When my brain woke up at 4:30 a.m. Thursday morning, it tossed and turned a wide range of need-to-dos: scheduling a work project actually outside my control, catching up on yesterday’s errands, up-potting young plants that have one by one been rotting or drying up or both. By 5:30, my body agreed to wake up as well, with help from a standard yoga-coffee-journal-newspaper transition. At 6:00, the kids were still in bed. Maybe, just maybe, I could make the early waking worthwhile… I opened the tub of tiny pomegranate trees that I had largely ignored but still worried about for a month. I gently pulled the largest leafy cutting out of the loose vermiculite. And laughed joyfully at the real magic I found!
After sticking the cutting in a pot mid-February, at the end of March it had still been just a stick. Now, at the end of April, a true tree had rooted. I set five of the babies in new soil, and packed up the rest for my students to marvel at and plant with me soon.
The kids did get up and to school, I did get to Lowe’s and then my school at a decent time, and the word “roots” got to play nicely in my brain while I drove. What roots me?
Gardening
The act of gardening centers me emotionally and strengthens me physically. My figurative gardening roots reach down to helping my mom when I was little, playing in my grandparents’ yard with my sister and cousins at every age, and learning from many local Southern Arizona locations and mentors as an adult. The idea of garden teaching as a profession was just a seed in college, and was nurtured and fully rooted over a decade later during early parenthood. My kids need a meaningful connection to the earth. So do I still. When adults stop me in my path to show off what they have grown, and children proclaim gardening as their favorite class, I feel affirmed that the needs for soil and sun and growth are real – and are really being met.
Tim
It’s funny, I tend to brush aside Earth Day or let it pass by uneventfully. Does “Earth Day Every Day” count? But here’s a pretty cool story about Earth Day 2005. I attended the Tucson Earth Day Festival at Himmel Park (It has since moved to Children’s Museum Tucson.) to enjoy the spring day and to browse potential outdoor volunteer opportunities. The Sky Island Alliance booth interested me enough to sign up for the upcoming restoration weekend – camping, moving plants to close roads, mixing with people who also liked those sorts of things. But I needed a ride.
Enter volunteer-of-the-year (literally) Tim Van Devender, who drove me to Empire Ranch one April afternoon, asked me on a proper hiking date that July, and – long story short – married me in March 2008. He is to whom I return to at the end of each day, with whom I navigate life events big and small, from whom I draw strength during low points, and to whom I channel strength in turn. Tim is my root to home, to family.
Song
Music rooted in my life beginning with Girl Scout songs, expanded into formal training and fulfilling community through piano lessons and multiple choirs, and drifts in and out of my head as an informal daily soundtrack. Currently that soundtrack is a little more Disney-themed than I might choose. Last year, among many COVID-era firsts, I participated in a virtual choir and recording that really resonated: figurative roots play a role in the Rising Appalacia song “Resilient”. I pine for the sisterhood of a choir again. My music roots are kind of dangling without a strong hold right now. What roots of yours are looking for soil?
Arizona
“Arizona native” is a badge I wear proudly. From tracing my family history here back to the 1950’s, to being encouraged to play in the dirt on family camping and hiking trips, to growing an expertise in native desert plants, my roots in this Southwestern state have held me here despite several opportunities to move elsewhere. I do love to travel – California, Minnesota, North Carolina, Texas, and many more states contain lovely relatives to visit and special ecosystems to explore. To Arizona, thus far, I always return.
I also acknowledge that the privilege to choose where I live stems from the good fortunes of health, employment, and living in a country not at war. To those involuntarily displaced, however near or far, I can imagine but not fully understand the pain of being uprooted.
Future plans
With slight chagrin, I confess that making lesson plans relaxes me – even though I allow myself a lot of flexibility with said plans. I’m rooted in the idea of having some control and predictability over schedules and goals. The same applies for planning family activities – I’ll plan out the week or summer as a way to feel more grounded in the present. Does that count as optimism? Any plans I make do work best if I get out of bed in the morning and DO some of them. Something, anything really.
Future of the planet?
I’m rooted in the pull towards helping Planet Earth, away from the fear that not enough other people are. “Something,” I have to chant to myself. Something is better than nothing. Saving some baby pomegranate trees on my patio last Thursday even if I didn’t save them all. Teaching a small class about soil and seasons Friday night, instead of keeping the joy to myself. Supervising a Jane Goodall-inspired club of elementary students on Monday afternoons and accompanying my older son to Scouts BSA service projects on the weekends.
Arizona draining its watersheds, and my own overdependence on oil, freeze me up if dwell long on the bigger changes still needed. So I watch birds in our wild backyard with Kid 1, brush our trusting dog with Kid 2, smile at the dirt spilled by my husband who takes care of the houseplants. Something to feed my roots.
And you?
What roots you? What has always been part of you, or what helps you be grounded in the present? I welcome stories of your own interests or examples of surprise successes.
Happy Earth Day to you and to our impressive planet.