The gardener

The sun was going down on the vegetable farm, giving to the sky some orangey-pinkie
brush stripes. The day has been hotter than the previous one. Bean leaves turn out brownish
and their pods start to dry on the bush itself. Too soon for the period would have said the
gardener. The mix of ancient tomatoes was wearing white dots on some of their curves. The
bite of sun.
The heat wave was indeed there. The nights were hotter, refreshing almost no one in
this Eden garden. A man wiped up his forehead with his soily and marked hand, knees on the
soil. He was finishing to plant some shoots of pontoise cabbage in a crop that he soaked
abundantly earlier. His day was almost over.
He walks nonchalantly with his tools to the abandoned broken house that was his
shed. He drops them in the entrance on the old wooden shelf where some spiders hide
themselves, afraid of being crushed.In the spring, a few swallows have built their nest on the
beams of the ceiling, safe from the ferocious predator from the ground. The new-borns chicks
are constantly squeaking, asking for more food. Their parents are flying incessantly in the
garden, passing through the broken glass of the old windows.
The gardener stops for a second and admires the quietness of the land. The calm
atmosphere, sprinkled with the sound of wind wandering in the labyrinth of leaves, the
singing of the birds flying away and the water flowing gently to the roots of the vines. He
takes out his tobacco to roll a payoff smoke when a gust of wind blows away his precious
treat through the doorway onto a woman's foot. A candid woman who was looking old as she
was looking young. She graciously smiles at him.

-I’m sorry but you shouldn’t be here. Are you here to pick up some veggies? The
gardener says promptly. She stares at him with softness but in a whisper she responds.
- I really love your garden, you know. It’s quiet and my children are alive here.
- Excuse me, but do I know you? Who are you?
-Who am I? An interesting question many have tried to answer. I think you will have
to figure it out. Humans gave me a name once. Thinking she was a lunatic, he approaches her
deliberately and politely says:
- I really think you need to go because I need to close the garden for the night. If you
don’t mind, shall we go? He points to the exit gate. He tries to lead her by gently
moving her back with his hand when his fingers just pass through her body like it was
air . The woman laughs about the incredulous effect she has produced on the man.
- I’m a gardener too, you know but I’m also the “growing”.
- The growing of what?
- What do you like about this place, gardener?
- I don’t like this place, woman. I feel this place, they need me and I need them. People
will say it’s silent but it’s not. It’s a garden of whispers. No one can understand the
language but every human can sense it. In the garden, you can hear your own heart
beating. But why are you asking that anyway? What are you?
- Tomorrow you will probably tell yourself that I come from your imagination after a
hot day in the field. A hallucination after labour. But tonight I will be your companion
for a brief instant, because you forget. I want you to see that you are not the only
gardener here. They don’t need you as a gardener but you need them in order to
survive. The ladybug on the leaf of this cabbage is only ephemeral. The worm in the
soil of this cucumber plant that gets just hunted by this swallow after all his hard work
of labour will just die eaten. You are not in need in this place, gardener. With or
 without you, they would last. But you wouldn’t live without them. They are the
gardener of your life and your people.
- You are right, but I’m an architect and a protector of this ecosystem. I have been
creating it inch by inch. I care when they are hurt and I sublimate their taste and
colour. When they are too hot, I make myself rain. When they are too cold, I make
myself the sun. When they are infested and attacked by pests or bindweed, I made
myself their knight. How can you say that I’m not in need in this place? It’s my place.
She smiled warmly and looked at the gardener with the look of a mother to her
naughty kid.
- Gardener, are you afraid to die?
- Everyone is! You didn’t answer me, woman.
- Look again at your place. Every strawberry that breathes in your land after putting her
astonishing red dress will die. When she falls on the ground, in the process of her
death, the sun will make her a bomb of seeds. Helped by some living being she will
die so her kids can live. They will rise again to remember what she has done. They
will remember the hot day and the cold one. The bindweed trying to grasp her mom.
They will remember to make space for them so the so-called nasty plant may purify
the soil for all. Protecting the strawberry heir from the sharp cold days and the hot
summer. Living and dying is an act of transmission so all can remain. Because in their
deaths, they will live again. How can you tell me it is your place? You are just seated
in the passenger side pretending to drive the car. Trying to drive from this position,
where will it lead you, Gardener? Can you just not just enjoy the ride?
- Are you Death? I’m going to die tonight?
- I’m as cruel as Death and Life. But I have no power to decide where you belong.
- Because tonight is not about me? She looks away at a toad enjoying the spray of the
water sprinkle.
- You are an entertainment of their universe. You are the unpredictability of their world.
They are not afraid of death but they are afraid of your people, human. Because death
is a certainty of their life. Your people aren’t. What gave you the right to decide who
will live and who didn’t? You need the one you let live and destroy the one who
doesn’t benefit you. How can you be so sure that they are useless?
- I…I need to sustain my family and my dream, woman. Why are you judging me so
hard? How is it a thing I should be guilty of? This garden is an act of love. I created
this project of an edible garden because it’s the kind of future I want for my kid and
other generations too. I invest in the future you are describing. I plant each seed with
some of their friends, so they can profit to the rest. I care about the water they need
and help them grow inventing some original system. Many are worse than me; they go
in lifeless spots to buy vegetables under plastic, thinking the soil is dirty. Not paying
attention to the name of the species they just bought because they found the pictures
pretty. I’m not the bad one in this story.
- I'm cruel, gardener, I told you already. You shouldn’t look at what people are doing
badly and think that you are better. You are as responsible as them. Your individual
choice may change some, but it’s your individual ego that leads you away from
belonging to this land. Everyday it’s not purely about you, not only tonight. We are
waiting for your awakening, and it’s been a long time. No matters how much you
love; it will never be an excuse for your behaviour. And it will not also make you a
better species because you care. We do too, and we don’t need to claim it. We don’t
know each other's names. We just live and then leave. My children are as cruel as me
like the flooding who destroy the mountain; my children are also as sweet as me as the
blossoming of the peach in the spring. But you, gardener, you are my most cheeky
 one, you forgot who I was. I’m the “I” so we can be a we. So tonight, I will help you
remember. And tomorrow, you may choose: Will I be your imagination after a hot day
in the sun? It does depend on you, what you will choose. The uncertainty of belonging
with us, not knowing your purpose here or the certainty of belonging to yourself,
having no doubt of your destination?

In the shadow of the raspberry alley, she starts moving slowly away. The sky that was
so heavy and hot became darker. A pleasant warm rain starts to fall in the garden. As she
fades away in the first rain of the season, she turns around murmuring: they have called me
Gaia, hope now you remember, gardener.