Clifford Serenades his Plants

An Entry by Opportunity Gardens AmeriCorps, Tony DeMarco

“I love my garden, yes I do,” Clifford assures us at least a dozen times.  And he has good reason to.

“Mm hmm, we’ve been eating lots of these.  My sister says they’re a little salty, but what do you think of them?” he inquires after letting us taste his homemade pickles.

“Well, they are pretty salty,” relates Trish, who oversees the Opportunity Garden Program at CCUA and set up this fall seed planting and mentoring meeting. “But they taste great.  These are huge, too and really crunchy.”

As we turn our attentions to the garden, “Ohh, my babies.  Yeah, my babies are growin’ real good.  You’ll see over in the other patch, they’re growin’ like crazy.  How did you grow so far?” Clifford asks one sweet potato that has meandered halfway across a bed and entwined itself through some chicken wire fencing.  As he starts to pull the vine out of the fencing to make space for fall seeds, Clifford exhorts, “Now don’t break on me here.  I’ll be gentle, but don’t break.”  One leaf snaps off the vine.  “Aughhooo!” he exclaims, “I didn’t mean to do that to you, sorry, sorry.  I hope you’ll be okay.”

“How did you learn to talk to your plants?” I ask Clifford.

“Oh, well because the plants like to hear music,” is his matter of fact response.  “So of course I sing in the garden.  They move around to the tunes.  Boo be doo da bowww.”

In Clifford’s garden when the wondrous prescience embedded in a seed meets his voice and gentle encouragement, good food grows.