If you want to read a person’s mind,
look at something they value
or something they don’t.
The house next door -
we thought they had just moved onto the site,
but he told me last week,
that he bought the land 39 years ago
and built the following year.
There is only grass in the back,
with poison poured around the perimeter.
There was a pittosporum hedge when we moved in -
wacked back to almost nothing.
He came with a chainsaw and cutting it all out -
too much work,
he said.
While pulling out hedge,
he found a mighty Tōtara -
self-seeded.
Pulled it out.
The back garden like a desert -
a desert of grass,
surrounded by a poison border.
In the front,
he has a hedge -
surprise!
A hedge begging to live.
Cut back until almost all you can see is branches,
tiny leaves on the exterior,
begging to live.
It seems that he planted alternating
pittosporum and camellia -
one could imagine he was creative,
but that style was borrowed by him,
from a neighbour with a much larger hedge.
While that other hedge grows tall and majestic,
covered with flowers and green -
this one is mostly branches -
and I only saw a flower for the first time -
recently.
No doubt,
he will cut it off.
Why all of this focus on the neighbour’s garden?
I see his mind there -
never an interesting topic,
never a novel idea -
39 years of cutting grass
and poisoning the boundary.
Look around you -
gardens,
home libraries,
handicraft.
The minds of others
and ourselves
on display.
Lee Sturgis