Urban Scavenging, Part I
Today begins a series of articles on my daily walks throughout my South Bend, Ind. neighborhood. I have been living on the south side of this Midwestern city for almost twenty years, and my two-mile morning walks have become the highlight of summer.
Like Lars Eighner, who penned “On Dumpster Diving,” I like the word scavenging, and I learned the complementary habit of foraging in my youth back in Detroit. There were a few apple trees on my block, a pear tree that hung over a neighbor’s fence into the alley and a cherry tree one block over. The apples were sour, which is how we kids liked them, the pears hard, which we also didn’t mind, and the cherries? Well, my friends and I never got the nerve to venture into that particular yard, for we feared some, if not all, widows with enticing fruits. At this point in my life, I figure it is time to make up for opportunities missed.
Curating goods — other people’s castoffs and fruits from ancient, neglected, trees — feeds more than the body; appreciating what others throw away feeds the soul. Take today, for instance. I walked two miles beyond my own neighborhood to visit one of my favorite yards, filled with non-functioning vehicles shaded by an arbor that includes two fifteen-foot cherry trees. June is cherry season as far as I can tell, so my taste buds were acutely alert with anticipation as I approached the plot, scaring away the competition.
A little black girl again, for five minutes, I stood under the tree’s umbrella, plopping one, then two, then five or six of the soft orbs into my dry mouth, breaking the thin skin with my incisors, squeezing out the juice and tossing the seed around my mouth before spitting it into the grocery-store bag I had brought along for cuttings. Sour cherries aren’t as sharp as a Sour Patch Kid but, cooled by tree branches, are more refreshing.
The urban yard of disparate things is for me a slice of heaven, a garden of treasure only birds and oddballs care about. It is bordered by an aged, rotting rail fence over which hangs an antique, dusty pink rose. I spotted the plant last week when there checking on the cherries, and planned my return, garden shears in hand. Today, I took two cuttings, one of which had a full bloom. Holding it up to my nose , I breathed in deeply its aroma, letting its cool velvety petal tickle the skin of my nose. The intoxicating sweet warm softness of a grandmother’s vanity is a close match.
Carter, my husband, a couple weeks ago tweaked my memory of my Big Mama’s yellow rose planted beneath her living room window. His grandmother too had a yellow rose, he says. He stood staring at cultivars at Lowe’s just before Father’s Day. We did not, however, bring home any of those roses. He claims I talked him out of them. I had misgivings.
Ending my own reverie, I gingerly placed today’s cuttings into the plastic shopping bag, tied its two handles around the stems and covered the thorns with my sheers.
Walking home, I was on the lookout for yet more plants and, lucky me, found a second rose, a miniature variety red. It must have contained a hundred small blooms. Snip. Snip. How nicely it would go with another miniature, also red, I cut last year in Mississippi. Twelve hours and wet paper towel around the stem. How hardy it proved to be, growing like a weed so that I was able to get another cutting off of it this year. If husband wanted roses, roses he would have.
Continuing toward home, I began to envision the garden’s design. I would place it outside the back door, across from my kitchen garden teaming with chocolate mint. There, Carter could catch a glimpse of it while mowing down the English Ivy overtaking the house.
I stopped in my tracks, ready for another caper. On the opposite side of the street, where a trashcan might go on pick-up day, I spotted against the curb a deconstructed table, its pedestal legs sticking up from the rubble. Perfect. If I could summon the energy, tomorrow not today, I would paint the legs a subtle color, maybe a nice green like our house, and situate them as a backdrop to the miniatures.
I’m incorrigible I realize — a pack rat, an old soul, but also something else. Ah, yes. An artist. My neighborhood is a cognitive feast, and walking through it does stimulate. Scavenging is sort of free. The only cost is judgment of the Gladys Kravitz variety, and, at my age, I have long ago gotten over caring what others think of me.
