Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)

It's Black History Month (I'm sure you have noticed the annual surfeit of media programming about African-Americans).  In celebration, for the first time in Urban Ecology history, I will be offering words from writers, poets, and essayists of African descent on nature, gardening, and mercy mercy me, the ecology.

Jamaica Kincaid

For the first offering, and in recognition that many of us are enduring a particularly difficult winter, an excerpt from My Garden by Vermont gardener and Antigua-born novelist Jamaica Kincaid:

I was putting the garden to bed for the winter when, looking over the empty spaces that had not so long ago been full of flowers and vegetables, I was overcome with the memory of satisfaction and despair, two feelings not unfamiliar to any gardener.  Satisfaction was seeing the tips of the asparagus poke through the earth, coming all the way up, wonderfully whole, real and without blemish, just the way they should be really, from the trenches into which I had placed their roots.  Even after many years of gardening, I never believe a live plant will emerge from the seed I have put in the ground; I am surprised, as if it had never happened to me before, as if every time were the first time.

Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden, 1999 Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, NYC, NY