Gardens in Adulthood

a sense of well-being for ourselves and others” (160). Both nostalgia for happy childhood memories with the family in the vegetable garden and a sense of harmony with the more- than-human world are intensified by the persona’s barefoot contact with the earth while planting the potatoes: “I walk behind them / my feet loving the damp earth / my footprints all over the ground” (ll. 21-23). The poem thus encourages the establishment of a healthy relationship with nature – in the form of a vegetable garden –, which helps foster healthy family relationships. That is to say that the healthy family interactions (cultural domain) are built on the family’s tending of their vegetable garden (natural domain). Hence, the poem exemplifies how the cultural and the natural domains merge in naturalcultural encounters between humans and the more-than-human world.

Crozier’s second poetry collection.

The speakers’ description of the different images of nature they both observe and reflect on in “The Apple Tree” is an idyllic one, which is reminiscent of the garden of Eden. Such a biblical allusion leads the reader to imagine the tree in the garden, even though the word garden is not mentioned in the poem. The unidentified personae (“we”) in the poem (“and we laugh / . . . / still we sit”, ll. 31, 34) cannot eat apples from the apple tree as it is not yielding any fruit yet. Nevertheless, the symbolism attached to such a tree seems to be both that of knowledge, specifically about the life-course, and that of life, particularly a celebration of mortal life. Therefore, the tree of life in the poem departs from its traditional symbolism, as it is not associated with a source of eternal youth. In the first stanza we have the first reference to ageing in the poem, namely “white blossoms turn / yellow” (ll. 2-3). This indication of the passage of time is retaken in the third stanza, in which the withered petals fall to the ground: “Wind breathes through / the tree, loosens petals / into a butterfly’s / brief flight / they light / from birth to death” (ll. 19-24). In these lines, the personae seem to realize the brevity of life in the fall of the petals, or the short life of a butterfly. Such a lesson taught by nature does not embitter the personae, they enjoy in their stead the innocent and simple beauty of the moment in a carpe diem of sorts. This can be seen when the personae depict the fall of the petals by the highly sensorial image of “white silk rain” (l. 27), which connotes the delicacy and softness of the petals. Another instance of ageing in the poem can be observed when the personae relate the falling petals to the confetti thrown to a just married couple: “Someone says / it’s just like a wedding / this white confetti” (ll. 28-30). This quotation refers to Erikson’s seventh stage of development within the life cycle, namely adulthood, in which care – both for significant others and for products and ideas – arises out of the crisis between generativity and stagnation. To quote from Erikson, “this is the stage when persons of

very different backgrounds must fuse their habitual ways to form a new milieu for themselves and their offspring” (71-2). Actually, the personae in the poem claim not to believe “in weddings anymore” (l. 33), which introduces the idea that the poem is about hardened individuals who have lost their innocence due to reasons that are not accounted for in the poem. In turn, this is underscored by the apple tree as a symbol of the tree of knowledge. However, in the poem the personae’s access to knowledge is acquired by the baptism of sorts that the rainfall of petals from the blossomed apple tree suggests rather than by biting an apple from it:

still we sit where petals settle in our hair blessings

in the early

apple morning (ll. 34-39)

The tree of knowledge that the apple tree in the poem represents does not relate to the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis; the knowledge or even wisdom it taps is that of enjoying the smallest things in life, such as the flowers blooming. This is because, with the observation of the swift fall of petals analysed above, the personae realize that tempus fugit, that life goes by so quickly, and yet “[they] laugh” (l. 31) and cherish the moment in nature by feeling blessed by the falling petals. Crozier thus revisits the biblical myth of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in order to offer a more contemporary approach to it, in which marriage is not an option the personae consider and there is no punishment for the attainment of knowledge. Through the examination of this poem, Boyd traces the evolution of Crozier’s poetry and contends that “Crozier’s garden poems still exhibit disillusionment with the garden trope and a highlighting of its coercive potential, but

Crozier is prepared now to express these ideas in less extreme formulations of figurative garden terrain” (306-307). In other words, the personae highlight the importance they give to a sensorial experience of nature over any metaphorical associations of the garden, especially in its relationship with the life-course. As such, the natural elements depicted in the poem seem to relieve the personae from the anxiety commonly associated to growing older. Thus, the imagined garden in the poem functions as a stress reliever, in line with healing garden research. As landscape architect Kadri Maikov et al. explain in their article – in which they examine a number of healing gardens in order to establish the specific characteristics that a healing garden (or a garden or park that functions as such) should have –, healing gardens are gardens that have been specifically built to promote feelings of well-being that in turn reduce stress and depression levels (Maikov et al. 223).

The subsequent life stage that is present in Crozier’s oeuvre in connection with the garden is adulthood, particularly midlife. To the best of my knowledge, there are no studies that specifically describe the role of gardens in adulthood. General research findings on both healing garden research and horticultural therapy would apply. The garden in midlife is portrayed in Crozier’s poem “A Good Day to Start a Journal,” which is the last poem in the poetry collection Everything Arrives at the Light (1995), and is classified under the fourth and last section, namely “Turning the Earth.” The poem’s main themes are love within a stable relationship, sexuality, and the acceptance of the bodily changes brought about by ageing into middle age. The themes of love relationships in different moments within the life-course and sexuality are recurrent within this fourth section of the collection, which also features non-dominant human relationships with non- human nature. In “A Good Day to Start a Journal,” Crozier depicts a middle-aged couple who are deeply engaged in tending their garden. And who, in close keeping with the previously-analysed poem – “The Apple Tree” –, engage in contemplative observation of

their garden and the life that their apple tree nests. This is because paying attention to the more-than-human world that surrounds them rather than to human routine is what matters to them both as individuals and as poets seeking inspiration, as suggested by the last line in this quotation:

a grocery list and appointments never kept because the sparrows sing for seeds in our apple tree, and the spider at the centre of her web demands your poet’s eye to hold her still. (ll. 4-8)

In the event of the man in the couple’s fifty-fifth birthday, the female persona starts writing a journal about the weather and their garden in order to express her love for him:

Since I cannot say

it right, for you today I must try to keep this journal. Write:

March, 26, and a little cold.

Write: Overnight the plum tree

has become one blossom. . . . (ll. 40-45)

These lines also suggest, as Boyd claims, Crozier’s intertwining of “a gardener’s spring digging in the earth and a writer’s work of creative renewal on the page” (337). Such a creative renewal, which is connected to the life cycle by means of references to the change of season from winter to spring in the poem, is fostered by a depiction of the ageing process from a positive stance. That is, the persona welcomes her partner’s ageing into his late middle age and celebrates it by kissing him all over his body: “You are fifty-five today. I must find / as many ways to tell you, as many places / on your body for my tongue to touch” (ll. 9-11). The sexual undertones that can be observed in these lines offer a

counter-narrative against socio-cultural discourses that normalise women’s sexual decline in midlife (Ussher et al. 451). Each reflection on the ageing process is framed within the couple’s, especially the man’s, close relationship with their garden. As such, the preceding lines are followed by:

Last spring, our first on the Coast

you said you’d never had a better birthday and wondered why. You’d been working in the garden, turning the damp earth.

On the prairies it would still be frozen nine feet down. For a body to be buried,

the ground is set on fire, bundles of straw smoking.

Birthdays always bring the old deaths back. (ll. 12-19)

As these lines suggest, the man in the couple enjoyed his birthday because of the weather- permitting access to working in the garden. This was not possible where he used to live, namely on the prairies, because of the longer winters. As horticultural researchers posit, gardening contributes to both physical and mental well-being, and it particularly prevents depression (Ng et al. 2). Accordingly, tending the garden allows the man in the poem to counter the sadness of remembering on his birthday those dear ones that have already passed away. Similarly, the following comment on ageing is framed by a showing-through of feelings, which is somehow triggered by the man’s close connection to the land:

“Earlier in bed, your hands cold from the soil, / I wept after I cried out, not knowing why”

(ll. 30-31). In turn, such feelings of sadness might have also surfaced because of the female persona’s remembrance of the death of her mother in-law and the love she professed for her son, as expressed by the jumpers she knitted for her son, and which the son wears to work in the garden. Alternatively, both the awareness of growing older – as

depicted by the man’s entering late middle-age – and the death of the man’s mother may serve as a reminder of the inevitability of death. In this vein, the persona’s shedding of tears symbolises anxiety towards not only her future mortality, but especially her spouse’s one. According to psychologists Victor Florian and Mario Mikulincer, “this need to face one’s own mortality after a recent loss may lead adults to recognize and deal with the consequences of death for different life aspects, and thereby spread the effects of that loss over most of the components of fear of death” (6). In this light, the source of the persona’s anxiety in the poem might be particularly related to future widowhood and its associated feelings of loneliness. As psychologist Kate M. Bennet and gerontologist Christina Victor assert, “[l]oneliness has been reported as a feature of widowhood from the earliest studies” (35). Even though the negative emotional outcomes of ageing into later life – namely loneliness and bereavement – are present in the poem, the ageing process itself is not demonized. In its stead, the love that the couple share – as shown in the poem through their sexualities – allows for a sense of welcome continuity in the affective-sexual area throughout the couple’s life-courses: “Fifteen years together and some days / there’s such pleasure in our bodies / as they move through the seasons” (ll. 32-34). Crozier uses hyperbolic images in the poem which intend to discard common perceptions of decaying flesh as disgusting, in the sense of Kathleen Woodward’s notion of unwatchability of older individual’s nudes (Figuring Age). As a result, the poem puts forward not only an acceptance of the changes brought about by the ageing process, but also the advantages for the maturity of a relationship to grow old together:

. . . far

from the beauty they [our bodies] were born to. Now they shine like parchment, worn by fingers,

by the spittle on the thumb as we turn

a page. (ll. 34-38)

The advantages described in this quotation are in line with Linn Sandberg’s theory of Affirmative Old Age, according to which “sexuality and ageing are analysed . . . as positive difference” (19) in order to overcome the common dichotomy within discourses of ageing of the decline narrative versus positive and successful ageing. From this perspective, while Crozier depicts the middle-aged couple’s skin as having lost the elastic properties of young skin, she also compares it to parchment, a valuable format on which manuscripts used to be written. In addition, the middle-aged couple’s skin is described with the verb “shine,” to which only positive connotations are attached. In this case the skin/parchment shines because the pages of their bodies have been turned many times, thus suggesting that their bodies have turned to each other for love and emotional support on many occasions. That is why they can understand each other very well: “We read each other, nearsightedly, / hands and tongues and even toes find where / the skin gives way”

(ll. 38-40). Thus, difference in skin characteristics is seen as positive difference in line with Sandberg’s theory.