Suddenly the summer is here in full force, the beauty and fierce radiant heat. I have been working in the garden and spending time with two Aloe ferox thriving in gravel and shaded only by rocks. I am listening but humanly deaf in so many ways. Attunement, the slow move to feeling in animal, vegetable, mineral rather than in human. I have lived with aloes and suculents all my life. The delicate grass aloes of the Zimbabwean savannah plateau, the tree aloes of Mpumalanga, the red and orange aloes of the Karoo in winter. But I am now dreaming of clumps of Aloe ferox in a dry river bed and wondering why. It isn’t a Western symbol of sterility — the dream aloes are magnificent and thriving in drought. The message lies elsewhere and deeper.
And the fullness of summer in the back garden enthralls me. My little pomegranate, salvaged as a cutting when developers tore down a hedge of pomegranate bushes, has bright flowers and may bear fruit after Yule, our summer solstice rather, here in the southern hemisphere. My figs are swelling with green ovoids. Buddleias are out, the Gaura lindheimerei is a mass of white hovering blossoms, Polygala myrtifolia is all out, the mauve September Bush. And I have barrels and tubs filled with new herbs: opal purple basil, green leafy basil, thyme, origanum all the way from a rocky mountain in Greece, pungent coriander, a large terracotta planter planted up with a large clump of white-flowering garlic chives. We are getting to know one another: I watch and listen for signs of discontent, yellowing leaves, sudden wilt, bolting, stunted growth, too much desperate blossoming. And beyond that, intuiting the breathless struggles of roots for moisture, the graceful growth patterns across the season and any felt discontent with the sandy soil provided, the insect life that may be too predatory, the happiness of bees, the degree of desired sunshine or shade, a need for shelter from the wind. I keep my gardens as close to the wild as possible. I follow Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for plant communication. When a plant is truly happy and thriving and at home, the subtler stuff can be communicated. A thirsty neglected plant won’t want to talk plant ancestors and healing for humans.
The best guide online for befriending plants is the awesome Susun Weed. Many of her indigenous American plants are unknown to me but her guides for the safe and simple use of herbs are clear enough.
As she says:
’I want my students to learn as I learned, not what I learned. I want them to find their own way and to trust their own intuition.’
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