Within the city we live not far from where my husband grew up, maybe 20 blocks, but we only bought this house seven or eight years ago.
We had to do a good amount of work before we moved in, such as upgrading the electrical, which was all 1960s when the previous owner bought the house, and redoing all the walls which are mamposteria. My husband also wanted to build a laundry casita at the back of the garden and a pool along one long wall.
As is traditional, albañiles stayed in the property to do the work. They cleared the garden completely (to be fair, there was not much there) to best be able to construct the pool and the steps surrounding it on all sides as well as the casita. They also laid a cement path for me, winding. There was not one bit of green in the back garden. The photos of the work in progress are just rocks and dust for about a year.
They asked me what plants and trees I wanted in the garden but to be honest I just wanted my house back, I wanted us to move in and have privacy, so I told them I would think on it and probably do it myself later. Then I never did. Not one plant. I meant to. I looked and admired all the gardens I saw and asked plenty of people what that was or this was. But I never put a thing in. Eventually because we are in the tropics, things began to grow and so I kept pulling them, always with the intention that I was keeping the garden clear for what I planned to put.
Then came the pandemic. My husband and older son were actually out of the country when the border closed. My older son was finishing school, in his last semester. My younger son, the one with Asperger, and I were going to fly to his commencement, then all four of us fly home. We ended up separated, half our family ine one country, half in another for two years.
I kept pulling “the weeds” at first. Then one day a plant appeared behind the water tank, an enormous tank meant to collect rainwater from the roof for use in the garden. And I was scared because it looked like a plant that made me very sick once and I did not want to touch it. So I found an application, a different one that was not very good, and tried to identify it. For months I was concerned.
Every night I spoke to my husband on video chat. I showed him photos of insects and butterflies I had seen and we would watch the sunset together. He promised to get rid of the plant when he ever came back. He was concerned too. I did not know he was searching for a better solution. Then he suggested iNaturalist to me and said maybe that could identify the plant.
When I uploaded the photo of the plant, the application immediately suggested the correct genus and then showed me a photo of the species as a suggestion and I was like OH. I cannot explain how that felt. Just nothing to worry about, Hamelia patens. It became my favorite plant and I watched it daily during the pandemic.
And I stopped automatically pulling things and began identifying things, including the bugs and butterflies I saw.
My entire garden comes from the birds and the bats and the anoles and the breeze and the bees.
Everything is a surprise. Everything is a gift.