Today that would be me, figuring out
the drip system routine for just part
of the magnificence on the corner
of the Santa Ynez garden goddess.

I had another one next door years ago
named Inez, who politely asked if she
could plant the strip between her
apartment building and my house,
and, after I eagerly agreed, she filled
it with succulents and ferns, gardenias
and roses and canna lilies that grow
a foot taller than me each summer.

Before she moved away, Inez made me
promise to take care of that strip of
loveliness, which I still do.

But Katie, the young garden goddess
who lives in an apartment on the corner,
has turned that formerly bleh swatch
of weedy “lawn” into bordered beds
profuse with foliage. In her absence
three of us tend the acreage I think of
as hers—a volunteer labor of love
that has me stretching long hoses
across the sidewalk to water beds
of tall daisies and even taller bamboo.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I talk
to the plants anyway, a rah-rah without
pompoms: “Atta girl, you pop out those
purple flowers.” “Good going, you tall
fellas.” “C’mon, little one, here’s some
water—perk up now.”

When I’m finished, walking home
to my little front yard, it looks, I think,
like a kindergarten—a starter garden,
which it is. But my cosmos are still
growing tall, and the red salvia
is already starting to bush out, though
one of the lupines has died, and the new
black-eyed Susan wilts every afternoon
in the heat.

But I take up my own hose, aiming
the magic water wand at the little sprouts.
“Keep going,” I tell them. “One of these
days you’re gonna be as big and strong
as the big kids down the street.”

It all comes down to water and love.
As they dampen under their daily
shower, I feel the newbies rise a little,
stretch their roots a bit more,
getting on with the business of growth.