For the Love of Dirt: THE GREEN STUFF

Sunday, May 30, 2021

THE GREEN STUFF

"When you're green, you're growing. When you're ripe, you rot..." -Ray Kroc

Quite a few moons ago, there was a family living about six streets over. My mother didn't know that I spent so much time hanging out with the daughter.....Summer.... that was her name. We were in Grade 6. Their last name was "Forest". So her name was "Summer Forest". Summer didn't always come to school. Her family were free thinkers. She was cool.

We would walk by the poppy patches and gather them in bunches. They would die.But we'd take them back to her house and stuff them into glasses. Her house was cool.

Beads hung everywhere. Furniture was enveloped with fuzzy fake fur. An assortment of dogs and cats wandered in and out. Loads of records lay on chairs.

And there were plants everywhere. Little green ones. In pots, on shelves, in the window.

Lots of them.

Summer's mom dressed in raging bell bottoms, tie die frilly blouses with her long straight hair tied up in a scarf. Her hoop earrings were huge and bangled and bongled and jangled as she walked.

She liked me to call her "Spring". Her husband, she called " Fall", was a gardener of some sort. "Names we chose, names we can live with," entoned Summer's mom , as she swayed back and forth while she baked . "Names that make us ONE with the universe. It's important to find your universe."

She liked to dance to the Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, and someone called the Jimmy Hendrix Experience. All while brandishing a watering can. Her green plants sure needed a lot of water. She was always watering them. Summer's dad would come sailing in. He was a sculptor . He would say to me " Can you dig it?!"

Summer would just roll her eyes. We'd raid the freezer for root beer freezies, and home made Jello popsicles. Her parents would sing "Wild horses couldn't drag me away, wild wild horses...."

One day we came back to Summer's house and her parents weren't there. There was a note left for us to water the little green plants. They sure had a green thumb.

One day we put on some Jimmy Hendrix and bopped about jumping up and down on the fuzzy furniture, till Summer got a nosebleed on the white fake fur. Then we had to hurry and clean it up before her parents got home.

But they didn't seem to care. " It's in the bag, man", said Summer's dad. when they came in.

I wasn't sure what was in the bag. But Summer's mom said they wouldn't be low on bread now. They must be making a lot of sandwiches, I thought.

They sure were happy. He'd landed another gardening job, apparently.

"Love was such an easy game to play. Now I need a place to hide away, or I believe in yesterday", Summer's mom and dad sang, and sang. They weren't very good at it.