During midsummer's stickiest days, Tatay would tend his garden until the sun started to fade. Sometimes he’d sit just under the garage door watching over his front yard—his eyes resting on the fig tree.
Whenever I thought of the garden, I thought of Tatay, and whenever I thought of Tatay, I thought of eating grapes off of the vine in his garden. My Dad and my titas remember that garden as I do, eating sour grapes and picking persimmons from a familiar branch. We remember the warmth it brought to our bellies with persimmon memories, sprouting from one seed and spilling into the next generation.
I didn’t realize how much I would miss our family garden until summer struck. So I started to volunteer at a local community garden in so-called Charlottesville called Common Field. There I learned how to properly tell when a watermelon is ready for plucking; what prickly defenses a cucumber can put up; and how easy it can be to grow enough food to feed a community, with little land. I felt so taken care of by my community and so eager to build a relationship with the land I lived on, just as Tatay had done.
Plucking weeds and planting seeds slowly turned into identifying leaves of Pawpaw trees in parks and acknowledging the land that is stolen Monacan land. I am still unlearning colonialist ideas about land and land ownership, often thinking back to when I lived in our garden and learned one thing: the earth will feed us if we’re not so greedy.
