A Tourist In My Own Back Yard
June 15, 2020 3 Comments
This essay also appears in my local weekly newspaper, Lamorinda Weekly.
In the beginning: dark, damp soil. A small, black plastic pot of hope. Nothing seems to be growing but my own impatience.
A few evenings later, the dirt has begun to mound and rise, swelled by a pushing from below. In the morning a white nub has appeared below the broken surface of the soil. By evening the protuberance has thickened, a loop of pale white rope tinged with green. The next morning a head is crowning, something large and thick and green dragged up out of the dirt. By the end of that same day, the head has revealed itself, the stalk straightening and hoisting up the bean from which this miracle was born. …