Keisha is poor. She was raised by her grandmother in the bayou country of Louisiana in a modest wood house lifted up by pilings along the Pearl River. With great pride Grammy and Keisha tended the lush garden every day after school. They looked forward to full days of gardening during the summer vacation. Together they produced zinnias, nasturtiums and strawberries.
Keisha loved every part of the growing cycle-planting the seed, watering them each night and watching them sprout into mature plants.
When Keisha was fourteen, Grammy died suddenly of a stroke. The house was sold and she was sent to San Farancisco to live with her aunt and uncle. Life changed; she found herself in public housing, where there were no gardens to tend and no lazy afternoons playing along the river. It felt to Keisha that her happiness had vanished overnight.
High school was rough. Keisha was use to a more gentle existence. The neighborhood was unsafe, the kids were unruly, and the surroundings were devoid of color and beauty.
I was always daydreaming about Louisiana- working in my garden, feeling the soil, cutting back the flowers, growing our own vegetables and fruits.
After high school most of my friends tooks jobs as cashiers and store clerks. But, not me. I looked in the phone book and found three garden nurseries. I hopped on the bus to find a job.
I'd never applied for a job before, and I'd never been to a nursery. Nobody had a job for me. But just walking down the rows of plants made me feel like I was back home. I knew in my heart I belonged here.
She kept going back every week for two months. Finally her persistence paid off when she landed a job as a groundskeeper's assistant. Five years later she's still working as the beloved employee of a family-run nursery.
Recently Keisha purschased her first house, a tiny cottage in a run-down neighborhood. But this cottage came with something very important, a twenty-by-twenty-foot plot of land in front of the house.
Driving down the street, it's hard to miss Keisha's house. Her garden is a colorful oasis in an otherwise bleak and gray neighborhood, a wall-to-wall carpet of yellow, orange, and purple. Tomatoes and zucchini grow among the hollyhocks, zinnias and gladiolus.
I did all this on fifty dollars' worth of seed and blubs. I feel so happy when I'm sitting in the garden. It reminds me of home. I have so much here. What I don't need I give away. |
