Robins pull worms from the ground

After work, we drive twelve miles due west of midtown. Pull up to the house with the car windows down.

The air smells green. Like Vermont. Like Belgium. The two places in the world that stand for pastoral bliss in my family of origin.

It rains every other day, and some days, every other hour.

The peonies are out.

Robins pull worms from the ground. Each time is a revelation to me. Each instance of a robin with a worm in its mouth.

A living ribbon in a pencil yellow beak.

The newest class of bunnies — out and about with their mothers. Even on double yellow streets. They try to out-sit our notice. Ears flattened back. “I am a rock.”

D. from Gaia Gardens spends an hour with me between rain showers. She names all the trees and shrubs on our lot.

She says the decorative pear tree must go. It’s terribly invasive and in poor health to boot. Then the silver maple behind it, will have more breathing room. Room to branch out. And we’ll be able to see the sycamore in the next yard.

I know she is right — and also I will miss watching birds land in the pear while I do the dishes. Will miss the lightning of the chipmunk zipping every which way.

I ask about birches. We had them in Belgium. She says the river birch and the gray birch are native to New Jersey. But they’re short-lived, she says. Sixty to eighty years. Like humans. Whereas an oak or a sycamore lives two hundred years or more. She says we have to think in layers of space and time. And I should make a plan. Which I already knew, but I needed to talk to someone like her in order to even know where to begin.

The possibilities for a garden are endless.

The pristine lawns feel lazy. An attempt to make the outside look like the inside: carpeted and vacuumed. Like the hair of a news anchor.

Vain, and also bad for biodiversity.

Close to sunset, while I am upstairs, Bobina begins to meow insistently. I come down, look out the living room window with her.

There’s a groundhog by the front steps. Now he’s on the first step!

I raise my phone to take a photo, he freezes, then lumbers off.

Divinity School goes out every Sunday at sunset. Subscribe between now & June 30 & you’ll be sending me to a workshop with the one & only Alexander Chee, on writing an essay collection. That’s 5 annual subscriptions ($50/each). Thank you!

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