Naming the Gardens, March 2010
It struck me, the day I went to the gardens for the first time this season, that they need names. Last year we called them The Big Garden and The Little Garden. That’s sort of like some people I know who named their feline pet Cat; it’s funny on the one hand, but on the other, not very expressive or original. And why not plant a seed of creativity into the garden mix?
The first thing that popped into my mind was Occident and Orient. Not bad for a start. The little garden, lying east of the larger, would, of course, be Orient. The larger garden, two and a half miles west of here, would be Occident. Clever, maybe, erudite, sure, but not memorable and certainly not humorous, something I was looking for.
I tried combination nature names such as Sunnyvale, Morningwood or Meadowbrook, but they weren’t what I was looking for.
How about a foreign word? The Greek word for hope came to mind, but somehow the sound of elpidah (el-PEE-dah) in modern Greek or elpis in ancient doesn’t ring sweet in this English speaker’s ear. Kiros is Greek for garden, fito (sounds like a dog’s name) is plant, and paradise is paradiso, the best of the bunch but still, no potatoes.
Then it finally struck me. The little garden is on some U.S. Department of the Interior property near the southernmost point of the District of Columbia on a spit of land called Jones Point. A tiny National Parks managed area lies next to the gardens with a quaint old lighthouse, a plaque marking the D.C. boundary stone laid in 1792, and some soccer fields. I can call the small garden Jones. I also think Jones would make an apt name because it’s a word that means having a strong yearning or craving. In this recently coined definition, you could say a person is jonesing for a garden, or I have a jones for a homestead and a life as a writer. I love gardens and have sorely missed having gardens these many years of living overseas (except in Seoul). This little 5 by 12 plot near Jones Point was the initial answer to my jonesing. Jones, it is.
Well then, If the little garden is Jones, I almost have to name the big one Smith, don’t you think? I partly chose Smith because the two together, referring to two gardens (Let’s go visit Smith and Jones), are funny. I also chose it because a smith is someone who works with metal, beating it on an anvil. The ground in the big garden, especially when I first started working it, is very heavy. Smith fits nicely. Last year at the end of the season, while digging up some plants that had hardly performed (actually they hard-ly performed), I was appalled at how rock solid the soil was, as if I had worked it, at some point, while it was too wet, and it had solidified into a virtual, underground anvil that those poor plants’ roots could hardly penetrate.
I’m glad to be able to refer to these two plots by name. Lends some needed and even earned dignity, and smooths our talk about them. “I’m going down to Jones for some onions. Be back soon.” or, “Smith’s got a mess of beans today, I better go pick them.” And you know what? It’s funny almost every time I say it.
