Rooted Wanderers

Rooted Wanderers

In the backburner of my rented house, beside the long shadow of uncertainty, I coax life from the soil of impermanence. Here, in this strip of land on loan to me by fate, I grow perennials. It's spring, and the world is waking up—you can feel it in the raw, moist air, biting into your lungs with promises of renewal. I, too, crave this renewal, this stable horizon of permanence, but the ground beneath me shifts with the term of a lease and dreams of a home not yet clenched in my grasp.

They say to plant roots, but what about us rolling stones? The ones with restless spirits and temporary postal codes? I’ve always felt a pang of envy for those who embellish their gardens with the reckless abandon of the perennially settled. Yet, here I am, subverting the norm, creating a nomadic garden in the confines of temporality.

This afternoon, like many before, finds me tethered by an insatiable need to nurture and grow. Pots and space ran out, a common debacle in my cramped existence, yet necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. Along the side of this transient shelter, there lay a narrow strip, shaded and overlooked, where the barbeque and a medley of forgotten tools lay gathering rust and regret. I saw potential where others saw dead space.

With brisk movements, born from a yearning to create despite constraints, the barbecue and tools were relegated to the shadows of the garage. In their place, I unfurled black plastic bags, a barrier against the encroaching wilderness of weeds, an assertion of control against the chaos. Upon this makeshift canvas, I began to stage my garden like a director setting the scene for a play destined to close early.

Plant pots—my vagabond companions—were arranged with deliberate care. Tall ones shadowed against the house, flaunting their height with unabashed pride. Gold-leaved specimens cast next to their darker brethren, a symphony of contrast. The shorter kin guarded the front lines, an assorted vanguard of color and life. Between this motley crew, I spread the peat moss, a nurturing medium to cradle my rooted drifters, keeping them upright and shielding the fragile textures of their existence from the drying sun.

From a distance, the illusion holds. The peat moss blurs the lines between pot and earth, creating a semblance of permanence—a perennial garden that defies its very nature. All it asked of me was to keep the moss damp, a small act of caregiving, mimicking the ebb and flow of a more rooted life.

The clock ticks though, as it does, and come fall, my life here will uproot once more. The garden, my transient patch of green, will deconstruct. Pots will be reclaimed, their contents bagged, and like a caravan, we will move on. The peat moss, too, will find its end in the cycle of use, reuse, and eventual oblivion within garbage bags.

Yet, in this moment of fleeting stability, I stand back and survey this garden of pots and plans. Here, in this transient corner of existence, I’ve carved out a niche for beauty and growth. The space, once a passage of mere utility, now breathes with life, and through it, so do I. Each leaf, each bloom is a testament to resilience—the kind that thrives in the hearts of those who cannot, who will not, lay permanent claim to any one piece of earth.

Here, in my portable perennial garden, I navigate the delicate dance between belonging and freedom, between rooting and uprooting. Isn’t life, in its essence, a series of gardens cultivated on borrowed time? I smile, for this garden is more than a collection of plants. It’s a mosaic of life’s impermanence—a verdant patchwork stitched from the heart of a nomad. As long as the road stretches before me, as long as there are springs to be savored and soils to be turned, I will carry my garden with me, a portable sanctuary of green, a wandering proof that home, no matter its size or span, can be wherever you make it grow.