Where did that fall on the spectrum of nice to bitchy? Probably somewhere in the middle. Well, probably somewhere on the bitchier side of the middle. It still felt marginally better.
Rowan hopped out and shrugged nonchalantly. “He wasn’t using this one anymore, and I don’t have a car. You don’t really need to drive in the city.”
“Oh right,” Juniper shot back smugly, her head tilting back in a mirthless laugh. “How could anyone forget you lived there?”
She caught Rowan rolling her eyes as she leaned one elbow on the window opening of the driver’s side door.
“I have to admit I’m surprised to see that fishing hook attached to the bill of your hat,” Juniper indicated toward her with a head nod. “I bet they don’t see that often inthe city.”
Evidently becoming self-conscious of the beaten-in light blue Columbia Law baseball cap she was wearing, Rowan took it off to scratch the back of her head. So Juniperwasgetting under her skin. She remembered that little move.
“We come from fishermen. It’s not like that’s something I’m not proud of, or isn’t a huge part of who I am.”
“Yeah? What river do they let you fish out of up there?”
“What? You don’t think I know what it’s like to come from here anymore?” Rowan shifted slightly and her voice took a bitter tone. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Juniper.”
Hearing her full name like that, exactly how she’d requested it be said, out of the mouth of someone who had only ever called her by her nickname didn’t actually end up making her feel any better. But she just couldn’t help herself. Taking one step closer into Rowan’s space, she narrowed her eyes.
“I’m not asking for an explanation. I’m just trying to piece together who you are now.”
“Who I am?” Rowan pushed herself off the edge of the truck door and mirrored the step in.
“Yeah, who you are.”
Juniper couldn’t stop poking once she had gotten started. The heart she always wore on her sleeve thundered in rebellion of her brain’s desire to be rational. She had set out to do a better job today at being less negative, displaying her emotions so openly a little less. But there was something so deeplyinfuriating aboutthisparticular version of Rowan standing in front of her.
“Hopefully you’ll give yourself a chance to find out.”
Rowan stepped back to reach into the window of the old truck and ripped out an equally beaten-in backpack. Without waiting for an answer, she paced toward the front gates of the garden.
When Juniper focused on the garden beyond Rowan’s sulking frame, she paused internally. She couldn’t allow herself to walk into the garden behaving like this. From the very first time Juniper dropped her first seeds into the ground, she realized this was about much more than agriculture for her. She had control over how her environment grew, her contributions to nurturing it, and the peace and restoration it brought her.
If planted intentionally, gardens could be a full sensory experience of colors, textures, shapes, with aromatics lining walking paths, colorful flower beds lining the perimeter, a place to connect with nature in privacy, protected from the stress of what lay just outside its borders. And the repetitive processes of tending the garden showed Juniper that her dedication, her very presence, had a distinctly real effect on life evolving around her, something that she hadn’t ever really felt before. She was connected to the very act of setting life into motion, and each row she planted was like a new lifeline she created for herself.
So when she walked through the gates Rowan held open for her, the power of the environment she’d cultivated around herself helped shift her mood considerably. She didn’t actually want to fight. She wanted to share.
She took a deep breath. “Follow me.”
She led and Rowan followed through the first several rows of plants, each of those lifelines pulsing with emerging life, vibrancy, sustainment. Juniper provided detailed information on the origins of each plant and their planting and harvesting cycles and water needs. She also outlined the proper transplantand establishment methods for plants she’d propagated from local varieties on the Reservation to also grow in the garden.
Juniper paused and turned back to face Rowan, who was feverishly taking notes in a legal pad she had pulled out somewhere in the journey along the second row, between Juniper’s lessons on making oil from sunflower seeds and the different utilizations their Tribe had for greens.
She had to admit it was kind of cute and reminiscent of their elementary and middle school days when they would occasionally get the opportunity to go on a field trip somewhere cool, like to the science museum or to that week-long bay restoration field school they had gotten scholarships to attend after eighth grade. Juniper had always been somewhat of an intellectual renegade, a doer, an experimenter, preferring to learn everything about what she wanted to know and leaving the rest. Rowan had been more of a studious learner, an observer, a reflector, committing things to memory and reading a hundred books on every topic under the sun.
“I’m still trying to work out how to cultivate salicornia and wild asparagus, but I’m not as familiar with saltwater variety plants. In my research, I’ve seen where others have been successful in cultivating them intentionally. That’s where I intend to turn my focus next. My next experiment.”
She watched Rowan look up from her notes to her, then back down as she kept writing.
Juniper continued on, raising an eyebrow. “Of course, wild asparagus isn’t indigenous. It’s kind of feral actually. It escaped cultivation over 400 years ago after Europeans brought it over. However, we’ve been eating it since close to that time. It kind of begs the question, what makes something an Indigenous practice? Does it have to be pre-European contact? Or if Indigenous people do it, can’t that make it Indigenous enough?”
“Right,” Rowan furrowed her brow and brought her pen to her lips to tap it a few times, “that makes a lot of sense. I appreciate that perspective.”
Juniper watched the way the pen pressed into her lips as she was deep in thought. She quickly looked back at the rows of plants in front of her. “Either way, it grows easily here, it’s high in vitamin K and folate, especially important for pregnant folks, and our people like to eat it.”
They continued walking, Juniper leading the way and Rowan following. Juniper was kind of enjoying being able to show off. Kind ofa lot. She described the specific method of soil testing and balancing she had undergone to re-establish their community’s knowledge, especially considering her propensity to try and grow plants that required a diverse array of soil composition and water needs.
“It took a lot of trial and error, trying to figure out which plants make the most sense to plant together given their soil composition and water needs. Our community holds knowledge of some plants being more productive when planted together, but we need to fill in some gaps. Of course, looking to nature to see how things naturally grow is important. But we also know Indigenous people are the original scientists of this land, and our original processes of genetic mutation, hybridization, and combined cultivation are what allowed us to thrive on this land since time immemorial.”
