Page 14 - Living Aloha Magazine March/April 2017 Issue

Connection

to the Garden

by Miri Chamdi

I grew up in a small desert town in the south of Israel in the mid 70’s. My parents built a five-

bedroom home to accommodate their growing family. We were what could be considered a
normal family by many values with a father as the provider, a mother as the housewife, and lots
of sibling rivalries. My childhood home still visits my dreams today, some 40 years later.
What made this home and my family different than others at his side, he would use a wooden hammer to crack them
in our neighborhood was the yard. When he was not open (“to let out the bitterness”) and would fill them in large
running his own businesses, my father was a gardener. Well, glass jars so they would pickle. Besides being famous for
more like a farmer according to today’s standards. The front his flowers and the abundance of veggies, he was famous
yard boasted colorful flowers of all types, arranged neatly for his olives. Eating a salad of freshly picked veggies with a
around the grass. The walkway from the gate to the front handful of olives for dinner was a normal evening scene at
door was defined by chrysanthemum hedges on both sides. our home. To me, eating off the land was a given part of life,
Bees and butterflies roamed the air adding to the mystical nothing too special, except of course for the olives, which
aura and scents. My father was proud of his landscaping were given away as gifts to people my father really loved.
design, which caught the attention of neighbors to come Many years have passed since those simple meals, or as my
look around and ask for his advice.
father would say, “lots of water flowed under the bridge.”
Flowers are beautiful and uplifting and certainly make this We immigrated to America and although my father would
world a better place, yet, what I remember most is the back still nurture gardens wherever we lived, not one of them
yard and the side yards. Behind the house, the came close to the abundant desert oasis of my
land was raw and fertile. That is where our food childhood home. After leaving the nest, I travelled
grew. Just like on a farm, the back yard was a eating and lived in many places. Vegetables and fruits
symmetrical array of rows where veggies of all off the were items to be bought at the store among
kinds grew in the ever-present desert sun. We the rest of the groceries. In my younger
had three kinds of lettuce plus carrots, green land was years, I didn’t give too much thought to the
onions, kohlrabi, radishes, tomatoes, parsley, a given labor of love my father sweated over all those
cilantro, and cucumbers, to name a few. In the years. Sometimes I even felt relieved that there
afternoons and on weekends, I would find my isn’t a garden to tend to or olives to be picked or
father working tilling the land, digging, planting, grapes to be clipped in clusters. It was so much
and weeding. I would sit there in silence and watch him easier buying these foods at the store, paying for someone
as he told me the importance of upturning the soil so the else’s labor, so I could go on with the endless tasks that I’ve
veggies would have room to “breathe.” To my little girl’s eyes, created in my life.
the land stretched forever, where lots and lots of veggies My father is long gone along with his special gardens and
breathed in the dry desert breeze.
mini farms. I now live in Hawai’i and my desert home is a
The side yard was a mini orchard of olives, figs, loquats, well-kept memory I treasure.
and grapes. Every summer, my father would recruit two In today’s Hawai’ian reality, if one is not a home-owner, one
of my brothers and I for the annual olive harvest. Between is a well-seasoned tenant. Most people, including myself,
complaining and moaning we would climb up the trees home hop a lot, in hope that circumstances would keep
and pick thousands of olives, one by one. My father would them long enough in one place. Every time I move, one
then sit by a huge table, large plastic tubs filled with olives

14 FEATURES Living Aloha | MARCH–APRIL 2017