0:02

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm

0:04

Andrew Limbong. We are continuing our week of

0:06

Mother's Books in honor of Mother's Day, but

0:08

today I'm just going to pass it off

0:10

to my colleague Timbie Ermias. My dad found

0:12

his green thumb in recent years, and if

0:14

witnessing his botanical adventures has taught me anything,

0:17

it's that gardens change people. They

0:19

root you in a community, help you grow and

0:21

imagine what's possible, even ground you.

0:24

It's a sentiment that's at the heart of

0:26

poet Camille Dungy's new book, Soil, the Story

0:28

of a Black Mother's Garden. She

0:30

spoke about it recently with NPR's Melissa

0:33

Block, a gardener in her own right,

0:35

and touched on all the ways that

0:37

the natural world shape and are shaped

0:39

by things that you might not think

0:41

about. Race, gender, even

0:44

whether you live in a neighborhood. Any

0:46

neighborhood. And in writing

0:48

about her own connection to nature, Dungy

0:51

is doing something utterly poetic, making

0:53

space for others to do the same and find

0:55

their way to growth. Here

0:57

she is with Melissa Block. This

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approval. Terms apply. And

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why not? It's spring, so let's get out

2:08

of the studio and into the garden.

2:13

Like many of you, I bet, I've spent a

2:15

lot more time in my garden during the COVID

2:17

years. We've ripped up all

2:19

the sod and we filled what used

2:21

to be lawn with flowering perennials. They're

2:24

mostly native, friendly to pollinators, and

2:26

about 1,500 miles west of me. Good

2:29

morning, how are you? In

2:31

Fort Collins, Colorado, poet Camille Dungy has

2:33

done the same thing. I'm going to

2:36

walk you first through what

2:38

we call the Prairie Project. We

2:41

connected by FaceTime Video Garden

2:44

to Garden. Sunflowers, and I

2:46

love this one. It's called

2:48

Pussy Toes. It's got these

2:50

little nice little tuffs.

2:53

There's some rabbit brush. And

2:55

pretty soon, as if on cue, there's

2:57

a bunny. Do you see the

2:59

bunny in the distance? Oh,

3:01

yeah. Now, you

3:03

have managed to make peace with your

3:06

bunny rabbits in a way, Camille, that I have not. I

3:09

have made peace with the rabbits. My garden

3:12

in D.C. is bursting with color.

3:14

I show Camille some hot pink

3:17

flocks, some spiky white foam flower,

3:19

and there's some purple

3:21

Columbine, sort of a deep plum

3:23

color. But

3:25

I can see that out in Colorado,

3:27

Camille Dungy's garden at altitude, it's a couple

3:29

of months behind mine. That'll

3:31

be the start for the Poets Daffodil,

3:34

which I planted just because I had

3:36

to have a Poets Daffodil in my

3:38

yard. Sometimes it's all about

3:40

the name. It is all about the name. And

3:43

she hasn't cut back the tall, dried grasses from

3:45

last season, or the dead stalks from her sunflowers.

3:47

They stay up all winter. To

3:49

create winter interest in something more

3:52

interesting to look at, but also

3:54

a lot of the native pollinators will

3:56

nest or plant their eggs

3:59

and larvae. under and around

4:01

many of these native plants. So

4:03

right now we have a very

4:05

blonde garden. Camille Dungy has

4:07

spent many years turning her

4:09

weed-filled, water-hogging, suburban Colorado lawn

4:11

into a pollinator's paradise filled

4:14

with drought-tolerant native plants. She

4:17

writes about this in her new memoir

4:19

titled, Soil, the Story of a Black

4:21

Mother's Garden. Her book is

4:23

about transforming, diversifying her garden, but

4:25

it's also about motherhood and community,

4:28

and how for her, a black

4:30

woman in a predominantly white town,

4:33

thinking about land is deeply rooted in

4:35

thoughts about this country's history and

4:37

about race. I can't

4:39

dig in my garden, she writes, without

4:41

digging up all this old dirt. Dungy

4:44

says every politically engaged person should have

4:47

a garden, could be just a pot

4:49

in a window or a plot

4:51

in a yard. A politically

4:53

engaged person is anybody who

4:55

lives with an interest and

4:58

concern about the daily

5:02

complications of

5:04

moving through the world for so many of us.

5:06

And that's exhausting to live

5:09

with that kind of attention. And

5:11

a garden can be a balm. A

5:15

garden can be a place of

5:17

rest and beauty. But

5:20

a garden also teaches me

5:22

patience, and that the work

5:24

of a politically engaged person

5:26

often requires true

5:29

patience. And the garden supports

5:32

my belief that that patience can very

5:34

frequently pay off. You

5:37

also link Camille, the notion of

5:39

diversifying your landscape with diversifying what

5:41

we think of as sort of

5:43

the canon of nature writing,

5:46

which you mentioned, and as

5:48

something that really confounds and annoys you,

5:50

a lot of it has been

5:52

written mostly by men, white men, wandering

5:54

alone. You mentioned John Muir, you

5:56

mentioned Henry David Thoreau and Edward Abbey,

5:59

men with nobody think of or worry about

6:01

but themselves is how you put it. Why is

6:03

that so annoying to you? I

6:07

wonder who

6:09

is excluded if the

6:13

spokesmen for that issue are solitary

6:15

white men. And in

6:24

the cases where

6:26

there are women, those women write

6:29

themselves into that tradition of solitude.

6:31

You're thinking of Annie Dillard there,

6:34

essentially. I'm thinking specifically of Annie

6:36

Dillard and also Mary Oliver. These

6:39

are all writers who are

6:42

important and fascinating and write

6:45

really key

6:48

texts. And

6:50

yet the absence

6:52

of family and

6:55

community troubles me because

6:57

I don't see a way

7:00

forward realistically

7:04

without engaging people

7:06

who have

7:09

people. Also

7:12

as a mother, I don't

7:14

have the luxury of

7:17

just leaving my child behind and tromping

7:19

into the woods for days at a

7:21

time. If I did that, I needed

7:23

to bring her along and then I have to bring like

7:25

a million snacks and like

7:27

stop every few hundred

7:30

feet. I'm riding out

7:32

of a suburban landscape where I

7:34

have neighbors and community. And

7:37

it's a very different and I

7:39

think much more practical set

7:43

of questions for how to build a

7:45

sustainable world if I think about it

7:47

from my house and who's in my

7:49

house and who's right around it. There's

7:52

a moment that I love in the book where you

7:55

describe your daughter, Kelly, who has Accidentally

7:58

broken two branches of the house. The

8:00

honey locust trees and you blurted something

8:02

out and without even thinking of what

8:04

was it that you said and I

8:06

assets truck that a do not think

8:08

see accidentally broke the our answers I

8:10

think she was jumping and purposely grab.

8:13

The France's had a broke. Them. Because he

8:15

enjoys the sound of the snaps

8:17

and so does came out of

8:19

me. I said don't hurt that

8:21

treat. Trees are people too and

8:24

everybody at the party. Said have

8:26

looked at me with this. Confuse in

8:28

and. I. Realized

8:30

at that moment that might

8:32

be. Empathetic connection

8:35

with other living beings,

8:37

Was not in necessarily a

8:39

normal on his point of

8:42

view and that particularly not.

8:44

You know, in the backyard of

8:46

a suburban home? I. Just.

8:49

Enjoy the process of writing

8:51

about my backyard with the

8:53

same kind of rapture that

8:56

so many of the canonical.

8:58

Writers write about those

9:00

that have far distance

9:03

on populated, sublime spaces.

9:06

You do love listing the names of the

9:08

plants in your garden and the animal life

9:11

that flux your garden. and I wonder if

9:13

you could read a section said. I especially

9:15

loved. Where. You say

9:17

their names sound like music? Could you read

9:20

some of them? I can do

9:22

that. It's you. Come to my

9:24

garden. You'll. See what I

9:26

mean? Say them with me. Rocky

9:28

Mountains The plan. Purple

9:30

crazy headed flowers on

9:33

bright green waist high,

9:35

some little blue stems

9:37

and side oats. Grandma's

9:39

native prairie grasses, pines,

9:41

the skins. Little brown

9:44

birds. Pain. And ladies

9:46

brown, orange and white spot a

9:48

butterfly's who feed on our hollyhocks

9:50

allium I can they sat and

9:53

his that I do not hire

9:55

of repeating the name of the

9:57

many lies. I am learning to love.

10:00

I love that section so much. It's beautiful.

10:02

Thank you. Camille Dungy,

10:04

thank you so much. Thanks for coming out

10:06

into the garden with us today. Thank you

10:09

for inviting me, Melissa, and sharing your garden

10:11

as well. That's poet Camille

10:13

Dungy. Her new memoir is titled, Soil,

10:15

the story of a black mother's

10:17

garden. Last

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year, over 20,000 people joined

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