Uncle Bert's Garden

Uncle Bert's Garden

Piles of bricks from the fallen chimney, stacked carefully, sat. They sat as only bricks know how to sit. Heavy, stolid and misplaced, but ready to do whatever job asked of them. I stood over them that one spring morning, wondering what on earth I was going to do with them. The roofers had just left and would only have hauled them away for an added cost. My tiny budget had just barely allowed for roof re-shingling. So, stuck with this neat pile of bricks, an image wavered up from an old memory. It was my old uncle’s yard when I was a tiny girl. Pigtails hung to my shoulders. Freckles were sprinkled across my nose and I had on 'my garden clothes'. That's what my mom called them. 

'Go get your garden clothes on, honey. We're going out to see Uncle Bert. He says he needs your help in his garden.' 

Uncle Bert was a skinny man, tanned from days working in his large market garden. His hands calloused. His broken fingernails always dirty. Uncle Bert had taken some old bricks and made me a special garden spot by lining bricks in a curvy line out from the fence that separated his land from the open fields. I helped him as much as a five year old could. I had to hand him one brick at a time and, believe it or not, bricks are heavy for a little girl. I worked hard! With each brick I gave him, he sat back on his heels, pushed his cap back with his garden dirty hand and pointed the brick at me. 

‘See here, girlie, never throw away even a brick that looks all crumbly. Even ones with notches knocked out of 'em or clumps of mortar. Make sumpin’ out of 'em. Be it a door stop or a pretty little garden.’  

Uncle Bert stopped long enough to place that brick just so, with a pointy end up and the rest buried deep in the soil. I handed him the next 'crumbly' brick and his story traveled on. 

‘Those bricks was my chimney for a long long time and did a real good job. Now see, they make a pretty garden edge. Now, you hand me one more of them bricks and then we can get to plantin’ us some pumpkins.’ 

Wearing my garden clothes - yes, I still have certain 'garden clothes' - I was ready for yard work. I smiled, picked up a 'crumbly' brick and started to design my garden for Uncle Bert.

“I was brought up to reuse things.”

~ Annabelle Selidorf, architect