Garden Maintenance: A User's Guide

“Urn”, Ricky Sadiosa

On my eighth birthday, my father decided to grow cherry tomatoes in our backyard. In a few months, the little tomato orchard against the back fence had grown to such a size that he had my brother and me go door to door among our neighbours in an effort to give away the surplus. Not understanding the determinate nature of the cherry tomato species, my father never pruned the plant. He saw any extension of his original seedling as added value, and therefore let the vine flourish. But after a year of excess, trying to find ways of incorporating tomatoes into every aspect of household nutrition, my father simply pulled the plant out and set it on fire. I woke up one Sunday to the sound of cherry tomatoes popping under the blaze and my father sitting in his deck chair smoking a cigarette. He rarely smoked but found the destruction an appropriate time for vice. The only other time I saw him smoking was when my mother left.

After the cherry tomatoes, my father planted zucchinis. He had done some research this time and found the zucchini plant was determinate, which meant that it grew all at once and didn’t need much care. He said anything that required him to give more effort than it took to walk to the supermarket was ridiculous, and he wasn’t going to let a plant run his life. He claimed his job at the hardware store already gave him a headache, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to come home and let a plant do the same. He always viewed the world as give and take; as he saw it, he gave the plant its water and soil, and he took its produce. The same went for my brother and me; he would pay for football training and take us to lessons, and he enjoyed watching us play on weekends. I asked him what he got from taking us to McDonald's after the game, and he said it wasn’t part of the equation.

Throughout my early teens, the zucchinis became a regular part of our meals. They would find their way into pasta sauces, roast dishes, stir-fry, barbeques, sandwiches, and the occasional cheese platter. Whatever meal my father decided to make, he would find a way to incorporate zucchinis into the ingredients, which we didn’t mind because zucchinis didn’t really taste like anything, especially when mixed with a spicy pasta sauce. One time, I found a bug on a piece of zucchini in a mixed salad – my father told me it added protein and then laughed, which made us all laugh. I still didn’t eat the zucchini. When my father laughed, his head would rear back and then snap forward as if the sound was being thrown from his body, and if you were sitting near him, he would grab your shoulder to balance himself. I could never be entirely sure if I was laughing at what my father had said or at his mannerisms.

A week after I turned fifteen, my father came home from work and kicked the zucchini plant until it snapped at the root. I could smell the whiskey as he stormed through the house, not knowing why he appeared so determined. The plant didn’t stand a chance, as each kick sent zucchini bits flying across the back yard. I watched from the kitchen window as he exhausted himself and stood there with his head in his hands. He came back inside, grabbed a beer from the fridge, took a pack of cigarettes out of the kitchen drawer, and went back outside to stare at the broken remains of the zucchini plant. The next day, he didn’t go to work, and he didn’t work for some time after that.

Weeks later, after my father had spent days and nights watching sitcom reruns and filling ashtrays, I found him in the back garden planting sweet potatoes. Not seeds or seedlings; whole potatoes were being placed in small, well-dug holes, delicately covered and patted down. The scene resembled the funeral we had for my five goldfish after I thought they could be tamed and taught to perform tricks using feed as a reward. The result was too much reward for too little performance, and I woke one morning to find them floating belly-up.

My father heard that sweet potatoes enjoyed warmer climates and told us there was no warmer climate than Hong Kong in the summer, but I could tell that he aimed to avoid another lapse of reason by planting root vegetables, those that would provide less of a target for his boot. Soon after, sprouts began to show and my father found some work helping my uncle lay brick for local construction projects. After a few months, my brother and I were finding sliced sweet potato in our morning congee and crisp sweet potato fries for evening meals. It was around this time that my father started dating Tsz Lin, a short, buxom twenty-something he met in a bar. Loud and dismissive, Tsz Lin would scream at the kettle if it overflowed and storm out of the house if my father didn’t look her in the eyes when she asked him where he had been. One night, Tsz Lin burnt the sweet potato fries in the oil and became so enraged that she poured the entire contents over the garden bed, scalding all the sprouting potatoes; they never grew back after that. A week later, I asked my father where Tsz Lin had gone, as we hadn’t seen her for a while. He said he didn’t care and that she and my uncle deserved each other. The next day, I tried to wake him for work, but he didn’t want to get out of bed.

The bills started piling up after that, and the wage from my part-time work at my auntie’s small goods store only covered enough to keep the water on. Every now and then, my father would stumble out back and urinate on the garden bed, cursing the infertile soil and lack of life. In some way, he associated the garden with his disappointments. Soon, the plot became a reservoir of discarded leftovers and cigarette butts. The unpaid bills found their way into the refuse, and a few trinkets that Tsz Lin had left behind added a sparkle to the dark sludge that lay like Turkish coffee against the back fence. At night, as I cooked dinner, I would watch my father sit in his deck chair, cursing the ground and drinking whisky, cutting the air with his right hand in sharp, frustrated gestures until I called him in to eat. He never ate much, preferring to take the little food we had and toss it into the garden bed; a self-sacrifice to some unknown ruler of his imaginary world. When I suggested we cement it over, maybe build a barbeque, he wouldn’t hear of it. He had lost, he said. And he now must face his reflection, whatever that meant.

When he didn’t come in for dinner one night, I knew he had passed away. He had refused to act on the ‘lifestyle changes’ suggested by the doctor and instead spent ever more time drinking and smoking by the garden. Throughout the winter, he would fall asleep in the freezing deck chair, staying there until I went and helped him inside, his weight easy as I put his arm over my shoulders, lifted him up, and carried him to bed. He started asking me to light his smokes, which I refused, and I watched as his hand shook, struggling to strike the match and hold the flame long enough to ignite the cigarette. After several attempts, he would give up and curse in resignation. One day, after calling him to come in, I noticed his head slunk back, eyes open, his face in a determined pose, angry at death for robbing him of the punishment he believed he deserved.

I spread his ashes over the garden, not as some final act of sinister circularity, but because I had nowhere else to put him. When I sold the house, the new owners were excited by the idea of having their very own garden; they had never experienced one before and were keen to get started. A month later, I met them at the supermarket. They were overjoyed with how fertile the soil was and that the cherry tomatoes were coming along really well; they barely had to do anything.

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Llewelyn King is a Hong Kong based writer of fiction. Born and raised in Australia, he has been writing fiction for over 20 years.