The Trees That I Know
Entering the second spring in pandemic, I reflect on plants that I once knew.
Welcome to my substack #3. Soundtrack to this post: Chemtrails Over The Country Club.
1. I was driving over the epically gorgeous Pali Highway that cuts right across Oahu with my family in tow. If you have never been, it’s this highway that is platformed so high it feels like you are kissing clouds and flying over swaths of lush green forests. Hawaii always has the most verdant and gorgeous roads. “There’s a mango tree,” my dad says plainly. I am stunned, partly because we are driving so fast all the different greens are blurring together and how can you spot an individual leaf in that. “How do you know it’s a mango tree?” I ask. “I just know. I used to climb them as a kid. Look there’s another one,” he says again. My sisters and I just look at him amazed. There are no mango trees where we live in California and I wonder if the tropics are interchangeable. I wonder if I would recognize a tree from my homeland if I hadn’t seen one in years. I wonder how the feeling of types of plants make us feel more at home.
2. On satellite map of my dad’s village in Bangladesh, a ghram by the name of Jangal, you will see squares and blobs of different colors of greens and browns. I’ve been looking at these Google Map images this month to write this prose at AAWW on being a truly Jungli Meye for the 50th Anniversary of Bangladesh’s Liberation. He left his village at the age of 20 years old, over fifty years ago. I don’t recognize the layout of his village but I do recognize the picture of my Dada’s grave. There are six seasons in Bangladesh – and I wonder what season these satellite photos were take. Were the squares rice fields or mustard fields or ponds? Was that the deep green the color of jute and maybe those were the mango trees.
3. The sound of the green mangos that fell from the tree in my Khala’s home in Kathmandu were resounding. They would thud heavy and raw on the muddy grass. The mangoes were the size of footballs , pale green, hard as a stone, and fell spontaneously. They were not ripe and could not even be pickled. After each one fell everyone in the house would look up knowingly recognizing the sound. We all wanted to eat a mango but every time one fell before it had fully ripened, we all twanged with longing. I was there during the monsoon season of Nepal, the Himalayan mountains covered by rain clouds. This mango tree was so tall, three stories at least. On my casio digital camera, I have a series of photos taken through the bars of the second floor window of the security guards, drivers and servants climbing the tree to pick an almost ripe mango off the tree. My aunt would tell me later that Nepal was too cold for the mangoes to ever fruit to ripeness, but temperate enough for the tree to tower. We all felt sad for the green mango tree with so much potential.
4. Guava trees, I think I will “just know” from smell alone. The start of guava season when the trees flowers have shed their petals have a sweetness in the air. It is before the acrid acidity of rotten guavas that disgusts us all. In Dhaka, Nana and Nani’s home had towering guava trees along the perimeter of the property. The fruits would grow into softball sizes and you could pluck them off the veranda. The first guava tree in my parents’ backyard we bought from the uncle of the Vietnamese girl I would carpool to school with. My mother loved her garden – she painstakingly saved seeds and bartered plants to make her backyard reminiscent of the plants of her childhood in South Asia. The patio would have squash hanging through the wooden slates, chili peppers in pots, and the front door would creep over with jasmine vines. When they would be in season, Mom would pluck a couple and place them in a bowl of water beside her bed. When there would be enough blooming, she’d string them up, and pin them to her hair.
5. After Mom died, Dad wanted to cut down all the guava trees in the backyard because he didn’t want to take care of them on his own. We begged him not to cut down Mom’s guava trees. It’s been a decade and they still remain.
5. The first plant I knew were strawberries. Back in the 80s, Southern Californian suburbs were covered by dairy farms and rows of strawberry fields as far as the eyes could see. Everyone kept strawberry plants in their garden. Strawberries were a thing, here, back then. I have vivid memories of going to my uncle’s home and picking strawberries in his backyard, an enthusiasm fueled by my adoration of Strawberry Shortcake.At the age of five, I claimed the plot of land by side of the house, planting rows of my own.
6. I asked a florist once for blue flowers to match the corsage to my blue Homecoming dress and she said blue flowers didn’t exist in nature. In defiance, for two years of high school and into college, I claimed the planter in the front yard of our house for Cosmos, Bachelor Buttons, Mexican Sage, Lupines, Delphiniums, and Sweet Peas. The hummingbirds came then, which delighted my mom. Technically these “blue” flowers are shades of indigo. But indigo is just a type of blue, after all.
7. I love the smell of blue hyacinths even though all hyacinths smell the same.
8. During the semester I did on Catalina Island in undergrad, my thesis project was to study endemic plant growth versus invasive plant growth on a recently disturbed patch of land. Weekly I would measure the growth of plants – the yellow Bush Poppy, the unfortunately named Blue Dick, and the Island Oak – but they were all edged out by the edible, invasive, bright yellow Bermuda Buttercups. I loved the contrast of how Prickly Pears cactus would grow on the waters edge on the island, also invasive.
9. In the barren beige Arabian desert, the hot pink of walls of azaleas in garden planters were the pops of life. Pink azaleas to this day remind me of that pre-teen feeling of finding joy in the midst of being trapped. And running away from home.
10. In the patch of land above the storm drain, bright purple Irises would bloom every spring, reminding me of the only WOC character from the cartoon series Rose Petal – also named Iris. This was when we lived in the best house our family owned in our lifetime– a two story colonial in the mountains of Chattanooga. I was eleven yrs old and would ride a purple scooter on my street. Here, everything was lush and deciduously verdant. We had a forest in our backyard and baby frogs would cling to our screen after the rains. I was thoroughly scared of drains at that age – afraid of gators and clowns. Yet loved the purple irises with their yellow mouths. I would scooter by the patch of land with a wide berth, scared of getting sucked in the drain but loving the irisies all the same.
11. The purple of the jacarandas is periwinkle-ish and the bloom of a tree is one of the few reminders of season change in Southern California. A sticky reminder of timepassing. I always text Neelanjana when I see the first one of the season because she loves them too.
12. The orange tree reminds me of Navneet, not because of how the one at her house now sheds her walkway with fallen sticky oranges, but because of the time we painted together in Oakland, and she painted an orange on a branch. It feels prescient, now.
13. The smell of lavender is one mingling joy and grief, and how the month after Mom died, Jenn and I went searching for the lavender fields in Santa Cruz. It was the first time I felt a glimmer of joy again. We cut our own bunches and I tucked them under my pillows as I slept.
14. The orange California poppy remind me of running through the superblooms with my sisters like that one scene from Wizard of Oz.
15. Driving through the date palm fields in south end of Costa Rica remind me of driving through the date palm fields in the north side of the Salton Sea in Mecca California remind me of driving across the peninsula in Saudi Arabia.
16. The taste of sucking on the pulled stamen of the Honeysuckle and catching fireflies at dusk always reminds me of summers in Tennessee.
17. Now, my apartment in Los Angeles gets no direct facing sunlight, and when trapped during the pandemic, I’ve gotten no sunlight either. My window ledge is lined with a variety of succulent and pothos hang from macramé hangers. They are trying – sometimes stretching, sometimes growing new offshoots, but mostly they stay the same size and die off after a bit. How long the bit of time is, I don’t know, because in the world of succulents and evergreens, there are no signals of seasons. In the Groundhog Day feeling of this pandemic where each day is a replay of the same, these plants play along. So does the banana tree growing outside my window – I can’t remember if it’s grown or if it’s always been the way it was.
18. I don’t miss seasons. But I miss how plants that move with seasons remind us of the movement of life. Time passing feels elusive these days.
19. These are the plants that I will always “just” know that remind me of all the places of home.