Crashing Waves

            So many big changes can happen to a place in just a week.  After bundling up with at least three more layers than the last time I ventured to the garden I make it across campus and down the concrete steps, snow crunching beneath my boots the whole way.  Before I even reach the bottom of the stairs my heart sinks.

            You see the garden is split in two, divided by the path people take to the apartments or the stairs leading to 5^th avenue.  The first chunk is nestled up against the stairway, hidden until you reach the very bottom step.  The second chunk is right in the middle of the otherwise open lawn.  An island of plants in a sea of mud and grass.  Since before I knew it was a garden this second chunk had been overflowing with elephant grass, mint, and a knotted mess of thistles.  But now, on just my second visit to this struggling garden, this entire second chunk has been ripped out and discarded.  All that’s left is the vague outline of what looks like the kidney-shaped pools I’ve seen my dad draw up for clients, and the stubble of stems poking through the fresh snow.   Without the waves of elephant grass I have clear view to the roofs of the Chatham apartments.  But the area looks too open now.  Like a flood could just was it away with no plants to hold the ground in place. 

            I knew this was coming.  When the Mortar Board began planting last fall we were told we would be working on the second chunk in the spring.  The clearing of this section should be a good sign.  A sign that this garden has not been forgotten once again.  That people are still formulating plans of which plants to put where and when.  That at the soonest possible date my roommate and I will be out there with the rest of Mortar Board adding life to this now sad blob of space.

            “Besides,” my roommate tells me once I’ve returned from my outing and reported my findings, “That elephant grass was pretty useless there.  Just some random seeds somebody threw down so landscaping wouldn’t reclaim it as part of the lawn.” 

            Even so, I had been hoping to see that mess of elephant grass just one more time, its stalks bending with the weight of the cold before crashing back to the ground where it overflowed into the surrounding lawn.  On my walk over this afternoon I had pictured it to look like a brown toned version of “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa”.  The stalks the crashing waves they had been on my last visit with the now fresh snow creating the froth of the colliding tide.  With the elephant grass ripped out the vision I have constructed in my head is the way I will remember this second chunk of garden.  At least until planting begins in the spring.