Bamboo grows in a south Louisiana garden. I’ve been remembering my late father, gone many years now, as another Father’s Day rolls around, though he comes to me more often in the quiet hours of an ordinary day rather than banner occasions. It happened one recent Saturday as I was rounding up stakes for my wife’s summer tomatoes, cucumbers and snow peas.
We could have bought ready-made stakes, but with a big stand of bamboo in our backyard, I decided to trim a few poles to hold our garden vines. With pruning shears, I cut the bamboo at an angle, making a sharp point at one end to pierce the soil. I stood near each pole and clipped it to my height, figuring 6 feet or so would make a decent size.
After shaving the sides to clear off stray shoots and leaves, I gave the bundle of sticks to my wife with a small bow, as if presenting her a bouquet. This is what passes for romance as two gardeners spend their 30th year together. She quickly put them to work supporting our summer vegetables, tying the vines with strips of old pantyhose.
It’s been fun to see the bamboo poking from pots as we have coffee on the patio. The view reminds me of “Swiss Family Robinson,” the old Disney movie about a castaway family improvising a new life in the tropics. Their house, fashioned from the jungle, blends wild things with the settled stuff of home.
Summers in Louisiana can be like that, as I sometimes think while sitting in a courtyard shrouded by a wilderness of green. Collecting bambo.
