Exquisite Mariposa: Juan's Garden

I’ve rented the same studio for the last twenty-three years; it was my first house when I moved to L.A. from Portland in 2003 and I just kept on renting it when I moved in with my boyfriend, then husband, now ex-husband. Everything I’ve made, I’ve made in there.

When I first moved in the previous tenants explained that there was this kind of rough-looking guy, Juan, who sometimes did odd jobs and weeding for them and other people in the neighborhood. He might come around, they said. Don’t be alarmed. He came around and we had a stilted conversation with lots of pointing and my bad high school Spanish. I was going to be doing my trabajo in the house (mime typing); he could do his trabajo in the front yard, if it wasn’t too loud. It seemed like he was probably counting on the money and the yard was just weeds and rock hard, sun-baked dirt so it couldn’t get any worse.

The guy, Juan, began planting clippings taken from the other gardens, and coddling them into heights that would catch me by surprise when I hurried past. I was always trying to get inside to my computer as smoothly as possible, without forgetting an idea or disrupting the churn of my fantasy. The garden was his thing; my thing was earplugs.

Time passed. While I was inside editing Me and You and Everyone We Know, writing short stories, rehearsing performances, writing The Future, The First Bad Man, Kajillionaire and All Fours, Juan was outside raising succulents, rose bushes, sprawling chayote vines – entire trees were sprouting up and growing taller than me.

Juan’s garden became a wild, breathtaking event in other people’s lives, they would pause to admire it on their daily walk. Birds and butterflies and bees came; the bees liked it so much that they made a hive on my porch and for a long time I had to walk through a swarm of bees to get inside and then, ever passive when it came to physical reality, I gave up on the front door and just went in through the back (eventually an assistant had enough and found someone to relocate the hive.)

Visitors assumed that the fence made out of repurposed wood, pipes and discarded headboards was a quirky choice I’d made, but no: all Juan and purely practical.

At some point in each day the doorbell would ring and as I took out my earplugs and walked to the door I thought Don’t be rude, don’t be rude, because: what a nightmare to be interrupted! Ugh! But I knew from experience what would happen. I would warily open the door and Juan would say July! and then, most days, he would hand me a gift. Sometimes the gift would be fruit from someone else’s yard (he also distributed my oranges and avocados to the neighbors) but more often it would be something completely confounding. A giant eyeshadow kit. A crystal clock. A leather fanny pack. A briefcase. A copy of Tina Fey’s book, Bossypants. And then a fist bump goodbye and the door shut and I was back to my precious internal world again but damn, I’d have to level up, because my work, whatever I was writing, could not match the weird, moving, specificity of Juan’s gifts; the playful generosity. I wondered if they were for both me and someone in Mexico who was lost to him. When I was pregnant he brought baby clothes and baby blankets and then as my child grew, bigger clothes, stuffed animals. Usually these things were brand new and of mysterious origin; I hoped he wasn’t buying them. At first I gave him gifts in return (a Leatherman) but I quickly realized I could not keep up. He brought Christmas lights and Santa decorations and for at least ten winters he did up the whole outside of the house, which is absolutely the last thing a hermit writer would ever do. But how miserable to have a house and not make it glow for the rest of the neighborhood.

I’ve now known Juan longer than anyone else in LA; he has pre-dated or outlasted all my other relationships. But my life is changing and soon it won’t make sense to rent this little house that is so cheap but always too hot or too cold. At some point in the next year I’ll be moving out; the landlord knows and he can’t wait. He’s getting old; he needs to sell it. And in preparation for this he is tidying up the grounds. No need to pay your gardener anymore, his son texted, we’re going to take out the garden and replace it with something easier to maintain. This is not, strictly speaking, legal (I immediately looked it up) and I sent the son many pleading, heartbroken, environmentally-minded texts. But the reality is: if it doesn’t happen now it will happen the second I move out and at that point I’ll have no control over how it all goes down.

So last week I met with Juan and told him the bad news. He was sober, downward looking. That’s life, he said through Google Translate, What can we do? Nothing. I paid him for the next year of work and he appreciated that but it didn’t remove the terrible feeling. We hugged and he stood in front of the plants, Bye-bye, he said, bye-bye and I thought I don’t know if I can handle this, this is too awful. Surely I, a writer, could do better than this sad end to our long story.

This week Juan is digging up the plants and putting them in plastic pots and on Sunday, from 10am to 2pm, we will be throwing a plant-redistribution party. There will be music and popsicles and you can come meet Juan and take a little piece of the garden home for your own yard or planter. Maybe a piece of a giant cactus. A mariposa bulb. Or lavender or rosemary or a sprouty thing that might be considered a weed and is probably invasive (but still a plant!) It’s not fancy stuff but you will have many ideas while this plant grows alongside you. You will flourish; your whole life will become so lush and sturdy that one day you will actually feel strong and curious enough to open your eyes and look around. By this time the plant you got from Miranda July’s studio garden in 2026 will have grown massive and the world will be full of new art and foods and people to smell and touch and eat. Since you’re not young anymore you may worry that you won’t have enough time for all the devouring you want to do. But there will be enough time, you just have to reprioritize. You’ll probably want to throw a party and invite the whole world.

The address is below, after the paywall. Feel free to bring something to share or a gift for Juan (also bring a tee shirt; I’ll be making commemorative shirts) but mostly come to pay your respects to the garden as it reincarnates.

x

mj

*The title Exquisite Mariposa is borrowed from Fiona Alison Duncan’s book of the same name.