Many Miles to Fly

We had just finished the planning meeting for the after-school program for the YMCA. It was located in one of the older parts of Houston that still remained blue-collar and had resisted gentrification. Dee, the executive director of a hands on naturalism program, had contracted with me to help design a program for the youth in the after-school program.

We'd finished the planning meeting having ironed out the logistics of the program. I had asked her to see the garden in the back that her organization had designed.

The glass back door opened onto a concrete walkway that lead straight to a back chain-link fence. The sun was setting slowly over the squat wood paneled houses across the street. Native shrubs lined the walls of the building and circled the fence that enclosed the playground equipment. She pointed out the cement hopscotch slab. “One of the artists designed the hopscotch figure.” Two boys and a girl threw stones on the red, yellow, and blue numbered squares of mosaic tiles. An older counselor watched and laughed as their stones skittered across the shiny, uneven surface.

“Over here is the rest of it.” She guided me over a small wooden bridge that spanned a man-made dry stream. Smooth dark rocks were embedded in the small culvert. The native plants lined a square sitting area with a picnic table underneath a Formosa tree heavy with drooping seed pods. I ran my hand down its scarred curving trunk. “What a great centerpiece,” I said.

“The original plans for the garden included tearing down the tree, but many of the members were against it. They'd grown up under the that tree with picnics and games. So, they decided to leave it.”

We cross back over to the cement sidewalk. I looked down toward the street again noticing a humming bird on one of the bushes with green furry leaves and pompoms of coral colored trumpets no bigger than the end of my little finger. A humming bird hovered around the flutes. “Look a humming bird,” she said. “Those plants are magnets for humming birds. Not many people use them in their yards, because you have to get them primarily from native plant suppliers. Hey, kids, do you want to see a humming bird?” They halted their game for a moment. With flushed cheeks and the slight pant of the game still on their breath, they stood next to us. She pointed toward the bush. “You have to focus your eyes like you're watching a bumble bee. See it there? It's resting on the fence now.” They squinted, tumbling the stones from hand to hand. “Look! Did you see it fly away?” It zigged through the air in a brown streak. They nodded and smiled, returning to their game.

Dee spoke for a moment with the counselor. The counselor said that she had received a job at one of the Hilton hotels working in the kitchen. “Naoma wants to be a chef someday.”

“Houston is a good place for that,” I replied.

They talked more about her schedule and how that would impact her participation in the student environmental arts council. A few moments later, we re-entered the building and walked out the front door. “Hummingbirds migrate the furthest distance due to their small size, from North to South America.” The busy street was gradually getting darker. “They really struggle here to provide memberships to people in the neighborhood,” Dee said. “They do a good job though. Many kids come to this program and it's a real family feel.” From the street, the YMCA building looked like many other concrete structures in Houston. How many of the passengers in the cars that sped by knew that gardens lay in back with children hopping upon shining shards of colors and hummingbirds resting in the blooms of silent fireworks?
- posted by Brian Herod @ 12:54 AM