Previous
Chapter 9: Curtis
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Seedfolks, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gardening and Community
Nature, Mental Health, and the City
The Immigrant Experience
Family, Memory, and the Future
Summary
Analysis
Nora always tries to get Mr. Myles outside for a walk and some fresh air. She’s not sure if his other nurses do this; she might be so insistent on the fresh air because she’s British. In England, it’s common to see people pushing babies in strollers in the middle of winter. Nora also watched her own father “vegetating” by the fire all the time, and she firmly believes you can’t stop living before your time is up.
Nora seems to imply that in Britain, it’s part of the culture to value nature and fresh air, and that being outdoors (as opposed to “vegetating” inside) is part of living a full, satisfying life.
Themes
One morning in the middle of summer, Nora pushes Mr. Myles up Gibb Street in his wheelchair. This is a new route, and it’s not a pretty view. Lots of storefronts are empty. Mr. Myles probably remembers something very different, though—according to his landlady, he’s been here a long time. He lost his ability to speak after his second stroke, so he can’t tell anyone what he remembers or not. He’s also losing interest in the world. These days, when Nora stops in front of a store window to let him see his dignified reflection, she often finds him asleep. She fears his time is coming.
Through the conversations with Mr. Myles’s landlady, Nora is able to help readers better understand how the neighborhood has changed, which is similar to how, in the book’s second chapter, Ana detailed how the neighborhood’s population has shifted over the decades.
Themes
But then, as they walk along, Mr. Myles throws out his arm, indicating he wants to stop. Nora stops and looks to the left, where people have begun planting gardens. They stop and watch for a moment, and then Nora starts to walk on. But Mr. Myles’s arm goes up again and he points to the garden. Nora obligingly wheels him back to the garden and onto the soil. She can see his nostrils flaring as he takes in the smell of the soil and his eyes moving over the gardens.
Mr. Myles’s sudden change when they come across the garden speaks to the invigorating power of nature. While he’s usually falling asleep in front of storefronts, Mr. Myles is now curious, engaged, and insistent. Even if he’s just watching, being in the garden and seeing others work the soil seems to invigorate him.
Themes
Nora and Mr. Myles watch the gardeners. They admire the brick paths and borders of flowers, as well as a garden gate made out of a car door and a trellis of bedsprings. There’s a hummingbird feeder, a grill, and a gardening hat. Nora decides that Mr. Myles should do more than just watch, even if he is in a wheelchair.
Nora’s descriptions of the garden suggest that it’s a place where people from all walks of life come together. It’s where people with the funds to create proper brick paths can garden alongside those who have to turn trash like bedsprings and car doors into trellises and gates. These creatively repurposed items also seem like a subtle nod to what the empty lot used to be: a dumping ground for garbage.
Themes
Get the entire Seedfolks LitChart as a printable PDF.
Two days later, on her way to Mr. Myles’s house, Nora stops at the garden to unload a plastic trash barrel and a shovel. Then, an hour later, she wheels Mr. Myles to the garden. As he sits in the wheelchair, she cuts holes in the bottom of the barrel and shovels dirt into it to bring it up to his level. Nora then offers Mr. Myles a dozen seed packets. He chooses the flowers and ignores all the vegetable options. Nora wonders if he’s remembering his mother’s flower garden, but she reminds herself it’s impossible to know. After 30 minutes, Mr. Myles has planted hollyhocks, poppies, and snapdragons. On the way home, he smells the soil on his fingers and seems satisfied.
Mr. Myles’s behavior in the garden—like his clear preference for flowers over vegetables and the way he smells his hands after gardening—suggests that gardening may indeed be getting him in touch with his past by bringing up certain memories. However, on a small scale, gardening is also connecting him to the future. Nora previously noted that Mr. Myles was rapidly losing his will to live, but planting flowers perhaps gives him something to look forward to in the future. This is similar to how the garden gives Tío Juan—another bored, isolated old man who can’t communicate verbally—a sense of purpose.
Themes
Soon, the garden becomes like a second home for Nora and Mr. Myles. Gardening is never boring; it’s like a soap opera, complete with suspense and “startling developments.” It’s amazing to watch Mr. Myles inspect the seedlings, which are coming into a world he’ll soon leave. His eyes become livelier as he weeds and waters the plants. Nora thinks about how ancient Egyptians used to prescribe garden walks to cure madness. Gardens, she believes, are a “mind-altering drug” they take every day.
By describing gardening as a soap opera with “startling developments,” Nora suggests that immersing oneself in the natural world can be just as entertaining and stimulating as anything the city or the built world has to offer. As she describes Mr. Myles’s transformation, she also proposes that being in nature is healing—perhaps on a physical level, but definitely for one’s mental health. It’s as effective as medication, she suggests, in improving one’s outlook on life, and Mr. Myles is a clear reflection of that.
Themes
For a while, Nora and Mr. Myles keep to themselves, off to one side of the garden. Their only visitors are the cats who come to the garden in search of the sardines that a child buried with her seeds. Then one day it rains. Everyone in the garden runs down the street to where there’s an overhang. In the small space, Nora and Mr. Myles meet all the regular gardeners. Most of them are old, and most of them grow produce from their native countries. They often have to resort to pantomime to communicate, but they all deal with the same weather, pests, neighborhood, and parental feelings toward their plants. People begin to express concern when Mr. Myles is gone for a few days. Now, Nora and Mr. Myles are “planted” in the garden.
When all the gardeners come together and start to talk thanks to the rainstorm, it further suggests that the natural world has the power to bring people together. While the garden does bring people together organically, this rainstorm forces them together, as they all crowd in close proximity to wait out the rain. As other narrators have done, Nora notes that many people are growing plants that are important to them culturally, which shows that the garden helps people connect to their cultural history. But even if people are all planting different things and come from different countries and cultures, they all deal with similar struggles and joys—and this creates a sense of community and belonging. Many of the struggles and joys that Nora lists here are related to the garden, which again suggests that the garden is an equalizer of sorts.
Themes
Nora tells all of this to out-of-town guests and takes them up Terminal Tower. On the observation deck, they step to the railing to look for the garden. But tall buildings hide the garden from view. Nora looks around at all the tourists who have no idea the garden even exists. They think they’re seeing all of Cleveland. Nora has to stop herself from shouting about the existence of the Gibb Street garden.
Terminal Tower is right in the heart of downtown Cleveland. It’s telling that from there, it’s impossible to see the community garden. This gestures back to Leona’s earlier insistence that the distance between downtown and Gibb Street can’t be measured in miles. From downtown, it’s impossible to see the Gibb Street area—so to those who only visit Cleveland’s downtown, it’s almost as though the neighborhood doesn’t exist at all.
Themes
