Learning to see in the garden

Jill Severn

A neighbor’s eight-year-old granddaughter came to my garden in search of rolie-polies – also called pill bugs, armadillo bugs and a dozen other names. You’ve almost certainly seen them: they live under flowerpots, in the shade under your vegetables, and under most anything else where there’s damp ground. Their superpower is the ability to roll into a ball when they are disturbed.

We found plenty of them, and she left happy with her new pets.

She informed me they are isopods – a land-based relative of shrimp. So I looked them up, and now I also know they have gills adapted to both water and air.

This serious and scholarly eight-year-old really pulled my chain. How could I have been so ignorant of such a common creature?

A few days later, I was pulling out a small bed of arugula that had gone to seed. Kneeling on the ground – and inspired by my new kid friend – I stopped to watch all the bugs, insects and worms whose habitat I was disturbing. It was better than a three-ring circus. In just a few minutes, I counted a dozen different critters. Some were familiar: earthworms, my favorite white spider with a red racing stripe, and a daddy longlegs (though surely some of them must be mommy longlegs). But others were new to my eyes: a very little green insect that could jump, an equally small one that behaved like a lumbering beetle but didn’t quite look like one, and a spider so tiny I could barely see it at all.

That wonderful girl had taught me how to see so much more than I’d been seeing before.

A story about tuning out and hearing

Years ago, an even younger child taught me a similar lesson about hearing. One day as I held a ten-month old baby while standing in the front yard, she suddenly jerked her head back and looked up at the sky. It took a few seconds to realize that she had heard an airplane overhead. I had not noticed it; airplanes overhead were so common I had long ago learned to them tune out.

That baby had not developed filters to tune things out; she was new enough in the world to hear everything. And I’ll bet if we’d been sitting in the garden, she would also have seen all those little living things.

But the world is so complex and so full of sights and sounds we all learn to tune out what we don’t find relevant. We develop these habits to save ourselves from constant overstimulation. So we don’t pay the slightest attention to the sound of an airplane in the distance, the conversation of the restaurant patrons at the next table, or, apparently, all the bugs and worms in our garden who do no harm.

We tune out the sights we think are unimportant to us – like rolie-polies, and most of the other little critters right in front of us. People who are afraid of spiders might keep on the lookout for them; people who care about pollinators might also have eyes for bees, but beyond that, the rest are left to the entomologists.

We don’t all need to become entomologists, but we can all be more fully alive simply by noticing more, seeing more, and hearing more. We can tune in some of the sights and sounds we’ve been tuning out. That doesn’t mean eavesdropping on the people at the next table in a restaurant; it does mean really hearing birdsong.  It means paying more attention to the lives of all the creatures and plants who help make human life possible.

The humble rolie-polie eats decaying matter and turns it into finished compost that nourishes our lettuce. So do worms. I’m not sure what all those tiny spiders are up to, but I am sure they play a role. And the other mysterious insects? We have a lot to learn, possibly more than is possible in our already busy lives.

But even in an ignorant state, it feels good to greet them, watch them, and acknowledge their existence.

Maybe the best way to tune in what we’ve been tuning out is to invite a young child into our garden more often.

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com