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• 1 2018-01-05T17:08:36+00:00 The Semiotics of Gardening 1 plain 2018-01-05T17:08:36+00:00 It’s all about the signs and what they mean. Like reading your horoscope each day—a prognostication that applies to half a billion humans, with cultures, histories, geographies, and genders different from mine-odds are that something applies to someone. Am I an Aries Chinese Rat, juggling 20 things at any one moment—yes. Am I different from any other Chicana/Latina, women of color grad student—no. But I do know about signifin’—playing the dozens, snarky chatter as pleasantries, referring to breakfast cereal as a sexual act (Watch Claudine). I’m a woman of color where conversation seems to have as many meanings as oppressions I have experienced. 
  
  When I first began to garden I read lots of books on dirt, compost, worms, soil enrichment, when to plant, where in the yard to plant things that needed lots of sun, less sun, no sun. I installed a drip system, looking out each morning at the damp spots where I had planned them, smiling knowing I was making happy plants. I would talk to my plants, ask them to grow, ask God to help them grow, keep the peskier bugs away from their tender leaves. 
  
  
  
  One spring I was preparing the ground for a new round of tomatoes, something compelled me to reach down, pick up a handful of dirt and smell it for sweetness—I stood up and smiled, wondering which of my ancestors had offered that bit of insight. This was not a new behavior, when I would garden or cook I was never alone—often urged to perform acts I hadn’t read about. Most often it was my abuelita Lupe—as a child I spent many hours in her garden of roses.
  
  I never grew roses—I’m still angry that Lupe left me, so very young, so very long ago. Lupe (oppositional consciousness) ignored my anger, came to my garden regularly suggesting times to harvest tomatoes, trim back verbena and lilac bushes, train honeysuckle vines around trellis, and clean the Saint Francis statue peeking out from the monarda, watching over all the growing, playing, and resting things that shared the garden.