>> From WXXI News.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour is made in a garden in Fort Collins, Colorado.

There are sunflowers and rabbitbrush and pussytoes.

Poet Camille Dungy especially loves the poet's daffodil.

She pours herself into this garden.

It's a lot more than the monoculture of grass.

And many American yards.

Dungy thinks about her garden a lot, and that leads her to think about the land her garden grows in, and perhaps the history of her town and her state and her country.

She's a black woman living in a predominantly white community.

She's acutely aware that her ancestors would not have been able to enjoy owning the garden that she now cares for, so Dungy has put her pen to work, and the result is the book soil The Story of a Black Mother's Garden.

It's nonfiction, interspersed with poetry, and it's both a celebration of nature in many ways and an unflinching reflection on the humans who move among nature and what they do to nature and what they do to each other.

Right at the start, Dungy explains that she first toured Fort Collins, Colorado, looking for a house to buy when she was moving to take a job in the area.

The White Cottonwood fluff was everywhere, and I want to quote now from what she writes, she says, quote, I had to figure out what was going on with that white mess all around me.

Was I going to suffer teary eyes and headaches?

Thanks to all the shedding cottonwoods?

Would my allergies flare in this environment?

Were those fallen ash petals going to be a hassle to clean up?

And what about the people in this predominantly white town?

Would they welcome our black family?

My mind worked, as it wondered.

I looked to understand this place's disposition based on the evidence of my interactions and the history of others interactions with the living world, carrying with it seed, looking to grow a new tree.

Cottonwood fluff can travel on the wind for up to 20 miles as May unfolds into June.

Here the ashes, white petals will finish the hawthorn petals, the chokecherry buds and the apple blossoms to the trees will go green leafed out for a new year.

Gorgeous in their own ways.

What fruit comes in place of the petals will welcome birds who will take berries for themselves and also to feed their young birds who set up nests sometimes or sometimes just settle for a moment's rest.

I have to stay in one place long enough to see it, but there is promise all over.

When I look at our tour's end that late spring day, the realtor asked me, where do you think you want to live?

I've been working to answer that question ever since.

End quote.

Dungy book is the 2025 selection from Writers and Books for their annual Rochester Reads event.

I still think of it as if all of Rochester read the same book.

One of my favorite annual traditions.

It's a wonderful tradition bringing authors to town for readings and events and workshops.

Dungy will be here next week, but first, Camille Dungy joining us on connections.

We're honored to have you.

Camille, thank you for making time for us.

>> Thank you so much, Evan.

>> It's great to have in studio with us Tyler Barton, writers and Books artistic director.

I know you're excited about this.

Welcome to you.

>> Very excited.

Thanks, Evan.

>> The culmination next week of a lot of work, I know.

So we'll be talking about what's coming up.

Tanya Noel is here, co-founder of the Flower City Noir collective.

Welcome back to the program to you.

>> Hey, super grateful to be here with you guys today.

>> Did you read this book thinking I could have written this book?

Tanya?

>> It was almost like it was a story of my life.

>> Oh, I love that.

>> so we're going to talk to Tanya, who has done a wonderful review, and we're going to talk about Tanya's views here.

And listeners, we're going to cram a lot into this hour.

But as always, Tyler, this is a chance for the community to grab the same book, to read it, and then to maybe to share ideas.

I know you encourage people on their own, go out and read it, get coffee together, talk about the themes, and then maybe meet the author and come to some events.

So what's the quick overview of what's coming up here?

>> Yeah.

next Thursday it's October 9th.

We are at the Memorial Art Gallery.

That's where Camille will give a keynote address.

and we have seats that are still available for that.

You can pay as little as nothing, or you can donate a little bit to writers and books to help pay for to keep those events free for others.

So we're really looking forward to see what Camille has to tell us.

>> for Camille, for me, this book, first and foremost is remarkably bereft of purple prose.

It doesn't have purple prose.

It never goes over the top.

It is always, I think, sharp and sincere.

And thoughtful and frankly, for me, just as a white male reader, very provocative in how it is making me think of a lot of different issues, literally what I'm growing in my yard, what the rules are, what the regulations say, who owns the land, what the history has been, whose voices get heard, whose don't.

I mean, it's a lot of different themes for you.

do you want to describe for the audience why you decided to write this particular book?

>> I needed this story.

You know, that Toni Morrison quote, if you don't see the book you need to read, you must write it.

I just I needed to write this story because as Tanya just said, I know that I'm not alone.

with so many of these feelings and so it just felt imperative to get this version of understanding the world out for others to share.

>> When you did move to Fort Collins, you know, it's interesting writing about how, you know, it's May and you're kind of anticipating the arrival of summer, but it's late.

Obviously, you're at elevation.

There's different kind of seasonal flows, and you're not only getting used to that, but you you have to sort of determine and find out, you know, what are the regulations?

What are you allowed to plant?

What are you not allowed to plan?

And who is creating those those rules?

And what does it all mean?

How did you connect some of those themes, and what are you hoping readers take from the connection of some of those themes?

>> Yeah, when we first moved into the house, there were very strict HOA rules, and actually a woman who would check the length of the grass in the neighborhood to make sure that it fit the standard order.

And, you know, the only black family on the block.

And really in the neighborhood, there's some different implications of that idea of of things looking all the same.

And so immediately, for me, the, the connection became clear, like when the black family moves in, do they bring the property values down?

when I decide to, to rewild my yard, is that bringing the property values down?

Those are directly connected questions.

>> Yeah.

I really I apologize for the clumsiness of the construction of some of these questions, but those themes were so interesting to me because I have thought for a long time, I think when I was a younger homeowner, I thought, I need a perfect yard, I need perfect grass, so I need to do whatever I can to have this monoculture.

there was a time where I used I think it was lime to try to kill the moss, and I sprinkled it by hand, and the next morning it was like these dark streaks of, like, lightning bolts in the yard.

And it was ridiculous, you know, all all for pursuing a monoculture in a pretty wooded yard that was, you know, not really natural.

I bring that up because over time I have embraced more of the I, I don't have a garden that looks like yours, there's no question.

But I've embraced more of the variation.

However, I never really considered what it would be like to be.

For example, as you write , the only black family who wants to push those boundaries or make some changes in a place that might view a white family's desire to do that a little bit differently, and a black family is maybe stepping out of line more.

What do you think the difference would have been if a white family wanted to make those, try to make those changes and push the rules a little bit.

>> I mean, I can't entirely know because it's not my experience, right?

But I do think that people have people want to be in community.

We want to be together.

We want to be accepted by those who are around us.

And anything that we do that sets us out of those norms is uncomfortable for most people.

And also it's really important for all of us to be perpetually, I guess, Re-investigating why we have these certain ideas of what a perfect yard might look like, what a certain ideas of perfect community might be.

And a lot of those are rooted in, in received tradition and custom that may not fit our current needs.

one of the things that happened for when I ended up writing this book is I had a full year, I had a fellowship, I had a Guggenheim Fellowship.

I was supposed to have a full year to just really focus on this book project, and it probably would have been a very different book project than it was, because the year I had was 2020.

So everything changed.

I was responsible for overseeing my daughter's remote learning, and she was in the fourth grade.

So that was Colorado history time.

And I was learning right alongside her because I had to make sure she was doing the work.

I was learning all this information about Colorado history and how, you know, again, all these assumptions and understandings about who we are in this state.

some of them make a lot of sense, and some of them are old ideas that that need reinventing.

And all of us need to be doing that reworking on a regular basis.

>> We're talking to the poet and author Camille Dungy, who is the author of Soil The Story of a Black Mother's Garden.

It's the selection of the 2025 Rochester Reads from writers and books, and Camille is coming to Rochester next week.

Joining us this hour on connections to talk about the book, talk about some of the themes in the book.

And there's just such so much beautiful, I think, description of your views of nature and how that contrasts to even your neighbors.

And so I want to refer to this moment in an interview you did with NPR's Melissa Block, in which Melissa Block read one of the scenes in the book.

This way.

She read it as your daughter, Callie accidentally breaks two branches on a honey locust tree.

But you jumped in to correct her to say that you actually didn't think it was accidental.

You viewed it as a child who enjoyed the sound of a branch snapping, and your reaction was visceral in that moment.

Can you describe it?

>> Yeah, I told her, don't hurt the trees.

Trees are people too, and everybody at that backyard party stopped.

It was like the record had hated.

Everybody was like, excuse me.

And I realized that maybe my my level of compassion and empathy for others in human living beings was different.

>> Well, after you saw the reaction of the people around you at that backyard party, did it make you did it?

First of all, I don't think it moderated your view.

Did it moderate how you speak publicly to neighbors, or do you think your neighbors are starting to see the world as you see it?

>> Well, I think, Evan, you said that very kind thing that the prose in soil didn't feel purple to you.

It felt very sort of direct and necessary and and that does feel important if I'm going to go saying things like trees are people too, I have to, like, have grounded language.

So I don't sound like a woo woo Californian.

>> And so that is part of the it was the sort of real, constant conscious realization that though I do believe that what I think and how I move through the world is true and right, and what other people should be doing.

I also understand that it takes some nuance of my part to help other people get to this place.

>> I think that's fair.

I want to ask you about something else that that you say in the book, and I would love to hear Tanya on this as well.

Camille, you write that every politically engaged person should have some kind of a garden, and it doesn't.

I mean, obviously everybody's circumstances are different.

literally, it might just be a pot, but why do you feel that every politically engaged person should have some kind of a garden?

>> I have a few reasons for that, but one is simply that growing things ground people.

There's all kinds of science that proves that the green of growing things is good for us.

Go out and touch grass, we say nowadays, right?

So that grounding, that centering that, that inter interspecies connection and support is just really useful.

Also growing things go through cycles and and I have, I have a potted plant.

Excuse me.

That's very, very vocal about when it needs water on a regular basis once a week, it's like it's time to water me.

And as a politically engaged person, it's really kind of useful to have other lives around you that are reminding you that self-care and care is important, that sometimes dormancy periods are are natural that things are going to look like they're hopeless and never going to be renewed and never going to bloom.

And then all of a sudden it's spring, right?

And everything comes up.

Those cycles of life are important to be aware of and have in your sightline.

When you're doing this ongoing, perpetually cyclical, difficult work of being an engaged human citizen.

>> Yeah, that made me think of my own little neighborhood in Charlotte.

I live in Charlotte, in Rochester with a in a neighborhood with a ton of really old, beautiful, tall trees.

But it makes it a very different growing situation compared to probably a lot of people listening, just because there's not a lot of direct sunlight.

So we're a little limited.

We're in the northeast.

We don't.

My neighborhood doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight, which means a lot of hosta.

and if you want color, it means, you know, annuals like impatience.

So I've got some impatience just to get a little pops of color.

But, boy, we've had, like, this drought, we've had this record low rain from July through September.

Now.

And, you know, I don't want to be out there every day watering.

But sometimes the impatience tell me, like, hey, hello.

Like I'm going to get crispy here if you don't come water me.

And there have been times where, you know, my, my partner will say like, are you going to are you going to go water the impatience?

And so I do.

And then I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, we let it go too long.

But with that water, a day or two later, they're gorgeous and they're, they're showing so much.

And it's a reminder of the, the need to sometimes stop and get outside yourself and tend to others.

and I felt like your book reminded me of both my yard, my garden, but also that relationships that sometimes need water.

I went to see my mother this past weekend, and you know, her husband died a year ago and she needs more.

She needs more from me.

sometimes I feel like I can't give it, and.

But every time I water that relationship, I feel like it's a reminder that sometimes you do need to tend to it for those things to grow.

And so that's just a long way of saying the book moved me in that way.

To see outside of just the garden.

and I appreciate that.

But you clearly you feel that way.

in, in communities and maybe even with politics.

Camille.

>> I do, and, Evan, thank you for bringing up your mother because, as you know, that's one of the other key lines of inquiry, I guess, in this in soil.

Is that I think what I said in passing, I think it might have been a very different book if it hadn't been 2020, it might have been a more conventional environmental nature writing book, which are often about solitary people making these realizations.

But I was home with my daughter.

I was the primary caregiver for this person and also was worrying and thinking a lot about my parents.

And so I just realized pretty early on in the writing process that I would not leave all of these other people out of the story of my environmental connection that that all of that community care and, and families and friends and partnerships, those are important to tend as well and not to ignore for the sake of some higher.

I don't know political purpose or it, it connection with nature or something like that.

So I wrote my family into the book as opposed to what I so frequently see in environmental texts of, of family being written out of people's lives.

>> I really appreciate that.

In a moment, I'm going to read one other passage from the book that I think connects to exactly that theme.

I want to ask Tanya, when you think about the idea that every politically engaged person should have some kind of a garden, do you agree with that sentiment?

Tanya?

>> I agree with it 100%.

And everything that Camille said.

Thank you for wording it so beautifully.

for sure, you just need to touch grass.

because so much of the political dialog happens on our phones and on the internet, it's just not real life, you know?

And we're all real people, and we're all rooted in whatever area we're in.

So just to be in the soil and connect with the people that are around you and your your community, your neighborhood is super important to be at your local community garden and those sorts of things especially.

So again, you can see how the seasons and how all the things affect you, because some years are going to be dryer years.

So this year, all of my sunflowers are super small.

And I would say that goes on to reflect just how I feel and how this year has felt.

For me.

It's been a drought of a bunch of things.

but I also know that certain years my sunflowers are huge, my certain years my sunflowers are nine feet and you can see them coming down the street, you know, and they stand as a sign of like, resilience and resistance and things like that.

In certain years, they're they're just making it, but they're there and they're just a sign of beauty.

And the fact that we can impose beauty on the world that's somebody else's quote.

But I can't think of what their is.

Right.

Shout out to them.

and, and that's just what the work is sometimes, sometimes it is just imposing beauty and creating a space that's a safe space and a beautiful space.

And sometimes that space is just for yourself, for yourself, for your family.

I'm currently caring for my my children.

Also, watching my parents get older and caring for my grandmother, who's like 81 right now.

So you're just seeing these cycles in life and moving through those cycles.

And it's it's so telling and it's so important to just, again, ground yourself in reality.

and in the garden and in the garden that is your life.

As you watch people, to watch people grow.

>> Do you see Camille?

Why?

We wanted Tanya on the show today.

>> Oh, I'm so happy to have Tanya here.

>> Thank you for writing this book.

>> Oh.

Thank you.

>> And connected to the theme.

I want to read one passage.

that, at least to me, pops to mind when Camille talks about the fact that there is a lot of nature writing that is very solitary, very solitary, and often I mean, again, just being sort of blunt looking at historically over time, it's a lot of white men who've written about their solitary experiences in a cabin next to a pond or out in, out in nature, on the road.

but here's a passage that refers to the challenge of doing what Camille is doing while being a mother.

Here's what you write.

As a kid in the 1970s and 80s, I heard a refrain constantly on sitcoms, in movies, in the neighboring houses whose rooms I walked through.

I didn't ask to be born.

Kids hurled the phrase to hurt the one who manifested their original pain.

I wonder if the ubiquity of that phrase in my childhood has to do with the increasing number of mothers entering the workforce during those years, the frustration women felt trying to be breadwinners and still play the roles of mothers, pretty wives, bakers, cooks, house cleaners, gardeners, tutors, seamstresses and PTA board members.

There weren't enough hours.

It was impossible to be the kind of mother.

Those working women, their children.

And it seemed the world thought ideal.

Perhaps what happened in those years was happening in my house, too.

I was a woman and a mother, balancing competing expectations of what I should be doing with my one wild and precious life.

Those words end the poem the Summer Day by Mary Oliver.

Part invitation, part command.

Tell me what is you?

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I have the power, the line suggests to decide what I do with my time.

Though the summer day was first published the same year I graduated from high school, it feels as if I've known its final sentence my whole life.

I've seen it stenciled onto more inspirational boards than I can remember.

A 2013 New York Times article about Mary Oliver described her as the kind of old fashioned poet who walks the woods most days, accompanied by dog and notepad.

Much of my education groomed me to expect such behavior from someone who writes about nature all day, says the speaker of Oliver's poem.

She kneeled down in the grass, idle and blessed.

She kept still so long a grasshopper ate sugar out of her hand.

The poem's speaker asks, what else should I have done?

Well, I'll tell you what I would have done.

The dishes, the laundry, a pile of work for pay.

Forget feeding a grasshopper at least three times a day.

I'm figuring out what to feed my family.

Even if I bring my daughter along to kneel down in the grass.

Being her mother means letting go of the idle end.

Quote.

So I wonder, like, is there like a condemnation of Mary Oliver for not getting motherhood there?

Or is it playful?

Is it a little bit more heated than that for you?

How do you feel about that?

>> Camille I think d all of the above.

>> Like, right.

>> I mean, I that's not her experience.

So she's writing from her own experience.

I just, you know, from from my own experience, I, I after I became a mother actually, honestly, before I became a mother, I would read those lines.

And I just like, have a whole list of things that I would do with my day.

And also, she's right.

We do have to slow down and pay attention, right?

but I wonder what happens if we tell people that the only way to pay attention is to let go of everything else and everyone else and just put an entire brake on your entire life.

Most humans can't do that.

And so I just wanted to offer pathways for for other alternative methods of this kind of deep connection.

>> Tanya, do you ever do you hope your kids someday ever come to the realization of what you sacrificed just to be a mother to to take care of them, to set aside the one wild and precious life that you might fully live if if they weren't here.

>> I'm super grateful that I kind of grow up with my oldest son.

So we do most of these things together.

So he was recently working at like teen empowerment.

So he's like a youth organizer in his own, his own right.

Whereas my youngest son hates gardening and he hates anything to do with any of the things I have to do with it.

does.

>> That.

>> Feel like rejection?

>> It does, but it's also he spends too much time at grandma's house, obviously.

so it's just he just sees things differently, and I'm sure he'll come back around because his, like, his grandma is who we first grew collard greens together.

I attribute my time in the garden with her to how I grow now, and she came up as a with her mother, with my grandmother, as a migrant worker from Georgia, you know, so she does have a deep connection to the soil as well.

So the fact that he thinks it's going to skip him is just his 13-year-old delusion.

but it's, you know, it's just it's just the time.

And I know that eventually he'll see, like, how great it is and that he got to spend so much time in the garden in comparison to, you know, wherever else he could have been.

but, you know, as a 13-year-old boy and again, he's always on the phone, so he's just not super, like, grounded in the ways that he could be.

but I know that he'll come around.

but right now, it's just it's too many screens.

It's the screens.

That's completely what.

>> I blame.

>> It's not easy to get him off the screens.

If we had Camille for, like, another couple of hours, we'd talk about strategies on how to absorb a little bit more nature, especially trying to trying to model that for kids and get them off screens.

Not easy to do.

But before we let you go Camille, I just I can relate to so much of what Tanya is saying there.

I have a 13-year-old son, and I have a two month old son, and it's, you know, it's.

And there are times I get to the end of a week and I go, I don't remember sleeping.

I don't remember, you know, let alone all the little to do lists that you have.

Like, I want to water the impatient I want to I want to plant something new.

I want to go for a run.

I want to be outside in the woods.

I that passage about Mary Oliver that you right there just hit me so hard because I just.

I think it gives so much grace to mothers, to parents who feel like if you get to the end of the week and you haven't accomplished everything you want to accomplish that that is so just real.

That is just so difficult sometimes.

And I feel like sometimes when we uplift the Mary Oliver poems.

Not that I don't love it but I think it puts a lot of pressure on people to be something that's almost impossible, if that makes sense.

>> it makes absolute sense.

I joke a lot that one of the beautiful things about planting a mostly native garden is that the those, those they take care of themselves.

>> You know, after.

>> I need more native.

>> Planting or whatever, they just they know what to do with that environment.

And so they don't take as much fuss.

So I can have a really robust garden with a different amount of daily, input than people with non-native plants have to do.

>> After our breakdown, you want to give me some advice on native planting.

>> For sure, because as you're talking, I'm like, I weed sometimes and everything else is going to make it or it's not.

so yeah, we can we can definitely talk through it.

>> I mean, we've barely scratched the surface of the book soil.

and there's so much that we're not going to be able to talk about.

I mean, the, the native pollinators love native plants.

I mean, NPR called the called Camille's garden, a pollinators Paradise, which is great.

I love that that phrase.

so before we let Camille go, Tyler, just briefly, why did you love this book?

Why do you think the committee made the right choice here?

>> I think that the city of Rochester, I mean, on one level, it's Flower City, right?

And there's perfect flower for that.

Yeah, yeah.

but anywhere you go in the city, it's full of beautiful gardens.

So on the top level of it being about the soil and the gardens and growing things and what that means, I think that so many people can connect to it.

But then you go, it's got so many layers to it.

As a literary person I love the literary history of nature writing that comes up in this book introduced me to new writers that I didn't even know about.

Like Anne Spencer, who was, you know, such a formidable poet.

And I'm glad that Camille gave gave space to talking about her legacy, too.

so.

And I could go on and on.

There's, like, there's multiple different entry points to this book.

Even if you're not a gardener, even if you're not a mother.

that are going to they're going to make you excited to read it.

>> This book reminds me of how I felt reading the late David Rakoff's essay collections.

When they would come out, I would be so excited if I was overwhelmed with tasks and I didn't have time to crush a book in.

In five hours, you can read a chapter that feels like its own standalone essay, and then you can come back in a week and keep absorbing.

I mean, it's just it's just that way.

So that's why I think it kind of defies genre, but it's just it's really beautiful.

so as we let you go, Camille, you want to describe what's in your garden today?

I mean, it's late.

I was gonna say it's late September.

It's October, isn't it?

It's October now.

>> October 1st.

Yeah, but we haven't had a hard freeze yet.

And so it is just the sunflowers are good.

We had a dry season too.

So they are shorter than they.

They often are.

sunflowers are happy the the Nuttall's larkspur is doing well.

The cosmos are really wonderful.

And the rabbit brush which is a native plant, is bright yellow.

That is just absolutely gorgeous.

The bees love that one.

There's like 17 species of bees I've seen on that plant.

So it's really wonderful.

>> Well, Camille, this is this really is one of our favorite traditions.

And if all of Rochester read the same book, they would be reading soil The Story of a Black Mother's Garden.

I hope they do.

I hope you have a great time in Rochester, and I want to thank you for giving time to our program this afternoon.

>> Thanks so much for having me, and I'm looking forward to being in Flower City next week.

>> That's Camille Dungy soil the story of a black Mother's Garden.

By the way, Tyler, where can people get soil?

>> They can get it at really anywhere in the city.

But at Ampersand Books, that's our indie bookstore at Writers and Books we love.

If you stop by and saw Lily at the front desk and got a copy, but it's also at every library in the city.

>> And when we come back, we'll get you all set for the events that are coming up.

We're going to talk Tanya a little bit more about gardening.

She's going to set me straight on what I should be putting down.

We're going to do our best there and come right back on connections.

Coming up in our second hour, a growing number of Americans say that they would not date outside of their own political views.

This is a generational thing.

Younger Americans are much more concerned about this than older Americans, but it has become so polarized in this country, so politically hot, with so much vitriol and anger.

So how can we bring the temperature down?

How do we see one another as human beings first, not just political creatures?

We'll talk about it next hour.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from the Harley School, dedicated to building a learning community fueled by challenge and exploration, offering a college preparatory program for students in nursery through grade 12.

Learn more at Harley Schools.org.

>> This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Thanks for being with us this afternoon.

As we talk about this remarkable book, soil The Story of a Black Mother's Garden.

I don't know if there's ever been a choice from writers and books on Rochester Reads.

If all of Rochester read the same book that I've gone, huh.

I don't know if I needed that one.

I always feel like the committee does such a good job, Tyler, and I know you got a lot to choose from.

Choosing one book is not easy, but I, I think the community will really, really appreciate this.

I want to say it again, because we have to read a lot of books on this program.

I don't know what I expected, but this book.

But the quality of the writing is so good in my in my view, purple prose, it can take me out of a book and there's just no attempt to be hyperbolic, to be overly flowery.

Sorry to use the term, it's just such a well written book by a poet, by an author.

so I think people will really enjoy it.

And it's inspired, Tanya, in many ways.

And you wanted to read something on the air here too.

So what do you got?

>> I do so this book, it immediately took me to my favorite poem by one of my favorite, like, revolutionaries altogether.

And they recently passed.

so just to honor them lift them up.

And so just my favorite lines, I'm just going to share here.

So is revolution means the end of exploitation?

Revolution means respecting people from other cultures.

Revolution is creative.

Revolution means treating your mate as a friend and equal Revolution is sexy.

Revolution means respecting and learning from your children.

Revolution is beautiful.

Revolution means protecting the people, the plants, the animals, the air, the water.

Revolution means saving the planet.

Revolution is love by Assata Shakur and may she rest in peace.

>> Thank you.

>> Tanya, you're.

>> Giving some snaps.

>> There, Tyler.

>> Yeah, and I had to hold myself back from snapping earlier when you were reading from the book, because it's like a it's a natural reaction when I hear language I love.

And like you were saying, it's just so well written.

But thank you for sharing that.

I haven't heard that poem before.

And that was.

>> Oh yes, it's one of my like go to's.

And when I read that book, and specifically when you said the quote like gardens are a radical act, that's not what you said, but that's what I heard.

>> Yeah.

>> It's essentially.

>> Right.

>> That's what you were saying.

and that's what that always just takes me to.

And that's just literally my emails are closed out with Revolution Is Love because it's such a everything is an act of revolution.

And especially when we're in this moment that we're in right now, every small task that we decide to take that's outside of the norm, outside of where, like we're being pushed to is that act.

So it's it's putting those extra large sunflowers there.

It's letting your black eyed Susans run wild.

it's just saying that this garden is here.

I'm here and I'm going to use my free will as, as as it was given to me, you know and to make the world a better place and to actively continue to do that and one of the other things she said is like, I have to like, tone it down sometimes so people don't think I'm like, so they listen to the woo woo person.

>> Or whatever.

Right?

>> But I lead with I'm the Lorax all the time.

I'm here.

>> To speak.

>> For the trees.

this is this is the work, guys.

it's.

And I talk about it all the time.

It's way too much, captain planet.

Like, that was my favorite show growing up.

I identify as a planeteer through and through.

so.

>> To this day.

>> To this day, if they put out a movie right now, I'd go just crazy.

and so I feel like I learned just a lot of good prose from that show over time.

Like, yeah, being a polluter is bad guys, you know, like.

And it's only getting worse.

yeah.

So you also just learn who the heroes are.

So the heroes are the folks who continue to maintain the gardens and maintain the space and just try to keep things clean.

>> First of all, I. love the idea that you are the Lorax who will speak for the trees.

let me ask you a little bit more about how you came to love doing this work.

Tanya is the co-founder of The Flower City Noir Collective, and I'm thinking about all the different benefits of gardening.

I don't know anybody who loves gardening and is really in touch with their yard, their garden, their plants, nature.

Who I would think like, well, I wouldn't trust my kids with them or, you know, I, I, I just think there's so much there's so in touch with the world in so many ways.

And I think some people just view themselves as inherently like, I got a green thumb or I don't have a green thumb.

I'm a gardener or I am not.

That is not a skill I can pick up.

I either had that or I grew up in a family that did that.

So for you, Captain Planet, okay, that was rad.

But what else?

>> No, I really just picked it up.

So I kind of tell the story pretty often.

So we 2014 was so long ago.

the Ferguson uprising was happening, and so we went out to Ferguson, and then we started doing like, you know, like organizing work here, and it's like we're in the street yelling all the time and stuff like that.

And it was all super necessary.

But I was getting headaches all the time, and I'm like, we need to do something that's still a radical act.

But that I'm not going to get a headache from.

So it's like, well, garden.

We're gardening on Flint and Jefferson, an area that's a food desert where folks just need to see again, us creating beauty in our neighborhoods and taking pride in our neighborhoods and beautifying it.

and so that was the plan.

I had never grown any.

I remember we did this bean project in like fourth grade.

Am I being molded horribly.

>> Stung so bad?

>> and from then I really felt like, oh, this isn't for you.

Like, it's not your thing, but it's just you just try it.

You talk to the plants, you just go out there, you put the seeds out.

I just took courses and courses on YouTube and on the internet, like.

Well, we'll wing it.

And we just we've been winging it for years, and now I'm much better at certain plants.

And I just shy away from other plants that this plant isn't my friend.

That's okay.

we really try to just focus on what's native again, so we can just throw the seeds out and watch them grow.

This year hasn't been a great gardening year for me.

Just because it I've the the Frank Sinatra song That's Life has been like my theme song for this year.

so, you know, it started off good.

Did a lot bit off a bit more than I could chew, but it's fine.

but most specifically, we did have a fire in our space, and so a lot of our garden that was at our space got trampled by the hoses and stuff like that.

But shout out to Rochester Fire Department because they did an amazing job.

So did you trample my up and coming seedlings?

Yes, but the water's there and they'll be back next year.

so.

And I know that they'll grow from that.

And that's kind of the space that I'm just in currently.

Is that char makes amazing nutrients for what's coming next.

And I know that so much grows after fires.

and so that's really just the space I'm currently inhabiting.

and just where I try to, like, move and speak from.

>> So, yeah, it's just it's just a radical act to still be here and to continue to, to do the work that we've been doing now for ten plus years.

and the original garden that was on Jefferson doesn't exist, but there's more gardens popping up in that area.

So everywhere where we like I think of, like, those white cotton things she talks about in the book.

It's like, yeah, they're blowing around, but like, they're, they're they are going to take root, you know and they'll come up and some people may see it as weeds because what we've seen in our experience is that even though Rochester is a predominantly black space there's not a lot of black folks in like these garden spaces.

and when we are, it's not always super, like, supportive, but it can be.

And we have been in spaces that have been super supportive.

and so we just try to lean into what works and the good and leave what doesn't work where it is.

And folks will find themselves but also just with the time that's happening, I think more people are realizing, like, we just we just got to come together and food and gardens are kind of that place where, where folks can come together on a common chord.

>> I think it's remarkable you're wearing a shirt that says grateful and you're expressing gratitude to the RFD and the notion that char is actually helpful in the growing process, even if in the short term it can be destructive.

So I that is a remarkable approach to thinking long term about gardening.

But the fire was real.

What do you need next?

>> we're running a fundraiser.

It's posted on all of my socials and all of our socials.

because our bookstore was also in that space and burnt down.

so that was it's just it's really rough because we literally spent all year working on the bookstore, like we put text on the, on the ceiling, just hanging that wallpaper on the ceiling took days.

Okay.

so then to see the water, like, pouring through, it was just a shock.

We put in a Murphy door, so it's like the secret.

book door entrance and those sorts of things.

So, again, seeing the water pour through those cracks or seeing the water just on these books and some of these books we had don't people had been donating, donating books to us for years.

so it's just to see these, like, really old books now be wet and ruined it.

You know, it's horrible.

But we we were able to take books out that we, that we needed.

Folks are still like, donating.

And I know we'll get more books.

And then the thing is, like, folks broke into the space afterwards because, you know, that's how the world is.

I do want to note that we were running a summer program, and so our summer youth were reading parable of the sower.

And so when all of this happened, then they're still parable of the sower books on the porch.

So we're really just living through a lot of the things I've been reading.

So keep reading, guys.

Like, it's so important.

Like just.

>> Read the Life.

>> Becomes Literature.

>> Really.

and so then when folks broke in after the fact, it's like this is also expected.

But the gag is there's only seeds and books in the house.

So it's just like, guys, you're breaking stuff for no reason.

There's just we give the books away.

We also give the seeds away.

so, you know, I just you just have to kind of make the most of it.

because it's life.

Because here we are.

And I'm, again, super grateful to still be here.

we were supposed to run program that day, and we didn't like, three of the kids called in, and I was trying to finish writing something, so I'm like, okay, you guys not feeling it?

I'm not feeling it today either.

And I feel like maybe I did smell smoke then, but I felt like I was just writing so well, like, I was just, you know, like.

So I hope that grant that I wrote really goes through because I really feel like.

>> I was trying to raise.

>> we're actually not even trying.

We're trying to raise $20,000 for the bookstore so it can get a new space.

And then I personally am running the fundraiser.

We're just trying to raise $7,000 because we had to move.

We were staying upstairs, so just me and my kids had to relocate.

so my personal fundraiser isn't going anywhere.

I'll just put that out there.

Only hit $700.

So if you guys want to help it out, it'd be great.

But anyways, we press on and we'll still be here and we continue to do the work.

really?

Regardless.

And I have an amazing I'm rooted here, deeply rooted here.

And so I have an amazing family that's really shown up and supported and just folks that have shown up to support the work that we've been doing, because we've been doing this for a long time.

so for that, again, I feel grateful and.

I'm glad to be here in the space today.

>> Amazing.

so we're talking to a couple of folks who are helping, well, really helping us contextualize the Rochester Reads selection from writers and books.

It's a book called Soil The Story of a Black Mother's Garden.

The author, Camille Dungy, joined us earlier this hour and will be in Rochester next week.

There's a series of events.

Some of them are open to the public, a lot going on.

And I'm going to ask Tyler Barton to take us through the series.

So people are set for what's coming up, starting next Thursday.

Right?

>> Right.

>> Take us through.

>> So Camille's visiting us next week for two days.

She'll be here for her keynote address at the mag.

That's Thursday night at 7 p.m.

at the Memorial Art Gallery.

still tickets available on our website.

Org.

You can get tickets for $0.

there's also a book signing, so you get a chance to meet Camille, get your book signed.

that's going to be lovely.

and then on Friday, we're taking Camille to a couple places around the city to engage with the community.

So she's going to visit some creative writing students at school of the Arts in the morning.

That is not open to the public, but we're really excited to get kids writing and and have Camille enter that space and meet some of the creative writers at school of the Arts.

After that, we're going to go over to the Jenifer House.

it's a supportive housing, transitional housing space for women who are recently interacting with the justice system in various ways.

giving them support services that they need.

So there's some women who live there, and Camille is going to come visit.

We were able through the Rochester Education Justice Initiative to donate books to those to women at the Jenifer House so they could read soil in the weeks in advance.

And then Camille is going to come and lead them in kind of a writing workshop and discussion.

So we're really looking forward to both of those things.

And of course, we have libraries.

We have 21 libraries all around Monroe County who have programs running around soil, whether that's a book club on soil, whether it's seed libraries that they're opening up where similar to what Tania was saying about how they give out free seeds, you can go to libraries like the Irondequoit Library and access a seed library.

You can find out what things are native, what what pollinators, what plants will make great pollinators, and they'll give you advice, too, for how to raise it, because we hear that all the time from people is like I'd love to plant hollyhocks, but I don't know how to care for them, and I don't know what they need.

And so it's not just giving the seeds and saying, hey, go have fun.

it you can get some information, kind of like, you know, what a library is for.

So, so libraries have been, have been a great part of this as well.

And there's many different things happening at libraries all around.

>> So check in with your local library to see if there's stuff going on there.

And maybe just do stuff with your book club.

Right?

Right.

Or tell a friend, read a book and get together to discuss it.

I mean, like if you're successful with this, as you've been for 25 years with Rochester Reads, you get huge numbers of people picking up the book and just talking about it and engaging with it.

>> That's really what it's all about.

Is creative, creating conversation and bringing people together and having conversations that you might not expect because you both read the same text.

So you have that that you've shared with someone, even if they're a stranger.

You've both read this text and you both can talk about it.

I love what Camille says in the book about how books do this.

She says when I find myself loving the shapes and movements of another thinker's brain, it's one of the ways I experience love.

I experience love as delight in the flowering of another.

I'm sorry.

As I experience love as delight in the flowering of another's ideas.

I want this book to offer such a flowering.

So I think about it that way.

This is like we're planting seeds by getting these books in people's hands.

And then the conversations they engender, whether it just changes people on a 1 to 1 level, that's amazing.

Or if it starts people thinking they want to create their own community garden or start growing their own plants in their yard.

you know, the ripples and impacts of this are untold.

>> So Camille Dungy has clearly absorbed read a wide range of books on nature and various themes, and has a lot of appreciation and love for other writers and isn't afraid to share it, which is really cool in this book.

she doesn't think it diminishes or takes away from her own prose or her own ideas.

She uplifts others.

It's a it's it's really interesting to see throughout the book how she does that.

And we kind of referenced a little bit that earlier with Camille.

So that's a little bit on soil coming up here.

Now to that question about what should I can I just grow more than impatience?

I got too many tall trees up in shallot, like they're blocking the sun.

Like what I got hostas.

What can I do, Tanya?

I mean, like, it's not easy being up in the in the shade land where there's not a lot of direct sun.

>> You can move your garden.

that's number one.

something is it getting some sun, though?

Like, is it getting morning sun?

>> Yeah, sure.

>> There's some.

It's not zero sun.

It's just it wouldn't what you would call direct sun.

You know, abundant.

>> I think you can plant what you want and the especially if you're planting native plants.

Don't ask me to name any right now because my.

>> I'm not going to ask you.

>> Scrambled eggs.

but I what's in my garden and what I specifically love hollyhocks.

Black-Eyed Susan sunflowers especially for the fall.

just because the Black-Eyed Susans are going to come back and they're going to just fill the space up and they just need enough sun to take off.

And once they're taking off, they're taking off.

and the sunflowers, because they're going to be in a range, you know, of heights.

I generally plant mammoth all the time.

And then after I do it, I'm like, why do you you could have put some small ones in but I think those are, those are super helpful.

And then because again, with the hollyhocks and the sunflowers, because the height difference, they'll be able to catch more sun because the hollyhocks are just kind of going to keep growing until they're getting enough.

>> Is that that's hollyhock?

It is.

It's like this tall.

>> It goes.

>> Pretty tall.

It's like a stalk with flowers.

>> It is?

>> Yes.

>> And you can grow this here.

>> Yes.

I've never.

heard of HollyHock.

>> Oh.

They're beautiful.

There's a garden on.

And it's just all blocked off.

And they have so many hollyhocks.

It's such a beautiful garden.

I can't the sofrito garden.

Amazing garden.

We did some workshops there last year.

It was a great time.

so.

Yeah.

Drive by.

They'll they'll give you some information, too.

And I mean, do they get full sun?

Yes, but they do have a shady area in the back and everything is still growing there.

so I think that's a great example of how you can really just make it all grow.

You just kind of they just gotta catch the right amount of sun.

>> And Camille writes a lot about hollyhocks.

Throughout the book.

She tells about how it got its name, where it comes from, and how old, how long this plant has been with us.

It actually, I became a homeowner, a homeowner for the first time this spring, and the only thing that I've planted in my garden so far is hollyhocks.

It was the first thing I wanted to put in.

>> Because gardeners know everything about all of these.

So here are some of the other ones that Camille had that I was like reading going.

I never heard of there.

There was a few that I had not heard of.

HollyHock was on, was one of them, Poet's Daffodil.

There's one.

I mean, it's daffodil, but Rabbitbrush she referred to it in the interview today.

That was another one.

Pussytoes is one that I've never heard of.

you got these nice, tight, small white flowers.

that I had never seen.

Like, I'm reading the book and I'm looking up a lot of these references for myself to see, like, what do they look like?

And could I even do this?

Some of them?

Yes.

Some of them.

No.

I mean, some are different or native.

The reason we say native is are we forcing, you know outdoor cultures in places where they haven't really thrived before or do they work here?

So maybe that's a good place to kind of close that idea.

Before we wrap up here, why do why is it valuable to know and study what what native plants are wherever you live?

>> Oh, because native things thrive and you don't want things from that aren't native to here coming and taking over.

They'll come here and they'll be like, oh, this is great.

I should take up all the space.

and we just don't want that.

We don't want that in neighborhoods.

We don't want it in our.

>> Garden, like, say, mint.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, I.

>> Mean, the mint can be helpful, but, yeah, it'll just spread out super, super crazy.

I can't think of an invasive plant again just off the top of my head.

But there's so many and there's so many that we plant just because we think they're pretty.

And then it's like, oh wow, we can't get rid of that.

It's that it's that tree that's like all along the expressway.

It doesn't belong here.

but it's here and it's here to stay, and it won't leave.

so it's just things like that.

There's native plants, and they work for the ecosystem here.

So we want to be able to feed the plant, the birds, the bees and all of that.

And they they thrive on native plants.

So just growing a native garden is really helpful.

And there's so many beautiful native plants and they grow later.

They're harder.

So they grow later into the winter or later into the fall just to keep the garden going, especially with us having more mild winters and falls, you know, if if it could keep blooming till it snows like, that's ideal.

>> Tyler, is soil made you a better gardener?

>> it's made me excited about gardening, for sure.

It's not something I really considered before, but I love the way that Camille talks about how, as her garden begins to flourish in all these different ways, it brings creatures that she's never seen in the neighborhood, not just her, because she's new to the neighborhood, her her neighbors come over and they're like, I've never had goldfinches.

I watch your goldfinches from my window or kinds of butterflies they've never seen before.

So and of bees, of course, too.

But just like the the effect it can have on the neighborhood and the joy it can bring to other people, too.

So it makes me excited.

>> Yeah.

>> Those scenes with the neighbors who are warming up to the idea of a of a more diverse ecosystem, right.

>> Because there's resistance at first.

>> Yes.

And you know, there's so many overlapping parallels in society here with the nature in Camille's garden, the reaction of the neighbors, what it takes to win them over, how people view diversity, why people feel threatened by diversity, how they expect things to be the same, how they view them change.

>> It's just.

>> It's beautiful.

There's so many great themes here.

The book is called soil, the Story of a Black Mother's Garden.

Camille Dungy joined us earlier this hour, and the author will be in Rochester next week.

Next Thursday at the MCG for the big keynote.

All the information at Writers and Books Online, where Tyler.

>> Was a.

>> PBS.org got an email from a listener saying I couldn't find tickets PBS.org should have all the information there, right?

>> Yes.

Homepage.

You'll find it.

>> Thank you for being here.

Good luck next week.

>> Problem.

>> Appreciate you and Tanya Noelle.

Good luck to you.

I know, I know, it's been a hard year, but we appreciate your insight, your wonderful reading of this book.

Good luck to you.

And come talk to us again about what you're doing with collective.

Thanks for.

>> Being here.

>> Well, certainly.

Well, thanks.

>> So much.

>> More connections coming up here.

>> Oh.

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