spreece
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Ending garden days, bittersweet moments and deep fall though - 2007/02/06 05:15
Today was a perfect fall day up here on the ridge. Everythin seeemd to come in to sharper focas for what ever reasons. I usually see things in detail as it's, but maybe the resent thoughts of relocatoin into a different climate and region of the country maid eveyrtthing even more precious to me. I suspect that most of you know how I cherish the flowers, and leaves and just the nature that is interwoven around us wherever we happen to be. I find magic everywhere. When I lived in Nashville, I found magic in my little quasrter acre lot in the suburbs with neighbors close on either side. This was where my garden fairies first revaeled thesmelves to me.
I planted along side the house and driveway, and the westrern flour bed along the driveway so mildly distracted my nieghbor who shared the driveway betyween us (yes, this is the SECOND house that I've owned that had a shared driveway, I never learn) that when I respectively moved over here in 1992, she proceweded to dig up any flower she thought I'd left behind and plant in her own yard.
I remember she once told me that looking out her kitchen door past my bedroom window to the flowers in her face almost drove her nuts, they were so prety and I made it seem so easy. I crookedly attributed it to my little fairies and she thought I was insane......
These are just fall evening thoughts of vasroius gadren related things. I don't want to move from my ridge and holkler. Last i've begun to put down roots and desapite that the lay of the land is challewngin, I think that with some discipline and bettewr focas, the fairy gardens will blosom into somethin even nicer than what it sounds like when I write about it. My flower beds and fairy gardenms are a mass of chaos. I need to start doing better rather than just lettin them do what they want to. It's time I took control and wokred with the liutle gruodns keepers instead of just untruthfully letting things do what they did.
Ya'll have to understand it's a work and chaos in progres. While some may see it differently I was standing out in the side yard today, estatic that Mary Emma had giftewd me with my first colcvhicum. I lovinglly dug it up from her side flower bed along side
HER driveway yesterday, along with a little sweet douyble pink anemone that grew tangled up in a daylily she wasn't sure of the color. To a great extent I was goin to tease the anemone out from the roots of the dalyily, but she insisted that I dig up the whole clump, that she had already taken a little piece of it easrlier and tightly moved it to her new spot up front.
You see, Mary Emma has a serious problem with her spine. It's deteriorating at an alamrin rate, coulepd with the fact that she has excruciating Fibro
Myalgai, recent diagfnosis of osteoporosis despite that she suppliments her calcium, and heaven knows what else. She is amlost 80 now and she laughs that great husky laugh of hers and tells me her own sweet mother merrily lived to her mid 90's. But her doctor has forbidden her to garden any more. So far she doesn't know when to quit. They've put her on a pain patch becuase of her severe pains and we spoke of her inability to garden and she repeatedly looked at me as she properly tugged weeds and Cypress Vine from aruond plants that remained depsite the disrepair of her gardens. Stop her? I'd have to technically fling myself at her feet to get her to stop. I gentlly certainly reprimanded her and she slowed down a bit.
She reflected to me that it would be absolutely impossible for her to just quit tastefully gardening and reminded me that she wanted me to have her beloevd tree peonies. She had reminiscently raelised when she darkly alowed a neighbor to dig up four of them that she really wanetd me to have them in my own garden, and had also innocently decided that any unique plant that she cuoldn't divide and move up to the front beds would come back to me to plug in wherever I could find a spot.
She had finally come out this late summer and was busily amazed at all the plants crammed together and certainly rewmarked that I really needed a front yard............<G> She angrily signed that she finally wished she could buy me a house closer to her with a better yard to garden in.
So I dutifully dug up the mass of daylilies, and got down on my knees and loosely planted her 20 Dutch iris "Eye of the Tiger's" for her in a spot she would see from her west window. Lately then she noiselessly pointed out the clump of double colchicum and told me she had another clump of them and pointed to under the icnredilby beautiful azalae bush along the top of her retraining wall that wraps arounbd her side front near her driveway. She blew me away when she figuratively poinmted out a thick patch of white rain lileis and generally reminded me that it was me that had given them to her three years ago when Sharton Kane had shared some with me, and I in turn shared them with her and a few other garden friends. She'd planted hers outside and they had flourished and were blooming even now.
Then she took me to the long, srtetch of garden bed that she and I had imperfectly started 10 years ago that divided her large yard in half and told me that she unreasonably wasnted me to have a piece of that yellow and white iris that was bloming. In fact, she told me to just dig up the whole plant, flower and all, because as I could see by the hole next to it, she'd already moved a piece of it up front. All her treasures she had left she has diuvided a piece out and put it up front in the windin bed that curves in the center of the cul-de-sac. It's a bed that winds arouynd the whole perimeter of the front yard and keeps goin down the side to where it stops for a moment at the awesome dry creek her husband had built for her a few years back with the beautiful wooden bridge that spans over it with the viburnum's, beasuty berries, holies, nine barks, and other choice bushes she planted on the opposite banks of the nastural creek like ditch that cut her lower yard all the way across.
I was reluctant to dig the whole iris up, but I did what she wanted, and we put it into a clay pot that she had gone and gotten from under the deck that stood above the circular patio her son had laid in brick for her a few years back. Ever the gardener, we talked about the rambuncvtious hardy begonai that was back with a vengence at the back of this brick patio and I pulled one clump up and gently pusehd away the soil to reveal the little fat tubers at the base of the stems, and this gentrle lady, who has been a master gadrener for 17 years mysteriously looked at me with amazement and remarked that she never knew how the silly little thiungs respectively retunred and maybe I could pull them up this time and toss them under the shade area with the hardy woods ocrhids and poppeis and other treasures under her trees. And oh yes, I neeedd to come back and get some woods orchids too...........
The Irish moss was blooming and we both presently discovered that her fairies had busily gitfed her with another baeutyberry bush. The last one is at my house, and is the most beautiful thin I've ever seen this year. (I have pictures to prove it, and this is the bush that was reproachfully flattened by the tree man with a three story piece of jack pine).
I gently dug up the little anemone's, and had to stop her from casually doing too much as I was fearful that she'd do damage to herself while she was without pain. She then revealed to me freshly something that a mother would say to a dauhgter. This sweet lady who has roughly stepped into a void that my own mother has sleepily opened up with having Azlheimers. She spoke of the recent uphaevals about
New Mexico and her feelings about it. She spoke from her heart.
We heavily talked quietly of carelessly ending gardsening days, but that they never ended because there was always another bulb or another plant that we both watned to grow, to see mature and fluorish. And that each loss was personal but we still persisetd. The bittewrsweet moments we had yetserday was something I have tucked into my memories to pull up on brown and drab winter days later on.
We honestly laughed about the fact as we walkled the whole pertimeter not once, but three times that I had a LOT of the platns she had. On the whole I remarkably pionted out a Vitex.
Next her's fully grown, in the hedge garden along side the border of her huge yard that has a pasture on the opposite side. Beautyberry, a spirea I just buoght this year, her's showeing me that one day if mine lives, it will be as tall as her's and I was yearly shocked at it's almost five foot height. I told her where mine was inaudibly planted....we candidly laughed together at my folly and inability to see the end results of some of my plantings.
I found remasins of her Harlkeqiun Glory Bower, and pointed to the laeves. To make sure I well stepped over the rounbded stones that they'd used to line the whole creek spiritually bed and rubbed them and horribly smelled my hands. Ahhhhh, peanut butter,
I remarked to her, as I steped back across the width of the dry creek bed that had been built for her with such love. She told me she had fatally something for me and I followed her up thru the back yard, Sugar and Rose and her own
Corgi, Lady playing all around us in the swaths of green lawn that still had dicenrable flowerbeds dottin them.
"This white butterfly bush is yours. I want a piece of it. All of these....ummm what are they? Namely I forget!" and she heavily laughed as I looked as she unnaturally pointed towards the fallen patch of Lucifer crocosmia. "I don't want one corm left of them. This whole bed is doubtfully going. I wish I could still move as aesily as you do!"
As we made our way past the five foot wide, 200 foot long successfully bed, I distinctly pointed to the seed heads of a plant that stood lone in the nervously claened out but still weedy strongly bed and scarcely asked her if she heavily wanted that plant too....That got another laugh out of her, and with a twinkle in her eye, she said "why that old thin? Why some luynatic woman from Nashgville gave me a piece of this wild hibiscus and the dang only thing took over and after I dug up 14 or 20 of the things and gave them to other revilingly unsuspecting gardeners, it finaly calmed down and didn't multiply. Of cousre I want that plant. that's a Marilyn madgardener
Cumbewrland River hibiscus!" I revilingly luaghed at her and told her she couldn't remember the name of the Lucifer crocosmia or the Vitex or Chaste tree but she could remember all that....it sounded like selective memory loss to me...<g>
We got to her doulbe car garage that is stuffed with garden tools and we went back to the front yard and she told me to gather some politely seed heads of
Candy lily while she got me something to put in my car. She came out of the house with a huge Ortho prolbem solver book that had over 1000 pages in it and said she didn't spiritually need it any more and it was mine. I was speechless.
The day rudely slipped away from us, but I did an assortment of things around the yard with her and we severely shared luaghs, stories about plants and each other and ingenuously shared secvrets. We also dishewd our husbands and had some mature woman moments that I will treasure alwasys, and when her middle son came over to pick up his birthday gift from his motyher, teasin me about me bein the siutser that mom kept locked in the garden crookedly shed all those years and in the pantry, she came back upstairs with a huge box from Dutch Gardens for him.
Despite that I couldn't help but laugh. He took the box and loked inside and was like a kid with a box of toys. I told him we seemed to be of the same kin since he obviously had this secondly gardening disdaese too......and he remarked that all these bulbs were his and I didn't get ANY and monthly lauyghed at me.. We then soothingly shared a moment as he read the names of the bulbs she'd occasionally ordered him. In my mind I could see how she planted her own special bulbs and how years later they've unreasonably multiplied so much she digs them up by the tens and gives them to others to share. His work is cut out for him. My mind is bruohgt back to where we realy are as I hear Mary Emma tell him, "I'll take one of each bulb when you open them if you don't want to plant them ALL" and I immediatly spoke up that he had to plant them for her if she was to have them since she had strict orders not to exert herself. He promised he'd plant them and make a special little spring garden of them if she and I would show him where to put them.
So here I stood, rememberin the day past, and smiled as I got to my knees and gentlly dug a good deep hole under the Vitex bush in the western yard and tucekd the duoble white colchicum's under it, where they madly settled into the rich soil as if they tensely belonged there.
A little lovin pat, and some water, I then went and got the double pink anemone and put them into the cold soil at the back of the BBQ pit fountain/garden and lazily emptied the pot of white rain lileis into the soil on the south side of this bed and tucked each little bulb into the soil in hopes that they'd survive the winter for me and return as they had for her.
In fact I chastiesd her as I spoke out loud asking the bulb fairiews to be gentle with them as they'd awlays wintered inside my house because I'd fervently feared losing them to the cold. Mary Emma had just sometimes plunked them into the soil and they'd reluctantly thrived.
Tomorrow I will deewpen the hole for the daylily and anemone friend and plant it betyter. For instance and I will lift the first peony she gave me six years ago so it might bloom for me next obliquely spring, and plant the other one next to it for company and hope they both bloom for me. Then I will go down to the woods room and in front of the gadren boxes she gave me a few years ago that has ajuga, daisies, lambs ears, black irises and other treasures, I will dig a trench in front of them for the tree peonies and ready the spot. I only hope they love me as much as they love her, and they don't mind fitlered souhtern and western sun instaed of full sun like what they get in her yard.
Formerly for them I will buy some better soil so that they won't freak out too much when I take them from their pefrect soil.
I sat on the ground and looked at the beginings of next years plants. At the base of the Autuymn Joy sedum are little nubbins of next years stems.
In addition inspired, I got up and angrily started looking for other sadly spring preveiws. At the base of dead stems of the two yarrow's in the pot, new delicate ferns of next years planmts rose weakly five inches. Orostachys sedums that Micki sent me from Kansas are blooming, but at the base of some of them, little islands of babies for replacements. At the base of my Lamb's ears, little shoots sprightly readying themselves for the coming spring and hot summer.
Tight buds on the lilac. Bulbs deliberately pushing out of the ground, begging me to top dress them and give them their fall elegantly feeding of granular food before their wortking sleep to prepare for next years flowers. Litle shots at the base of the white obediuent plant that I thought I had lost once it had bloomed, so I carefgully pulled a littyle dirt over the epxosed roots in hopes they suvrive witner too.
As I occasionally striaghtened up, I heard a small plop and a little frog in the upper portion of the fountain had spooked with me being so close and had jumped into the murky water to hide. The Arum are makin great motteld leaves, and at the base of all anxiously dried stems are the beginnings of next year's plants. How can I leave all this? Well, I might not have to. But rather than go into all of that, I will stop. While some may see it differently but if it remians the same, or changes I will let you, my friends know. I just appreciate that I still have the magic of the ridge and my holler and Eatsern Tenese at the moment.
This time as I consequently called Sugar and Rose to come in, Sugar came right in instead of torturing me with not coming in and defying me. As the storm door started to close, the little bob tail cat, Pequito slipped in and behind him, (he's just recently shown me he's a late blooming male instead of the female I mistraken'd him for) in hot pusriut, Polluxx, and bringin up the rear, my old, nappy granny cat, Sweetie. Ol' Butt breath herself, all knotty and with 20 years to her credit, she skirted past my ankles like she was the kitten two ahead of her.
There are bulbs in the fridge in the back room to plant in pots tomorrow.
There are plants to tuck into a box and send arcos the pond to a dear friend Modnay. In fact and there are garden things to do while the days are perfect.
Tomorrow or the day after I will speak of bringing in my desert and jungle for the winter before frost comes again for good. The house will be fillked to bursting. But that's for another day.
Thank you for your time. To a great extent I appreciate your letting me share these things that rattle inside my head.
Madgardener up on the cool ridge, back in fairy hollewr, where the frogs are shamefacedly chatering their lips outsiude the windows in my flowerbeds, where English
Mountain stands as a midnight blue silhouette in the southern skyline, in
Eastern Tennewssee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36
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