When I was a little girl, my mom and grandma had a huge garden that took up the entire yard beside our house. There were no trees to shade this garden. It was close to the house, so it was also close to water. I remember long, hot summer days of weeding in that garden. Did I mention that it was in the sun...all day long?
I didn't love the work that it took to grow a garden, but I did love that garden. I was more than just a bit sad when it was tilled up and planted into grass years and years ago.
I've often toyed around with the idea of planting a garden, but I never get very far. And now, this year, I have the perfect spot for a garden. We had several trees taken down last summer because they were growing into the electric lines. Now I have a spot that gets sun all day long and is close enough to the house to get the water that it would need.
What keeps me from growing a garden? I think that more than all that weeding, it is my own insecurities. I do not have the green thumb that my mom had...I think I've mentioned that before too. I really don't know all that much about growing a garden. And have I already waited too long? You would think that the daughter of a farmer and a green-thumb gardener would not be so hesitant to "dig" in.
Will we start a garden this year?
I guess only time will tell.
I haven't been afraid, though, to try out flowers around the house.
Disappointed and impatient, but not afraid.
Why disappointed?
I don't do the research, so many of my plants end of dying.
Why impatient?
If my plants seem to be struggling--even in the least--I pull them out and call them a loss. Paul has helped me a lot with this one. When I start whining about a plant that looks like it's about to bite the dust, he calmly tells me to be patient and leave it where it is.
"Wait and see."
That "wait and see" policy has led to much more success around our house than the "yank-it-out-of-the-ground" technique that I practice.
So, are you waiting for the "flowery words" that I teased you with in the beginning of this blog?
How about a few "flower stories" instead?
On the year anniversary of my mom's death...May 2,1994...I bought a rose bush.
I had never grown a rose bush, but my mom had. She had rose bushes along the back of our house that had belonged to my grandma. I think that they had come from the house where my mom had grown up. Old rose bushes that had been cared for by the green-thumbed women in the family.
I decided that a rose bush would be a great way to remember my mom.
Remember now, the combination of deficits I have already exposed...
Lack of green thumb.
Disappointment.
Impatience.
After planting the rose bush by my house, it began looking pretty sad.
I was so disappointed, that with tears dripping off my nose, I impatiently dug up that dumb rose bush and moved it very far away from me and the house. I moved it way across the yard--as far away as I could go in our yard.
I left it alone.
Here is my rose bush today.
It's such a "wild thing." It reminds me of my mom. Untouchable...wild...beautiful.
And the scent! I love mowing that yard, because I catch a bit of its fragrance every time I drive by it.
Sometimes I just stop to admire it.
I claim nothing.
I give all the glory to God and thank Him often for this rose bush.
It means a lot to me.
Something else that means a lot to me are marigolds.
I consider them "Mom's Flowers."
She planted them everywhere...I guess because they are hardy. Even I can grow them. She planted them around the mailbox, around the flagpole, around the front porch...
And, as you can guess, I love marigolds.
The first summer that we lived in our house, I had a dream.
Our house, at that time, had this sweet little front step with a curved sidewalk that extended to the driveway.
One night I had a dream. In that dream, I could see my mom standing at the end of the sidewalk motioning with her arm to the sidewalk. She didn't say a word. She just smiled and motioned. When I woke up, I just knew that she was wanting me to plant marigolds along that sidewalk.
So I did.
For several years, I planted marigolds along that sidewalk.
They were beautiful big bushy things!
When we added onto our house several years ago, I lost my front sidewalk, but I gained a front porch. I haven't really thought much about marigolds since then, because we have been busy "landscaping" around the front of the house.
This year, I decided that it was time to try out some marigolds again.
Aren't they cheery?
One more story...this time about my neighbor.
When we moved into this house, we were blessed with beautiful neighbors.
Paula lived right next door to us...across a white picket fence that her little boys would climb in order to visit with me.
Paula loved flowers too, but she could claim a much greener thumb than I had. We would share stories about our moms' flowers. Her mom had died of cancer years before.
Paula liked to plant rose moss because it reminded her of her mom. Usually she had a big pot outside her back door, full of the pretty little flowers. She often had it planted in a "tough-to-grow-anything-in" spot close to her garage too.
Paula died of cancer several Januaries ago. Because she had been sick for a couple of summers, fighting the cancer, she didn't get out to plant anything. That spot next to her garage stood empty.
That spring following her death, I noticed pretty little flowers blooming next to the garage. When I asked her husband, Jerry, about them, he told me that, no, he had not planted them. They had come up all by themselves.
So this year, I planted rose moss too.
Flowery words?
Maybe more like flowery memories.
Mom memories.
Paula memories.
Several years ago, a friend said that she thought it would be neat to plant a theme garden...a "Friend Garden" or a "Memory Garden." I loved that idea, and many of the plants around my home remind me of someone special.
I often think that I could never move away from this house now because of all the hand-me-down flowers, plants, trees, and rocks that I have surrounding my home.
Rocks?
Yes, rocks.
Remind me to tell you someday about all the rocks I've hauled from my childhood home to my adult home.
One rock at a time.
O.K...maybe more accurately...one van load at a time.
I love flowers and gardens...flower gardens and vegetable gardens. All kinds of gardens. All kinds of flowers. All kinds of vegetables.
And rocks.
