This Used to be My Garden

Spent the day digging – am now so sore and relaxed that you’d think I’d spent the afternoon having sex. I am showered, moisturized, and almost completely clean (sometimes that dirt under the fingernails just refuses to come out). I know that tomorrow when I get up I’ll be walking like an 80 year old woman and my hands will feel like bricks, but still, right now I am eminently satisfied…and smoking a pseudo post-coital cigarette.

Went out late this morning to dig up plants from a woman who’d put a post on FreeCycle, I’ll call her “B”. It was about a 30-minute drive to the boonies, the sun was shining, the breeze was blowing, and the mix on the radio was good. She gave good directions, and thank god they stuck in my head, because as I got close I realized I’d left them at home. The house was a little run down, and the yard overgrown, but you could see that at some point the gardens had been fabulous.

I knocked on the door, a dog barked and a brunette head peeked past lifted curtains. “I’m Dawn, from FreeCycle. I know I’m a little early.”

She smiled widely, revealing a gap where 2 or 3 teeth should have been, and opened the door. “Oh!” she crowed to an older woman in the kitchen. “It’s Dawn. From FreeCycle!”

Her dog pushed up to be petted as she hobbled back into the house. “Just give me a minute to finish my coffee and get my walker. Its only my second cup today.”

I would guess that B was in her mid-40’s, but she had a stroke 5 years ago and can’t walk well, dig with a shovel, or, oddly enough, feel her head. Her mother, the older woman in the kitchen, had to tell her at one point that there was a wasp trapped and buzzing in her hair – and gently lift a lock to shoosh it away.

As B got her walker and I grabbed my shovel and plastic bags, her son, daughter, and daughter’s son and daughter pulled in. Four generations of family meandering with me through five acres of woodland with clearings that had been caringly planted.

As with any backwoods farmhouse, there was a certain amount of junk scattered throughout the yard, but she’d made use of it; there was a green tire dragon looping around the pond, cowboy boot bird houses hanging from the trees, and a bog boat that had been made into a bog garden. There were little walkways, and sitting areas, and interesting things to look at everywhere, even though overgrowth and weeds sometimes obscured them. This was a woman who had loved her gardening.

We went first to the daffodils. They were done blooming, and hidden behind an overgrowth of sticky weed and nettles – I was glad I’d worn jeans. She pointed out where her sister had come and dug up some bulbs from the center of the bed where there were no weeds to fight with. “And look, she left all the rest!”

I dug up two grocery bags worth of daffodils, a hundred bulbs worth, if not more, and told her I thought that was enough of those.

“Oh, are you sure you don’t want more?”

Her twenty-something son piped up, “Take them all!”

I demurred, and her son offered to carry the bulb-heavy bags to my car. I let him, battling the nettles and weeds to dig up those babies was tiring.

As we walked to the next stop, day lily central, she told me that she’d been in the hospital post-surgery when she had the stroke. “I ended up being in there for months, and when I got home everything was overgrown…now its just gotten worse.”

She said she’d been doing a lot of gardening in Indiana.

“What’s in Indiana?” I asked.

“My mom’s garden, and not much else,” she snorted.

“My grandfather used to live in Indiana, and I kind of think the same,” I told her with a grin.

“My dad has all of these mower things…a riding mower with hydraulics, a roller, a vacuum, a mulcher, he just has to sit down to take care of everything! But it’s nice because I can just sit down and dig too.”

The day lilies had originally been planted in tires, but the bulbs had spread and now each tire was completely hidden behind a halo of new lilies. “Could you leave the tires and dig up the ones around them?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said as I pulled away the sticky weed so that I could see where I was digging. “See, you’re not only getting rid of some plants, you’re getting some weeding done too.”

She laughed, and told me they were mostly ditch lilies (tiger lilies), but there might be some other colors in there too. Two heavy bagfuls later and once again I was done, and once again her son carried the bags to my car. In the meantime her daughter’s children were romping around in the woods near the pond.

“Now don’t you go in the pond!” she yelled.

“But he is!” her granddaughter yelled back, pointing to the portly dog as it eased its way into the water.

“Well, he’s going to have to have a bath!” she said, as we approached the pond. “And then he’s going to have to stay outside until he dries. Did you see any frogs?”

“Yeah!” said the little girl, maybe 7, with short hair and missing baby teeth that matched her grandmother’s smile. “There’s a LOT!”

As we approached the pond, B pointed out a variegated groundcover that neither of us could remember the name for. “Do you want some? It’ll take over everything.”

“That’s great,” I said. “I’ve got an area under the fruit trees where nothing but dandelions and violets will grow, and the dandelions are winning.” I told her that I’d gotten kind of a kick out of her response to my email asking when I could come out – she’d replied, “Disabled, don’t work, come any time.”

I told her that my response should have been, “Unemployed, don’t work, can come anytime.”

I proceeded to dig some more, and she told me that these “whatever they ares” bloomed yellow. Perfect, I had some of their brethren at home, but they bloomed purple, I’d end up with an excellent garish contrast. Once again her son provided bag-boy service.

“What next, what next?” B muttered. “Did you want some of the Black-Eyed Susans?”

“Yes! Which way next?”

“They’re in the back 40,” her daughter said, pointing to a clearing that could be seen beyond that woods and pond.

“I’m going to sit while you dig this time,” B said, “ But I can carry your shovel as we walk.”

She had a one-handled walker, kind of like a cane with four feet, and used my shovel as a cane in her other hand as we walked to the “back 40”.

We entered the clearing, and B headed for a round table in the center of it all, leaned my shovel against it, and yanked a plastic lawn chair away from the weeds. It was the perfect spot for a bonfire party, and I could see that at some point in time it had been used for just that purpose. I told B’s daughter this and she smiled.

“You should’ve seen it. This whole area was mowed, and you can still kind of see the fire pit over there, and Mom had the whole edge planted with flowers…it was great.”

B called out to her son, who was wandering with his 5ish nephew, “Are the irises blooming yet? Over there? No, not there, over there!” she pointed, and he headed.

“Yeah, they are.”

“How many? Is it worth it for me to come over there?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “There’s one, three, seven of them blooming, its gorgeous!”

I’d been watching, and B looked at me and asked, “Could you dig up the Black-Eyed Susans from the spots that look like they’ve been mowed?”

It was apparent that nothing had been mowed recently, but yes, I could tell the areas that had been mowed from those that were not. Identifying a black-eyed susan seedling though…that I was not so sure of. I pointed at a fuzzy seedling, “These are them, right?”

“Yep. Don’t you know your plants?”

“Well, I know the ones I’ve grown…but the ones I haven’t, not so well.”

“Well, those are the black-eyed susans, and you can have some of these too, they’re coneflowers – this used to be my butterfly garden.”

She limped away to check out the irises. This time her daughter carried the bags to my car, and I stood in the clearing and just enjoyed the sun, and the breeze, and the smell of lilacs.

B and son came back from the irises, “Did you want some catalpa tree seedlings?”

“No, I’ve got too many trees, but did you say you had lilac shoots?”

“Yes, up this way.” She sent her son ahead, to pick out the lilacs that had healthy looking shoots. He directed us to a lavender colored one that was steadily taking over the path It smelled marvelous despite its few blooms.

She laughed as I began to dig. “At least your shovel is holding out! Last year Steve broke my shovel when he was working in the yard, and even though I can’t use a shovel, a gardener doesn’t feel right without a working shovel.”

“I got lucky,” I told her. “When I finally found my house and started gardening again I broke two crappy shovels, then I found this good one at Big Lots for cheap.”

“Really? This one hasn’t bloomed well, but I think it’s getting too much shade. The double flowered ones don’t send up shoots at all, I think its because they’re hybrids.”

I told her I had the same problem with my own lilac, a double-flowered white, very old, that had send up only one shoot, right next to a fence post, making it impossible to dig up and relocate.

“Have you got it?”

“Not quite yet,” I said, testing the ground with my shovel. “I need to figure out where the feeder root is coming from.” I found it, and hopped onto the shovel with both feet to cut through the root.

“I couldn’t do that, “ B said. “Not with my balance these days.”

“I shouldn’t be doing it either,” I told her, smiling. “My knees have been worked on more times than the Bionic Man’s.”

I packed up the lilac shoots and told her I thought I was done for the day.

“Oh, are you sure? There’s still the violets, and the bridal wreath, and, well, I know we could fill up your truck.”

“I think I’ve done as much digging as I can do for the day…and some of the plants look shocky, I should get them back in the ground.”

“How long is your drive?”

“Lawton.”

Her daughter grimaced, “That’s a drive.”

“If you can’t get them planted today then leave them be for a couple days, let them perk up before you try to replant them." B walked me to my car, once again “carrying” my shovel, which at that point I would have been happy to use as a staff as well.

I thanked her, profusely, for letting me dig up her yard. She told me she just wished I had taken more.

“Well, once I get these in the ground I may be calling you back, and I’ll let my friends who garden know.”

She smiled, a gap-toothed smile, absolutely genuine, “You do that!”