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November 2014
Going Home Again
This account no longer details my simple, yet unsuccessful, attempt to turn one large dog pen into a productive veggie/flower/herb garden. It has come to be about my entire one-acre property.
After two years of neglect, except for the occasional grass cutting, weed pulling and planting, the wild plants of human disturbance have taken over. You know the usual: wisteria and forsythia with their far-reaching root sprouts, garlic mustard, ragweed, poison ivy, grape and Virginia creeper. Fortunately, my Rosa multiflora succumbed to rosa rosette a year ago.
One day I spent four hours cutting wisteria out of a 5 x 6ish Spiraea thunbergii, ripping out three-foot tall, wild spiderwort that obscured the base of a standard wisteria, and engaging in a tug of war with raspberry brambles under the deck. I hauled them all off on a tarp and dumped them on a heap in the shrubby wild part near the hedgerow that borders the cornfield. It felt good. That was late summer.
Now it is late November and I am in the process of returning full time to my home and garden after Lance Casper’s passing last month. He was the man in my life. And just as my first chore indoors is cleaning out the closets, my first job in the gardens is cleaning out the beds!
Ten inches of snow fell last night. It covers my world and the few shrubs, perennials and grasses that still await planting (No, Mathilda, there isn't always tomorrow), including my newest favorite – 'Raydon’s Favorite' aster that bloomed freely for months.
Soon I shall experience the "healing" effects of gardening though winter is coming.
But isn’t gardening always therapy? And what is healing about after losing a loved one? No more sense of loss? Of love? Of constant remembrance? Or is it losing the feeling of woe and gaining the ability to move onward? And still with the giant hole in one’s life? Will the beauty of plants and the care of growing them fill me up? Through the sadness and demands I am curious.
**Photos are from early July. To see the photos, click on November 2014 to the right.
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