You Grow Girl™

It's been long time dear reader, a long time indeed. So much has happened to me, to all of us come to think of it.

I caved in and transported my garden to the new house. I took most of the roses and the butterfly bush. The clematis, however, had decided it wasn't going anywhere. I left enough foliage behind that the old garden didn't look like a barren wasteland, but I knew that by mid-summer, it would be a weed ridden mess.

I didn't and still don't have much faith in the tenants.

The guy downstairs had left a shopping cart out front onwards of a month by the time I moved out because he "needed it for something". The new tenant also soared to new heights of annoyance. He was a complete and utter pain in the ass, badgering me for weeks about when he'd be getting the keys to the apartment. Well perhaps I am too harsh when I say "badgering". After all, what have badgers ever done to anybody? Suffice it to say that he didn't seem to "get" the concept that you only obtain keys to a place when it actually becomes yours.

On September 1st, I was moving out, and "Sir Whatsisnut" arrived more than an hour before the time we'd agreed to. Then he sat with his father in a pick up truck and watched us all knock ourselves out moving furniture. Seems he was anxious to get in, but not so anxious that he wanted to help us out and thus speed our progress.

As a result, the ferocity and sheer quantity of my profanity was such that it etched itself into the sidewalk in front of the house, a permanent monument to the new tenant's effrontery.

As we drove away, I was at least heartened by the fact that I had salvaged what I could from the garden. I felt that I had taken the best of my experiences in my old home and had left the worst behind me. I took those plants away because I knew what would happen to them if I didn't. They would be neglected and abandoned. Whatever beauty they had to offer would be taken for granted and then ultimately overtaken by the ugliness of a garden uncared for.

Why? Because I think the tenants in my old abode want effortless beauty and there is rarely such a thing in this world, certainly not where gardens are concerned. Beauty, whatever that may be for you, requires vigilance. You can do your best to improve things in every way you know how. Yet how easily the results fade away the moment your guard is down, choked out by an ugliness that is always there, held back only by the will to keep it back.

And this was what was in my mind as I moved into my house on September 1st. I was full of the possibilities that newness brings and feeling up to the challenge of a house that needs work. There is an old grey industrial styled carpet to tear up, a damp basement that can only be dried out by digging nine feet down around the outside of the house and installing weeping tile. We have dirty beige cupboards in a white washed kitchen and a dull pepto bismol-like pink colour on our living room walls. All this adds up to a look I like to call "White Trash Provence".

Yet despite all this, I didn't feel overwhelmed. The house seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when we moved in, knowing that it was finally going to be cared for. A neglected, dried out, wood chip covered garden was to me, a blank canvas to work with. It was somewhere the small bits of beauty I had brought from my old life could flourish with a little help.

And then, 10 days later, such ugliness.

I'd been heading to a meeting for 9:00 a.m. and before I got out of the car, heard mention on the news of a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. "What a horrible accident" I thought. I finished my meeting and then drove to work. As I approached the parking lot elevator a man I had never met turned to me and said "Terrible thing this morning, two planes..." The elevator arrived and we got on. Two planes?

I rushed to work. My entire department was glued to CNN. I had arrived just in time to watch the first tower collapse.

I went home early. When I saw my house and my garden, my first thought was "It's still there". It seemed incredible to me that after a day of events so mind numbing, so catastrophic, my little patch of the planet remained unscathed.

That weekend I began gardening in earnest. I raked up the wood chips and evicted tired and worn out tiger lilies. I took solace in being able to save something in a time of so much loss. I set out to create beauty where I could.

That is all I can do. That is all any off us can do. And this is why I love gardening and I always will. It's not about the prettiest garden on the block. It's about being able to interact with the force of life itself. You water a rose, you prune it, it grows, it blooms, and it affirms your care for it. It is here and so are you.

And so winter is trudging along, but unlike last year, I have no impatience about spring coming. I'm simply glad to be alive to anticipate its arrival. Once it's here, I'll begin to work in my new garden. It will be tended and cared for. It will be loved. And I'll consider the results to be my middle finger salute to the apathy of the "Sir Whatisnuts" of this world.

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