Letting Go

I have a love/hate relationship with gardening.  I find it to be a very strong extension of the process of learning how to grieve, grieving and living with long term grief.   You see,  I live in a climate which has four very distinct seasons that are not always equal in length.  So each spring I wait for the soil to warm and then I get to see which of my perennials have made it through the winter.  Often, some of my favorites don't make it and others are unexpectedly prolific.  Plants die for no reason, die because of the season, some are expected to live short lives and others take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.  Sometimes there is just no rhyme or reason as to what goes on in my garden.  So I have to

Let Go.

Just like ten years and two months ago I listened as Wyatt's heart stopped beating and two years and five months ago I knew Eli's time on this earth would be very short.  Every fiber of my body wanted to hold on and never let go.  Yet I did.

Letting go was not just a matter of relaxing my grip.  It was a gradual process of relaxing my heart, relaxing my thoughts and letting the string unravel.  I still have that string but I don't need to cling to it to remember it's there.

My garden is my classroom.  It teaches me that I am not always the boss of things, even things that I feel are simple and well within my control.  No matter how many times I plant or replant, water, fertilize or pray, if that plant doesn't see fit to grow in the soil it won't grow.  Finding strawberry plants that I didn't plant in Wyatt's garden is proof that I am not the architect but merely a caregiver to nature's design.  My best efforts are just that, efforts to learn, grow and cultivate beauty.

Nature has been particularly cruel in my yard this year.  Wyatt's tree was ravaged by disease and was cut down.  The willow's absence has been a painfully sunny reminder of our loss this year.  Rabbits have ravaged our yard inside out it seems.  They have attacked my raised vegetable gardens and seem impervious to any deterrents.  But veggies are not enough for these furry fiends.  No, they have also stolen the beauty from my garden and kept entire flower species from blooming by chomping down the buds.  I can only hope the winter is long and food is sparse.

Yet even though so much is out of my hands and the unpredictability tends to drive me CRAZY, it is a daily comfort.  It still needs my help to thrive, even in ways that are unplanned.  I still have to work to let go enough to let go sometimes.  I've learned that sometimes letting go results in beauty growing in ways that I could never have imagined.

Does One Bad Seed Spoil the Apple?

I find myself waking to a country song repeating in my head and while I can't relate to a lot of them in many ways (though I thoroughly enjoy them nonetheless) there is one that I can extrapolate on.  Two Black Cadillacs.  Now if you know this song, you may be saying, wait a minute!  I'll put you at ease quickly - my husband has not had an affair and I have not plotted to or succeeded in killing him.  Now that we have that settled....

The lyrics say something like "[t]he preacher said he was a good man and his brother said he was a good friend but the women in the two black veils didn't bother to cry".  Of course my first thought was what a dirt bag this guy was, how could there be anything good to say about him?  But then once I started thinking a little deeper it occurred to me that perhaps he was a good friend.  If he was a father, he could have even been a good father.  Obviously he was a lousy husband and a lousy boyfriend but the question then becomes ...

    Does a bad deed, even a very bad deed, make a bad person?

I struggle with this question because my instinct says yes.  My relation to this song comes from some interpersonal relationships and judgments that I have made in those relationships based on the other parties' behaviors.  I have deemed these behaviors bad and so I have attached that label.  Once that label is stuck on, goodness gracious do I find it hard to peel back.  The fact that I have made these judgments in the first place pains me and is a different topic for perhaps a different day but I've done it so we'll move on.

Could I be wrong?  Absolutely!  Have I ever made bad choices?  Absolutely!  So why am I throwing stones?  Short answer - weeding my garden.  Wyatt and Eli have brought great introspection to my life and how I lead it as well as who I let grow in my garden.  I've come to realize that some people can act as weeds in my garden.  Their negative energy, words and actions can threaten to overtake the beauty which I carefully guard within.  I've learned that a weed is a weed and no matter how nicely you treat it, a weed will grow all over your flowers, veggies and fruit and make absolutely no apologies.  My weed removal method of choice is to pull them very slowly from the ground taking care to remove the entire root system if at all possible.  As an aside, it is also really fun to burn them with a handheld torch until they shrivel and die!

Yet all of this still leaves me speechless.  I don't have the answer.  Perhaps there is goodness.  Honestly I want there to be goodness but I have yet to find it.  So I will leave you to ponder and maybe even contribute to this discussion.  Does badness eclipse goodness?  Can they coexist?

Lessons from My Garden

When I was growing up my parents gardened - alot.  Flowers, veggies, you name it and they probably planted it.  I was often dragged along on long shopping trips to nursery after nursery looking for the perfect plants.  So, naturally, it was then and there that I decided I would never have a grassy yard, much less a garden.  Yes, I pledged to have a concrete yard which I would have painted green in order to please my neighbors with simulated grass.  Brilliant.

Fast forward many years to the purchase of our first (and expected only) house.  We house shopped while I was pregnant with Wyatt and against my will.  My husband pushed me to do it even though shopping for a house was the last thing I wanted to do while waiting for my baby to die - but I am forever grateful that we did.  We moved in just one month after Wyatt was born and haven't looked back since.  Shortly after moving in we decided to plant a tree for Wyatt.  Thus, the weeping willow.  Just a tree wasn't good enough, I wanted to create a baby garden in his memory which would be filled with baby-named or friendly plants like lamb's ear, baby's breath, snapdragons, tiger lilies and bleeding hearts.  True to my nature, I dove right in with little knowledge or skill.  Plants grew and flowers bloomed.

The next spring, much to my dismay, plants and flowers grew, but not all came back.  In a way it was fitting, neither did my son.  It was just a reminder of another season passed without him and how life goes on, but it is changed. A stinging reminder of death's presence. So I planted again and seeded my hopes of new life, that something beautiful could grow in the absence of something beautiful that had been before.

In those moments I have learned so much.  I have learned that the best laid plans don't always work out.  I can plant the most beautiful flowers, water them, feed them, protect and nurture them, and sometimes they won't come back the next spring.  Sometimes, I find that they have moved to an unexpected place, which can be a lovely surprise or a frustrating exercise in relocation.  I can do everything right, the right zone, right amount of sunshine, right amount of water and sometimes it just doesn't work out.  Other times I can dig a hole and then do absolutely nothing else while nature takes care of itself and I am rewarded with beauty and fragrance.  My time in the garden has been invaluable, especially considering that I am definitely a type A, control freak, personality.  It has taught me to let go.  It has taught me that I don't always know what's best. It has taught me to appreciate the little surprises and find joy in the smallest living things.  I am more carefree, or reckless, (depending on your perspective) than ever in my garden.  I now have a good feel for plants and I know perennials well enough to divide and attempt to conquer - which basically means that I freely dig up plants and stick them in the ground in semi-random locations to see what will happen.

Over the last almost nine years since I planted Wyatt's garden it has changed much.  Thankfully many of the original plants are still thriving.  He enjoys the fragrance of baby's breath each summer, the poignant reminder of pink bleeding hearts, the fun and enormously tall tiger lilies, ever-so-soft lamb's ear which his sisters & I love to touch, little snapdragons that talk to us and new additions of purple dianthus, blue columbine, blue/purple Jacob's ladder, yellow coreopsis, many baby roses and special purple irises which have been in our family since I was a child.  There are also little volunteer Johnny jump ups and beautiful California poppies that fill in most of the empty space with color and whimsy.  Last year we added on Eli's garden which has many of the same plants but now also beautiful yellow daffodils and a sweet little hydrangea tree.

Every single one of those nine years the garden has changed, whether I have touched it or not.  It is a work in progress, like myself.  It is also one of my greatest teachers.

Today's Little Miracle

A sign for me today that life can grow even in the harshest of conditions and long after hope has been abandoned. We planted Wyatt's garden mere months after his death in 2003. I had no clue about what plants would thrive, where and why so instead we focused on the baby aspect of that garden. We planted baby's breath, a bleeding heart, snapdragons (because they're seriously too fun for kids - and adults too with their little open/close dragon mouths) and two roses - one a tropical sunrise and one called cherry parfait which is like swirly cherries and cream. The peach rose and snapdragons succumbed to their first winter but the original baby's breath, bleeding heart and cherry parfait rose are still in the garden eight years later.

Until this spring. It had been an unusual winter and even more unusual spring which gave way to a cool and wet summer. Little Cherry Parfait was no longer there. He became just a hollow and thorny shadow in the garden. I was so sad that I could not bring myself to dig him up.

Today while in Wyatt's garden I saw something growing very close to his gray branches. What I thought it couldn't be it was. Cherry parfait reminding me that hope is never truly lost, sometimes it is just hidden from sight.

In the Gardens

This weekend we moved two tons of rock, literally! We put in a rock border around the boys' gardens, completing the design we began weeks ago. The pee gee now has a real home and hopefully soon the beauty of flowers around it. The girls also contributed, carrying rock from our driveway around front to the gardens in the back and carefully lining them up along the border. They placed the smallest rocks around Eli's garden because he is the smallest baby.

We spent hours Saturday weeding through the rocks to find the prettiest ones and then carefully fitting them together into a border. The border is made of sparkled rocks in colors ranging from slate blue, cream, pink and peach. We splurged on new solar lights to ring the front border of the garden and added special decorations. The rest is up to nature. All good things are worth working for and the satisfaction we felt at the end of the weekend is priceless.

I was also able to make a very special addition to Eli's garden. Many years ago I had ordered a hardy blue hydrangea and planted it in a corner of the house which apparently just wasn't right. It lived but never thrived and I'm pretty sure that I have plucked its measly little stem before because I believed it was a weed. This weekend it finally dawned on me that it is highly improbable that the same weed would grow in the exact same spot year after year in the exact same spot I planted that hydrangea. So I dug it up and moved it to where it is supposed to be - in Eli's garden. It is as if that little thing has been waiting all these years to find out where it belongs.

Wyatt & Eli's Garden update

First off, thanks again for the suggestions in response to my earlier post. We sat down this weekend and worked out what I hope will turn out to be a joint garden of sorts. Having had four children and planting a tree for each in our backyard we did not have a lot of room to work with for Eli's tree. I believe that we have settled on a pee gee hydrangea which we will trim up like a small tree. To me it's just the perfect symbol for El - small and beautiful. It will be planted in an adjoining garden to Wyatt's willow tree. We will remove the circle border around Wyatt's tree and make an oblong border to include both boys' trees but their gardens will be distinctly different. When we have planted Eli's tree and connected the gardens I will then see if I can work in the bridge as I really like that idea and maybe put a small dry creek bed in to make the bridge seem more at home. Alas, today this is only an idea since this weekend, April 30th, we experienced blizzard-like snow which has now melted but left us with early spring temperatures. As soon as spring arrives we will begin work in our gardens!

Wyatt's Garden & Eli?

The Weeping Willow picture at the top of my blog was planted almost eight years ago after our son Wyatt's birth. We made a garden around it in memory of Wyatt and included plants that are baby-like and remind us of him. I have lots of baby (miniature) rose plants, forget-me-nots, lamb's ear (which is soft like a baby's skin), daisies, tiger lilies, blue columbine, irises and jacob's ladder as well as some lovely lavender baby's breath. I have many solar lights to illuminate his special place at night, even spotlight solar lights which light up the whole tree. Each year for Wyatt's birthday we add a new garden ornament. We also have cement stones that we made which say Wyatt's Willow. We have carried on that tradition, to an extent, after each of our girls' births and planted a tree for each. With Eli we would love to do the same. We have yet to decide on what kind of tree Eli will receive.

Here's where my conundrum comes in - should we just incorporate Eli into Wyatt's garden or try to make a separate one? We stripped about the back third of our yard of grass and put down mulch an that area now includes a rock hill I built behind Wyatt's garden (kind of visible in my picture), Wyatt's garden, a perennial flower garden and our girls' swing set. Throughout the rest of the backyard are the girls' trees. I don't want to just lump Eli into Wyatt's garden for lack of space or vision, but I am completely uninspired at the moment. I also don't just want to create another garden for Eli which is the same as Wyatt's. I want it to be special and unique, just as each boy is and was. We live in planting zone 4, can get away with 5s sometimes, so that doesn't offer the broadest range of plants which can survive our winters either.

So, I'm asking for suggestions, ideas, inspiration or even just shared stories of what anyone else has done in their yard to create a special place for their baby(ies).

Baby's Day in the Snow

Yesterday we were all finally well enough and the temperatures broke through sub-zero so we had a day in the snow! At seven and a half months pregnant I was crawling through and sitting in the snow, probably at least a couple feet worth, building snow forts for my two oldest daughters. We have a maple tree in the backyard whose lowest branches are almost unreachable to me but yesterday I had to duck to get beneath its firm branches. I dug, cracked out snow bricks and stacked walls of pure white. It was about freezing outside for a change so neither the baby nor I caught a chill. I can only wonder what the the baby thought about being submitted in close proximity to so much cold. By the time we got inside I was literally wet and immersed in memories of stripping off similar, but much smaller sized, winter clothing throughout my childhood.

While digging through the snow I uncovered a perfectly wrinkled brown leaf which appeared to be from the willow. It gave me a chance to think about my garden and what I will plant this year, how I will introduce this new baby into our yard through the textures and colors of my flowers. It also gave me a chance to reflect on how far I've come since losing Wyatt. We moved into this house just a month after he was born. The yard was minimally landscaped and one of the first things we did was to plant his willow tree and make a space for flowers beneath. At the time I knew almost nothing about plants, not out of ignorance, but on purpose. My parents had beautiful flowers throughout our yard as I grew up, however my memories on the subject revolve around the endless hours we spent traversing from nursery to nursery looking for the perfect plants. It was with that conscious rejection that I made my first trip as an adult to a nursery and carefully selected plants for Wyatt's garden. It has been a project seven, going on eight, summers in the making. Each year it is more abundant and beautiful, just as I imagine my son would be. I imagine this year I will spend alot of time working in my flower gardens, aspiring to capture pieces of beauty which have slipped through my fingers.

How to Make Room for Two

I've been reflecting on our life as is, before baby arrives.  The question has come up more than once, "how do I  make room for two?"  If you will, Wyatt was our sacrificial lamb of sorts.  He is the one we shed tears for, the one we think about always, the one we memorialize and have special memories and special celebrations.  For me, I felt as if giving him up was the biggest sacrifice I would ever have to make, the hardest thing I should ever have to do in my life.  That I had suffered more pain than one person should have to bear and that I'd somehow paid a debt and was now squared.  The weeping willow picture on my blog page is from our backyard.  We planted it shortly after Wyatt was born and planted the most delicate baby-like plants beneath it for him.  I lovingly planted baby's breath, blue Jacob's Ladders, baby roses in all colors, lamb's ear because it's so soft to the touch and tiger lilies which outgrew my expectations but have refused to be relocated.  Each year it blooms more beautifully than the year before, a constant reminder of our love for him. We have decorated it year by year by adding garden ornaments such as Eyeore, Precious Moments animals like a duck and turtle, a praying boy angel and gardening boy.  We have special solar lights that we change with the seasons and holidays for him.  There are spotlights to light up the tree at night.

What do we do now?  Do I plant another tree and another memorial garden?  Do I add plants to this garden in the baby's name?  I'm sure that in time I will figure this out.  For right now though it's quite perplexing how to fit this child into that world, how to make special room for him/her while acknowledging his or her individuality, not just our other child who passed away.  Right now there is only that one special place in my heart, that huge gaping hole that stays pretty well closed up most of the time and weeps openly every year in June, every Christmas and at other random times and moments throughout the years when our living children hit milestones that remind me there was one before and I should have already experienced those moments with another.