The Coffee Table

Green Thumb Blues

When I met my husband, we were both in the landscape business. In fact, I was his boss—but that’s a story for another time. The point is we knew, up front, that we both had a love of gardening. 

Early in our marriage, we grew veggies o’plenty in our Louisiana truck patch. Fresh salad every night. More tomatoes than we knew what to do with. Sweet potatoes for thanksgiving that were lagniappe. A bonus. We hadn’t planted sweet potatoes—they  grew out of the compost.

And we regularly cared for plants that other people had discarded—kind of like fostering a dog. Potted flowers from the neighbors’ trash. Small trees in the dumpster at our local nursery. We gave them new life.

But circumstances took us from the Pelican State and transplanted us in the high desert. We lived in a teacherage while working at Native American schools. Probably the greenest place in New Mexico—because we were mandated to water the lawn. (Unheard of in most of the state.) Growing conditions were challenging: There was bonafide winter—with snow and ice. And even in the summer, the nights got cold. And, of course, we couldn’t plow up the precious green yard for a vegetable patch, so our gardening was limited to two or three flower beds. For a dozen years.

Then Lady Circumstance said it was time to move on. Our kids were grown and out of the nest. My honey and I pulled up stakes and headed to the Ozark Mountains. Anxious to exercise our green thumbs, we bought 22 acres. (Five would have been overkill.)

Two kids—in their mid-fifties—in the proverbial candy store. We grew vegetables to sell at the Farmers’ Market. To put away for winter. Homegrown food at every meal. It was heaven.   Until the revelry slowed along with our aging bodies—and all but halted when my husband passed away on the very acreage that lured him to Arkansas.

Recently I found myself crying while weeding my roadside flower bed. I thought I was simply overwhelmed with the work of taking care of our land by myself. But this flower bed was always my work. It had been a six-foot long iris patch when we moved here. But I transformed it into one hundred feet of daffodils, iris, and multi-colored day lilies. A garden that flowers from late winter all through summer.

I like the work. I enjoy being outdoors. My dog enjoys my company outside. It’s relaxing and an accomplishment at the same time. Not a reason to weep.

No, I finally figured out the tears came because I was saying good-bye to my garden. I was recognizing that I can’t maintain the landscape alone and will either have to move— or allow the poison ivy and Virginia creeper free reign. The veggies are already gone. The flower beds are supremely neglected. 

I have lived on this land longer than I have lived anywhere in my entire life. My honey and I planted two big red maples, a row of dogwoods, and a crepe myrtle out front. Fruit trees in the side yard. Magnolia, cypress, river birch, and Japanese maple trees in the back yard.  The front ramp is bordered by his installation of lilacs, vitex, and other flowering shrubs—a tunnel of flowers in the spring and summer. All marks of a long love affair. How does one part with this? 

I’m not gone yet. But Lady Circumstance is dropping hints. And she’s taught me old bones can learn new tricks.