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| This little cement angel was from my husband's services. |
Very little gardening was accomplished this year because my husband was very sick and passed away in October. Going through serious sickness, medical diagnosis, treatments and death of a loved one is similar to putting a car's gear into neutral while pressing on the gas. You don't move along but you certainly have the engine revved up all the time. It's hard on the engine and you never get out of the fast lane.
As my husband said when we were coming home after he was told he would not survive this third bout of cancer, "This sure makes a lot of things unimportant." It mentally and emotionally lines up things on a list of what's important and what isn't important simply falls off the radar. Some things are so far down on the list, it takes concentration to think of them if mentioned by someone else. Other things become unimportant because you simply no longer have time to think of or manage them. If you are doing five-thousand things today, the five-thousand and one thing will not happen. My garden fell into that category.
I have a big garden and most often it takes big work. Not the kind of work that's a drudgery but the kind that gives satisfaction and soothes my soul. I'd venture a guess that most people do not have big gardens and can't imagine what it takes to keep it looking like it takes no effort. On the few occasions I looked outside at my yard, I knew what wasn't getting done but most people didn't.
I don't resent that I didn't get to garden; it wasn't as important as what I was doing at that time. I had sincere offers from friends to come in and trim, weed and help manage but my limit of personal resources couldn't even organize what needed to be done so I could get them started. I was grateful a neighbor came in and mowed and for the young man who is working his way through nursing school who needed another yard to mow - both without any instructions on my part.
My comment on my gardens, when garden friends worried about the state of things, was, "I'll let winter come and take care of it this year". And that's what I did.
Next year I'm sure I'll have to battle even more weeds from all those pesky plants that didn't get pulled. But then next year I'll have different priorities.
My husband didn't garden and never indicated he would ever want to garden. He was the muscle behind my latest "idea" and that was good enough for me. Frankly, when I heard garden friends talking about bickering with their husbands about garden things, I was always grateful my husband was a "Sure, whatever." kind of guy.
He was the one that built the screened porch on the back of our house so we could enjoy the gardens while sitting insect free.
He was the one that looked around a room to see what bouquet of flowers I'd brought inside.
He was the one that wheelbarrowed in load after load of old brick to where I was making a new project.
He was the one who dug out failures. We would laugh at how he would dig up a huge bush or tree, leaving a root ball the size of a basketball and against all odds it would grow into a better plant.
He was the one that would move the very large cement angel three times before it was in just the right place. He was also the one that would quickly/silently drive by the discount cement yard ornament place hoping I wouldn't notice.
He was the one that picked up, loaded and placed field stones around the yard every spring. The stones work their way up by the freeze/thaw process and we always felt we were doing our local farmers a favor when we gathered rocks. The grandchildren loved to help and it was an adventure.
He was the one that figured out how to tow snow sleds with kids on them up the hill in the frozen snow-covered bean fields for the grandkids to swoop down without the long cold walk back up.
Yes, next year I'll have time to garden but it will be at a mighty cost.
