Doris von Tettenborn
Won Off Topic Publishing September 2023
Creative Non-Fiction contest
Published in Off Topic Publishing,
Inspired 55+Lifestyle Magazine
Recipes and Roots
The ruins of my garden were visible from the deck for some time, but I had not yet ventured outside. It was time to get a good look, see the extent of the damage, cry my tears and come up with a rebuilding plan.
The flower gardens had been my project for years. My husband managed the lawn, he had the best lawn in the neighborhood, lush, dark green and weed less. He took great pride in his lawn, it was immaculately groomed.
But he wasn’t a gardener.
When I got sick, the gardens languished. First I was too sick to notice, then I noticed but was too sick to care. Then I cared but was too weak to get out there. By then, they had languished to death.
Now it was time to scope out the extent of the damage and formulate a rebuilding plan. I had 30 feet of flower gardens and as much again of vegetable gardens. I started on the flowers.
I stepped into our backyard for the first time in many months, years really. The day was warm and sunny. Memories, pictures of previous blossoms floated in front of my eyes, tears blurred the real view, the neglect, the destruction. I walked over to the flower garden with a bird bath imbedded in the centre. I knelt in the grass and leaned into the dirt. How I loved my dirt. I loved the smell of it and the feel of it running through my fingers.
Some remnants of perennials had managed to hang on by the tip of their roots, tiny bits of green poked up among mounds of brown and yellow dead foliage. Tiny red roses had died, as if on purpose, resembling dried flower bouquets. The beauty of the dead and dying plants struck me. Some flowers had grown past their usual life span, no one had pruned them, or yanked them out by their roots, leaving wild, spindly, shaggy bits, gone to seed. Wild shapes and colors swirled around each other, roped together by errant vines.
What had looked like a mat of various greens, yellows, and browns was a beautiful montage of nature taking care of itself, seeding, dying, going dormant, germinating again, against all odds, in the spring, fighting each other for sun, rain and soil nutrients, climbing around each other. In the end, sharing the resources and dying together.
Was there any beauty left in my body and soul, matted down by years of chronic fatigue, pain, fighting for breath, struggling to stay alive? Just as surgery had saved my life, surgery was now going to save my gardens.
I grabbed gloves, pruning shears, trowel, shovel and a trash bin. I debated pruning around surviving remnants, but I didn’t know how much chance of survival those plants had after 3 years without extra food and water, on top of what the soil and rain had provided in my absence.
Deep breath, I ripped out plants by the roots and tossed them in the bin. Ripped and ripped, tears dripped.
I didn’t know how much I loved this garden and the act of gardening until I lost it and had to start over.
I didn’t appreciate my health until I lost it and had to start over.
I ripped out the first flower garden. I had several, with themes. A birding garden, fairy and butterfly garden, and the farmyard, complete with a big red barn.
My energy and psyche could take only so much destruction, so I cleaned my tools, and put them away for another day. Later my heart jumped at the view from the deck, the clean, empty black dirt of the just cleared garden, a blank canvas. I grinned and planned a trip to the greenhouse.
The next morning my husband drove me to the Garden Scents, just out of town on a narrow gravel road. I jumped out of our black SUV and grabbed a large cart. He raised his eyebrows but didn’t say a word. Kid in a candy store, I zoomed up one aisle and down the next.
“Do you know what you are looking for?” he asked.
“I’ll know it when I see it.” I grinned, barely looking his way. “I want to see everything before I decide.”
I breathed deeply, the perfume of thousands of flowers and their dirt snaking up my nose, into my brain for instant dopamine surge. I grew up on a farm, planting and weeding were in my blood. As a teenager I had resented time spent in the gardens and fields. I wanted to read or write, be by myself. 40 years later, I could hardly wait to get back to the dirt.
My stomach was pinched, like first love. Pansies, little purple faces smiling, petunias, pink petunias, white bacopa, purple lobelias, curvy ivy, my cart was overflowing.
Again with the raised eyebrow. I stopped, embarrassed by the many plants, the riches of color and texture overflowing the cart. He smiled and nodded, and I, tears threatening, leaned in for more.
I bought more than I needed for the small space that I had cleared the previous day. Certainly more than I would have the energy to plant.
“I can help you.” My husband said on the drive home. “I just wanted to make sure you really wanted to do it this time.” He glanced over at me, eyes immediately back on the gravel road. “You’ve gone out there a couple times over the years but came back in almost immediately.”
It wasn’t the first time he had told me something I had no memory of. As if I had been in a walking coma the previous years, bits and pieces of memory floating by, difficult to grasp.
“I didn’t want us to start and then let it die again. I don’t love your gardens enough to do it on my own.”
I laughed. Never a more obvious statement uttered.
Later, I placed flowers, still in their pots in various arrangements in the birding garden with its wrought iron bird bath, swinging old wooden cabin bird feeder, single white bird family dwelling and the large, turquoise condo bird house. I heard the sounds of my husband ripping out weeds and detritus of plants in the fairy garden. I winced but didn’t look up. He had been nervous until I told him, “don’t worry about identifying anything, just dig it all up.” We both knew he didn’t know petunia from clover, a rose from thistle. Dandelions, he knew dandelions, and ruthlessly stripped them from his lawns.
When I was satisfied with the arrangement, I left the pots in the exact spot I wanted the plants to live, my husband came over to dig the holes. He would dig, and leave the rest to me as I sat down on the ground, next to my plants, settling them in with food and water, patting dirt in, and soothing the plant.
“I’m going to take you out of your pot, give you a beautiful place to live, lots of food and water.”
Many years earlier, my sister had said, “Did you know your wife talks to her plants?”
“As long as they don’t talk back,” my husband had replied.
“Oh, but they do,” I said, pretending to ignore the glances between my sister and husband.
Over the spring and summer we were out there almost every day. The bird garden was glowing with soft pinks and purples, dotted with white. The fairy garden twinkled with pink and soft blues, purple cornflower for the butterflies, an occasional blaze of red. The farm with its big red barn, a rock path to the fields, one side green thyme ground cover, for the hay field, yellow ground cover on the other side for canola. Joy and exhaustion in my eyes, fingers and bones.
Next we tackled the vegetable garden. My husband turned the soil over with a shovel, a few days grunting with that task, he bought a battery powered hand held roto tiller. I hid my jubilation, didn’t want him to stop.
By summer’s end, the flowers were spectacular, hanging purple fuchsias dripping into climbing pink roses, purple lobelias creeping into lawn territory, risking their necks to the lawn edger. My stamina increased over the days and weeks, digging in the dirt, pruning, humming, weeding, until once again, the gardens were almost completely my domain.
I bought a pork loin and we roasted it, served it with fresh steamed baby potatoes, the first sweet carrots, crisp green beans and fresh sliced tomatoes. I savored the first taste of baby potatoes smothered in butter.
Sweet moment. Nothing ever tasted as sweet as vegetables grown in our rebuilt gardens.
Nothing ever tasted as sweet as recovered strength and stamina in my rebuilt body.
I breathed new life into the garden. The garden answered me back, breathed new life into me.