There is a garden in every childhood

"The earth laughs in flowers." ~ Emerson

   This is where I like to sit to have my coffee or a snack. Behind the dogwood tree, like a secret, is an antique iron table topped with marble that was my Grandma Tommy's. On either side are two small metal chairs painted French Blue. When you nestle back into the foliage people can walk right by as you sip and not even see 
you...

My shady beds are in riotous glory right now, the hosta unfurling leaves like baby elephant's ears, the maiden hair ferns shaking out their unruly hairdos, and the Sweet William phlox a sea of sky blue.
 
  My problem is, I go out, planning to sit only long enough to have my coffee and then go inside to do more important things. Most times, though, I never finish the coffee. I go out in my bathrobe, no gloves, no shoes, and next thing I know someone is heckling me. I turn it look and it is a nasty ole weed. Weeds are like children, they are a baby one day and the next they are staring you in the eye. To be big enough to burst up out of the lush flowers, the weed often has to be at the belligerent teenage size, and it stares at me. Whatcha gonna do about it? it taunts in weed language. 
    That's when I spring, a feral cat pouncing, coffee and relaxation forgotten. An hour later I come out of my coma and look around. I am surrounded by the defeated bodies of my enemies- hurrah! It makes me want to beat my sword on my shield, because this is war. Then I come to my senses. My feet and knees are covered in dirt from crawling about, my bathrobe is dew soaked, my hair is full of sticks, and my hands look like a burrowing animal's. Perhaps a deranged groundhog's. But the weed started it!

I could never count how many washtubs and wheelbarrows of the enemy that I tote away

Why do I bother? I ask myself that every year. I answer is, I always wanted a garden like my grandma's. Grandma Tommy had the kind of garden that you read about in books. Weeping trees, climbing roses, vines spilling flowers far overhead. And a giant fish pool filled with massive, shining, slick-sided fish that would come in answer to a tap on the side of the pool. Mouths puckering, gaping for a bite of food. It was a paradise, and I just knew that I would have one of my own for my children.
    It was so much work, and most of it done with one baby or another on my hip. My pop said I was the only woman he knew that could nurse a baby in one arm and rake mulch with the other. Where there's a will, there's a way.
    Now my kids are mostly grown, and we do not spend every waking moment of good weather in the garden. There are times when I think- I could just let it all go back to lawn. I could just quit. But I look around and see all the flowers of my great-granny. The ones from my Grandma Tommy. The flowers I took from my Aunt Sharon's house after she passed away. The flowers my Grandma Betty brought from Texas. It's not just a garden, it is also a memorial of loved ones.
    And someday, someday, I will have grandbabies. I want them to toddle into the garden, squint up at the light and reach for a flower. Then I will tell them about the special people who gave me each flower and how much they would have loved to see the little one holding it. 
    In the meantime, I cling to tiny victories.

    On the mound behind my fishpond is a pink wisteria tree my pop gave me as a cutting off of my great-granny's. It is a pendulous mass that smells so heavenly it hits you when you walk out the door. All manner of pollinators from honey bee, to bumbler, to wasp, are lulled to drunkenness with its nectar. The iris were from my Aunt Carla.

One of the peonies just opening beneath the wisteria tree.

    People who come over rarely care anything about my flower beds, even though there are times I am fit to bursting with wanting to drag them through the garden, shoving their head down to examine the more lovely of my denizens. Most people stand at a distance and rotate their head, nodding, like it is a Monet painting and to go closer would show all the brushstrokes. Little do they know that in getting close, really close, you see all the tiny, hidden beauties.
    One year I even had a garden club over to the house for a garden tour and tea. I was starved for horticultural conversation. My grandma Tommy had inundated me from the very beginning with the Latin names for all the flowers and shrubs. To enter her world you had to learn the language. She gave me a plant guide for a birthday and I promptly memorized it. To be able to stroll through her garden and discuss each plant as if it were the first one created was a treasure. I wrote in Ocean Vacation that Latin felt to me like the creation language- God spoke it, and it was.
    I had hoped to have these conversations again, but the dear ladies did not know even the common names for many plants. There was no Latin at all. So gardening can be a lonely prospect, both in the sweating and grunting in the dirt, and the desire for a soul to admire your patch of Eden the way that you do. My moma and pop (and a dear friend named Jenny) are the only folks I have left to truly love my garden. I go to their house to see what is blooming, and I drag them out to mine to see what is coming up. But there are days when I would give anything to rush to the phone and tell Grandma Tommy I have Papaver Somniferum coming up...

Tender baby poppies coming up

  

    I've almost gotten my garden into shape. A few more spots remain like a wilderness waiting to be tamed (it sticks it's tongue out at me every time I pass).

   Pictures only show you what the photographer wants you to see. In the first picture I only showed the glorious wisteria, iris, and peony. The whole story is that all around, under, over, and through, are a tangle of weeds waiting for me to rip into it. Ack, gag, and spew.
    Of course, after I get it all weeded it will be time to put out tractor buckets full of mulch. It makes me sigh just to write it. So I have to step back, Dear Reader. Look at what is beautiful, what is blooming to give myself courage. Isn't that like life?

And I might even whisper a few Latin names to my grandma to help me keep up the good fight.

"There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where the colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again." ~ Elizabeth Lawrence