I have been looking out my bedroom window a lot lately, thinking about planting a few things.
Standing there, looking into my backyard, takes me back to my childhood, back to when I would look out my second-story bedroom window and see my mother working in her flowers below. If I close my eyes, I can see her, plain as day, digging and planting and weeding in the flower bed that lined the white-picket perimeter of our backyard.
There was nothing formal about my mother's garden. She had tulips and iris in early spring, lilacs in May and a rose bush that bloomed in June. She had peonies in the sun and hostas in the shade and her favorites, blue bells, and her very favorites, daisies. And she had my favorite, a large bleeding heart, which always looked to me like the earrings of a very fancy lady going to a very fancy ball.
Some of her perennials had been carefully divided and transplanted from plants originally grown at the farm where she grew up. She artfully mixed in annuals - pansies and petunias and impatiens and whatever else caught her eye - to take over when the perennials were spent.
And it always looked just right.
When my husband and I moved into our first home, we inherited an older lot, overgrown with a multitude of peonies and hostas and daylilies, many of which were struggling to grow in the wrong spot. Under my mother's guidance, I transplanted and weeded and whacked to restore order.
After the first couple years, the results were discouraging. It still didn't look like the magazine spread I was expecting.
My mother brushed my disappointment aside.
Working on a garden will take your whole life, she said. There is always something to plant. There will be something that doesn't work here, so you move it there. And then you add this and then you add that. And then this doesn't come back one year, so you have to fill in that hole.
It doesn't just end, she said.
My mother helped me figure out what to plant and when; what she didn't know, she looked up in one of her gardening books. We comforted each other over husbands who mowed over newly transplanted peonies and drastically overpruned the lilacs. In the spring, we visited the garden center together to pick up a few things, or maybe more than a few. What's a few flowers between a mother and daughter?
By the end of our time in that house, I could see what we, slowly but surely, had accomplished. And then my husband and I moved into a different house with a different type of yard - a yard without fences or borders, a yard that seemed more like a fairway.
I still did a little gardening in a few landscaped areas in the yard. But it wasn't nearly as nice as my mother's.
Along the way, my parents had moved from the home of my childhood, and my mother had a new flower bed to tend. I'd visit and we'd look at her garden and sometimes decide to take a quick run to the garden center.
(There is always something to plant.)
And as my parents grew older, they downsized, and that meant starting the flower beds over yet again. I was the laborer, digging in the rocky soil, as my mother used her cane to point to where she wanted transplants from the old house to the new house placed.
(Working on a garden will take your whole life.)
Ultimately, it was a long, slow march for my mother to the end of her life. She gradually lost her mobility and when she could no longer come to my house, I told her about my forays into dividing the hostas (successful) and transplanting ferns (not so much) and we discussed my complete inability, despite a dozen attempts, to grow a black-eyed Susan (which completely vexed us both.)
Even at the end, when she lost the ability to speak, I continued to reminisce with her about some of our gardening adventures: Remember that magnificent pink climbing rose, how it was covered in blooms? And did I tell you my black-eyed Susan finally did took off last summer? And she would smile at these old gardening tales, familiar stories shared between a mother and daughter.
My mother died at the beginning of March. Ever since, I've been looking out my bedroom window. We put in a small fenced area for the dog last fall and it desperately needs something along its perimeter.
It needs my mother's touch. I need to get to work.
I swear, if I close my eyes, I can see my mom out there, plain as day, pointing and telling me there's a spot over there that would be perfect for a daisy.
- Mary Jane Grenzow is editor of the Monroe Times.
She can be reached at
editor@themonroetimes.com.
Her column appears on Saturdays.
Standing there, looking into my backyard, takes me back to my childhood, back to when I would look out my second-story bedroom window and see my mother working in her flowers below. If I close my eyes, I can see her, plain as day, digging and planting and weeding in the flower bed that lined the white-picket perimeter of our backyard.
There was nothing formal about my mother's garden. She had tulips and iris in early spring, lilacs in May and a rose bush that bloomed in June. She had peonies in the sun and hostas in the shade and her favorites, blue bells, and her very favorites, daisies. And she had my favorite, a large bleeding heart, which always looked to me like the earrings of a very fancy lady going to a very fancy ball.
Some of her perennials had been carefully divided and transplanted from plants originally grown at the farm where she grew up. She artfully mixed in annuals - pansies and petunias and impatiens and whatever else caught her eye - to take over when the perennials were spent.
And it always looked just right.
When my husband and I moved into our first home, we inherited an older lot, overgrown with a multitude of peonies and hostas and daylilies, many of which were struggling to grow in the wrong spot. Under my mother's guidance, I transplanted and weeded and whacked to restore order.
After the first couple years, the results were discouraging. It still didn't look like the magazine spread I was expecting.
My mother brushed my disappointment aside.
Working on a garden will take your whole life, she said. There is always something to plant. There will be something that doesn't work here, so you move it there. And then you add this and then you add that. And then this doesn't come back one year, so you have to fill in that hole.
It doesn't just end, she said.
My mother helped me figure out what to plant and when; what she didn't know, she looked up in one of her gardening books. We comforted each other over husbands who mowed over newly transplanted peonies and drastically overpruned the lilacs. In the spring, we visited the garden center together to pick up a few things, or maybe more than a few. What's a few flowers between a mother and daughter?
By the end of our time in that house, I could see what we, slowly but surely, had accomplished. And then my husband and I moved into a different house with a different type of yard - a yard without fences or borders, a yard that seemed more like a fairway.
I still did a little gardening in a few landscaped areas in the yard. But it wasn't nearly as nice as my mother's.
Along the way, my parents had moved from the home of my childhood, and my mother had a new flower bed to tend. I'd visit and we'd look at her garden and sometimes decide to take a quick run to the garden center.
(There is always something to plant.)
And as my parents grew older, they downsized, and that meant starting the flower beds over yet again. I was the laborer, digging in the rocky soil, as my mother used her cane to point to where she wanted transplants from the old house to the new house placed.
(Working on a garden will take your whole life.)
Ultimately, it was a long, slow march for my mother to the end of her life. She gradually lost her mobility and when she could no longer come to my house, I told her about my forays into dividing the hostas (successful) and transplanting ferns (not so much) and we discussed my complete inability, despite a dozen attempts, to grow a black-eyed Susan (which completely vexed us both.)
Even at the end, when she lost the ability to speak, I continued to reminisce with her about some of our gardening adventures: Remember that magnificent pink climbing rose, how it was covered in blooms? And did I tell you my black-eyed Susan finally did took off last summer? And she would smile at these old gardening tales, familiar stories shared between a mother and daughter.
My mother died at the beginning of March. Ever since, I've been looking out my bedroom window. We put in a small fenced area for the dog last fall and it desperately needs something along its perimeter.
It needs my mother's touch. I need to get to work.
I swear, if I close my eyes, I can see my mom out there, plain as day, pointing and telling me there's a spot over there that would be perfect for a daisy.
- Mary Jane Grenzow is editor of the Monroe Times.
She can be reached at
editor@themonroetimes.com.
Her column appears on Saturdays.
