IT’S NOT ENGLAND – IT’S COLORADO.

I love the lushness of England.  Beautiful, tall willow tress lining the river Avon in Stratford.  Neatly trimmed hedges in Warwick Castle’s Peacock Gardens.  The cluttered, messy Victorian look of English gardens in full bloom.

Summer 1999

I've lost count the number of times I've been to England.  It's my second home.  But I do remember one trip above all others, and that is when my husband had his heart attack.  We had just come from France on the Chunnel train.  Mike’s lucky to be alive – he received incredible care from all of the medical staff at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.  For two weeks we depended on the kindness of our British hosts while Mike recovered.  During this time, I stayed in a bed and breakfast, which was much more affordable than a hotel.  And oh my goodness, did my landlady, Nora, have the most beautiful English garden.  In the mornings before I headed out on my one mile walk to the hospital, Nora would pull me into her garden.  

“Isn’t she spectacular?” Nora would ask me. 

She, being the single rose opening up to early morning sunlight.  Nora was nearly blind, but she would put her face up to that rose and gaze in wonder at its beauty, as though looking through a magnifying glass.  She didn't just smell the rose.  She stared into its very soul.

“She’s stunning,” I would reply. 

And for a brief period of time each morning, all my worries stopped. I didn’t fret about Mike’s heart, or his recovery, or the expenses, or my job, which was demanding my return to America.  Instead, I would sit in the garden with Nora, having a cup of tea, commenting on the wonder of nature’s blooms.  Grateful for the brief respite.

I wish for Nora’s English garden.  But I live in Colorado.

The stone wall is now complete.  We are in the process of finishing the upper garden, which once housed my hopes for hydrangeas, lupines, and English lavender.  Replaced now with indigenous bushes, supposedly protected from draught and flash floods.  These are hardy, pioneer plants.  We’ll see . . .

The rock comes next, to keep the critters who love to dig from accomplishing their single-minded task.  As for gardening, I'm not giving up.  I’ll move to containers – hoping to grow peas, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, and a variety of flowers in clay pots.  But I already miss my beautiful white hydrangeas.  It’s painful to say goodbye.

Rebuilding

The garden wall is broken.  Weeds grow between crevices, an indication of poor construction from the beginning.  And then there are the rabbits and ground squirrels who tunnel, digging beneath strawberry plants, lavender, and yarrows.  Colorado plants may be hardy, but even they can’t tolerate these tunnels.  Lest I forget, there is also the damage from the flood of 2015.  The one that ruined our basement.  And my garden.

I come from pioneer stock.   Great-Great Grandma migrated from Wales in a covered wagon, traveling to Colorado when she was only three months old.  Life took from her three beloved adult children, whom she was required to bury.  Yet she somehow found the strength to plant her “tomorrow's” with a sense of hope.  I adored Mabel.  And I think she adored me.  Mabel taught me to love English tea, served with a splash of milk in real china cups.  She taught me to crochet.  And she was my first Master Gardener (my Dad was my second).   I remember Mabel’s green house – the smell of peat and dirt.  The smell of fertilizer and cow shit.  The smell of life. 

Great-Grandma didn’t let the Colorado wind, the critters, the dryness, the droughts, the floods stop her.  She grieved and mourned, but she continued to plant new life each season.  In her garden, and in her family.  She saw all of us.  Her children.  Her grandchildren.  Her great-grandchildren.  We were all part of the garden she cultivated.

Sometimes, it benefits us to sit in silence, to observe our surroundings, to take stock of the plants that remain in our life, and to appreciate those plants that were destined to go.  To reconstruct.  And when required, to harden.  Add pebbles and rocks so the critters can’t tunnel through. 

Here’s to the 2016 Garden Caretaker Blog.  And to rebuilding the garden wall.