On My Gardens: Love, Legacy, and Continuance

I’m sitting on my front porch drinking morning coffee, my ancient Addie at my feet, her pups, now ten, Bella and Charlie, hunting in the grasses and wildflower garden that line the driveway. Birds sing in stereo from forests and lawn: American robin, goldfinch, chickadee, nuthatch, red eyed vireo, chipping sparrow, flycatcher...

In the gardens, lilacs, roses, irises, flags, laurel, rhododendrons, and peony bloom. On my front porch more: hanging begonia baskets, potted orchids, Christmas cactus, and amaryllis... Begonia petals litter the porch flooring.

My plants are a history of my life. 

Some have been with me since childhood: my grandfather’s Egyptian spreading onion, my grandmother’s rhubarb, my parents wedding peonies that then graced mine and my daughter’s wedding bouquets. Some originally transported from Rochester, NY to my then South Lincoln, Vermont home many moons ago by my brother Steve who 50 years later helped choose the flowers that became Tegan's wedding table bouquets. The rugosa roses and irises I’ve propagated from Maine and my first marriage, some of the hostas, the Queen of the Prairie, and astilbe come from my gardens then as do the bachelor buttons, black cohosh and others gifted from gardens of my friends when I was a young mother in Starksboro. 

Here they thrive with added in the twenty years since, and the founding hydrangea, the blue spruces my dad bought at $5.00 a piece, the lilacs (my father’s favorite from his parents’ home on old Ridge Road), and $5.00 pin oak that he helped me plant as my mom watched from the porch. And dare I forget the delicious purple pole beans bought back from paternal family in South Africa by my dad when I was in college and careful kept propagating every year since. The quince is inspired by my graduate school friends Dottie and Paul from Massachusetts who I haven’t seen in years and the miniature roses from my beloved former student Nicole who died much too soon last year leaving her beloveds Greg and their 8 year old James, Jim’s namesake. The apple trees carefully tended are reminiscent of all the apple picking forays in my memories dating back to my maternal grandparents and hiding drops under the car seats and much later apple picking with Tegan as a child where later with Jim’s encouragement she would get her first job. The pond in the back, a legacy from my father’s family: my godfather Jack’s, the eldest, and my dad’s ponds with memories of building it with Jim, Ray, and Corinn. 

Newer plants are from modern forays to gardens around the state with Daphne and the Garden Divas and my friend Kathy along with those gifted from her gardens when she moved from her mom’s gardens, and the statutes from a former friend and past neighbor Kelly, Jim’s oncology nurse. 

They sit in the front garden that contains so many cherished plants and is designed as a labyrinth from my silent retreats to Peace Village where I walked that labyrinth and prayed for my parents, now I walk mine circling through it ending upon a Maine stone in the center and then I express my gratitude to my family and home facing South, to my work facing West, to my communities of friends facing North, and to God and his beautiful natural world that I may protect it facing East.

Now my daughter has her gardens and some of my plants grace Doug’s gardens. Who knows what future gardens will hold.