Mom’s Garden

Though once we may have travelled across the globe and back, there comes a time when we slip the passport into a drawer and our daily path shrinks to the distance between recliner and dinner table. When that day arrives, we discover the real value of the green space that lies just outside our windowpanes.

After caring for my mother for the final thirteen years of her life, I can attest to the healing power of green things.

 

Last October, as my mother lay dying, her pastor sat by her bedside. As he prayed the words Mom longed to hear, my young spaniel was outside making a spectacle of himself.

“That’s my grand dog,” Mom said and gestured toward our Riley Roo. He was just then bounding back and forth beyond her window.  In the soft light of that cool autumn morning, he was busy chasing after a cloud of butterflies, trying to snatch at least one out of the air.

Eventually, as Mom fell asleep. Riley flopped down in the garden I had made for Mom.  He waited for his second wind, keeping his gaze laser-focused on her butterflies.

He was none too pleased when I called him in, but I wanted to invite the pastor out to see the garden. I wanted him to know how much it had meant to Mom and to me.

Earlier that month, we sat out there, enjoying each other’s company, focused on nothing more than watching monarchs on the mistflower as they fueled up for the journey home to Mexico. We both got a kick out of watching the butterflies dance over the part of the garden she called “the prairie.”  It was a space I always let go wild. 

I may have made the garden, but it was Mom’s through and through.

In 2017, after a Bradford pear tree crashed down in a storm, Mom gave me both the free rein and the funding that brought the garden to life. For perhaps the first time since Dad passed in 2011, we had something to share that had nothing to do with to-do lists.

We worked up a detailed design brief. The colors she favored inside the house would flow out into the garden. We quadrupled the beds in front and added moss boulders to hold them up.  Out back, we designed smooth concrete paths to accommodate the wide turns she needed to make with her rolling walker. We spaced out rest stops. Each corner had a different feel, but it all flowed together. With nearly the whole backyard made accessible, she could leave the recliner behind, roll out the back door, and find herself in another realm.  

The garden brought the world to Mom, particularly during COVID times.

Mom often invited friends over for luncheon garden tours, pressing me into service as co-host. I kept a running plant list, formatted in a large font size, so she could share our successes with her guests. When the Collin County Master Gardeners came for a tour, she sat by her flowers and beamed with pride. Her garden was our triumph.

Looking after the garden was never a chore. It was my excuse to pop over to check on Mom without seeming to hover. It was also good for business. I’d be puttering around in the front garden when a car would stop, and the driver would turn out to be a pleasant person who either needed a gardener or a plant question answered. Often, I stored an overflow of plants for clients on Mom’s patio, which was fine so long as a good percentage of my flowers were reserved for her.

Mom could be a demanding client. She knew what she liked.

She had been to Butchart Gardens, and what she wanted was year-round color and no gaps.  Since she’d never been a gardener, the keen interest she showed in our endeavor was quite a surprise to me. She pointed at plants, and I shared what I knew. We did this over and over and over again, but our walkabouts were no burden. There was always something new to appreciate, together.

She loved a gaudy phlox. An in-your-face hibiscus made her day. I could never put in enough bulbs or tuck in enough annuals to satisfy her hunger for color. She fussed when I wanted to thin out her precious daisies. She practically squealed as I knelt down to thin her thuggish violets. However, when self-sown sunflowers or Mexican petunias got in her way along the path, she promptly summoned me over to give them a chop.

I fulfilled all but one of Mom’s garden desires.

She had wanted a handrail to help her navigate the front steps, but the thought of her heading down them with a walker terrified me. Every time she brought it up, I changed the subject.

I wouldn’t give in, but I did. make a point to take pictures of the plants she couldn’t see from her front porch, and then I showed them to her on the big screen TV. When we came back from appointments, I always stopped the car in front and then crept ever so slowly forward, naming every plant that was blooming or even thinking about blooming.  I also cut flowers and brought them in for the simple arrangements she liked. 

“The life of a flower offers us something to hold on to, a form of protection against fears of fragmentation in the face of death. Ephemeral and fragile as flowers are, they are the agents of continuity. For the flower in its beauty is destined to die, that its fruit may live and bring forth more flowers from its seed.” Dr. Sue Stuart-Smith, The Well Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature

Mom’s funeral took place in the columbarium garden at her church. It was a warm and sunny morning when we said goodbye. The pastor wore a white stole embroidered with butterflies around his neck. As he was semi-retired, he said it was the only one he owned. After the service, I sat on a bench with my eldest son and one of Mom’s friends. A cabbage white butterfly lit onto the pavement beside us. To me, her appearance was no coincidence.

An elderly widow bought Mom’s house, which seemed right to me. When we met, I could tell that Mom would have liked her.  Before handing off the keys, I walked her through the garden. I was happy for her and for her daughter, who lives nearby.

Happy memories will stay with me.

I’ll miss Mom and the garden we shared, but I won’t be going back. 

Instead, I’m moving forward, as she would want. In fact, my husband and I recently moved into what I think will be our own final home, a one-story with room for a pool, a rowdy spaniel, and a garden I can see from every window.