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| Flowering crab apple across the street |
It has been the earliest spring here in the north, no snow in February and a balmy March. The flowering showy tree to the left is the view we see out our front living room window. Isn't it like a painting? So beautiful. But the dark contrasts are the breaking hearts in the house behind it; sadly, my neighbors are in the midst of a impending grief, keeping the watch, in a dim situation, as their beautiful 26 year old daughter fights for her life. Elizabeth has stage IV terminal lung cancer, diagnosed in September a month after her marriage; she never smoked was healthy and boom! That hand of fate deals the death card. No one knows what to say or do and they look at me and another neighbor, because we have lost adult children, us a son and they a daughter and so that makes us experts, officers if you will in this gruesome club into which none of us ever sought membership. The father, Steve, is being stalwart, reasonable as one can be under the death watch; he is an ER Nurse highly regarded in the area and active Army after being in the reserves; while Monica, the mother is barely functional. Steve can talk but Monica cannot. She already has that look in her eyes that Mary and I know. Their lives will never be the same. I think we have done remarkably and I take that from a lifetime of faith, but I know that there are times when a tingle of a memory tries still to snatch our spirits, to rattle us. We did the best we could, we were not able to save an adult and neither were Mary and Randy, nor will Steve and Monica. So we talk, quietly at times and listen when others talk around and around. These are times that silence is comforting. There is nothing to say but to listen and pray with and for them. To point out the beauty of spring around us amidst the impending.
There's a new bug for my rose garden there to the right, isn't she sweet. It's her job to twirl her wings madly in the breeze and watch over the leafing rose bushes, which are way ahead this year making me early to remove the mulch and trim the winter deadwood. And yet last night we had a short time of freeze. People worry and ask if I am not concerned and will I be covering my bushes at night. Yes and no. I figure I did not tell these bushes to bud out so early they know they live in Minnesota, and they chose to leaf out so they will have to live with the consequences of their actions--just like people ought to do. I call 2012, the year of tough love for the roses in this garden. They can take it or they will have wasted their time. I am not one to pander to weaklings.
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| Lady Bug whirl a gig with Bon Chance |
We are thankful for the beauty of spring each year, the renewal even with the work it brings, outside pruning, clipping, hauling carloads up and down the hill. Good exercise in the fresh air, but then resultant acheyness for a day or two the protest of muscles not used enough over the winter. Doses of Advil are a good thing and allow us to go on the next day without too much grumbling.
April showers bring May flowers is an old child's poem but what brought the March and April blooms this year? Not showers and certainly not the snow.
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| Lilac bush between our houses |
The house next door sets vacant like my Uncle Carl's home in PA. Both Frank and Dorothy are dead and their adult children do not appear to be in any rush to clear it out or list the home for sale. We will have new neighbors someday. But for now, I am left to smell the wonderful scent of lilacs without Dorothy's chatter warning me to not take them inside. When we moved here I asked her if she minded if I cut bouquets from the bushes on my side, the lilacs are between our houses. Not at all, but she could not understand my bringing those flowers inside, "..they have bugs. You will not like that. " You know she was right, she knew these MN lilacs were to be enjoyed outside, unlike my later blooming Miss Kim bush or the ones we had in CA. She was quite the gardener, an old farm gal really. And at the last when I saw her in the nursing home when she was so wasted away and hardly knew herself let alone anyone else, I knew it would be mercy if she could pass on; Dorothy who loved her old fashioned and would raise a glass in toast, a drink to the garden and who was opinionated and certain, died at 90 a month ago. Frank died two years ago so the place is empty.
I will be unlikely to ever dig around here without remembering them and especially her. She was just my kind of woman. Crusty and testy at times, and really one of a kind. We have two front door to our home, built that way by the original owners. Dorothy would never use the big front door, she preferred the garage door that comes into the kitchen but it our garage was closed she would come to the small front door that enters into a hallway and then the kitchen. I can still her say that she wished Frank had built such an entry to their home, because when people come in the front door it just tracks in everything. When she was failing before she went into a care facility she locked herself out of the house, she was out in the yard. Fortunately we were home so she came right over and announced her dilemma. It took some time to reach one of her sons, it was quitting time and they were en route. Dorothy was very stirred up and I suggested we have a glass of wine while we waited...that helped calm her down but when the one son arrived she chewed his ears for delaying. We laugh about the strong lady and her activities. It was so sad to watch her fail first using a walker and then into the facilities and as I said, the last, well it was not the Dorothy we knew.
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| Dorothy's hoe at her garden |
I did not set out to memorialize Dorothy today but I did snap some photos of her deserted garden. It is poignant because she kept everything so neat and now, well it is askew is the best I can say.
She oversaw Frank at his assigned tasks there to be sure everything was done just so. Her particularness reminded me of my Aunt Jinx. After Frank died, she took hoe in hand against the wishes and admonition of her family. The photo to the right is what I snapped today. It tells a tale of desertion and neglect, when the primary person is gone and no one else cares.
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| Dorothy's deserted garden |
We never found her stumbling or falling down out there as happened all too often to my Uncle Carl before he went into assisted living. I suspect she would not be happy today to see her garden abandoned to becoming the mess that it is. If she has any power from the beyond I know her family's ears are burning, "get over there and fix my garden" She grew tomatoes and gave them away which we appreciated; Frank did not like them but Dorothy could not imagine not growing tomatoes anymore than she could imagine weeds in a garden. RIP Dorothy lady of our hood! As her eldest son Gary said at the funeral, "no peace for Dad now in the hereafter...the boss has arrived."
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| Bleeding heart |
I close with the last blooming photos of today, the first bloom is peaking through on the bleeding heart bush in my back flower garden. It just started. This is never in abundant bloom until late May...showing just how far ahead of things we are this year.
Finally my tulips. When we ived in Newcastle, CA I could not grow tulips but had nearly every other bulb. We had an abundance of gophers and moles there who would dine on the tulip bulbs considering them a delicacy. Everytime I planted some Jerry would say, "feeding the gophers?" I tried all sorts of remedies, chicken wire, adding moth bulbs, and to no avail. I never saw a tulip come up in spring. So I was very excited to have a tulip bed in Minnesota. Today I caught some of them swaying to the breeze.
That will close my post for the day.
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| Some of my swaying tulips |
