Fatherly Foliage

The year my father died was the same year my brother turned fifty. Although dad was always generous with his grandkids, he was a bit stingy with me and my brothers most of our adult lives. Dad figured we should fend for ourselves; he did not want to encourage any lingering parental dependency.

That changed as he grew older.

My brother's family planned a surprise birthday party for Ted's fiftieth. Dad--who never was much for parties unless they were happening at his house--declined the party invitation. Instead, he asked me to deliver a birthday gift: a card with an envelope containing five one-hundred dollar bills. When Ted opened it, he was so surprised.

The weekend before my birthday, less than two months later, I was at dad's house helping with a few chores when he handed me an envelope with the words "Happy-Birthday-Debbie" penciled on the front (dashes between words was dad's signature way of writing). In it I found five one-hundred dollar bills.

I protested, thinking it was too much money to lavish on someone having an ordinary birthday, especially coming from a parent living on a tiny fixed income. I suggested he wait, maybe another two years when I turned fifty. Dad gave his typical response, "I don't think I'll be around that long."

For years, everyone in our family had listened to dad anticipate his demise, which by his reckoning was sure to occur at any moment. In his fifties and early sixties, dad repeated his wish to achieve one last milestone: collect his first Social Security check. Once that occurred, he could promptly expire a happy, fulfilled man. Sure enough, he did collect that first check, followed by more than twenty years of continued benefits.

Dad insisted I take the money as a birthday gift. A few weeks later, he was gone.

So I used some of that birthday money to plant a tree in his memory. We had already discussed replacing the back yard apple tree we recently removed. Now the tree-planting served a higher purpose.

A maple tree is what I had in mind, and we found a lovely specimen at my favorite plant paradise, Paulino Gardens. The tree we chose was a Deborah Norway Maple, a perfect fit!

That tree was no more than ten feet tall, splindy but healthy. In seven years' time it has spread and grown into a beautiful shade tree that I adore.

Following dad's death, my sweet neighbor gave me another gift of remembrance, a beautiful yellow rosebush. That bush is planted near the maple tree, next to a commemorative stone where the yellow rose petals land after the blooms are finished showing off.

Surrounding the rosebush are clumps of purple irises, the offspring of a plant that once lived in mom's garden. Dad gave me the iris tubers when I first bought my home seventeen years ago. They spread like wildfire and brighten up several gardens each spring.

This year the irises were exceptionally pretty and fragrant. The rosebush is covered with bright yellow blooms that give off a sweet licorice scent. And the maple tree has grown so big and strong, a family of birds christened it with a brand new nest in the upper branches.

I am so grateful to have inherited my father's green thumb, as well as his love for plants and gardening. It has served me well.

Thanks, dad.

My New Little Garden Friends

Ahh spring, a time when this not-so-young girl's fancy turns to... gardening tools and the heady, intoxicating smell of spring-moistened Colorado dirt.

Now, I don't know what it was like in your part of the world, but here in Colorado it was a long, cold winter. Not so much in the snow department necessarily but good grief it was cold. Or maybe it's just that these middle-aged bones of mine can't handle the extremes any more. Or possibly, a combination of both factors.

April showers were mostly April snowshowers and blustery cool days. May was chock full of rain and colder temperatures than we are used to, with the snow giving us one last hurrah on May 12. Then it suddenly shot up in a few days' time from about 45 degrees to more than 80 degrees.

Okay, enough about the weather.

Sunday morning I plopped down in a ten-foot-by-ten-foot plot of land that I refer to alternatively as either “the vegetable garden” or "the compost." Last year my vegetable garden was a bust (owing to the unusually wet, cool, cloudy spring and damp, humid summer). This year we have rather unceremoniously assigned ourselves a mess of new yard projects to accomplish, so the vegetable garden will have to be sparse. Originally I planned a salsa garden but I’m opting for just tomatoes and cucumbers instead.

So there I sat, ready to break ground on my Year Twenty-Ten vegetable garden, plotting the perfect location to root a recently acquired Juliet tomato and her tiny sidekick, a Burpless cucumber. A quick glance at the sky, now where is the sun? And where will it be this afternoon? Would this be a good spot to make sure Juliet is blissfully soaking up as much sun as possible without scorching the poor darling to a crisp? Yes, the spot I picked looked just about right.

I turned the earth and oh my! That scent! The gritty odor that simultaneously reminds one of childhood days playing in the mud combined with a whiff of last year’s decomposing kitchen waste: potato peels, green onions and peppers with a hint of melon rind thrown in for sweetness. The earthworms squirmed with surprise at their sudden exposure to light and heat, so I dug a little trench and sent them packing back to the land of cool, dark, damp feasts.

Now Juliet and her trusty cucumber companion, Mr. Burpless, have established side-by-side homesteads in the southwest corner of our backyard oasis. Honestly though, the tomato cage looks ridiculous towering over Juliet’s spindly 8-inch frame. The trellis--ready to corral Mr. Burpless and his wildly trailing vines--is vacant, bored. But soon enough there will be so much growth that I’ll have to decide which branches get to stay, and which must go.

It was a late start this year and I suppose come early September, I’ll be thinking about how nice it will be to dig up the gardens and turn the soil for winter, reverting the "vegetable garden" to its winter moniker, "the compost." I’ll be anticipating the heady, intoxicating smell of rotting, decomposing leaves as they fall from trees and swirl around the base of the vegetable garden, ready to help amend our hard-packed clay soil.

Until then, I will delight in watching my new little garden friends grow, and will be anticipating the delicious salads they are sure to provide. So let’s get growing you two!