Gardens and family

I try to get some exercise 3-4 days a week and since the weather has been nice, I walk. I use a walker but I go and I love looking at people's gardens.

I'm blessed with living in a part of the country where people love to garden. We have nurseries everywhere and even drug stores, hardware stores and liquor stores sell some kind of plants!
There are people who take it very, very seriously and want everyone else to do the same and there are people like me who buy whatever strikes their fancy at any given time - usually helpful if it's on sale - and into the ground it goes one way or the other (gardener or husband doing the planting).

I love seeing what happens - which is usually that the plant flourishes- leaves and branches sprout, buds appear, flowers bloom. It's very fulfilling. I tend to kind of "know" what's going to work. After years and years of planting I know which plants flourish on neglect, and which ones want daily attention. I've also gone to classes, orchid or African violet clubs, succulent clubs, and bonsai groups and sucked knowledge out of the experts.

It's wonderful when plants like orchids - which I think of as being exotic - bloom like crazy. They ignore the frosted nights, the overheated days and the inexpert management of watering schedules. Of course, there are more delicate and demanding orchids - but, like I say, I have an instinct for the survivors and survive they do. Roses the same way. I have lots of rose bushes in a variety of colors and scents. I can't resist a beautiful color, shape, or sale. And some of the best roses I have in the garden have been orphans I've picked up after the sale was over and everyone had gone home.

Morey is the scientific gardener. He pays attention to the sun, the soil, the watering schedule and the fertilizer - and I have to give him some credit because my hit or miss approach would probably not be as successful if he didn't follow along and make sure the plants have what they need. So we both enjoy the garden.

Some roses have been with me since Toni and Martin at 7 and 5 (about) brought home little pots of red roses. I've moved them with me from house to house and they flourish here in Santa Rosa as they never did in Los Angeles. They'll go with me to whatever retirement I end up at and I would like it if they were planted on my grave, but most cemetaries have rules about things like that. Too bad. They are called garnet roses and I love them.

I bought myself some orange roses one Mother's Day when everyone else seemed to have forgotten they have a mother. They are sweet and rewarding - and they don't forget Mother's Day. They bloom wildly (which is why I bought them - they were so generous in their bloom at the nursery) around May and they always make me feel they do it for me.

When I was a little girl in England, we didn't have flowers in the garden. Our garden was strictly for food and filled with potatoes, carrots, cabbages etc. But down the middle of the garden dividing our garden from our neighbors was a long, very long, row of roses. Somehow they knew to bloom on my birthday and every July 16th there were thousands of pink roses on those bushes. They were not re-bloomers - once was all and then it was over - but what a display that was every year. And, from somewhere my Mother had found a blue taffeta dress with pink roses embroidered all over it and I wore that dress for my birthday every year until I burst out of it.....and there was no hope for further expansion.

Such memories cling like cobwebs to the brain and infuse the present with their sweet memories. I think I was a noticing sort of child and there were lots of things around me that I noticed - not so much people as gardens, fields, wildflowers, wild strawberries, horse chestnuts,
birds nests - living on a farm has much to commend it. I was also alone a lot. My parents were hard workers and I was an only child with few friends - mostly at school, so my days at home were out in the fields, garden or barns. I don't regret one minute of it.

I climbed fruit trees to sing to them. I sang every song in my repetoire. I don't know if the trees appreciated it, but there copious apples however sour, that came off those trees. The red currant bushes provided little hideouts for me in the long grasses between them and I sang to them too. They too were very, very sour so my music may not have helped but they were also prolific - maybe I can take credit for that.

I think that a farm is a great place to raise a child and I wish I had had that option for my kids.
Still, there is a time, when farms cease to stimulate and museums, art galleries, parks (with rose gardens) took over. Los Angeles in the late 1940's was open to me and all I needed was bus tokens and/or the willingness to walk for miles. I did walk for miles to Exposition Park where two large and wonderful and FREE museums welcomed me and the rose garden was open to me and I was often the only person there sniffing my way from flower to flower.

I learned to swim in the Olympic pool at Exposition Park and I went every single weekday of the summer whether it was overcast or not (and May/June in Los Angeles can be very gloomy). I had crushes on the lifeguards who were often students from the nearby USC and sometimes I was the only kid in the pool.

On weekends we, as a family, went to the pool and Dad showed off his diving skills on the high dive boards. With his beer belly, he made people chuckle until he took off flying through the air.
Mom paddled around and wouldn't get her face wet. Dad had taught her how to swim when they first met and she was a timid swimmer. I have shoeboxes of pictures of them, Mom and Dad, with their friends and Dad's brothers and my grandmother picnicking and in swim clothes at the lakes surrounding Berlin. I know my Dad and his brothers intended to build a holiday cottage somewhere they could all go and enjoy the swimming and hiking. What a nice life we might have had if not for Hitler. I might have known my cousins and grown up with them. I'm sure there would have been a lot of family for me to keep track of. And I'm sure it wouldn't have been as idyllic as I imagine. But who knows?

Mom loved to garden and she particularly liked African violets. She'd sneak leaves off the plants in the various stores she went into and then encourage them to develop roots and become little plants for her. Her room was filled with pots of violets when she lived with me. And when she lived in her own house, I had to go over weekly to water her many, many pots of plants. Many of whom took one look at me and died. She specialized in Coleus in those days and I've always hated them. I guess they knew it.

Mom could plant anything and it would grow. People would say "Oh that plant doesn't grow here." or "You can't start that plant from a leaf, or seedling." and Mom would go her merry way and they'd grow. (if they knew what was good for them). Mom would have loved Santa Rosa if she hadn't already been failing by the time we moved here. I took her for drives and showed her the flowers, but she was uninterested. She missed Los Angeles, and she missed her friends and her time was running out.

I wish I could plant a flower on her grave.