A few days before we left our Oregon homestead, my good friend and neighbor helped me pack my garden. Yes, I know it’s crazy, but it felt hugely important to bring to our Missouri home some small percentage of the hundreds of plants that I had come to know and love over years. So we spent several hours choosing, pruning, labeling, digging, and packing flowering perennials, herbs, bulbs, and fruit bushes into black garbage bags nestled inside of enormous cardboard boxes. Into the moving truck, and across the country my plants traveled, and when they arrived in Missouri, I hastily heeled them into a makeshift bed of topsoil, covered them with leaves, draped chicken wire over the entire thing, and hoped for the best.
In March I checked on the bed to see if there were any signs of life, and sure enough, the Columbines were putting out lush green growth. I felt an urgency to put the plants in the ground, to get them established before they put all their energy into upward growth. On a gusty day, Brian and I worked quickly to dig up sod, shake off the topsoil, loosen the hard clay below, and add horse manure. It was hard work, and thankfully our good friends who were visiting were willing to chip in and help. There were moments that I lifted out a “plant” and saw nothing more than a dead stick with a bright pink label. But I put it all in the ground, thinking that you never know when a plant will surprise you!
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been eagerly watching the bed for new signs of growth, and every time I see a tiny leaf push through the soil, it is a joyous gift. Yesterday, I was on my hands and knees, gasping with excitement over the fact that my favorite mint – which I dug up from the Echo Hollow creek-side, and interestingly, had been first planted by my Missouri neighbor Sarah – was indeed alive! It struck me that these plants are so important to me because they represent so much more than beauty and culinary delight; they are like a scrapbook of my past, holding the memories of important friendships, events, and places.
For instance, the four years that I worked at a wholesale plant nursery, way back in 2000-2004. So many discarded, overgrown plants came home with me those years. Into the garden they went, and as I added more and more plants to my stash, Brian obligingly dug and sculpted more garden space. Those were tumultuous years of our relationship, yet there was something about the garden work that we did together that assured us that, like the plants, we would grow together. Some of the plants from that nursery, a perennial primrose for instance, are still alive and now at home with me in Missouri.
Or flowers from the garden on the land that I was married. I worked in that garden for a summer, talking with my friend, the owner as we weeded together. I remember one day I was confiding with her about my relationship with Brian – I wasn’t quite sure where it was all going. She assured me that we were meant to be together, and when we were ready to be married, it would be on her land. Her Cut-Leaf Rudbeckia came home with me one day that summer, and is now growing more happily than I’ve ever seen it.
Or the way that my Oregon garden acted as a backdrop for our lives. We’d step out the door and check on new growth, or steep some sun tea, or warm ourselves, or play with goats in that garden. Some people have a stately tree under which they snap their family portraits; I had that garden.
Some of that warmth, that connection, those memories that I associate with plants and gardens is here with me, in our new home. And so my plants and I continue our journey together, sending down new roots, and experiencing new growth.
* This post was shared at Natural Living Monday, Homestead Barn Hop,The Backyard Farming Connection, The HomeAcre Hop, and Homestead Bloggers Network.
How sweet a post! The children are so beautiful. The flowers complement them well. I jumped over from the Home Acre Hop.
Thank you so much! And thanks for stopping by!
Lovely post! I have memories in my gardens, too–iris from the Auntie across the hill who divided her plants when she was so very ill, English violets from my grandmother’s garden, lilacs we planted when our grandsons were born. Thank you for sharing your story and your memories! (I saw your post on the HomeAcre Hop!)
Thanks so much for sharing your memories! What a sweet garden it must be with all those lilacs, violets and irises!
That is wonderful! We just recently moved to our acreage out in the country and I tried to bring a few things with me. Some made it, some didn’t, so we make new memories with new plants. Thank you for sharing your memory garden at the HomeAcre Hop! Hope to see you back tomorrow morning: http://blackfoxhomestead.com/the-homeacre-hop/
That’s how these plants are too – most are making it, some not! Glad to join you all!
How sweet that you moved your garden! I hope it grows strong and quickly.
Thanks for sharing on Natural Living Monday.
Thank you! Glad to join you all!
I didn’t know you had packed your plants with you. That’s great. Good luck to them.
I just checked on them again today. It really seems that most of them survived! There are a few casualties, but so far, so good!
I loved this post. I’ve moved plants myself – all over the place. Just yesterday I was weeding around the beautiful irises that I got from Clark’s mother’s garden in Medford – at her insistence. She’s been gone for over 13 years now – and the time I spend in the garden with her plants is almost like time spent with her. How I loved her. Thank you, Teri.
Sharon, that is so beautiful that you took those irises and gave them a home. Yes, This is exactly how I feel about these plants – like they instantly connect me with people and places. Thank you for sharing that story.
teri
this made me cry Teri. It always astounds me the awesome power of life, and the parallels between the strength of plant life and our own lives.
One day, several years back, I was doing the normal spring cleaning and noticed in our sidewalk, a tiny hole in the concrete, about the size of a pea and in that hole, coming up, was a cosmos seedling. I stood there in awe of the strength and tenacity of that little seed. Sounds so simple, but to me it’s so powerful.
Blessings.
Oh, thank you Peg. I’m so glad you wrote. What a wonderful thing to see a small flower coming through the crack in the sidewalk. Reminds me of “seed bombs,” where people make balls of seeds in compost or manure or soil, and then toss them into yards, parking lots, empty lots.
We are reading The Secret Garden right now, right as your show is playing!
xo teri
Teri—-oh, wow—-that was magnificent….and I’m typing with goosebumps all over me! LOVE XXXOOO
Thanks Ann. You’re my biggest fan!
Thanks so much for highlighting my post!
Thanks so much for highlighting my post!
Thanks so much for highlighting my post!