On Our Porch

We’ve had days and days – maybe ten or more – of beautiful weather.  I promised myself that I would get outside to work in the garden every non-rainy day to ‘winterize’ the flower beds.   Translation: pull, hack, dig, clip, yank away the vestiges of summer’s beauty.  A cart-load a day, I told myself.

Except for the days we’ve been in Portland, I’ve managed to do just that.  It takes me about two hours to fill the cart.  Nyel kindly dumps it onto the burn pile for me; I can’t manage that part anymore.  Sometimes I think I can’t manage any of it anymore, and then I think of my friend Kaye Mulvey who kept working in her garden well into her eighties.  She’s my gardening role model and I figure I have a few years left.

Spots of Fall Color

As I work out there I think of all the people I know who have worked in this garden – my grandmother and my Uncle Willard  beginning back in the 1920s.  My Aunt Mona in the ‘40s.  My father during the ‘70s and ‘80s.  Nyel and me during the ‘90s and the aughts.

Full Cart

And then there are all the non-relatives – mostly folks who were hired to keep things looking wonderful or to help with the ‘heavy stuff.’  I think Chris Freshley (now a father of grown daughters) was still in high school when he mowed lawns for my dad.  Carlos and Sharon Montoya-Welsh took their turn, too.  And then there was Hank Batten who worked here for years, finally as my dad aged, doing most all the yard work himself.

For the past twelve years, Nyel and I have mostly limped along by ourselves.  While Hank was still on the Peninsula, he would help occasionally with pruning.  And one year Vivian Wattum and her sister did some weeding for us.  A few years back we hired Fred and Alicia and, later, Bobby – all of whom mostly worked for Bradley across the street.

Progress!

And, a year and a half ago Mary Fluaitt cleaned us up in preparation for our September 2012 Anniversary Bash. (It was two weeks later that she was given six months to live but, so far, she has beaten the odds and is gardening in Eastern Washington!)

There are others, I’m sure, who escape my memory just now.  I think of them all as “The Garden Gang” and can almost see them kneeling and bending alongside me as I work. Don’t I wish!!  Next spring I’ll be glad I put in the effort, I tell them, but I sure wish you were all here right now to help!