My Garden

Check out these pictures! A couple of weeks ago I was wondering what I'd do with 30 yards of topsoil and today, I have a beautiful garden. I bought 8 perennials at a "2 for one sale" at a local garden centre but all of the rest come from the gardens of my sisters and from a friend. When I look at this garden, I am so grateful for the people in my life who are so willing to share and to work at helping me out. This garden is more beautiful to me because it represents the best in people. We've heard and read so much about the worst in people these last 10 days and it's good to be reminded of what is good about people.

Yvonne spent an entire day with me taking the plants out of Michele's garden and then replanting them in mine; Michele was willing to give me whatever I wanted from her garden.
When I visited Gwen, a friend whom I've only just known for a year or 2, I could see from her yard that she is a gardener. We talked about gardens and I told her about my (at that point) empty flower bed. A few days later she came to me with some of the beauty of her garden in a large garbage bag which I promptly plunked into the ground.

I feel so blessed.

I am not a gardener. For the life of me I can't remember the names of the flowers. My sisters on the other hand can recognize a flower just by its leaf. Not only can they recognize the flowers, they know where they'll do best (sun, shade, dry spot, wet spot). Sometimes they can even recognize a plant or flower they've never seen before. I love it when they find one like that and start talking about it. "I've never seen this before. It looks a little like a ________ but the leaf/flower/stem is different. Do you think it might be a __________?" And the conversation continues until they either figure it out or decide to go home and check their flower books.

But alas, I cannot join in those conversations. I hope that some of their knowledge will rub off on me but so far it hasn't. While I do not claim to be a gardener, I love and can appreciate beautiful gardens. I love stopping at gardens when I'm walking. Wes and I visit "The English Garden" at Assiniboine park several times most summers. And I can talk the talk with other gardeners if only to ask them the name of a particular plant and if it is a perennial or annual. I find that if I ask a question, a gardener can go on and on about his or her garden-a conversation that I love and have never found boring.

For my new garden I bought some stakes upon which I will write the names of all the perennials that I have planted. Hopefully, if I see the names every time I walk in the garden something will stick and just maybe, I'll learn them. I hope so. But for now, I'll be content to look at the beauty, and take care of them so that in the spring I will be able to give some of them back.
That's one of the wonderful things about gardens. We receive, and then we can give back. I can't wait to share the beauty of mine. And I can't wait till spring! (sigh)