Gone But Not Forgotten

I bought my first home when I was 25, with all kinds of gumption and a mite bit of naivete. There wasn’t much on the land except for the house when we moved in.  What I did like about moving to a lake was that we could keep our boat in the front yard and have a dog.  Young people have funny priorities sometimes, don’t you think?  It didn’t seem to matter that we were almost an hour’s drive to work.  If you’re a homeowner, you know the projects are never-ending.  These are the things you can’t put a price on when you sell your home.  All the years of lovingly tending your home and garden, then leaving it to someone new. It’s a little bittersweet.

A garden is the pride of many homeowners. It’s where you take family pictures, invite friends to visit, play with the dog, really life comes and go’s through the garden. I wonder if the new owners will be so diligent?  Do they have a green thumb?  Will they stake the Peonies as their giant blooms start to nod with heaviness?  What about the Poppy’s and Delphinium?  They certainly need some help to stand up tall. I hope they love my favorites like the Bleeding Heart, Lady’s Mantle and white Lilacs as much I as did.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could pack it all up like the dishes and just take it with you?  I was truly sad about leaving the rose-bush we transplanted from my mother-in-law’s garden when she moved to a nursing home.  Fran just loved to see it in my garden, growing happily and bigger every year.

Seems perhaps a garden never really belongs to you, it’s just temporarily in your care. I knew one day we would leave the lake and leave the garden. But while it may be gone, it’s not forgotten.

Buddy in the Garden (1995 – 2010)