I'm Scared 'A You

The photos we took of our home when we first bought it have been shuffled deeply for a long time, escaping the inevitable scornful appraisal I'd have given them. Once a very public place in its tenure as a private bar, and one would think fairly well tended, it was derelect when I found it, including the modest garden which was quite overgrown, diseased, and choked with poison ivy.

Not one to be easily dissuaded, and certainly not from the vision of the completed project that had been growing in my imagination, I spent many of those early days outside, kids toddling around nearby, ripping out that ivy, cutting down shrubs, moving spidery azaleas, and amending soil everywhere. I discovered an entire half of the garden lurking behind the initial wall of closely planted, spider-mite infested hemlocks. Down they came, revealing a crumbling edge to the garden, railroad ties decomposed and about two feet of precious space layed waste to erosion.

New project: retaining wall. After those hemlocks were cut down, I spent the better part of two weeks with an axe, shovel, and pickaxe at my side as I ripped their solid stumps from the soil. The neighbors across the street would watch from their porch, beers in hand, easy conversation steady. They'd moved in just a month after we did, so were new to the area too. In her mid fifties, Martha told me that in her younger days, yard work was a way of life and she missed her garden, had fun watching me at mine. Her son, a huge, dark headed guy with a booming voice in his mid thirties, would watch too, often yelling out "I'm scared 'a you!" because of the way I'd throw myself into my daunting tasks. It always made me smile, proud and cocky in my achievements.

The garden is rather pretty now, ten years later. Broad, curving lines of bricks show off the perennial bed borders, a few of those original azaleas filled out, and grass covers where the kids enjoyed muddy escapades.

Martha died several years ago, falling victim to a swift intestinal cancer. I created a painted chair in her honor with a stylized lilly of the valley on its seat. Her son moved back in a couple of years later, to keep his dad company, and I hear his booming voice daily, most often in conversation over his cell phone. Though I couldn't picture myself doing quite such hard work again, bad back and all that, it's a good feeling knowing that I once did, easily and with pleasure, and accolades.

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