It is true what they say~a little bit of dirt never hurt anyone :)

I know it will probably sound weird coming from a person soon to be facing her 57th birthday "square in the eyes" but ok, so here goes~ yesterday was a great day to play in the dirt!  As a matter of fact, for the first time in FOREVER, I spent the entire afternoon outdoors doing just that.  I was pretty dang  tired and was covered from head to toe in some of the richest garden soil on the block but the "price" was worth it in regards to the amount of fun I had.  LeRoy Willis, my good friend, you'd have been proud of me~I refused to act like a grown up!

I've been working, little by little, on Item #8 of the Miller Bucket List, "to redo my backyard so that it will be more "user friendly" to an old person".  It's definitely one of those bucket list items that will take time, and actually a WHOLE lot of it.  This weekend's part of the project has been to plant perennials along the north fence of the yard and because our local Westlake Hardware Store ran a special on 5" chrysanthemums, I decided they would be the perennial that I would choose.  It took some doing but I finally managed to get all 21 of them into the ground in a little under 2 hours worth of time.  A little cedar mulch added around them to hold in the moisture and now all I have to do is wait and see what happens by next April or so.  For now, they look pretty~an amazing example of the Creator's colour palette.  Shown below~

You know a person has a lot of time to think as they play around in the dirt and yesterday I was no exception.  I thought about how my mom would be so surprised to see the way the backyard turned out since I came here and I think she probably would have approved of how I did things.  I remembered the time when she fell in the garden and her knee actually landed on some broken glass in the soil.  The cut she received was her "ticket" to the doctor's office for stitches that day.  She still had the scars to prove it in the years that later came and it wasn't long after that, that we kids insisted she carry her little portable phone with her outdoors.  Mom was stubborn but finally gave in because she knew she'd be in big trouble if she fell while in the backyard and no one would be there to find her.  Now my OWN children are asking me why I don't carry my cell phone with me outdoors in case the same thing should happen to me.  I keep telling them that I'm too irresponsible to carry my only phone around with me outdoors and it'd be just my "Miller's luck" to lose it in the garden area.  But actually the TRUTH is, I go outdoors to be away from that thing and the peace and quiet I receive at this point in time is worth the chance I might need to call for help.  That's the story, not changing it!

You know, I kind of felt a lot like her today.  My knees have their share of arthritis and I did enough moaning and groaning as I got up and down on the ground to last for a couple of lifetimes.  
I had taken her old yardstick outside in order to measure the distance between the mum plants and it startled me to realize that as I walked back in to the house, I used that stupid yardstick as if it were a walking stick, just like Mom used to!  It's a weird feeling to turn into your own mother!  Not even sure how that one happened....things like that just creep in on you I suppose.

With last weekend's planting of 125 tulip and jonquil bulbs, 3 dozen lilies and today's mums, I've made some great progress towards getting things in the ground.  Tomorrow it's the iris bed's turn to be moved to a new spot so I believe it is safe to say that a whole lot more moaning and groaning is in the works. But I'm pretty sure that unless the really weird happens, I won't die back there of being overworked.  It will just seem like it.  I'm working hard to get planted everything that needs to be in the next two weeks.  Monday of this coming week, I head to the doctor's office in Wichita to see if "old lefty" is going to need some more surgery.  If so, it will happen soon with the promise of another long-arm cast for 8 weeks and I can't even imagine what fun it would NOT be to have to plant stuff with only one hand.  :)  It's definitely a "making hay while the sun is shining" kind of moment but I'm sure I will get it done.  

In the days ahead, I will finish up plans for what needs to be done before the first hard freeze of the season arrives.  As winter sets in, I will delight in pouring over the pages of the seed catalogues that arrive each day.  I'll dream about what to plant and where to plant it.  The cold days of winter can be awfully long ones but they are made much more tolerable with an R. H. Shumway seed catalogue in your hands.  Perhaps you "gardeners" that are reading this feel much the same way. WINTER~we just get through it that way.

I remembered yesterday about a lady I met several years back as I was walking one Saturday afternoon.  She was in my neighbourhood and I had the chance to see her working in her backyard garden many times.  We always smiled, waved and said "hello" to one another but never more than than.  For some reason that Saturday afternoon, I decided to stop and introduce myself to her.  

Her name was Mary and I supposed her to be my own mom's age.  I told her how  much I admired the beauty of her back yard and the hard work that she had put into it.  She smiled at me as she invited me to come in through the gate and see the many different kinds of plants that she was growing.  There were beautiful tea roses, yellows~reds~whites.  The north side of the fence was lined with about a gazillion types of lilies, so many that it would soon be time to divide them up.  Shasta daisies were in colourful little clumps of white, here and there and so very many other plants that I have now forgotten.  It was a gardener's "paradise".

I remember her looking at me and all of a sudden the smile on her face disappeared only to be replaced by an extreme look of sadness.  It was then that Mary told me the real reason why her garden looked so beautiful and what she told me has stayed with me to this very day.  It seemed as though a couple of years before this "chance" meeting with her that Saturday, that Mary's only son, whom she named Robert, took his own life.  He had suffered greatly from depression and for what ever reason, had decided that it would be better for all concerned if he were gone.  Mary told me that it had happened in the winter time shortly after Christmas and that she was devastated and absolutely didn't know if she would be able to go on without him.  There were many times when she was not sure.

One day, in the weeks following, she came up with idea of "Robert's Garden" as a way to  work through the sadness of losing her son.  In the remaining weeks of winter that followed his death, she started "drawing out" the way she wanted her back yard to look.  Mary thought about flowers and plants whose very names would be meaningful in remembering the man who was once the tiny baby in her arms.  That's what the Peace Rose had been planted for and in the corner by the back, the beautiful "Live forever".  

I stayed way longer that day than I had ever intended to.  We gave each other a hug and said "good bye".  In the years that followed, she and her husband moved away and sadly "Robert's Garden" kind of went to pieces as well.  Mary's story, at least to me, is a credible testament to the fact that sometimes the greatest cure for things like depression and loneliness cannot be poured from a bottle or shared in conversation with a therapist. As for me, I believe that the  greatest and most lasting cure can be found in the earth of the backyard and underneath our "once clean" fingernails.  

Well, it's nigh onto 6:30 in the morning and as usual, I'm trading "daylight for dark" again.  Wait a minute, looking out the window here.  Oops it's STILL dark~well, ok time for a cup of coffee and THEN it's outside.  Have a great day ALL of you dear friends...It's Sunday, September 16th, 2012 and I'm positive, beyond the shadow of  doubt that we can know it's a great day to be alive in.

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If you are looking for an interesting flower to add to your garden area next spring, I'd like to suggest one of my favourites to grow.  It is called "amaranthus", also known as "Love Lies Bleeding".  I plant it in my garden each year to remember those I have loved who have gone on before me.  The beautiful "dreadlocks" are a brilliant deep red colour and the plant's stalk seems to stand up to some pretty wicked Kansas south winds without breaking.  You might give it  a try and see if you like it too!