And the Tides Hath Turned

it all started with one little craigslist ad.

you think you know where this is going.

the bulger family has never had a real yard. the new house has not only a real yard, but a real large yard. the owners of the house have done a good job setting up a pleasant landscaping base. but this house has so much potential and i really want to make it shine.

that costs money, something we rarely seem to have lying around.

and then i'm reminded of "the community garden". people share plants with each other. spring comes around, the perennials of last year have doubled in quantity. in the interest of curb appeal, homeowners dig up plants that don't quite fit into the grand-scaping they've created over the years.

and instead of throwing away precious living things, they share them. they offer them to neighbors with sparse foliage, to the young new couple who just bought a home for the first time, to the empty nesters who suddenly have time to fill, to the avid gardener a few houses down who is always looking for a new addition. they trade roots for muffins and bulbs for a younger back to mow their lawn once or twice.

suddenly a neighborhood becomes a beautiful, harmonious collaboration between people who were once just neighbors, but are now friends.

about 2 weeks ago i posted an ad on craigslist asking people to generously donate their overgrown perennials to my humble collection of non-food plants. 

by humble, i mean non-existent.

our neighborhood has never really struck me as friendly. most of this area is rented, not owned, so i'm not even sure the current tenants have any authority to offer me clippings of their plants. there also seem to be a lot of ground coverings and flora that require next to no care, and are thus not very attractive.

i got one response. 1. from the hundreds of people on craigslist, only one person was willing to exchange homemade bread for plants.

if you know me, you know this was a mistake made by the craigslisters. i make stellar bread.

the email that was sent listed a pretty vast variety of growth. the emailer also told me about growing up in kentucky and having "friendship gardens", that she didn't understand why people thought they had to buy gardens at lowes.

it was meant to be.

i made a fresh loaf of rosemary garlic parmesan bread, braided and covered in an egg wash, cooked to a perfect golden brown.

i showed up, pots in hand, extra bag of soil, ready to work.

her husband dug everything up for me. they handed me extra pots of plants. "take them! what else would you like?"

i left their home in serious debt to them. white and purple irises, wandering jew, perennial begonia, october daisies (swamp sunflowers), amaryllis, white and yellow mums, ferns, an aloe plant, shamrock plant, violets, jasmine, a grape vine, five (count them, FIVE, 5, V) maple tree saplings ranging from 2-5' tall, hydrangeas, elephant ear, some plant that we haven't yet identified (no blossoms yet, but we'll get there), seeds for hostas, tiger lilies, rose of sharon, zinnias and pepper plants. i'm sure there are a handful of other things i have forgotten.

all well established plants. i came home, repotted, pruned and watered. all of my plants have to live on our back porch right now because we're trying to give the ground covering on our rental home's lawn a chance to grow back in. 

this was my view the next morning

there are more plants in the greenhouse as well, mind you.

after all of the stress and worry the last few days have brought us, this gracious gift from total strangers caused an abrupt shift in the emotional climate of my life.

and do you know what happened the next morning?

e's orders came in. the very thing we've been waiting on that would make the majority of the stress disappear. something we'd been told might not come before the move. something that we desperately needed. 

and jp started walking in his cast. and giggling at himself with excitement.

sometimes the current is too strong for you to change direction on your own. sometimes it takes intervention when you don't have the strength to right your own path.

thank you jon and sharon for being my intervention this weekend. and for the reminder i will have when i look out at my beautiful friendship garden in all the years to come.