It’s a happy kind of tired
After working in your yard,
Trimming things and sprucing up,
You forget you’re working hard,
But when you stop you find out,
You have muscles you forgot,
Will we do it again tomorrow?
I’m thinking maybe not!
While enjoying a weekend afternoon
planting some flowers in hanging baskets, I began to take note of the various
bushes we have planted over the years. There are Rose of Sharon I
transplanted from my parents’ yard when we moved into our house, some
Forsythia, Azalea, Lilac, and Rhododendron. There is also a Wisteria.
I bought the Wisteria the summer after my
mother passed away. She had one in the side yard that had the most beautiful
clusters of light purple flowers on it. It was also an aggressive grower and
took over the area where it was planted. Mine is growing on a trellis
against the deck and I keep it trimmed so that it’s a bit more like an out of
control small leafy tree, but it gives us a bit of privacy when on the deck and
some shade in the yard. If we have too many days in a row of rain and hot
temperatures it takes over the deck and I fill a large yard bag with clippings
when trimming it back to its useful form. We had to tie the trellis it
grows on to the deck rail because when the wind blows too strongly from the
North it falls over from being top heavy, and recently my husband noticed that
its weight is pulling the deck rail apart.
I’m not sure what we’re going to do about that! We have needed to right it
several times over the years. We cut it
back severely in the Fall so the weight of ice and snow won’t further damage
anything. It has never had flowers, as I didn’t realize when I purchased it that
it can take 20 years to mature before blooming. Oh well, I have a few more years
to wait, and at least it’s useful in the meantime.
We recently drove past the house where I
grew up, and I noticed the Wisteria is gone, but mostly the yard and house look
the same. I regret that I forgot to look and see if the red rose that
grew under my parents’ bedroom window is still there. I’ll have to drive by the
house the next time I’m in my hometown. It’s funny the things you remember when
you go back to the neighborhood where you grew up. There is a house at the
other end of the block on the corner that always had and still has a wooden
stockade type fence around the back yard. Every time I walked past that house,
there was a large dog that barked and growled as I walked past, the whole
length of the fence. It terrified me every time, but that’s the side of the
street that had a sidewalk so I had to walk there. I was always afraid
the dog would somehow escape and attack me. I don’t know what type of dog
it was, and don’t remember the name of the family who lived there; I just
remember the terrified feeling it gave me to walk along that fence. As we cruised slowly down the street I
mentally noted who lived in the houses—my oldest brother’s friend Richie in
that one, my cousins in another, my mother’s friend in the one with the big
porch, and the cranky old man who confiscated our kickball in the house next
door to us. Across the street lived the
family who had a paving business and then sold the house to younger relatives
who were on the rescue squad which was diagonally across the street from us and
had 2 little girls. The rescue squad
building was a polling place during elections, and in later years was the site
for a nutritional lunch program for seniors.
I still remember the sound the tires on the ambulance made on the
crushed stone driveway when they were heading out on a call, but I don’t
remember hearing the siren.
It is funny the things that we remember,
and the things that jog our memory. For
me it was the Wisteria that took me on a trip down memory lane; tomorrow it
could be something as mundane as a cup of water. You just never know.
