Handy and Dandy

Home Depot has long been one of my favorite places to shop. I have spent the occasional day this summer pouring over the flowers in the garden section. I fantasize about turning the front lawn into a semi-bricked and grassless courtyard, generous and hospitable with blooming daisies and bowing lilies, and fringed at the corners with cypress or Japanese maples… and tons of lacey white azalea… and hibiscus… and…. I think you get the point. This time, I found myself in the kitchen and bath section, and then windows and doors. After several deep sighs, I settled on a more practical expense for a renter: a tube of caulk and a set of scrapers.


All I can say about the last person who caulked the tub in the kids’ bathroom is that he must have done this blindly. It was the most botched caulk job I have ever seen. Not a finger-smoothed bead in site. I spent thirty minutes scraping and prying layers of moldy, gross old caulk out of the tile and tub area. (What I really should have bought at Home Depot, in addition to the caulk and scraper, was a haz mat suit.) Right now, the area has been bleached, is drying, and waiting for a fresh coating of anti-mildew caulk. I could smack myself for being the smug caulker, but I cannot wait to finish the job and show my husband, not that he ever doubted my handy capabilities.

Maybe he will be so tickled he’ll give me a Home Depot gift card. There were these really pretty bowls of Shasta Daisies with Spike and flowing variegated ivy… and red deck chairs… and pretty ceramic planters in a myriad of shiny colors….

News from the Gardens

Watching the wildlife around here is a bit like watching neighbors in Rear Window, or Melrose Place. This week, we have had dramatic developments.


Herbert has left Frances. Now the little mourning dove pecks alone through the front yard. I suspect that Herbert may have run off with Chuck the squirrel… apparently, they may have had that type of relationship. What a shock this must be to Frances!

All kinds of new relationships have formed in the backyard, including one between a pair of cardinals. The female peeps and tweets ceaselessly as she jets from bush to ground and back again, just behind her male counterpart. He never says a thing. I wonder if he has read The Diaries of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain because he just ignores her and continues on his way. In fact, I think I have even seen him roll his eyes.

Two robins take a much more active route in the backyard. They swirl and dip together following one another from various perches in trees, on the deck, over by the fence, and so forth. They seem to get along quite swimmingly, in fact. They are the contented lovers of Malvern Gardens.

The squirrels are hysterical. Take the 3 stooges and multiply by two, because they often run in packs that size, and their comedy is just as large. This week I had one in the plum tree, his pooching white belly toward me as he hurled unripe plums to the ground just for sport, while his friends swung (literally like circus acrobat teams) from branch to branch of adjacent trees. A few days ago, in the yard of a neighbor, one squirrel had been playing with a stick and tried to plant it upright in the ground. After discovering that it was too tall for the hole he dug, he began to chew the stick into two. It was a little thicker than he would have desired for quick results, so he started to roll around with it. In his fervor, he rolled straight out of the yard, over the retaining wall, and hit the sidewalk with a stunned smack. This did not deter him at all. He leapt back up into the yard, carried the stick with him, and worked it over for good measure, then gave it to a friend who then tried the same. He even sat there and supervised! Soon the two squirrels were practically cartwheeling about the grass with the stick. Eventually, the charm of the game wore off and the two squirrels, along with about four other friends that had been pillaging the garden beds, scampered up trees.

Chipmunks are as plentiful as ever. One busied himself with a fallen, ripe plum this very morning. He seemed to understand it was too big to cart away, so he nibbled thoughtfully until he was full, and then skipped to the back of the garden. The chipmunks are the industrious counterparts to all the tomfoolery that takes place. I see them scout, gather, stop, plan, and dig. They never seem to hang out with friends, yet they are everywhere. They ignore the activity of the others unless it is to stop and chirp a warning that I am on the deck. I think the chipmunks have formed a Neighborhood Watch committee.

And we have a new member, a baby rabbit who has made two appearances this week. She did not stir at all when I came across her this morning, but instead ignored me and scarfed down a delicious yellow leaf from her shaded refuge under the fig tree. Surely, she has been approached by the Malvern Rabbit Association for a prospective membership and protection from the local hawk population.

I walked through the garden today and made a note of the burrows and tunnels the quadrupeds have created. I will leave them alone. I don’t need a four-star yard. I prefer that the critters live here and entertain me daily with their antics. I am no longer bothered that the animals raid my fruit trees and leave me nothing. Instead I am amused when I neighbor tells me she has found chewed up plums on her porch, yet she has no plum trees at all. I was thinking about investing in a bird feeder or two, or maybe even a bird bath to enhance the courtyard that the little animals seem to enjoy so much. It would at least give them a new excuse to gather and socialize… maybe even discuss that scandalous Herbert and Chuck.

Gardening from Within

A friend and I had a long talk this year about weeds in our gardens—metaphoric weeds that bring complicated, emotional messes to what could otherwise be a productive, fruitful life. I seem to have taken a year’s frustration with my worst “weed” and have channeled that energy into the yard. The front of the house is tidy, clipped, and visually organized. Dead growth has been pruned to make room for new green. There are a few spots of color in annuals on the porch and at the edges of the house. While I have not done what I would really like to do, what I have right now is good—a modified plan, which is workable, looks nice, and has potential. If you were to drive by our home, you would think, “Someone cares.” And we do. We love it here very much. I feel my own roots settling into place here as I pull mint from the garden and check the plum tree for imminent fruit-bearing. I tug weeds from flower beds and remove vines from the shrubs. Making some of the changes was scary at first—just ask the holly bushes, who are now filling out again after a major cutting two weeks ago. I hope they speak encouragingly to the gardenias.


You know, you can’t always reason with a gardenia. It’s why I wield a saw.

Please forgive me, but this one beautiful gardenia which towered over the front porch has been cut into compliance and it now matches in height its partner—a supposed twin gardenia-- on the other side of the porch. This year’s snow seriously weakened all my bushes, and I am hoping a good trimming helps recoups a loss in strength. The aforementioned twin does not bloom as profusely nor does it do so at the same time. Now, they can sit together, the sorry mates they are, and grieve their new reduction in height together. What the bushes don’t know is that I need to be able to sit on my porch and see kids play in the yard, as well as not get mugged because some criminal has hidden behind a giant bush. In the meantime, I will ply the plants with fertilizer and prayers.

This summer, the backyard will see a coming to Jesus as well. My husband and I earmarked certain bushes and trees for trimming or removal. We fantasized about building a garage should we ever buy this place. I mused about the possibility of moving trumpet vine to the fence and my husband suggested tomatoes in the back of the yard. In the meantime, I have horribly abused a hedge by the deck. My secret hope is that I killed it and can replace it with a nicer looking bush, maybe even, more gardenias. If it grows back, the bush at least will be humbled and more containable. My husband looked at the poor stubs left sticking out of the ground and said, “Don’t ever let me get you angry.”

Yesterday, I extricated our power cable from a crazed, wandering series of grape vines and one smothered plum tree. It required a certain deliberate unbraiding, clipping, de-puzzling, and gentle pulling, all of which I had to do without coming so near the cable that I might slip off the ladder or worse, hit the cable with my metal clippers on the way down. When I was done, I felt relief that the task was accomplished, and I could see better what needed to be addressed in that area of the yard. I spent an hour doing in the yard what I had spent the last year of my life doing within a court of law for my children.

Now, I can see the fruits of my labors, the blossoms that will return next season, and the potential for growth.

Happy gardening, everyone, both in and out of your yards.

Bearing Fruit

The backyard is laden with fruit and herbs. My neighbor, a rather eccentric bloke in his sixties, had been gardening just two houses over. He pulled cherries from the tree, ate them straight from the branches, and spit seeds thoughtfully onto the waiting earth. In his slow, soft drawl, he told me to go get myself a good duck breast and make a cherry sauce for it. He meandered through the garden and showed me peaches that should have been sprayed in winter to prevent infestation. He talked about how to prune the fig tree. His hands, crusted and dusted throughout with black loam, proffered samples of the growing fruit. He chastised me a bit for not taking more advantage of what was growing and asked if he could return to pick our fruit—more telling than asking, really. As he squinted into the sun, he adjusted the brim of his hat and warned that birds would soon discover the ripe cherries and then the plums that grew nearby.


I had been pruning trees out of practicality and desperation. Tired of ducking heavy branches on my way to take out the garbage, I had removed branches, dead and live alike, fruitful and barren, and heaved the pile into the alley. My neighbor pawed through the remnants for more cherries, told me he would help himself to this, too, thank you very much. He tipped his hat, and ambled, in his time-be-damned manner, back down toward his home.

I retreated to the shelter of the fruit trees. As I stretched up into the branches for another taste of early summer, I suddenly felt gloriously happy to be exactly where I was. Such a wonderful city, so rich in history, and my home, an oasis in the middle of it all. The fruit trees are just the cherry on top. They are a reminder of all the things in my life that are blossoming and bearing goodness.