How Does Your Garden Grow?

My little perennial garden.  (I think we need a new bench.)
Leafy canna plants courtesy of my gardener brother-in-law Mike.

About twenty-five years ago, Melissa, a friend I had when we lived in Ohio, taught me how to play in the dirt.  While residing in any of our previous homes I had never planted anything; I never knew how.  All summer long, Melissa was outdoors from dawn to dusk working in her lush suburban Cleveland garden while her young children played nearby.  She had a green thumb and didn’t mind sharing her expertise with her pasty next-door neighbor, freshly relocated from Alaska – me.  Once, we transplanted a tree that we dug up from a nearby wooded area into my treeless yard.  That root ball was damn heavy as the two of us struggled to push the rickety wheelbarrow over the rough terrain of the woods.  We have not heard from each other in over two decades (a sad thing, but that’s what happens sometimes… people move away and move on), but with every new bloom in my current garden, I think of my old friend and smile.