My Peaceful Place

The memorial garden I planted for my mom has been decimated by gophers.  First they ate the lily bulbs -- all 25 of them-- and then they started eating the dahlia tubers.  Cha-ching!  Not to mention the disappointment of having buds one day and stalks on the ground the next; sheared off at the soil level.  They didn't eat the lilacs or rhubarb -- I planted them in wire cages.

Friday on my way home from work I stopped at the nursery.  My plan was to buy some small cages for future bulbs and tubers.  I was also planning to buy some native perennials in the hopes that they might be more gopher resistant.  After expressing sympathy for my loss (which felt kinda weird to tell you the truth.  They were plants, not loved ones),  the master gardener told me that gophers eat everything.  Everything.  But she did have a gopher repellent that she said works very well.  The gophers hate the smell and move to a new neighborhood.  Or area of the garden anyway.  I picked up a bag of the granules and some plants.

I planted lavender and alyssum by the pelican.  The blue-purple and white will, hopefully, look like the ocean around the base.  I planted all the flowers yesterday evening.  I put a healthy palm-full of granules in each planting hole and then scattered more over the top of the bed.

This morning, they were still standing.  I put in drip lines over to the pelican and then covered everything with composted manure.  I added compost to the main flower bed as well.

Kersey slept under the garden table.  Brett was busy on his tractor moving compost over to the garden for me.  He's getting around really well, and the swelling has greatly diminished, but his range of motion went backwards.  He said working on the tractor was good therapy; it required that he bend the knee beyond 90 degrees to reach the reverse pedal.

When I finished, I sat in my favorite red chair and soaked in the peaceful garden.  Small birds flew to the feeder, flitting between the fence and seeds.  Kersey slept under the table.  A breeze blew through the garden, drying the sweat on my face and neck.  I looked at the pelican and thought of how my mom loved to sit in a garden, with a book.  She would have loved sitting there.

It's hard to believe that last August, when we moved in, the garden looked like this.  It was almost impossible to imagine a peaceful place among all the weeds and brambles.