The Fanciest Garden

From where I’m sitting in the living room I can see Eleanor as she sits at the table, crouched over her breakfast. Her shoulders hunched forward, hiding most of her neck. I can see myself in her glass of apple juice, my reflection just as twisted as her own posture.

I do not fear aging, nor death, for I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. What I do fear though, is my own body; it’s never done anything I wanted it to- never taken the form I work so hard at to get, never developed even the slightest shape of muscle. My skin barely tans anymore, allowing my pale Irish tones to overpower my darker Italian ones. My hair has never once been easily tamed; it’s thick, and, like every other person on either side of my family, I’ll never be bald, but it’s wavy and sometimes wiry, especially in the summer humidity. If this is my body now, what will it be like when I’m Eleanor’s age?

I eat the right foods, take the right vitamins and do the right exercises, I try to keep as healthy as possible, and after living with Eleanor all this time, watching her body prevent her from doing the things she wants, I can only wonder if all the upkeep I’m doing is futile. Will it prevent my body from hunching over? Keep my knee joints strong? Allow me to walk faster than a snails pace? I’ve seen people older than Eleanor in better shape, but I’ve never asked them how they lived their lives. Eleanor was very active and always busy in her younger years. Aside from being raised on a farm back in Canada, she maintained an envious garden around her small house. It’s interesting that Eleanor’s pride in her garden is based on the flowers and plants that she keeps out of her garden, while other people admire it for what she lets in.

The upkeep of the garden, as well as the house, is not unlike the upkeep of our own bodies. We get cracks in our foundations, a leak here and there, even unwanted weeds grow in among our more valued stems. No matter how hard we try to maintain these things, nature will always have its way.

Mel and I divide our household responsibilities in respectable ways and doing the upkeep is unrivaled experience in being a homeowner. As we begin the process of preparing both Eleanor and the house for her departure to a nursing home, we start to see the wear and tear she’s tried to hide from everyone else, a mirror to her own mental and physical condition.

Eleanor, like her house, has a leaky pipe. While we replaced the house’s pipe, we haven’t been able to replace hers. She wakes in the middle of the night to pee five or six times in the “potty chair” by her bed, and she pees out far more liquid than she takes in. Despite our best efforts to keep her hydrated, she teeters on the borderline of drying out. She’ll only drink water in parallel with her mood, a mood that does not parallel weather. Rather than an abundance of water during her miserable moods, like dark, grey rainclouds, she detests it, refusing any liquid we offer her. Only when her sun is out are we able to give her the hydration she needs, and as of late, the sun hasn’t been shining very much.

The garden doesn’t do much, other than attract attention and admiring looks from passers-by. Its orange Tiger Lilies are the most noticeable, but their subtle intensity can only be seen when standing right at her much contested property line. The moonflowers sleep during the day and bloom at night, a process Eleanor claimed she once timed at just over three hours. The blues, purples, pinks and yellows are peppered in among the green stems and leaves. And then there are the weeds. Having a vegetable garden of my own, I can successfully identify two or three types of weeds, and anything else that isn’t an herb or vegetable I pull. Eleanor’s garden, on the other hand, is a flower garden, not a vegetable garden, so I am often at a loss of what to pull, though I do water it, some by hand, for an hour every day once the sun goes down.

She once identified a weed to me as Queen Anne’s Lace, a white, flowering weed that looks like a larger version of Baby’s Breath, but also appropriately enough, looks like lace. These weeds have a quiet beauty that can be appreciated, but admittedly, they do look as if they don’t belong in the garden amongst they other flowers, so I pull those as I see them, which is easy as they have white flowers and stand very, very tall. The rest of the weeds however are varying shades of green and because I’m colorblind I can’t differentiate what’s a weed and what is one of the plants that Auntie planted, so Melanie pulls these every Monday morning, the day we have designated for garden upkeep.

Often times Auntie Eleanor will say that her garden is a mess, or a disaster or some other FEMA related tragedy. During our visit to The Good Doctor Gill, Eleanor spent five minutes complaining about the weeds in her garden, saying that no one maintains it. This untrue statement was met with quiet rage by Melanie and she excused herself from the examination room while Auntie was with Doctor Gill. Mel will spend 3 to 4 hours every Monday weeding and trimming the garden under Auntie’s watchful eye as she sits on the porch and when she’s done Auntie will shower her with quick praise on how lovely it looks, even followed by a rare “Thank You” and an even rarer smile. This happens every Monday, and yet, Eleanor tells everyone, including Doctor Gill, that nothing gets done with it. While this brand of criticism goes along with Auntie’s usual attitude of unappreciation, this particular instance really made Mel’s blood boil and rather than argue with her (as we could have argued everything she told Doctor Gill that day [and eventually he saw why]) she left the room.

As we’ve mentioned before, Auntie is convinced that if the garden has weeds, no one will buy the house. Everyone, EVERYONE, she says this to will tell her that it isn’t so and that whomever buys it will probably tear it up for a simpler and easier-maintained lawn. Yet Eleanor rejects this notion because SHE wouldn’t buy a house with an unkempt (despite the fact that it actually isn’t) garden; just another classic example of how Eleanor is incapable of seeing anything from anyone else’s point of view. Most people would target this house as a “starter home” for a young couple, as it couldn’t house anything more than a family of 3 without building up another floor.

I can say, without reservation, that even in it’s initial weed-filled form, her garden is beautiful. The flowers grow wildly and beg to be more of a meadow rather than be contained in a their moat-like beds. It has even inspired me to have a section of my own property dedicated to wildflowers someday. I’m looking forward to being able to just throw various random flower seeds into the fertilized section of soil that I’ll dedicate part of my property to. Last week, there was a breezy, almost perfect summer day, and the gentle wind carried the sweet smell of flowers on it everywhere. I haven’t been exposed to such a strong, natural smell since passing an Orange Grove by the Ocean while visiting my Aunt and Uncle in Tampa, Florida while on a trip back in 2001. 

So we maintain this flower garden as best we can, fighting the weeds each week with the dependability of a celebrity infused sitcom during sweeps week, hoping that one day Eleanor will be able to tell someone that we do “a good job” with it rather than “it’s a mess.” But, as she’s often proven, even if we used hired professionals with more experience performing a certain task than her, she wouldn’t compliment it or consider it a job well done, unless she did it herself- a facet that, since her stroke at least, she has shown that she isn’t able to do well either.