Planting Hope

We spent the weekend at our place in the country, our healing place. My parents came up because my mother wanted to work in our front flower bed, to plant some things to grow in celebration of my completing chemo and being able to "get on with the rest of my life." This bed has been totally unruly and a bit of a thorn in our flesh. There is a stump and some large roots in the middle of the bed. We tried to make it into a flower bed so hubby wouldn't keep running over the roots and bending his lawn mower blades. They pulled weeds from the roots and conditioned the soil and planted these plants.

There is about half of the bed left to be done. Everyone tuckered out before we finished. I did help, a little, with constant admonitions not to over-do it.

In the background of this photo, near the Hurricane gate that opens to nowhere, really, is another large problem area with a dying stump and roots. We will eventually get around to working that bed too. 

I saw this quote on Facebook and liked it. I'm not sure which photo with the quote I like best. I did these on my phone and it is sometimes hard to gauge how large the text needs to be. I think the text could have been a bit smaller on the one below with the tree. 

The tree, by the way, is the one we planted on the first year anniversary of my son's death. It has finally gotten tall enough to where I can stand under it. I was taking pictures and not paying any attention when I walked under it and felt the limbs graze the top of my head. My son sometimes fiddled with my hair as a way of greeting or saying bye and the limb grazing my head made me think of him, and miss him.

I was worried about the tree over this past winter. It was just a stick coming up out of the ground with no leaves on it. But when it decided to "green out" it went all out and I am happy we did not lose the tree. We do need to get some sort of support to straighten it out a bit, it leans too much.

"the planting of the bulbs is the work of hope"

--May Sarton