Dear MAGA: 20190122 Open Thread

If you build it, they will come.
I had a girlfriend who did the ‘fairy treatment’ to one of our pecan trees in the backyard. What she did was similar but amateur to this photo. I thought it was corny at the time but wow, the kids loved it.
My neighbor was a trust fund baby. His wife was an over-educated but eccentric psychologist who decided to leave the profession and opened an EXCEPTIONAL garden center. I love gardening. When we bought the house, my girlfriends talked me into taking a Master Gardening class via our extension service. I couldn’t believe how much I learned.
Well, the neighbors went through a divorce. I was looking out my kitchen window one day and saw the husband, with trucks, hauling debris and slinging black plastic pots. He looked exhausted and I banged on the kitchen window to offer him a cup of coffee and leftover pancakes. He explained that he was clearing out her greenhouses and throwing all the “dead pots away”.
Huh?
“Everything is dead”, he said.
No, it was dormant, not dead. It was February and he didn’t know the difference. I asked him if I could have the dead stuff. He said, “If you haul it, hell yes”.
It was as though I won the garden lottery!
For several days, the minivan and I were busy. I had plants on the dashboard, plants in my lap, stuffed to the rafters. HUNDRED of rare hostas, perennials by the zillions, over a hundred azaleas, over 75 hydrangeas in over a dozen types, scads of Iris, daylilies, Japanese magnolias, 72 lavender crepe myrtles, and foundation plants. My husband thought I lost my mind, “Dead stuff”, he said.
My girlfriends found out what I was doing and I had to share.
With each trip, the plants took over a LARGER section of our yard and I had to figure out what to do with my treasure. I took an inventory and cooked up an idea.
Our house has an old brick-walled garden and one would think that’s where the property ends but it doesn’t.
On the other side of the brick, I had a chicken coop that had not been used by a hen in 30 years. I converted half into a garden shed and half into a playhouse for my toddler son. The chickens went out the back to level ground and then swept down a little hill to a grove of triple 150yr old pecan trees that offered high-dappled shade. The space was secluded, private, quiet, and perfect.
It was time to make the chicken coop garden. I could see it in my mind.
By March, the weather warmed and I dug and cleared, dug and cleared. Our house was abandoned for 23 years so the clearing was a serious effort. In April, my mom committed suicide. I dug and cleared some more and it was perfect therapy. It became mom’s garden, I told myself. I sold my grandmother’s home the same month and rescued ferns from her grandmother. Now, it was a mom’s and great-grandma’s garden. My best girlfriend showed up one day with a peony in her hands, holding it like it was a Faberge Egg. She explained it was from her family’s house in Ohio and if I didn’t mind, she would like to contribute it to the mom’s garden.
I loved the idea.
My 2yr old son dug and I planted, or I dug and he planted. We kept going.
Oddy, at least a dozen girlfriends showed up to contribute plants from their moms or grandmothers and picked out a spot for their plants. Generous and kind. Quite often, I would finish breakfast and open the backdoor to find a Wal-Mart sack with a plants and instructions on what it was – from total strangers, all from sisters, mothers, aunts, and every plant came with a story. Amazing generosity.
We worked through a ‘whole lotta’ motherhood angst that spring.
Eventually, we had about a 150′ x 350′ space, twisting around old trees, that was rough and newly planted but it became magical and we all owned it. At the other end, a curving row of odd-space lavender crepe myrtles would seal off the garden from the lawn. My grandmother’s favorite color was lavender and it was perfect with her soft grey hair. Beyond the garden was a flat plot of about 5 acres surrounded by hardwoods and brush, all in the midst of the city, but completely hidden. It was like a park. No one could see it from the road and few knew it was there.
But it kept growing and the contributions came from all kinds of places.
The following Christmas, I did a huge southern wedding with a theme of “garden in winter’ that required thousands of dollars of fountains and statuary. My fee was keeping all the props and we added them to the garden.
The older kids found a treehouse on abandoned land and talked the dads into moving it to our garden. It was an adventure but it worked and we retrofitted it and put it on stilts. The kids had a clubhouse and they were thrilled.
My girlfriend at the local Wal-Mart garden center was throwing away 13 wrought iron tables because the bolts to attach the legs were broken. I made a deal and bought them for $10/each. Husband welded new bolts. Now, we had tables and chairs throughout the garden.
The men built a huge fireplace and a bada$$ grill. The guys decided they needed a frig in the chicken coop for beer, so we got more electrical outlets, and thus, fairy lights.
A guy showed up in my driveway with a truckbed full of handmade birdhouses. Someone told him I might buy some. We made a deal for the whole truckbed and unloaded them to the side porch. Within 15 minutes, a girlfriend whizzed by who was desperate for an idea for a painting class she was teaching. We loaded up the birdhouses and I ended up with SPECTACULAR birdhouses for the garden.
One of our corporate guests ordered 12K tulip bulbs for the home office and someone changed their mind. He sent the bulbs to me…. in honor of his beloved Polish grandmother.
At one point, between my girlfriends, we had 56 children. When I started the stone company, I had granite pavers engraved with kids names and their favorite sayings shipped from overseas. Over the years, that spot became our July 4th picnic place, kids shot fireworks from their treehouse, our BBQ spot, our spot for Easter Egg hunts, birthday parties, bonfires for homecoming games, Thanksgiving football games, and the rare snowball fights. The kids made football fields, go-cart tracks, soccer fields, baseball diamonds, and one summer, an incredible 300′ long slip and slide. We had dozens of weddings and engagements occur in that simple little spot.
Better yet, the backyard became a ‘field trip’ for the kids at the school next door. We brought in wildlife experts with eagles, hawks, baby bears, experts in tree identification, and for plant cell science, we would ‘borrow’ microscopes from the local college and have an outdoor lab. The high school used it for writing classes and the elementary school for art classes. If the weather was good, it worked. I don’t recall how we paid for all the burgers and hotdogs but we managed. About 8yrs ago, we got a new school administration. No more field trips. Bummer. THIS is the problem with our school systems, no parents allowed! I can’t wait until President Trump turns his attention to our schools.
Most of the kids are grown and gone, busy with their careers. When they return though, they look at the backyard wistfully. We’re never too old to play and now that they are older, they appreciate childhood in different ways.
Out of all that pain, dead bushes, divorce, and nastiness, came something exceptional. We didn’t need a vacation, we had the best spot in the world. A blessing from a fairy? Nah, it’s it’s the goodness in people. Love and friendship always wins. We need more of it.