sometimes you just have to vent your spleen......

Sometimes you just have to vent your spleen......I will explain.

Over the years, those who are familiar with me here over the fence in wrecked gardens know that when I am outraged or moved emotionally by something, I'll most likely post it here. Usually it has to do with horticultural things. I have discovered over the years that most of us gardeners are benevolent creatures of various levels of stewardship towards growing things. We're nurturers and growers and usually optimists, because we plant seeds, and trees. We sit on cold, snowy winter evenings (and days) and pore over catalogs and slobber over the newest tomato or perennial or blooming shrub. We push the envelopes with zones and plant figs and crape myrtles or magnolia's or lust and long for those tulips and hosta's that to some living in the more tropical climates think are just fabrications listening to us up northerly wax happily about (yes, Zhanataya, I speak of you wherever you are in the Southwest now happily growing cacti and other desert things......)

I've anguished over things lost, like my lower neighbor cutting down three incredible Forsythia's to the ground that were over a hundred years old. But I'd captured their magnificence in early spring before his farmer's mindset persuaded him to go out and cut them severely to the ground. They're coming back, but they won't bloom for another two years...........and they'll have the last laugh even when he's gone to his own rest, and hopefully his surviving children will see the beauty of the old roots as they will have thrown healthier shoots that will be loaded with even more bright yellow lanterns and they will never cut it again. I wrote of those shrubs that his wife's family and ancestors had planted well over 100 years ago when they first laid claim to the land and made it theirs and their family and kinfolk. I have great grand daughters of those bushes, and when I leave Fairy Holler, I will take a cutting with me to remind me of something that I hold sacred in it's simplicity and tenacity. It endures when we've all gone back to the soil ourselves. (you always see lilacs and Forsythia's and old fashioned three flowered narcissus growing where old homesteads used to be).

So why do I want to "vent my spleen" again? Well, to put it simply, yet another action against something that I grew to love and respect has now been take away and gotten rid of for whatever reasoning. Miz Mary whom I've spoken of many times in the past ten years on this newsgroup has always had a magnificent old iron and thick slat park bench that she always painted white every Spring. It sat in the special prominent place of honor of her side yard before you got to the old farm house she was raised in. Her grandmother and daddy lived in this house. She has life rights, meaning she can live there as long as she's alive, and as she would have told you quickly, she had no need of it once she was gone..........

Over the eleven years I grew to love and respect Miz Mary, I learned she was the epitome of what you all would know in the phrase of "Southern Lady". She was hospitality and charm, and quite the character. If you drove up the dead end road which was named Niles Road for her daddy, she'd have come out of her cluttered house, maneuvered through the clutter of her piled up front porch that she'd tell you immediately she was enclosing and cleaning off one day, to tell you that once, Niles Road was known far and wide as Mockingbird Lane because of all the mockingbirds. (they're back now). Much to your chagrin, she'd talk your ears off, and if you COULD get a word in edgewise, you soon found yourself hearing her trademark response to your feeble efforts to respond of her "Like I was SAYING........." Her energetic and generous character taught me that Spinsters weren't always the stereotype they were thought to be. She'd quickly put you in your place if you called her a Spinster (and I did, just to get her fire up) and she'd tell you that she had dated many men, thank you very much, and had almost married ....insert names of local men through her lifetime of the 72 years thus far here, and all of them had married and passed on!!

Her observations of people was astounding, her knowledge of incredible trivia was also astounding. Despite her incredible and ever mounting clutter of her porch and home with the trails that kept her from cooking in her own kitchen, she'd whip up awesome things to take to community meetings outside on her summer tables underneath the trees. Always scrumptious and never ceasing to amaze. She'd use me as a co-conspirator to bake her cornbread for her cornbread salad.....and reward me with leftovers, and a dessert of fresh ripe peaches with sour cream and dark brown sugar whipped and lavished on mismatched colorful plates or bowls she'd find at little shoppes she frequented from all around. Bric and brac was everywhere, and when my granddaughters visited, she'd appear with little gifts for each girl (there are four of them) and crayons and books, dolls, silly little things, bottles of bubbles, all manner of little things. For the boys in my family, she'd give little trucks and cars and things that fascinated them. And always there was the open door of balls and toys in her yard, encouraging the children who had their bicycles (one year my grand daughter brought her bike as I have a perfect driveway and road to ride upon safely)to visit and sit and drink lemonade with her and munch cookies and listen to stories about people they hadn't a clue who were......this was Miz Mary. To the 100th power.

That she had this iron park bench with the thick slats underneath the shade of two 75 year old trees that her daddy planted with her mama, and you could sit and visit and just look across the miles to the majesty of English Mountain and the slice of blue that was Douglas Lake. Watch the trees and see hawks or turkey vultures circling overhead. The stretch of "Thunder Road" or as some knew it, old Highway 25-70 below to the south could be seen through the window of trees and you could see vehicles, and despite that there were more and more signs on the pastures beyond to the south that the farmlands were being sold and subdivided, the stars are still visible underneath her sky up here. You might see more lights across the road where you know it lies a mile away at the end of Wine Road, but you know you're in an island of peace and tranquility where deer, coyote, foxes, possoms, raccoon, woodchucks, chipmunks, flying squirrel, gray squirrel, a huge wide assortment of birds from yellow finches, blue cranes, hawks,turkey vultures, gray eagles, Mountain bluebirds or Indigos, hummingbirds, from the tiniest to the largest reside here and around here. It's called a green belt. At least 16 acres that doesn't get taxed the same because it lays fallow.

Well, since Miz Mary experienced her many little heart attacks and then the strokes that wound her up in the nursing home five miles away, her family have been methodically coming up and cleaning out her home. It needed it, but lately, I've been seeing a disturbing practice. Miz Mary will never come home. I grieved this year that she wasn't brought up here on Easter to see her beautiful dogwoods and azalea's and tulips and candytuft and phlox all blooming at the same time. Nor see her little dogwood she'd planted in the gnarled up roots of the 80 year old maple beside the driveway we share that wraps around the back of her house. It bloomed for the first time this year before the hard freeze nipped the blossoms and leaves. And it's a perfectly shaped tree as well.......Her family have not only been throwing away the stuff she accumulated, but doing radical cleaning.

I spoke of coming home a few weeks ago and couldn't figure out what was different, and realized someone had completely cut down her six year old pussy willow tree that she'd had planted a bit too close to the foundation. Over a foot thick, I knew it WAS too close to the foundation but this year, it was glorious and I took cuttings of it before it "disappeared" and they are now all rooted...........I'll pot them soon.

Today I discovered much to my anguish that her beloved park bench was simply gone. And after leaving a message on her brother in law's machine at his house down the road, I had my grieving spell and went about doing aimless stuff for about an hour. I got over it but was still raw about it, and when I told the old man (when I went and picked him up from the truck stop to bring him home for the weekend) about it, and his blowing it off to family doing what they want to, I noticed in the headlights of the van as I circled and prepared to drive backwards down the driveway as I always do.

Something was missing. And it was huge. I stopped once again at the boulder that Miz Mary and I have sat and talked many, many times, that I had bought a reflector to shove into close by so you don't HIT that boulder as you negotiate the curve to come back to my abode, and stopped dead. The brights were on, and as my sentence trailed off I figured it out immediately..........ALL of her beloved (and mine too) pink Acacia trees were GONE. Every one. Cut to the ground. They were woolly twigged pink Acacia's, members of the pink Locust family and had suffered like everything else had with the hard freeze. But underneath the brown and crispy leaves, I had seen new growth of leaves AND buds. But now they were all cut down and even the clump of prickly pears that I'd planted underneath my mailbox that used to sit in the middle of what was then the growing colony of Acacia's. They had colonized the sides working themselves eastwards towards me, and I was actually contemplating removal of the cactus when I realized I'd left a few when Miz Mary had offered to put up three mailboxes for the three of us up on this ridge and hilltop. When she had them put next to the asphalt road for the conveniences of the mail carrier (this is how generous she always was), she asked me to leave a few cacti to colonize around the base of the Acacia. She liked the idea of the thorns of the locust, the huge pink pea like flowers that drove the bees insane with delight, and my prickly pears in yellow blousey blooms. It's all gone now. Just scraped clean and mowed to almost bare soil. clipped short.

To say I'm devastated is an understatement. That the man I am married to never figured out why I was so distraught and upset was saddening. His rationalizing that the people had "farmer mentality" wasn't correct. His statements that they didn't know they were Acacia's nor did they care only proved he didn't know WHY I was so upset. My pleas to just not speak anymore of it fell on unsympathetic ears, so I dropped it on the ground and went off and wept.

It was because the beauty was gone, and so was her beloved park bench. And this was two things in one day that was very unsettling. And so, I've posted the pictures I took last fall of that peace and quiet place she'd provided to anyone who wanted to sit and just experience it. and I've added pictures of last years bounty and last hurrah of her pink Locusts that she herself had planted..........Sometimes it makes me wonder......but the gardener in me still drives on. And I will be vigilant in watching for shoots of the trees coming up from the roots that lie below the soil and will lift them over and over again and pot them up in hopes of saving one or two to have for my own, be damned, and I will plant them at my own gates and hope they tromp down towards the WEST towards the edge of the pastures.

I only hope that when I come home one day and discover the old family homestead farmhouse has been bulldozed like I suspect they will, they'll not cut down the remaining sister sugar maple tree with the perfect little white dogwood underneath her. I hope they realize underneath the boughs of this young maple, lies Miz Mary's sweet cocker spaniel, Hero, whom she lovingly tucked in his blanket, planted a huge swath of bright daylilies over him and then put up her old mailbox to mark his grave. Birds have built a nest inside it, and the daylilies struggle with the reality that they're underneath a maple tree, but the leaves shade her little dog she loved dearly like a child, and I know. I know soon they'll probably cut the front maple tree down that is now quite dead from being struck so many times by lightening last year after she left.

Thanks for letting me vent my spleen. The next post will be of sticky pots and frustration container gardens..........

madgardener, up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler, overlooking English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36

Reply to
madgardener
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Ah {{{{{maddie}}}}

I understand. C

Reply to
Cheryl Isaak

I'm so sorry, Maddie. What a horrible thing to happen to someone and somethings that meant so much to you. The world is full of vandals! Some friends of mine had a wonderful garden, full of all kinds of lovely plants up the sides of the drive and when they drove past it a few months after selling, they saw all these half-dead shrubs in piles waiting to be burned..... If only they'd known, they'd have taken them out themselves and moved them to their new home. Would it help you if you planted something in your own garden in special memory of your friend - put a seat there and think of her?

Reply to
Sacha

Similar story with a house we once lived in. The frontage of the property was just thin uneven concrete. So I broke it up and got a load of topsoil over the area. I planted a small bamboo to hide the wheelie bin, lots of Spring bulbs, small shrubs and perennials. Not a large garden but it was bursting with flowers. After a few years it was a little bit of paradise.

A few years after we sold the property we were out walking the dogs and decided to have a stroll past the property. Wish we hadn't! The entire front garden was full of rubble, timber, old kitchen units and rubbish 5 feet high! It had been used as a skip by the latest owner while doing building work inside. There was nothing left of the flowers or shrubs. Obviously not a garden lover!

Norman Digger.

Reply to
Norman Digger

You're reading my mind. Today I did a little bit of skull duggery meself, I walked around her yard (what is left, sadly, it looks...........SCRAPED) and I saw her pile of her collected old glass bricks. You know the ones. She'd find these at consignment shoppes and Goodwill stores for a quarter. She had about six or seven. She had something in mind for them, and I saw them like she did, so I nicked them. they were assigned to a bag of rubbish.....I had my own canvas bag and there you go. They're hidden in plain view in my own gardens, and I will assign them to their rightful places later on. insensitive bastages! thanks for the comfort!! maddie

Reply to
madgardener

You're on your way! ;-) I hope it will help you to construct something that makes your friend's garden part of yours. I'd like to email you something that might help a little bit so if I may, I'll do that.

Reply to
Sacha

"madgardener" wrote after..

, "madgardener"

It's just blind ignorance Maddie, feel sorry for them, they are missing so much in life. Seems the world is overfull with ignorant self-centred people these days.

Reply to
Bob Hobden

Well, this sucks. I've heard you talk about your buddy for many years. Stinking people. I don't know what to say. Where I live we are losing more and more and more habitat and open field corridors by the second as they build concrete toll roads nobody drives on.

I wish I could vent my spleen. It's eating all my blood platelets, I have cirrhosis even though I haven't had anything to drink in near three decades and I garden laying down as I threatened several years ago!

Be glad to be who you are, those people are missing the entirety of life's offerings.

said with love and sadness, Veet

Reply to
Jangchub

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone They paved paradise and put up a parking lot . . ."

(Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell)

- Bill Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

Reply to
William Rose

In message , William Rose writes

Your letter almost made me cry: everyone has already said what I would have, only much better ...

Reply to
Klara

Oh, Maddie, what a terrible thing! Someone took down the trees?!? Why? How sad. And the bench going missing, I sincerely hope it wasn't vandalizement. Nothing is safe anymore. By the way, I will have baby hemlocks for you this week? Is that okay? I'll bring them down there.

dancing in my mind, gloria in sunny hemlock hollow

Reply to
gldancer

In America you'll get food to eat Won't have to run through the jungle And scuff up your feet You'll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day It's great to be an American

Ain't no lions or tigers ain't no mamba snake Just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake Ev'rybody is as happy as a man can be Climb aboard little wog sail away with me

Sail away sail away We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay Sail away-sail away We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay

In America every man is free To take care of his home and his family You'll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree You're all gonna be an American

Sail away sail away We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay Sail away-sail away We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay

Randy Newman Sail Away Sail Away album, when they were called albums, about the great fat lie lovely Americans told the African's on the slave ships as they landed in Charleston Bay.

Poof.

Reply to
Jangchub

I'm not sure that lies were needed when the newly enslaved were enchained, starving, and packed in like sardines in the holds of the tall ships that delivered them to the Americas. To keep it in perspective though, remember that white people were messin' over white people long before they got the chance to mess over black people. Strangely enough, when white people first met black people, they saw each other's humanity first. Prejudice had to be learned (A People's History of the United States - by Howard Zinn). This wasn't true of the Spaniards and the Arowacs though. A gentle, loving people were butchered in the hopes of finding riches. You don't need a "time machine" to see that we already live in an age of Eloids and Morlochs.

- Bill Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

Reply to
William Rose

yeppers, bring em down but call me first, I'll be out gardening and huntin' fer jobs................ maddie

Reply to
madgardener

I now get these moments now and then which tells me the end of the planet isn't far away. Maybe a thousand years and everything will be dead from on thing or another.

The political clime at the moment in the United States, where I reside, is hideous. I am a conscientious objector to the entire current administrationl I hope the rest of the world realizes not all American's are like the dummards in politics. I think when we retire, it will be to Cancun, Mexico, Belize or Costa Rica.

What is the feeling about Americans these days in Europe?

Victoria

Reply to
Jangchub

I've often thought of this post in the last few days. While damage has already been done, perhaps future damage might be reduced. It's possible the folks doing the "clean up" know very little about gardening and in their efforts to tidy up unknowingly destroy and damage. Perhaps if you would very sweetly (One catches more flies with sugar than with vinegar.) offer to help with the "clean up". Something along the lines of, "I can't help but notice you are doing some yard work. Since I've live next door, know what is planted, and can identify many of the emerging plants, perhaps I can give you a hand. I'm sure it is difficult to decide how to proceed when you're not sure what is planted where. In any case, I have very fond memories of Miz Mary and would very much like to work in the garden she so much enjoyed. In addition to giving me the opportunity to help out, perhaps you would allow me to have some cuttings or plants you intend to remove. Planting them in my own garden in memory of Miz Mary would please me very much. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help."

Well, maybe I'm too much of a Polly Anna but then again maybe it would work. Sorry you have to witness the devastation. I'm sure it is very painful.

Reply to
LAH

William Rose wrote:

here's the incredible difference, though, Bill. Up here on the ridge where I live, Miz Mary's house still sits atop of the dead end, my driveway still hooks around on the northern side and ends in a holler. Trees at the bottom with what amounts to a REAL holler (like shady terraces). The lower part that lays behind Miz Mary's old farmhouse that her sister actually owns now is predominantly pasture, with a couple of interesting sink area's. This whole hill once millions of years ago was probably covered in water or had intense running water around because of the way the boulders that stick out look. It's still nice. Not much scraping yet, just cutting down the "weed" trees that happen to have incredible character. She also has an old "L-M, (Elm) that has that neat pinched bark when it's young and is almost flat on all four sides. I'm sure they won't cut THAT down. There's another on in the pasture (or is there? now I gotta go look for that sucker tomorrow to see if anyone has bush hogged it from near the electric fence that keeps the cows inside). No paving so far. Today there were turkey vultures circling lazily overhead, probably in search for some of those imbred cats of my neighbor across the shared driveway.. there is quite a nature balance going on up here. Coyote, foxes, vultures, hawks, felines (too many, I'm seeing bird carcasses, but this is nature at it's basic. his cats are starving and inbred. So Mom's Nature provides them with less than normal instincts to survive. I hate to see the birds (my cats are fed and only slightly cruel, and I thwart them at every chance as I watch from the quiet of my bedroom window, living room window or kitchen deck door.....) but this goes on in the wild which is damn near what this is anyway. There are possoms, raccoons, all manner of wild life. (even owls!!)And the deer that are around, and wild turkey are hunkering down. Especially the wild turkey at the moment. I think it's bow season. I'm not quite sure, but I overheard talk about turkey shooting today twice, so it must be season for some. I coulda sworn you didn't shoot turkey when they're nesting. But there are so many, maybe I'm mistaken.

After having a brain fart, I realized that no matter that they cut the suckering shrubby trees to the ground. The roots are healthy, and unless Benton sprayed Post on the stubbs, I can watch for the shoots coming back up and sever me one or two with my sharp spade for my own to plug in beside the gate. If I plant it just past my gate, near the pasture, it will have chance to root if I can get a calloused shoot later this springtime. The park bench was taken by the middle sister's granddaughter, and I decided today that unless the Adirondack chairs disappear as well, I'll drag one over underneath the trees and sit. And if they take THEM, I will take my OWN lawn chair and sit and gaze. Miz Mary would never deny me that solace and peace and view. Besides, there's also grass underneath those trees near the electric fence where the cows sometimes graze, and it will be soon cow picking time for me. The pear tree might bloom, and I'm a mind to take cuttings of her old fashioned snow ball viburnum when it gets new growth going.

I planted up two containers today and felt really good to get my hands into the soil. Mostly dry and sun loving perennials. Ruby heart sempervivum and Red Ruby semp, Katrina semp, three Arnaria that I put two on either corner of the large Earth box, then two silvery leafed Prince Edwards yarrow that are starting to bloom. I'll cut them back to encourage them to double, and the semps fanning out. After planting the boxes, I felt a bit better, and they will bulk up nicely for me given time. The Arnaria are already opening their flowers (they were bud tight). Simple things make me happy.

maddie

Reply to
madgardener

On 4/23/07 9:02 AM, in article snipped-for-privacy@news.supernews.com, "madgardener" wrote: SNIPPING

Those semps sound lovely.

Reminds me that I have to get some shots of mine as they shed their winter leaves for the spring!

Reply to
Cheryl Isaak

(Sigh) Like it or not, life goes on, within you or without you. Hopefully, the glorious bursting forth of new buds takes some of the sting out of the loving memories of old canes. Anywho, they both need acknowledgment and care.

- Bill Cloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)

Reply to
William Rose

Bless you heart.

Reply to
Treelady

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