Ten trips

I had a plan for this years garden project. I decided it could wait.

My dad is 80 years old and we made ten trips to five nurseries this weekend. Ten. We are now on hugging basis with one of the nurseries that we visited four times to pick up more plants.

One of the 6 trees and 50 shrubs we chose this weeken

When I started clearing a section of land this year, my plan was straightforward. I already have raised kitchen beds just outside the back patio. I was going to add more vegetable patches, a cutting garden, expand on what was already there. And then my dad and I started walking the property together, looking at what I’d uncovered recently after twenty years of overgrowth, and I made a different call.

I can plant vegetables any year. I can build a cutting garden any time. That’s the beauty of this property (no shortage of land to plant on). But designing alongside my dad, who has more knowledge and vision and love of landscape than almost anyone I know, and who is 80 and vital and still able to put his hands in the ground alongside mine, that I cannot get back.

So that’s where I put my energy. My body is complaining loudly this morning, but it is totally worth it.

We’re not done. That’s the thing about this kind of work. You plant and you wait and you watch what takes, what fills in, what surprises you. We worked on multiple sections this weekend. We’ll work on more throughout the year, probably for years after that.

Clearing land that had been wild for twenty years and choosing, deliberately, what you plant there does something to you. It makes you think about what you actually want. Not the default plan. Not what seems practical. What you want to look at for the rest of your life, and who you want to have made it with.

My dad and I share this. The love of landscape, of dirt, of watching something take shape slowly. Why wouldn’t I do this with him now, while we can both get our hands in the dirt and have the kind of conversation you can only have when your hands are busy?

This weekend was a week before Mother’s Day. My first one without my mom. We talked about her a little. We didn’t go too deep. You can see the loss in my dad’s eyes when we do. I still feel the deep ache.

But she was there somehow. In all of it.

I didn’t plan the weekend this way. But spending those two days with my dad, planting things meant to last, felt exactly right. The memories and a garden to last for years to come.

I hope you did something to fill your cup this weekend as well.