Monday, May 06, 2019

2018 MAY – DivaAnnie’s Garden Day


This post, 2018 MAY – DivaAnnie’s Garden Day, was written by Glinda/Annie in Austin for the Divas of the Dirt Blog. 

The rotating schedule told us that DivaAnnie’s turn to be hostess would happen in May, the month of her birthday. Annie really wanted to host the meeting but she was having serious health issues. We knew that Annie was having trouble with gardening maintenance and we wanted to do it for her. She was having trouble with other things too, and many of her friends and neighbors helped with what they could. They took her to stores, helped her get supplies for the garden, drove her to buy groceries, took Annie to doctor appointments and her pets to the veterinarian and helped with mowing. 

A few days before the meeting I took a Before Photo of the fence corner in front – hoping there would be a good After Photo. On the day before the meeting some rain fell on the garden, softening the ground and plumping up the plants.
Annie, Buffy, Karla, Mindy, Mattie and Sophia were already there when I arrived, enjoying coffee with muffins and fruit salad. And ooh, what’s this? A beautiful orchid decorated the table of the birthday girl.
After a while we all went outside and got out the tools. In that front Before corner a seven foot tall Barbados cherry had not done well over the winter – the whole top had died off, but new growth was appearing at the bottom. The Salvia guaranitica was running rampant, covering other plants that Annie liked. In the square bed the top of her magnificent Duranta was all dead sticks. We could fix all of that.

We could weed and clip back all the beds and borders, rescue plants that were being smothered and dig out the oh-so-many tree seedlings that had popped up everywhere. We were going to need a lot of yard bags!
The ‘Marilyn’ abutilon was so beautiful one could almost ignore the weeds in the bed.
You’ve seen Annie’s Abutilon ‘Patrick’ in previous posts…let’s take a closer look at her ‘Marilyn’
The day was quite warm, the ants were out and there was a lot to do. Everyone worked together, trying to make a difference in each part of the front yard while trying to keep an eye on Annie, who was working too hard in the hot sun.
Sweet mascot Barbie stayed in the dappled shade and kept us company.
Eventually the shady end of the front sidewalk looked respectable again
The square garden on the far side of the driveway was no longer a tangle of overgrown plants and saplings.
We couldn’t make the St. Augustine lawn look better, but we could get rid of the weeds in the center bed and clip things back so the Phlomis/Jerusalem Sage, columbines, salvias and other plants had some space. Maybe some mulch could discourage new weeds.
Annie called us in to lunch – really good broccoli salad, a fruit salad of strawberries and pineapple chunks, rotisserie chicken salad on croissants with leaves of romaine to add crunch. We had so much to talk about as we ate – well, we always have so much to talk about!
Annie had requested a lemon cake for her birthday. There were no candles on top, but she liked this old-fashioned 1-2-3-4 lemon cake with cream cheese frosting, made even better with a little ice cream plopped on top.
We puttered around a little more outside and added plants to her porch containers. We wanted to stay and keep working in the garden but Annie said what she wanted was for us to go home, and then she wanted to go to bed.

Before we left I snapped a photo of the now-pretty Barbados cherry-Salvia guaranitica bed so there’d be an After picture to go with the Before picture.

                                                                    
****************INTERVAL***************
I’m writing about this day a whole year after that meeting, and it’s been an odd and difficult post to write. Back then we were worried about Annie’s health and hoped that modern medicine could make her better, but we couldn’t know the future.

We didn’t know that this would be the last time she had a garden day, the last time we would all be together at her house, that this was her last birthday cake in this the last spring of her life.

All that I can do now is tell you about that day and tell you how we liked being together and tell you how much we loved and miss our dear friend.