Member-only story
My Mother’s Bermuda Grass
Like her, it will always be with me
When my husband and I bought the house we live in now, it was new construction, and because we moved in as soon as it was built, we had to put in the lawn and the flower beds. (It was a buyer’s market, we got it for a good price, and contractors weren’t bothering with amenities like granite countertops and flower beds.)
To say my mother is a gardener extraordinaire isn’t an exaggeration, but it’s also not quite accurate. She doesn’t just garden — she’s a hoarder, and her “flower beds” look much like the inside of her house — messy, overgrown, full of weeds, and generally out of control. They are also full of a nursery’s worth of various plants, because she can’t stop herself from buying them.
When we moved into our new place, she saw a blank canvas, waiting for her to fill. We, on the other hand, had a 3 year old, and she took most of my time and energy.
Still, I’d quit my job to stay home with our daughter, and I’d make the 30-minute drive to visit my mom once a week, so she could see her granddaughter. Often, my mother would send me home with various starts, bulbs, rhizomes, suckers and saplings of flowers, bushes and trees, to add to our wanting landscape.
She didn’t mind so much where I planted them, as long as I got them in the ground…
