Celebrate everything!

Last week I had a pair of chance encounters that bookended each other so neatly, they might have been scripted in one of those television movies with an uplifting theme. The first occurred while I was going through the self-checkout at Lowe's. I said hello-how-are-you to the young woman on duty at the register and, taking my pleasantry literally, she told me she had just had her birthday and she felt old. She was twenty. She couldn't believe it—she wasn't a teenager any more.

It was hard not to laugh. I was already married when I was her age, I'm closing in on my 60th birthday, and I'm undergoing chemotherapy (and doing fine—great, in fact). I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from saying the obvious things, such as "life has a way of throwing you all kinds of surprises so enjoy being young and healthy with your whole life to look forward to," yada yada yada.

Sempervivum 'Reinhard' (Hens-and-chicks)

What I did say to her is that life is great—too great not to celebrate it every day. I don't think what I said made an impression, but that's my mantra these days and I keep throwing it out there in case anybody is listening:  Life is great. Celebrate every day.

Then, on Friday, waiting in line at the Costco pharmacy, I noticed a man several years older than me sitting on one of the chairs in the waiting area. He and another man, about the same age, were having one of those conversations that seem to arise spontaneously whenever veterans encounter one another; some sixth sense tells them they have military service in common, and that gives them plenty to talk about. I could hear what they were saying, but didn't poke my nose into their conversation. I picked up my prescriptions and went off to finishing my shopping, then realized that I needed to park my cart and visit the restroom. The other man was gone but the first man was still in his chair, still waiting patiently, and I asked, "Are you the Duty Watch?"  Technically, that's a Navy term, and he had said he was Infantry, but he knew what I meant. He laughed and said he was, and agreed to keep an eye on my cart. When I got back, we chatted for a few minutes. I think the conversation started when he told me to have a good day, and I said, "All my days are good days. I don't have bad days anymore." 

Sedum sieboldii (October Daphne)

He laughed and agreed with that. He said he got up every morning and said to himself, "Good! Looks like I get to have at least one more of these."  Then I told him about the young woman whose best years were behind her now that she had attained the ripe old age of twenty. He laughed again and said, "On my twentieth birthday, I was stationed at Fort Hood in Texas. It was November 22, 1963, and all of a sudden we were ordered into battle gear and got into our trucks and took off down the road. We didn't know what had happened or where we were going, then we found out President Kennedy had been shot. It turned out it was just Lee Harvey Oswald, but we all thought it was the Russians. That was a terrible day."

That was a terrible day. I was in seventh grade and I remember it clearly. For the generations who were old enough then to comprehend what had happened, it was as terrible as 9/11. So then I told him about my youngest son, who in his early twenties was serving aboard a Navy cruiser that was abruptly ordered to sea after 9/11 to escort the aircraft carrier providing protective air cover over New York City. As a matter of fact, the carrier was the John F. Kennedy.

Sempervivum 'Ashes of Roses'

But truly terrible days are rare. Not even the day my oncologist told me "You have a malignancy" was terrible, because that was the day I learned a necessary truth and began the journey toward getting well. Since beginning my studies at the feet of my mentor, Big C, I've become aware how often I've allowed my focus to linger on things that bother or anger me—held bitter (and irrational) arguments in my head with relatives and friends because of something they said—worried endlessly (and lost sleep) over things I can't change—become irritated because laundry doesn't stay washed and folded, dishes keep dirtying themselves and piling up on the counter, and the furniture covers itself with dust the minute my back is turned. And for years, I waved off birthdays and anniversaries and Mother's Days with the comment, "I don't want to do anything special. It doesn't matter." 

Sedum rupestre 'Angelina'

Well, it does matter, and now I'm celebrating everything: every birthday, every anniversary, every Mother's and Father's Day. But more than that, reminding myself to appreciate all the mundane things that are easy to overlook: that first cup of coffee in the morning, yellow daffodils in springtime, red autumn leaves, phone calls from my kids, unexpected visits from friends, neighbors walking their bossy little alpha dogs, the chalk art that appears on the sidewalk in front of our house when the neighborhood children have been playing together. A hummingbird on the feeder. An unexpected sunny day in January (or May). The satisfaction of a clean desk. The view of Mount Rainier when I reach the top of SR410 on my way home. (Okay, that's not mundane, and it blows me away every single time I see it. It's like the moment in the novel Enchanted April when Mrs. Wilkins throws open the window of her room on her first morning in Italy:  "She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it."  I've never been to Italy, but my mentor has been doggedly teaching me to open my eyes and be aware of what's right in front of me:  Such beauty, and I'm alive to see it; such beauty, and I'm alive to feel it.)


And now we come to the garden portion of this post:

Lewisia cotyledon Sunset Series

But enough. This is getting to be way too serious. Time to lighten up and write about plants. The photo at the top of this post is one of the things I'm celebrating: for once I've managed to put together a container planting that actually turned out the way I envisioned it. Sometimes I wish I could put together brilliant container gardens, like those created by my friend Tina Dixon (of Plants a la Cart in Bothell), but we all have different strengths and I've accepted that containers are not my forte. It takes me a lot of tries to get my container plantings looking halfway decent; they're all right at first, but things tend to go downhill as the season progresses. I think this one might actually go the distance.

Sedum acre 'Aureum' (Goldmoss sedum)

This particular container—a big, heavy, concrete thing that looks like a weathered baptismal font from an old church—has been fighting me for years. I've tried everything from hanging fuchsias to a Japanese garden juniper trained to grow up a post and then trail downward. The juniper looked good for a couple of years, but the container is really too shallow for its root system and the juniper began to look stressed, so I took it out last summer and put it in the ground.

That's par for the course. Almost everything I've tried has struggled. I think part of the problem is calcium leaching out of the concrete into the soil, raising the pH of the planting medium (in other words, making the soil too alkaline for the plants). Another problem is that the perfect place for it, aesthetically speaking, happens to be the one spot in the front of the house that is inaccessible for a drip irrigation line. It has to be hand-watered, and I'm very bad about remembering to do that every day during the summer. On top of all that, it gets full hot sun and reflected heat from the stone wall behind it during the summer, but during the cold months it's in almost full shade. There aren't very many plants that tolerate, much less like, such extreme growing conditions.

Sempervivum 'Pacfic Taffy Pink'

I have high hopes this time because I've used a combination of shallow-rooted plants that prefer to stay on the dry side and need perfect drainage; the basin-like shape of the container should be well-suited for them—in theory, anyway. The soil is a mixture of the leftover potting soil from the juniper, plus the potting medium the new plants came in, plus a bag of cactus mix, some pea gravel, and small red lava rock. (I have no idea how I came into possession of a bag of red lava rock, which I think is ugly, but it came in handy for mixing the rocky, sharp-draining potting soil I wanted for these plants.) It's essentially a trough garden, and the plants are mostly succulents (sedums and sempervivums, also known as stonecrops or hens-and-chicks), with a pink-blooming Lewisia (a Northwest native alpine plant) and a saxifrage whose tag, I'm embarrassed to say, has gone missing. It's here somewhere; I'll find it eventually, and when I do, that'll be another thing to celebrate!

Texture, color, and even a few flowers

One more thing  


Here's an idea I read somewhere and have borrowed (as you might have noticed in the photos of the individual plants) to keep track of plant purchases—what the plant is and when you bought it: use your digital camera to take a photo of the plants with their tags (buying plants is like eating potato chips: you can't have just one). Then file the photos in a folder titled with the date and a brief description. I have a thing about dated folders and documents always being listed in exact chronological order, so the folder for these plants is labeled "20110507_Sedum_Container"—May 7, 2011—which happens to be the date I planted the container. Use whatever system works for you and allows you to quickly find the information when you need it.