Last Spring my Sister Julie passed away. The last few years Julie did not have the time or the energy to write as in the past. For fifteen rears the Cancer chewed her energy and spit it out. I would call her up before I went to work in the evening and Julie would tell me about the flowers she had deadheaded, or the weed she'd pulled to edge of her employer's property. Julie could not make much money for she was on disability from her Cancer. MY sister's pre-existing condition of Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma cancer. After we buried her, I decided to grow a "Julie Garden", and in doing so, I learned many things, symbolic and through my taste buds.
We planted the garden where the Play set had been for nine years, and Sue my wife, and I carted ten yards of beach sand for her daycare while are children were young. The play set was a fortress of treated wood and plastic slides. The daycare was gone after nine years, and the children were too big to use the play set; so I sold it to my neighbor. Julie died of Cancer after that so I was inspired by grief and restlessness to start a garden. I used the neighbors Troy bilt red rotor tiller, and tilled the sandy soil, hoping it would be able to support a garden.
The first Spring rains on the plot were soaked up rapidly and I knew I needed topsoil. Work was slow and I had no funds, so I shoveled all of the good top soil from our compost area for many days, till their was six inches of top rough top soil.
I surrounded it with chicken wire, and felt satisfied with our work.
Picking what to grow in the garden was complicated. Sue and I bought a mixed assortment of vegetables, and planted them. Sue was a expert at planting perfect rows. I weeded and watered, pampered the sensitive plant's from frost and watched. In 1996 Julie gave me a copy of "Frog and Toad Together" children's book for her Nieces and Nephews. Toad talked to his garden, recited poetry and played music, I Imagined Julie was doing that from above, as I labored below.
The Sugar Peas were the first crop, so sweet they never made it out of the plot. The Cucumbers were aw some, and we enjoyed the Veg tables during the bountiful Summer. I did not grow this garden to can, or supply food for the family; I did it to reflect on Julie's last few years as a Gardener. Julie has been a Girl Scout Counselor- College Student-Stained glass Artist-Butter FACTORY WORKER and College Professor. The only thing she talked about was John, Martel, and Gardening. I wanted to see her, feel her, as I toiled in the sour soil in my back yard.
I took for granted the harvest as I watched the vegetables grow, reach their peak. I felt that Julie was all around me growing up as the beans and peas, vibrant, beautiful. I never thought that harvest would ever stop. As Summer progressed, all the plants were tall and healthy as we are in our prime. Julie's plot, She could not control her own garden, it was infested with Tumors and disease. The soil was tainted, infertile as our beach sand. As I reflected in the "Julie" garden, realizing as she weeded the garden's in her last job, she could not stop the weeds and blight in her worn Body.
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