A Love Note

We don't have much money. I go to school all of the time and work crazy hours. I got married last summer, and maybe the reason that my husband and I don't go out is because we are saving money. Maybe it's because we are nesting. But no matter the reason, I love my house, I love my nest, in all the world my nest is best. I love my life, I love my family, and that's what she is to me, my family. My house.

Chad's grandmother, that doll we call Louise, has a beautiful garden at her house. And it just knocks me out to see old pictures of the house when it was the desolate old Italian section of Enfield. Anyway, as you may recall Chad proposed to me in that garden.


I was not able to do much gardening last year on account of the wedding planning. Furthermore, as we had purchased the house in the winter, I hadn't a clue what the yard or gardens looked like. I sort of sat back, sneezed, and watched what bloomed.

What bloomed were a lot of beautiful flowers, sure, but what really bloomed were a whole lot of weeds. Ugh. Lucky for me, I married into the kindest little family imaginable, God bless them. Linda had offered to help clear out the yard, and low and behold, I come home from class one Saturday afternoon a month back, and out in my yard are Chad, Tony, Linda, Gary, and Dad's old faithful blue truck.

Man, we worked. If you recollect, we had those ugly lamps in the front of the porch, we had a fake well (which on the first day of moving in Dad said, "You are going to get rid of that, right?) and lots and lots of bird nests, dear Lord. Well after two trips to the Dumparoo, consider them all gone. Consider a one foot thick, six foot wide patch of weeds gone for that matter. Consider a garden full of disgusto red mulch that rested next to red brick (I mean it just attacked your aesthetic senses) gone. Eh, well, mostly gone. It's pretty hard to get rid of mulch. Soon, soon.

Now I had these empty beds I wanted to fill. But I had no no no idea how. I'm telling you, I went to a gardening place called "16 Acres," and it was literally 16 acres of garden stuff. Pretty, no doubt, but so overwhelming. I up and left. I felt like how a person with no fashion sense must feel like in a beautiful clothing store. And I didn't like it.

Louise! Louise has a garden. Louise loves to garden! I got engaged in that garden! And along came Louise. So the allergy ridden Sunday morning before Andrew's party, I went to Louise's and I got my gardens going.

Once back at my house, Linda and I plotted out where each plant should go. So much to consider. Which spread the most, which are tall and ought to go against the walls, and which will look best where.

We even scouted my yard, found stones to make a wall, and some bleeding heart plants down my the water that I replanted up front.

It has been two weeks, and what a nice hobby it is to have- to weed and water and love. Yes, there is more mulch to get rid of, yes, I have hayfever attacks, and yes I have to find a way to border off the gardens so that they don’t run into the grass (any ideas), but I love them. And one by one they bloom. Louise even said that some of the plants are mums, so that I ought to have blooms for three seasons. Cool, right?

I may not have tons of money, and I may not even have a lot of free time. But I have love of a husband, a love of two families, and a great love for my house.