No. The answer is not poo, but that's a good guess. And this isn't really a gardening post, all immediate evidence to the contrary. Mom loves to garden, but between us, she stinks at it, so this story, while admittedly about a plant, is so much more than a plant post.
Cousin Lucy, whose adorable fur baby, Petunia, is my long-distance squeeze, has the greenest thumb I know. Her yard is about as close as you can get to a tropical paradise in the northeastern US. She has more than 20 varieties of flowers and greenery, all perfectly groomed and wafting floral fragrances on the summer air, smelling like mom's Bath and Body Works bag right there in her backyard. Last summer, she gifted Aunt Ruth and Mom a bee balm plant. None of us had ever heard of bee balm, but the ones Lucy had in her yard were beautiful, and it was hard for us to turn down the planter full of bee balm when we were packing our car at the end of a weekend visit. Mom whispered to me that she secretly hoped Aunt Ruth would take the whole thing to her house and plant it, releasing her from the pressure of keeping the bee balm alive.
Like I said, Mom and plants don't necessarily have a great relationship. They're like friends who are always at odds but who can't seem to stay apart. Every year, she wants to plant flowers in the yard, because in her head, she has this vision of how great our house will look. And every year, nothing goes - or grows - as planned When we moved in, there was a beautiful batch of lavender planted by the light post in front of the house. Oh, the scent of that on a summer evening, rising just above the hint of freshly mowed grass! Mom loved it, so she watered that lavender like clockwork. No way was she going to let that wonderful plant die. Nope. New house, new green thumb. As summer wore on, and it got beastly hot and humid, she watered and watered that lavender, which seemed to look more sickly every week. She Googled - yes, lavender can take the full sun and heat. Must just need more water. So she just kept watering. Finally, when there was no improvement, she read the whole Google result . . . lavender needs minimal water. : ( This was the epitome of her plant relationships. She gives what they don't need, and what they need, she lacks. Good thing she takes better care of me. Mostly, I think it's the commitment she lacks. She has a peace lily that has survived 20 years . . . only because her friend Donna takes care of it at the office. So, you can see her fear about the bee balm was justified, but she didn't have the heart to tell Lucy or Aunt Ruth no, so she took half of the bee balm plants.
Because she lacks time both time and commitment, the bee balm resided in that planter for most of the summer, but come September, she said she was ready to finally get that sucker in the ground. But where to put it? We really only have one suitable place for flowers, and it's the light post. After killing off the lavender, Mom has planted all kinds of annuals there each year - some make it through the summer and most don't. Odd fact about annuals - sometimes they actually do come back up, even though some have tried to dispute me on this fact. I don't know much about flowers, but I can tell a petunia Mom planted last summer. Ok, so back to the bee balm. Mom dug up some dying annual whose name I can't remember and got the bee balm planted. It made it through the fall, died off with the cold weather as expected, and we didn't give it another thought. It had lived through the summer, and Mom's success on that front was enough for all of us.
Fast forward to spring, when I convinced Mom to take a break from flowers. Just let the grass grow around the light post and call it a day. Dad even got clearance to weed wack the crap out of that mess around the light post. It was freeing for Mom. No plants to pressure her this summer! And then a text from Cousin Lucy. "Has your bee balm sprouted yet?" Crap! The bee balm!! Mom couldn't even remember for sure if she had planted it out front, but since there were really no other good choices, she started prowling about the light post. All I could see was weedy grass, a crawling ground cover with little yellow flowers, two shoots of lavender (?!!), and some dandelions. What was Mom smoking? I had a sick thought that maybe the bee balm had sprouted and been tragically slaughtered by the weed wacker! Mom drove to Aunt Ruth's to take a picture of her bee balm, which (of course) had sprouted - and then some! The progress of her bee balm did not bode well for our unseen half of the plant, but Mom was committed to finding it. We could not let Lucy and Petunia down. So Mom got her gardening gear (she stinks at it, but she does look the part!), and she started weeding. Little fistful by little fistful, she dug around in the ground cover looking for the sprouts of the bee balm - for nearly two hours. But as she neared the end, her weary eyes beheld the bee balm! I rejoice over small leaves I can eat all the time, but Mom - such small leaves had never made her so happy before! I watched as she gingerly dug out all the ground cover and other weedy roots from around the area where the leaves had sprouted, and when they were free, she took a pic for proof . . . in case it doesn't make it through the summer.
She texted Lucy, who said we'd made her day, and that made Mom's black fingernails (how does the dirt get through the gardening gloves??), sore knees, aching hands, and sunburned neck worth it. And after she eased herself into a hot shower that night, she told me that she had thought about all those weeds trying to choke out the bee balm. It was kind of an allegory for our life, which is always so cluttered by so many things Mom feels she just has to do, including those she does actually have to do, like take care of me. Every now and then, Mom said, she digs down through the weeds that are choking her and dragging her down, and she recognizes a prize like the bee balm - a stolen moment with Big Brother, an unexpected hug from Dad, a surprise lunch invitation from a friend she hasn't seen in ages, an email from a pen pal she'd thought was lost. Those are the gifts that lift up all humans of course, but it's so hard to see them among the clutter. Sometimes, Mom said, people have to actively sort through the crap that weighs them down to see the gifts. So this summer, Mom said, when that bee balm blooms - I know, you're as doubtful as I am that it can happen with her at the helm, but I'm a bee balm believer right now - she's gonna remember to keep looking every day for some surprisingly good gifts in the monotony of life that drags her down - the schedule to keep, the chores always left to do, the laundry to fold, the notes to respond to . . . I guess you know how it goes. I worry more about treats to eat and birds to chase, but to you humans I say - Believe in the bee balm! Go look for the gifts worth gloating about in your weeds!
Comments