Category Archives: Musings

Your Body Is Like Your Garden: Pay Attention to Signs of Distress

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Here’s me planting my original tropical summer garden. Definitely overdoing it in the heat.  (May 2002)

I overdid it again. One day this week, I spent five straight hours in my garden on a steaming, humid 90-degree day. My clothes were drenched and clinging, even my sweatband was dripping. I was getting wobbly, in danger of toppling over and suffering broken bones or worse. And then, a mild evening breeze swept by me, gently cooling my skin. At that moment, I snapped to my senses and realized I was flirting at the edge of disaster. So I stopped. Abruptly. I left the wheelbarrow filled with mulch, ready to be shoveled into the flower beds. I left it right where it was in the middle of the walkway. It was so heavy, and I was too tired to push and too tired to shovel. The reality of being 77 years old smacked me hard, and I shuddered at the consequences I was dancing with.

Throughout the day, I had filled my favorite 24-ounce, pink water bottle multiple times. I had eaten my usual meal of fresh fruit, coconut yogurt, gluten-free granola, topped off with some raw almonds. I am careful about myself. I eat well and hydrate well. I take care of myself. But maybe, just maybe, I should have paid attention earlier. Maybe this time I just got lucky. Perhaps I should have stopped working sooner in that suffocating hot and humid heat. And maybe I needed to pay attention to how I was feeling earlier, before I became wobbly. I had ignored the warnings my body was sending me throughout the day. Again.

Entrance to my garden. May, 2025

For over 35 years, this garden has been a solitary endeavor, where I continually design and redesign the landscape and plantings. I have worked independently, savoring the time to think quietly by myself, my sanctuary where I find my center. But I began to recognize that many heavier tasks like mulching, planting, and transplanting were no longer getting done. My garden was suffering. And so was my aching body.

For the last year, though, I’ve been lucky to have a garden helper for a few hours once a week to help with chores that have now become too difficult for me. It had been hard for me to invite someone to work in my garden. But when the option of working with John, a man experienced in yard work arrived, I grabbed it. Now, from March through October, once a week, he joins me in the garden.

John’s approach to self-care became clear to me the other day, when he had left for home after working in my garden for only two out of his usual five hours. Leaving early was totally unusual for him. It had been another hot, humid day, and not enough water was cooling his system. I was concerned about him.

Woodland Garden. May 2025.

John returned the next day feeling refreshed and healthy again after going home, taking two showers, separated by two naps and dinner before sleeping through the night. He emphasized the importance he is aware of in taking responsibility of himself. He said he knew what he needed to do to keep himself safe and healthy since he wants to continue doing the physical work he loves. He took responsibility for his health. I admire that.

I try to stay aware of my needs, but there are times when I need a reminder —a soft evening breeze to wake me. Just a gentle nudge to remind me to pay attention to what is happening in and around my life at that moment.

Like a collapsing hydrangea in the summer sun, I too need water, cooling shade, and careful attention to the messages my body and brain are sending to me in order to thrive. Perhaps, like John, taking responsibility for myself with well-considered decisions, sprinkled with a bit of luck, will be the key for me to continue my active lifestyle for a long time to come.

Front Garden in June

 

Rediscovering Currents

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Wilhelmina Gerrits-Nicolai. Tante Wilh

Wilhelmina Gerrits-Nicolai. AKA – Tante Wilh c.1947

When I was a young child growing up in Brooklyn NY, we would travel as a family to Holland to visit our relatives. As one would expect, I was always exposed to new ideas and experiences beyond the normal and predictable rhythm of my life. At home, I was used to what my mother cooked and how she cooked it though I was not included as an assistant in the kitchen. I was also not included in planning the meals, gathering the supplies, shopping for the food, or storing it. I didn’t clean it, chop it, or scrape it either. Basically, food was just put in front of me and I ate it. It was not something that I thought about.

Tante Wilh was our mother’s oldest sister and she lived with her husband Oom Herman in Breda. Wilhelmina was the eldest in that large Gerrits family and was so different than my mother Truus. She seemed so efficient and knowledgeable even though we didn’t speak the same languages fluently. We sure found ways to communicate.

At the age of seven, Tante Wilh had me working next to her in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, popping peas from pods, and taking the tips off the string beans. All her food was fresh, nothing canned like we had at my home. I don’t remember how those veggies tasted or whether I even liked them, what I do remember is how much I enjoyed being in the kitchen with her helping to make our meals.

Current Shrub in my front garden (without the currents)

One day she handed me a fork and a bowl and sent me out to her garden and told me somehow or other with hand signals, my broken Dutch, and her broken English to get the red berries from the shrub growing along the edge of the garden. I found this big green shrub with these tiny bright red round berries. I used the fork as she had pantomimed, to slide the tines of the fork along the sides of the branch edge that was holding the berries. When I did so, the berries popped into the bowl she had given me. I felt so proud to be given such a great responsibility to harvest these home-grown red berries. I brought them into the kitchen and Tante Wilh had me wash them and then put them onto the salads we were having along with our dinner that evening. I was bursting with pride at having contributed so significantly to the meal the whole family was eating that evening at the dining room table together.

This year at one of the nurseries I frequent, I saw a bit of bright color dangling from the tips of the branches of a shrub. This color combination galvanized my interest. It turned out to be a Current shrub that was sporting the very same bright red berries that I’d seen all those years ago in Tante Wilh’s garden. Within moments that shrub ended up in the back of my SUV. Now, sitting with pride of place in the middle of the shrubs and perennials in my front garden is that Current bush. I can see it through the French Doors in my living room. The birds feasted on the berries before I could gather them. But that’s all right since I gather the memories which is more important than the taste of the berries to me. I can still feel the sense of belonging that Tante Wilh gave to me by sharing and teaching me about creating meals, about family, about inclusion, about process, and about growth, as I stood by her side, elbow to elbow in the kitchen.

My iPhone Plant Identifier is Very Cool

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New Mexico Plant ID-Brittlebush

Screenshot of the plant ID feature on my new iPhone 13

My new iPhone 13 has a great feature for identifying plants. Just take a photo of the plant, hit all the right buttons and voila, it gives you the suggested name or names of the plant. It also gives a few links to try to further learn about and identify the plant as well as suggestions for other plants similar to it for further research.

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Sharing My Garden In Support of the Huntington Historical Society

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June 6th is one of the many days I think of my Uncle Teddy, the man who introduced me to gardening at the tender age of 6. Because of him, I began my long journey into gardening. I’ve written about him in previous posts.

This year on June 6th, I opened my garden to benefit the Huntington Historical Society. It was so fitting that it fell on Uncle Teddy’s birthday since, in the garden, he and I are entwined together. For five hours straight I taught, explained, identified plants, offered historical references, shared my knowledge, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Between 200-250 people came to enjoy my creation.

June 6, 2021 Garden Tour Welcome

June 6, 2021, Huntington Historical Society Garden Tour – Welcoming the Docents

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Lessons From The Garden

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I am a gardener. So in 1989 I bought the garden with the home I could afford in the zip code I sought to live in. It’s the first house as you enter my town but some have needled me and said it was the last. I know better.

That gray day in February, the realtor brought me to five different properties. It was the first day I was actually house hunting but when we pulled into this particular gravel driveway I knew I was home. The house didn’t really interest me all that much because I knew the garden had good bones. The giant oaks and the abundance of understory shrubs of mountain laurel spoke to me. I particularly envisioned how beautiful the spring would be when all those dogwoods came into bloom.

I was home and I knew it. So I made an offer below the asking price. As a single parent of two teenage sons, I reserved enough cash to modify the living space so they could have a room of their own. The offer was too quickly accepted which dismayed me since that meant I could have bid even lower. But, oh well, what’s done is done. I had the garden I dreamed of.

Original House Purchase 1989

Two-Bedroom Cape Purchased in February 1989

That winter I would walk in the garden pulling dead leaves from the shrubs, picking up twigs, learning, and looking. Eagerly I awaited the new growth of spring the flowering of the dogwoods. Fingers crossed there might also be some perennials bursting with color in the beds. Continue reading →