Back to the business of gardening

I have my phone back. My new shiny, full, and not broken phone. Not just the phone but everything came back with it. I was able to get all the things out of the clouds into the box. Actually my mom did it. She is relentless with technology. She spent the day figuring this out. So I didn’t have to. I worked. Without a phone. My favorite days are when I forget my phone or lose it, but find it, or can’t access anything on it from being in places that don’t have access to anything. I seek them out. Places that claim no service. Sign me up.

But I worked. I’m in an essential business that my business for some reason wasn’t deemed this but then was a little bit later. It made no sense. My business owner never deemed us not. We are essential he says. I stayed growing plants through this all. If I quit growing so does everyone else. My growing is vital to everyone so they can grow. The day our state officially decided we are essential everyone came out of the wood work. We knew it would happen. We prepared by accepting plants ordered to be there for when people wanted the plants. Our space was full of plants no matter if it was ever going to be full of people again. But we chose hope. It’s why I work this industry. You can always find hope in growth. Simple botanical growth.

I think of the first plant on the planet. Not our first people. That’s how I think. I think of the first bugs. The layers of the earth. The water that has been cutting and shaping our rocks for millions of years. I imagine the single plant who started it all. Was it an apple tree? I don’t know. Was it grass? Has grass seed always been around? It wouldn’t have been mowed for thousands of years? Man made grass? Not grass made man? Did our universe just come with a ground cover of lush forest or was it once barren and rocky? Like the pictures you see? Are they real? How can they be? If I keep imagining this I will peel it apart in layers that are never peeled apart and explained. Just imagined.

I have never seen my business so full of business. All the people out coming and going to make up for the lack of coming and going. I’m guessing gas emissions went way up yesterday. And markets. And gas will go back up. Traffic will be traffic again. Crashes will go up. Speeding tickets.. everything back up.

My day started with my first trip back to Starbucks. I don’t love their coffee. I drink my first cup when I write early in the morning made with grounds I roast in a popcorn maker myself then grind myself. If I had it my way I would also travel to gather my own beans to roast. So why the Starbucks? I love steamed milk. With whipped cream. It’s calming. Or it makes me think of calming warm baby bottles full of milk. I don’t have a steamer and not sure I ever want to steam my own milk. I also am not a baby who needs a bottle of warm milk. I picture over boiled milk in my efforts to make anything that needs me to boil milk. Boiling milk for me means a new pan. But my grandma used to make me warm milk with a little sugar and cinnamon toast in the oven. Then we would sit at a tiny child’s table because I was one, and the toast would be cut up on little porcelain tea set with Peter the rabbit on it. It was just so simple. That’s why I go to Starbucks. To recall this memory. Simpler life. Someone else to boil my milk.

When I got to Starbucks I squealed with delight to have the chance to get in the line. All the lines were always 16-30 cars long. I can’t wait like that. I have to grow plants. The barista was so excited for me back. Once I got to the window she told me the lady in front had paid for my drinks. Mine and my girls steamed milks. This has never happened to me. I have done it hundreds of times. Because I like to imagine it keeps going, forever. Pay it forward never stops in my mind. That not one person will not do it. There is good in everyone. Nice thought, right? It’s simple and I hope true.

I cried. Harder than I cried when my dad died. But specifically because my dad has died. She gives me a minute, I say nothing. The boy with my drinks behind the barista cries. I pay for the mans drink behind me, hoping he wasn’t a single man in a minivan about to deliver coffees to teachers everywhere. Which you really can’t except now with a mask you can? I don’t even know.

Our garden center had a record day. In 40 years we haven’t had a day like we did. I couldn’t keep plants in the greenhouses. I would put them down on benches and off they went to grow somewhere else. Once we decided to just leave them on plant racks from nurseries that deliver some to us and let people just take them off them. Our customers became our helpers. We couldn’t keep up. We ran out of carts, and parking spaces, we ran out of staples. We ran out of energy. We ran out of running. Never ran out of hope.

Our lines were all the way through the 10000 square foot greenhouse and out the doors. To keep distance. We have the space it’s just unusual to see the space so full of everyone giving people space. People were kind, compassionate to others, following rules they didn’t want to follow but free from their homes where they have been running major insurance companies and various other business in their jammies for weeks with kids bouncing off the walls zooming with teachers and eating all the food in the house.

I was told several times that so many were so sorry for my loss. All several times I wasn’t sure what my loss was. My dad? They mean losing him. It is a loss, yes. Is it my loss? Yes. They don’t know that I’m relieved. That most days I’m relieved he isn’t hurting so much anymore. That’s not something you say. You don’t tell total strangers that his last breath was the most at peace you have ever felt. Because he was at peace. It isn’t about me and it’s still not. I’m still learning what to say. Thank you is what you say. I’ve just never had such a big loss that it is actually so big I question if it is a loss at all. I’m a very confused griever.

I cried once when a man told me he drank coffee with him. That he was one of his coffee buddies. He went on to say how much my dad loved us and talked about me and my trips and my work and my sisters and my mother and his grand babies. He talked about these things? To other people? It’s hard to imagine because he usually talks about anything but these things. He usually talks about physics or music or a book or show or something he is building. But not his people, to people. His coffee guys were his people. He told me someone set up a fund in my dads name for this coffee drinking group to drink coffee, forever. Pay it forward. Forever. He invited me to drink coffee with them. Which I had multiple times over the years. I’m standing in my greenhouse full of people crying like a baby waiting for a bottle of steamed warm milk. And I didn’t care.

And I’m exhausted. I’m not 25 anymore. My legs have reminded me. More like my joints. I’ve been doing this since I was 16, over half my life. In between I’ve carried 6 children. I’m not as young as my mind says. My dad was this way. He looked one age, acted another and thought he was younger than both but was as wise as someone who was older than them all. He told me once he was still trying to decide who and what he wanted to be when he grew up. Like he was a 3rd grader uncertain what he would be. Or a college freshman who changes his major every year. My dad never quit growing up. Still hasn’t, because I’m still here and I’m part of him still trying to decide what and who I want to be when I grow up.

I thought I would hike today. Some of our parks are open. Why they all aren’t I don’t know. Seems to me that opening all of things would have helped disperse the people who haven’t been able to go anywhere for weeks. They opened a few that are now crowded. A person every 6 feet. Is that as ok as smaller clumps of people in more locations. There were too many people even though they were following the rules. You have to navigate people on a trail not just the trail. It’s too hard for me now. I am good for now.

It was rare that I have had so many chances to see our woods in early spring that it’s enough. I’m back to the business of gardening. I love my rainy, snowy, windy, miserable weather to hike in. It’s when I can normally go and prefer it after all these years. I buy gear and boots to be in bad weather, sometimes it stops and I get a little sunshine but you still have wet earth. A beautiful spring day is the business of gardening to me. I don’t like to waste beautiful days wasting beautiful days that are beautiful enough for people to want to garden. A beautiful day for me is a slow steady rain to walk in. The slow steady rain waters for me and so many. So the next sunny dry day is gardening business.

It was a bit dreamy to see early spring. It took me back to when I was little with my dad. It was like I was given the chance to have my woods to grieve in a time I would so rarely be able to. Where my dad showed me to be when life is hard, which is always. When death isn’t as hard and life is. It’s not him being dead that is hard, it’s that he isn’t alive.I can’t explain it. I can’t explain it it’s too hard. But for one month he was with me in those early spring woods as if he was with me 35 years ago in those early spring woods. And he will be with me in all the woods forever.

I was being told not to be out, but a few forest preserves stayed open and almost no one went to them and knew of them. They are now some of my favorite places. I wasn’t supposed to be anywhere but all of my anywhere is outside. It’s my everywhere. Where does someone stay when their staying place is the place you aren’t allowed?

I’ve been pushing garden through it. Because I need people to garden through it for me. I can’t. I don’t have a garden. I am not a gardener. I want everyone else to be. I should be able to be one but am not that certain of myself yet. My dad had a garden. My dad was a gardener. I am struggling to get myself to do it. I’m not him. I’m me. It’s growing full of weeds I once removed and I’m frustrated he is dead and didn’t weed his garden. I don’t have a tiller. I don’t know if I have a garden in me just the plants to make one. I miss my dads garden.