Garden for Mothers Day

When I was ten, I planted a garden behind the garage on a soggy day in April as a surprise for Mothers Day. I could see it from my swing set and my mother couldn’t from her kitchen window. I got the idea from reading a story in a book with pictures and large black font that told of a boy who had no money and dug a hole in the shape of a heart then revealed it to his mother fully bloomed on mothers day. Clearly,  he didn’t live in the Midwest.

This is how I learned that books were for extrapolating not for literal translations. In trying to cut a heart into a lawn of Marion Blue grass, the weight and strength of my foot could not cut through the sod, let alone create a shape, so she got a ditch. The story, like my experiences since with instructions in assembling toys, furniture and recipes from British cookbooks omitted important steps and information. Like, how did he afford the seeds when he had no money? My babysitting savings held in a white ceramic pig with my name, Mary Beth painted red and written in cursive on the side was an exclusive account for Nancy Drew books. This present bred resentment. and how did he get water to his plot? My dad’s fancy watering system included a tractor the size of a Tonka Truck, with a rotating water copter on top and big wheels with blades that clawed the lawn on a track made by the hose and it cleverly moved with the force of the water pressure. It would stop at a stake with the power of the copter hitting it and the sprinkler continuing to crawlforward… tick tick tick tick tick silence, cutting off the water flow until it tapped it stopped.  Unfortunately the water thrown from the fancy watering system and couldn’t be rerouted, according to my dad.  

The garden with the seeds that didn’t get water behind the garage and under an eave allowing only an hour of early morning sun was revealed to my mother on Mother’s Day as a plot of hope and opportunity. Sliding down my slide, I noticed that the sod miraculously knit back together in July.