Pathway to a blissful garden has its bumps

My mom was a born gardener. Her time, though, was consumed by eight kids, leaving no time to develop, much less maintain a garden. She did install spreading evergreen bushes in front of our house, incubators for terrifying black spiders with quarter-sized bodies and legs two inches long.

When I was 13, Mom planted roses in our front yard in Cheektowaga, a suburb of Buffalo. Most were cuttings from the two mature rose bushes that had survived the winter. She covered them with upside-down Hellman’s mayonnaise jars, her “miniature greenhouses.” After college, I relocated to Manhattan, got married and eventually moved to Long Island. When Mom visited me, I made sure to take her to Old Westbury Gardens to see the stately roses.
My husband, Lee, our toddler, Ben, and I moved to Valley Stream in 1987. Our small lot was in rough shape. The front lawn was barren, and the back was filled with weeds. I wanted our yard to look nice but was busy with work and soon, two more toddlers.

Still, I tried. I planted tulip bulbs in a row on the north side of the house, pleased to see a few cherry red blooms the following spring but surprised when the flowers died three weeks later. I planted impatiens in our desert-like soil. I didn’t know enough to enrich it and was discouraged when the flowers failed to blossom into the expansive splashes of color depicted in catalogs. When my sister-in-law, a real gardener, gave me lush, lavender plants, I bedded them in a shady corner. Mistake after mistake, but I was learning.

Most of my siblings left the Buffalo area, moving south or farther north. Only Bruce lived nearby, in Massapequa. When he died unexpectedly at 48, I was devastated. I worked through my grief by turning our desiccated backyard into a green place. My 11-year-old son, Joe, helped. We made a border, digging 12 inches into the hard soil, then mixing it with manure, using lanterns and flashlights as the days got shorter. A peace rose that Bruce's wife gave us that summer lives on in our backyard. The front garden was next on the list, but by the following summer, Joe had lost interest. I tackled it solo.
I envy those who stick to a design and create enduring landscapes. But that’s not me. If I like a plant, I squeeze it into an available space, making for an overcrowded garden. Sometimes it doesn’t work: I remember the autumn of 2015 when I ripped out all the flowers in the front yard and replaced them with fall blooms.
And there were happy accidents. One spring, I broke my foot, and it was summer by the time it had healed. Towering sunflowers and brilliant blue morning glories had taken over. It was wild and beautiful. Another year, I buried squash seeds in a south-facing corner. The plants grew enthusiastically, their vines covering the front yard, killing the grass but giving us 17 delectable butternut squash.

This picture, however, is no longer as pretty. Two years ago, the wooden arbor designed to welcome visitors began collapsing and the roses developed a nasty fungus. I replaced it with another arbor and planted new climbing roses. But it still looks unfinished, raw.

The work, the frustrations and the rewards never end. If all this is not a metaphor for life, I don’t know what is.

Reader Susan Lee Miller lives in Valley Stream.