"We all get the same box."

 "We all get the same box," said a woman on the neighborhood garden tour that bink & I went around to on our bikes last night––meaning the houses around here sit on the same square lots--but some people have transformed theirs.

I've mentioned that I live on the edge of a well-to-do neighborhood. Several of the home-owners had paid for gardeners (or garden businesses) to create their gardens--not only to plant them––(as I age, I understand better wanting to hire that hard labor out)––but to plan them.

This surprised me: where's the pleasure? Yeah, the gardens look nice, but is that the point of gardening? Don't you want to choose the plants, and, if you physically can, don't you WANT to dig in the dirt yourself?

Same with interior design--I don't get hiring someone else to choose the things you live intimately with.
Maybe it's a like arranged marriages--sometimes they work out better in the long run than marriages chosen by individual, romantic whim.

I guess it depends what you want. A tidy kind of beauty, or the mess of free choice. Growing living things, such as plants (or children), reminds me of what Molly Ivins said of democracy--you have to relish a certain amount of chaos.
Ah--here's the exact quote:

"The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion."

One woman told us that her first garden she planted herself was a mess because she didn't know what she was doing. When she hired a designer from Tangletown Gardens (nice! pricey!), they told her what would work and what wouldn't, and it looks great. I'm sure it does.

But honestly, probably most of the people had done their own gardening. Some had gone to a lot of extra work too--for instance, a couple houses had paths of granite cobblestones the owners had collected (heavy!) when the city tore up streets, down to the old trolley car lines.

It was fun to bike around my still new-to-me neighborhood and look in people's backyards.
Everyone was friendly and open--though there was a paucity of snacks... Only one woman had put some out--shortbread and lemonade. Funnily, the thing in her backyard that everyone was commenting on was her old-fashioned style of laundry-drying rack--one of those that's like a spider web of clothesline that rotates around a center pole. You know? She was my favorite.

Lots of people had a vine arbor or pergola--I took photos for my sister who's planning some such thing for privacy, as a new condo building has gone up right next to her & SIL's house, with massive windows overlooking their lawn!

(That's bink, far right, taking off her bike helmet). I looked up pergolas, and, I didn't realize--you can buy such a structure at Costco for around $500.

How bout outdoor kitchens? That one on the right even has a sink with running water. These yards are not that big--such set ups dominate--it's not what I'd choose, but then, I'm living on vodka and ice-cream this summer--no cooking required!
I do love the orange trumpet creepers (left).

I'm sitting outside this morning, laptop on my lap, feeling proud of my three pots of geraniums, and my bird-and-squirrel water dish.
I did them myself!

It's been a decent summer here . . . if you overlook drought and fires. (More Canadian smoke is due here today, as a passing cool front pushes the higher air down). I mean, it's not been too terribly hot. This is another cool morning--and wet--it rained hard last night--welcome!

BELOW: I'd saved this quote from Werner Herzog because it'd reminded me of what I'd said about walking Camino--going by foot, you experience your self differently--but it reminds me of gardening too--the Earth reveals itself to those who dig in it.

"I create my own world view out of the knowledge that I derive from the world itself. When you travel on foot, for example––and I don't mean backpacking or hiking, I mean, for example, travelling on foot from Munich to Paris--you are given a world view, an insight that is different or outside the average knowledge. I have a dictum:
'The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.""

--"Werner Herzog", New Yorker, Ap 26, 2022.

______________

This has been a warm social month--warm in a pleasant way. Very Cancerian. The astrological sign. Though cancer, the disease, has also figured... 

A thrift-store regular I like, for instance, Marian, came in for the first time in a few months--looking thin--she had been tending her oldest friend with cancer. They were both long-time single, and childless. She'd moved into his house to care for him, and a couple weeks ago, he had died.

It was quite a good ending, as these things go, she told me.
She'd been helping him stand, when he'd said, "Oh, no!" and fallen over, unconscious. A stroke.
He died within the hour, her holding his hand and talking to him about the musicians he was about to meet in heaven. (Neither was a believer, but these stories are sustaining.) "Miles Davis! Johnny Cash!"

And now she's living in his house forever, because he left it to her! It's small house, but paid for, and he'd also left enough money for her to pay property taxes for years. She'd been living in government-assistance housing, so this is extra welcome--and even more so because... she loves to garden!
So that's nice, though she said, "I'd rather have him. We've known each other since we were thirty-one." 

Sometimes I wonder what my final illness will be like, being single and childless myself... It might be lonely, or it might not.
I see these sorts of surprises around deaths--like how I helped BJ die last spring. I didn't help much--once a week--nice, but at the end, you need 24/7 care. The real helper was her foster sister who she hadn't seen in thirty years! She flew in from Georgia and did every. single. thing for BJ's last three weeks dying at home (another gov't assisted apartment--across the alley from the thrift store). Hospice helped, but they visited, they didn't stay.

So... you just don't know. I've worked in nursing homes where people with lots of children died alone--often because their children lived and worked out of state. (I mean, they were not necessarily uncaring.)

In the end, we all get the same box indeed.
Enjoy your garden, whatever you've got of one!