Wisteria Hysteria
For which of you,
intending to build a tower,
sitteth not down
first, and counteth the cost,
whether he have
sufficient to finish it?
Lest haply, after he
hath laid the foundation,
and is not able to
finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,
Saying, This man began
to build, and was not able to finish.
— Luke 14:28-30
A nice lady called, asking a favor. Could
they use our back yard for a patron party in June? It would be part of Omaha's
big Garden Walk fund-raiser, raising support for a center for handicapped
children. Usually, they feature the best gardens in town. I was flattered.
She didn't mean this as a cut, but
she said they were asking us because our back yard is nice and flat, for all the
tables and chairs they had to bring in for the dinner. That was our
qualification for the Garden Walk: flatness.
My lips disconnected from my brain, anyway,
and I said yes.
Now, this was in winter. The snow
concealed how much work there was to be done to make our three-acre yard presentable.
Forgotten were all the weeds. The legions of poison ivy. The crater our dog
Sunny Bone-O dug for her day bed. The volunteer trees. The amateurish edging that
wavered and wobbled at wacky angles. The overcrowded, age-old perennials that
had needed to be divided since the Eisenhower Administration.
But noooo. I didn't think about THAT.
I thought about how the event was five
months away. That was forever, to a Champion Procrastinator. I'll think about
it tomorrow! After all, tomorrow is another day!
Tomorrow finally came . . . and
fiddle dee dee!!! I suddenly saw our back yard for what it really was: a
wasteland! A barnyard! A hard-packed prison enclosure!
Those well-coiffed charity matrons
would have massive heart attacks if they arrived to set up their swank patron
party amid unpooper-scooped crabgrass and creepin' charlie, with a flyswatter on
the patio table, and a concrete block holding up the birdbath.
So I went into Turbo Gardening Mode.
This was WAR! I wielded my nuclear-strength jug of Roundup with the menacing
spray gun, like Arnold Schwarzenegger wiping out the bad guys. I strapped on my
gunbelt with clippers and trowels - "Weeds? Reach for the sky!" I had perpetual
dark circles under my knees, mud up to my laces, and posture at a 90-degree
angle due to an aching back. My hands became crusty claws, and my favorite
reading glasses slipped off my head into the foliage someplace.
The party is Saturday night. I'm
beat. And I'm afraid the Garden Cognoscenti are going to sneer at our ho-hum
garden.
Our grass, on the other hand, really
does look great. That's because we splurged on a lawn-care crew to come and
"do" us, professionally.
I told the lawn-care lady of my
fears. Everybody ELSE on the Garden Walk pays pro's instead of doing it
themselves, to do everything, not just the grass. They have these fantastic
ponds and waterfalls -- tropical trees flown in -- bridges and nature walks -- rare
and gorgeous flowers. I was having a severe case of petunia envy.
She told me something that made me
feel a lot better. It seems that many Garden Swells want to grow wisteria, that
stunning, long, purple, drape-y vine. But it's from the South. In Nebraska,
it's almost impossible to grow.
But there's a little old lady in a
little old house in the old part of town whose entire back yard is wisteria
heaven. It's been there for decades, and blesses the whole neighborhood.
That's God's grace. We first saw it
in a garden, a silent witness to His love. Gardens are supposed to remind us
that real beauty is never work. It just is.
Poof! My anxiety was gone. My focus
was back where it belongs: on God's beautiful creation. That's what I hope
they'll see this weekend in our relatively humble, and suitably flat, back yard.
They won't see me: I'll be in
traction in the loony bin.
But I'll be
smiling . . . because it'll be over! †
