The Garden Club of DeLand
It was somewhere close to my first week settling into my rather strange new life in DeLand that I stumbled across the marvelous ladies of the Garden Club. Returning north from an estate sale, I happened to pass a sign that read “plant sale today”. I pulled into the Garden Club parking area with thoughts of a jump start on my food forest. Not knowing anything about Florida gardening, I asked rather naive questions all of which were answered politely, kindly, patiently, and with a generosity I had not fully appreciated at the time, not yet realizing how dumb some of my questions were. They asked me in turn when I had arrived in DeLand, why DeLand, from where had I moved, among other questions that I answered truthfully – all of which were contrary to expectations. I had just arrived from Southeast Asia (not Ohio or Pennsylvania) and I came to DeLand for love (not as a snowbird or retiree) – but he had died a few months ago just as I was about to return here to be with him. Quite unexpectedly, the women each hugged me tightly, some admitting they too were widowed, or just had the empathy to recognize the needs of a complete stranger. Cheryl, who it turned out lived just down the road from me, invited me over the following evening for a glass of wine. Several gave me their phone numbers and insisted I call soon. It was a welcomed expression of solidarity and kindness, something I hadn’t realized I had desperately needed since moving here. Then and there, I joined the Garden Club, intending to cultivate these new friendships, and start converting all that awful lawn into some kind of productive garden. I’d always thought of gardening as a solitary activity. Yet here it was bringing me into a community of absolutely lovely women. True I’d likely have very little in common with most of them, but that wasn’t the point. We were united by our location, our gender, and our love of gardening. Wasn’t that, after all, more than enough?
Companionship, especially after experiencing life-changing events, is essential. It wasn’t a need to talk about those events. In fact, I had no desire whatsoever to discuss the loss, the grief, the change, the impulsive, head-first jump into this crazy Floridian sinkhole. My life trajectory had always been impulsive, crazy, unusual in comparison to most. The last thing I wanted was to have to answer more questions about myself, my choices, my thoughts, my experiences, my marriages, my work, or my travels. I did not want to dwell on the past at all. I just wanted a new future and new friends, other bodies in close proximity, idle chit-chat, smiling faces, easy banter, and, of course, answers to some of my most basic and embarrassing questions – like how do I plan a garden? How do you use a washing machine? Or a dryer? How do I load a dishwasher? How do I unplug a drain? And why is there no power in the back of my house? I had no idea there was a little reset button in the middle of the sockets! Amazing what we can learn by asking the right questions to the right people! Even if they are the wrong people, who cares? It’s a conversation starter and a way to at least get a friendly chat going. In Indonesia, I’d had a marvelously house-trained husband and I’d had servants. I never needed to wash dishes, clean anything, wash, dry, iron, fold, put away my clothes, clean floors or bathrooms, repair anything, or drive somewhere myself. My lifestyle, work, daily activities were cerebral, intellectual, and physical as in bicycling and gym for fitness. I had no home-making skills. Yet now I was a solo homeowner. I needed help but without emphasizing how different my background was from my new neighbors and acquaintances. I wanted to fit in and be liked, not stand apart as an oddity.
But I was odd. It was all odd. I was interacting in English again – a language that emphasizes individuality, difference, separation. All the things I did not want now, being alone for the first time in almost my entire life. I had to navigate between my American and British and Australian varieties of English, never quite knowing which was which. Everything else was strange and new too. I had to learn to drive again with an automatic transmission and on the right side of the road (I’d driven a stick shift on the left since 1978!), cook with an electric cooker instead of gas, turn on the AC from a thermostat on an app on my phone (AC??? Never had that before!), figure out bill pay without having to write checks or post anything (as in mail it – buying stamps was so difficult!), change addresses, change languages, change diet, change sanitation practices, and figure out how to access an internet account and turn on the TV (the TV came with the left behind furniture and I never did figure it out). Oh and I had to sign onto Medicare and Social Security – navigate the insanity of Advantage plans and find a doctor that would respect my forty years of “third world” travel and my self-diagnosing and medicating for most of that time. Yes, I had a lot of weird questions. And I had to cut the weeds/grass on that huge expanse of lawn.
American friends in far flung places were able to advise via telephone, text message, WhatsApp, and Facebook messenger. Angela in Hollywood advised on the magic of ordering online and having heavy objects delivered right to the house. Livia in New York advised me to buy a battery powered, self-propelling lawn mower. She even googled it for me and found the exact model and source for free delivery! Karin in Long Island informed me that I could install what is called here a “hand bidet” on my American toilet and get back to washing rather than wiping (ouch!). Janice introduced me to the magic of an air fryer. Betty showed me what a self-cleaning Roomba was. No more vacuuming! Carvana would arrange the sale of my dad’s car so I never need interact with annoying buyers. And that wonderful Robin (who I had met online following the death of my lover, had gone to see the house for me while I was still overseas, and definitely approved!) convinced me to buy a Tesla with self-drive so I would never again need to worry which side of the road to drive on. Everything from banking a check to paying all my bills could be arranged on my phone. Life in the United States was indeed okay – once I learned the right questions, found people to ask with answers, got used to all these radical changes, and learned how to work it all!
Despite my moving to Florida in August, what is probably the hottest time of the year – and hurricane season (and nonstop threats with arrest for removing my clothes and prescriptions from his house and insanely obsessively aggressive emails sent by my dead lover’s ex), I was determined to start on eliminating that horrifically wasteful expanse of lawn. Not really grass and not really a weed, I had no idea what that stuff was. A rough, coarse growth that resembled grass – sort of – but retained the stubbornness and invulnerability of a most noxious virus. And it had roots! Deep, large, round bulbous roots resembling ginger tubers in some places and a string of white pearls in others. All of them took great effort to dig up through what we habitually called ‘soil’ but was actually sand. It is called Myakka here, from an Indian word meaning “big waters”. That seemed a strangely inappropriate name to me as the sand here doesn’t hold any big or small waters, or nutrients or any of the organisms that keep plants alive. It is sand, fine, powdery, dry, dead. It repels water that runs off its surface like glass. It was no surprise that Florida “grass” was so determined, tough, deep rooted, persistent, and coarse. You had to respect it for surviving and even thriving in such inhospitable conditions. As evidence of my determination to beat the ‘grass’, I was out there in my front yard every morning and every evening with my shovel digging away. These were the cool times of day, relatively speaking, of course. Sweat dripped down my face and landed in pools on the moisture repelling sand that then evaporated into the heat and humidity of these coolest parts of the day. Grass and its long, deep roots and tubers were piled in layers on the pavement to bake to death in the heat.
Naturally, all of this massive effort to overcome the lawn was also a massive waste of energy and time. Everything grew back almost instantly. Since I didn’t yet know what the questions were, it would take time to discover much simpler and more effective means of altering my landscape. Until that point, I continued to stumble toward my increasingly distant goal of a functioning food forest.
Having lived in Indonesia for so long, I went out and bought some young trees to break the monotony of my sea of weeds/grass. I got a mango, a guava, a grapefruit, a mulberry, a peach tree and some passion fruit vines – because that is what I was used to back home and heck. This is Florida. It’s tropical, right? No. This is Central Florida. Winters can and do get cold enough to kill them all and hey. Don’t forget, the ‘soil’ sucks! My first mistake was in wanting to plant the trees in the front yard. The house faces north which means it is more exposed to cold north winds. The peach tree and mulberry tree were Florida cultivars (I didn’t know what a cultivar was when I bought them), so they were adapted to our extensive heat and brief frosts. The rest did not fare as well. But before I could plant the trees in the front yard as a first step toward my great conversion, I needed to figure out how to treat the ‘soil’ to make it livable for plant life. And I needed to do it all on a budget.
The first step was to figure out how to block off areas of the garden. It would be impossible and far too overwhelming to think about working the entire expanse. Isolating doable sections made it seem manageable. My experiences in Indonesia with permaculture meant I’d block out and build walls around areas that I could easily reach across and fill up with organic matter such as compost, topsoil, and mulch. Over time these would all break down and replenish the sand with organic life. Being new to the area and the country, I hadn’t yet worked out the use of cardboard to smother the weeds, or the wonders of Marketplace and other sources of used materials. But I did know Lowes had bricks (retaining wall bricks in Lowes lingo) and I would need a lot. With a price under $2 each, it sounded cheap enough but I would need dozens and the cost would add up quickly. As me, however, I also needed to work within my personal preferences and limitations. While the ‘how to’ manual on Florida friendly landscaping demands we design our garden ahead of time, recognizing the movements of the sun over seasonal changes, the terrain and its modulations for water retention, the direction of winds and winter frosts, I knew I would never bother with all of that. My intuition works just fine – even when it doesn’t.
Off I went to Lowes spending hours examining all their choices, trying to picture in my mind how they would work, and how attractive they could be. I selected the $1.29 bricks in red and loaded 30 into my shopping cart. They weren’t light. But I could lug 2 at a time. (Note to self: bring work gloves next time!) Then I carried them out and loaded them into the trunk of my car – in 96 degree heat dripping in sweat. (Note to self: bring water!). Next, I drove home and immediately commenced to unload them and place them where I imagined they would go in the front yard. From the trunk to the garden and back again 15 times to start building the retaining wall. 30 was nowhere near enough bricks so back I went to Lowes for another 30, loaded them into my cart, moved them into the trunk of my car, unloaded them again two by two, moved, placed, and returned to pick up two more, move, place, repeat and repeat. This time I had my trusted garden gloves and water. Once I had the long, narrow, meandering kidney shaped wall in place, it was time to fill it in. Oh, wait. One layer of bricks wasn’t high enough. I needed to double them all.
Next came the walkway which I figured would make access to the growing area easier and help keep the grass/weeds down. The only renovations I had chosen to do on the house was to change the kitchen sink and the countertops from the original, ancient, yellowed, inefficient to a nice modern version that maintained a good vintage appeal in line with the rest of the house. I asked for any leftover cut pieces from the countertops and was given some nice strangely shaped remnants. Even better, the guy informed me that all cut remnants are loaded into the dumpster behind the shop and I was welcome to go and collect whatever I needed to create a textured walkway in the garden. Perfect! The pieces were super heavy and very dusty from being cut but I soon got the hang of knowing which pieces were the right size and shape for my walkway, liftable and interesting. I did learn that these cut remnants were only reachable if the dumpster was quite full so as I’d drive along the Boulevard, I’d crane my neck to see how full the dumpster was and if it was a good time to go collecting. Obviously, it was better to do this early morning or late afternoon when the temps were in the balmy 80s rather than stifling 90s. Back and forth again, reaching, picking, loading – always with my trusty gloves. Heading home to unload, carry, and place. No wonder I wasn’t gaining any weight!
After the first walkway was done, someone from the garden club pointed out to me that if I’d placed cardboard under the stones, the grass wouldn’t grow up between them. Blast! I wandered the neighborhood collecting cardboard from people’s recycling bins. Then, of course, I had to lift up all the stones, place the cardboard and replace the stones, never in the same pattern they were in before. It worked for a few months. Then the cardboard disintegrated and the grass returned with a vengeance. Oh well.
Some six months later, on a dumpster dive at a home renovation right across the street, I found a whole roll of garden weed block cloth and another roll of shade cloth. The price was right, so I carried them home. When the mood struck, I was back out front lifting all the stones yet again and placing the weed block underneath. As of this writing, it is only marginally doing the trick as the weeds just grow over the weed cloth. Also as of this writing, I have redesigned my front yard and have moved the walkway and the bricks that shape the raised beds. My lack of planning strikes yet again!
Beyond my front garden, life and learning to live in the USA continued. The garden club held monthly garden visits to members’ homes for garden tours. At one of these visits, we were all given day lilies to bring home. I created a round bed just for these lilies, that are still alive and growing even now (see pic above) which is more than I can say for the lavender I’d bought at Lowes to fill in the area, which all died rather quickly! I still knew nothing about native plants that are adapted to our Florida soils and climate. Yet again, the Garden Club was to be my salvation as my trusted source for information on everything native and seedlings!
As part of my adaptation to home-ownership as a gardener, I needed to learn how to compost. This would be an ideal way to deal with household rubbish – and help my garden. Since I was no longer in Indonesia, I could not throw kitchen waste into the yard and watch it decompose and regrow itself. I would need a composter. I was smarter now so shopped around for a good one that could easily be turned and aerated and that included free shipping (and all that new cardboard for the garden!). My new two compartment composter was delivered a week later and Ron Johnson, an old skydiving friend, was kind enough to help me assemble it. Once I had a place now for all wet, smelly kitchen trash, I noticed how much dry waste I accumulated each week and made a point of reducing garbage as much as possible. The aim was to avoid anything wrapped in plastic (a near impossibility – but not entirely) and never use plastic bags. I now throw dry trash right into the bin for the weekly pick up but pretty much only put my trash out to the curb every three to four weeks instead. My bin is never more than half full. These reduce, reuse, recycle games became a sort of way of life. How long I could go without needing to have the trash collected was extended to how low could I get my household bills. I made sure my air conditioning and heating were kept as high or low as possible and I would no longer use the dryer. Line drying was fine and unless I was sweating profusely or rolling in filth (which actually I do a lot as a gardener), there was no need to wash or change clothes frequently. No social life has great advantages!
And then I decided it was time to invest in a wheelbarrow. As bizarre as this may sound, buying my first ever wheelbarrow was a super exciting event that marked me as a real gardener! None without holes was to be found at estate sales and I was warned – again by those wonderful Garden Club ladies – to not get the one-wheel variety as they were easily tipped over and required more strength to manage. After many trips and comparisons, I eventually bought a mid-sized gorilla cart, my faithful sidekick for lugging bricks, compost, mulch, plants, anything! It helped me move my massive mounds of compost and mountains of mulch that needed to be moved all over my front and back gardens. I did once manage to flatten all four tires that time I moved heavy pavers from the car to the yard. If those pavers flattened the tires, I don’t want to imagine what moving literally hundreds had done to the tendons in my arms. Yeah. They do still ache.
The next time I went to Lowes to pick up more bricks, I had just been to the salon and my hair looked great – and I was in a dress. When I went to pay at the cashier, he said he would call an assistant to help load the bricks! Wow!!! So, wear a dress and make sure my hair looks good – and find the male cashiers – and I won’t have to load myself! In time, I would realize that if I ordered through the Lowes app, I could actually get their staff to do all the lugging and bring the bricks to my car and load them for me! This of course wouldn’t work once I got smarter and learned to find much cheaper used items at estate sales or piled up beside someone’s trash or as remnants or through online marketplace. Fortunately, I always have a pair of gardening gloves in the car now (and a tape measure and sheets to keep the car clean when I haul bricks or pavers or plants).
Bags of compost or topsoil or whatever soil additions we used were pricey at anywhere from 5 to $12 for a one cubic foot (plastic!) bag. Plus, they weighed 20lbs and needed to be loaded and unloaded too. It was too much for me but I did it anyway, fighting dizziness, exhaustion, aches and pains, and the never-ending fear of hurting my back (but wearing gloves!). I am, after all, a scrawny, gray-haired old woman. Despite the physical abuse, the mental satisfaction totally outweighed the problems. I persisted, and learned (well, sort of) from my mistakes. A bit of googling showed me I could order a cubic yard of mushroom compost from a place down the road for $30 with a delivery fee of $25 – and no plastic!!! That seemed like a better and easier deal so I jumped on it…. And a second delivery shortly after of 2 yards – since why not? Delivery charge was the same. I did still need to shovel and move it all as needed. But with my big garden beds and my trusty wheelbarrow, and with starting to work on the backyard too, I was sure to manage it all. Plus, I had a big paved area just outside the fence behind the carport where I could store the mound of compost until needed.
It didn’t take long before I got fed up working the front lawn. It was just too big, too visible, and it was time to start on my food production. The original idea was to keep food as annuals in the backyard and fruit trees and perennial native flowers in the front – keeping things simpler and more attractive for all to see. The fully fenced, private backyard was where I could let my hair down and be as messy as I needed to be.
To be continued….
Laine Berman 