Summertime Gardening
On May 17 2023 I had shoulder reconstruction surgery to repair a skydiving injury sustained way back in 1977. My left shoulder would slip out of the socket and not go back. This did not hurt at all, but it was awkward and took a bit of maneuvering to replace so I can use my arm again. Imagine lifting your arms to wash your hair in the shower and not being able to lower it again; no pain at all, just a malfunction between brain, bone, and movement. Post surgery, it hurt like hell. My garden suffered as much as I did. Not only was it HOT, but the pain and discomfort and not having a left arm to use meant I was forced to neglect my garden. For more than a week following surgery, I stayed with Robin and Mike who were willing to babysit me, bathe me, feed me, and take care of me. Mike even installed a hand bidet on the guest toilet near my bedroom! THAT is a good friend!! By the time I got back home, all my salad greens, mustard greens, bok choi, and many of the herbs had either bolted or died. For the first time in a year, I was unable to go and pick my salad or my greens right from the garden. It was highly distressing.
Besides my daily early morning watering, multiple times a day, I would still wander though the garden to look over my handiwork, simply adoring it, the butterflies, the bees, the life, and even the various levels of living and dying vegetables, herbs and flowers. It always soothes, calms, inspires. Yet, now, as distressing as it was to not have fresh food at the ready and not be able to work, just being there and admiring it was fantastic. Anything that died could be replaced later with something else that was bound to live. It was fine to at least pull weeds with my right hand, but one morning about a month after surgery I went outside to find a cool crisp gorgeous, totally unlike Florida summer, morning. I was overwhelmed with the urge to mulch over the remainder of my back yard. Mulch is light. I can do this. It doesn’t require raising my left arm, only supporting the shovel. I immediately weed whacked the remaining 60 or so square feet of space, then covered it with cardboard. Next, I grabbed my gorilla cart and shovel and tugged it over to the remaining mulch pile in the front yard. Shoveling was easy enough favoring my right arm, using my hips to push the shovel and lifting again with my right arm balanced on my belly and held straight with my left hand. The doc wants me to exercise my arm and this was exercise! Several trips over to the mulch pile and back again to the rear yard almost finished up half that whole space. I was out of mulch! Another Chip Drop requested. I needed lots more mulch to do what needed to be done.
It didn’t arrive. I pondered going and buying bags of it but just couldn’t bring myself to do that. It was just wrong to pay for something when I could get several yards of it without the processing, preservatives, coloring, or plastic wrapping – all for a $20 tip to the driver. Several weeks later, still no mulch. Early this morning I jumped out of bed in total darkness. I heard a truck. It sounded like it was unloading something! My mulch! Despite the darkness, I ran to the front window to peer out at what should be a huge mound of fresh, steamy mulch. Nothing. It was just a dream. My disappointment was profound. I can’t believe I dream about mulch drops!
Meanwhile, I was becoming increasingly distressed about my inability to do much work in the garden. I figured since I couldn’t do much more than clear out the beds, chop up the dried up remnants of my edibles, and drop them to add depleted nutrients to the soil, add more soil as well as clear out the freshly ready balls of moist compost out of my composter, I may as well prepare the beds for my fall planting.
OR find workers to do things that needed to be done but that I could never do myself.
Christopher was a youngish (46), very slender sexy kinda guy I matched with on Tinder. We were busily chatting on the app when the discussion edged round to his small tree clearing business in Port Orange. Oooooh, as a matter of fact, looking over the exact areas where Trevor had pruned and cut (that’s another story….), I needed a bunch of water oaks removed as well as all the cherry laurels growing up between them. The entire west facing fence was lined with these rather unattractive straggly growths extremely thick with ferns all around. I knew they’d have to come out eventually. I was just putting it off for as long as I could. It seemed a great excuse to meet this guy. I made a date with Chris to come and give me an estimate on clearing that patch – and who knows what else once he was here. Yeah, not another Trevor, I hoped! Trevor at least came right over. Chris did not. Four hours after the designated arrival time, he finally replied to my text with all kinds of excuses based on equipment failure and far too much work. OK, I can accept problems but he failed to make it to our next appointment also, nor did he text with an apology for two days. Two strikes and no punctual apology or regrets or anything – he’s out. Luckily, there was an arborist working at the house renovation right across the street from me. I wandered over and asked them if they could take a look at my trees and give me an estimate on what it would cost to remove them. If I can’t get a Tinder date, at least get the garden work done!
Ed came round the next day and cleared out all the water oaks, most of the cherry laurels, and that awful water oak in the front yard. All he did was cut and remove. He could not get the stumps out and they will definitely sprout new growths. Ed recommended a stump grinder guy named Travis who came round a few days later to grind out 13 stumps. In order to make very clear what needed to be ground out, I started to pull out all the ferns and assorted growth thickly covering the area. This was a bit more exercise than I am supposed to be doing with my left arm, but it needed to be done. Just my luck that the trees were all removed in the midst of our heat wave – the hottest days on record ever occurred just as I took down trees. Me. The crazy lady who freaks out when other people take down perfectly good trees because of a fear of hurricane damage or roof damage or because trees are dirty and drop leaves that require raking and clearing. I’ve heard it all and remind people that we need trees. They keep our temperatures down, they clean our air, they improve our quality of life in addition to giving us food, providing a home and sustenance to wildlife, and just being beautiful. At least I knew I’d be replacing these ugly trees with beautiful fruit producing trees.
After the trees were removed and the temperature inside my house rose by several degrees, it was time to call Lonny Reid and book a food forest consultation. I wanted to ramp up my gardening. I needed more of it and it would help to actually do it correctly, rather than my usual haphazard methods creating more work than was necessary, even though I already knew I’d keep my preferable chaos. If anyone could appreciate my way of thinking and doing, it would be Lonny. Being incapacitated had benefits! I was forced to actually slow down and learn something!
Lonny was a lucky find early on in my move here and I immediately knew he and I would be friends. He exuded the love of everything gardening that I adored and he obviously did not play by standard rules. His farm was big; it was crazy wild; it was experimental; it thrived. Lonny fed his family from his garden and maintained a spiritual connection to all that lived and grew there. And he gladly shared his knowledge through classes and consultations and gardening support. He is an invaluable resource on everything gardening, diet, health, and life! https://thereidfarm.com/
The first thing we discussed was how to fill in those blank spaces where the water oaks had been. He would put in a nectarine, a cherry, and an avocado in the southern section and a pomegranate in the north section between the two podocarpus that I left standing. Then he’d put in three banana trees.
What Lonny did recommend during the consultation was an irrigation system that would free me up from being home and watering the yard every day. I had avoided thoughts of irrigation for two years now, thinking it would cost too much. Irrigation was like birthing a kid but handing it over to a nanny every day, taking no part yourself in the child’s nurturing (fun fact: I never birthed my own children choosing travel, career, and adventure over family, home-ownership, stability, etc.). Then there was my belief that irrigation was for sissies, spoiled, old, rich folk who garden for show or for HOAs, or because their Mexican gardeners don’t come every day. Irrigation was not for me because I love being up every morning early to water the garden before the sun was high enough to evaporate all that precious water. But when Lonny suggested it, I was sold! Irrigation was freedom, he insisted. It freed me from needing to be home every day. It freed me from requesting a neighbor (Tracy!) do the watering every morning before she went to work. Irrigation would have salvaged my garden during the week I was recuperating post surgery at Robin’s house. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad, elitist thing after all.
Here is the video Lonny made of the work he did in my garden:
I was, as you can see, thrilled. Except for the fact that I could no longer state I was the sole architect, engineer and laborer in the creation, (lack of) design, and construction of my garden. I think I can get over that.
Considering what a bust the summer had been because of my surgery, when my girlfriend Cathy called me from Australia asking if I’d like to meet her in Europe and do a road trip together, I never thought twice and said, “Yes!” Cathy was my best friend back in the 1970s in New York. We’d had many wild adventures together and stayed in touch after I moved to London in 1978, then to the rest of the world in 1980. We have the type of relationship that easily transcends long gaps in contact. Cathy lives in Melbourne Australia. We’d met briefly there, in Singapore, in Sri Lanka, and on a road trip from Darwin to Alice Springs over the years (lots of photos on my FaceBook page). Why not Europe? It was a great opportunity to see Cathy again and visit places I’d wanted to see – like Prague, Berlin, Spain and Portugal. We planned it as a road trip, which I figured I could do even with my still aching but healing left arm.
Following a wonderful month in Europe with Cathy, I came home to a thriving, overgrown, crazy wild, wonderfully watered garden by that magical irrigation system. Thank you Lonny!!! My hero!
In time, however, my lack of planning again surfaced. Lots more work to do! Naturally. Always.
Tune in next week for a new wacky episode of my life in Florida!
Laine Berman 