The Rose Garden

A dear friend Cheryl recently came to my house to help me get my yard back in shape for spring.  We became friends after my husband died.  Her husband has also had a lung transplant.  She has been such a blessing to me through this difficult time in my life. I don’t have to explain the mixed up emotions or the complexities of daily life because she is living now what I lived for many years.  She doesn’t have to explain her struggles to me, because I have been there.

Today Cheryl was ready to jump in and start moving bricks and plants to help me simplify and streamline my yard care responsibilities.  I had decided to remove the rose garden from my yard.  I had already started removing bricks that we needed to use on my driveway.  So, this was a moving forward from that point.  Well, I thought it was.

Cheryl had only seen the rose garden from a distance; it seemed it was always covered with leaves.  Today was no exception; it was again covered in leaves from last fall.  I had removed most of the roses and replace them with peonies hoping there would be enough sunlight to allow them to grow as there really wasn’t enough sunlight for roses.  The only roses that remained were climbing roses on arbors around the edge of the rose garden.

Cheryl suggested that we prepare the area of the yard where we were going to move the plants.  It too was covered with leaves and weeds along with groundcover roses growing there.  As we cleared out the leaves I picked them up with the lawn mower. While I finished mowing up the leaves Cheryl decided to get started moving brick from the rose garden.  She filled the wheel barrel with bricks and together we rolled it to the front yard where I planned to line the flowerbeds with the brick. It took both of us to pull the load up the incline to the front yard.  After taking two loads of brick to the front it was time to begin moving some of the daylilies that bordered the rose garden to their new home. I returned to finish mowing leaves. Cheryl tried to push the shovel into the ground to begin to dig up the lilies. She kept tapping and tapping along the edge of the daylilies trying to find soil.  Then she yelled across the yard, “Is there more brick on this side?” Yes, I responded.  Tap, tap, tap…Cheryl continues to look for soil, but finds more brick. “Is there a brick path that goes around the rose garden too?” She asked. “Yes, I explained; the brick path goes all the way around the half circle.” She was astonished to discover there was likely twice as much brick to move than she had originally thought. She stopped trying to dig right at that moment. “Where are you going to put all of this brick?” “This is a lot of brick,” she exclaimed! She pulled back some of the leaves uncovering the full width of the path next to the day lilies.  When she saw the pattern of the brick, the width and length of the path she exclaimed “This is beautiful! You can’t take this out!  By this time I had finished picking up the leaves with the lawn mower and joined her in the rose garden.  “You put too much work in this to just take it out.”  As Cheryl continued to uncover the paths and look at the brick work in the garden, I could no longer hold back my tears. I had tried to remain detached from the situation and face the practicality of removing the rose/peony garden. I had told Cheryl some of the story behind the rose garden but not the whole story.  She suggested that we finish pulling the remaining weeds from the garden and clean out the leaves.  She also stated “You just can’t take this garden out, it is too special”.  We began removing the rest of the leaves from the rose garden, and tearfully told Cheryl the rest of the story.

The Anniversary Rose Garden

Bill and I always had a project in progress.  It didn’t matter if it was inside or outside; we were always working on something.  Nearly our whole married life I had wanted to have a rose garden.  There was an area in our yard that seemed to be a great spot to have a rose garden.  It had a good bit of sun at the time and I came up with a plan for a half circle rose garden.  My sweet husband agreed to do this for our wedding anniversary.  We planned our rose garden during the winter months.  For Christmas Bill gave me a special stone to be placed in the center path of the rose garden.  It was a glass cardinal set in concrete.  Our half circle would be divided into three sections and would have brick paths dividing each section; a brick path stretching across the top of the garden and a brick path bordering the outside of the garden.  At the beginning of each brick path coming into the garden we would place an arbor with climbing roses. This meant that there would be 4 rose arbors. Bill was so indulgent of my planning for this anniversary garden.  I carefully choose all of the roses that would be in the rose garden.  I researched for hours at a time finding the most fragrant and colorful varieties I could find.  There was enough space in the garden to have 4 rose bushes in each triangle.  Instead of having 4 rose bushes in each triangle I read that peonies grow very well with roses.  So I planned to place 3 rose bushes and one peony in each triangle.  Around the border of the rose garden we put planting beds.  This gave us a place to put the rose arbors.  In the planting beds we transplanted day lilies from another area of the yard.  In the center of each of these planting beds we placed one peony.  One of the peonies came from my childhood home.

Bill’s lung function had declined to the point that he could not do active things without having to use supplemental oxygen.  Each time we worked on the rose garden he would put his portable oxygen tank in an old denim backpack, turn it up high enough so he would not get short of breath moving around and he would get to work.  When he ran out of oxygen, he would fill up the tank and get back to work. Sometimes it would be very hot outside.  This would cause the portable oxygen tank to freeze up.  Whenever this happened he would have to stop working until the tank thawed.  We also had a young man helping us move and lay the brick.  The rose garden was on a slope which made planning for the brick a bit more complicated.  Bill studied the amount of slope and carefully planned how much brick we needed and how the bricks would be laid.  He planned every part of it, implementing my design.  Once we finished putting in the brick paths and planted the day lilies, we were finally able to plant the roses.  Then we started working on the arbors.

For the rose arbors, we looked online for patterns to build rose arbors.  Bill reviewed and researched many different designs and then designed the arbors for our rose garden.  He drew the arbors on graph paper so we would have a plan to follow. We then built the arbors together and I did the priming and painting.  Once the arbors were finished, we carefully moved them to the backyard where we dug holes for each arbor and set them in place in the ground. To make sure the garden had enough water, we had a drip irrigation system added.  Every rose was as fragrant as I had hoped and dreamed they would be.

So, I guess the rose garden stays. Cheryl told me that she would come over each year and help me clear the leaves and weeds from the garden.  Now we will be putting back all the brick that has been removed and restoring the garden to what it once was. One of the arbors has been destroyed this spring.  A tree or large limb fell on it.  I went out in the yard one day and there was the arbor – in pieces on the ground.  Whatever had hit it had been removed, leaving only the pieces of my heart.