Report From PIA – November 16
Does being a gardener mean you’re better able to accept change? Please, God, let it be true.
I spent the entire day with elderly neighbors, driving off-Cape to pick them up, then driving them back to the Cape to visit another assisted living facility, then returning them back across the bridge. And those of you who live on the Cape know what crossing the bridge is like in these days of one-lane repair work.
Here’s the gist of it: the assisted living place we visited today is much nicer than the facility where they live now, and the residents are treated with much more respect. And, saints be praised, it’s less expensive than their current retirement home. I’m talking about thirteen hundred dollars less per month. But by the end of the day, I knew that this elderly couple won’t make the move. Why? Because they can’t deal with change.
I get that it’s harder when a person is old. But I’m hoping that being intimately involved with the seasons and plants might make me a bit more adaptable when I’m elderly.
After spending the day with the back and forth, eating lunch with my neighbors who have no family to do this for them, and then coming back to Poison Ivy Acres, I needed even a small dose of the garden.
Even before looking at my email or sitting down to write my article for Prime Time…even before unloading the groceries I picked up on the way home, I grabbed a trowel and the two bags of bulbs that have been sitting in my garage, and headed out to the garden. It was getting dark, but the fifty starflowers (Ipheion uniflorum) got planted. Then I grabbed my camera and took a slow walk around the gardens.
When I’m old I don’t know if I’ll be any more able to change than my elderly neighbors are, but I hope that gardens always have the power to sooth me.
I finished planting my bulbs, went in to grab the camera and take a few quick shots as the sun set, and then I went in to unload the groceries and check email.
