The Changing Yard
by Ruth Tindugan
Jane, neighbor of twenty five years moved to her son’s family in Hawaii
She’s in her eighties. I didn’t know she had moved, until I saw a moving van in her yard.
I went over and met her son. He said they already sold her house to an investor. Soon after a contractor arrived with his workers, and the renovation begun.
Jane’s front yard (picture above) had roses, ornamental grass, small trees, and shrubs .A circle of river rocks run in the middle of it.I asked Luis, the foreman, if the front yard will stay.He said the investor ordered for a “desert landscape”. I asked for the roses, and the river rocks.
A few days later, I arrived home, Jane’s shrubs and small trees were gone, and six roses stumps were at my driveway.
I paid one of the guys to dig up holes for the roses at the farthest corner of my backyard. I planted a small conifer on that spot twenty years ago. It had grown so high, its nettles covered the ground, and the wide, heavy, branches obscured the sun.
One single tree can feel like a forest.
I wanted a clearing and had it cut down last Fall. I imagined roses in its place.
I had misgivings if Jane’s roses (stumps) would thrive. But I did my due diligence by watering them every other day.
I’ll give it a year.
When I first moved into this neighborhood, every yard was green. Not lawn but shrubs.
The past three years, the front landscaping has changed into a desert semblance.
No grass, but soil looking like sand. Partly gravel and small stones.
The desert look is in. Cactus here in there. Spaced.
It is beautiful in its sparseness. Open. No need of water.
After my divorce, I’ve had the front lawn covered with bark.
The lawnmower was picked up by a “dump” collector of appliances and gadgets for a fee.
But Jane and I shared a hedge of green. The contractors left it.
The evergreen shrub that line the side of the road in my front yard had grown.
Once a car swerved into it had it not been for this hedge.
I’v watched the from yard now has a row of desert landscape.
No need of watering drought tolerant cactus and other drought tolerant plants.
People dont have time to garden any more.
The backyard is minimal concrete within barbecue.
No more areas for vegetable planting.
I can agree to that because I have three boxes in my backyard but planting vegetables in spring cost water, and the raccoons and squirrel, and worse- the ugliest of all oppusom
are thieves.
One day, while working in my earlier blog, as I labor I realizes a nihilistic thought.
Whats the point of all these time and effort in planting and tending, season in and out.
One day, I will be gone. My house will be sold. Implanted a pomegranate, peach, and plum in the middle of the side yard. Maybe they will be uprooted.
The orange and grapefruit will probably remain.
Everything that grew in Jane’s property were wiped out in three weeks.
So I thought what the point. Nihilistic.
Then I realized, it is my NOW that matters. I love the musty smell of earth. I feel victorious when I am able to pull a stubborn weed to its roots. I like to wonder and wander in the spaces between the bougainvillea’s in pots in a row.
Its a joy to see the blue flowers outside my bedroom window.
So I will keep my yard. Tend to it.
One day I will be gone. And someday someone will uproot what I have planted.