The Neighbourly Thing
We've lived next door to each other for the past fifteen years. They've seen us grow old, living next to them, and we've witnessed the miracle of their children becoming teen-agers. Truly amazing. We live next to each other amicably, never failing to greet one another in amiable familiarity, bringing one another up to date on what's been happening in each of our lives - to a point. We are, after all, of vastly different generations, backgrounds, values (to a very certain extent) and lifestyle orientations.But friendly next-door neighbours we most certainly are. She has a sunny, happy temperament, a truly effervescent personality with a smile bright and wide enough to include anyone nearby. One who truly needs the presence of other people surrounding her to bring her nature out, to make her feel alive and valued as a person. He is withdrawn, reserved by nature, ungenerous in character and more suited to the life of a hermit than that of a sociable family man. But he has a good heart, and although reserved is capable of behaving in a friendly and socially responsible manner when the occasion demands.
Their personalities are so clearly oppositional one wonders how the twain could ever meet in any kind of agreement, but obviously they did, they have, and they do. One or the other makes concessions, perhaps after great discussion on the matter, perhaps merely to maintain a sense of married amicability - for the sake of the children, that tired old mantra trotted out yet again. He is the picture of an old-fashioned European paterfamilias, she more akin to a light-hearted free spirit reflecting current ideals of motherhood in the West.
They are an attractive pair, both large-boned but nicely toned and they have produced two children, a girl now approaching graceful womanhood, and a boy verging on teen-hood. Despite their mother's outgoing nature the children have inherited their father's distant social approach. Because of their mother's never-ending efforts verging on the prodigious they will become well-adjusted, responsible adults in time. The mother has always been a stay-at-home mom, something both agreed upon; he in keeping with his perhaps outdated outlook on family structure, she because she genuinely saw her calling as being thus, utterly responsive to her children's needs.
It's been our practise when either of us goes away on vacation to ask the other to keep on eye on the owner-absent property, to remove evidence of the owner's absence, such as advertising flyers left in the mailbox, and to take rudimentary care of the gardens, to ensure that planters and beds don't dry out completely in summer heat. I have been grateful to her for her conscientious care in that regard, in our occasional absences, and have been more than willing to return the neighbourly favour.
I've had occasions to do likewise for many other neighbours during the lifelong course of our own various home ownerships. The current arrangement is simply yet another neighbourly courtesy long practised and appreciated. Besides which, I've always taken great pleasure in perusing others' gardening techniques and their generally pleasing results. I take pleasure in viewing not only our own gardens but those of others. And this particular neighbour's back garden has always been a source of particular delight - to her, above all, and to me by default of occasional caretaker.
She is a creative person with a talented aesthetic, and she has worked long, enthusiastic hours in creating a restful, beautiful space in the back of her home. She planted a plum tree, a Norway red maple, a Spruce, all grown now to shadeful maturity, and underplanted with various shrubs and colourful perennials. Her garden had the requisite shade for shade-loving plants, and more than adequate sun for its areas of sun-loving flowers and a good-sized vegetable plot. She imaginatively and successfully hung Victorian-inspired birdcages from tree branches, and placed mirrors in the most ingenious way to create a wonderful illusion of an expanded garden.
Things are not always as they seem. Although we occasionally invite one another to cross our respective property lines to share a momentary delight in a newly-discovered floral gem, it isn't quite the same thing as taking one's time to drink in the mystery and beauty of an unfamiliar garden at one's will. So when I ventured into my neighbour's garden behind her house a day following her departurethis summer I was shocked to discover a garden completely unfamiliar to me.
The once-charming garden had descended into the chaos of neglect; anarchy rules. The beds were unkempt, unloved, and weed-littered. Each clump of flowering perennials struggling to assert its place in the aggregate. Small containers of wan flowers hung listlessly in their spent soil. An overabundance of garden trinkets, large and small, hung forlornly from tree branches, and littered the now-overgrown spaces in the beds and borders. The grass was being consumed by an embarrassment of flowering clover, but much worse, Ajuga was thriving, driving out the grass, even in the middle of the lawn.
Sloppy bushes were crying helplessly for judicious trimming. Opening the gate leading to the back garden one encounters directly and must somehow pass through an arbour impossibly, thickly covered with Morning Glory vines, vines grasping out to clasp the unwary passer-through. At the back of the yard the vegetable patch looked as though the plants were in their last, gasping throes of life. She had told me, regretfully, that because neighbourhood cats were depositing in the soil of her garden she had planted her tomatoes in plastic pails, and the result had been less than illustrious. Now I could see for myself.
A once-loved garden, obviously given a spring-time boost with the planting of annuals here and there, sitting in dismal decay and neglect. The effect was sobering, off-putting and more than a little sad. For it isn't just the condition of a once-treasured garden, repository of gardening pleasures, ambitions, and pride. There is obviously much more here, for the garden is but a symptom.
What has happened to the light of garden happiness which always impelled my neighbour to bury herself in the trials and pleasures of gardening? What is what I have observed a symptom of?
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 30, 2006
<< Home