I Didn’t Plant Flowers This Year

posted on : August 15, 2014 posted by : reccewife 1 Comment

I didn’t plant flowers this year.

Usually, about May I start to get all anxious about flowers. The vain part of me wants to look like everyone else’s house, and so I head out and try and ‘start over’ with a garden, buy flowers and dirt and plant a bunch of things I don’t have the care or understanding to look after. I’ll plant some vegetables, I’ll spend money we don’t need to on baskets and potting soil and just like every year before it, I’ll put all this half-assed effort into making it work.

Part of the problem with my ill-advised and always mostly wasted money is that I never buy perennials.
A little bit because I don’t figure I’ll get to enjoy them all that much after we move. Selfishly I think “I won’t be here to see them year after year so why should I plant them?”
Mostly though, it’s because I lack basic faith in the plant growing process.
I am completely unconvinced that the plant that I plant, with my terrible gardening skills, the one that dies and disappears in the fall, will come back in the spring. I have a hard time believing that what I plant will return year after year, especially when the winters are harsh and the ice is thick and I don’t see the flowers for months and month.

So I buy annuals every year. And most die before their time because I have a black thumb that is only reflecting the rest of me that deep down knows it doesn’t like gardening, it just thinks it should do it, because that’s what you do.

I didn’t plant flowers this year.

And it ate at me a little, every time I’d drive up and see our yard looking a little bare. Or I’d look over at the immaculate yard of my retired neighbours and think what we must look like to have done so little with ours. My vanity would nag at me, convincing me that I should go out, buy more, add more, plant more.

I’m easily persuaded to superficial fixes to non-existant problems.

But I didn’t plant flowers.

This year we had decided to foster a child from Belarus as part of a Relief from Radiation program. This charity program sees children from impoverished and Chernobyl disaster radiation affected areas come to Canada for 5 weeks to allow their bodies and immune systems to heal.

So when May came I didn’t buy all the flowers. I never fruitlessly bought dirt and tried to make pretty things grow just so our neighbours would think we’re not slobs. I didn’t try like I do every year, to build some new and in the end, useless flower bed or pretty lanscaping piece. Short of filling the 2 buckets we already had with old dirt and mostly the flowers our kids brought home from school trips, I didn’t even try with our yard this year.

We knew there would be extra costs involved for our family in hosting our little girl. Clothing for her when she arrived since she came with very little. The costs of family trips so we could show her as much of the area as possible. Gas money to bring her to and from the town where he interpreter stayed about an hour away. Incidentals and such that would eat up that extra summer savings.

So I didn’t plant flowers.

Instead we went to Justice when she arrived and bought her a new wardrobe. We went to see the Buskers Festival on her 2nd day in town so I’m pretty sure she thinks Canada is made up mainly by circus performers. We went to Canada’s Wonderland and saw her ride her first roller coaster and slide her first water slide. We went to the Zoo where she ran from enclosure to enclosure calling “Keem! Keem!” to show me all the animals. We bought a pool membership and eventually saw her learn how to swim without water wings. We took her to Jiu Jitsu and went out for ice-cream afterwards more times than I’m sure was healthy. We sent her to Vacation Bible School, took her on runs with the dog and sat for hours watching her jump on the trampoline.

I didn’t plant flowers, but I sure watched more than a few unexpected things grow.

I watched my daughter share her room and her toys. I watched her slowly learn to keep Dasha included in all her activities, even when her friends were over.
I watched the kids start to choose movies for family pizza movie night based on what they thought would be easiest for a non-English speaking child to understand, instead of arguing over each other their own desires.
I watched my oldest son spend his reading time looking up Russian words to try speaking with her the next day.
I even watched Monster give her hugs before saying goodbye.

And when a military plane flew over our home and my army-brat kids looked up half amused and half bored, I watched their perspective on their own life change when they realized that Dasha looked at the plane with more apprehension than excitement.

This program may work differently for our family. While many host families will see the same child back for many years, if the army moves us away next summer we may never get the chance to see our Dasha again.

And yet, that didn’t mean I was afraid to love her with all we could and offer her all we were able.

We may never see the difference we made, but I have to trust that in a time when I watch the news helpless and paralyzed for lack of ability to do anything to alleviate the suffering I see, we made one difference. To one child who is now on her way back home with a body that’s a little healed, with a few more English words than she came with (most of which are *not* colourful) and what I hope are positive memories collected with the piece of our heart that she takes with her.

Because in an even bigger way, she made a difference to us.

I didn’t plant any flowers this year.

But I think I’ve finally learned the value in those perennials. Even if I never get to see them bloom.