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The ghosts in my garden keep on giving, year after year
By Kristin van Ogtrop
May 28, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EDT
(Lynn Scurfield for The Washington Post)
Kristin van Ogtrop is the author of "Did I Say That Out Loud: Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them."
An invasive ground cover is taking over the pachysandra bed in my front yard at a remarkable rate. According to a plant identifier app, it's glechoma hederacea: ground ivy. I don't know how it got there, and I don't hate it. A member of the mint family, it is small and beautiful, with delicate purple flowers; apparently you can steep it in hot water to make tea. But I am worried about what it means for my relationship with Aunt Marca.
I am an average gardener, passionate but feckless. I have enough sense not to hedge-clipper my azaleas into giant, round, Volkswagen Beetle-sized blobs, but not enough expertise to prune my flowering quince without first watching a YouTube tutorial. My sisters and I find it funny that the chore we most hated growing up — weeding the garden — has become a favorite way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Love of gardening was passed down from our mother to us, gradually but persistently, like ground ivy overtaking pachysandra.
My husband and I bought our house 19 years ago from a woman named Valerie who didn't seem to care much for gardening; instead, she hired a landscape designer who later informed me that Valerie loved "romantic flowers." Though I still don't know what that means, exactly, I think of — and silently thank — romantic Valerie every year as the lavender lilacs and pink peonies compete for best in show in my suburban backyard.
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After I took over Valerie's garden, I started keeping track of things in a small spiral-bound notebook. Each time I buy a plant, I tape the plastic identifying tag that comes with it onto a page, noting when I planted the item and where. Almost two decades later, the book is nearly full. But it doesn't tell the whole story. The plants that mean the most to me didn't come with tags; they arrived in yogurt containers and plastic bags and cardboard boxes.
My mother started it. Soon after we bought the house, she began showing up for every visit with plants in the back of her car. They were things she had dug up from her own beds so I could plant them in mine. She was helping us save money, yes, but the plant sharing was an expression of love, an unspoken lesson in perennial connection. Each spring, when plants poke through the soil, I am reminded of my childhood home, which she sold years ago. It's as though my mother is by my side as I walk around my garden and admire her transplants: yellow day lily, celadon poppy, mayapple, ostrich ferns, the wild blue phlox that smells like baby powder and looks nice in a vase on the dining room table.
My garden is filled with the presence of other generous gardeners who have given me plants over the years. They are gifts that keep on giving, season after season: epimedium from Jim when he knew I needed a groundcover next to the patio; yellow tree peonies and purple bearded irises from Barbara before she moved away. Evening primrose from my former next-door neighbor, Mrs. Reynolds; rose lily of the valley, that rare beauty, from Uncle Petz in Ohio.
And, of course, the four flats of pachysandra from Aunt Marca, which we planted together, on a surprisingly hot spring weekend, laughing and sweating, hands and knees brown with dirt.
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Fans of formal gardens would frown upon the mishmash of colors and shapes that dot my yard. But I don't care. Despite my deficiencies as a gardener — columbine in various shades keeps popping up for reasons I can't fathom; bleeding heart fails no matter what I do — I've been able to keep alive the plants that mean the most, these living connections to people and times that feel important to me.
Until the glechoma hederacea started taking over Aunt Marca's pachysandra bed.
A woman with no children of her own, Marca was like a second mother to me, with a terrific sense of humor and an ability to find the best in people and things. She loved wordplay, and so would have made something of the fact that glechoma rhymes with glioblastoma, which is the form of brain cancer that, after a long struggle, ended her life last fall. A physician once told me that glioblastoma is like a web that can thread its way through the folds of the brain before you know it is there. Like ground ivy, it takes over — and obliterates.
Gardening is serendipitous, especially in a yard such as mine, full of donated plants and a haphazard design scheme. I wonder: What would Marca have done with the ground ivy? I'm not sure. She could find beauty in unexpected places. At least for this year, I might just leave it alone.
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