Dunbar Memorial Garden

During the summer and fall of 2007 we averaged 30 to 40 people each Saturday - a feat I doubt I will ever stop expounding on. As we moved into the first Spring date of 2008 our numbers dropped but at each work session there would randomly be at least a dozen people there.
After we lost Hannah on May 6, 2008 - I know it was harder for many of our regulars to return.
I know it was for me.

I mentioned earlier that the summer of 2007 in Lexington was a total drought and while I knew we had done everything we could to get the soil prepped - I worried. By the time we started planting in the fall, we were all amazed at how easy it was to dig in the soil. I remember one little girl - one of Athena's younger sisters - saying "How come all these plants we are planting just look like sticks?"

She couldn't imagine their future and quite frankly the rest of us were kind of yeah, really.

We started pulling weeds early in the Spring of 2008. Onion grass, oh my. Dandelions, oh my. But as we tried to convince each other, our natives would outshine them soon enough. More than weeds began to emerge but it was still pretty colorless in early April of 2008.

As we approached the first year after Jesse's accident I had no idea what to do or where to be but someone, I just don't know who, called and said I should come to the garden. The 19th, a Saturday, a few of Jesse's friends showed up at the house and took me there. As we walked around the corner I was astounded. Several beautiful pots filled with yellow flowers dangled from the limbs of the Bur Oak we had planted. Scattered around the garden were other pots filled with colors - annuals. There was our precious Hannah, digging in the dirt - planting yellow pansies around the tree. There was Aaron, and April, Andi and JA. We hugged and kissed and cried and laughed and Hannah presented me with a beautiful clay pot she had made - with a glaze half yellow and half blue/purple. She'd filled it with yellow pansies.
When I hear adults prattle on negatively about "the youth nowadays" I close my eyes and remember what the youth nowadays do so much better than so many of their adult counterparts. People are freaked about death - especially the death of a young person. But these kids, these "youth" intuitively knew what I needed - simply, that Jesse was remembered on the day my life changed forever. They did it well.
We all went to Fazoli's (Jesse loved pasta) and we sat and ate and talked and remembered.
There were many who remembered Jesse that day and many who were not at the garden that Saturday but who worked the night before. I don't know who they all were - but I love every one of them with all my heart for doing it.

Now, it's getting dark on the back porch so to get us closer. During the Spring and Summer of 2008, we dug a lot of weeds. We mulched and mulched and mulched faster. The beautiful red bee balm got a sweet case of powdery mildew and after researching "non chemical treatments" we just decided to prune it down and clean our tools and see what happened. What happened is it rebloomed. Then we found out bee balm has this tendency - so this year we will be prepared.

We had a female kildeer who decided to make a nest among the emerging swamp milk weed. She left three eggs that we checked on as much as we could. Stick flags were placed around her ground nest in the hopes no one would step on them. We learned that both the male and female tend to the nest and we also learned (with some help from our Florida-bred friend Aida Fine) that if we moved close to the nest, they would distract us by pretending to be wounded, dragging a wing along the ground as if to say "come get me instead."

Then there were the butterflies. Monarchs, fritallaries, buckeyes, sulphurs. An American snout, swallowtails and hairstreaks. Joyce became as fascinated as I was just trying to catch a picture and "look it up." This year, we are going to buy the field guide instead of renewing the same field guide over and over again from the Lexington Public Library. The birds were there too - but harder to catch in action. We have a particular affinity to gold finches (yellow is the color associated to Jesse), buzzards (Tevis' bird), great blue herons (for Aida's son David) and hawks (Hannah's dad said something one day and now when I see one it is hers).

There were a lot of weird bugs too - aphids love swamp milkweed but so do ladybugs and then we spotted the swamp milkweed bug - orange and laying eggs like crazy. Many, many hours were spent studying the ecology of the garden over the summer. It was absolutely crazy. For the record, we had as big a collection of bees as I have ever seen. They were HUGE but apparently were only interested in one smashing young man named Austin, who while incredibly good-looking, must have worn the perfect complimentary cologne when he came to the garden. These bees are now known as "Austin's stalker bees" - they didn't sting - they just liked his essence!

Now, a word about Sarah. Sarah was a long long time friend of Hannah's, they grew up together and she knew how important the garden was to Hannah. Without a doubt Sarah has been the steadfast presence that Hannah had been. Without a doubt, she stepped up and into a lot of lives of people who needed her badly - and she is one of those absolutely perfect "youth" that every parent dreams of - and yeah, we rib her about that relentlessly.

As the summer came to a close we decided to go ahead and start our straw bale construction benches. We also replaced the tops on several of our picnic tables - our good friend Tyler can attest to just how difficult it is to remove old bolts from old wood on very old picnic tables. We created a purple table for Hannah. Sarah created beautiful stencils and Hannah's dad helped us paint them. As did Lucy and Rebecca and Ariel in from Tulane.

As Linda Noffsinger so eloquently put it so very very many months ago - this is our "labor of love" - it won't ever stop. At least as long as those of us who won't forget, remember.

There was a summer day, sitting alone at the garden just pulling weeds, watching for gold finches, listening to the air move that I looked around and said "Hannah, you would love this" and I felt something leaning on me even though there wasn't anything tangible to attribute that to, but I want to believe it was her. Somehow, crossing whatever line there might be in the universe. We planted a "callicarpa" for Hannah, a "beautyberry" because that's what she is and it bloomed the prettiest purple ever.

At the garden last week - every day I checked on Hannah's beautyberry with the beautiful wooden star Sarah painted in front of it. There is an indescribable feeling I get every time I go to the garden. That it will be gone or the flowers will not flower. Mostly, I obsess about the beautyberry. Finally, I spied green buds emerging on it. Finally.

Finally.
<3