Dunbar Memorial Garden

Most of the "sad moms" I've met can attest to how completely obsessed we now become over the most minor things. Sometimes I think it's a synaptic package in our ever-altered brains that manages to enable us to live in this surreality.

At the expense of the garden, I've spent my early summer eliminating the material goods I've collected and then painting the back porch. On both of these, I relentlessly obsessed. So when Jesse's dad announced that we were doing no new projects at the Dunbar Garden until we got the weeds under control well - OCD, here I am.

Twice yesterday, twice today I took mah bukket and my sad back and logged I dare say 15 hours. The mulch pile has dwindled substantially and the weeds are back at manageable. In the process, I visited with the ground hogs (they run, I chatter), I cried at the beautiful gold finches (who literally perched inches from my face) and I hovered under the cover of false blue indigo, sawtooth sunflowers and the gorgeous cranberry viburnum (pic embedded) to sneak a smoke and talk to Hannah (I buried a butt under a rock and wished I could hear her laughing at me). Both days I've seen great blue herons, gold finches, swallows and yesterday saw a bird I can't identify but it had a gorgeous red head and lighted in the bur oak. It was the size of a gold finch.

Today I noticed the yellowing grass which meant of course that ground maintenance is spraying their herbicide again and every time I see the signs I just cross my fingers they won't get too near the garden. The little "buttefly puddling area" is toast - they went around it in a wide path of spray so I doubt we'll be seeing any action there for awhile. I wish our school system would invest in some good mulch and a little common sense and courtesy to the environment in which our children study and play and quit using crap that keeps butterflies away. I'm going to write a petition and ask the students of Dunbar to sign it then send it to our board of education and at least ask that in our native garden habitat, in the sacred space that is our remembrance of Josh, Jesse and Hannah, that they just gtfo and let it be a chemical-free-zone.

Jesse's dad and I have no vested interest in the future of this environment EXCEPT that we have found a beautiful family in those who have gathered and will gather to work at the garden. We want the young men and women who collect around the brightly painted picnic tables to eat lunch, who saunter through the garden, who sit on Richard's benches, even who stand on top of the straw bale benches to do so without breathing toxins. Maybe we can. We will try.

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