"I am not a weed!" Cried Alice. Well, I am. Welcome, ninja gardeners, lost souls, fans of moss and rot.

Sunny Dawn Simms, Circa 1955

When my mom, Sunny, died suddenly last March she left a huge hole in our family. You might say she left us in shadow. I didn't know quite what to do with myself. My mom believed every choice I made was right, each decision the wisest, and most astounding solution. To Sunny, my every page, poem, or quip was the deepest, well spoken philosophy.  I depended more than I realized on that buoyant encouragement, and now, I have to access what she planted from within my own cluttered mind. It's not always a walk in the park in there. At any rate, it's a busy, busy place in terrific need of an engrossing project. So I decided to build a memorial garden. The guff!! Teach me, learn something, laugh at it, relate to it, use it.

Alex and Gramma Sunny June, 2012

Mel & Me with Donald, circa 1973

I moved from Disneyland to Richmond, Virginia 14 years ago this fall. I miss bouldering in Joshua Tree, 75 degree Februarys, vast redwoods and sequoias and the timpani thump of boots on mulch a thousand years thick. I miss making Las Vegas in under 3 hours, lemon trees, sunsets crimson with L.A. haze, walking across the Mexican border with nothing but a simple ID and 20 bucks, returning with amazing stained glass and hand made pottery.

It hasn't been an easy transition. We live in a flat, wooded community south of the city and the leaves are insidious. Yeah, they're pretty when they first fall, so you think about Charlie Brown pile jumping and musical underfoot crunching. Why not just leave them there? At first I assumed they'd just blow away.  Well, they don't. They dump from the trees, soak up rain, get really ugly, very heavy, and kill everything underneath.  I saw more leaves on the ground in one month than I'd seen up in trees in all my years put together. Daunted, and rather insulted, I just left them there to rot for three years. It turns out they start to stink; you began to experience neighbor-glare and mosquitos breed like....yeah.  Finally I realized I had to make them go away with a tool.  I bought a rake, (a long, wooden-handled fork-thing) and worked for weeks clearing it all away. I was so proud! The ground was fresh and smooth! I'll be damned if it didn't happen again just a few months later.

And, it's not just leaves. Our home, as most of our neighbors', exists in perpetual dappled shade. Ours boasts nearly total shade all day (we're having to replace the roof from mildew). All the sun-loving perennials I'd known in California, beds of petunias and impatiens, walls of bougainvillea, scads of giant pepper-scented geraniums and Jurassic begonias that bloomed like mad all year suddenly appeared here in Zone 7 as "full sun annuals."  I hate spending money on annuals, even if I had the sun for them. We also have seriously dense clay just inches below our topsoil. (In fact, I'm pretty sure this climate killed 3 sets of colonists, but of course it wasn't just the leaf clutter and clay.)  I tried to plant; grass was a total no-go. Listen, digging is really hard work, and everything I planted died. I let our entire yard disintegrate into a few hostas, azaleas, and...well, I guess that's about all I had for a while...and miles- deep rotting leaf-matter steadily encroached even those half-attempts at greening up the place.

I started out with a space very much like this one:

 We grabbed an unused circular area  approximately ten feet across. There was a 7 year buildup of leaf litter between 2 large sweetgums, but underneath lay a couple of mature boxwoods, a few established azaleas, and a pretty dogwood tree, all struggling for light and air. I am always working with a limited budget, and I'll admit I (and Mel) went a bit overboard at first, but it turns out that suburban RVA offered me a few cool freebies I'd never have found in the desert: a plethora of flowering natives, (we mostly call them weeds) and acres of wild moss living unappreciated and often destroyed by spoiled run-off and mulch-collecting areas around my neighborhood. And the rot, the decay, the trunks and roots turning to soil...lovely, soft death slowed by drying... offers changing sculptural elements like sandstone cliffs. 

And here I am now.

We'll talk about the border, propagation, ornament, composting, and ninja gardening...Creeping Jenny rocks!!

So when I say I built a garden, I mean I changed everything and grew a new me, too. Its significance has spread well beyond a nice place to sit. I've come to equate our suburban 1/4 acre with a proper attitude towards life, I wonder at its brevity, reluctantly accept  its apathy, and enjoy the benefits of seeing a weed as a flower. My gardens are spaces of order, fantasy, and serenity that I create and maintain safe from the inevitable chaos and constant disruption and encroachment of the rest of the world, and just like the wild area of my yard, that world becomes more beautiful and tolerable the less I struggle to control it.  

Bella, Sunny, Alex, and Papa Pete, 2011

Before we begin, I need to thank my family for their unfailing love, encouragement, and tolerance. My steady, adorable husband, Carlos, is the love of my life. My gentle, hilarious sister, Mel and her awesome-cool husband, Peter, foot most of the considerable bills for plants and furnishings and there's no one I'd rather visit.  My beautiful, witty, and gifted teenage son, Alex, keeps me current in music and film, and allows me almost complete access to his fascinating life. My courageous brother, Dave, best dad in the world, annoyingly keeps me grounded, the company of Bella wards off squirrels and monsters and makes friends for us on the trail, while my tough old Dad tells his weird, unbelievable stories, and holds steadily on in the shade.