It’s been about a month since my relationship of two-and-a-half-years ended. When a relationship dies and the people involved were trying their best to stay on track, a lot of plans get upended. In the rubble was a summer vacation that had to be re-arranged, a lease no longer getting renewed — things that could no longer be taken for granted. This season of life has taught me a lot about the levity of intimacy built over time and with good, good intentions. While that does not erase the hurt nor the pain, it leaves me with few, tiny, and insignificant regrets that will likely fall away with time.
A few weeks ago I walked out onto our patio and took a look at my beloved flower bed. In the early Spring, I had planted a mix of local wildflower seeds, along with my favorite marigolds, hoping for the best. The wildflowers sprung up so fast and so tenaciously in spite of the one or two cold spikes we had in April. I stood there and admired the greenery that they had produced and felt a pang of grief crash over me: by the end of this summer I will have to say goodbye to them. I have no idea if the property managers will leave them be or not, or if the next tenants will want to inherit them. While they are not the most luxurious garden in my neighborhood, they’re mine, and I earnestly care for them.
I contemplated digging my flower bed up and putting them in pots to go with me when I leave. They would likely have another yard, and plenty of critters to enjoy them. In return I would not lose out on my hard work or risk it being destroyed.
Last year was my first full planting season in this home. I started out with marigolds, Black-Eyed Susans, and lavender. While the lavender never got going, the marigolds grew enormous. I would clip marigolds from the patio and put them on my altar or in a small glass jar to have on my office desk. They were such rich, soft, colorful little things, and their stems were surprisingly robust. So much so that they stuck it out well into late-Fall before perishing for good. The susans took more time. Eventually they did catch up, though, just in time to blossom about a dozen flowers before the season’s end.
As my ex-partner and I go through the process of dividing up belongings, labeling what we want to bring with us and what to leave behind or sell, I find myself in an incredibly precarious place of both freedom and fragility. Perhaps my body felt this coming longer than I mentally understood. That said, love is about intertwining. It is about building something, somewhere intimacy can have its hearth. Over the last two years we have brought home art, books, animals, pillows, blankets, love gifts, flowers, tote bags filled to the brim with farmer’s market goods. I was eager to see how we would change around these objects, these artifacts of us. Well, well.
It was through this process that I realized the flowers I’ve grown belong here. I couldn’t bear trying to uproot my fully-grown flower beds to somewhere they’ve never been and risk their survival. I could ruin the year they would have to grow, blossom, and bask in the sunshine. The time they have now may be short in my view, but it is everything to them. I planted them so that they would flourish where they are.
I hope that when the time comes for people to make this their new home, to do all the things I got to do two years ago, that they see the value in these little rough-and-ready wildflowers. I will miss them. I may not be a houseplant person, but I am a flower garden gxrl — like my mother and grandmothers before me. Flowers greet me in the morning as I sip on my coffee. They give me something to hope for, something to feel proud of that is not tied to beauty, money, or professional success. They are some of my most precious harvest.
And now, like so much I walked into this year with, I will have to let them go.
Such a lovely, tender, thoughtful piece. Thank you for sharing.