A Nice Story

In over ten months since we left our house back east, I have rarely thought about my former gardens, first because there is so much new and exciting to experience here, and second, because I am well aware my gardens there are no longer mine. I don't want to know. Not mine.

The view from our driveway in Connecticut in 2017.

A few months ago the woman who bought our house in Connecticut sent me an e-mail with some questions about roof maintenance, and she added this nice story:

I want to share a garden story with you, since it's clear that you put much time and love into creating it. We decided last fall that a few items needed to be removed, and one of them was the blue spruce at the top of the driveway. It was growing into the paperbark maple (which we love!) and, in consultation with Bartlett, we decided to let it go. Last fall, we befriended a young family who had just moved to Hartford from Egypt so that the father could pursue his PhD at Hartford Seminary. So when we cut the tree, we took it over to their home and set it up, with a stand, lights and ornaments, as their very first-ever live Christmas tree! The couple and their two young daughters loved it! I thought you'd appreciate knowing that it served to bring some joy to this immigrant family for the holiday.

How lovely to hear what happened with one of my plantings, a blue spruce that I knew before we moved was getting too big for its space. If it had to go, it had a very nice ending.

In 2017 this blue spruce was too big next to a paperbark maple.

I thought it was a dwarf blue spruce when I first planted the little ball, but in less than a decade it grew to be a big upright evergreen, taller than I ever expected.

The blue spruce looked like this seven years before, in 2010.
I thought it would remain a rounded dwarf bun.

This spring, as my new gardens struggle to establish in a dry Santa Fe courtyard, there are times when I am overcome by an intense longing to see what all my gardens in Connecticut look like now.  Sometimes I ache to know, to see pictures, to follow what is happening with favorite plants.

Other times, I'm just fine not knowing. I don't want to have a relationship with the new owners -- we're friendly and have occasionally communicated back and forth and they are very nice people -- but I do not want to get pulled back into an emotional connection with what I left.

It's all theirs now, not mine. They took down a tree I planted and they will do far more to their garden (not mine anymore) in the future and I won't know and don't need to.

But it was delightful to hear the nice story of what happened to the blue spruce at the holidays. I have to admit I'm curious about her comment that they had to "take out a few things", only one of which was this tree. What else did they chop . . . . .

              . . . . Wait. Stop. It's not my garden any more.