Wall - Mister Owitas guide to gardening: how I learned the unexpected joy of a green thumb and an open heart

I never liked getting my hands dirty. This was one reason that our yard looked so sad. But there were other reasons, toobigger reasons that were much harder to confront than brittle grass and overgrown bushes.

Its not that I was ignoring our yard on purpose. Every once in a while we hired someone to plant or trim something. My husband, Dick, did his share of mowing. But he never did it happily. We werent yard-proud the way some people are. And when the kids were young, there was always something more important than yard work to do. Going to one of their games or events, running them to school and lessons, or shepherding them to doctor appointmentsall those things ranked way higher on our list of priorities.

Once the kids were grown, I still managed to find more important things to do. I much preferred reading a book, or watching a documentary on TV, or going out to dinner with Dick to pruning a bush. I loved our house, and I enjoyed decorating the inside, but there was never anything about maintaining a house that I enjoyed. In some couples, one spouse makes up for the flaws of the other. But for better or worse, my beloved spouse and I shared the same flaw in this department. Neither of us was handy. We ignored our loose front doorknob until it went from shaky to wobbly and finally fell off when we tried to exit the house one evening. Dick watched it fall to the hardwood floor with a thunk, then looked at me and said, Time to move.

I dont think we were entirely wrong in holding on to our low-intervention policy. Once when Dick and I were walking through town, we were stopped by a group of young women who were celebrating their friends upcoming wedding. They were asking all the obviously married women they saw for advice for the new bride. I said, You know, my life really began when I got married. They all laughed and told me that I was the first woman theyd stopped who hadnt said, Dont do it. Then I told them that my best advice was not to approach marriage like it was an arrangement between property co-owners. It seemed to me like too many people spent too much of their time taking care of their houses instead of enjoying their spouses. And where was the fun in that?

I liked to think that it was a valid philosophy of life that kept me out of the yard, and not just sheer laziness. In any case, to me, even worse than digging out a screwdriver to fix our doorknob would have been digging in the dirt. I had zero interest in that area of our property. I dont think I even really looked at it.

Then one day, I noticed that our yard had slowly, gradually transformed itself. No longer could I flatter myself that it was natural and unmanicured because that was the aesthetic I preferred. No, our yard wasnt just rough around the edges. It had become a genuine embarrassment. Maybe we didnt have the worst yard on the block. But we were close to it, and one good mowing in our most neglectful neighbors yard might easily nudge us into the bottom slot. And that just wouldnt do. I might never have been yard-proud, but I did not want to be yard-ashamed.

So I decided that it was time to do something about this situation. It was a fixable problem, after alland how nice it was to have one of those.

When I passed our neighbor Sarahs yard I couldnt help seeing what an amazing job her gardener had done. Sarah was a master gardener herself, but recently shed gotten busy at work and had brought in some help. And even I could tell that a true artist was at work there. Maybe I could hire her gardener, I thought to myself. And then our yard would be as beautiful as hers. It would be healthy and lush and well taken care ofjust the way I wanted to be myself.

A few days later I saw the mystery gardener in the fleshthe artist whod wrought such a miracle transformation in my neighbors yardand it was kismet. Love at first sight. No, it wasnt the kind of love that causes you to question your marriage. It was the kind of love that causes you to question yourself. The kind that makes you want to be a better person. The kind that changes your life completely.

His name was Giles Owita, and from the start, something flowered between us and around us. First he became my gardener, and then he became my friend. And while I knew from the moment I met him that he was someone specialtruly, I didnt know the half of it.