#34 Love & Marriage, Lilacs & Redbuds

Our house project.  Oh, boy.  It's still in the good category.  BUT, it's still in the 98% finished and holding category. We're living in it.  But there are a lot of details that still need attention, as we also try to live our lives.  Those older people that tell you when you're young that timegoesbysomuchfastertheolderyouget! They're right.

I want to set aside the house project for a minute and share about life from a different perspective.

Matt and I were approached recently by a teen at our church and she asked if we would be willing to be interviewed.  She has an assignment to interview a Christian couple that has been married for more than 10 years (we're going on 16.).  Specifically, the project is called something along the lines of "The Vintage Christian Marriage."  Ahem...vintage.  Eep.  We said yes, of course.  We --well, maybe more I -- LOVE talking about marriage and parenting.

The house in Summer 2005 right after we moved in

This time last year

Marriage is an interesteing journey.  It's also in the good category. Really good.  We came to the conclusion, after filling out the written portion of our assignment, that marriage is fun.  There are peaks and valleys, oh we've had so many, but thus far we've had a lot of fun together.

Once upon a time, when there was 1 baby, and then 2, and then 3, and when they were all small, I was all-consumed with being a full-time stay-at-home-mom of 3 tiny people, I was utterly (say that like martha stewart "uhtterhly") oblivious to anything related to the outdoor part of our home.  I have always enjoyed and dabbled in interior decorating, so I paid attention to inside things because I like it to be fresh and pretty. I hung pictures, painted walls, rearranged furniture and had eyes for makin' the inside homey.  These are all things I did regularly while I was growing up. 

 

 

But outside?  It was a completely different story.  I had never, ever worked outside on landscaping.  When I walked out the front door, I did not even broaden my sights to extend beyond door-to-car, car-to-door.  Kid-in-car, kid-in-house. We played outside in the driveway a lot; but even then, I didn't even consider using actual outdoor chairs for about three years into parenting.  I used the 5 inch front step as a perch or used a neon green, low-ride, terry cloth beach chair that was a hand-me-down clearance find from my parents.  If a friend came over with kids, I got out the neon blue low-ride-terry-cloth-clearance-beach-chair.  Eventually, we used some folding chairs given to us, again, by my parents.

So, outside was absolutely not my forte.  Matt managed the yard 100% on his own.  He mowed, he did the weed-control, he trimmed and managed the landscaping that came with the house.  A couple years after we lived here, my aunt gave us some Redbud saplings and Matt planted them and tended to them. When landscaping and weeds got out of control (see all of these photos), Matt would weed whack it down.  He was solo on all decisions in the yard.  I was completely oblivious to anything outside of our four walls.   The kids and I either hung out in the driveway or on the play set in the back yard which was very close to the back patio.  The rear of our back yard felt like foreign territory on the very rare occasion I ventured way back there.

But, occasionally, I would be inspired while I was at the store.  One time, while meandering around Wal-Mart, I found 3-5 annuals, in the pot, mostly dead, on clearance.  So I bought them and stuck them in our front flower bed--- I planted a handful half-dead annuals in our front flower bed.  And then I never watered them or looked at them again.  They were whole-dead in a matter of days.  This became a habit.  I would purchase plants or seeds, but when I brought them home I left them around outside or in the garage, and never communicated to Matt about anything;  It wasn't even a matter of buying them and assuming he would plant them.  It was a matter of me never thinking about how these plants or seeds would get in the ground once I brought them home. I had zero long-term landscaping plan. I'm telling you, I was completely obliviously blind. 

Overgrown by the back garage door

Until one fateful day.

I made a decision.

The kids and I were shopping for groceries at Aldi.  They had the tiniest of tiny lilac bushes on sale.  Less than $5 for a lilac stick. It was about 8-10 inches tall, in a cardboard holder, with a root ball, for only a couple of dollars.  I like lilacs. And, since that was during our leanest financial years, I really liked the price.  Suddenly, my dream life included a lilac bush and I wanted that lilac bush to be somewhere in our yard.  So I bought it.  Without a plan.

I brought that little happy plant home, and stuck it in the garage.

Where it sat for many days.

And then an argument ensued.  I don't remember the details, but I don't believe the lilac plant even started the argument.  I believe the lilac plant came out in frustration as a byproduct of the argument. I might have been the first one to bring it up.  Maybe I accused Matt of not planting the lilac that I bought, or he might have brought it up first.  I do know that at one point he told me I needed to stop wasting money on plants if I didn't intend to plant them myself, because he didn't have time to plant plants that just showed up willy-nilly in the garage.

Giant front untouched flower bed, Matt working on one of a million outdoor projects.

How dare he.  I was so offended that he wouldn't even consider planting my plants.  I spent hours upon hours upon hours cooking and cleaning and tending to the kids. I couldn't even consider wandering outside to landscape. We didn't have a fence, so I would have to wait until 1 or 2 kids were sleeping and figure out how to entertain the other 1 or 2 who weren't sleeping to even be able to go outside and focus on something that was not directly related to entertaining or supervising the kids.  Since we were raising toddlers in the early 2000s, I didn't even have the luxury of a baby monitor that would reach outside very well.  I was very tethered to the house, and the possibility of doing yard work on a regular basis was nonexistent.

Furthermore, I explained that I didn't even know where to plant it or if there was anything special I needed to add to the hole if I did plant it.  To which Matt explained something along the lines of, "Jess.  You take a shovel, you dig a hole, you put the plant in the hole, and you water it!"

"Oh. Is that so?  I'm not an idiot!  Of course that's what you do! I know how to plant a plant."

"Then plant the plant!"

"Are you serious right now, you're going to make me plant that?  You won't even go outside and plant this lilac bush for me?"

"Nope, it can die for all I care. You can't keep wasting money on plants that eventually die in the garage!"

"FINE!"

I stomped to the garage, grabbed the shovel, grabbed my lilac stick, stormed out to the back yard with the most sour, most toxic attitude, probably muttering all kinds of hateful things under my breath, and dug a stupid hole in the stupid yard with the stupid shovel, and I could feel Matt's eyes on me from the kitchen window as I angrily put that stupid cheap puny Aldi lilac bush in the ground.



THERE.  I'll show you...tell me I don't know how to plant a plant...I'll buy ALL THE PLANTS AND I'LL PLANT THEM FOREVER* FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES.

So, now.  Mere inches from one of Matt's redbud trees, we enjoy an annual show of survival of the fittest.  Of all the places in the vastness of yard, when I stomped myself outside to that foreign territory all those years ago, I didn't even look around before I struck the ground with my shovel.  I planted my lilac bush within 3 feet of the trunk of one of the redbud trees Matt had been tending.  And they have grown side-by-side ever since.

We've watched them with a competitive eye to see which plant is better.  At one point I asked Matt if we should move one of them to a different location.  With a smirk on his face and a twinkle in his eye he said, "Absolutely not.  They're staying right there together. May the best man win."

Last year, blooming side-by-side in the midst of construction

Last year, they both bloomed for the first time.  My lilac, his redbud, occupying life together, intertwined in the same spaces, blooming at the same time.  Two very different plants, but when they bloom, they sure look pretty.  And somehow, they're thriving in each other's company.  I don't even think it's necessary to spell out the life lessons here.

When them bloomed again this year, we laughed again.  Wouldn't you know, they're still healthy, thriving and growing neck and neck.  We'll probably never know which plant is the actual "winner" but in the meantime, it's a good reminder that even the hard times in a marriage can turn into something good.

Decades from now, I can hear future owners of our home walking into the back yard and saying, "What kind of weirdos planted a tree and a giant shrub so close together!?"

And oh, if only shrubs could talk.

Today

(*And ironically, I am now the boss of all landscaping at our house.  Over the past 4-5 years, I have learned a lot and come to absolutely love hanging out in the yard and talking to my plants that never talk back or have opinions. Someday, I hope to write about that learning process & journey too!)