No Shit, No Flowers

The Wonderful Husband received an generous gift from a landscape design client several months ago: 6 bags of aged, weed-free steer manure. Wow.

A gift, you ask?

Well, yes, in the right context ;-)

Several weeks ago David and I were happily putzing in the garden. One thing led to another, and in two shakes of a mockingbird’s tail (as Mama used to say) we were digging in the front and creating a real garden there for the first time. We transplanted hellebores, violets, and maples from the back garden and, along with still-potted plants David had collected over the years, created a lush new landscape.

What a gorgeous garden we created! As I’m writing this, I’m looking out on a lushness of blossoms: crimson rhodies and azaleas, creamy dogwoods, chartreuse hellebores, purple labrador violets.

We mixed said manure in all the new beds. I’ve never used bagged manure in a garden, and I was surprised to see and smell how, er, recognizable it was.

As I was digging, I remembered a client many years ago in Big Change. Elaine was a gardener, too, and we played with metaphors from nature to help ground her grief and deepen her trust in the cycles of death and rebirth in nature and in life.

One week Elaine came in all smiles, a miracle given the depth of her losses. “Melissa,” she grinned, “I’ve found the key!”