Her Last Garden
Not her usual bounty. Everything
seemed stunted that year—was it the heat
or the deer? She labored while my father
painted the house for what would be
the last time. None of us knew
what was growing inside her.
Long afternoons we weeded beds
where lilies and hibiscus bloomed, clematis
twined trellises and roses. Peonies
the size of infants’ heads, scented those hours
and we talked of ancestors long dead, but
perennial in her stories, Onkel Ernst and his
dahlias, wider than dinner plates, Grandma’s
roses, iris, Canterbury Bells—fox gloves—O,
she had magnificent fox gloves—her garden
rampant color until first frost. That year
little grew. Were the trees too big now, blocking
the sun? Was the soil played out? We put in
flats of annuals, marigolds and zinnias in hot
colors, rigged up fencing, scattered repellents
to keep the woodchuck and deer out, watered,
watched, waited. Weeds grew vigorously. She
was tired all the time, with little appetite, but
when the next year’s seed catalogs arrived
she began her list, sketched out plans for a new bed.
JULIE SUAREZ’s poems appear in The New York Times Magazine, Salmagundi, La Presa, Phoebe, and others. Read more.