Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 14:24:16 -0400
From: “N.A. Booko”
Subject: Spring in the garden- Fall in the woods . . .
Last spring I put in a flower garden for friends. The agreement was that I would from time to time stop by, rake leaves, prune or weed the area. It is located East of town, in a lovely natural woodland setting. Quite a distance from the main highway. Turn off here, then left, winding roads, over the hills, down the lane- dense tree growth all the way for a mile or so. Even the house can’t be seen from the road. So remote there are only two driveways at the end.
No one was home- so I set about doing what was needed. The garden looked beautiful. Noticed at least 12 poppy plants had grown from the seeds I scattered last fall. At my own garden, I seldom get a poppy to germinate, much less bloom. But these were going full blast- Probably will bloom late May or June, delayed by the cold weather. The perennial begonias were just beginning to peek up out of the soil. The ferns were in glistening glory. So tender, seemingly so frail, but majestic later on. One lone tulip out of fifty had survived the deer feast. There had been no trouble with deer until September last year.
At the time, I urged the owners to put up fencing along the edge of the woods. They did. He had put up about eighty feet of the netting. It was netting that is about six feet high and difficult to see. Difficult to see? I was there more than an hour before I realized that large section of the fence had been knocked down.
I took it upon myself to venture into the woods to repair the fence. I had no hammer, no nails or anything to work with, but I found that I could re-attach it using sticks in a safety-pin type fashion. As I picked up a length of fencing, half covered by leaves, I didn’t realize that my foot had become entangled in the netting on the ground. As I proceeded to drag the netting to the next tree, my foot stumbled and I went flying forward, hands in the air and landed with quite a ‘plop’ face down in the undergrowth and dead leaves. At the moment I was air-borne, I just knew something would be broken. I think every part of my frontal body hit when I landed.
For a moment, seemed everything went blank- darkness. I couldn’t move. What to do? My cell phone was in my right front pocket, pinned beneath me. I was so stunned all I could think of was . . I don’t even know the actual address of this place! If I called for help, I wouldn’t know to tell anyone where I was located. Suddenly a cooler head prevailed. I was aware that nothing really felt broken or dis-jointed. I lay there for a few minutes before attempting to get up. I wasn’t able to push myself up with my hands, I had to roll over on my back and then grab on to saplings and pull myself up into a sitting position. I sat there for maybe twenty minutes. Thinking to myself- Diddley dang!- I am not going to let this get the best of me. I crawled back and continued my weeding, mostly on my knees, in a half sitting, half dwangling, sloppily reclining position.
I have every intention of seeing those luscious poppies bloom!
N.A. Booko
(N.A. Booko lives, writes and weeds in Chatham County- even in the FALL!)