Garden of Love

I've been watching Fun Shui on HGTV for a while now. One of the recent shows hit home. A couple was having a streak of bad financial luck and the host pointed out that their house was L-shaped and the missing chunk corresponded to their wealth area and showed them ways to correct the issue. If you take this map and stretch it over our house, the love area falls outside the walls. (Actually, our home is a weird shape, so wealth, wisdom and career fall outside the walls too, but I'm just dealing with love for now.) Our "love" area has been a mess since we moved here. It had a mishmash of plantings, pea gravel and mulch courtesy of previous owners. When we had the house re-landscaped in 2005, I had intended to make some raised beds and brick walkways in the area after the landscapers removed the plants, pea gravel and mulch. Having surgery in July kind of sidelined that idea and I spent late fall finishing the stain job on the back of the house. The area became a weedy mess, which I weeded once or twice (so I could get in there and stain the walls) and covered with a layer of chopped up leaves held in place with pieces of lattice which were waiting to become the deck skirting. The next year, we got Bizzy who thought that area was his playground and he consumed what little energy I had so I couldn't even think about laying brick and tilling soil with a puppy who wanted to roll in the mud. We borrowed most of the pieces of lattice to prop up around the deck because Bizzy just wanted to crawl under there and roll around in the sand, so the chopped up leaves blew away until fall when we added some more. Bizzy jumps whatever fence we put around the "garden" and does his business in there occasionally. Summer 2007 arrives and I don't even care enough about this area to do anything. I barely kept the weeds down in the planting beds. So our "love" area has leaves/exposed dirt/piece of lattice/old folding wire fence/soaker hose/some bricks and the occasional dog poop all surrounded by a wrought iron fence. In feng shui terms, is it any wonder our marriage is in the dumper?

So I was going to address the area, but the snow fell early this year and is covering all the junk and the dirt. Kind of pretty actually. But I needed a piece of garden art to place at the corner where the walls would intersect. So I looked around and found one that I thought would work. It's an obelisk with two doves sitting on top and the words "May the sun's embrace fall upon this garden nook" (or similar, I don't have a photographic memory) on one side. It was kind of spendy, but it's for a good cause. I have it in my cart and a helpful store employee says she'll find me one in a box. Against my better judgement, I agree and she returns with this giant box. It just fits in the trunk and I'm on my way home when a songbird dining along the road flies into my windshield with a resounding thud. Shit!!! Major bad omen!!! I get home, open the box, get covered in a thousand styrofoam beads which are attracted to my static cling, wrestle the styrofoam insert out the box, slit the tape and slide apart the two halves just enough to see that the thing is broken and box it back up swearing like a sailor. I had a beautiful, unbroken one in my cart which was helpfully replaced with a broken one and now I have to return it. It felt like another bad omen. After getting most of the styrofoam beads off me, I call the store and have them pull the floor model for me, I just knew someone would buy it out from under me and it probably was the last one. (BTW - it was the last one.)

So I return it and put the new, unbroken one in the garden in the appropriate spot. I love the doves and the saying, but it looks like a tombstone sticking up from the snow. Especially surrounded by the wrought iron fencing. "Here lies our marriage. Dead of neglect." Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week....