Home and Garden - By Sharon Flood Kasenberg

I'm feeling a little sentimental as I sit to write my final post from my current home. I've lived in this house thirteen years - the only one I lived in longer was the one I grew up in. (If you want to know more about my memories of that house you can read them in an earlier post called Home Again.) To say I get a little attached to the houses I live in is a gross understatement.

Let me give you a little background on this house. After spending three miserable years in Quebec we moved here - just as our sons were about to begin high school. (Our younger son skipped a grade.) We were anxious to start a happy new chapter back in Ontario again, and were on our second trip to look at homes in Kitchener when we saw this house. We'd seen another place across town the day before that we were all quite taken with, but it stretched the budget a little tighter than my husband or I wanted. (It was one of those houses that, as my real estate agent put it, was "more done up.") Still, there was something about the bones of this house that I liked, in spite of its mostly horrific decor. I knew it would be a good fit for our family, and that with a few cosmetic changes and some elbow grease we'd make it nicer than the more expensive house. (And we did.)

An Ode to My 70's Split Level

More than a dozen years
I've spent within your walls
and it's with smiles and tears
my memory recalls
the first time we stepped in
on avocado tiles,
and now I have to grin -
they wooed me with their wiles.
You were Mike Brady's dream
in Laura Ingall's dress,
the mishmash made you seem
a schizophrenic mess!
'Twas not love at first sight,
but once shag rugs were gone
and hardwood floors shone bright,
the love affair was on.

Sharon Flood Kasenberg July 13, 2016

The one time in my life I turned a blind eye to something that was technically vandalism was the night before we took possession of this house. One of my sons was making note of the particularly odious embossed floral wallpaper that graced the walls of what was about to become his room, and noticed a loose edge that he began to pick at. "Give it a good tug" I thought, and when he read my mind and did just that I didn't reprimand. Over the coming days one of our top priorities was removing every trace of the horrible plasticized Holly Hobby-ish wallpaper that the former owner had put up to bring a 70's era house into the style fiasco known as "the 80's". I sincerely believe that the house began to smile once the shag carpeting (in shades of various bodily fluids) was torn out and the walls were stripped and painted.

I grew to love the bright daylight basement with its ten foot ceilings. I learned that the sun room is blistering hot during the heat of summer, but an incredible vantage point for spring thunder storms. I learned to love sleeping in our dark and peaceful basement bedroom while our sons ruled the top level of the house and kept their crazy teen aged hours. Somewhere along the way this house crept into my heart - and I'm certain it will always hold a corner there.

Our family has enjoyed a really good life within these walls. We've had both brilliant and totally inane conversations here. We've hosted parties here. We even held a memorial service here when my mother in law died. One son left this house one morning and came back into it a married man. We've celebrated twelve of every holiday that exists within these walls. We've also celebrated some milestones here - two graduations from high school, one graduation from university, the beginnings and endings of several jobs...this house has witnessed a lot of changes within our family. Now my sons are grown up. One is married and living elsewhere. The other is still living with us, and has decided to come along with us to our next home. My husband and I have changed too - I like to think that we've both grown a little wiser than we were the day we first moved in.

Thirteen years ago I had little experience with gardening or yard work. I hated bugs and worms and dirt, and had a phobia about birds pooping on me. (Okay, so I'm still afraid of birds, but the rest I can cope with now.) We had inherited a strip of flower garden along the back fence, and I gradually developed an interest in making it progressively nicer. Each year I added a few perennials and divided and moved around whatever had survived over the winter. It looked pretty nice for a while, but four or five years ago the cinch bugs ate up what few blades of grass were left after a particularly bad drought, and our backyard and garden both looked so dismal that we decided to landscape the entire yard as soon as possible.

I never thought I'd say this, but the garden my husband had put in for me was the best gift I've ever received in my life. Working outside has become a passion. Getting my hands dirty as I beatify one little corner of the world is now a huge source of satisfaction. Pulling weeds gives me time to muse on my life and the happenings in the world around me. Planting and caring for flowers makes me feel connected to the earth and the planet in a substantial way. I helped design the garden - (I gave the landscape designer a rough sketch that she greatly improved upon) - and knowing that I helped create, and  have managed to sustain this thing of beauty has increased my self confidence and multiplied my desire to be creative. I never thought it was possible to get attached to a bunch of plants, but I have. Needless to say, the gardening bug has bitten and I look forward to making my next yard a little oasis too.

I wrote this poem one September day after spending an afternoon in the dirt. I'm not sure whether I began writing it one or two years back, but I found it in a file full of scribblings a few months ago and finished it up. You see, every autumn makes me feel a little nostalgic for the seasons just before - for the anticipation I feel each spring as green sprouts pop up, and for those long summer days I spend with my spade and my trusty old rusted watering can. This year the nostalgia will come a little earlier...

Fading Glory

The fading glory of
the autumn flowers
is evidence of end
of summer hours.
The sun's heat wanes,
September days grow chill -
but of my garden
I've not had my fill.
In spite of tattered leaves
and blossoms bleached,
and pinnacles of beauty
still unreached -
the barren stalks hold
mem'ry of what's done -
of rampant blooms beneath
an August sun,
and promise of fresh growth
when Spring's begun.
I turn from fading blossoms
with a sigh.
I know they'll bloom afresh -
though by and by.
They soon will wear a
blanket cold and white,
but when it melts they'll
once again delight.

Sharon Flood Kasenberg, April, 2016

When I finished off this poem I already knew that I wouldn't see my garden this September, let alone next spring. That chokes me up a bit, but I will toil on until the day we move, in hopes that it will become a place of sanctuary and inspiration to the next inhabitants of this house. Gardening has fueled my analogies for life now. I've learned that life, like a garden, gives back in proportion to the efforts we put in. I understand all about pests that eat at your leaves when you're minding your own business, and chipmunks that look darn cute until they dig up the roots of your flower pots. I know sometimes we plant things we never get to see through to fruition. Other times we reap what others sow. We pull a lot of weeds and watch a lot of plants wither under less than ideal conditions. And we always need to stop and admire whatever beauty nature graces us with.

I'm about to leave behind the garden where I grew flowers and nourished talents, hopes and dreams. I'm about to leave the home that grew four different people in four different ways. Leaving both will be hard, but sometimes you have to make a few changes to keep on moving forward.

I'm going to a new house where I can nourish a whole different set of dreams, and a plot of land that is over-run with weeds and mystery plants, but rife with possibilities. When I write my next blog post (in about three weeks time) I'll be at this same desk (probably) but I'll be in a room in a big old Victorian house in a small town, instead of a 70's split level in a medium sized city. Perhaps the new owners of this house will be relaxing here in my ten foot basement, or out weeding my garden as I type. I hope this home is a happy place for them, and that they grow, gain wisdom and make wonderful memories of their own within these walls.

As I say good-bye to everything that reminds me of the past thirteen years, I will temper the tears with reminders to myself. Sometimes you need to give up something you love to find something that you'll eventually love even more. I remind myself that the flowers I've planted will bloom here for someone else next year, and that flowers other hands planted will bloom for me. I remind myself that the best memories made within any walls always get to go with me.

New chapters cannot be written until old chapters end.

Stay tuned for the next chapter of my life.