Guilt is a powerful motivator

I planted all the stuff that white flower farm sent me -- peony, anemone, snowdrops, tulips. Also the tulips that my mom gave me (though the worms had got to some of those) and the daffodils for Nicolas' garden, so that is all the bulbs that belong to him. I finished two projects and sent off four packages for other angel moms, i hope they will arrive on time and without damage. I went shopping to get all the stuff for the hospital baskets and ordered the hand/foot molds which should come in a few days. I called to follow up for the teddy bear drive i plan to organize for the holidays. I emailed several friends who i have not had the chance to email lately, and dealt with my awareness bracelets. I signed up for a holiday gift swap with other angel moms. I made a firm commitment to meet S. at the Walk to Remember, thus insuring that i must attend. I emailed March of Dimes with a comment about how i felt about their using the pregnancy and infant loss ribbon to mean 'prematurity awareness'.

It's been a real dead-baby-activist kind of day....

two and a half years

Well, today Nicolas would be two and a half, if he had been born alive. I have been kind of down and dreading the day, all week -- heck, all month. It has been a tough month, just logistically -- school started, C. started daycare, she is getting teeth, she is sick from daycare....so i was dreading this day. All week it has been sitting there, waiting for me...

But it turns out i am a horrible mother -- actually this weekend, until i got on the computer and saw the date this evening, it totally slipped my mind. My colleague R. came to visit us on Saturday, literally i didn't know until Friday night if he was coming. But he did come, so i had to try to finish all my weekend chores saturday morning before he arrived and then when he got here we did math like crazy people so that we could finish up our article before he had to leave sunday afternoon. (The article is due in a few days, dh had to watch C., oh he did not like that at ALL, his whole weekend was shot in terms of getting stuff done on the house). So then the minute R. left i had to actually finish the chores i did not manage to finish (like putting away the laundry) and then there was a block meeting and then this and then that and all of a sudden it is 9 pm and i figured i should log on to check my email and bang, whoops, look at the date.

Now, i don't actually observe the 25th every month, often it comes & goes without my noticing. But the years & the half-years are a bit different, those you know. And i did know, i have been quietly chewing on it all month. To forget the actual day, though, until the day is nearly over -- that is very bizarre to me. Life takes over, our grieving is cut off, pushed away. But our grieving is the only way we have to relate to our absent children...so that is very sad....

I also wanted to make 6 stillbirth baskets to take to the hospital this month, i did not get to it. I am going to do it for next month though.....i will post a picture when it is done....

sweet autumn clematis

Here is a picture, finally, of a plant that is blooming that *is* in Nicolas' garden, not in the other parts of the backyard. I just got it yesterday, at Home Depot. I was actually going to take a cutting of my neighbor's and root it, next spring -- but then i saw a nice big blooming plant for 10 bucks and decided to go for the immediate gratification instead. So now i have bought 3 plants at home depot, as well as all those bulbs....after i swore not to shop there for plants...oh well!!

fluffy bunny mommies

My friend S. calls them 'fluffy bunny mommies' and you know exactly the ones i mean by that. ARGH. This morning in class we had to change rooms from one with a dry-erase board to one with chalk. My student J. had previously bought me a pack of dry-erase markers because there were none in that room, ever. Sucking up? Not really, just a nice thought, she was in the line at walmart and saw them. So she & i made a joke about it, in the new room, and then she proceeded to talk with the girl seated next to her -- 'It's a mom thing,' said J, ' you just get used to taking care of people, you want to take care of everyone'. 'I don't think i'm ready for that', said the girl next to her.

I am not ready for that either. I have been a mom essentially as long as J. has (J. has a beautiful family, 5 kids, at one point she had 5 under the age of 6. They are a little older now and she is back to school to become a teacher. ) but i have no impluse to 'take care of everybody'. I can barely take care of myself some days, and make sure my family has clean underwear and the kids have something to eat even if it is just ramen noodles. So what's wrong with me? What is my 'mom thing'?

And then also i think of my compatriots in this lousy loss world. We are all moms, but if we have lost our only child, the world at large does not grant that label. We have all lost our chance to take care of our children, at least in the way we would want to. Sure, we do memory things -- we take care of gardens, we take care of graves, we do projects for others. But who wants to do that shit? It sucks. We do take care of others, to the extent which we are able. But grief is hard, it saps you. And so you are tired, and you snap at your dh, and your l/c, and feel even worse...so much for a 'mom thing'.

I wish i was a fluffy bunny mommy too....

Things proceed along at the usual pace

On the gardening front, i finally got in the hostas, so now all the plants that i brought from my mom's are in the ground (except the boxwood, that is another story). And i just got an email from White Flower Farm that my order has been shipped, so i will have those soon too...but i need to get the grass seed in before it is too late in the year. That will be this weekend, unless my colleague R. comes to visit me (we have a paper to finish up). If R. comes, there will be no grass sowing....

I had a lousy day....the usual issues reared their ugly heads. So, what do i say when my students ask how many kids i have? This time i did not include Nicolas. Why, i don't know -- because it was a group of students, not just one; because they were enjoying their conversation sharing about their families and i didn't want to put a damper on it; because i didn't want their pity. But of course it just makes me sad...and then their conversation went into how we spell names, how hard it is to find anything personalized if you use an uncommon spelling etc. HELLO yes, if i want something with Nicolas' name spelled right i have to freaking import it from France. But then there was nothing for me to say, since i had left him OUT already. It's hard enough to say '2' when you 'should' have 3 kids, it's even harder to list their names and leave his out. But it is also very hard to include him, and have everyone stop and the conversation ends and i will just walk away now...There is just no good way to go about this thing.

Blah....tired

Do you ever get just so *tired*?? Physically, mentally, emotionally, the whole bit. I wish i could just crawl under a rock and stay there....i have so much to do, i am so behind, and it is all just falling on me today....i don't know that this is something i will ever get used to, this level of exhaustion. Before Nicolas died, i would be tired, sure, but not like this.

I actually did get stuff done this weekend -- all my housework plus i finished digging my flower bed (the shade garden part) and mulched it, until i ran out of mulch. I even got a few plants in before dh made me come help clean out the basement. But i am quickly losing steam on this garden thing...well to be honest i am losing steam with everything. I still have to prepare my lectures for tomorrow and it is nearly 10 pm and i can barely keep my eyes open. And after cleaning all weekend my house looks just as messy as it did when i started.

Plus it's been rainy & humid, which is good for the garden, but not so good for the plaster...there is no old plaster (and thus old lead paint) left in our house at all, except for ONE place which is the furnace room/pantry up here on the 3rd floor. The door to that room is always closed and no babies are allowed inside of course! But walking by the door this morning what do i see? A paint chip OUTSIDE the door, on the kitchen floor! The humidity is causing it to flake off, and it's even working it's way outside of the room. I was not going to bother to have that room fixed (it involves taking out the ductwork of the furnace) but now i don't think i have a choice. Of course the dust will be awful from demo'ing it, so that will just be worse. What i did was vaccuum up the paint which was peeling off (vaccuumed it from the wall) and then wet-mopped so that should do it, as best as i can. But i feel like i cannot deal with it, that this house will kill us....

Well maybe i will go deal with my lectures now....

Here is a picture of an aster that i stuck in there, maybe looking at the picture will make me feel better. HA.

a better picture, hopefully

Maybe this will show up better on the screen. Now at least you can see the line of the bed, where i mulched it. You still can't see much but it is more than before! There is Nicolas' tree in the back. Everything that is soil (not the light brown which is mulch) is where i am going to put grass. I was supposed to sow grass this weekend but the earth is not ready and i need to finish this flowerbed anyway. You can see it kind of peters out in the corner -- it is shady there under a tree so i have a hellebore & some nice hostas but i need to build up the bed. I did plant the daylilies today though....and i hope to get the hostas in soon. But i am low on energy tonight, no more work for me....

A telephone encounter

Today i went kinda crazy at Home Depot and bought lots & lots of bulbs. Most of them are for the rose garden and for the rest of the border, though i did get some white daffodils for Nicolas' garden. I also went to the expensive garden center since i had a coupon, and found some white siberian iris on the clearance rack so that was good. When i got home i figured i would call and order the rest of the plants & bulbs for Nicolas' garden, then i would be somewhat done with that (i still need to find the white gaura at a decent price...)

Well, anyway so i called and ordered, from White Flower Farm. I have never ordered from there before, as their prices are kind of high. They are perhaps not that high overall (actually some of the bulbs i got were quite well priced) but it is more than i usually pay. I am in general a frugal gardener, not the sort who will order the fancy stuff from the fancy catalog. But for Nicolas' garden i do want certain exact varieties and such. So obviously, when i call white flower farm and order nothing but white flowers, this is cause for some comment. The lady said somehting like 'you like white flowers eh?' or whatever. So i said , 'they are for my baby's memory garden'. And she was very nice, she said 'I'm sorry' and 'i'm sure it will be beautiful'. But the thing is, i really choked up when i told her, and i am still kind of teary about it. Which honestly i think is odd. After two and a half years of this life, you know, i am pretty used to it. I can talk about Nicolas and mention him and tell my story to people without crying at all, just very matter-of-factly. But i can't say 'they are for my baby's memory garden'?? What's that about? And then of course it is just bitter, that that is all i have to show for his life -- some plants to put in the ground. An exercise in futility, really.

AND i mulched, so everything looks alot better, and i will post a picture of that tomorrow. Then you should be able to actually see the beds so it might make more sense what i am babbling on about.

We planted the tree!

Ahh, progress....we finally planted Nicolas' tree this Sunday. Here is a picture of the tree in all it's ragged glory. I do hope the poor thing does not die. All last week i raked & trucked in a load of compost & made beds when i had a minute or so -- not easy since it was the first week of school. But finally Sunday i was able to plant. I got the tree in and a few spare perennials for his garden that i have already and all the roses and peonies. OK i had better give you a bigger picture and explain what it is supposed to look like, it's really hard to tell though because of the light etc. When i get it mulched and the lawn seeded (which has to happen soon) , it will be clearer. But here goes...

Now in this picture you are looking down on the backyard from the second floor window in the back of the house. OK currently it is a door not a window but let's not go there. It is really hard to see ANYTHING on this stupid picture, except you can see the garage. Nicolas' garden and his tree are in the left corner by the garage. The flower bed curves around his tree and all that will be planted with white flowers. Lots of bulbs in early spring and then i will fill in the perennials throughout next spring & summer. Of course there will also be a white rose, butterfly bush, clematis, and peony. Then after the curve of Nicolas' garden comes the rose garden which is in a circle around that old mop handle which i have stuck in the ground. You can just see it sticking up on the picture. Nicolas' tree is inbetween the first 2 garage doors and then this mop handle is in the line between the 2nd and 3rd garage doors. Okay, eventually the mop handle will be a large statue or a fountain. But those things are expensive and we have alot to do here. So soon the mop handle will be replaced by something decorative like a victorian gazing ball. But for right now it is a mop handle.

Anyway after the circle of the roses you go back around along the other side of the bed of Nicolas' garden, that will be some daffodils and daylilies i think. Then as we continue down the fence line it gets more shady, closer to the maple tree and the house. So that will be a shade garden with hostas, bleeding hearts, etc etc. I have a nice hellebore that i have to plop into the ground before it dies. But in fact i am not so sure how that bed is going to go which is why i did not make it yet (also i can only do so many things LOL) . Also that rope which is stretched across the yard is where the line of the vegetable garden is going to be. The veggie garden will not be *all* the way down the yard, more like halfway. It will be a french-style potager eventually even with boxwood hedges, i hope. But that is a project for later...


Well, to be quite honest i feel odd posting pictures like this which look lousy, you cannot really tell on them yet what it looks like now and what it will look like. Also of course there is nothing to see since nothing is *blooming*. Well, it is the middle of Semptember after all. So just because of that i have taken a picture here of the only thing which *is* blooming, this crazy delphinium that my mother gave me. Isn't it pretty? Dunno why it is blooming now but it is planted in the backyard and so it counts. (This is in the part where it curves back toward the fence).

Now i have to go water...

I tilled but i don't have an after picture.

When i got back from my mom's the weeds were higher than my head. So i yanked them all out by the roots (that did not take me more than a few hours) and i had some fellows help me move the rest of the stuff out, including most of the big slabs of rock. Then i rented a tiller which you can see back by the garage, it is a pretty seriously big tiller. Over labor day weekend we tilled (mostly me! But dh had to come start the thing for me every time, it was pretty funny). For some reason i don't have an 'after' picture of when the place is tilled. It looks the same only the green is gone.

The rest of the summer

OK, after we got the trees taken down we were kind of busy for the rest of the summer. We had to get the third floor in order (somehow this meant i was here painting until 3 am alot) and get all packed up and moved, and then there were various business trips throughout the summer... so anyway nothing at all was done in the backyard. I left to visit my mother for some time in August, and we planned it so that i would take back a bunch of my outdoor plants and rosebushes that she had been taking care of for me. Then, i planned to deal with the backyard, hopefully before school started...

Where we started from

Well, i always knew i would make a garden for Nicolas -- in fact i planned it in the hospital, after we knew he was dead but before he was born. But since we were living abroad at that time, and we knew we were returning to the states in a few months, nothing could be done about it then. When we did move back here, we rented a house at first while we were looking for a place to buy. On Nicolas' first birthday we bought him a tree, a weeping pussy willow tree for his eventual garden. We were thinking we would buy a house within a month or so...


[photo removed]

Well, we did eventually buy a house, and what a house it is. This is the 'before' picture, the 'after' picture is not ready yet. 'Needs a little TLC' is what they would say in a real estate advert. Needs a lot of gasoline and a match, is what i say on some of my bad days. Renovation is not for the faint-of-heart. And we have even hired people to do most of the work, you would *think* that would make it easier. We owned this house for nearly a year before we were even able to move in, and that means move in to the 3rd floor (which is a separate apartment) not move in to the main house. The house itself was built in 1885, it is a Second-Empire/Eastlake Victorian house. It is located on a street with many other Victorians of all different styles. Ours is *not* the one in the worst condition on the block but it is close. It will look a LOT better with a nice Victorian front porch on it, which hopefully Randy will start building soon but i am not holding my breath on that one.

So anyway with all that to deal with the garden was on the back burner for awhile. Nicolas' poor tree has been languishing in a pot since March of 2004. However this spring we did start a little work on the backyard. Here is what it looked like at the time...

Yes, that horrendous cinder-block structure is a garage. It is in fact an 8-car garage that someone built years ago, in order to rent out the parking spaces. Then it burned out in a fire (there is no roof to speak of). You can't see in this pic but there is a tree growing out of it. No, we did not demolish the garage. Basically because if we do demolish it, whatever we put up has to be strictly historic since this is a historic area. But with the existing structure, the rules are somewhat easier. So we are going to rehab the garage -- keep the 4 bays facing the alley as garage bays and the 4 bays facing the house as something else, dunno exactly yet -- studio space, greenhouse space? We cannot afford it for awhile so it doesn't matter. What we do need to do this fall is to clean out the rubble and secure the garage so it does not fall down, and in the spring i will probably paint it so it is less completely ugly.

Anyway, you see the pic of the back yard but not the worst of it. That tree which you can barely see there on the right was a huge chinese sumac tree that had to come down, and there are several other trees that had to go too. That pile in the middle is lumber for the construction. We had already taken a dumpster of debris out of the yard when this picture was taken. In fact it is alot cleaner in the pic then it was when we bought the house. What you cannot see in the picture are the curbstones -- there are about 20 or 25 slabs of rock in the yard which i suspect were old curbstones. They are 4 ft by 1 ft by 6 inches or thereabouts and are a real *&&%# to move. That was some of the worst of it.

Well this is my first post

Ok, i am kind of new at this so please bear with me! Basically my intent here is just to put up pictures and descriptions so everyone who might care can see what is going on in my backyard. I imagine it will not only be Nicolas' garden that is pictured but the rest of the mess...er...garden too. So you can see how it all comes together. I am sure i will put other stuff in here too. But it is probably just going to be a list of things i do and i like....no deep dark secrets here....not that i have any to begin with...