Your Stories Are Needed

Going into this weekend, we are starting to think about the other part of the house - the yard. It's a tough thing for me for a couple of reasons. First this was Leslie's favorite part of winter - the end. Although she loved to ski in the mountains and bringing cups of hot cocoa as I shoveled the driveway by hand, she loved watching out the window as the barren earth began to pop with tiny green sprouts and early season color. This very large yard was yet to have been discussed in any great detail, so I'm flying blind a bit.

At our last house, we went to a local nursery that created a plan for us free of charge as long as we bought materials and plants from them, which we were more than happy to do. That taught us a lot about zoning, bed height, variation, timing among other things besides just giving us a color-by-numbers plan for our yard. we took it and used it more as a guideline and created a beautiful yard that we loved to spend time in. It was funny, we would see an area that was 'barren' of grass and would usually say, Let's turn that into a flower bed. Of what? we'd ask. I don't know, we'll figure it out as we go. We need this or that in that part of the yard, let's do that. And we would, it was great to be able to talk through the smaller details of how to take a barren, unproductive part of land and make it into something beautiful. It also meant I had less to mow ;-) Leslie always had a glimmer in her eye as she spoke of flowers or landscaping. She had spent a couple of summers in college working for a company and learned alot and loved to bring that knowledge to our yard. It was great because she wasn't afraid to get mud under her nails (she'd use it as an excuse to have a manicure later) and saw the benefit of short term dirtiness for long term beauty. There's something to be said to walking through your yard and having a story for almost every bush, flower or plant and being proud of that finished work.

One great story, then I'll let you go. When we first moved in to the last house there wre 8 foot hedges that were partially blocking the solarium windows because they had grown so out of control. In the new plan, they needed to come out and were to be replaced by smaller, more ornamental bushes. Leslie helped trim off the branches and put them into bags, then went inside the house. It was the usual Iowa summer in July -90 and humid as hades. I tore into the roots that seemed to be 3x the size as the bush above ground. I was 5 feet below surface, cursing the bush, the weather, the too small of a hole, the heavy shovel, Leslie... hey where'd she go again?! I was about to start crabbing about doing this alone, when suddenly Leslie appears with a huge, ice-cold, glass glistening cup of lemonade. Followed by, "Wow, you're doing great Honey." Man she was the greatest. That was a good day.

As I've shared here, please share yours with me. They certainly don't need to be posts here, but please do take a moment and write a "Leslie story" down and send it to me. Via email, snail mail, whatever, We're trying to collect stories for Ellie so that she knows her mom in a greater sense than I can give her alone. Some have said they're waiting to write a couple at a time and haven't found time yet - don't write the first today and send it. You may find it starts to flow after the first one. Anything at all, the most ''everyday' stories, the most outrageous stories, send them all. I love to know about my wife too from stories I may not have been around to see. Inevitably, if I was there it jogs memories I've even forgotten - and that's scary. Please, take a moment to remember, then write, then send, it would mean the world to me. Take care.