There I was, minding my own business at our local nursery, keeping myself occupied as my wife wandered through aisle after aisle, trying to find just the right fruitless flowering red plum tree to go in the corner of our backyard.
If you are not an ardent arborist and have never heard of a fruitless flowering red plum tree, you are in good company. I have no idea either. But picking the tree is not my job. Digging the hole for it is.
It is the same arrangement my wife and I have practiced throughout our marriage. I could not tell you the difference between the paint colors of “smoked oyster” or just plain white, but my wife can. I just have to put it on the walls.
Like paint selection, gardening is also part of our happy marriage. This usually entails my wife steering me toward a particular coordinate of our yard and showing me where to start digging.
As my retirement date fast approaches, I am now finding myself on my knees more often than I do during Lent and Advent combined. Gardening seems to be accelerating, as my wife has apparently interpreted that less time in an office means more time to dig weeds and do something about the arugula I planted, which has grown to horror-movie heights and has taken over our raised bed garden.
There are only days left for me to go into an office where I can find some refuge from the toil in the backyard, and respite for an aching back. People at work who see what rose bushes and other aggressive flora have done to my paper-thin Irish skin have probably been tempted to call husband protective services. I assure them my domestic status is blissfully peaceful, and the scratches and bandages on my hands and arms are just the result of toiling in God’s nature.
But I digress.
So, there I was, giving my wife “space” during her sapling search, and I loitered around the fountain and statuary section. St. Paul did not have a wife, so he obviously did extraordinarily little gardening. If he did have one, he probably would have added something like: Wives, be merciful to your husbands and leave them be when they are creating water features. My wife has been “merciful” to me, so even though I grumble about backbreaking weeding, I am free to build my water features. So far, I have two water features in my backyard, and one in mid-production. Since my backyard has four corners, I am always on the lookout for more inspiration.
Every water feature in our yard has a religious motif. I do not recall any of my brothers’ or sisters’ backyards being without one, and I always loved the weathered stature of the Blessed Mother my dad lodged in the hollow of a pepper tree in our family home’s backyard.
My statue of the Blessed Mother reigns in a place of prominence over my fish pond/water garden in a corner of my backyard. Diagonally across, St. Francis offers passing birds and the odd squirrel or raccoon a drink from his water fountain. Currently under construction is a planter/fountain that will be the backdrop of a Celtic cross.
As I thought about that fourth, unclaimed corner of my yard, I scrutinized the nursery’s collection of religious (Catholic) statues. There was not a lot, and none of it was calling my name. But for every statue of the Virgin Mary, there must have been 20 statues of Buddha. For every statue of Buddha, there must have been five statues of dogs/cats/skunks/raccoons. There was even a collection of weird statues — some of them I cannot describe out of a sense of decency. A sign of the times, no doubt.
Thoughts of the fourth water feature vanished as my wife reappeared with a look of triumph on her face. She found that elusive fruitless flowering red plum tree — the last one the store had.
There was going to be more digging and Advil in my future after all, and that was OK. Do not tell my wife this, but I actually enjoy gardening, and I find my three water features with their specific Catholic imprimaturs to be a kind of triangulation of spiritual fire aimed in my direction.
On these long summer nights, my wife and I sit outside where she takes in all the greenery she has planted, and I listen to the sound of the bubbling water coming from my water features. Call it a Catholic version of feng shui or whatever you will, it facilitates a sense of calm and gratitude for all the gifts God has given us — even if it comes at the price of a sore back.
