Scouring Spotted Spurge – gardening, a widowers hobby

OK, so this has nothing to do with travel, But there is that other word in the domain name which this does relate to (widow, not garden), so I may throw some odd posts in related to my journey through the grief wilderness since my wife passed. And besides, as I’ve said before, it’s my blog! I can make up the rules as I go along!

I do not think of myself as a gardener – I’m more of an amateur landscape designer, that likes to plant things. I rarely write down what I plant, so I have no clue after a year as to what’s growing in my yard and have to use Google lense when someone asks “what is that?”. I love the way it looks in the spring and summer when everything is blooming, and find it relaxing to just sit in the shade and watch the pollinators and hummingbirds buzzing around. I spent a lot of time in my little haven while Jan was beginning to decline – my own little sanctuary, most of the time worry, cry or both, when Jan was sleeping or talking on the phone.

As it turns out, a lot of the widows/widowers I know are more serious gardeners and even know the names of what they plant. Imagine that. It’s a time consuming hobby which requires planning and effort….all good things. There is a real sense of accomplishment when everything is growing. And, there are clubs to join, which provides another source of socializing, again, something important when your prior social world has collapsed.

Aside from puttering around on my own property and helping reconstruct a friends sprinkler system, I have also been a volunteer in the Garden Guild of the church I joined after my wife passed (Trinity Episcopal Church in Folsom). We have a wonderful professional (pHD) horticulturist  who designs the grounds, and relies on volunteers to help with the planting, pruning, mulching, and all the various tasks required to maintain a very large garden. It’s fun for me – it gives me something else to do, and I get to socialize with the worker-bees. It’s been important for me during periods when the only social contact I have is with the checkout clerks at the local grocery store. Nice people there.

Today was a maintenance day, with a small group planting a few things, and doing a lot of weeding and cleanup. I volunteered for weeding an area overgrown with my unfavorite weed – the dreaded yellow spotted spurge. It’s sticky, and grows into thick mats. I guess you could consider it free ground cover. The rest of the crew worked on other areas. The really cool thing about the work we do, are the results. The gardens on this property are absolutely gorgeous. The church is set in an old neighborhood of Folsom, and the neighbors all comment on how absolutely beautiful the gardens are, especially now that everything is blooming. You get a sense of pride in being part of the effort to maintain this. That’s something important when you are sad and depressed a lot the time. 

That last one shows the mass of spurge…there were about 3 buckets worth. The rest are just a few photos of the garden areas. There’s lots more which I did not photograph.

OK, end of gardening. I promise the next post will be about travel. I’ve got two more caves, a Sequoia forest, an old railroad tunnel filled with graffiti, and possibly another old mining site lined up in the next few weeks. Plus, I’m free from the medical constraints which kept me from being far from home (woo hoo!). I’ve got eight weeks before I leave for Alaska. I think I can fill that time with some fun things.