Share Four Somethings: May 2022

I’m writing this on Tuesday morning, the day I usually publish a blog post each week. I’ve gone back and forth about posting something this week. It’s the time of month when I usually share my Four Somethings, but over the last several days, more pressing matters kept taking precedence (as they often do) over writing.

Gardening. Spending time with my daughter as she recovered from getting her wisdom teeth removed. More gardening. Holiday weekend stuff. Thinking about what’s going on in the world and in my family’s recent history. Even more gardening.

Perhaps you’re noticing a trend here. Time in the garden isn’t just necessary to control weeds. It’s also therapeutic in so many ways.

As you can tell, I made a last-minute decision to write something for this week. Not just so I can link up with Heather Gerwing and others who have likely already shared their Four Somethings, but also to share a bit of truth and beauty that might encourage you as summer looms. Starting with …

• Something Loved

OK, this is almost too easy. It’s my late-spring garden, of course.

• Something Gleaned

As I’ve shared before, peonies were my dad’s favorite. Like several of my siblings, I have peony bushes growing in my flowerbeds that originated in the peony patch of my childhood home. They’ve been blooming for a while now, and they never fail to remind me of him.

Not just because he loved them, but, as I realized while reading Christie Purifoy’s book Garden Maker, he was actually like them.

“Peonies are always fully themselves,” Purifoy writes. “We never mistake them for some other flowers. No one ever says, ‘Oh, that peony looks just like a double-flowering tulip!’ … Peonies are icons. They are archtypes. They are reliably themselves.”

That was my dad. Always reliably himself.

Purifoy’s entire book is wonderful, but the chapter on peonies was pure reading enjoyment. Like this part, about how peonies stand apart from reblooming perennials.

“Every plant has its reblooming variety,” she writes. “Reblooming lilac. Reblooming azaleas. Reblooming roses. Reblooming daylilies. So dry your eyes. Take up your nursery catalog. … Because even in the garden we need never say goodbye. We need never sit in quietness waiting for the return of every beautiful thing we have loved and lost. Except for the peonies. … They have never submitted to the modern demand for seasonless flowers. For months we anticipate them, for weeks we revel in them, and when they are gone, we miss them.”

And this, about how “peonies are forever” …

“Peonies are good medicine for grief, not because they deny death and suffering, the way those reblooming wonders can sometimes seem to do,” Purifoy explains. “They are some of the longest-lived of our garden perennials, and springtime after springtime, they flower for us before fading into the general green of summer. They are not a circus act. They are worthy of being painted on fine porcelain. They are worthy of honoring the graves of our dead. No one ever took a peony for granted. No one ever said, ‘Oh, I will come back and admire you tomorrow.’ Peonies are only for right now—which means that peonies are forever.”

This probably goes without saying, but if you are in the mood to read a gardening book that isn’t just about gardening, I highly recommend Garden Maker.

• Something Saved

In the last month or so, I got a new phone. I resisted the purchase as long as I could because I honestly don’t care about updated technology. But when Spotify stopped working on my iPhone 6 because my IOS was so outdated, I had to give in.

Before I switched phones, I went through all my old voicemails to see if I wanted to keep any. They stretched all the way back to 2018, before my dad went into the nursing home. Needless to say this little trip down memory lane was more bitter than sweet at times.

But I did save several messages—from my dad, my sisters, my husband and daughters, and even some from my aunt who died in 2020. I don’t know that I will ever listen to them again. But I like knowing that if I want to, I can.

• Something Achieved

It’s been epic, our battle with the squirrels. Specifically, keeping them out of our “squirrel-proof” birdfeeder, which is anything but squirrel proof.

My sister jokes that the squirrels that plague our gardens are descendants of the same rodents that used to give my dad such fits at our childhood home. She may be on to something with that.

We originally hung the birdfeeder on a hook on a tree that is directly in our line of sight as we sit at our dining room table. It was too close to the tree and barely a challenge for the squirrels.

So Randy modified the feeder with a roof of nails:

The squirrels weren’t fazed a bit. Next, he put on a false-front sort of shield, hoping it would keep them from reaching the birdseed. They quickly adjusted to that.

We tried an expensive variety of spicy birdseed. It kept the squirrels away, but also most of the birds.

Then came a much-longer arm to get the feeder away from the tree. Combined with a baffle, which resembles a satellite dish, this kept the squirrels mostly away. But before I had a chance to get a photo, the bolts holding it in place started coming out of the tree and we took it down before it could fall on its own.

Finally, Randy got a mounting pole for the birdfeeder. He installed it about six feet from the tree, with the baffle below.

And now for our Something Achieved. So far, the pole is working. It’s been up for a few weeks and nary a squirrel has reached the feeder. (At least not when we’ve been watching.) I don’t know about you, but I call that a win.

• • •

Now it’s your turn. Please share your squirrel stories, a nostalgic tale about your favorite perennial or anything else on your mind today.

♥ Lois

P.S. I’m linking up this week with Share Four Somethings, #tellhisstory, InstaEncouragements, Recharge Wednesday, Let’s Have Coffee and Grace & Truth