gratitude 107Camille made the call, and it was inspired: a plant. The tiniest posy,
anything would serve. And truthfully, while we’d put prodigious efforts
into our vegetable garden and orchards, our front yard lay sorry and ne-
glected. Anything people might bring to set into that ground would im-
prove it. Thus began the plan for my half- century Birthday Garden:
higgledy-piggledy, florescent and spontaneous, like friendship itself.
This is what my friends brought: dug from their own backyards, a divi-
sion of a fi fty- year- old peony, irises, a wisteria vine, spicy sweetshrub,
beebalm, hostas, datura, lilies, and a flowering vine whose name none of
us knows. My parents brought an Aristocrat pear, a variety bred by an
old friend from our hometown. A geographer friend brought Portuguese
collards, another indulged my fondness for red- hot chile peppers. Rose-
mary and sage, blueberry and raspberry, fountain grass, blue sweetgrass,
sunshine-colored roses, blue- and-white columbines, scarlet poppies, but-
terfly bush and “Sunset” echinacea—the color scheme of my garden is
“Crayola.” Our neighbor, to whom we’d taken the tomato plant, dug some
divisions of her prettiest lemon lilies. “Oh, well, goodness,” I said as I re-
ceived each of these botanical gifts. “Well, look at that.”
I thanked my parents for having me, thanked the farmers for the food,
thanked family and friends for the music, the dancing, the miles traveled,
and the stunning good luck of having them all in my life. But I did not say
“Thank you” for a plant. My garden lives.