Northeast Gardening: Solace in the Garden, 0 by pixie62560

pixie62560 wrote:
Victor, your piece sums it up pretty well. I still have trouble watching anything about it on T.V. I often think of the families and grieve for them and for what we all lost that day. On that day and for many after, I questioned having brought children into this world. Did I condem my own flesh and blood to a life of unpredictable violence and massacres? What kinda of future will my grandchildren have?
I had guilt also, it was in our own State of Maine where 2 of those men got on the first plane, could we have stopped them? The questions still plague me to this day.
My life changed as all Americans lives did that day and I don't think we as a whole will ever be the same. But it made us stronger, more determined and banded us togehter as brothers standing united.
I think that is how I have to look at it now, what it gave us, not just what it took away. I believe that is called healing, and I am relieved to have finally arrived at this point, there were days when I didn't think I would ever heal.

As for my gardening, I don't remember doing any during 9/11....it was all a blurr. My garden has helped at other trying times in my life, like when the biopsey came back on my dog. It was cancer and they wanted to remove his leg, but not guarentee they'd get all the cancer. I don't think so! They removed the tumor and told me to take him home and enjoy him......"another tumor would replace that one in about 6-8 weeks. Oh, and you might want to put him on a diet, he weighs 130 and he shouldn't be more than 110" is what they said.
You just gave him a death sentence but you want me to put him on a diet!! Are you Freakin crazy? I asked. So I grabbed Bandit's leash and said "Come on buddy....were going home to have a T-Bone steak and Ice cream for desert!" (and he did)
During the next few weeks I watched him and knew our time together would soon end. It angered me and frightened me both at the same time. This dog had been my best buddy through some very hard times in my life and the prospect of life with out him was not something I could picture. So I picked a spot out in my yard near the big Oak tree and I started to dig. (Now you know why the oak is special to me) Everytime the anger and grief built up in me I would go out and dig the hole bigger and deeper. Pretty soon Bandit did indeed have another tumor, and the hole by this time was big enough for a human casket.
One day I was folding clothes and he was laying down beside me, I got up to answer the phone and Bandit did too, but fell on his face with a whimper. My DH picked him up and put him in the car and off to the vets we go. They said it had spread up his spine and thats why he fell. I had him put down, then brought him home and buried him. It's will be 8 yrs. next month that I put him in that hole....which is now a place called "Bandit's Garden" with phlox, oriental lilies, daylilies, and iris's.
Bandit with his black tongue sticking out a few weeks before he passed.