For about the last 12 years, the yard had been in survival mode. It was at the mercy of an unimaginative mow the lawn and shape the shrubbery lawn maintenance service. Some days no matter the season, when life’s strife bubble over the top, I head outside to stroll and clear my mind with moments lost in the song of a bird or the flora of a flower, I even love the dandelion weeds. Why not?
Wishing weeds help the honeybees and fertilize the hopes and dreams of children. I would notice passion flower vines beginning to grow and their disappearance after the grass was mowed. It had to be the deep down memory of picking maypops and making farm animals with toothpicks that prompted me to buy a small trellis for them to be protected in order to grow. On walks around the neighborhood circle, I would gather dried blooms of golden black-eyed Susan and toss them into the safety of the flower bed I built to be viewed from the kitchen table the first spring we moved into the house. A house can’t be a home until you have moved into the yard. I loved the yellow jasmine vine, South Carolina’s herald of spring, which climbed an oak tree at the end of the driveway. When the power company marked the tree to be removed, I bought an obelisk to try to save it. The red trumpet vines, hardest of all wild vines and hummingbird magnets, choose their own trees to climb. Red honeysuckle, spring ferns and ironweed, with its purple fringed blooms, hugged the tree lined parts of the yard. These plants are native to the area and have survived all over the state of South Carolina. I have decided to keep and nurture each wildflower I find, add to them and let the wild things grow. I began this quest with a trip to Terri’s Treasures in 
Chapin and found a white metal, single bed headboard to use as a trellis for the passion flower, maypops. I pulled the rusty iron obelisk out of the leaf and limb pile and set it up for the yellow jasmine to climb. I rearranged the flowerpots and a statue to stand stately within the patch of black-eyed Susan. Next country drive, scissors will be carried along to cut a bouquet of Queen Anne lace. At this moment, I’m heading outside and have armed myself with packets of orange butterfly flower seeds to attract the monarch butterflies. A part of the soul still searches and tries to recreate the peace that passes all understanding in a garden.
