ON LEGACIES AND REBIRTH

If you are like me, you have ups and downs all the time. Some of the factors affecting my day-to-day being have been created or recruited by my own ambition or involvement, but others are beyond my control such as acts of nature. Such  has been the case with me in the past few weeks. I had been bumping along in blissful anticipation of a new dahlia year - regularly checking my tubers, thinking about how to amend my soil, creating the framework for my shadecloth, putting the finishing touches on our 2013 show program, and setting up my seeds for germination. Following a busy fall and winter, I've indulged in the luxury of "extra" time, allowing me to jump into the warm, sweet analgesic of dahlia season, where my mental and emotional aches and pains are soothed.

January slipped by quickly, an uneventful slide into a new year. However, around mid-February, my mom started to have increased health problems, which landed her in the hospital for several days, on IV antibiotics and pain medication. I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say that at 91 years of age, a person's vulnerability to the marauding elements of time is increased, causing havoc in an elderly body and mind. I'm grateful to say that she has been able to return home, where she is much more comfortable and much less stressed. I wish I could say that she is back to her old (younger) self, but that is not the case. Although she seems to be doing OK, and seems to have recovered her physical health, she has lost a lot of her energy for living, and it is very difficult to persuade her to do much of anything....much like a tire with a slow leak.

In addition to the stresses associated with caring for family members, we also received the tragic news of the fire in Ferndale that claimed the life of Walt Wynne and the family's dahlia business. This loss had an especially profound impact on growers and clubs in the Pacific Northwest, and also resonated all over the world of dahlia growers. Many of us felt this as a personal loss, at several levels.

In the past couple of years, we have said "goodbye" to several friends, and it causes me to stop and think about the impacts we make in our lives and the pathways we choose to travel. Each person interacts with his/her environment in different ways, and leaves both scars and footprints. Those of us who remain after our predecessors can't help but be affected in one way or another.

One of my friends reminded me a few days ago that a lot of what I do in my work with my dahlias and with my clubs is driven my my need to carry out my dad's legacy.  However, I am me, I am not my dad.  Following Dad's example, I need to choose endeavors that are a good fit for my skills, talents, interests, energy and available time. They should also be enjoyable, adding more glee than gloom to my golden years. I'm thinking that I might need to get better at that, since the last few weeks have caused me to feel, at times, as though my brain was going to explode....Ever feel way yourself?

The natural progression of this theme leads me into my crawlspace, where my humble tubers are still slumbering. The more precocious ones are already waking, sending out shoots as certainly as my infants used to quietly babble as the sun came up, hours before I was actually ready to face the day.  Impossible to ignore, I would grumble and drag myself to the nursery, only to be flooded with the love and warmth that I, as a mom, always find in the smiles of my babies,. My comfort, my therapy, my panacea - are all found within the lives of those with whom I am intertwined.

So, if you see me posting pictures, showing trays of seedlings, tubers and pot tubers, it is representative of the healing that I am experiencing as the result of the legacy of last year's garden. My flowers gave up their lives, dropping petals, closing up and creating infinitesimal black promises within their seedpods. To add insult to injury, I shamelessly massacred their denuded stalks and  dismembered the asymmetrical root-clumps - a humiliating and certain death, I'm sure.

However, as if by magic, spring comes, and these modest remnants of "last-year's-news" rise, like Lazarus, to live again in even greater glory than before. We are charged with carrying on the legacy, just as it had  been with my father, my grandfather and all the dahlia growers who paved our way. It is handed gently into our eager, outstretched arms.