After a dormant period, this author’s love for gardening blooms again
|[originally published on NextAvenue.org, May 8, 2019; photo courtesy of Debbie L. Miller]
After 23 years of marriage, I was finished. For the last nine of those years, I’d owned a house with a garden in East Tennessee where I grew herbs, perennials, wildflowers and vegetables. I gathered herbal bouquets and dried flowers. I was a member of the Smoky Mountain Herbal Society. I loved my garden.
But middle age hit all at once and with it came a series of events that rocked my world within a three-year period. There was surgery to remove a suspicious lump, my father’s death, the death of my two 18-year-old cats, my mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis and subsequent death and the separation from my husband.
In 1997, I filed for divorce, sold my interest in the house to my soon-to-be ex, yard-saled most of the household stuff, sold my car and moved to New York City.
Looking For a Permanent Home
I was raised in Northeastern Ohio, where my mother grew coral bells. Every year, she divided them and gave away clumps to friends. After I got married and left Ohio in 1973, I moved around a lot with my then-husband. Mom and Dad brought me coral bells…
