Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2009:
Tomorrow morning, I will rise at 5:30 a.m. to shower before scrubbing my left knee for exactly three minutes with an antiseptic cloth. I will not eat or drink anything, no breakfast, no coffee, not even a sip of water, before traveling the three miles to Maine Coast Memorial Hospital where I will, sometime during the day, undergo total replacement of my left knee.
In this manner, my gardening year comes to an end. By the time I can return to any meaningful work in the garden, it will be to remove frost-killed plants to the compost pile, return bamboo stakes and birch-branch cucumber trellises to winter storage.
It is a fitting end to a gardening season that was truncated at its beginning by endless rain and cold. Tomato transplants, some home-grown, others purchased, were planted to the garden three times before nighttime temperatures crept above 50 degrees, the threshold for successful pollen tube growth and subsequent fertilization.
When it finally looked like fruits would form, the late blight struck down all but one tomato plant, leaves of all the others turning yellow, then brown, while stems turned black. The lone survivor, a Red Fig, may ripen a tomato or two. If so, it will be mine to pick, even if I have to hobble on crutches out to that rugged plant.
Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2009:
I returned home yesterday, at midday, slowly hobbled up the back steps surrounded by the perfumes of summersweet and nicotiana, volatile oils released by the sun’s warmth from a thousand nectarines. That was all I had of the garden on the day of my return.
By the time the home health physical therapist left at 2:30 p.m., leaving behind a litany of daily exercises that should be held to the light of Geneva Convention standards, I was too tired and too sore to do anything other than sleep. If I hear “no pain, no gain” one more time, I will refuse to wear that dreaded knee stabilizer through the night, a contraption that forces sleeping on your back, something I have never done quietly.
I remember little of the actual procedure, only the anesthesiologist directing me to lean forward so that he could insert the spinal anesthetic and the same doctor telling me nearly three hours later that it was over.
The details of those three hours lie beneath the straight line of 36 staples running through my left kneecap.
Of the subsequent five days away from Marjorie’s garden, I remember care flowing toward me from all directions, most of all the nurses, RNs and CNAs, who would work in pairs through long shifts, always beginning by writing their first names on the dry-erase board that filled the wall directly across from my feet. At the press of a button, they brought me relief from pain in the forms of pills and IV fluids. They kept ice water flowing constantly around my swelling knee. They talked about their families and their pets, taking my mind off the constant discomfort.
This afternoon I walked on crutches out to the garden. Some plants lie defeated on the ground and I longed to lift them out of the ground, bury them in the compost heap. Yet there is exuberance in many of the plants, including a single potted morning glory that defied all odds to climb eight feet up the deer fence and into the lower branches of the Japanese pagoda tree. It may never flower, but its large heart-shaped leaves are a true welcoming.
And the Red Fig tomato? It was blown off its bamboo trellis during the recent winds and rains and I found it crawling across the bed, still showing no sign of disease. One lonely green tomato, the shape of a pear, has formed, and there are numerous flowers.
I may never eat a tomato from this plant, but I feel a kinship to it. We are both survivors.
Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605, or to rmanley@shead.org. Include name, address and telephone number.