My dad lived in the same house for thirty years, and at least five days a week for those thirty years he spent time in his yard. That's almost eight thousand times he put on whatever passed for his yard clothes at the time and ventured out to tend to the various chores that made the yard what it was. It was never one of those showcase yards you would see in Better Homes & Gardens, but it was our yard it was where I grew up.
My first memory of this house is the back yard. It was about a half-acre with grass and some trees close to the house, the back three-quarters wooded and wild. Weekends when we first moved in my Dad, Grandfather, and some uncles and cousins spent all their time clearing this lot and turning it into a yard.' My mother and grandmother were in charge of refreshments. My twin brother and I were mostly kept out of trouble with us approaching our sixth birthday, this wasn't easy.
My brother and I weren't allowed past the edge of the house while the clearing work was going on. Trees were falling, underbrush burned, and machetes flailed through the bushes. I don't know how much time was spent on this project it may have been weeks or months. I remember the woods were there, and then they were gone. In their place was a huge expanse of fescue grass, broken only by a bed of Irises in the middle and a bed of roses to one side. The only trees left were a tall sycamore in the middle, a huge shady water oak in one corner, a wild cherry close to the house, and two hickories on the other side.
When my brother and I were five, we moved into this, our first house. We had lived in an apartment as infants and a rented duplex after that. Our family lived together there for the next thirteen years and every day, it was always the same. My father came home from his office in downtown Atlanta as an insurance underwriter. First, in a 57 Chevrolet, then in a 63 Volkswagen beetle, and finally in a 68 Volkswagen square-back. He got home, found out how much time before dinner, changed into his work clothes', and went out to Work In the Yard.
There were hundreds of activities over the years. There were hedges to plant and then trim, grass to seed and then mow, ditches to dig and maintain, and flowers to pot and transplant. He tackled each task with a seriousness and focus, as if this way, and no other, was the right way to accomplish the mission.
And accomplish them he did, whether it took an hour or months an hour at a time.
And heaven help the boy that slowed or reversed any of this work. If he found a small footprint in a bed of new seed, or a young twig was broken, there followed much finger pointing. We both found that the best thing about having a brother was there was always someone else to take the blame. Neither of us ever did anything, the other brother did. If George Washington had a brother when he chopped down that cherry tree, history might have been rewritten.
A few tasks grew too large and Dad would regretfully ask for help from other family members. The ditch he decided to dig along the back of the lot to prevent flooding is one example. This ditch would end up being about a hundred feet long and about a foot and half deep and wide. It would run through Georgia clay, which is like digging through bricks. Dad decided one summer to give us something to do to earn money and get help with the ditch by offering us a fee for each linear foot dug. After calculating the fortune I would earn, I proceeded to work. About thirty minutes later, I abandoned the task for all time. The ditch did finally get finished, and I can still point out the eight inches or so that I contributed.
Another time, he solicited the aid of our mother. One of the trees left in the lower part of the yard dropped a small limb on the roof. Dad decided that the tree had to come down before it caused more damage. Armed with only an ax, he began chopping down the wild cherry. As it got closer to falling, he looped a rope around the trunk above a high limb. He gave the other end of the rope to Mom. She stood out of range of the falling tree pulling the rope while Dad finished chopping through the trunk. As the tree began to sway with the final swings of the ax, Mom began tugging on the rope causing the tree to rock. Swaying the wrong way, the tree finally broke and fell on the house, creasing the gutter. You could hear Mom and Dad a block away as they had a spirited discussion about physics and the fine points of teamwork. That was the last time Mom was involved in anything heavier than raking leaves or planting roses.
After my brother and I moved out, my father retired, and my mother passed on, he continued to live in that house for several more years before moving to his current house. During that time, he continued his daily rituals until the day he left, although retirement left his schedule open to hours that were more flexible. Any addition or removal from the yard would be a topic of our frequent phone conversations. When I stopped by for a visit, we would spend part of the time walking around the yard surveying the work he was doing. If a major part of the landscape had changed or something was missing, I felt a sense of loss, as if someone had violated my home.
He has moved to a new house now and he still spends a lot of time tending to his yard. Since I don't see it quite as often, every call is accompanied by a discourse of what has been planted, transplanted, or removed. When I visit, I get a stack of photos of things in bloom or projects in progress. We will walk this new yard and he will show me the retaining wall he built and the line of pine trees he planted. I know he still enjoys the design and fulfillment of landscaping and things growing.
I miss the old yard, though. I could walk out into the middle it and look at the trees that I climbed. I could spot the location of the bases on the baseball field and the location of the badminton court. I could walk past the shrub in the middle of it all that I always jumped over as I ran back toward the house, when it was shorter and I could jump higher. I could stand in that yard and be home again.