Once again I’m back home after my two days away in Cedar.
It was a change, which I suppose is a good thing, but my brother and sister-in-law are both so wracked up with illness I felt like Tarzan in comparison, and all they seem to do is watch TV.
Their front garden though is just beautiful. Of course the background view is of the ocean, but the garden itself is comprised of a series of 14 brown pots set in a triangle on 14 pavers at the farthest end of a large patio. The pots are filled with pink geraniums, darker pink fibrous begonias and lots of trailing white boccopa, really lovely, and certainly easy to care for.
There are hanging baskets as well, suspended from a trellis and these are filled with a mixture of trailing red geraniums, bright yellow daisies (which look fine, which they shouldn’t) white boccopa and red fibrous begonias, and these attract the odd humming bird. Not a fuchsia in the place, but there were four stems of heliotrope in another pot and two of the tallest blue alliums I’ve ever seen in a small bed next to the patio table and chairs.
Behind the house there are three small plastic greenhouses and in these are planted spinach, chard, zucchini squash, and a couple of rows of carrots, but these are tended by a weekly gardener, not my brother. I lectured him about it, suggesting to him the joys of raising vegetables yourself, the thrill of finding sprouting seeds, and growing plants, but he was having none of it.
I think he has given up on life, which troubles me deeply, but his wife is very ill, although still alive and living at home, being cared for by a couple of dear, sweet-natured girls who have the patience of growing grass, and feed her like a baby.
She seems unable to hold onto anything in her mouth and the food drops out onto her lap. It certainly took away my appetite, and I tried not to watch, but I guess my brother is used to it, because he tucked right in, and even had dessert.