Gremlin's Meadow

Welcome to my backyard!

In the summer of 2004, I bought a house in the country, about a 20-minute drive from the university where I work.

I had been thinking about moving out of town for a while; had wanted a home of my own, but hadn't had the motivation to pursue what seemed a daunting task. In August of 2003, my landlord in town provided it: he dropped off a letter notifying me of a significant increase in rent for the coming year.

The rent increase ate up the small salary increase I'd recently received from my employer. I might have cried a little. A monthly mortgage payment couldn't possibly cost more than the rent I was going to be paying. In frustration, I resolved that by the following year's rental contract date (mid-August in a college town), I'd do my best to be in a home of my own.

I worked with a mortgage company to get preapproved, and started looking at houses. I became an expert on online searches:  check the newspaper's real estate listings every Sunday, pick up the local real estate guide each month, find the MLS (multiple listing service) number on each house of interest, get a map online, do a drive-by. I was looking more for a place than for a specific type of house: a place in the country, some place green, some place peaceful.

I looked at almost a hundred houses in the following eight months. I only scheduled appointments to see inside a few of them. Almost all of them had neighbors too close. Many of them were sold or under contract by the time I even got to see them. I learned how much they cost; met with the mortgage company again; bumped up my spending limit. It was a frustrating experience, but I learned a lot, drove down a lot of side roads, got to know the area.

In late April of 2004, I was almost ready to give up. I'd seen a lot of houses, been stunned by how quickly many of them had sold, realized that the choices within my price range were a bit limited.

Then one evening after work, I did a drive-by on a pretty little house on an acre of land in the local countryside; admired its green lawn and trees and shady yard, the fancy glass window on the front door. I could see many trees casting shadows through the peaceful yard. It looked perfect. Could this be my new home? I wrote my real estate agent a note: What was the story on this house?

They informed me it was already under contract; there were two offers pending. I told my agent I was giving up the search. I'd had enough disappointment. Maybe I'd rent for another few years, try again.

About a week later, I got an e-mail from my real estate agent: the offers had fallen through, and the little house and property I had loved was back on the market! "Get me in as soon as possible!" I wrote back. That was a Wednesday.

Thursday at lunchtime found me meeting my agent at the house. We went inside. I liked the house, but I loved the huge deck out back, and the large yard and woods that surrounded it. I wanted to have my morning coffee on that deck every day for the rest of my life!

We looked at another nearby house after that, but my head was spinning: all I could talk about was the house we'd just seen! I went back to work, mulled things over. By 3 pm, I called them back: could we write up an offer on the house ASAP? By the end of my workday, I had a contract in hand. All I needed to decide was how much to offer.

That night, I called my boyfriend (let's clarify that: my long-time boyfriend; we'd been dating each other exclusively since 1986), told him I was making an offer on the house, asked his advice. His only suggestion was, given the locally very competitive housing market, that I should offer a bit MORE than the asking price. (The house, by the way, was to be mine; but we thought that eventually he might move in. But he was renting a place in Altoona, a town about an hour away, where he would need to stay, at least for now.)

I finalized my offer, dropped it off at the real estate agency the following morning, May seventh. I had a vacation day scheduled for family plans. My little sister, a serious genealogist in hot pursuit of our family history, had organized a few of us to go search some local cemeteries for long-deceased family members: a "cemetery stomp," we called it. My father and two of my sisters and I traveled around, visiting graves, taking pictures, feasting on a picnic lunch my mother had packed that included sandwiches, as well as her homemade fudge and pickled eggs.

I got home Friday evening to find multiple messages on my answering machine: several questions from my real estate agent, asking me about something called "earnest money," and then finally one last message with this great news: my offer had been accepted and the house was mine! Mine, mine, mine!

We scheduled the closing for the Friday before Memorial Day weekend in late May. Quite pleased with myself, I gave notice to my landlord of my intent to move out of my little rental house in town by the end of the summer. I began cleaning and packing and moving, a process that continued from late May through mid-August.

It was a time of mixed joy and sorrow for me. Do the biggest joys always come with the biggest sorrows? Is that how it is? How it must always be?

At that time, I had a huge (22 pounds at his top weight) orange tomcat named Gremlin whom I adored with all my heart. He was the cat I had waited for all my life. In the summer of 2004, Gremlin was 17 years old. He had occasionally struggled with complications from diabetes; my life style was a bit limited by the two insulin shots a day I had to give him, one at 7 am, one at 7 pm, for the last 6 years of his life. Gremlin was a fierce-hearted cat: friendly to my boyfriend and me, but nobody else could get near him or touch him.

Gremlin's health was rapidly deteriorating, and I took him to the vet in June, where the vet reported my beloved cat might have liver cancer, and a limited time to live. I cried, resolved to spend every waking moment I could by his side.

One morning in late June - the second day of summer - the people at work had a party for me to celebrate my purchase of my new home. I went home after that (I had started trying to work at home whenever possible to get more time with Gremlin) to find my cat convulsing on the bathroom floor. I held him for more than an hour, crying, knowing it was the end. I called my boyfriend who was at work; told him what was up; gave him the chance to say a tearful good-bye over the phone.

An early afternoon thunderstorm; a call to the vet, who came to the house with her assistant; a quick injection, and Gremlin's suffering was over. I never knew true heartbreak until then. My world was shattered. I cried for hours and hours. Cried every morning for more than a year, in fact.

A sidebar: we waited several years to get another cat after Gremlin's passing; I admit I was afraid I'd never love another creature as much as I loved that big orange cat. But maybe I was almost as much afraid that I might . . . And who could live through such heartbreak as that more than once in a lifetime, I wondered? Who could possibly survive it?

I had hoped to have a garden at my new house, had big dreams of all of what I would plant. But here is the sad news, friends: the very first thing I planted in the yard of this property was the big orange tabby that I had loved so much. That Friday, we dug a hole at the very back of the yard, played sad music, cried a lot, said some words acknowledging our love and commending this cat to God, and in a small Rubbermaid container (accompanied by photos of him and me, of him and my boyfriend, and tokens of all of his favorite things), we buried Gremlin.

The area at the back of the yard, directly in front of his grave, had some rough spots in it that made it difficult to mow. And so we stopped mowing it, and allowed the grass to grow long, and I eventually planted other plants there: everything you can imagine, in fact.

The deer came to play there, and the rabbits too. I thought Gremlin would be very pleased with that. And that little bit of wild space at the back of the yard came to be called Gremlin's Meadow. We have quite a few wild visitors. Creatures seem to be attracted to this place: especially for any who may be suffering, there is peace to be found here that restores the soul.

Over the years since then, I have planted in the meadow more things than I can remember or list. Here are just a few: lilac, daffodil, tulip, gladiolus, painted daisy, speedwell, gaillardia, bleeding heart, shasta daisy, allium, pansy, Italian aster, tree rose of sharon, checkered lily, snapdragon.

One day a few years later, sitting in the local hospital waiting for the results of a redo on a suspicious mammogram, I contemplated the possibility of my own death, and I perused a plant catalog. Nearly giddy when the results came back OK, in relief I celebrated: I bought a whole bunch of tulips in every color . . . pink ones, purple ones, parrot tulips, purple prince, rococo. Hundreds of them! Let there be joy!

I spent weeks making diagrams of how I would organize the tulips in my yard, they finally arrived, and I planted them at the front of the meadow in an intricate pattern I'd come up with after weeks of scheming and diagramming.

Alas, those tulips for which I had such great expectations only gave me blooms for a few years; this past spring, only two or three came up. Such is life. I consider my planting activities a grand experiment: plant a lot, some of it grows, some of it doesn't, don't take it too personally.

Eventually, I went on to plant a butterfly and hummingbird garden, which has been more of a success than any of my other planting endeavors. If you are standing where I was to take this picture, the butterfly garden is to the right just outside this scene.

Gremlin's Meadow has grown taller and lusher over the years. I don't weed or whack it anymore, just let it all grow. I am pleased to report that some of what I planted comes back each year: the shasta daisies, the gaillardia, the butterfly bush, and finally (on the right) some pink echinacea.

You can see the hummingbird feeder that I try to keep clean and full this time of year; a pair of white square planters to the left and right; a chair. My most recent project was the 40-foot-long trench I just dug this week for the iris rhizomes I moved from the front yard to here. You can see the trench at the very front of the meadow.

If you thought the ground was fertile and good here, you might be wrong: it is just loaded with rocks. In fact, while digging that trench this week, I could have sworn someone has been sneaking into my backyard and planting even MORE rocks than we had in the dirt.

If you want to picture me happy, imagine me here, in my backyard, watching for hummingbirds at the feeder as the late sun throws shadows on the grass. You might find me reading a book, or doing some small yard project, or listening to music, or making a list, or diagramming my next planting adventure, or staging a little photo shoot with my glass menagerie and the latest visitor to my yard, whoever it may be.

It is a quiet and peaceful place. All creatures are welcome here, and I promise they will receive hospitality and comfort; and a last place to rest, should that be needed as well. They are not the first. They will not be the last.

Let there be peace everywhere. Let it start here with me.

Welcome to my backyard. Welcome to Gremlin's Meadow.