2026 ~ The Summer of Second Chances

My therapeutic seed garden saved the summer.

One early autumn leaf hangs on the Italian Plum. Eager beaver, I commented to myself. But then I glanced at the date on my phone. We’re minutes away from the “ber months.” September, October, November, December. 

I like to call these the Brrrr Months. Because I’m a winter lover. Snowy days, good books, hot cups of tea vs. iced. When that doesn’t help - twice daily showers because it’s so freaking hot out here, I can’t cope.

Heliopsis has not received one drop of sprinkler water all summer long.

How hot? Well, take a look at this gal ~ worshipping the blazing sun. Eight-feet tall, balancing the weight of a record-breaking number of happy sunflowers. {Heliopsis, perennial, they’re called false sunflowers, but I don’t think that’s fair. Look at how hard she’s trying. Kinder to name her a Sunflower Tree.}

She doesn’t belong here. Neither do I. I guess you could say we’re making the best of it. In starkly different ways. I've never seen so many flowers. Perhaps she's under the delusion she’s back in Arizona. (Given the number of record-breaking, "dangerous high heat" days we've had this summer - she's not wrong about that.)

On our way to the Bear Claw Cabin!
You have to ride 4 different ski lifts to reach this restaurant, at the top of the Sundance resort.

At the end of May, I had full knee replacement surgery. 

For a variety of reasons ~ most importantly is how I wanted to keep up with my darling granddaughter. 

This was a happy surprise. Drifts of wild Larkspur appeared in the backyard this summer.
Seeds blown in from who knows where.

I don’t know if it’s like this everywhere but getting new knees is common where I live, in a ski resort. I s'pose that's because most of us “old timer” Park City residents fell in love with the same movie. When Peter Pan turns to Wendy and says: Repeat after me, let’s never grow up! We thought to ourselves… Yeah! That’s a great life plan! 

Which is how we ended up skiing so hard, so frequently and for so many years… that the whole town is lining up for new knees.

Yarrow ~ another drought tolerant, long-blooming, beauty.

I’ve never had surgery ~ so I was scared to death ~ and this is a grand example of why I oftentimes prefer the company of dogs, cats, and horses to people. Because they don't talk. Anyone who heard I was having this surgery was delighted to regale me with terrifying tales of suffering.

They’re right about that. Recovery is super painful. Though, they’re missing the most painful part of all.

Enduring an entire summer without gardening.

After knee surgery, I couldn't walk downstairs to my summer coffee spot.
Though I did receive a ton of compliments on these pink flowers, Dame's Rocket.
Just FYI? They're weeds. But if visitors don't know that, I'm not gonna tell 'em!

Imagine. Being in close proximity to your gardens, but you can't do a dang thing.

1) For the first six weeks, post-surgery, you can’t drive. Therefore, you cannot visit your favorite nursery and waste spend all kinds of money on exciting new perennials you do not need.

2) The new knee doesn’t like to bend, so you can’t pull weeds. Which. On one hand sounds rather heavenly but the weeds are still there. Dancing a jig, knowing full well I can’t get to them.

During my recovery time, I joined an online Hollyhock Lovers group.
We're sharing seeds ~ so I have big, big plans for this garden next summer.

Post-surgery, it took me 4 weeks to be able to walk down the steps to my gardens. So, I whiled away the recovery days by swearing so loudly, the neighbor asked if I was okay. I was sipping my coffee, at the top o’ those stairs, peering over the railing. Screaming oh goddammit! There’s another Canadian Thistle!

You know the thing about Canadian Thistles? In addition to being a noxious weed, their seeds can lie dormant for 30 years. Which means they’ve already outlived me and I’m still here.

The cool thing about Sunflowers is that they all bloom facing east.

I’m retired, now, but my lifelong career was that of Strategic Planner. Helping companies plan, research, look for the inevitable roadblocks that can turn a great idea into a bad idea in record time.

I can sum up my 25 years as a freelance marketing consultant in just a couple sentences. My job was to sit in meetings, listen to presentations, see the excitement on the teams’ faces. The team who clearly did not think this through. Just like the weeds in my garden, everyone in the room is dancing a happy jig. Then I say: Wait a minute.

And that's how I got the name Buzz Kill.

SURPRISE! We just left my backyard and now we're in Paris.
Because of the surgery, I didn't take too many flower photos this year.
But I traveled like crazy! And that's another reason why the old knee said enough's enough.

 

It was my strategic planning brain that saved the summer. Thinking ahead, to preserve my sanity, I hoisted a whole bunch of new planters onto the big deck. No stairs. Even better? Softer soil. No weeds! No deer saying: Why thank you, that brand new flower you just purchased was delicious!

Rather than destroy the old house on this property when they began construction...
This hotel, outside Paris, hoisted the farm house to the top of the building. The house is now a fabulous restaurant.

Before my knee surgery, I filled the deck planters with soil, set up a hose out there, purchased a ton of quick-growing annual seeds. And then I waited.

Because I had no idea how I would feel during recovery. Surely there will come a day when the sun is shining while I’m hobbling around in my walker fantasizing about killing myself and just how would one go about doing that and make it look like an accident. Plus who would adopt my dumb pets? My cats are a-holes and whenever I’m petting dog, Teddy, I sing that song: If I only had a brain…

We spent a lot of time in Rothenberg (Bavaria.) Some of it was shopping, oh my gosh they had cool stuff.
But most of our time was spent searching for our car. Doesn't help that every damn rental is white.
* It's a walled city, so we walked the top of the wall for hours trying to figure out which parking lot we originally chose. 

Sure enough, post surgery misery kicked in rather quickly. Planting day arrived much sooner than expected. Took no time at all to start focusing entirely on my deck containers. My brand new garden!!! Content to leave the “real” gardens to their own devices.

Neuschwanstein ~ down in the village where we were staying.
And yes. The pastures are that green!

If I wasn’t so self-conscious, I’d share pictures of me in my walker, thinning the seedlings in my planters. I was out there every single morning. It gave me purpose, it made me happy. It got me thinking about how gardening could, and should, be an activity we do no matter what our physical abilities. 

And that includes me. I don't have nearly as much energy toward this property as I did 23 years ago, when I bought it.

Linderhof Palace, north of Munich.

I hear a lot of talk about Blue Zones, these days. Healthy places where people live very long lives simply by doing what they love to do. Everybody wants to move to one of those places. But why? You could easily create your own blue zone, wherever you live. And I think I just did.

We visited Europe twice this year. In autumn, goofing around at the castles,
getting hopelessly lost in the Black Forest + visiting the Cuckoo clock capital of the world. So fun.
Returning early December for the Christmas Markets in Switzerland. Even more fun.

Been pondering, long and hard, about selling my house. It used to be a labor of love; it’s quite enjoyable puttering in your gardens when the weather is a balmy 82 degrees throughout the entire summer. But we don’t get balmy days anymore. Nowadays our summers are so hot, this place has been renamed Hell’s Half Acre.

Bye-bye Europe. Now we're in Belize.

The big surprise, during this beastly hot summer, was seeing how well the “real gardens” ~ the flowers planted in the soil, not containers ~ faired without me. Yeah. I was throwing a fit about Canadian Thistle. There is one spot that will always torment me. But for the most part, those gardens looked great. Filled with feisty long-lived and long-blooming perennials, drought tolerant, tougher than most of the weeds foolishly thinking they’ve got a shot. They flourished during this hellscape summer. They did just fine. Without me.

That’s when I said to myself: Well, lookee there. I’m off the hook. 

That dot below the arrow is me. Climbing to the top of a Mayan Temple.
Reason #87 why I ended up having knee surgery this year. 😊

Part of me wants to sell the house because I no longer have the energy to keep up with those big gardens. It’s a lot of work and I don’t wanna do it anymore. But maybe I don't have to. Because I absolutely loved the manageable aspect of that container garden. I want to do that every summer!

We're on our way home now. Here in the Cotswolds I discovered my dream house.
I wouldn't be on the fence, at all, about selling my own house.
If I could afford to live happily ever after in a fairy tale cottage like this one.

The talk around this weekend’s campfire wine bottle was how we’ve changed, now that we’re officially old. (I typed it like that because we haven’t been allowed to gather around a live campfire in years. It’s a tinderbox out here.)

I’ve been feeling the pressure, says B. Like. If I don’t do things now, I might not ever get to.

Me, too, I responded. And I think we can blame Oprah for this. 

I was only half-joking. If you’re old enough to remember the 20th century you may recall how she popularized bucket lists. I made one, everyone made one, mine’s not done, yours probably isn’t either. 

This spring, we followed the bloom times of the California wildflowers from far south to San Fran.
But it was the Botanical Gardens that truly blew me away.

Every year, it gets harder for me to find people to travel with. And that's why I finally got up the nerve to try out one of those small group, women only, travel companies. It felt like a scary gamble. Though it only took about 5 minutes to make a few new lifelong friends. Because. If you think about it. You have a lot in common with those women before you even meet them. They’re here because they want to see and do the same things you do. 

Boating beneath Niagra Falls. That's me in the pink.

If you find yourself in the same boat, I would highly recommend one of these small group women's only tours. Yeah, you’re gonna feel nervous, shy, and possibly a little weird at first. I know I did. But that little bit of discomfort? It’s a sure fire sign you’re on the right track. To opening new doors while enjoying some beautiful places in the company of like-minded friends.

So there ya have it. All kinds of great reasons why I needed a new knee! Because this year I did a truly fantastic job of wearing out the old one.