Benny’s Garden

After the accident, Parker had these grand ideas about creating a garden/zen like space somewhere in our yard. If you don’t know my yard, it’s the kind where wild things grow, where nature takes over and landscaping is a battle. When we bought our house some ten years ago, the yard was so overgrown you could barely see the front of the house. I remember walking through the backyard and feeling like I was in the book ‘The Secret Garden.’

For years we’ve tried our best to tame our wild things. For years we’ve also tried our hand at a vegetable garden to no avail. We tried to grow them in pots from seeds, than seedlings with no success. This year I figured that if my soil could produce such beautiful flowers and an abundance of weeds, logically it would be the best place to grow our vegetables.

Parker borrowed a rototiller and built raised beds. Darcy and I had planted seeds back in March and some of those we were able to transplant, but most of them didn’t make it. We had tried sunflowers, but they also were sun fried and wilted. So while Parker was on the Great Race we planted cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, strawberries, squash, corn, pumpkin and beans from seedlings. I really had no clue if this would work or what would grow, so Darcy and I planted a little bit of everything. We put up some netting, watered nightly and sat back and watched the garden bloom! It finally worked!

Darcy and I began calling this our ‘Benny Garden.’ I hung my wind chimes out on a tree nearby and bought a large metal sunflower and hung it on the fence. We moved our ‘Benny light’ that was given to us by a stranger from the roadside memorial and put a little picket fence complete with pinwheels, Benny’s favorite.

At the same time we bought the seedlings, we bought more sunflowers and tried again to grow them in pots. I eventually moved the pots over to the vegetable garden and was excited when the sunflowers actually began to grow! What was even more exciting were the sunflowers that were mysteriously growing in both raised beds. The only ones that we had planted were in the pots and now 10+ sunflowers have started to sprout up everywhere in the beds inexplicably. Perhaps inexplicably isn’t the right word. Once again, my little man’s work.

Just when I feel like I haven’t gotten a sign in awhile, something so concrete happens. People say that it’s happening because we are open to it, but I would say it would be hard to miss what’s happened in the last 9 months.

Author: sheriroaf

Sheri Roaf is the mother of four wonderful children who turned to blogging after her 17 month old son Bennett passed away unexpectedly. Through her writing she has found a way to help herself and her family move forward in the face of tragedy. View all posts by sheriroaf