13 Gardening and Landscaping Examples of an Aging Mom in Pajamas, a Retirement Dream, a Baby Name, and the Backyard That Helped People Choose Happiness

My husband got out after 9 years for good behaviour. I drove to surprise him. But I forgot to turn off the oven. I’d been baking him a welcome cake. When we pulled up the house was smoke and fire. Our neighbor called the firefighters. My husband screamed at me, “You, little cupcake! You baked me a cake?” Then he pulled me into his chest right there on the lawn, laughing and crying at the same time, and said, “Nine years I dreamed about your cake. Nobody’s hurt. Look at them, they’re all out.”

The kids were standing barefoot on the neighbor’s grass in their pajamas, staring at the smoke. He crouched down, gathered all three of them in his arms, and said, “Okay. Fresh start. Everything we had is gone, so now we get to pick what comes next.” Mrs. Alvarez from across the street showed up with blankets and a pot of soup, and her husband handed us the keys to their spare apartment over the garage. “Stay as long as you need,” she said.

The fire captain found one thing in the wreckage the next morning, a metal tin from the hall closet. Inside were the letters my husband wrote me from the inside, nine years of them, untouched. He read the first one out loud to the kids on the curb. It said, “When I come home we’ll start from zero if we have to.”

Zero turned out to be a square of bare dirt. The insurance would take months, but the kids wanted to plant something right away. In his last 4 years inside, my husband had worked in the greenhouse program, so he knew exactly what to do in October. They built raised beds from lumber the neighbors dropped off, hauled in fresh soil, and pushed garlic cloves into the first bed and a packet of wildflower seeds into the second. Every kid got to choose a spot.

Mrs. Alvarez brings coffee over most mornings and tells them they’re doing it wrong. They ignore her. We’re still living over her garage, and the house is a long way from finished. But the garlic is up, and my husband calls me little cupcake every morning, standing in the garden with dirt under his nails. The kids picked the colors for the new house too. They all want yellow, to match the sunflowers they’re planting in spring.

My mother-in-law insisted on naming my newborn “Basil.” I was furious but my husband agreed. I called my mom helplessly but she said it’s not her business. I made peace with it because I don’t have a voice in that house. Until I searched the name online and found out Basil means “king” in Greek. My MIL knew.

My mom stopped speaking after her stroke. Doctors said she might never recover. I brought her home and built her a small raised garden bed outside her window. 2 weeks later I heard something. She was outside in her pajamas talking to her tomatoes. First words in 4 months.

I crept to the screen door so she wouldn’t see me. She was scolding a plant. “Too much water,” she told it, a little hoarse, a little slurred. “I told you. Too much water.” I stood there with my hand over my mouth. Her speech therapist told me later that talking to plants is the easiest place to start, because a tomato never waits for you to finish a sentence. The next morning she said my name.

My mom started gardening at 72 in her pajamas every morning. My neighbors complained. I apologized to her. She said, “Let them complain. I spent 40 years dressing for other people. This garden is mine.” Last month a magazine called. Someone had photographed her garden from the street and submitted it. They want to feature it. And yes, she was in her pajamas in the photo.

The magazine’s photographer arrived with a stylist who gently suggested a sundress. Mom held up her hose and said, “I’ll be in the pajamas.” They shot it that way. The most vocal complainer on our street, Mrs. Hale, now walks her visiting cousins past the garden and says, “That’s my neighbor, you know.” Last week she asked for zinnia seeds. Mom gave her two packets and didn’t say a word about the petition.

My mom started talking to her plants after my dad went. Full conversations. I thought grief was getting to her. Last month I visited and sat in the garden with her. She introduced me to each one by name. She said, “They listen without giving advice. Do you know how rare that is?”

Well, before I left she handed me a bag of mint. “This one’s your husband,” she said. I asked why. She said, “Invasive. Smells wonderful. Impossible to get rid of.” I’ve kept it on my windowsill ever since. The funniest part is, my husband thinks it’s a compliment. I really hope it is.

As much as I wanted to, my mom wouldn’t go to a nursing home. Said, “I’m staying where I can see the sky.” We compromised. A small house with a big garden. The first week she called me crying. I panicked. She said, “I just grew my first carrot. I’m 74 years old and I grew something from nothing and I need you to come see it right now.”

I drove over expecting a harvest. The carrot was about the size of my thumb, forked at the bottom like a tiny pair of legs. She’d washed it and put it on a plate on the kitchen table, with a fork beside it, like it was dinner. Nobody was allowed to touch it for a week. On day 8 she cut it into thirds, one for each of us, and we ate it standing up in the kitchen. Best carrot of my life, and I’m not exaggerating.

One day, my mom said her retirement dream was a garden with a bench where she could drink her morning coffee. We built it. First morning she sat out there she called me and said nothing for 5 minutes. Just sat there with the phone. Then she said, “This is the first morning in 45 years that I have nowhere to be.” She’s been out there every morning since. Still in her pajamas.

I drove over unannounced one Monday at 7am. She looked at me like I’d walked into a meeting. “I’m busy,” she said, and went back to her coffee. I almost left. Then I noticed the second mug on the other end of the bench, already filled, for me. Oh, I don’t know what’s up with that generation, but at least she’s happy.

My mom retired and immediately got a diagnosis. She said, “I’m not spending whatever time I have indoors.” She built a garden in 3 weeks. Every plant labeled with a family member’s name. She said, “When I go, the garden stays. Water your name and think of me.”

We spent that first weekend finding ourselves. My brother’s was a chili pepper, which he took personally. My sister’s was a rose with thorns. Mine was the tiniest basil in the whole bed, with a tag that said, “Danny needs attention.” Everyone laughed, and then nobody did. I water it every day now. It’s the only plant I’ve ever kept alive, and I’m not sure that’s an accident.

Three weeks into retirement, Grandma Ruth announced she was going to grow a pumpkin big enough to win the county fair. My Grandpa Max laughed so hard he had to put his coffee down. She had never grown anything bigger than a basil plant. She bought a book, a bag of special seeds from a man in Ohio, and a wheelbarrow she didn’t need, and she spent that whole summer out there at dawn, talking to a vine like it was a stubborn child.

It came in at 214 pounds. The winner that year weighed 611, and the judges barely glanced at hers. She took the ribbon for fourth place, which she hung in the kitchen next to the clock, and then she did something I’m still thinking about. She walked straight over to the twelve-year-old who’d come in second, a skinny kid in a borrowed fair T-shirt who’d been grinning at her pumpkin all afternoon, and asked who had taught him to grow like that. “Nobody,” he said. “I read your book at the library.” It was the same book. Grandma checked it out again that night and wrote her phone number inside the back cover, in case he ever needed a second opinion.

Nobody on Alder Street could say exactly when the pajama lady started planting sunflowers along the sidewalk. One week the strip of grass between the curb and the pavement was dandelions, the next week it was dirt with little paper tags stuck in it. She’d called the city first, I found out later, and a very confused clerk had told her that as long as nothing grew taller than the stop sign she could plant whatever she liked. So at 6:40 every morning, in flannel pants and a cardigan with a missing button, she was down there on a folding stool with a watering can and a thermos.

The school bus stops right in front of her house. By August, the sunflowers were taller than the fourth graders, and one boy who’d cried at the bus stop every morning since kindergarten started getting there ten minutes early. He wanted to check on “his” sunflower, the one with his name on the tag in her loopy handwriting. She’d made a tag for every kid on the route, 31 of them. He hasn’t cried at the bus stop since. When the heads got too heavy in October, she cut them down and mailed a bag of seeds to each family, with a note that said, “Plant these next spring, I’ll be watching from the porch.”