Garden Tour, part deux

 Forty days and counting.

That's how many days we have left before the Master Gardener's Tour begins on June 4-5. And I'm feeling the pressure.

OK, OK. I know what you're thinking. I spent more than 30 years of my professional career in journalism under deadline pressure. So what am I so worried about?

Well, it seems to be a different kind of pressure. When I wrote sports for The Dispatch, all our copy had to be in around 10 a.m. for the 11 a.m. press run. Curiously, I didn't mind that kind of pressure. It was kind of fun. It made putting out a daily newspaper resemble something like an everyday miracle.

I even once had the opportunity to run down to the press room and shout to the pressman, "Stop the presses!" It's something I always wanted to say and mean it. Really. I was working on a late-breaking story about a coach, I think, who just got hired. Or fired. I forget which. Anyway, within a span of 20 minutes or so, I got a few quotes, banged out the story, had the story repaginated and put on the press. The paper still hit the streets before noon and nobody was the wiser for it.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

But this Master Gardener thing is different. The house still looks like it's climbing out of its winter hibernation, even though I spent the past week thatching and seeding – and reseeding – my front and back yards.

I do have seedlings in the front yard. It took about six days for the first sprouts to show, which is probably pretty quick. But then, we're down to 40 days. Six days can be interminable.

The back yard still looks like the 50-yard line of a natural turf football field after a game in the rain. C'mon seedlings. Hurry up. We only have 40 days to go.

I wonder if this is what it's like for the groundskeepers in Augusta as they get ready for The Masters every year? I feel their pain.

Kim just planted scarlet red geraniums in the kitchen window box, but the driveway window box is still waiting for ideas. The perennials in our front English Cottage Gardens are just now waking up, but we're still thinking about border plants to decorate the gardens with color.

Since I'm retired, I'm the guy who can invest four to five hours each day doing the weeding, seeding, mulching and watering. Kim is still a working professional, so her free time in the garden is limited to weekends. She's the garden organizer. She's the one who decides what goes where. So time is of the essence.

A garden deadline seems much more stressful because you're letting nature take its course. It's mostly out of our hands. All you can do is stand there and remind the seeds and plants and herbs and flowers, "Hey, guys. Hurry up. There's only 40 days to go."

Going on tour

The way I remember it, a few years ago, Kim and I jokingly noted to ourselves that our house was never included in any Master Gardener recognition.

"Why not? we laughed. "Our gardens looks as good as anyone's."

(Note: Our gardens, front and back, are basically humble ones, having already been established mostly by previous owners by the time we bought the house in 2003.)

Our front garden in 2018.

So we let the matter rest without any further thought.

That is, until several weeks ago. Kim said she had gotten a phone call at work, out of thin blue air, from a representative of the Davidson County Master Gardeners, wanting to know if we'd be interested in participating in their annual tour this year, and can they send somebody over to look at our house first?

Umm, OK. This is interesting. I told Kim, sure, why not, let them look, but I'm not going to throw a lot of money at our gardens or go out of my way to create something extravagant. Our house is a simple Craftsman bungalow, and that's the way I want to keep it.

Then two nice ladies came over to scout out the property. One of them, Frankie Mefford, explained that the Master Gardeners were resurrecting their popular tour after a two-year hiatus because of Covid. They already had six houses lined up in the beautiful Grimes School area, but six houses weren't enough to justify selling tour tickets. They needed a few more attractions and could we help them out?

I expressed my concerns about throwing more money into my yard than I was comfortable with, but Frankie graciously pointed out that many of the people on the tour probably feel the same way that I do, and that our house would be a fine example of simplicity intersecting with beauty.

How could we say no to that?

So, we agreed. We are now on the tour, along with eight other participants, scheduled for June 4-5. Frankie recently sent us an email that said the Master Gardeners are expecting upwards of 500 people to tour the participating gardens.

The pressure is on.

Right now, hardly anything is in bloom, so it's difficult to envision what hopefully will be. Or to even meet the description we wrote for the tour brochure. On top of that, I weeded and feeded (wed and fed?) the grass in our yard before this tour project actually became a thing for us, so all of our grass right now looks like circus elephants have been grazing on the property. Plus, with about 54 days to go, the weeds have been merciless.

Indeed, I've already started significant weeding. I'll be turning the soil and throwing out grass seed this week. Kim has already bought geraniums for the kitchen window box and put up the hummingbird feeder. Both of us have submitted our pleas for Divine Intervention over the coming weeks. We've even taken our second Covid booster shots to make sure we get through this thing intact. And, if all goes according to schedule, I'll be throwing down at least three Bobcat loads of hardwood mulch in about a month.

But until the tour actually gets here, I'm anticipating daily work in our yards and gardens. We'd be doing this even if we weren't on the tour, except there's a deadline now.

But we're excited about this. It'll be hard work, but it'll be fun, too. Simplicity meets eye appeal.

Participating in the tour will be Stuart and Grace Ward, 210 Westover Drive; Willie and Jo Ellen Edwards, 212 Westover Drive;  Don Patterson and Marcia Michaud-Patterson, 4 Hege Drive; Courtney and April Crowson, 27 Grimes Circle; Amy Suttle, 116 Chestnut Street; Bright Carter, 209 Chestnut Street; Tom Tussey and Jeff Miller, 500 West Second Avenue; Gail and Judy Lanier, 304 West Second Avenue; and us, Bruce and Kim Wehrle, 406 West Second Avenue.

Tickets are $20 and will benefit several charities.

Band of brothers

Back in 1991, when Mom was losing her battle with breast cancer, one of the things she asked her three sons was to promise to never lose touch with each other.

I think it was her vision that the brothers would reunite every few years, hoist a few, arms locked around shoulders, singing John Denver tunes.

Unfortunately, as it usually does, life got in the way.

One son, me, was already living in North Carolina. The youngest son, Scott, was soon to live in Tennessee, then Iowa, and finally Oklahoma. The middle son, Dave, ended up spending more than 40 years in Alaska.

It was nearly an impossible promise to keep. And while in truth we never did lose contact with each other (promise kept), we never had that reunion of the three of us together. To this day, that is still an open possibility.

What did Mom expect? She and Dad created a family in Allentown, PA, then packed us up for brief tenures in Portsmouth, NH, East Hartford, CT (where Scott was born), and then back to Pennsylvania, a state where we moved three more times in just a handful of years. Indeed, our parents ended up in Wisconsin. It is where they are buried. Perhaps inadvertently, they handed down the wanderlust gene to their children. No wonder she worried we'd lose touch.

Technology helped. The brothers would call and chat with each other on holidays. Then we could text, which made contact even easier. About a year or so ago, my laptop beeped and I received a facetime call from Scott.  A what? But that was nice. Shortly after that, my cell phone beeped, I hit "answer," and I got a visual call from Dave. All of these things have brought us closer.

 Scott and I have reunited several times in person over the years, the latest event several years ago when he and his wife, Shelly, came to help me through my recovery after colon surgery.

But Dave was a different matter. He was soooo far away. Kim and I did see him in Anchorage back in 1992, and then saw him again in 1998 when he brought his toddler son Charlie to Allentown to be christened. But that was the last time we saw him in person.

Until yesterday. The cog wheels of time were gaining some traction. In his retirement, Dave returned to Allentown, having seriously reconnected with a high school friend, Linda, who sat at the desk in front of him in home room in high school. They now plan to be married. It's a great love story, one of those with a Hallmark happy ending, I think.

Anyway, they're on their way to Florida to visit one of Linda's friends. And yesterday, they showed up at our house to stay overnight. Maybe two nights. We'll see.

It's the first time I've seen Dave in 24 years...

(Excuse me for a moment. I'm a little verklempft right now. I need to take a breath...)

We're tying to pack a lot of things in a short amount of time. We gave them a brief tour of the house, then a brief tour of Lexington. We drove to Childress Vineyard and then had some barbecue. That night, they met some of our neighbors as we sat around the fire pit, watching the Final Four and sharing conversation. Everybody wanted to hear Dave tell them my secrets, and what was I really like? 

Dave and I broke away for a few moments to enjoy a couple of celebratory cigars and some personal time as we caught up.

Even this morning, I still can't quite grasp this moment, although I know it's here.

Now that Dave is back in Pennsylvania, the thought of a brothers' reunion is more real. Where? When?

Well, there is that wedding to plan for.

Mom would be delighted.