constant narrator

So, I volunteer for Project Transitions, an AIDS services org here in Austin. I’m their gardner for the hospice house which can have up to five clients/patients at a time. Michael helps out too, which I’m grateful for. Thing is, there’s not much to garden. The yard has been abandoned to the weeds for some years and only after cutting things down and back and pulling piles and piles of ragweed did I discover some pretty antique roses, rosemary, sea oats and a big ol’ firebush. This place needs love.

Being that no one has money anymore, non-profits are stretched thin so I had to go asking for some gardening goodness: compost, mulch and a bunch of plants. After being flatly refused by the first nursery I called, I called Emerald Garden, whose owner Jeff Yarbrough agreed to donating $100 worth of whatever I needed to the hospice house. w00t!

I went down today and he spent a long time with me helping me pick out Texas native plants that can take the heat/dryness and also bloom and be purty and attract butterflies and hummingbirds. I figure, this is the last place some of these people see, it might as well be beautiful and not just ‘tidy’. I got so many gorgeous plants I was bouncing up and down. A Yellow-Bell bush, a Hummingbird Bush, lantana, midnight blue sage spikes, a creeping sneaky-puss rock-rose that will wind between all of the plants on the ground… oh it’s just too good. I brought them over to the house and the care workers and clients were all grinning and forcing Kool-aid on me. I can’t wait to get it all in the ground.