A Gardening Spring

One silver lining of the Spring of 2020 for my family has been the rediscovery of weekends at home. Normally, we’d have shifted gears straight from ski season into spring soccer season. This year, our ski season ended abruptly, like so many other things, in mid-March, and COVID-19 erased soccer season outright. This spring, our family time has shifted to the gardens.

When my husband (before he was my husband) and I moved into this house nearly 16 years ago, there was a large garden out front: a mishmash of perennials, varied and sprawling ground cover, and a few veggies growing in the midst of the flowers. Behind the garden was a wild rugosa hedge, a fragrant section of which continues to thrive in unordered beauty along the curved edge of our driveway. Beyond the rugosa was a field.

The spring after this became home, we dug out most of the rose hedge, turned the field into a lawn to hold the tent for our wedding reception, and redesigned much of the perennial garden out front. For several years after that, we managed to hold the weeds at bay, adding mulch to help in the fight every couple of years. But the weeds, as weeds are wont to do, gradually took over.

As the kids grew, so did our weekend (and weekday, after school, after work) obligations. Last spring, I barely got around to planting the vegetable gardens. One end of the big garden, left completely untended, grew the best crop of weeds I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, the perennial bed took on a decidedly jungle-like persona.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is rip something bare and rebuild from the roots up. This spring, we found ourselves with the time to start over. Instead of lacing up soccer cleats on weekend days, the kids grabbed shovels and rakes. Like kids everywhere, mine are not always thrilled to be tasked with chores, but this project – for whatever reason – they got behind.

We spent a few weeks, little by little, uprooting the perennials worth keeping. Some we stashed at the edge of the yard to replant in the revamped – and much smaller – garden. Others we gave away to friends, neighbors, and family members. The rest – the ones so infiltrated by weeds they seemed a lost cause – were hauled to the edge of the woods, where they’re now growing in a heaping hodgepodge.

The littlest among us proved to be the best shovel jumper, using mighty leaps to split sprawling perennials into moveable size. My son climbed into the role of tractor operator, maneuvering between garden wall and granite posts to gather and discard loads of muddy root balls and rocks, and later to drop piles of loam for spreading. My older daughter rescued a piece of baptisia – banned from the restored garden for its propensity to spread by way of thick, snaking roots – and rehomed it to the edge of the yard, where its purple blooms seem happy enough.

Together, the five of us dug and shoveled and raked. Once everything was out, we started reassembling the pieces we wanted to keep. Into the newly weed-less dirt we planted astilbes and day lilies, hostas and lady’s mantle, black-eyed Susan and flag iris and moonbeam coreopsis. We spread grass seed and straw mulch onto the unplanted area.

Our gardening efforts have not been restricted to flowers. The veggie beds, too, have had a small overhaul. On Memorial Day, when we would normally be at a soccer tournament far from home, the kids helped my dad fashion two long raised beds, upcycling the thick boards from our old, homemade swing set, which we took down years ago. These are placed into the big garden out back and have since been planted with carrots and beans, tomatoes, lettuce, and some zinnia seeds for good measure. Elsewhere, zucchini and cucumbers, peas and beets, celery, and a variety of peppers – from sweet to spicy – are tucked into the soil.

Planting vegetables when the memory of winter is still fresh always feels like hope to me – hope that the last bits of snow will melt and the days will grow warm again, hope that tiny seeds will transform into green stalks, and that the future will hold a plethora of colors and flavors.

As nice as it’s been this spring to turn our efforts to the gardens, to have time to sow seeds and consider the placement of perennials, there’s a different sense of hope now. Hope that next year, we’ll have a little less time for gardening – because we’ll be back to busy weekends – but that we’ll remember to slow down, pull a few weeds, plant a few seeds, and stop to smell the blooms of the old rosa rugosa.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's June 12, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

So long, (remote) school

Despite the likely prospect of a summer devoid of beach trips, overnight hiking adventures, and the annual visits with cousins, my kids have never so eagerly anticipated the end of the school year. Sure, EVERY spring there is a sense of celebration and anticipation. No more pencils, no more (Chrome)books, and all that jazz. Hot days of sleeping in and endless freedom stretching to time’s horizon.

Dreaming of summer sunsets and getting to the beach

But my kids like school. They like their teachers. They like learning new things. They like hanging out with their friends at lunch time and recess. What they – very vocally and consistently – do NOT like is remote learning.

Before I go on, let me be clear that my children’s teachers have been fabulous through this whole remote school experiment. If I had to guess, I’d say the teachers like remote teaching as little as my children like remote learning. Nobody – at least nobody I know – wanted school to look like this for the last several weeks of the school year. 

Normally, this month is chockful of end-of-the-year events – field trips and projects, concerts and celebrations. Normally, when I look at the calendar in May, I have to deep breathe my way through an anxiety attack – so many places to be in so short a time. This year, though, I am glad I wrote everything on our family calendar in pencil, because most of it has been erased.

The last day of school, formerly scheduled for the middle of June, has been moved up two and a half weeks to May 29. To add that new date to the calendar, I had to erase the previously scheduled event of that day: the annual 5^th and 6^th grade field trip to Boston. This is one of the most highly and happily anticipated days of the year for kids in those classes, including my own 5^th grader. It’s a day in the nearest big city, with lessons in history and science (and how to cross several lanes of traffic safely), topped off by dinner at Quincy Market.

This year it’s one of many spring traditions my kids – and all the others – have had to give up and get over. I can hardly fathom how disappointed this year’s 6^th graders are to be missing out on so many of the rite-of-passage events they’ve anticipated since they were wee kindergarteners. And I feel an extra big pang of disappointment for this year’s seniors, who, of course, are missing out on a whole lot of pomp and circumstance – and facing, like all of us, plenty of uncertainty in whatever comes next.

In our home, rather than giddy excitement over a summer of plans – quality cousin time, a week at the Cape, camping and hiking and paddling with friends, soccer camp and dips in the pool – there’s instead a reserved relief at nearing completion of a necessary task. So long, remote learning. Here’s hoping that after whatever this summer holds, fall’s return to school is up close and in person.   

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's May 7, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Salamanders, S'mores, and Seclusion

Last week was my kids’ April vacation from school. We don’t normally go far during this week when the weather here can feel like spring or winter – or both in a matter of hours. Maybe a short visit to Acadia, or a couple of days in Boston. Still, the idea of not being able to go ANYwhere this year weighed heavily on all of us.

Without the normal weekend travel to late season skiing and early season soccer this spring, without practices and playdates, without even the daily journey to and from school and the office, we’ve become used to being home. Lucky for us, home is in a really beautiful place with plenty of space for spreading out. Most of the time, we’re OK being here. But school vacation – even when school is being done from home – is supposed to offer a time to get away, even if briefly and not very far.

So, we got creative. A couple of weeks before the break, I suggested camping in the woods between our house and my in-laws’. I didn’t have a plan beyond that vague idea, and I figured one of my children, maybe two, would be excited about this to varying degrees. But all three immediately jumped on board and went into planning mode.

It was a gift to have something to think about beyond school assignments and chores, beyond missing friends and sports, beyond the news that permeates so much now and can be simultaneously frightening and utterly confusing.

A week before vacation started, we took a whole-family walk into the woods. My husband, who grew up exploring this terrain, led the kids to a spot tucked into the trees, where Bowen Brook curves around a level area perfect for pitching a tent (or two). The kids declared this the spot and set to work building a fire pit of river rocks in the sandy ground next to the brook, with just enough space for our family to sit around it.

All that week before vacation, the kids discussed what to bring with us, who would sleep in which tent, and what we would eat for dinner (hotdogs cooked on sticks over the fire, of course). We kept an eye on the long-range forecast to see which days would likely be the best for camping. What I had hoped would be a mild change of scenery for a couple of days became a happy distraction stretched over the course of a couple of weeks.

On the chosen afternoon, we headed into the woods after lunch to set up camp. The girls worked together to pitch my old backpacking tent. My son and I put up the big family tent. Sleeping pads were unfurled, sleeping bags laid out, a few extra comforts from home tossed in. We schlepped in firewood and camp chairs, along with extra layers to allay the nighttime chill. As I got the fire going, the kids set off together – first downstream, then up – to explore.

All their lives, my children have been in these woods – first carried or pulled across the snow on sleds, then toddling in rain boots and stopping to inspect every leaf and bug, now walking with the dog or riding bikes. This is not unfamiliar territory. Somehow, though, making these woods into our overnight home – rather than simply passing through – made if feel, if not unfamiliar, in some way new.

The kids played in the water, moving rocks to build canals, happily discovering salamanders in that space where water and land merge. They gathered sticks for kindling and cut beech branches for cooking hotdogs and marshmallows. They jumped across the water, climbed up and over downed trees, played and laughed together.

I have two teenagers and one not far behind. We’ve been in the same house, nearly constantly together, for seven weeks. Most of the time we are all OK, but it is certainly not always easy. I abscond to my office and work for chunks of time, all the while wondering if they are doing their schoolwork or playing a game on a screen. Visits with grandparents, all thankfully within a mile of us, include social distancing rather than the normal hugs and snacks and playing games. None of us has hung out with friends in nearly two months.

Like most everyone these days, we are all a bit more, well, sensitive than usual. Buttons are pushed, tempers flare, feelings are often easily hurt.

But for two nights in the woods, there were no squabbles. Nobody sulked up to their rooms to be alone or picked a fight out of boredom. We hung out by the fire. We ate s’mores. We played cards. We talked. And then we crawled into our tents, with a gazillion stars overhead and a burbling brook for a lullaby.

For those two nights, it felt OK to be set apart from the rest of the world, from even the rest of our small community. We were at home in the woods, in a place at once familiar and fascinating. We were mere minutes from our backyard, but it felt like the perfect getaway. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's May 7, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.