Off The RecordMy Neighbor Used My Garden as Her Personal Dump — So I Gave Her a Surprise She Didn’t See Coming
I’m seventy-three years old, and I live in a wheelchair.

Most people, when they see the chair, seem to make an automatic calculation about my world—they assume it’s gotten smaller, more constrained, more limited. They imagine that mobility loss means life loss, that disability equals diminishment. They’re not entirely wrong, but they’re not entirely right either.

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My world didn’t shrink. It just reorganized itself around what I could still reach, still touch, still maintain.

And what I can reach and touch and maintain is my yard.

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Source: Unsplash
The Yard That Became Everything
It’s a modest space—maybe a quarter acre of what most people would call ordinary suburban Connecticut real estate. But to me, it’s the entire universe I can control.

I’ve got two young maples out front, planted them myself about eight years ago when I could still stand for longer than five minutes without my legs betraying me. They’re thin still, with that delicate quality that young trees have before they develop character. Three fat old evergreens line the side property—Eastern blues that were here before I bought the place, that have survived three decades of New England winters without complaining.

And then there’s the garden.

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It’s small—maybe eight feet by twelve feet—but I’ve fussed over it like it’s a firstborn child. I grow tomatoes in the summer, though I never seem to eat them before they get overripe. I grow basil because the smell of it reminds me of my mother’s kitchen. I grow whatever else I feel like growing on any given year, which changes based on mood and what seeds I happen to find at the local hardware store.

Even in winter, I’m out there.