Viernes

As Fiorella walked back down to the driveway after wheeling out her giant trash can, she remembered how, when they first moved in, she and Husband had hired a landscaping company to make a garden paradise around around the house--a garden that lasted three months until a drought hit Central Texas. No matter how much water Fio and Husband scooped out of the bath tub (water rationing) and carried down the stairs in milk bottles to assuage the garden's appetite, everything wilted--and took Fiorella's right hip with it. Yep, a joint can only take so much stress before having to be replaced.
     Fio also remembered Husband planting various bushes and setting out sprinklers in the back and front yards, but most of the bushes died and the sprinklers just weren't enough. Fiorella got horticultural advice from friends, relatives, nurseries, and magazines, but nothing worked. There will never be a good grass cover and never be petunias in the flower beds. Oaks, elms, and cedars are the name of the game, punctuated by occasional rugged rock outcroppings attached to the center of the earth.
     Somewhere along the line, Fiorella gave up on having a lawn like her father's and a garden like her mother's and started appreciating the landscape as it was. In return, the rocks and trees started talking to her. So when Fiorella packs her last bag and moves out, it will not be a carefully-tended landscape she will miss, but something far more beautiful--the whispered friendship of her lovely rocks and trees.🧡😢😢