The Sun Is My Best Friend

The sun is my best friend. I miss mornings in the window seat of our old kitchen where southern light bathed the room. Ceramic bowls shined like actors under stage lights and peaches glowed like deities. Living in a condo facing north now, planet earth kidnaps the sun in September and returns her in March. So is the way of a tilting globe. When the sun returns in spring, I lean over the balcony to see her rise.  It’s brilliant. You wait impatiently with bold orange clouds, and suddenly you see a lip of light and before you know it a circle on fire.

At first I resigned myself to sharing shade plants with the sky. I’ve learned in three years of high rise living to arrange plants for appreciative eyes and a productive growing season. I even have a few shade perennials that return in spring. I always thank them. Still, I miss the garden at our home where we lived for twenty-five years. The peach and gold Julia Child roses that grew along our picket fence and the crop of white daisies beside the back porch. Herbs, okra, beans and tomatoes grew in beds outside our kitchen. I competed with backyard birds for ripe brown figs.

The Julia Child roses in our front yard

Gardens are my quiet church, my consolation for worries, sour words and the startling events that puncture boundaries. I write easily about trees, flowers and the large blooms that present on bushes. Gardens are spiritual, redemptive and enlightening. We had a rhododendron for one season, but the Barbie pink blooms were vibrant and deeply satisfying.

Trimming bunches of perennial blue hydrangeas and cutting thorny floribunda roses demands attention. Caring for them was tedious, not to mention dangerous. However, when they delivered, my Julia Child roses were a source of pride and a gift to grateful neighbors who walked past their well-tended arms.

In the shade of tall hardwoods, my beloved moss grew in long minutes, but it was worth the wait. It took about fifteen years to spread into the shape of a pond. The moss offered a spongy green velvet path upon which fairies must have tread. I always took my shoes off and walked across the quarter inch growth. On difficult days, I sat on the moss carpet and moved my hand timidly across the soft tops. It was by far the most peaceful part of our yard. Last summer, I planted a lick of Irish moss and asked it to share space with a plant I don’t remember. It decided not to live there, and I understand.

It was twenty stories above ground without a hardwood mate or a compatible shade plant. I might try again this summer, but you can only expect so much from a plant that’s forced to live in a foreign land.

Living in a high rise and facing north still feels foreign to me. But I can sit with the sun in the condo’s clubroom and see sunrises that far exceed any I’ve seen before. With trial and error I’ve created a lovely shade garden on our terrace. When shade loving plants are arranged with their rightful companions, they are elegant in a way that a sun loving perennial can never be. It’s in the subtle patterns and shapes of the leaves.

Sun loving plants put all their energy into flowering. Compared to shade plants, they are pageant girls. Shade loving plants tell the stories of people who’ve been overlooked. They are like the girls in the back row, quiet but full of promise.

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