Weird little gardening meditations

I had a thought the other day when I was digging around in the dirt:  When I garden, I commune with people who are no longer in my life. 

That thought became a weird little meditation and as I played with placing plants strategically around my garden, I let my thoughts drift to my late grandpa Stan and his late sister Deloris. 

As I've said - I'm an enthusiastic, albeit amateur gardener.  As it turns out - I'm also pretty damn sentimental.

I don't remember my grandpa Stan being an enthusiastic gardener, but he always had a handsome and well maintained yard and garden.  It also turns out that he had a sentimental streak:  The fern peonies in his garden had been transplanted from his mother's house.  I now have one of my great-grandma Florence's fern peonies in my own garden.

I think that my grandpa would be amused and maybe a little bemused by the haphazardness of my perennial garden and when my husband asks me "do you know where you're going to put that?" when I acquire a new plant, I can imagine my grandpa smiling and congratulating me for landing such a practical man. 

There's a good chance that my fern peony may never bloom (I've been told that I need to uproot it a bit to uncover a node that will allow it to bloom, but I'm afraid of killing the poor thing), but I'm not going to uproot it again until we move from this house.  I may not be able to grab every brick from my various garden beds, but that plant goes with me.

The next "heritage" plant came from my great-aunt Deloris's garden.

These hens and chicks were pretty tiny when my mom gave them to me a few years ago, but they've easily tripled in size. 

I'm pretty lucky when it comes to the stories that come from my garden.