A Garden of Garden Furniture and other Curiosities

A bear-hugger, a mile-a-minute talker and a make-the-most-out-of-each-minute crammer, my Aunty Marjorie has always been larger than life. She lives in an apartment now, her small balcony, crowded with pots, garden elves, the odd gnome and weirdly-shaped hanging planters, only a pale shadow of the garden she nurtured with her imagination when she lived in the house she shared for many years with my uncle.

I always liked going to visit Aunty Marjorie and Uncle Allen. Due to some quirky city ordinance, their house sat on a city lot that was actually the size of two ordinary houses on the same street where they lived. As a child, even as a young adult, my aunt’s backyard seemed like a magical place to me, not part of the city at all; a mysterious kingdom all its own, where supernatural adventures were the norm and not the exception. I enjoyed going over to their place, because every time we went, there always seemed to be some new treasure to discover.

To my father, who took a more formal approach to landscaping, Aunty Marjorie’s backyard was a chaotic jumble of oddities. Sure, she had the typical planter made out of an abandoned, rusting outdoor grill and a couple of interesting fern-like plants growing out of a discarded pair of Uncle Allen’s fishing boots. But mostly her yard, at least to me, seemed to grow things other than flora, although there actually was a plethora of colorful plants.

The yard directly behind the house was pretty tame, but when I turned the corner into the “extra” lot, I was never sure what I would find. The gazebo was a Renaissance creation of columns and classic metalwork scrolls, enhanced by trailing vines. In summer, when the vines were flowering, it was the perfect fortress in which to hide from my cousins.

The path beneath the rustic arbor wound its way through a small grove of trees until it arrived at a small pond, complete with lily pads and a few goldfish. The onion dome trellis made the climbing roses it supported look as though they were growing beneath the roof of a miniature Russian palace. One day as I was walking around the property, I came upon this huge butterfly who told me she had flown to Aunty Marjorie’s garden from a mythical island in another galaxy yet to be discovered. Actually, it turned out to be the folding stool, in the shape of a butterfly, that my aunt used to sit on when weeding her flower beds, but had forgotten, on that particular day, to bring inside. And speaking of butterflies, near one of the beds, there was a charming wicker garden bench in the shape of a butterfly. And of course, the matching table and chairs could be found on the flagstone area in the front yard.

I could also find more conventional items in my aunt’s garden, like the garden swing my cousins and I would fight to sit in. Or the planters that really looked like planters that Aunty Marjorie would pick up on her travels to stores and garage sales.

I wonder what would happen if I told her about all the outdoor furniture and accessories you could get online at Cymax Stores? Hmmmmm…better not. Things might start falling off the balcony.