Regaining Balance by Making a Garden Peace Pole, Part 1

Reader Contribution by Barbara Hengstenberg
Published on May 11, 2018
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Seems I’ve always been a gardener. My earliest garden memory: building rock gardens with Mom when I was a wee one as my two older sisters went off to school.  Warm spring days found the two of us collecting pebbles, stones and rocks to add to our backyard “garden.”

Mom always had a vegetable or flower garden, or both.  And she was often found “piddlin’ around” in one or the other, clothed from head to toe in order to ward off the array of pests found in the Connecticut landscape. Even as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis nagged her, she found respite toiling away on her hands and knees. She would often say, “If I can’t work in my garden, I might as well be dead.” She continued to work that New England soil up until her death from cancer at 79.

Gardening is in my blood. So, when hip issues, ultimately leading to a hip replacement, sidelined me for two years, I felt I was missing out on an important part of life — losing my balance in more ways than one. Luckily, my husband, Bill, discovered his green thumb and worked steadily to keep our yard in bloom while I watched from the front porch.

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