THE OAK TREE

 

I am so happy that author Julia Robb stopped by my blog today. She recounts an amusing story of her West Texas gardening trials and tribulations. However it is a journey of much reward in the end, for while her garden refused to grow, her impressive body of literary work took hold and bloomed. She tells us about her latest book, as well. -Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

 

The Oak Tree

                                 From Julia Robb, Author

 

My garden saga began when I moved to my parent’s home in Marshall, Texas in 2004, after events had beaten the heck out of me. I had left a Maryland reporting job for a Louisiana reporting job, because Louisiana was nearer to Marshall. But the second morning on the road I took my chocolate lab for a walk, and he jerked me. I fell, shattering my leg. That led to a Near Death Experience, which I tell in its full detail in my latest book, SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA. Readers can find the book at https://www.amazon.com/SUPERNATURAL-PHENOMENA-Julia-Robb-ebook/dp/B09256BZ82

  I didn’t get along with the Louisiana folks and got fired. Then, I got home to Texas just in time to see my father’s Parkinson’s disease go from bad to worse. I needed cheering up, so I looked for a house (one I could afford). A miracle—I found it. But the house had problems.

  There was nothing behind the tattered wallpaper but board and the home’s former owners had covered the ceilings with commercial acoustic tile. Linoleum covered the sunroom floor. The 1940 yellow-brick, two-story house was on a nice street, but nothing grew in the front yard but scrubby, yellowy grass. According to neighbors, the renters who lived there before I showed up never watered the grass, or planted anything (which I could see), but they did haul a plastic kiddie pool to the front yard and splashed around while guzzling endless Coronas. I renovated all 1,600-square feet, and then faced doing Something to the vast wasteland beyond the front porch.

  Question: What did I always want in the way of a garden? Forget gardens. I had always wanted a tree that towered over everything—hundreds of feet of green shade. I wanted a 500-year-old Downton Abbey-type tree.

I thought, “Maybe I can have that tree? Maybe at least a 30-foot tree?” I didn’t know anything about trees. I had never planted a tree or even had trees because I grew up in West Texas, which gets a maximum of 20-inches of rain each year. (Marshall gets 50-plus).

  As soon as I got this tree idea, I was inspired and zoomed off to the nursery, only to discover none of the trees were more than five-feet-tall. A grizzled laborer said, “Lady, nurseries don’t sell no 30-foot trees. You can try somewheres else, but you ain’t gonna find nothing that tall.” On the good side, he said the tree I liked was a Red Oak, long-lived, hardy and tall (eventually).

  I gave up and shoved the tree inside my Toyota (although half of it hung out the window) and raced home to the waiting (male) neighbor. Bless Mike’s heart. Digging the hole was convict labor because dirt in my front yard is hard-packed clay. When we sat the tree in the hole, that five feet was pitiful looking; better than nothing, but pitiful.

  Then my real challenges began. It wasn’t long before I discovered that grass refused to grow beside the oak. Clay topsoil will not hold moisture. So I had this little, bitty tree which reached my nose, but was surrounded by dirt. I solved that problem by hauling wheelbarrows of rocks to my yard and dumping them beside the tree. That created a sort-of Japanese look: A tiny tree surrounded by rocks. The yard wasn’t looking like an English manor.

After fuming about the vast wasteland, it dawned on me I could plant other green things—back to the nursery to buy irises. I lined the sidewalk with purple irises, but they took turns blooming for two weeks each spring, and that was it—not near good enough.

  I searched garden books and found an English manor house with roses surrounding the main entrance. That’s it! Climbing roses! That was the answer. So I bought an iron trellis that circled halfway around my front door, and I closed the half circle with wire. The Don Juan climbing red roses looked like my vision of heaven. After they grew around the trellis, I rejoiced in the beauty and the smell. Then black spot hit.

My heart was broken, but I was not going to be beaten down by rose disease. I cut the roses down and planted a clematis vine. That worked splendidly. After several years the vine grew all around the trellis and the tiny white blooms smelled just as good as roses.

  Inspired again, I planted a 12-foot-long garden of perennials (zinnias) between the front door and sidewalk, on the opposite side of the oak. I thought I wouldn’t have to do anything; just plant, and the tall pink flowers would grow, faithfully, each year. Yes, when they bloomed, the zinnias were beautiful. They got taller each year, but so did the weeds, which flourished.

Eventually, my flower bed looked like an empty lot and I didn’t want to spend my free time on my knees. I forced myself to pull up the zinnias by the root (that hurt me, because I believed the flowers cried when I did it), and planted another tree. But the tree had to be a dwarf to avoid electric lines running over that part of the yard, so I planted a Crape Myrtle. Crape Myrtles produce pink blooms from summer until frost and usually quit growing at 12-feet. Guess what! My tree is three years old and has never bloomed.

Then last month a freak, five-day storm may have killed the clematis vine. Right now, on April 5, every single leaf is brown. I have no idea if the vine will come back. My neighbor swears it’s dead. If it’s really dead, I’m going to plant disease resistant climbing roses.

Now let me tell you about the lantana, which is a perennial verbena plant with a red or yellow bloom. I planted two lantana plants with yellow blooms, one on either side of my yard, beside the front sidewalk. They’re beautiful when they bloom, but the plant dies off each winter. In spring, you have to cut off the skinny limbs to make way for new growth, leaving huge circles of nothing but dirt until the plant decides to wake up.

Oh brother! Right now, I have in the front yard two large circles of dirt, a mutant Crape Myrtle and a possibly/probably dead brown vine.

No sign of iris blooms. Well, maybe one.

I don’t seem to be a natural gardener, although I am stubborn.

I do have one redeeming piece of beauty in the yard. Every year, for 16 years, while I failed at gardening, the oak tree grew, and I wrote novels (https://juliarobb.com/).  I didn’t believe the tree would continue to grow, but it did. Before I knew it, the oak was as high as my house, and I never dreamed it would go on growing, but now it’s as tall as the house plus half as much again. And there is an extra benefit—each fall the tree flames with color.

My oak tree almost makes up for the vine, the roses and the zinnias.

***

SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA

Julia Robb began collecting psychic experiences from her Facebook friends and found them so intriguing she decided to put them together in a book.

One friend told her about a shadow spirit who flowed across the bedroom floor and physically attacked him, and another about a malevolent spirit who lived in his boyhood bathroom.

One mother lost her beloved only son to an accidental overdose, but was not spiritually alone before or afterward. Spirits kept appearing to her, and she kept repeating (about who we consider dead), “They’re Alive, They Really Are!”

Julia herself has had psychic experiences, and she has stories to tell us.

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