The magnolia, beautiful as well as healing

I don’t remember when I realized I was pouring what was left of my heart and soul and scarred body into my garden. I think it was the winter morning I found myself on the fringes of our property, defying the ticks and pulling bittersweet off the wild vibernum it was trying to strangle.I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was coming off two surgeries for lung cancer, two separate surgeries for two primary sites. The biopsy reports had come at a particularly cruel time. I was newly married, married very late, but no less joyfully, and looking forward to the life ahead of me. My new husband was rock solid through the long process of surgery, recovery and more surgery. But even he almost fainted the first time he walked into the hospital and saw the tubes and bloody drains everywhere.That winter morning, surgeries past, I was supposed to be in the house, taking the painkillers the doctors had prescribed and resting up. But the strangling vines were too much to tolerate. So instead I was there in the woods, boots pulled over my pajamas, bathrobe hiked up, wrestling with the bittersweet. And it felt so good.I think that’s when I decided to plant the magnolia. I’m not sure why a magnolia. They are just so beautiful, and they look happy somehow. It wouldn’t be an easy job. The perfect site for it, a sunny spot where I would be able to see it from the kitchen and dining room, was an overgrown mess of wild honeysuckle and yards of bittersweet. The soil was heavy and limey, as it is around here, and the resident birds were fond of the honeysuckle. But pish-tosh. Who’s afraid of a little lime? And I would give the birds a new and more beautiful place to hide from the hawks. So we went to work. The lawn guys came in and rooted out the bullying bittersweet and honeysuckle. We dropped in new soil, spread grass seed, and then brought in the biggest magnolia I could afford. I got a big one because, and not to be too melodramatic about it, I wasn’t sure how long I would be around to watch it grow. It was a saucer magnolia, a 10-foot beauty, vase-shaped in its adolescence, its branches not yet reaching out to the world around it. The buds were still curled tight, hiding inside a velvety coat, waiting to begin their new life. Like me. We put it into its place, off the back patio, where we could see it from almost everywhere in the house. Almost immediately a chickadee came and sat on it. Since then I’ve planted dozens, maybe hundreds, of plants and bushes and trees. Hydrangeas, lilacs, tulips, daffodils, weeping cherries and crooked contortas. They are all thriving, strong and tall and bursting with life. There’s a small wind chime in one of the gardens, and when a breeze comes up, the chimes and the flowers and trees all seem to be laughing together. It’s a wonderful little sound, and I can’t help laughing a little with them.And Maggie, my magnolia? (Of course we called her Maggie.) She is the most beautiful and happy of all. We have to put a fence around her in the winter, to be sure she’ll be safe from marauding creatures who want to nip her buds. That’s an odd coincidence, because I have to be checked every year to be sure I stay safe too.I’m not a serious gardener; no garden society would be interested in my untidy plots of random color and stinky compost. But now I know why I went out to beat the creeping bittersweet on that gray day. It was the only way I could think of to ward off the invasive evil that had tried to bring me down. Gardening is not only therapeutic; it is optimistic. Plant something, nurture something, and you assert your belief that you will be here to watch it grow, even if you’re not sure for exactly how long. Sure, I had the surgery and took the painkillers when I had to. They healed my body. But it was the magnolia, and all the beautiful plants that came after, that defeated the fear and dread that hobble the soul. We’re still here, Maggie and me. This year she was especially beautiful, and I was especially happy. Eight years and still going strong. Marjorie Palmer lives and writes in Taconic, when she’s not tending other gardens.