When destruction brought salvation

The first in a series of deadly tornadoes hit my neighborhood, Cahaba Heights, about dawn on April 27, 2011. Rotating at 100 mph+, it blasted a path through a once leafy community, heavily damaging dozens of homes, businesses and the elementary school, which remained closed for more than a week.

We were lucky. No one in my family was hurt and other than damage requiring a new roof, the house was intact.

But half of our yard had blown apart. Towering 50-year-old pines were felled by the winds, taking out everything in their path -- bushes, smaller trees, a pear tree, fencing, a make-shift kiddie fort, and near the back of our lot, an apple tree and once massively bushy fig.

 

 

Compounding my sadness after the logs were removed and several stumps had been ground was the discovery that my prized hydrangeas were gone. I had planted some – snowflake hydrangeas and harmony hydrangeas in honor of the King of Hydrangeas, Eddie Aldridge, and his lovely wife, Kay – about a week after we closed on our current house.

Also wiped out were three blue French hydrangeas, one grown from a cutting from my childhood yard in Atlanta. Another was from a cutting given to us by Eddie Aldridge (one of the great cultivators of hydrangeas before his retirement) from 19^th-century root stock he had discovered and preserved. The third was a gift upon the birth of our first child.

 

But destruction brings rebirth and regeneration. Although no trace of the hydrangeas remained after the logs had been hauled, within weeks green leaflets peeped from the very spots where five had once blossomed.

Their recovery inspired what would become my own rebirth and regeneration while my career in newspapers, which defined me, was blowing down like all those trees only in slow-motion.

Today, a flower garden and Yoshino cherry trees bloom where the pines once were rooted. Another garden is built around snowflake and harmony hydrangeas and watermelon-red summer-blooming crepe myrtle trees. Flanking one end are pink azaleas that bloom twice a year including near my daughter’s April birthday. Every time I walk outside my house and look at my ever-blooming gardens, I smile.

 

 

I started with a vision and a relatively generous budget, thanks to a loan from my 401(k) that I took out the day after the storm, knowing we would need cash to recover from the damage. I wanted to create a flower garden, plant new trees that would reflect our personality as opposed to that of the original owner who sold us our home. I wanted to create some kind of spectacular hydrangea garden in the other main area of storm damage. Anna, my wife, added to the project an expansion of a garden I had created around our mailbox, and another near our front door.

We knew we wanted crepe myrtles. Both Anna and I love their color during summer’s oppressive heat, and the reds were extra special to us. When Anna and I bought our first home, a towering crepe myrtle in the front yard was filling out its red blossoms, which we enjoyed as we celebrated the closing with glasses of champagne while sitting in folding chairs in the otherwise empty living room.

Our desire for Yoshino cherry trees was a nod to when Anna and I lived in Macon, Ga. and fell in love beneath the blooming cherry trees that the city celebrates with an annual festival.

 

What I lacked in tools, I compensated with enthusiasm. With a shovel and pick, I dug out the ground-out root shavings and the roots themselves, then expanded the mailbox and front-door garden areas. I have the great fortune to live near Cahaba Heights Hardware, a few blocks up the road, which delivered truckloads of a planting mixture of topsoil, sand and mulch. They also delivered a palate of this decorative stone and enough pea gravel and concrete mix to lay borders.

 

Another benefit of Cahaba Heights living: My son is friends with a co-owner of a great garden shop, Sweet Peas in Homewood. Jon Culver was not only a great adviser, but also every plant and tree we ordered from Sweet Peas thrived.

I did most of the work during two week-long vacations (actually one was an unpaid furlough). Anyone who has gone through a long-simmering major workplace upheaval understands the excruciating atmosphere as people desperately try to prove their relevance and survive the next round of cuts.

Backbreaking, sweaty physical labor from prepping the garden areas, building soil from the truckloads that I distributed around the yard with a wheelbarrow, moving rocks, digging pits and planting trees – all flowed into an oasis from the pressures at work.

As the gardens took shape, some bordered by poorly-mortared stone walls, each day’s considerable progress became a late-afternoon treat for my wife and children. They also enjoyed a much happier Dad.

 

Despite some challenges, including a persistent grass that overtook my hydrangea garden last summer, everything looks good. The cherry blossoms, while still modest, were an improvement this spring over their first. The flower garden, full of perennials, has thrived so much that once-planned additional plantings now are unnecessary. Nearly two-dozen fragrant hyacinths bloomed this year, some twice during a confusing warm-then-cool winter.

This year I hope to put in pea gravel paths through the hydrangea garden, as originally planned, and show the weeds in there who’s boss. We need more daffodils/jonquils. I need to regain control of the rest of my back yard and improve the three vegetable planters I installed as part of the recovery plan. I will enjoy every second.

 

 

 

Two years ago, as I surveyed the devastation, I could not have imagined what I see there today or how it ultimately would help me. From destruction came my salvation.