It was one of those mornings when you’re just glad to be alive: cool and fragrant, birds singing, flicker pecking, doves waking up, owl calling goodnight. With the promise of way too much heat, the last two days I have left my chair in the living room corner early after my 5:00 (or so) bed-leaving, staying only long enough for coffee.

Yesterday I took the second cup of coffee to the barn door in the just-risen sun. I haven’t done that for a long time. Of course then I noticed the blackberry vines still cruising into the barn, and the bramble around my sitting log, and the trail on each side of the barn I still haven’t cleaned out.

I tossed out the rest of my now-cooled coffee—the second cup is never as good anyway—and went down to the mailbox in the garden to get my leather gloves. I pulled the native blackberry vines out from in and around the barn, my mother would be appalled, and cleared enough of one trail at least enough to walk through, and the other one more thoroughly. Not done yet, there is still the pile to haul off, but I’m checking it off my list.

Off course, by then, the sun was shining on the house gardens and I had to do the planned activity in the sun after all. Also not finished. Need to get the St. John’s wort beaten back. Maybe after it sheds its sunny little personal fireworks display that are just beginning to pop.

Today, up early again, I did not ignore the voice telling me I would be so happy if I cleaned the Airbnb suite for tonight’s guests before I went out to work. I should have ignored it. The target was the garden my sister created when she moved back to the homestead sixteen years ago. By the time I got out there it was already too hot for pulling run-rapant thyme, euphorbia, and creeping Jenny; and wandering sweet peas and more blackberry vines that will take over the house if not beaten back. I persevered and reached my goal of cleaning out and mulching half of it.

Rebecca and I have each had our gardens to create, while letting our mother be in charge of her pet area. My garden, dubbed “the garden where nothing will grow,” because that’s what my mother said would happen if I wasted my money trying, is looking good. It could have used a few more plants from this year’s Master Gardeners’ sale. Next year.

Now I’m having to care for hers too and she would not, I think, be happy with what I have done—or, in truth, not done. I tried, finally, on Sunday, to get it under control after ignoring it all spring—pulling out all the ^@#* lemon balm and buttercups I could get my hands on, and of course, the blackberries—but quickly discovered I can’t fix it this year. It needs a professional, and a make-over. Maybe I’ll just let it go rogue.

As I finished for today, I had one of those moments while hauling the wheelbarrow full of detritus to the dumping ground: my mother is gone. Forever gone. What about the questions I hadn’t asked? The ones I don’t know yet I wanted to ask? She’s gone—two months on Thursday. My father is gone—23 years on Thursday. I can’t ever ask them anything. Never ever again. The answers died with them.

It’s inconceivable to me.

I can only guess, and watch for clues on this property they poured their heart and soul into for half a century. It will also ask the questions.

One of the questions I did ask my mother, just a few weeks before she left, was if my father did all this work himself, even as his body began to betray him. “Yes,” she said.

That is also inconceivable to me.

Tomorrow I’m taking the day off from work to celebrate my birthday on a hike in the Gifford Pinchot NF. A short one, with minimal elevation gain (Flutterby will do the bulk of it). My body is tired.

And now the sun is setting on my favorite garden and I’m heading toward my last sleep before my 66th anniversary.

The sun has set on my mother too, and some moments I am overcome with, not grief exactly, but disbelief. And nostalgia. Nostalgia for the halcyon days of my childhood, heightened by caring for this place where I set down roots, pulled them up, transplanted them, and brought them back to their native beginnings.