The transformation of Jeanne's Garden

Meet Jeanne. She was a dear family friend (one of my Dad's closest friends) who invited me to live in one of her rental properties, after my Dad passed away very unexpectedly from a stroke, in 2001.

Jeanne kind of took me under her wing at a time when I felt really sad and lonely after losing my Dad. She was a friend, mentor, and "second mother" to me for about a decade and a half. 

My father had always encouraged me to write, and Jeanne did the same. I will always be grateful for that. I started many blogs while living at Jeanne's place, and I have lots of testimonials from people, telling me that the health information I shared with them changed their lives. 

In May of 2018, Jeanne was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  The doctors said the cancer had spread all over, and they told her that her cancer would be terminal and there was no cure. I was determined to figure out a way to save her, and we tried everything we could think of, but her cancer was extremely aggressive, and we were both under a lot of financial stress at the time. 

Jeanne passed away in October of 2018, and I haven't been the same since. I think about her every single day, and feel like her presence is still with me. She left me the house I'd been living in for 16 years, and I will always be extremely grateful for that. Her generous gift allowed me to spend over a thousand hours doing research to figure out the best way to beat Covid (and write about it).  

There was little bit of a catch to inheriting Jeanne's place.... it had a balloon mortgage on it, and I knew there was no way I could pay it. I was so stressed out, worrying I was going to lose the house I'd grown to love (and had been in for about 15 years). So many people have told me to just "get rid of the house" and sell it, but I've spent so much time working in the yard at Jeanne's place, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. 

When I first moved to Jeanne's place in February of 2002, it looked as if nobody had ever done any gardening on the lot. There was a lot of concrete, and almost no trees (Jeanne did add a few trees, but was wary of adding fruit ttees because they tend to cause headaches for landlords). 

The front of the property had a very dead looking lawn, with a huge splotch in it that looked as if someone had poured some kind of poison or toxic chemicals on it. I asked Jeanne what happened with the lawn, and I'll never forget the way she said in a low murmur: "Sabotage." 

She'd had a few malicious tenants in the past, and I always wondered if her previous tenant had poured poison on the lawn out of spite. About a week after I moved in, the plumbing exploded, like something out of a horror movie - and I found out it was because the last tenant purposely shoved a ton of plastic down the toilet.

I remember the day I heard a strange gurgling sound, coming from the hallway toilet. I didn't think much of it, because I know that when you move into a new house, it's typical to hear strange noises you might not be used to, since every house has it's little quirks. So I figured I was just in a bit of an adjustment period, and blew it off. 

But one day the gurgling sound suddenly got worse, and I noticed that the once-clear water in the hallway toilet was suddenly turning black... and was starting to rise. All of a sudden, I was looking at a slow tsunami of sewage water rising up and above the hallway toilet, and the next thing you know, it was spilling up and over the rim of the toilet.... and headed for the carpet in the hallway. I was MORTIFIED. 

I called Jeanne, in a panic, and she called two plumbers who were really loud and didn't speak any English. There was black sewage coming up out of both of the toilets in the house. One of the plumbers discovered that someone (I'm assuming the previous tenant) had shoved a TON of pieces of plastic down the drain (they looked like cut-up plastic six pack rings). I have no idea why someone would want to do this, but they must have either been on drugs or they did it with malicious intent. I saw NO REASON for that type of plastic to ever get flushed down a toilet, instead of put into the trash. 

The scene in the house that day was like something out like a horror movie. These plumbing guys were making NO efford to prevent the sewage on their boots from getting all over the carpet between the two bathrooms. It was an OCD nightmare. I had to several days steam cleaning, to feel like the carpet was back to normal. 

Between the exploding toilets and the poisoned lawn, I felt an urge to do nice things for the house to clean up some of the bad juju it had been through.  There was concrete everywhere on the property, and very few plants or trees. I decided to plant flowers in the front yard, and vegetables in the back yard. It was like therapy for me to work in the yard after my Dad's passing, but I also wanted to restore the yard and turn it into something beautiful. 

I remembered how much my old landlords appreciated it when I did the same thing for a house I lived in, in the Richmond district in San Francisco, and wanted to do the same thing for Jeanne's yard. I remember thinking, I want to give Jeanne the nicest looking yard on the block, as my way to say thanks to her for being so kind to me.   

The lawn looked so dead, one of my busybody neighbors called the city to report it. I got the impression one particular neighbor had the city's complaints department on speed dial. I was still pretty broke, that first year I lived in Jeanne's place. 

Eventually I got an inheritance from my Dad's passing, and spent a LOT of that money on plants and flowers for Jeanne's yard. 

As the plants and flowers grew and bloomed, I got more and more people stopping by to have a look and make comments. Then one day our local ice cream man, Jim, said, "This is the nicest yard on the block." I was really happy about that because I'd worked my butt off (and spent a lot of money) to plant all those flowers.  But it took a while for everything to come together.

I had to map out the yard, drawing out where I needed to put the irrigation tubing (it ended up changing cause I didn't need that much water, but this was the original idea). I had to figure out where to place the different plants and flower bulbs (many of which I'd just bought from Costco). This is what those early sketches looked like.  Today, I would be much more conservative with the drip lines. I'm all about using the least amount of water, to get the maximum growth. 

Eventually, the bulbs started to grow...

I originally wanted to make the walkway in the middle straight, but Jeanne wanted the curved shape. I'm glad she made that suggestion. Now it's an "S" shape that reminds me of Jeanne, whose last name began with an S (for Shaw).  The concrete blocks were recycled from a neighbor's yard, after their landlord had their driveway dug up. They worked pretty well, to hold things together, and are still there to this day. 

I love that gardening and digging in your own yard is one of the BEST ways to exercise!

Here are some pictures of the back yard. I know there SOMEWHERE in my archives, I have a picture of what the back yard used to look like. It was just a plain, mostly-dead lawn, so I started growing vegetables in it. 

I bought grass seeds and planted this lawn in the back yard, too. 

I spent many years planting flowers and taking care of the yard. At one point, I set up an automatic drip watering system all over the entire property, and things were getting so well watered, the yard looked beautiful. I had plants and flowers growing everywhere. There was white Hawaiian ginger in the back yard that got to almost ten feet high. The combination of the Redwood City heat plus lots of water = explosive growth!

Eventually I had enough ginger to make a flower lei (need to find those pics on an old hard drive).    

I used this photograph of the ginger, below, when I started selling it on eBay.  had such an abundance of plants growing on the property, I decided to try my hand at selling some of them. My mother is in the business of growing and selling tropical plants at a local nursery back in our hometown in Hawai'i. 

Someone actually found this picture on Flickr and asked if they could use it for their marketing, and I said sure. You can see below, the picture was on the packaging for those little Hawaiian Ginger plants that are sold at the airport!

I sold lots of flowers, plants and bulbs on eBay, and worked extremely hard to keep a 100% positive feedback rating. I was really determined to get my customers' packages shipped quickly, and if I missed the 6:00 pm closing deadline at my local post office, I'd take the packages to the back, to be sure they went out that day. If I missed that cutoff (I had till about 6:15), I'd either drive it all the way to the San Francisco airport (where the cutoff is 8:00 pm) or San Jose (where the cutoff is around 9). Using all that extra gas and time definitely did not allow me to make a profit on certain packages, but I really wanted my customers to be happy, and deliver on my promise to have quick shipping. 

Eventually, I had to get "regular" work in an office, to pay all my bills. I really sold those plants and flowers out of love, and not for a big profit. But I loved doing it!  My gardening efforts have really been on hold for a while, but I hope that I will eventually be able to get back to it. Gardening is just about the most fulfilling thing I have ever done (besides writing).  The next time I'm able to get back to it, I hope I can teach kids to do it with me. 

I think Jeanne would like that ☺.