Her Backyard

In her backyard, there is a flowering cacti, a green dinosaur, and fish in the trees.

"You have a beautiful garden." I tell her, because it is, but not in the common sense of the word.  Yes, there are lush bushes and beautiful flowers and dainty paths twisting in circles, but it is not carefully manicured or organized, as a garden of mine would be.  The plants and colors are not organized in any clear way, and there seems to be no limit to the whimsical items scattered throughout the landscape.  The fence is lined with a wide variety of unique artwork, in the center of the garden is a lime green wood skeleton of a dinosaur, and there are fish hanging from the trees.

Glass to wicker, blue to white, there are fish of every different size, material, and color hung randomly on the branches.  Wiley, the autistic boy I am babysitting, swings one back and forth.  The average elderly woman would tell him to be careful, not to break it.  This one couldn't care less.  She is teaching Felix, Wiley's younger brother, to command her enormous dog.  Concerned about the dog's size in comparison to the boy, I also order him to sit.  "No, let him do it.  He needs to learn." she tells me.

The only reason we were there in the first place was because she came over, ringing the doorbell while I was unsuccessfully trying to get Wiley to practice piano before leaving for a birthday party.  Felix and I opened the door for her and her large tawny brown dog, and she gestured to two birds' nests sitting on top of the milk box.  The boys' mother had wondered where they came from before she left in the morning: she asked me, but I would not have brought two birds' nests over just for the fun of it.  I probably would not have even noticed them.

"I found these in my backyard." she said, describing what the birds had made them from.  "And Wiley, you haven't seen the flower on the cactus yet, have you?"

So skeptically I walked with the boys over to the neighbors house, hoping that a bit of fresh air might make Wiley more likely to do his piano practice.  I did not expect the peculiarly stunning scene that I found.  We were brought over to see the flower, a gigantic fuzzy purple flower growing from the cactus.  "No one has seen anything like it before." she tells us.  "Have you googled it?" I ask her, and she gives me a funny look, saying, "Well I guess you could do that, couldn't you?"

The garden and everything in it is whimsical, exciting, but above all, fun.  I tell her so, and she says, as if it's the most obvious truth, "Life is fun."  Suddenly, I stop stressing about Wiley doing his piano practice, or the three of us getting back to their house in time.  If I was old and had a garden, maybe, just maybe, I think there could be fish on the trees.