Planting Silk Flowers

Gramma

This year, my mother-in-law asked me to help plant fake flowers in her white square planters along the front of her porch and garage.  She's in her eighties.  Until now, we always filled the planters with real geraniums and white flowers that hung over the edges.  I thought of the plastic flowers that were so popular in the 70's.  Those wouldn't fade and look tired after a season.  Her silk flowers from the dollar store will be faded by mid-summer.  The look real enough from the street. 

I admit that, for years, I have stuffed my window boxes with quality silk flowers that are good for two seasons.  It's much easier to keep them alive, and there is no dead-heading.  If the garden club I belonged to in another lifetime saw this, I would surely be condemned.  But, I don't care.  These flowers cost less than the real ones and I don't have to water them every day. 

After I plant the fake flowers, I have even fluffed the dirt, I spray weed killer.  Eleanor has made this from a recipe she found in a magazine.  She also bothers to make her own laundry soap.  Too much time on her hands.  I hope the weed  killer works so I can use it in my yard.  Because of the birds and pets, I don't like to spray poison. 

I am already over my calorie count and don't want Eleanor to make us something to eat.  But it is her thing, and I comply.  She always tries to pay me for things I do for her, like painting or mending.  This time I put the forty dollars under my paper plate.  Later, she will call me to complain.  If I lived closer, it's a forty minute drive, she wouldn't have to pay for yard work.  She tells me how she puts the salt in the water softener a cup at a time, until she can get someone to dump the bag. 

If the weather was nice, I would have hurried back home to work in my own yard.  Instead, we sit and visit for awhile.  She says how lonely it is at night.  When Glen was alive, there was another body in the room.  Even when they weren't talking, it was a comfortable silence.  During the day she is busy with friends,  The phone rings often.  She says how she hopes to die in her sleep.  I tell her I want to be put to sleep when I am ready. 

We talk about the old people warehouses.  Neither of us want's to be where your room is smaller than a prison cell, it is always noisy and smells of urine.  I assure her that she should stay where she is.  Even with the maintenance, it is cheaper in the long run.  She has decided she needs a new roof more than she needs hearing aids. 

The need to make this kind of choice annoys me.  My step-mother also needs hearing aids, but can't afford them.  I think the hearing aid industry is a scam.  How can they be that expensive today.  Why haven't they come down in price.  Most of all, why doesn't insurance cover the cost.  Unacceptable. 

Eleanor has updated all her insurances and come out thousands of dollars a year richer.  This appalls me.  When she cancels the old insurance's, they want to know why and who she has switched to.  She tells them it is none of their business and hangs up.  She is angry and feels she has been scammed long enough. 

She talks about how alienated she feels from some of the family she was once so close to, grandkids in particular.  They drive by the house, but don't stop in.  I know this is what happens when you are old, especially when you are in the old people warehouse.  We swap childhood stories.  I didn't know she was mostly raised by her grandmother.  When her mother tried to take her for weekends, she would cry to go home and be with her aunts and uncles.  I tell her stories.  She says I should write a book.  I didn't get much done today, but it wasn't wasted time.