A Time for Every Season

In order to appreciate the beauty of a garden, you have to learn to accept and respect death. As the seasons change and as plants either die or die back, the emphasis changes to what will either grow next or to the reality that an empty space may be left behind permanently. As I age, I'm no longer concerned with filling every hole because of the work involved with maintaining the life of a plant, especially within the landscape. 

Over these past two years, I have lost a few good friends. These will be holes in my life that will not be filled. Eventually, a few new friends will be added, but the memory of those who have passed will be cherished forever.

When I'm out working in my garden, I have a chance to think clearly and to put together the pieces of that giant puzzle called life. Sometimes, I don't think at all. Gardening can be a terrific way to turn off the noise. Granted, in the suburbs, I'm often surrounded by an almost perpetual noise of lawnmowers and leafblowers.

As gardeners, during the colder months, we plan and prepare. As the seed catalogs, our garden porn, come rolling in, we admire the beauty of what can be and what lies ahead. We also look back often with both sadness and fondness through our photographs and memories of what we once had.

May your gardens in 2021 flourish beyond your expectations. May your memories of friends and loved ones lost, hold a special place in your heart forever. In addition to the tears, may their memory bring a special smile to your face as the memory of my friends do with me.

To Scott, Steve and Gilbert, you guys will each hold a special place in my heart till eternity and your memory will always bring a huge smile to my face and even a little chuckle.

Staying Grounded

"You've got to be tough to live this life!" ~ me, and many others

As an aging gardener living with a disability, tending to myself takes priority to tending to my garden. After breaking my leg over two years ago, I once again found myself in a position where I was losing my independence. The same independence with my personal care that I had fought to regain over 33 years ago, when I had first sustained my spinal cord injury. I knew the day would eventually come that I would experience this if I was lucky enough to grow old, but at 54, I wasn't quite ready mentally to rely on others for my care. I don't think that I really need to apologize for my absence from social media, because most of my followers know that a passion for gardening is lifelong, but I do have a responsibility to let everyone know where I've been. That said, have I quit gardening, as a few close friends have been wondering? Heck no!

Many know that I jumped back into physical therapy last February to regain strength and to work on stretching. After almost 9 months with my right leg in a cast/splint, my hip flexors, legs, back and almost everything else on my body tightened up to a point where for the first time, I've needed to take spasticity medication. I now jokingly admit that I went into outpatient rehab for a tuneup, and ended up needing an overhaul. Yes, even as active as I have been, I just wasn't getting enough of a cardio workout. The permanently torned ligament in my wrist hasn't helped, but it's something that I can and do live with.

Anyway, without too much excessive whining, I've found that getting back into tip top shape the second time around is a lot more exhausting than I can ever remember. I ache in areas that I never knew that I could feel and I often wonder will I ever get use to it? Thankfully, my sensation isn't as impaired as it once was. (Yeah, right!?) I am, I just have to tell myself this...

Knowing that my 60 visits of physical therapy (I was lucky to have that many allowable visits!) were coming to an end, I had to come up with a means to continue strengthening and getting a decent cardio workout at home. I was stoked to learn that the same advance technology that I've used successfully in rehab, was also available for home use. I wasn't thrilled with the price, but my medical team and I could medically justify it as necessary. I was thrilled when I learned that my private insurance approved my claim, only to tell me over a month after my purchase, that it was approved in error. (Yes, seriously!)

The durable medical equipment provider that I relied on for submitting a 'clean' claim, billed in error. They might as well had lit fireworks around my claim when they gave the insurance company an opportunity to change their minds when they resubmitted the corrected claim. Almost half of my debt had been resolved, now this magician must somehow win an appeal over what was an approved claim. Never before in 33 years have I had to deal with such non-sense. My strengthening will cost them less, but then again if I die from the lack of it, they'll pay less. Hmmmm... Not right, not ethical, and basically immoral. All qualities these companies seem to lack.

In addition to my workout at home, I've also taken advantage of our town's great senior center, staff and fitness machines. It's kind of cool being the young gal for a change! I also took a few adaptive yoga classes over the winter with a local adaptive sports program. All things that I'm fortunate enough to have close by and within my community!

You've got to be tough to live this life. Shouldn't the fight be towards getting stronger, becoming healthier, and encouraging others to do the same? Two of my friends are now cycling and I've had the joy of connecting with others who are also benefitting from using Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) cycling and other advanced technologies. Anyway, I will appeal and appeal again and again and put my frustration towards my workout. And in the mean time, since our greens have partially bolted and are damaged from 2 nights of freezing temperatures, I will plan our Spring garden.

Trapped

Trapped

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living. ~ Gail Sheehy

Someone once asked me how long it took me to accept my disability. My response was that you never really accept it; you just learn to live with it. Because of this, I realized early on that I was not a great peer counselor for a person who had experienced a new injury. After a spinal cord injury, there is a long period of denial. The adjustment is even longer if your spinal cord injury is an incomplete injury, one that generally involves the gain of restored function sometimes for several months afterwards.



Many who have experienced a spinal cord injury have been fortunate enough, with a lot of rehabilitation, to walk away from their injury. For this reason, it is good that an individual does not lose hope. They may walk, but usually their entire perspective on life has changed. Until you have had to relearn how to scratch your nose, and to retrain your bowel and bladder, you have no idea of how important those functions are.

Life is not fair. Life can be flat out cruel, and loved ones die too soon. It is of no surprise that very few people want to hear this initially after they have experience any hardship. You can try to justify this with your personal religious beliefs, faith or whatever. Justifying why things have happened doesn't make life any easier.

I once said that I had heaven on earth. Several weeks later, I broke my neck. Oh, how that perspective changed very quickly. On top of all that, my life continued and real life issues started happening. (Many events that were way more painful than my neck injury.)

My house actually blew up. My hot water heater relief valve did not relieve. The explosion literally picked up my 1850 Greek Revival house and dropped it back down on its foundation. I went from feeling as if I was on top of the world to being a homeless, dependent quadriplegic. With a blink of an eye, life can change. That is simply life. Finding the strength to keep moving forward is the tricky part. Somehow, I did.

As I grow older, I try not to let the simple fact that it is taking me longer to take care of myself get me down. I have reached a point where I have to say no more frequently about traveling and going to special events. I am also at a point where I have to re-examine what I may need to maintain my independence. None of this is easy.

Why do I advocate for better transportation? Because I know firsthand what it actually feels like to lose this freedom. You feel trapped. After over a year of rehabilitation and a long struggle to regain my independence, I was also able to relearn how to drive a car with handcontrols. I enjoy this freedom but I also know the reality that lift equipped vans can occasionally breakdown and uninsured motorists can sometimes total them too. This I know from what was supposed to be a fun Thanksgiving trip to Florida.

In our lives, we survive through one tragedy to the next. In between, we try to embrace many happy moments. It is in those moments that things make sense. Life is not always a garden of happiness. Our gardens grow, produce and delight. They also get eaten, diseased and die. If we can focus on what we can successfully grow, we are good.

Tattered and Torn: Smiley

Smiley, a happy little dragonfly, has been hanging out in the garden a lot lately. I think that she is curious and somewhat leery about this person cruising around in her wheelchair taking tons of photos of flowers, butterflies and of every kind of bug that she sees. She's suspicious yes, but not afraid, as long as she keeps a safe distance away.

A new friend of mine this past week was curious about what kind of camera I was using to 'make' my close-up photographs. I have had the privilege and sometimes frustration of living my life these last 15 years with a real fine art photographer. I differentiate with the term 'real' because at first my objective as a photographer was to simply take pretty pictures. Pretty pictures of life in our gardens. Life isn't always pretty, but having the ability to see the beauty in everything possible is what seems to make it all worthwhile. I sometimes will crop out the ugly parts of a flower by zooming in and showing off only the 'pretty' part. My new friend asked me very nicely if she could edit my photograph of 'Smiley', but it didn't occur to me until later what she probably had in mind. My dragonfly had a torn wing. At first, I thought about 'mending it', so to say, with Photoshop, but I realized that editing it would remove the life I saw in Smiley. That torn wing was a reflection of her life. It reflected her character as a possible champion from a battle she fought and survived. To hide or fix her wing would take away that part of life in her that I could relate to.

The most beautiful people I've known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I remember years ago a friend asking me why there weren't many pictures of me that showed my wheelchair. I had never really noticed that that was the case. Before that time in my life, I do believe it was difficult for many people close to me, including myself, to see my wheelchair. Somehow maybe, the wheelchair made me less attractive, and served as a painful reminder of too much pain or loss. I'll never forget my first outing from the hospital after breaking my neck. I was wheeling outside of Boston University Hospital when two guys walked by and turned and looked at each other and said, "Did you see her? She was pretty too!" Yes, I wanted to respond, "Pretty people break their necks too!"

I know I have said it before, that "the wheelchair is not me", but it is a part of me. Kind of like my high top sneakers. At the end of the day, both are next to my bed. The flowers, the veggie gardens, the bugs, and the gardeners aren't perfect. We are, however, full of life. I am so thankful that there is a change in attitude and acceptance from many now who actually do see people with disabilities as an integral part of our world.

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. ”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

Garden On! Thanks Y'all! (You All)

It's been a year since I really began Access to the Garden. My original intent with Access to the Garden was to spare my non-gardening friends on Facebook from my passion for gardening. (I also needed a cheap way to store my garden pictures.) As I've connected with more and more gardeners, I have discovered that there is a genuine interest on my page of people wanting to continue their passion for gardening as well, regardless of age or disability. We are all gardeners, some are farmers and some simply enjoy beautiful flowers. We share ways of making our passion for gardening a little easier, and often, ways of making it more affordable.

Unlike a lot of pages out there in Cyberland, I do this for free. Not for profit, and generally at a financial loss. If I can inspire anyone to do anything, then I have gained personally from this endeavor. My goal for the next year is to do something even more productive with my website and blog, and to maybe use them to show off even more affordable gardening stuff and cool gardening ideas. My other goal is to keep writing about GARDENING from my perspective, as a quadriplegic who is getting older. More tips and tricks from this Gimpy Gardener! Your feedback is always appreciated, unless you are a cat hater.....

This week in the garden, my husband and I (I can't take all of the credit) have been busy planting cool weather veggies and adding compost to our beds. We have also planted a few burlap bags with potatoes. My elevated tables are also ready for more crops. Roses and Butterfly Bushes have been pruned. Daffodils, Lorapetalums and Azaleas are starting to bloom as well. Spring is definitely in the air, although the temps are a little chilly today!

Potatoes in Sacks

Out of the garden this week, yet in the garden too because I met him cyberly on Access to the Garden,  I encountered a design professional who truly 'gets it'! I have never felt so encouraged in my life! I just wish there were more professionals with his kind of common sense attitude. Please check out Billy Goodnick's blog at www.edhat.com, KeepYour Garden Out of My Face. Excellent! This guy, this Landscape Architect,  certainly understands that if one cannot travel safely on a sidewalk, one cannot get to where they need to go, whether it is to a community garden, bus stop or restaurant. Blocked access prevents independence and can be quite dangerous!

Another rewarding experience for me last week was that a group of my friends with the SC Spinal Cord Injury Association had the opportunity to go to a Stingray's hockey game thanks to the goodwill of the City of North Charleston and the North Charleston Coliseum. One flying puck didn't stop my friends from having a terrific time. I'm glad I could help. Life with a disability isn't cheap, and many would have never have had the opportunity to go. Awesome!

If I don't get out soon to my new elevated gardens with my trowel in hand, I will not have a garden to take pictures of or one to eat from! Thank you all for a very REWARDING and SUCCESSFUL year!

CARTA Board Meeting: Trees are Important, but so are Humans!

As I was leaving, I commented that had the town truly understood the impact of the route change, less landscaping may have been included in their recent widening project of Route 17. As the Administrator and Creator of Access to the Garden, landscaping is incredibly important to me. The quality of a human life is even more so. ~ Brenda Parent

TO: CARTA Board Members
DATE: February 20, 2013
RE: Recent changes in Route 401 and cuts to Paratransit Service

Dear CARTA Board members:

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Recently I received a notice from Veolia Transportation stating that due to recent route changes in Mount Pleasant that I would no longer be within Tel-A-Ride’s ¾ mile Paratransit service area. I received no further explanation other than the fact that these changes would start within ten days.

As a long term resident living with a disability, I originally purchased my home, stayed in and modified my home on the basis of growing old and aging in place within my home. Having access to accessible transportation is not an option for me, I have been a quadriplegic since 1983. I chose my home based on the proximity to hospitals and other necessary services. I chose my home based on the availability of public transportation as well.

After contacting Jeff Burns with CARTA, I was informed that this change would only affect 14 individuals. This information is incorrect and falsely represented based on the fact that two additional riders who live further back than I do and on the marsh within my neighborhood did not receive notification. Also considering that our population is aging very quickly, and by the year 2030 over 20% of our population will be over 65 the impact is potentially huge.(1 in 3 people in this age bracket will have a disability.)

After reviewing Google Earth map, I ascertained based on an older map which did not accurately reflect the widening of Route 17, that I as ‘the bird flies’ was within .78 miles of the frontage road. After speaking to Jeff, the only solution was for me to wheel approximately 200 feet to be within the service area. Only on the days that are above 65 degrees and sunny, this may not be an issue. The whole purpose of Paratransit is to actually provide a door to door service when needed to individuals such as myself. As I get older that 200 feet might as well be a mile. This decision is absurd and may be medically impossible for me some days! Considering the fact that they will be expanding Paratransit service on both the Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island, two areas that will no longer have a fixed route service, this does not make sense.

After contacting Project Action, it was brought to my attention that CARTA held a poorly publicized meeting on this route change in December. I had absolutely no idea that this was going on and that it would personally affect me and potentially so many others to the extent that it will. Without Paratransit, I will be forced to eventually move.

“You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats its most vulnerable.” This statement couldn’t be truer. After reviewing a powerpoint of CARTA’s presentation on these route changes, I saw absolutely no indication that service to those who are the most needy of public transportation would be cut. This is appalling to say the least. I am shocked that the Town would allow such a thing to happen to its residents if they indeed realized that this was an actual consequence of any route change.


http://www.townofmountpleasant.com/documentcenter/view/6105

This letter is my written notice, in which I am not obligated to give, to inform CARTA and its supporting municipalities that I will be filing a legitimate complaint with the Federal Transit Administration’s ADA Civil Right’s Division regarding public notice, and specific ADA requirements for public transportation both with Paratransit and Fixed Route services. I will also be filing a Title II violation with the Department of Justice regarding non-compliance issues with all of CARTA’s facilities. I have no choice other than to exercise my Civil Rights.

Knowing that for years I volunteered to make CARTA a better and an award winning transit organization, this truly saddens me. For over twenty years I have watched accessible fixed route buses travel to inaccessible bus stops. What an unfortunate waste of money.

Brenda B. Parent
Certified ADA Coordinator

CARTA ends Paratransit Service for Many Living with Disabilities

The Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) will be ending its specialized transportation Paratransit service for many people living with disabilities in the Mount Pleasant area who do not live within 3/4 of a mile of CARTA's current Route 40. Paratransit service, Tel-A-Ride will be available on the Isle of Palms and on Sullivan's Island, two areas that will no longer have a fixed route. The Federal Transit Administration's ADA policy requires coverage to areas within its core area that are not within a corridor. FTA ADA 49 CFR 37.131 - Service criteria for complementary paratransit. (ii) Within the core service area, the entity also shall provide service to small areas not inside any of the corridors but which are surrounded by corridors. Many residents have received notice that their transportation will end in ten days. For many that will be an end to their employment and independence. CARTA's current Fixed-Route service is not accessible to many people with disabilities who use wheelchairs and to those living with other types of disabilities that prevent them from traveling independently.

Although my neighborhood is within 3/4 mile of CARTA's route to the schools, I will also no longer have the opportunity to utilize Tel-A-Ride. I will be working diligently to have this issue resolved. I, like many others, moved to my neighborhood and have remained in my current home because of the availability of public transportation. Without public transportation, I will have to move. I will no longer have the opportunity to age in place. People living within East Cooper should be outraged by this pitiful reduction in service. In my neighborhood alone an elderly widow, a young man living with Down Syndrome and myself, a quadriplegic who uses a wheelchair, will be affected by this horrendous decision to cut services. The community as a whole should stand up for what is right. There is an appropriate saying that comes to my mind, You can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens, our seniors and people with disabilities deserve more respect. This is wrong.



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