The Wheelbarrow – 5

The yellow rental truck was packed tight, floor to ceiling, front to back. Everything was out of the house and on the truck, everything from the garage was on the truck, including the wheelbarrow.

Sasha from Ukraine, visiting our friend Joe (Sasha was built like an American football lineman), kept saying, “Books, more books,” as he carried box after box down the second-floor stairs, then down the porch steps and onto the truck. If Sasha could only see the books now he’d realize that he’d gotten off light twenty years ago. All pastors should have book allowances built into their compensation package; I had book allowances and I used them.

Even though the rental house we were moving to in Beverly, MA. was on a much smaller lot than our Chesterfield, VA home, we knew we’d take the wheelbarrow – for no matter how small the lot, there is always a place to grow plants. We also had house plants in the truck – we’ve always had house plants.

We lived in Beverly three years and we often think we should have stayed – but that’s another story and one which I may never write about, at least publically. Vickie worked her gardening magic at 3 Museum Road, Beverly, MA. There were flowers along both sides of our home, even tomato plants on one of the sides. Then along our rear fence she planted a perennial garden – this is when we learned about the “friendship gate” which I’ve written about. We discovered a paved path outside the back door which had been covered over the years by grass – we uncovered it. While we didn’t use the wheelbarrow as much as we did in Chesterfield, we did use it to haul dirt and turf and plants.

An important side benefit of gardening in a neighborhood is that it provides an opportunity to meet your neighbors. It works like this; you are outside gardening, your neighbor comes outside to do something, you speak to your neighbor and then your neighbor speaks to you – the whole thing is pretty neat. This is how we met our neighbors in the back and our neighbors on one side of us. The neighbors on our other side greeted us as soon as we arrived – that was an immediate answer to prayer…maybe I’ll pick that up on the next post in this series.