Remembering Shirley Cheatley - My Neighbour With a Spectacular Garden

I love gardening!   Our garden is my pride and joy!

It was a glorious spring day in Toronto! I was basking in the warm sun, caressed by gentle breezes while doing one of my most favourite and enjoying activities in the world: gardening in the backyard of our Toronto home!

There is nothing I enjoy more than puttering around in our garden, digging up overgrown perennials and moving them around like furniture and finding them new homes in various corners among our other plants and shrubs.

Cut flowers from our garden

Gardening is a de-stressor for me ; nothing calms me down and lower my blood pressure than admiring the greenery in my garden. With a coffee mug in my hands, every morning during the warm spring /summer days,  I take a princely walk and survey my royal subjects that bring so much pleasure in my life, I feel like I am the Queen in my own castle.  It is a heavenly experience for me!

I was singing and enjoying myself, immersed in  weeding and pulling up some perennials unknown to me. Umm,, I 'd better ask Shirley about these unknown perennial before I kill them all. Shirley, my neighbor since the early 1980\s, and whose spectacular garden was featured in the Home and Garden magazine,  had been my volunteered plant consultant for the past thirty year.

 

Shirley and I used to talk a lot over this fence

" Hi, Shirley, good morning! How are you? How are you plants and flowers doing this year?" I yelled over the fence to my neighbour, eagerly awaiting for our usual little exchange about our gardens, our husbands and what was going on with our families.

I waited. There was no answer. I waited again. It was complete silence.

She 's gone! I was brought back to the reality. She's gone forever from her garden and the house next to ours.

How I have missed our exchanges over the fence! I have missed that lovely smiling face that no loner peeked over our wooden fence covered with well grown shrubs that we planted more than twenty years ago. I've missed her friendliness, kindness, welcoming warm hello every time when I was in our  garden, her smart planting tips and wisdom on flowers, plants and all my questions on gardening, her spirit of generosity, her hospitality for the neighbours, the sing-along in the basement of her home during the Christmas party....

My neighbour taught me about growing perennials in our garden

We moved into our house in the early 1980's and Shirley and her husband moved in six months later. She was in her fifty's while I was in my late twenty's.

 She reached out to us, a young couple with our first born at the time. I distinctly remembered how she had a lengthy conversation with E.who had just turned three at the time. She had such an endearing way with little kids and showed genuine interest in everyone she met including very young children.

The following Christmas, she  brought over two boxes of gifts for our two boys - It was beautiful kids' clothes form Ellen Henderson, her own company. We loved how smart these clothes looked on our boys! Since then, we had established the tradition of exchanging gifts between our two families and our friendship began.

Shirley and I had a lot in common. We were career women; hardworking, determined to do well in our profession. She loved gardening which has been a hobby of mine. Therefore, we could easily talk for half an hour on our sidewalk whenever we saw each other. I did not have a lot of time for tea at her house saved for our annual visit of Christmas gift exchange. I would usually bring our gifts over and we sat and drank teas for sometime and caught up with our news.

Shirley and I spent some wonderful time in our gardens

I retired in 2009 and was looking forward to more frequent visits with Shirley. I did go over and had tea and cookies a couple of times and we  shared our photos in a leisurely manner for the first time in over thirty years!  I even had time to go down to her basement and saw what she was working on in her retirement years.

I noticed that Shirley's health was failing. I saw her less and less in her beloved garden. The last time I saw her was at the Bridgepoint Health Centre in the Riverdale area in 2010. Shortly after our visit, she passed away in the fall of 2010. The spring after her death, the house was sold and her husband - our neighbour for over thirty years moved into a senior condo.

The flowers are still here but Shirley is gone.

Still working in my garden and thinking of Shirley, I had tears in my eyes. I regret that I did not spend more time with my lovely neighbour because I was so busy with my life.

Shirley was my cheerleader; she was happy for me whenever I told her about the promotions I had in my career. As a woman entrepreneur, she encouraged me to achieve my career goals and shared her own challenges with me.   I thought she would always be there and that we could spend more time together in our gardens after I retired.

 I am here every morning in my lovely garden, but Shirley is gone forever.

Shirley, I have really missed you! I will always miss you. You are gone, but you will always be in my heart!

R.T., Your neighbour in Don Mills
Toronto