Azalea Attack

It’s not that the blog has become less important to me, but it feels like every part of my life is expanding to crowd out the time I would usually set aside for writing or reading or sleeping. It certainly doesn’t help that there’s a war two countries over, which has meant I got called in for a few extra shifts this month. The war doesn’t directly affect Christina’s job, but she works for the Foreign Ministry, so a war on the continent has ripple effects through every division. She’s been working some crazy hours too. So, for the last four weeks, it’s felt to me like I wake up, walk Murphy, get people to school, work, walk Murphy again, do chores, walk Murphy again and then get to bed.

This is not meant as a complaint. God knows, you don’t have to read very far into any halfway useful news feed to hear stories about people in Ukraine suffering infinitely worse than my fling with exhaustion here. I’m simply saying, I’m glad to get five hours of sleep at this point, so blogging has become quite a luxury.

Another thing distracting us from social media has been the return of the mystery gardener.

This all happened a few weeks ago, and it’s been on my “must blog” list the whole time, but here we are. The short version is that Christina called me up from the cemetery about two weeks ago, clearly agitated. Someone else had come and made modifications to the gravesite. Now, I already wrote a while back about the person who set down flowers and an angel statue that we didn’t really like. This time, the person (and for all we know, it’s a separate individual), actually put in new plants. I mean, these weren’t flowers laid on the grave, but the person dug up some soil and put these new plants in.

This created a few problems, namely:

• Christina didn’t care for these new flowers (let’s be honest, I barely notice the colors of the flowers)
• They dug up some of the bulbs Christina had specifically put in because THOSE were the flowers she wanted.

Suffice to say, Christina found time in her Murphy/chores routine to make a sign telling people we weren’t into freelance gardening at OUR family’s gravesite. As a bonus, when she went to put the sign down, she ran into Frau Krämer, who runs the cemetery. We’ve run into Frau Krämer all kinds of times since we’ve been there. I remember her asking me as we picked out the site how it felt to watch my kid die. I didn’t take the question as insensitive one. I think she was genuinely curious. But the only answer I had was “About as bad as you’d think it would be.” She’s also a hoot. Like, if I ran into her on the street, I’d assume she was a bartender at a biker bar, not a cemetery administrator. She’s all tattoos and piercings and making the cemetery as pretty as possible.

Anyways, Christina ran into Frau Krämer, who agreed that this kind of behavior was unacceptable. She kindly listened as Christina told the story and then asked “So, why is the angel still here?” Christina didn’t really know what to say, so Frau Krämer followed up with “You said you don’t like it, right?” Christina agreed and, like that, the angel was gone. To sum up: Don’t mess with Frau Krämer.

I find the odds that the person who is doing this isn’t reading the blog. Then again, I still get all kinds of exciting notes from people from Russia telling me how much they like the website and how they really want to sell me something, so who knows who’s reading this? Let’s just say: Don’t freelance decorate graves, people. Put down flowers, sure. I can’t even personally get that mad about the angel (though it wasn’t to my taste and I’m glad Frau Krämer took it down). But digging up dirt and putting in your own plants? Lines crossed, whoever you are. Lines crossed.

Our sign is up and Frau Krämer is on the lookout. You’ve been warned.