A classic case of repurposing: Onetime pool now an organic garden

rose_courtneyBRH_9226I’ve always had just a little patch
of a garden,” says Rose Courtney.
“Here, I thought, I’m going to do
it all the way.”
The trouble was, her back
yard wasn’t exactly set up for the
enjoyment of the green-thumbed.
Sunk into the middle of it was a pool.
And, as the saying goes, there’s no
pool like an old pool (sorry).
“It was a 27-year-old pool,”
says Courtney. “It was getting a little
dilapidated.”
So the owner of Fitness By Rose
decided not to put any more time
or expense into “the maintenance
of something that wasn’t giving
back.” She and her fiancé set to work
breaking up and filling in the pool,
and reworking the yard so that it
would indeed give something back:
specifically, to her kitchen.
“I like to eat organic, and
organic is pricey,” notes Courtney.
“Now I have five produce gardens
and 10 fruit trees.”
The gardens are providing
her table with tomatoes, radishes,
onions, peppers and lettuce, while
the fruit trees yield mangoes, figs,
peaches, apples, key limes, grapefruit
and two types of oranges.
“It’s almost finished,” says
Courtney. “I want to put in grapes
and blackberries.”
Yet for all this delicious and
cost-efficient bounty, it may be that
the real gifts of Courtney’s new back
yard are spiritual.
She sees her new garden as a
tribute to her late father.
“I’ve been gardening since I
was a kid,” recalls the former Texas
resident. “My dad worked for the
government, one of those jobs he
didn’t enjoy that much, and when he
came home his joy was putting on
his old jeans and his garden shoes.
That became a time, Courtney
figured, when her frequently
preoccupied dad could relax—and
when she could corral him, at least
briefly, for some of the conversation
for which she longed.
So she worked up a modicum of
courage on one of the gardening days
and confronted him matter-of-factly
with the idea this could become their
time to talk.
“This is my time,” advised Dad,
leaving little likelihood of further
discussion. Undeterred, Courtney
recalls, she shot back: “What if I
don’t talk?”
And so was broken the rule
of silence and the door opened to
a remaining lifetime of man-anddaughter
communication, which to
this day Courtney reveres as what
she’d long desired: “A chance to
bond.”
— M.V. Moorhead

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Photo by Billy Hardiman

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