On the patio behind my house there is a wisteria vine. It has been growing there from the seed my mother planted 36 years ago and has slowly snaked up one of the four posts of the pergola it is now draped across. The post that supported it for all those years is like an arthritic finger: twisted, bent, and broken across its ten foot height. The vine supports itself now. Its trunk is massively muscled. You can feel underhand each fiber of its straining muscles that hold aloft its luscious canopy. Early in the spring, long bunches of delicate violet flowers erupt. And the canopy springs to life. From a hundred yards away the tingling buzz of the bumble bee vibrates the air as they zip from flower to flower--sending goosebumps down my arms.

A week later the flowers float in clouds of thousands to the brick patio below, coating it an inch deep, and tickle a bare passing foot.
Thousands of waxy green leaves are left to collect all the sun’s rays. Underneath their roof dozens of shade hungry flowers sprout out of the cool damp earth. All these flower beds bordering the four sides of the pergola were created by my mother.
Arranged throughout the beds are relics she found at the dusty auctions, and the hot musty flea markets we used to go to together. Over there is a four pronged pitchfork with only three stakes that she planted in the ground as though the farmer who used it all those years ago would come back at any moment. Just down from the pitchfork, is a small child sized shopping cart. I remember scoffing at her when she bought that at an auction. But she, like with all of her finds, saw only beauty and possibility. Now, rather than a load of groceries, it carries my dad’s old forest green crumbling rubber boots with huge holes in each toe. Orange flowers creep out of the holes in the sagging boots. A half cone shaped wooden stand occupies a sunny patch of wall. On one of its four shelves a tarnished silver spaghetti fork clutches a ball of lime green moss and a tiny succulent plant perches in the middle. From the rafters of the chipped and faded blue green pergola are hung upside down flower pots--their blazing red flowers arching upward searching for the sun. And also from the rafters is an old grocery scale, with a big white dial and red pointer. The dangling vine within the scale’s dish weighs six and a half pounds. My mother created this space. This is her specialty--precision through apparent disorganization and through that beauty.
I sit on one of the benches enjoying the cool touch of the wisteria’s shade. I came out here to read, but before I opened the book my eyes had already started to wander. Drifting from from one vibrant spectacle to the next. There is something about this space. Something in how the sun’s beams are caught by the colorful foliage, and like stained glass in a cathedral the leaves become more complex. Green turns to a yellow hue, pink to white and brushed with milky red, and red turns to an even richer crimson. Dotted throughout these eruptions of color are my mother's treasures. She has mastered this space--infusing and enhancing nature with her own personality.   
So I sit. And though my mom is not here she is all around me. Her feet crushed those fallen petals. Her hands hung the ornaments from the pergola rafters. And her crafty eyes found the perfect place for the pieces of her garden mosaic.
I like to chide her for buying seemingly useless pieces.
“Mom,” I say, “we don’t have any room left. Where can you put this broken standing lamp, or that old milk pail, or that old door?
And she shakes her head, not looking right at me, and says in the tired voice that has told me a dozen times, “There is always space for something pretty.”
I look around me now and see the ornate metal standing lamp repurposed as a candelabra, poking out from the patch of daylilies. Thick icicles of wax cling to where lightbulbs used to protrude. The old milk pail--of which there are several--is now home to a wide leafed delicate vine. The door with its rusted metal work and flaking sky blue paint is now a coffee table for the sitting area under the pergola.
Without my mother’s vision this diverse culture of plants and antiques would be nothing more than a hot desolate patch of grass behind an otherwise boring teal house.
Part of her style, I am thankful to say, lives on in me. My room is full of pieces that I have collected. Pieces that are unique. Pieces like my desk. I remember seeing it walking through a hot dusty flea market with my mom and my sister. I loved the three inch thick wooden planks of its surface that were laced with streaks of caramel and smoky grey brown lines that at random points were twisted by thick black knots in the wood. The four legs of my table are blue grey metal singed with smooth patches of rust along its edges. On the right side there is a square drawer with a worn brass handle polished by hundreds of fingers. The dealers I bought it from told me the wood was hemlock and that the planks were rescued from an old dilapidated barn. The legs they told me were from an old machine shop. I fell in love with its warmth, its richness. And when I looked at it I could feel its powerful grace. I bought it that day under the proud gaze of my mom.     
And so I am terrified of the day the Wisteria dies. With that vine goes everything under it leaving only the sun whose huge beams of scorching light will burn all the plants and take all the water from the earth. Without the Wisteria it would be too hot to sit out on the patio together as a family. Without the Wisteria--without my mother--there won’t be any room left for something pretty.