I can see him in memory, my fluffy Maine coon cat with a plume of a tail, trotting beside me on the first day of gardening season. He settled nearby as I laid a tray of plants at the edge of the garden, and he watched with uncharacteristic patience as I set each little plant into its bed.
I looked for the watering can, remembered that I’d left it in the garden shed and returned with it just in time to witness Benjamin BadKitten’s own springtime ritual: He was peeing on my newly planted pansies. For 13 years I’ve written about Benjamin in a lighthearted, but unfortunately true, story line that ran like a cord of garden twine through many of my columns. I hoped that readers might think of him, shake their heads and smile while they drank their morning coffee and read the Moscow-Pullman Daily News and more recently, the Lewiston Tribune.
My impetuous garden plans and the ways my husband, Lee Rozen, helped make them happen were also recurring themes. I remember a series that began with my asking Lee if we (meaning he) could build some raised garden beds so I could grow all our own vegetables. While I was leafing through seed catalogs and daydreaming about opening a farm stand, Lee was measuring space in our yard, graphing a plan, hauling lengths of lumber and beginning a three-year project that produced five raised beds in our backyard and six in the side yard — plus one big honker of a bed as our main pumpkin patch.
Readers commiserated when I wrote about my first summer as a raised-bed gardener, so confident and naive while I planted corn (the weevils loved it), pole beans (an early heat wave turned them mealy), lettuce (I blame the Garden Goddess), watermelons, cantaloupes, artichokes, peppers and fennel (R.I.P. to the ungrateful lot of them). More than a decade later, Lee and I celebrated our 363-pound pumpkin harvest, grown in the raised beds he built. He also set up a system of soaker hoses to keep my flowers happy and healthy. Without my sweetheart’s heavy work, there would be no Church of Dirt and Flowers, no garden of tulips, oriental poppies, lilacs, delphiniums and phlox to help me find the peace I need.
Sometimes my columns have taken me out of the garden. In “Hope rises,” I wrote about my anxiety and grief during the COVID-19 pandemic and why it eased when I watched a little boy coasting past our house on his red bike and singing off-key with pure joy. Hope rises. I’m also proud of a column born from a major case of writer’s block. My deadline was looming, and I still had no idea at all for a topic. As I paced around outside our house, I noticed a tiny violet, growing through a narrow crack in the concrete sidewalk. I found 600 words from a fragile flower and the power of resiliency.
The most fun I’ve ever had as a writer was a column about Dragon School, an imaginary academy created and ruled by my youngest grandson, Sam. I was the school’s only student and particularly inept at dragon-riding. I described Sam and me, gliding high on fantasy wings of red and purple, while neighbors tried but failed to smother their laughter as we staggered past, riding double on a broomstick.
I’ve written often about the animals Lee and I have welcomed through the years. Rags, our sweet, great-hearted Old English sheepdog, was Benjamin BadKitten’s best friend. Tessa the Vague, our docile calico cat, lived for 21 years and greeted each new day with a blank stare. Marlon was a tough, homeless street cat we rescued and named for Marlon Brando in “The Wild One.” At home with us, he was a purring ginger-colored pussycat and a hero to Duffy, our Bernedoodle puppy, but he died, alone, in a midnight street fight. When I wrote Marlon’s eulogy, I tried to express my bittersweet love for a wild creature who could never be tamed.
My most difficult column, by far, was “A Shadow Falls on BBK,” written when I realized that Benjamin BadKitten was dying. Familiarly known as BBK to longtime readers, he became the column’s main attraction soon after I introduced him. Vain, spoiled, pampered and disobedient, Benjamin was an endless source of material. Sometimes readers approached me at the grocery store to ask about BBK’s latest misdemeanors. I knew his fans were with me in spirit as I traced the final months of Benjamin’s life. After his death, their compassionate cards and emails touched me beyond words. My buddy, my companion, my BadKitten will always be the cat of my heart.
I have been a professional writer for more than 50 years, with seven nationally published books and hundreds of newspaper articles in my portfolio. Writing this column has been the creative joy of my career. I tip my garden hat to readers in this final column and wish I could give each of them a Cinderella pumpkin and a thank you bouquet from my Church of Dirt and Flowers.
Craft Rozen is grateful for the community of impetuous gardeners, animal lovers, readers and tea drinkers who welcomed her into their kitchens for 13 years. She can be contacted at scraftroze@aol.com.
