A Gardener Gone

May 29th, 2012

   We lost one of our own last week at way too young of an age.

Christi Konopski

    Fairview Twp. gardener extraordinaire Christi Konopski died last Thursday morning at age 46 after battling breast cancer for more than 5 years.

   Christi’s backyard gardens were a retreat and a sanctuary as she went through agonizing surgeries and energy-sapping chemotherapy. Her favorite spot was sitting on a swing under a vine-covered pergola, looking into her water garden.

   She and husband, Ken, had come to peace with her fate as the cancer spread into her spine and lungs. The treatments just weren’t working.

   The two of them got to go outside to the swing one last time the evening before Christi died.

   Christi was one of those positive, smiling people who was a natural fit for the nurturing that is gardening.

   It became her passion soon after she and Ken moved into their modest suburban home 23 years ago.

   “The house was a fixer-upper,” she told me last year for a piece I wrote in The Patriot-News. “We did the inside first to make it livable, then we did the outside.”

Christi's water garden.

    At first, they’d just go to the garden center, get a bunch of petunias and go home. Then they began to notice and buy other plants.

   You know what happens next.

   Grass started to disappear, replaced by beds of mixed plantings.

   When the swimming pool leaked, it got turned into a water garden with a waterfall and a Japanese maple overlooking it.

   Then Ken built a 36-foot-long pergola leading from the back door to a swing at the opposite end so there’d be shade in that whole area.

   Eventually the back yard grew into a Certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat.

   As any passionate gardener knows, this isn’t work. It’s something more akin to creation or artistry or maybe just plain old fun.

   Christi loved it. She’d come home from work most days and take a walk around the yard to see what changed.

   “I just love plants,” she said. “I like to try to pack one of everything into the yard somewhere.”

   When I stopped by to visit a couple of weeks ago, Christi was on oxygen and too weak to plant or weed. But she did have the energy to get back to the swing and enjoy the peaceful splashing of the waterfall.

A sitting area under the vine-covered pergola.

   That’s the last place I saw her. And it’s a great final picture to remember.

   The years of treatment were staggeringly expensive, and insurance did not cover all of it.

   Christi’s friends last year staged a “Long Drive Fore Life” golfing fund-raiser to help pay for some of the family’s bills.

   They’re doing another one this year. It’s going to take place Sat., June 16, at Valley Green Golf Course with registration at 11:30 a.m. and a shotgun start at 1 p.m.

   Golf and dinner is $90. Just dinner is $33, which includes steak, dessert and beer, plus a raffle, silent auction and music.

   If you’d like to participate or otherwise help, contact Diane Ramp at 717-979-2644 or  dmramp@yahoo.com or email Chris McNulty at thejargan6@yahoo.com.

   Or just plant something. Christi would like that, too.