Stress-free zone

By Travina Coleman
Phoenix Staff Writer

July 16, 2008 06:45 pm

— Deanna Moore said being a nurse can be stressful, so she has found her own way to keep her stress from growing. She picks the weeds out of it.
Moore said the rainbow of flowers covering her home on South 24th Street is a labor of love with involvement from her entire family.
Moore, her husband, Jackie, her two children, Aaron, 18, and Rebeka, 22, spend many evenings plucking the unruly plants and unwelcome weeds out of her three-tier garden below their porch.
“My husband is a contractor,” Moore said. “He built the garden when he built the porch. There used to be a rock front and he tore it down.”
Moore, a former ICU nurse for Muskogee Regional Medical Center, said she enjoys the time she spends in the gardens.
“The garden relieves my anxiety,” she said. “It’s something I get to do for myself.”
Moore said it isn’t easy to create or maintain her flower garden, but says it’s worth it.
“When you look at the humming birds that swoop in or the honey bees buzzing around, it makes me feel good to be a part of nature.”
Moore now works 12-hour shifts at the Cancer Treatment Center in Tulsa.
“I love my job,” she said. “I am very happy at the cancer center.”
Her son, Aaron, agrees.
“She’s a lot happier,” he said.
And when Aaron isn’t working as a teller at IBC Bank, he is bending over pulling out weeds out of the garden.
“It’s like they’re trained,” Moore said of her family. “They have all put a lot of work into it. They walk by and if they see something that doesn’t belong, the kids pull it out.”
Covered in a variety of colored pansies, gladiolas and lilies, Moore’s garden is home to several different plants.
“I just went to Lowe’s and started picking what I liked,” she said. “Some work, some don’t. It’s a kind of guessing game.”
But it’s not just trying to figure out what looks good and what doesn’t, Moore said it is a lot of work with the general maintenance.
Along the middle tier, she has a sprinkler hose hidden under the petals.
“I can run this and it waters above and drains below,” she said. “They all get water evenly so that helps.”
Most of the work is the weeding.
“I have to get to it every day,” she said. “You just can’t let it go for days, it gets too hard. You do it little by little and it’s not too bad. I love it. It’s just a fun thing.”
Reach Travina Coleman at 684-2901 or tcoleman@muskogeephoenix.com.

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.