Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN, USA (Memphis.online) Cathryn Stout Faces & Places
Gardening helps survivors thrive 2005 - a fresh start after successful fight vs. cancer "My biggest dream is to get a community garden in Collierville. That's one of my 'I wants.' - Juanita Fant, an avid gardener, thought her gardening days were behind her after a severe car accident seven years ago left her wheelchair-bound. Today she still gardens on her 5-acre "piece of heaven" on Main Street and serves on the Town Beautiful Commission. Elizabeth Blaylock said that 2005 is going to be her year. "I'm going to be healthy and take care of myself ... I'm not going to sit around this year." Blaylock was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2003. She battled and defeated the disease in 2004. Now in 2005, she's looking forward to rediscovering life. The 10-year Collierville resident who lives on Sugar Lane credits her sweet disposition to a great support system, which is why she ended 2004 with a thank-you party attended by 25 friends and family members. Attending the celebration were Alan, her husband of 22 years, daughter Lauren, 21, and close friends Cathy Dormer and Julie Nations. She said she's put her disease behind her. "Cancer is not coming back. I'm not going to let it," she said defiantly, adding that she is looking forward to spring when she can watch her lilies and azaleas bloom. Juanita Fant also can't wait for spring. Fant, an avid gardener like Blaylock, survived her own personal hardship seven years ago. Fant spent 202 days in the hospital after a severe car accident on Park and Getwell. The doctors gave her little chance of survival, a 1 percent chance, to be exact. "If it hadn't been for the people in Collierville praying for me and donating blood, I wouldn't have made it," she said. Today, Fant is 72 years old, and though wheelchair-bound, she has a cheerful spirit that can't be restrained. Fant and her husband, Frank, have been married 55 years. They moved to Collierville in the 1980s and opened Fant Nursery on Poplar were Starbucks now sits. After the accident she sold the nursery, which has since moved to become Morgreen Nursery and Landscape, and she thought that the better part of her gardening days was behind her. That is until former mayor Herman Cox appointed the master gardener to the Town Beautiful Commission in 1995. Mayor Linda Kerley has since extended that term to a lifetime appointment. She splits her time between Town Beautiful projects and her own garden. On the grounds of her 5-acre home on Main Street that she calls "a little piece of heaven," she plants tomatoes every spring, plus pansies, onions and sometimes eggplant. "My biggest dream is to get a community garden in Collierville," she said. "That's one of my 'I wants.' " She said a successful community garden would take at least 25 acres and the space would be well used by the 27 master gardeners and the host of apartment dwellers and zero-lot owners. Plus, she added, it's a good way to plant the seeds of friendships. Fant and Blaylock have never met, but Fant's dream of neighbor meeting neighbor in a community garden might be the catalyst that brings these two survivors and others together. As Fant said, "I never met a gardening person I didn't like." ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
