A Tribute to Anne LaFrance

by Kristina Lefever, PPRV President

Anne was a regular volunteer with PPRV for more than a year, showing up almost every Wednesday to work in the nursery or garden ~ weeding, pruning, whatever.

She was also helpful as we got started again with our Rogue Buzzway mapping project, and she also contributed to design ideas with some of the gardens for our From Fire to Flowers Pollinator Gardens program.

Anne must be credited with much of the redo of our demonstration garden this past spring. She researched ideas for additional plants, helped select the species, gave great guidance on placement based on mature size, went to Plant Oregon and Shooting Star to get them, dug the holes, planted and watered them. And, helped get rid of those 2 mugo pines out front!

What a shock to learn of her illness...... and then that she was no longer in the world she loved.

Anne loved her gardens at home, volunteering at PPRV and the Master Gardener's Plant Clinic, her home with Jan, taking walks, cooking good food and sharing it with others.

Jan, Anne's husband, told us: Remember Anne as a caring person who loved plants, gardening and life in general.

Anne, we miss you.

Click here to see a small photo album of Anne, PPRV Pollinteer.

Deb Vroman, a PPRV Pollinteer who sometimes worked with Anne, shared this beautiful poem after learning of Anne's passing.

This morning, thinking of Anne... this poem came to rest in my heart with memories of her beautiful spirit...& her smile!

Adrift by Mark Nepo Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. In the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we’ve lost face each other. It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful.