Seven Gardening Takes

One

Matt managed to aquire a small mountain of mulch this week and spread it all over the yard with a goodly measure of yelling and frustration. So much work. But so much nicer than the big brown smear of the bed he “opened up” last year. He is addicted to “opening up beds” and then freaking out while they continue to grow acres of weeds. He has been veritably hysterical about it. Then my cosmos reseeded itself to be an acre of cosmos rather than just a small bed of it and I wouldn't let him pile it up with mulch and he nearly resorted to profanity. I come from a hot place where if something is growing you weep and pray and beat off the goats. You don't purposely kill anything, ever, no matter how much of it you have. Matt grew up with a pleasant and beautiful forest in his back yard. The poor children. Like everything, we don't garden in a calm civilized way. We shout and become emotionally over wrought. Because it's relaxing, don't you know.

Two

Last year I planted a tiny little lilac I purchased from the internet. I buy almost everything from the internet. Buying plants seemed an obvious thing until I talked to other people and learned that I can go to actual stores and look at the actual plants before laying out my money. Anyway, this little lilac turned out to be more than perfectly fine. It is white and lacy and delicate…

So amazed and relieved.

Four

People who are from here walk around my garden (I should really say yard, it's a yard with some plants in it, but I will glorify it by calling it a garden, someday a book called Anne and her Binghamton Garden) with sorrowful expressions of bemusement and patience. I am the idiot foreigner who is starting from scratch. Maybe there is hope for me, in like thirty years. Nevertheless, I will learn to compost.

Five

Maybe it would help if I could try to remember the names of things, or mark out where I planted what, or plant things in some kind of order. I have jumbled peonies, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, cilantro, fennel together with something called Maiden Pinks and the two remaining hollyhock seedlings that I didn't kill. I don't know, I just shoved them all into the ground and hoped I would be able to figure out what everything is when they've grown up.

Matt folded his arms and said, “the tall things need to go at the back, and the short things at the front, so it won't look stupid.”

“That's all very well,” I said, “but I don't know what's tall and what's short. Maybe I can rearrange it all later, when it's obvious what it all is.”

He looked extremely dubious.

Six

A knowledgable gardening friend sent me a long and comprehensive article about just that, arranging things and planting them with sense, wisdom, and intelligence. I read it carefully and then forgot it all as I was planting. I think I need to print it out and then go out and read it out loud to the plants themselves and draw myself pictures and then probably dig everything up and try again. Or not.

Seven

It's the investment of gardening that's so interesting to me. It takes years and years. There isn't any hope for you if you only have one year or three. And most of the time, when you're not doing anything, it goes on with itself, doing whatever it is it's designed to do. Then you drop in and mess around and walk away again and it sits there, unfazed by your hysteria and stress. Just like children, you might be tempted to say. But not like children at all. You can't walk away and let children be for a couple of years. You have to be at them constantly to make sure they don't grow in the wrong way or not at all. And not like house keeping. Believe me, I try to drop in and out of the laundry and it always proves to be a poor choice. You have to do laundry all the time or you will perish. And it's not like the church, because that, like children, requires attention and care all the time. No, I really think it is it's own thing, thank goodness. Or I wouldn't be interested in it at all. And when you've spent an hour or two laboring over that which you really have no control, this is how you feel.

Have a great weekend and go check out Jen!