Me and My Binghamton Garden

This house is a hundred years old. It’s hard for me to fathom, as I walk up and down and back and forth, sweeping up dust and stooping to pick up socks off the floor, that for a whole century this house has been perched here on this hill, looking out of the windows of its soul over the sweep of the horizon, squat, friendly, unassuming. A hundred years of Binghamton going and coming and the house sits and watches it all.

Now that it is finally June we are beginning to see what’s in the garden, finally able to see and judge the decisions and aspirations of the various generations before. The first wave, in early spring, of course, was Forsythia and Daffodils and Tulips. Then three great bushes of purple Lilacs. Color, in other words, and scent. But then, as the Lilacs faded, came Lily of the Valley and many other old fashioned delicate white flowers. I didn’t know what any of them were and there were many different kinds.

For many weeks it was only white. ‘This needs some color,’ I thought, and so I bought something yellow, and two small red rose bushes, and plunked them in the ground.

Then the White Bells faded and the Rhododendrons finally bloomed…white. And then the Peony…white. And then the Rose that I whacked back so many weeks ago, praying that it would revive and come back…white.

‘We have to move those things we planted,’ said Matt this week. ‘This garden is only made of white flowers. We can’t just plant whatever color we want. We have to move all this stuff to the front.’

So I am in search of more white flowers. And I don’t know the names of anything or what would be nice. But so help me, those hostas have got to go. I don’t care how beloved they were by past gardeners. In this new millennia, as we face new and foolish wars and earthquakes and rumors of wars, I’ll keep to white, but I won’t keep the hostas.