Tirza ~ May 26

 

Gardening

 

That’s what I should be doing this morning, gardening.  Some plants in tiny nursery pots will die and I’ll feel guilty about it.  This gets me thinking about gardening to serve as my prompt.  I must write before I can save plant lives. Or to be honest, it serves to delay the gardening.

Some, like B., have a greener thumb than I.  Last evening, we sat on the deck after a very tiring day at his booth amidst hordes of people slurping Italian ices in awful colors at Mayfest.  As soon as we sat down with a glass of lemon water, he noticed that the salvia needed water.  I looked at the salvia with its bright scarlet trumpet shaped flowers that hummingbirds love so much, and I said, but I watered it last night.  Not enough, he said. This one needs a pitcherful of water right away.

He's a plant whisperer all right.  I notice parched soil or droopy leaves, but not much else.  I like his way of gardening – he gives his plants plenty of good soil, and a good place to grow.  I love to watch him water, showering them with love as much as water.  But then, he leaves them to it. They’ve got to duke it out with their neighbors, or get chummy with them.  By midsummer his garden beds look like jungles.  His deck filled with pots is a jungle with pots. Profusion, confusion. It’s all beautiful to him. And I love that.

Other gardeners, like my neighbor Lynn, are in the Martha Stewart faction.  Delight the passerby when you don’t fill them with envy and shame.  Every flower bed is arranged as a composition, by height and breadth and color.  There is a control of nature that is absolute, for the gardener’s eye, yet achieves an appearance of free abandon within the garden walls. Every year, wonderful plants may be rooted out to be transplanted to an even more idyllic spot, to be replaced with a newer favorite.  
I’m thinking of taking out the lilac bush, she told me the other day when she came over to provide me with much needed advice.  WHAT? I murmured screaming inside, why would you do that?  Well, it bothers me that it breaks the symmetry, she said 

And about the design of my garden? I’m not good at garden design, she replied.

But your garden is always such a delight to behold as I top the hill!

Yes, people tell me that, she said. 

I guess it’s all relative. 

And my gardening style? Well style may be going a little too far.  More like an approach. 

Do as little hard work as possible.  

Kill as few plants as possible, even for someone with a history as a serial plant killer.  

And try – in a break with most gardeners - not to be garden fascist.  If the milkweed tries to take over the vegetable patch, encouraged in the beginning when you heard they were essential to the monarch butterfly, only pull out the little ones and pretend it's still an herb garden. If the mint wants to upend the flagstones and take over the path to the gate, accept it as a tradeoff for making the most thirst quenching cold drink all summer long.

Weed only when having a glass of wine in one hand and unexpectedly outside to better view the sunset.  Otherwise, it might occasion an internal philosophical debate about why we prefer certain plants over others -- and how much of that is the result of preferences of the gardening fashionistas and their ilk.

As you might guess, I may have the best of intentions, but calling my backyard a garden is aspirational.