Not Giving Up on Gardening

Gardening:   

Succeeding Means Not Giving Up

(c) Copyright (2016) by Kathleen Spaltro

All Rights Reserved

Mother Nature has implanted within us the desire to garden in order to remind us that Mother Nature is really in charge.  Successful gardening amounts to leafing through yet another seed catalogue after a disastrous harvest, to persevering despite one's powerlessness against the natural world—in Samuel Johnson's immortal phrase, to enacting "the triumph of hope over experience."

Gardening unearths the paradoxes of life, among them the truth that we are most in control when we accept what we cannot control. Looking at some improbably successful plants in my garden, I remember other, vanquished ones. (Seed catalogs in early spring inspire unwarranted optimism!) Life is just like a garden: plant with hope, some of what you plant takes root, but much does not, and other, surprising successes take over. Accepting what you actually get, rather than insisting on what you planned, is key to joy, in the garden or in life.

Here are some excerpts from my past gardening logs.

Spring

The only flowers up so far in our garden are snowdrops, which I was very pleased to see today, but we do have many other "little bulbs" like scilla, grape hyacinths, and crocuses, as well as wild tulips. Lovely crocuses and snowdrops blooming in our garden always endear themselves to me because I didn't plant them. They are remnants of some previous owner's garden.

Crocuses, hellebores, miniature irises, a last snowdrop or two, scilla, Grecian windflowers or anemones--all were blooming during a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon as we did an hour of garden cleanup. I stared at the flowers to affix their memory because we are returning to cold rain for the upcoming days.

It seems time to voice my annual unspoken wonderment about violets. Why do people mistreat these lovely posies by considering them weeds? I have an area full of blue violets right now and couldn't feel happier about their exuberance. Bloom on, unjustly despised wildflower!

I creaked my way through the weekend after some strenuous garden work digging 24 holes to plant mazus reptans alba as a groundcover asked to invade bare patches on the right of way denuded when the City cut down two ash trees. (Later note:  The mazus reptans disappeared and never bloomed.)  I also pruned out deadwood in the rose garden. My roses being old or antique roses, they bloom only on old wood, but some of the old wood had not leafed out and needed the guillotine. Their executioner also was punished by mosquitoes.

I began to forget a grumpy week by walking in our garden on this beautiful sunny Saturday morning. I was so happy seeing the vegetation that, when a rose prickle sliced into my thumb, it didn't break my good mood. Spring finally is here to stay, it seems. I went outside into the cold, brilliantly sunny morning and wandered to see what the garden needs. I pried out some dandelions with the dandelion fork, pruned some weed trees, admired the flowers. Primroses are blooming like mad, and I have a cherished stand of white guinea hen flowers. We might go buy some seeds or plants later. I have two concrete planters and two three-tiered metal planters. Besides the flower seeds I already have—calendula and four-o'clocks—I'd like to find some nasturtium seeds and petunia plants, maybe a New Guinea impatiens. John needs to pick up some basil plants.

 

Summer

Large stands of Joe Pye weed vie for pride of place with ox-eyed daisy, spiderwort, and my favorite, ironweed. I particularly like ironweed for its purple flowers. Joe Pye weed takes its name from a Native American who used the herb as a medicinal plant. Bees and butterflies flock for treatment.

A cool Sunday--it was a little too cool to hang out on the back porch, but I did weed for a while, pulling 10 gallons worth of a strange clinging, sticky weed, with whorls of skinny leaves interspaced up and down the stem. After I did some research on the Internet, I discovered that my weed is bedstraw. 

I cleaned up a wet, muddy garden for an hour and felt gloriously happy! Large stands of the herbs Joe Pye weed and valerian are flowering; my old-rose bushes are in bud. I must have certain plants: sweet woodruff, borage, southernwood, goatsbeard. All are flourishing except the borage; no signs of it yet.

Autumn

I am enjoying a late-season bloom of flowers. Calendula and four-o'clocks are still going strong, and I am really impressed with the steady performance of New Guinea impatiens. The weirdly beautiful toad lily is just beginning to open up

I noticed some naked ladies in the yard today. No, not the human kind. These are lily-like purple flowers. They got the name because their foliage appears in the spring, and then it disappears, but in late summer, leafless stalks suddenly emerge, bearing purple flowers. These are the Lady Godivas of my garden.

Goldenrod is blooming in our garden this morning, and, to my surprise, another naked lady (amaryllis belladonna) exposed herself in an unexpected area of the yard, and two sweet-pea flowers suddenly appeared! This is especially mystifying because sweet peas supposedly hate hot weather!

Lady's mantle grows next to a mossy rock in our garden, as well in another, self-sown place. Now that I think of it, even the mossy rock plant sowed itself. I had planted the lady's mantle somewhere else in a location of which it apparently did not approve. We can't control even our herbs.

Elizabeth Lawrence's Gardening for Love consists of Lawrence's comments about her many years of correspondence with country women who advertised plants and seeds for sale or exchange in state market bulletins. Well-versed in botanical nomenclature, Lawrence was always trying to figure out the scientific name for the plant or seed in question. But the common names have great charm, as does her book.

Cur moriatur homo cui Salvia crescit in horto?: "Why should a man die whilst sage grows in his garden?"

First appeared in The Woodstock Independent