Our doorbell rang last week for the first time since early
March. Peering out through a window, we
saw an anxious-looking, casually attired middle-aged woman with face mask in
place. Curious, we opened the door.
“I’ve been biking past your garden for months,” the woman
said. “I finally worked up the courage
to ask if we could see it.” She motioned
behind her to a similar-aged man standing next to a car parked out on the
street.
 |
This is how our garden appeared
from the street in July 2020 |
Betty and I looked at one another.
“Sure,” I said.
A few minutes later, we were all standing, masked
and socially distanced, on our sidewalk.
The woman explained she and her husband had grown tired of
their grass lawn and wanted to make an ecological statement. Our garden was the closest thing they had seen
to what they envisioned. Flattery, I
guess, will get you everywhere. For the
next hour, we walked the couple through our property and explained how, over
five years, we created our native garden from what had been a thicket of pines
and nasty, invasive plants and shrubs.
 |
One of our stands of Monarda - in July
|
The woman was enchanted by what she saw; her husband, somewhat
less so.
He kept asking about wildflower
blends that could be purchased, sown, and cause their lawn to turn into a
colorful meadow.
Betty carefully explained
that ‘gardens in a can’ don’t take into account the reality of differing rates
of growth or the aggressiveness of certain plants.
“You really have to start with lots of pots,”
she said; almost but not quite apologetically.
 |
The same Monarda in late August
after six weeks of drought and heat |
While Betty pointed out and enumerated specific trees, shrubs
and perennials – the names of which were entered into the woman’s phone; I was
making a different list.
Mine was of
tasks we had let slide during the debilitating, six-week-long heat wave that
seemed a fitting accompaniment to our Covid-19 year.
Our guests thought the garden looked
wonderful.
All I could see was the
neglect.
Spent perennials had not been
trimmed back and weeds were everywhere.
Paths were barely passable because of overgrown plants, and summer-blooming
perennials were obscured by rangy shrubs.
I know Betty was seeing the same to-do list because, as soon
as our guests left, she pointed out everything I had noticed, plus a few more
problem areas.
 |
One of our foundation plantings. To us
it looked terrible (oxalis highlighted). |
Which, I guess, is the key difference between those who are
visiting gardens and those who maintain them.
It’s a forest-and-trees thing: the visitor sees a pleasing green fuzzy
ground cover with cute, tiny yellow flowers.
The gardener sees opportunistic and unwanted
oxalis encroaching
into every open space.
A dozen arching
but clearly spent
liatris can be viewed as a graceful, visual
destination point; or they can be recognized as the husks of once-attractive perennials
waiting to dump tens of thousands of seeds that will mean pulling out the same
number of seedlings from every corner of the garden next spring.
 |
The same area, after an hour's
work this morning |
With the arrival of cooler temperatures, we’ve spent the first
two-plus hours after dawn each morning bringing the garden back into some
semblance of order.
As I fill buckets
with the detritus of that cleaning, though, I’m also trying to keep in mind the
genuine sense of appreciation those visitors had for what we’ve accomplished.
All too frequently, we dwell on the warts:
all the things we’ve
not done (and whether it’s a good trait or a
personality flaw is a subject for another discussion).
 |
The spent liatris: a 'visual destin-
ation point' or a disaster
unless cut down immediately?
|
I strongly believe we need to leaven that
ingrained dissatisfaction with a dollop of reality: real gardening is
hard.
Whether it’s a small vegetable garden in the
back yard or a manicured estate, creating something takes time and patience,
and maintaining it requires a commitment measured in seasons rather than hours.
My back ached after pulling multiple buckets of weeds this
morning, and the well-earned shower afterwards felt wonderful. The best feeling of all, though, was looking past
the newly cleaned areas to admire the half of the garden that still requires
attention, and thinking to myself with a grin, ‘I had a hand in making all of that
happen.’
