October 2006
Time for the weather report. It's cold out folks. Bonecrushing cold. The kind of cold which will wrench the spirit out of a young man, or forge it into steel.
Fortunately, by the thirtieth or fortieth or fiftieth year or thereabouts, the gardener strikes that balance by which he has the best of all seasons. By the time one is eighty, it is said, there is no longer a tug of war in the garden with the May flowers hauling like mad against the claims of the other months. All is at last in balance and all is serene. The gardener is usually dead, of course.
I cannot live without a rose, especially a climbing or rambling rose, for just one truss tumbling in the right spot can be like that last long feather on a hat, a nonchalant sweep that lifts a perfectly acceptable design to another level, a throwaway gesture that means nothing and everything.
If the garden was a secret and we could get into it we could watch the things grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are alive. Don't you see? Oh, don't you see how much nicer it would be if it was a secret?
They should look pretty together, if only my scheme comes off. Alas, how seldom do these little schemes come off. Something will go wrong; some puppy will bury a bone; some mouse will eat the bulbs; some mole will heave the daphnes and the lilac out of the ground. Still, no gardener would be a gardener if he did not live in hope.
The two most mysterious aspects of clematis are, How is the word pronounced? and, What is its plural form? Once these questions are answered, growing the plants is plain sailing.
The Alexanders of this world who find nations easily conquered should come up against the California annual wild flower seed. It gives you pause: who's the boss? If you need to be boss, stick to nasturtiums and marigolds.
A garden raised from seed is a garden raised in the heart, the gardener growing along with the garden.
Nowhere but at home are the flowers the most colorful and the scents the sweetest.
Despite these losses and setbacks, like King Sisyphus, gardeners forever keep rolling that rock up the hill, convinced we are progressing toward the day it will stay in place up there and not roll back on us, the day our gardens will be just as we want them.
Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence.
Time for the weather report. It's cold out folks. Bonecrushing cold. The kind of cold which will wrench the spirit out of a young man, or forge it into steel.
I think you need to be possessed to farm, you have to have a calling.
