March 2008
To northern gardeners, this time of year [March] is full of anxious pleasure. Even as they daydream about the botanical pleasures of June and July, ordinary mortals find themselves nearly defeated by the gardening deadlines that pass so swiftly in March. Extraordinary mortals--whose seeds arrived two months ago, whose windows are now full of seedlings, and who are ready to sow peas and carrots the instant the soil thaws--will suffer torments of their own when the perfections they're planning somehow fail to germinate or blossom. A garden is just a way of mapping the strengths and limitations of your personality onto the soil. It would be too much to bear if nature didn't temper a gardener's ambition or laziness with her own unsolicited abundance.
Seeing a plant that you have known only in catalogues is like recognizing a celebrity in a crowd.
Getting rid of poor plants is as important as seeking out the best.
We're all experts in the garden, right up until the moment that we're not. . . .Every single time you try a new crop or new variety or new plot, you risk failure. Even with the tried and true, a year of strange weather can make decades of experience meaningless.
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.
That is the beauty of reading seed catalogues while the next snowstorm approaches. We seed in an imaginary spring, weed in an imaginary summer, harvest in an imaginary fall.
Marcescence is the retention of dead plant organs that normally are shed. It is most obvious in deciduous trees that retain leaves through the winter. Several trees normally have marcescent leaves such as oak (Quercus), beech (Fagus) and hornbeam (Carpinus).
There is very little in gardening that benefits from being done quickly, and weeding teaches the virtues of pace as well as any activity.
In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
Some might say a calendar is a simple construct that allows us to divide and conquer. But I prefer to think of each little numbered square as the reminder to bite off only what I can chew and savor.
Marcescence is the retention of dead plant organs that normally are shed. It is most obvious in deciduous trees that retain leaves through the winter. Several trees normally have marcescent leaves such as oak (Quercus), beech (Fagus) and hornbeam (Carpinus).
But gardeners do not dwell too long on catastrophe. Failure is an accepted part of daily life and we value our successes the more.
There are two difficulties with ground covers: first to get them to grow, and then to get them not to.
