Cold Climate Gardening

Today is the first day of autumn if you garden in a cold climate in the Northern Hemisphere, that is. Just as spring comes much later than the supposed first day of spring (the vernal equinox), so the first day of autumn comes much earlier than the first day of autumn (the autumnal equinox). You have to go by what the weather and the plants tell you, not by what the calendar says.

It took me years to figure this out. All that good garden advice about planting perennials, shrubs, and …

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It’s funny. What Rundy saw as futility, I see as preventing futility. There’s an old garden maxim, “One year’s seeding yields seven years’ weeding.” Well, the worst “weed” in this particular bed was one of the original flowers I planted here myself: Malva alcea ‘Fastigiata’, also known as hollyhock mallow. Wonderful pink flowers, and lots of them–and every blossom produces copious amounts of seed, all of which germinates, sooner or later. You might at first glance mistake the foliage pictured at left as a clump of coral bells. But these are mallow seedlings carpeting every available inch of soil. I was removing them from a good six feet of flower bed. In some places I could use a tool to cut them off just below the soil surface, but when they were growing close to the garden plants, I had to pull them out one by one. Where the ground had been recently cultivated I could grab them out by the handful with a sideways motion, but in areas that hadn’t been dug up and replanted in years I had to grip each tenacious seedling by its taproot and pull. It was an exercise in futility only if you forget that most of those seedlings would grow up, flower, and create an even worse problem if I didn’t pull them now.

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We all have our preferences in futility. I have at various times made different forms of this observation, but today it struck me again as I watched my Mom weed her flower garden. I wouldn’t do that, I thought. It wasn’t because I thought weeding was too hard–weeding is easy. It wasn’t because I hate weeding–weeding is okay, and I actually enjoy the appearance of a weeded garden.

The futility of weeding is what gets to me. You spend a lot of time weeding a garden and a week later you need to do it all over again. And again. And again. It’s like running in place and never getting anywhere, or building castles in the sand only to have the …

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Early summer is the time when I pass from the state of “getting behind” into the state of “being behind.” It is a time when there are a lot of beautiful things I might take joy in, but instead find myself wallowing in guilt or despair over unaccomplished goals. Nobody knows how to ruin a good summer like one’s own self.

My great point of irritation is my unplanted corn. It should have been planted two weeks ago, but one event led to another and it still isn’t planted now. My laziness, or incompetent time management, is to blame somewhere. This case symbolizes all of my self-criticism where sources of grumbling and complaining are ever before me. It is easy to let this kind of attitude grow and consume oneself. Summer becomes one long litany of “I didn’t get this done, and I didn’t get that done,” all misery and complaining until it comes that one looks back on summer with deep dissatisfaction instead of happiness. Summer becomes one long whine of “I didn’t get that done” and all enjoyment is lost.

This calls for a right perspective, something I have difficulty with. I have a schedule, and I want life to follow my schedule, and my nose gets bent out of shape when it doesn’t. I didn’t get my corn planted when I want to. I think I’ll throw a snit.

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Sometimes, it’s better not to think about certain things. Sometimes it’s better to pretend you didn’t see, to not think about it. Sometimes one might wonder how there can be such moral quandaries about mowing a field.

We have a back field of about five acres that runs up the hill to the edge of the woods. I try to mow the field with the DR Brush Mower every year to keep the field from going back to scrub. Normally I mow in the fall when other work around the house is at a minimum, but last year I was working on a house renovation project in the fall. Rather than let all the nasty scrub in the field get another free year to grow I decided I should mow the field this spring.

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The next time I doubt the depth of my gardening devotion, remind me that one of the very best Mother’s Days I ever had was spending the entire afternoon pulling garlic mustard out of the Secret Garden with my younger sons. In case you aren’t familiar with it, garlic mustard is a very invasive plant that crowds out a lot of native spring ephemerals. I don’t believe it grew on the property when we moved here over 16 years ago, and then suddenly it was everywhere. Knowing the seeds persist in the soil for at least 5 years, I looked at the growing patches with increasing dismay. I finally came to my senses and realized that if I had help, it could probably all be pulled in a day–this year. Next year it would only be worse, so now was the time to start.

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We are on the cusp. We balance for this one moment–these few short days–at the place of middle spring.

The grass has greened, but the trees have not yet burst into full leaf. It is fascinating to look at the hillside and see how different varieties progress. In some places bare wooden branches stick up, rimmed with the red of buds. I think these are red maples, so called because of their red buds at spring. Other trees on the hillside provide a sprinkle of pale green, not yet leafed out, but prepared and ready, almost there. The poplars seem especially eager to leaf out, as well as some other varieties of maples. The ragged emptiness of winter branches is almost gone and the vigor of new spring life sits just on edge, ready to burst forth. It is life barely contained.

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