Gardening Day

We've been puttering off and on outside for a month, at least, but there comes a day when things really kick into gear. (Now there's an inappropriate metaphor!)

Any bona fine gardener who happens upon this blog will discern almost immediately that I'm not much of a gardener. But I would hope to make it clear that I have a profound affection for plants. And also for history. Call it "local history." The wild ginger, spotted trout lily, columbine, and wild geranium predate our arrival in this landscape thirty-five years ago. It's nice to see them return, sometimes year after year, at other times intermittently.

But I have an even greater affection for the plants we've been discovering, enjoying, and moving from place to place, year after year, as the light changes and other plants die off.

Most of the color we enjoy comes to us courtesy of various nurseries and the farmers market on the west side of downtown Minneapolis. Last weekend it was a madhouse. We drove by but didn't stop. Today there was almost no one there, neither vendors nor shoppers (see photo above).We picked up some herbs and some impatiens.

The real fun started later, when I discovered a three-foot  pagoda dogwood nestled within the lower branches of our spruce tree out front.  I dug it up moved it to a barren spot next to the yew hedge.

After a trip to Bachmans, Hilary planted some simple yellow marigolds in the back garden, along with some Victoria blue salvia, while I prepared the tomato beds alongside the driveway.

I was just digging up some mint that had wandered in when I saw my neighbor Sarah coming down the street.

"Hey Sarah," I shouted. "I've got something for you." I put some of the mint in a container. "Take a whiff," I said, handing her a leaf. (Then it occurred to me that phrase probably went out a style when I was in high school. More likely it was never in style.)

She had a few stalks of rhubarb in her hand.

"Lee and Joe make a great rhubarb margarita," she said. "I'm going to give this to my mother so she can make me a great dessert!"

"I bet Lee and Joe would like some of this mint for mojitos," I said. And I bedded some more in another plastic container and went down the street to give it to them. 

I wandered into the back yard, presuming they'd be out in their rhubarb patch. No one in sight. But I was struck by their white wooden tool shed, crooked door open to a shady interior. It wouldn't have been out of place in a painting by Pissarro.

The "garden" here alongside our garage is especially redolent of history. There are a few remnant raspberry bushes that were bearing fruit until recently. Another volunteer pagoda dogwood is doing fairly well nearby, and also a hydrangea that I moved from the back garden last year. Stalks of Solomon's seal are sprouting here and there—I don't know where they came from. And I also see a baby ash tree that I'll cut down when I get around to it.

Once I'd removed the mint I dumped a fifty-pound bag of compost onto the strip of exposed soil and worked it in with a shovel. It was ready for Hilary's newly purchased tomato plants anytime.

 I don't need to tell you about the little snips I took at the top of yew hedge, which is now filled with new growth, bright green. I felt a little like one of those short, balding, mustachioed men you see in England at Stourhead or Blenheim Palace, pruning away at a hedge paper-thin but thirty feet high—but not much.

Stepping around the garage to the back yard, I see a veritable field of Virginia waterleaf. It's widely considered to be a weed, but right now the airy blue-white blossoms looks nice. The plants aren't encroaching on anything important, and the bees seem to like it.

But I've failed, in this brief narrative, to touch on the most important elements of the day: the individual plants, and the harmonious way they naturally arrange themselves. I can spend a lot of time gazing at a clump of leaves, admiring its shape, its beauty, its history, its life and presence. This is Sartre's nausea, but in reverse: elation. Even the glare of the afternoon sun across the pathetic lawn, parts of which I've recently reseeded, highlights individual blades, all of which are shades of rich gorgeous green.

Hilary is meanwhile planting herbs or annuals, or up on a ladder cleaning out the gutters. We roam the yard, reconnecting from time to time, mutually lost in a heavenly spring day with plenty of things to do, but it no particular time or order.