Good writing stands out in the company of indifferent prose. The Improper Bostonian editor, Andrew Rimas, wrote a piece that summarized travel. I still laugh out loud when I reread it:
"Even a salmon knows that travel is what makes life worth living. But it's easy to be cynical. The last time I went abroad, I spent a fortune on cab fare, got lost in a post-industrial wasteland, bickered with a half-dozen functionaries who didn't speak English and contracted gastroenteritis. Then I finally left Logan Airport."
Most people know they have a book in them. How to get it out is problematic. There is no such thing as natural childbirth for a developing masterpiece. Henry Mitchell extracted his book piece by piece. He wrote a weekly column for the Washington Post back in the '80s and '90s. (He died in 1993.) One Man's Garden is a collection of his later writings.
You probably have to enjoy mucking around in the garden to enjoy the book. His is the first garden writing that didn't make me feel like a gardening slacker. He is funny, matter-of-fact, deadly accurate, and honest in describing this outdoor sport. None of our horticultural habits (or lack thereof) are left unexplored.
His version of stop and smell the roses is perfect:
"Sometimes people complain that such-and-such a flower fades quickly, and people new to the natural world (having been weaned on aluminum) are almost always startled to learn that peonies, irises, and lilies, for example, bloom only once a year.....Irises are somewhat more generous [than peonies] in their way, though the individual flowers last only two days...The third day, if it's cloudy and cool, the flower still sits there looking a bit tubercular, no great ornament that I can see. Which is why you pick the fading (a euphemism for dead iris flowers, which writhe themselves into a soggy mess) blooms off, lest they ruin the effect of the flowers ready to open.
Then they are gone. It does not do at all to say, 'Well, we'll look at them next week', because next week is always too late. When peonies or irises or lilies bloom, you stop and look at them. The dentist will be there next week, the office will be there next week, and if people can take time off for funerals, babies, plague, and conventions, they can take off enough time to get properly saturated with the iris or the rose...
It is curious to me that so many gardeners occupy their leisure making things neat and tidy. It is one thing to trot past a fine bush...laden with attar-scented blooms, and another thing to settle down and gaze at it for an hour. What is the point of growing a rose in the first place if you just admire it in passing?
The idea is to grow at least a handful of the great flowers and then drop what has to be dropped when they bloom."
I've not done enough recently to create blog fodder. This is a weak whine, indeed. But my daffodils are not the first daffodils in blogland. They are also not the best, and therefore, not worthy of posting for that reason. I cannot, in good blog conscience, trumpet pictures of crocus foliage in these pages. One must always move up and on. The garden is not currently cooperating.
I've been holding off on buying new plants. I can't tell quite yet what the voles have devoured over the winter. My gardening past is full of barely restrained spring fever experienced in local garden centers as optimistic purchases. New perennials are more easily sited than new shrubs. I often misremember the size of a spot that needs filling. When I get home with the proud new plant, I'm embarrassed to find that it won't fit the spot.
It can also get parked in the holding area on the driveway (plant purgatory) because I need to prepare a planting hole for the new arrival. I trot out with shovel, compost, watering can, and plant in little pot, only to find that the spot's prior occupant really ISN'T dead, and is showing full new growth. Oh dear. The new plant goes back to plant purgatory.
At different times in the spring, I wander the garden looking for a place to plant the new arrival. I fix the size of the pot firmly in mind. I picture the mature size of the plant. I start the circuit of possible locations, walking across the lawn to the garden bed in back of the house.
The first distraction might be a weed. (Or, honestly? Weeds.) A vole hole is equally likely to wrest my attention from the task at hand. Occasionally, per Mr. Mitchell, a flower newly in bloom could be the thing that completely wipes planning from my mind. The new plant sits on the driveway for another week.
Or, honestly? All summer. One does not intend for this to happen. It just does. I water it every day, but there are some hot days that dry out the entire pot while I'm at work. The plant gamely limps through a stressful summer. By fall, just before it is far too late to plant anything in good conscience, I plant it somewhere. Anywhere. I plan to move it to its REAL spot in the spring. But because it has had root stress intermittently throughout the summer, and I've planted it far too late for it to recover from abuse, I wake up the garden in the spring to find that the plant has breathed its last at some point in the winter cold.
I suspect I am not the only one. I may simply be the first one to parade this horticultural crime in public.
I finished a sekrit knitting project for an expectant mom. She may occasionally read my blog, so I must keep the FO on the DL for now. So there are no knitting pictures.
I like winter because there are no bugs. I may have been wrong about this. I'll end with a bug picture that documents the stunning size attained by these creatures in Utah. It takes them all winter to grow this big. I have no idea how Utahns cope with them in the summer when they reproduce.
