Gardening Lies We Tell Ourselves

Suppose we start at the Lie Of Downsizing our gardens? You know the one where we tell ourselves at the end of each season - or sometime during the winter when our muscles and sore backs have just begun to comfortably atrophy? When painful memories of even minor daily gardening chores in sweltering heat make us want to reach for the ice pack despite the frigid temperatures outside at that moment? The one we share - in all earnestness and honesty - with our other gardening friends who totally concur? The same lie we tell our non-gardening friends or family who quietly roll their eyes in disbelief since they've heard this all before? Yeah, right.

It usually starts in our brain's garden planner by rearranging, redesigning and re-evaluating. What needed too much watering. Too much attention. Never thrived in that spot - or any other for that matter since you've already moved the thing four times over the past four years. (Which could be one of the reasons it never thrived..never having spent enough time in one spot to literally "set down roots".) But I figure that my plants should know by now if they don't show signs of major flourishing by the end of their first season or at least their second, then those wheels get slapped on their bottoms and they're relocated. Of course the most evaluation is of ourselves: Just what and how much can we physically still accomplish? Is it time for us to rely on some wheels to help us around the garden? Do we need more than just a few months of seasonal down-time and more every-other-day-down-time in order to keep on doing what we love?

The actual first "step" in this "Way-More-Than-12-Step-Program" begins with severely limiting initial purchases. Planning on only one visit to each favorite nursery per season. This one for the best perennials. Another for the most well grown annuals and a third for specialty plants that I'll use to make hanging baskets. (One $3.00 Proven Winner can produce a brimmingly beautiful basket by mid season and cost less than any $12-$20 pre-made hanging basket. Plus I love to make up my own baskets.)

But then reality hits. Oh, sure I make those cursory (alleged) one-time visits to the aforementioned nurseries. Only, let's face it, there will be times when I'll have to leave the house and drive the roads for other reasons than going to a nursery! Therein lies the danger of constant temptation and swaying from Step One since no matter where I'm driving, I almost can't avoid passing a nursery, farm, big box store's outdoor plant display or someone selling a few pots of pathetic petunias along side the road. Addiction can have no boundaries and is a hard beastie to beat.

Even the supermarket isn't safe. They, too, now sell luxurious perennials right out front and for really, really good prices, too. I'm hooked even before I enter the door. That's exactly what happened a few weeks ago when I saw a row of gigantic, gray-fern leafed bleeding hearts billowing in the breeze outside ShopRite. There was this especially lush beauty still in bud and not the least leggy or pot bound beckoning my heart with its dangling pink hearts. No second thoughts. No pausing. It was picked up, paid for and positioned carefully in my car so as not to tip over whereupon I returned to the store for a shopping cart and at least managed to get the groceries I'd set out to get.

Last Memorial Weekend, however, I pulled into my driveway after another supermarket challenge to pick up some last minute holiday dinner items. My husband, who was cleaning the mower after just finishing the lawn, got up and walked toward the car to help carry the groceries in the house. As he approached, I shot him the most sheepish stare through the front window and shook my head in dismay. Like an alcoholic up on that podium admitting to their addiction and finally having the courage to ask for help, I hung my head and confessed, "I've got to be stopped. I can't be let out of the house alone anymore." He looked kind of puzzled. But only momentarily until he scanned to the back windows of our station wagon only to see no grocery-filled cloth bags...but rather some tall green or gold leaves, some ferny, some straight, pots of colorful flowers and one or two unidentifiable plants so tall their heads pressed against the roof of the car. He shook his head too, but with an understanding and knowing smile.

"You never made it to the supermarket, right?" He smiled some more. "Well, he said reassuringly, "it IS food for the soul as they say and we can always call for a pizza tonight".

I DO love this man. Plus he rarely rolls his eyes. At least not that I can see. Read more!

The Faeries Keep Calling Me Back To My Garden

**If you want to pause picture, click on double lines "II" at bottom left of slide show**


Maybe they'll be calling you back to the garden soon, too. Maybe not for quite a few months. But there's a garden out there, under the frozen earth and inside the warmth of your heart.

And certainly inside your busy head all full of plans and ideas being egged on by those catalogs stuffing your mailbox day after day. Now's still the time for dreaming and planning. But as eager as you may be, don't wish these present days, weeks and months away. Every day....any day....is precious and won't come back again.

Don't wish too hard for "Tomorrow". It'll be here soon enough and then you'll wish it were "Yesterday" when you missed out on something because you were too busy thinking about "Tomorrow".

As my Mother used to day: "Today is the Tomorrow you wished for Yesterday". I think the fairies would agree. Read more!

A Little Poetry

“SILENT CRIES”
by Linda Frank

Upon myself I take their sorrows.
A heart so burdened by the weight.
My pace grows slowed and labored
With knowledge of their destined fate.

I do not deign to say “I know”
For that is not my right to feel.
But of their lives,
So callous held
By others who’d not think me real,
To be so bothered
And seek from harm
The ones who cannot shout...

Alarm

Mercy's pleas are little heard
Above the deaf and hardened crowd.
Yet in my saddened, stifled heart
Silent cries ring clear and loud.

_______
(End) Read more!

What's It All About?

Whether it's political, social, educational, recreational or avocational, I believe gardening is a combination of all those factors.

Political because politically-influenced policies, regulations and laws will trickle down to effect my environment; what seeds I plant; how clean my air will be; and the safety of my water source...among other things. Social because where more than one gardener gathers, either in person or on the internet, some sort of personal interaction ensues.

It's educational because any gardener worth their weight in compost can tell you - or they should tell you - that they never stop learning. Hence, my life-long-held philosophy that there is no such thing as "an expert gardener". That often-times, self-appointed title presumes a particular gardener knows all there is to know about gardening with little or no wiggle room for any further information to penetrate their already overwhelmingly-overloaded and permanently-closed-for-repairs font of gardening knowledge. Phooey!

Recreational because, gosh darn it, it's fun. It only ceases to be fun when it's laced with pain. Even then, as long as the pain isn't too persistent and can, at least, be managed, there's still a modicum of fun involved sometimes in just the simple gardening act of pruning. Of course, who amongst us hasn't spent less time pruning and more time just standing and staring at the sky, the birds, dashing antics of chipmunks, tall stalks bending in the breeze or just felt the all-encompassing calm enfold us in warm layers from an errant sun peaking between drifting clouds in that sky which so mesmerizes us? All this "fun", despite increasing aches & pains and knees that refuse to bend as much or hips that snap, crackle and pop like that old bowl of Rice Krispies this old fart remembers from my 1950's breakfast table, or the reality that we just can't keep doing what we've been doing the way we've been doing it or to the extent to which we've been doing it....it's still the best form of recreation even for us creaky, old fart gardeners.

Finally, it's an avocation because, I've chosen to devote as much time to it as one would devote to an honest-to-goodness-money-earning job. I don't get paid for it, but I do it anyway. These days, however, I find myself 'avocating' less and less in the garden. Not out of choice, but necessity. Yet what I do do still provides a requisite necessity of diversion; a physical and metaphysical diversion which works better than any bullet on which I can bite to 'ease the pain' of what ails me at the moment be it physiological or psychological.

Consequently, if it's pain I'm trying to escape, then the last thing I want to invite into my circle of diversion is any talk or thoughts of any form of pain- either my own pain or any pain of the animals who share my garden of solace.

My garden has become more and more a safe haven for me and all creatures who've deigned to share it with me, and I might add, who have allowed me to share it with them! Many are creatures who others would dispatch and snuff with nary a care, concern or whit, if it meant protecting a petunia, a tomato plant or even an expensive, long-standing shrub of some kind or just for the shear, unfathomable ego of mounting a dead animal over a mantelpiece.

I need my garden- and all living things in it - to help 'ease my pain'. My contribution and thanks to them for that gift is that I will try to do whatever is in my power to ease theirs. I speak, as always, from a gardener's - not a farmer's - perspective. My garden is my avocation...not a vocation. So my ability to sacrifice that petunia, tomato plant or expensive shrub (on which I probably shouldn't have spent so much money to begin with) is not tied to my living wage or sustenance.

I am an organic gardener endeavoring to remain true to the tenet of "doing the least harm". I'm merely given the privilege of sharing my piece of earth with those who, in reality, have more of a right to exist there than I do and who did so long before my arrival. I figure if they can endure my frailties, faults, mistakes, errors, and downright stupidity, then the least I can do is offer them the same gift, leniency and forgiveness in return.

My circle of acquaintances and topics of gardening conversations has grown tighter these day and totally removed from those who relish and regale the number and methodologies of murder and pain inflicted upon the (perhaps) distant cousins of my extended animal families who reside in or around my place of solace. From the smallest chipmunk to the beautiful, gentle deer families with their babies in tow who grace my back yard...all are welcome in my garden. They have nothing to fear from this gardener and I have everything in a spiritual sense to gain from them.


Time and life is shorter than we think. Too short to waste. Too short not to recognize how sacred all Life is. Pain is too frequent in the world. At the hand of God and nature, it is beyond my control, whether in my garden or out. Yet I can still mourn. At the hand of Man, however, I can not only mourn, but my conscience cannot condone it by silence, and it's my choice to disassociate myself with the multitudes who casually dismiss the pain, suffering and death of God's creatures' as inconsequential.



I am an idealist, some may say. Some will also say I'm naive. (A concept so removed from my personality, it's more than just a little ludicrous to even contemplate.) Some will say I've grown reclusive. But then, if they really knew me, they'd know this already. Some may have confrontational comments about this entry. I don't know whether I should be flattered or annoyed for all "they" might have to say. But then, I'd have to give care in the first place, now wouldn't I? And guess what? Read more!

HAIL TO OUR NEW CHIEF!!!

GOD BLESS AMERICA! GOD BLESS OUR NEW PRESIDENT! GOD BLESS THE PEOPLE WHO MADE IT POSSIBLE!

I'm proud to have been one of those people and proud and blessed that this has happened in my lifetime.

Cowardice asks the question: "Is it safe"?
Expediency asks the question:"Is it politic"?
Vanity asks the question:"Is it popular?"
But conscience asks the question:"Is it right?"
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one what is right. M.L. King

AND WE HAVE FINALLY DONE WHAT IS RIGHT.


No more words to say despite the following: Read more!