I've been thinking about trees.
For a while now there have been talk about a tree in the front yard, and in that same period my mind has been circling around the idea of a magnolia, a small magnolia, if there is such a thing as a small magnolia. But as I look at the space, and look at various magnolias in my neighborhood on my walks, I realize that what I have really been dreaming about is a mythical magnolia, one that is all blossom and seed pod, and pretty leathery magnolia leaves, but which really isn't about the tree itself, its own needs and the demands it makes on the landscape.
How often do we do this? Make decisions based on illusory dreams or on an illusory understanding of the world itself based on assumptions and circumstances we simply take for granted? I do this all the time. I suspect I am not alone. It is too easy to move forward with the dream, without thinking about the consequences only to set oneself up for disappointment later.
During this time since the driveway has been poured I have been thinking about the garden. It seems I spend lots of time thinking about very small things. I hope this will play well with the final result, but it may not, and I accept that the plans and the dreams are just as important to the well-being of the gardener as the garden itself. But as I walked and thought and looked at my garden and the rough plans for what this garden may eventually be, a few points have become evident.
The first problem I noticed and the biggest one is that there is too much sun. Yes I want a small vegetable patch. Yes, I want some roses and peonies and herbs and sunny flowers, but the sun and I are not friends, or more exactly we are friends at a distance. I love the sun as long as I don't have to be in it for very long. The sun does not love my pale northern-European ancestry as reflected in my pale skin that burns and gets rashes from sun exposure. I need more trees to protect myself. I also need more trees because my dream garden is filled with hydrangeas and azaleas, hellebores, Daphnes, and ferns. I love cool colors and shade loving plants. I have more than enough sun for a brief flirtation with roses and irises, dalylillies and peonies.
I need shade and so we added trees. It was only as I started thinking about those trees, that I realized that perhaps my dream of a magnolia is really an impossible dream. I want the flower and not the tree. Most of the magnolias in my neighborhood actually look at little junky at their bases, have nothing growing beneath them. The larger ones look like a great place for imaginary jungle exploration, magical worlds to tempt childhood imagination, but they don't fit in my dream garden. Thiss tree is supposed to be in my front courtyard and I do not like trees surrounded with a circle of mulch. My dream garden leans more toward cottage-garden informality than toward manicured landscapes. I love a tree surrounded by irises or hosts and ferns, a tree blending into the landscape, not a specimen. Perhaps a magnolia is not for me, not at this time, not in this place.
Luckily there are many other choices and my head is dancing with the possibilities. Just wait and see.
