The garden, microcosm of the world that it is, continues to offer lessons in joy, in patience, in fortitude, in failure, in folly, and in grace. The other morning, after I mowed my rather small patch of lawn, I picked a handful of blueberries and sat on the steps admiring my handiwork with self-satisfied contentment.
But of course all is not as it seems. There are far more planting beds, intentionally so, that patches of lawn, and most of those areas remain filled with weeds, some of those extensive weedy patches in the front yard, the more public space of the house. It struck me that my neighbors may not be as contented with my manicured lawn but overgrown weedy beds as am I. Oddly enough I find myself unconcerned, marveling far more at this general state of acceptance of my own limitations, than at any concern over other people’s opinions. It has not always been so.
Despite initial intentions the planned order of work, from public to private, from street to back, exactly the opposite has occurred. In this rocky time in the world my imperative has instead been to create sanctuary. This too is a part of a long process, but I have created a space where I love to sit, where nothing is finished but everything is filled with potential, where I can sit and watch the birds, the bunnies, occasionally if I am very lucky a fox, or perhaps merely a cat or my grand-puppy hiding in the long grass.
Above is the planting bed at the base of the deck, to the left in the photo above it. It took me a good while to dig that up and plant it, but the plants have been in a couple of weeks now, and look like they are establishing themselves. There are a few stakes where designated plants were not available. Now that the ground is ready, these have been ordered for fall planting.
Furnishings remain unsettled and in flux. A dining table has been ordered but has not arrived. In the meantime I am not really holding dinner parties, and chairs remain scattered about for social-distancing. Eventually, I would like these beds to be mostly perennials, mostly for my own ease, but it is good to stick some annuals in here and there, as spaces evolve, grow, change.
Across the walkway is the bed designated #2. I have dug up and planted about half that bed, as seen here in a photo actually taken through the kitchen window. You see the undug, unplanted portion of that bed in the second photo from the top, on the right. Plants have been ordered for the rest of this bed, which means more digging is required to prep the soil for their arrival, but I am mostly done with planting until October. There is time and as my strength has grown so has my confidence that this bed will be ready when the time comes.
Also from the deck, I am looking across the driveway to the vegetable garden, which is thriving. There is a small planting of euphorbia nowthowlee at the end of bed 3, where the walk meets the driveway. I misjudged that planting. I have seven plants, 14 more are on their way which will fill that small quarter circle at the end of that bed, next to the path. I would like a similar patch on the other side of that walk, but due to availability that cannot happen this year. The delay gives me time to plan, even as I can acknowledge that plans are tenuous, at best.
The vegetable garden, though thriving, is a continuing lesson in munificence, in failure, and in hidden joys. The spring crops are almost done, the summer crops just beginning. There are lots of tomatoes. The eggplant have begun to set fruit.
I can probably still put some summer crops in as the first frost really won’t be until October. Even if they don’t fully yield, this was always an experimental year, and my attentions have been scattered between various projects. The point is to take joy in what works, and simply accept the rest. The peppers are heavily laden. I harvested my first shishito peppers yesterday and blistered them to serve alongside my eggs for breakfast. In retrospect I should have planted more peppers. My adventures with sauerkraut have me dreaming of condiment-making and chile-fermentation. Next year.
I suppose now we should walk around toward the front.
This small bed at the base of the circle is doing well: geranium max frei, and Siberian iris. A few of the iris died before the sprinkler system got connected, and there was a long period where I wondered if any would survive. That bed was rocky and the clay more packed than I would have hoped, I had trouble digging it up last fall when I planted it, but I am stronger now. It seems worth the possibility of redigging and replanting it when the bulbs come in during the fall. But that decision does not need to be made now.
The Japanese maple and the small bed around it that were not destroyed are doing well, although there a few plants that need moving, and as you see, an area to be dug and planted.
Much of the front remains a place in waiting. These shrubs are doing well, although the blueberries (center of the photo) were spaced far too widely and need to be dug and repositioned. Given the amount of rock and difficulty I had digging and filling in a gap in the boxwood border, this may be a rather time-consuming task. I had been waiting until the blueberries finished fruiting, the season began in early June and the late blueberries are just ripening now, but am now thinking I should just wait until fall, until shrubs are dormant and the weather is kinder to both plant and gardener. In this case I should just weed and mulch to make the bed look neater and forget about it. Laziness prevented me from doing this earlier; I was loath to put energy into mulching a bed I was about to dig up. Surprisingly enough, mulching is harder on my back than actual digging.
Across the driveway you see little lime hydrangeas starting to come into bloom. They too are in the wrong place, and will have to be moved, another tedious fall task, after which I can finally start designing the front beds and hopefully finish planting them in 2021.
I hope the hardscaping implies the intentionality of it all. But I am not really bothered by the mix of manicured lawn and unruly weeds. The speck of orange flowers in the photo above is a daylily, the one seen at the top of this post. It is in temporary housing in a pot, and will be planted just outside the fence, near the post, once it has finished blooming. No point in moving it now, I will just lose the remaining blooms.
I don’t expect to see further visible progress in the garden this year. I will continue to dig beds so that they are ready to plant when the time comes. Aside from what those euphorbia and a few transplants here and there, fall bulbs and a few perennials, nothing else will be purchased or ordered until its home is ready and waiting, which means planting will, in all likelihood, be put off until 2021. But gardens, like lives, are things that evolve over time.
I hope you have enjoyed this visit to my work in progress. Some of these photos have appeared on my instagram feed, a site that feels somehow more suited to my current state of contentment with the slow, the small, the quotidian, a flower here and there. But the odd photo will appear here as well, depending on how things evolve, although perhaps not another garden tour for some time.
