Early Garden Jive
photo essay and talk about talk
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The garden (or gardens) got a late start this year. First it was the mammoth ice storm early in the Spring, and then, after a week of unseasonably warm weather (those early spring warmups always make fools of us up here, lodged as we are between three of the largest weather-making freshwater bodies of cold water on the planet) the thermometer plunged into what I consider the least desirable weather possible… daytime highs hovering in the upper thirties and forties with only rare instances of sunshine and drizzle that threatens snow… and delivers it miserably, miserably enough.
My least favorite time of the year even in the best of times. Completely untrustworthy.
The cleanup from the ice storm was significant and time consuming. But finally warmer weather tentatively crept in. My greenhouse functioned quite well despite the cold weather and my tomato plants were much improved over last year’s leggy darlings. But getting the garden in came later than usual it seemed.
The photo above is of my clematis vine that has bloomed faithfully for many years, this year being no exception. It survived even after a bough from one of my juniper trees smashed its trellis a few years back after a heavy snow. I made a new trellis from the branches of that juniper bough. The numerous fallen branches from this year’s ice storm nearly smashed that juniper trellis as well, but it withstood the onslaught and the flowers, as usual, are very fine. White and lavender and a little later, dark magenta.
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As you can see, from the picture above, taken today, the garden is still a work in progress. Interesting thing is, however, when I look at my store of photos from past years, its belatedness is only by a few days. Some things, like the clematis, bloomed exactly as usual. The beds where I grow lettuce and other greens… mustard greens especially… are quite far behind my usual schedule though.
Some of this is because of the time-consuming nature of the ice storm clean up, but the cold weather also slowed things down. Mustard and lettuce greens are quite cold hardy, but even they required a bit more warmth than was available this year.
It’s been especially hard for me to grow spinach and any cool weather greens like bok choy. The springs here are often too cold and then they suddenly leap into hot weather that makes these plants bolt quite quickly. I keep trying though… trying to predict the weather and ascertain the length of a narrow window of weather that is warm enough to germinate the seeds but cool enough not to bolt plants too young to be worth harvesting. I’ve not had much luck.
The following is a shot of my little pond. The two bush-like plants between the pond and the wall are suckers growing out of the stumps of the willows that were taken down by the ice storm. I may leave some of the suckers. They look kind of nice. The increase in sunlight around the pond will have positive and negative impact. The pond plants, especially the pond lily, will probably like more sun. But I’ve cultivated three different varieties of shade-loving ligularia that send up very attractive yellow stalks of flowers in various shapes and sizes in late summer. They will most likely need to be moved. You can see them wilt in full sun.
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Here is the pond in late summer two years ago.
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There’s a bit of cruelty in how this weather stuff behaves and how it impacts any plans for a garden. One is forced to anticipate and roll with it. It is easy enough to become overly confident about one’s ability to predict weather patterns and plant accordingly. But even when one’s predictive abilities are better than usual, at least in terms of temperature and rainfall, there are so many other variables that come into play. Unfamiliar bugs and/or diseases, fungus and molds, that invade and eat plants. Bigger animals that likewise invade the yard and chow down. Rabbits seem to be going through one of their periodic high population swings currently. And then there’s deer.
A pretty doe has been finding a way into my yard for a number of years now. Often enough I am able to prevent this through any number of rather complicated and frustrating maneuvers. But she’s no dummy (I’m still unsure if it was her that ruined my crop of drying beans last year, or a rabbit). The ice storm took down a stretch of tall, closely planted, cedars that I believe were probably planted along my south lot line about the same time the house was built, 1878, leaving a large gap. One late morning I came home from a meeting at the college where I work part time to find her in very relaxed repose, in a spot of sun, back in the corner of the lot… on top of my attempt to cultivate a small asparagus plot. She ignored my overly polite entreaties to get her up and out of the back yard. But then, one must take great care in getting such a beast, no matter how lovely she may be, out of your yard or risk greater damage if she feels too rushed or threatened. And she is pretty.
The above is a honeysuckle vine I put in along the wooden fence that runs the length of the north side of the lot. Aside from the clematis vines, a trumpet vine, and some annual runner beans and other pole beans, I’ve had rotten luck trying to get vines to climb up any trellis. I have greater hopes for this plant.
But back to my doe: It is also good to take one’s time getting said creature to move out of the back yard. She will take her time, not be frantic enough to kick up any plantings, and in the meantime manage, inadvertently, to show you the exact places she has managed to find her way around—in or out of the garden—and so finding ways to prevent her re-entry becomes a bit easier. In this way it appears, at least presently, that I have been able to block her entry.
But why do I feel a bit guilty? So what if she can destroy all the hostas she finds in one sitting? So what if she uses the yard like her own personal salad bar with an apparent total disregard for any systematic directional chow browsing from one side of the yard to the other? One finds a favorite phlox that has been nibbled far from the chewed-up hydrangea or painted daisies she has apparently consumed with whatever gusto, watchful gusto, a doe can muster. Can she help it?
None-the-less, I have considered borrowing someone who knows something about guns.
For some reason my irises haven’t done so well this year. This one, above, is a consistent performer, as are the cream yellow ones that bloom with what could be called abandon almost every year since I moved them to the sunnier corners where they live now… but my favorites, in a place I cultivated especially for them, an old variety that is tall and quite elegant, remain stubbornly unpredictable.
Gardening can be cruel… but it is a manageable cruelty, predictable in its unpredictability. And its cruelty isn’t really mean. It’s not purposeful, nor does it take anything that appears to be pleasure in the kind of cruelty it unleashes.
Unlike people.
I go to the garden… often enough I believe I work my old hips, legs, ass and back, into a pervasive ache this time of year… to escape the meanness of humans, or at least be actively involved in something in which any garden cruelty is able to redirect the focus of my humanity into something very close to the foundational elements of what being human in the world means, and what it can do… what it delivers to me in what is probably a more spiritual way than I am ready to admit to.
The unleashing of the human meanness in these last months (really, it has been building notably in the past twenty years, to the point that those who are most keen about it are also the proudest when they can engage and promote it) has been particularly stultifying. It infects everything. There are days when I can barely tolerate being around people, even those I like, simply because of the historic periodic swelling of what seems to be a natural predilection among humans to be mean… to one another and to the other creatures and essential life sustaining aspects of our world.
It’s hard to take. The cruelty of the garden is much less intentional. And it doesn’t come from those who seem to have absolutely no awareness of their own intentionality. That intentionally mean humans most often (yes… it is most often, let’s not argue about this… mean people can arise out of any culture or self-defining social or political group) are comprised of people who swear ultimate and undying allegiances to prophets and sages whose central theses have to do with loving one’s neighbors… even one’s enemies… is beyond comprehension. It is so absurd, and the inability to loosen those creatures from the contradiction of their immoveable stance so absolutely dismaying, it is hard to understand it except in terms invented and explained in the journals of virology.
So, the garden gives me a kind of silent succor and relief from the mean-ness that surrounds me. To be sure, I have been an active and aching practitioner of the garden arts for much longer than this emerging perplexity of human mean-ness modified any remaining adolescent naivete about the intentions of the species and the manner in which many of the meanest among us go about getting what they want, molding the world to their own image out of a deeply disturbed and unconscious self-destructiveness, which is the ultimate narcissism… not this pop psych version that calls everyone and anyone a narcissist who is disagreeable at times or can’t be fit into a mold or expectation that reinforces someone else’s narcissism.
Ah yes…
Yesterday I got all my tomato plants in. Up at my community plot a few blocks away. All 39 of them. Finally… it looks like it will stay warm enough for them to grow. Too cold and the damn things might not die, but they just sit there in the ground. The lake water, Lake Michigan, apparently, is still hovering around 50 degrees and the prevailing westerlies consistently drop a load of that coolness on us.
Like magic, a couple of my favorite people appeared today and took the greater number of the rest of the tomato plants. I thought I’d grown less this year and would have fewer leftovers, but no. I was preparing to put them out near the curb with a sign “Free Tomato Plants, Donations accepted but not Required”. I use an empty parmesan cheese dispenser for any money people want to leave. I’ve done this before, and it has gone well. I’ve felt good about it. Tomorrow I’ll plant my pepper plants. I grew too many of them again this year too.
Oh well.
The following shot is the approach to my front door. We put out the flag, not so much to advertise any identity attributes, but as a way to convey a certain level of safety in the neighborhood for any that need to feel it. It feels good to do that (I like that the impatiens planted along the sidewalk leading to the porch mirror the rainbow flag. What d’you think?). I think more and more purposeful projecting of that kind of safety is going to be necessary as the current viral swell of self-defeating human meanness takes hold.
