I didn’t mean to garden for such a stretch of time, but there I was, hatless and without sun screen, pruning, transplanting, weeding, filling the feeder, turning a dead Rose o’ Sharon into a bottle tree.
It didn’t matter that I had just assigned myself the task of reviewing screenshots on my phone. (Ugh). Even if I’d been doing something enjoyable, this could have happened. How do I know? Because it happens all the time.
Fact: the only time I missed one of the kid’s friend’s birthday parties, I gardening.
Usually, after a trip to California I add something to my household that from then on feels essential. How did I live without it before? One year, it was a rice cooker, another, a Dyson stick vacuum. This year, it’s gonna be a new waffle maker and bourbon vanilla extract. Used the extract for French toast this morning — yum!
Heading home shortly. I don’t know why, but when I get back I want to do a deep cleaning of the downstairs.
In case you’re not on Instagram, here I am modeling my new haircut. Billy’s caregiver used to be a stylist and a good one as it turns out. Did you know you should change your side part every other month?
Christmas in July. For trump, that is.
I’ll say no more about SCOTUS for now, but holy fucking Christ.
We stopped at a Concord garden store with obscene prices (eg $90 for a small terra cotta pot) not to shop (obviously) but to enjoy the owner’s exquisite taste. Made it home just as the rain started.
Twirls of leaves still wound tight, the hosta reach for the sun. Legions of them. Lilies of the Valley, which will annoy the gardener later in the season for their invasive vigor, in late April offer a glad carpet of green. Four daffodils — not four banks or four clumps, but exactly 4 daffodils — grow in this yard, and not even altogether. Two bloom out front next to the chimney and two bloom outback next to the tall yew.
Rhodies and euphorbia died. Rabbits ate one entire pot of purple pansies.
But oh, just look at the fluttering leaves of the Virginia Bluebells. You don’t notice them emerging — they are just suddenly up. Both delicate and hardy, their oblate leaves turn luminescent at certain hours of the morning. And they spread — not just into adjacent pockets of soil, but clear across the yard beyond the patio. Some flowers are plumbago blue, others white. I have no idea why.
The mold on the plastic gate comes off with warm water, a rag, and the occasional pass of a toothbrush where the pikes meet the cross brace. Satisfying.
A satisfying chore is by definition one that offers immediate noticeable results.
The ferns announce themselves shyly. Fronds rolled near the surface of the soil, still tightly wound like Spanish dancers who wait for the proper refrain to snap open and flutter their fans. Oh, but they will. They will, and soon.
During the week of their uncurling, their rise happens so quickly you swear you should be able to hear them growing. You will pause to shoot a video, half expecting the 15-second capture to creak and whisper.
The Montauk Daisies you stole from a teardown around the corner have settled in. Good news! You only took a dozen stalks and now wish you’d taken more. Over on Langley Road, the specimen was a veritable shrub, so hardy, so thriving! May this little clump go crazy and grow shrub-like too!
Hyacinth flop under the weight of their almost obscene beauty. You therefore feel no compunction about snapping the fallen stalks and bringing them indoors where their signature scent perfumes the kitchen from the windowsill. Such a heady smell!
Other things will not get done now. Closet clearing, quilt binding, postcard writing. Why? Because the soil needs replenished near the astilbe. Because that invasive mallow needs digging up near the side gate. Because the Rose of Sharons need pruned and the liatris thinned. You still haven’t finished snapping all the ghostly gray stalks off the sedum yet.
It’s the call of nature, improbable and yet present even here in suburbia. We measure the strength of its siren lure by how TO DO lists are never required for its multiplicity of tasks. We ignore the indoor TO DO lists with a decisive abandon.
We’re weeding a lot this year and planting almost not at all. It’s a strikingly different way to go. I’ve enjoyed the absence of lifting and expense and worry about the survival of new plantings.
But! After placing a geranium in the front bed for our neighbor’s ease of watering while in California recently, I was reminded of the value of pops of red. So this weekend we went and got a few little things plus a buddleia bush for the back yard.
The energy around Harris’s candidacy continues to uplift spirits.
Brattleboro, VT
Until I read about the election deniers occupying critical positions of power, that is. Is there a plan for how to deal with partisan refusals to certify the presidential election results. Is there?
I don’t subscribe to Rolling Stone, but here’s a picture of the headline.
What mess? What deniers? Just point me to the thin-leafed hosta!
As if in answer to this post, a friend sent this out this morning.
