Lately I’ve been in the garden.
I love this. I love the smell of the dirt and getting dirty and leaving a patch of earth better than when I found it. We have a wonderful yard here in North Carolina, one that was landscaped long ago with several different garden beds and Places For Planting. At the back we have a bank of azaleas in white, pink and hot pink that right now are blooming Exquisitely. I love azaleas. I love spring. I love gardens.
Sadly, we didn’t do much with our gardens when we moved in to this house ten years ago. And the people who lived in the house before us didn’t do much with them either. It was the owners previous to them who had invested so much time and money in shrubs, trees and perennials, and we spent our first few years in this house busy with our own growing things– children– and just enjoyed what we found in the yard.
The thing about gardens, especially, perhaps, in North Carolina, is that one must Attend To Them. Things will grow beyond all reason when left unattended. And so, in the last few years since my children haven’t needed me quite as much as they used to, I have been spending more time in the garden, Recovering it– or Uncovering it– so to speak.
The ivy is my greatest enemy. Just last weekend I pulled most of it from the sloping garden under my kitchen window, and Friday afternoon I got the rest. I also attended to the progress of the rudbeckia, which, pushed by the agressive ivy, had forced all the ajuga past the fence and into my nextdoor neighbor’s yard. Last weekend I also spent some good time digging up said ajuga and finding new homes for it along the stone steps. It seems Very Content there, and sails its purple blooms like flags all down the hill.
Gardening is mindless, like housework, but it is far more satisfying. Because when you’re out there in the yard, you discover again and again the worms doing their essential work in the soil. You hear, without looking, the song of the chickadee or the wind in the newborn leaves. And when you are finished– ah! it all looks so much better.
This spring, Emma Grace and I started some flowers in peat pots. I was more excited about it than she was and found myself watching every day for signs of life. Cosmos, cornflower, foxglove, delphinium. How amazing to stick those hard kernels into the ground and find, for one’s meager efforts, the smallest shoot of green or the bent and fragile stalk of a stem unfolding. Is there anything more tender than these quiet efforts at life, so new and frail and willing?
I’ve said before that I don’t pray over much that isn’t human, but that I do pray over the weather sometimes, and yeast breads when I set up them up to rise, and bulbs stuck in the earth in the autumn. Now I find I pray over seeds, too, because it seems that, like the others, they are in want of a miracle. Who would think that they could be anything– these small stones, these bits of stick, these lifeless things?
On Friday I transplanted the delphinium. They were the smallest bits of greenness with waifish stems and pairs of leaves. But they weathered two nights outdoors, and we are past our frost date. As soon as I could change my clothes on Friday afternoon, I was making small spaces for them along the wall behind the hydrangea and depositing them all down the hill. I watered them last night and checked on them before my walk this morning, and there they are, brave and quiet and still green. I doubt that anyone else would notice them for now, but I will be watching them carefully.
I have always wanted delphinium, mostly because of this:
There once was a Dormouse who lived in a bed
Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red),
And all the day long he’d a wonderful view
Of geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue).
A Doctor came hurrying round, and he said:
“Tut-tut, I am sorry to find you in bed.
Just say ‘Ninety-nine’ while I look at your chest….
Don’t you find that chrysanthemums answer the best?”
The Dormouse looked round at the view and replied
(When he’d said “Ninety-nine”) that he’d tried and he’d tried,
And much the most answering things that he knew
Were geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue).
The Doctor stood frowning and shaking his head,
And he took up his shiny silk hat as he said:
“What the patient requires is a change,” and he went
To see some chrysanthemum people in Kent.
The Dormouse lay there, and he gazed at the view
Of geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue),
And he knew there was nothing he wanted instead
Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red).
The Doctor came back and, to show what he meant,
He had brought some chrysanthemum cuttings from Kent.
“Now these,” he remarked, “give a much better view
Than geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue).”
They took out their spades and they dug up the bed
Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red),
And they planted chrysanthemums (yellow and white).
“And now,” said the Doctor, “we’ll soon have you right.”
The Dormouse looked out, and he said with a sigh:
“I suppose all these people know better than I.
It was silly, perhaps, but I did like the view
Of geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue).”
The Doctor came round and examined his chest,
And ordered him Nourishment, Tonics, and Rest.
“How very effective,” he said, as he shook
The thermometer, “all these chrysanthemums look!”
The Dormouse turned over to shut out the sight
Of the endless chrysanthemums (yellow and white).
“How lovely,” he thought, “to be back in a bed
Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red.)”
The Doctor said, “Tut! It’s another attack!”
And ordered him Milk and Massage-of-the-back,
And Freedom-from-worry and Drives-in-a-car,
And murmured, “How sweet your chrysanthemums are!”
The Dormouse lay there with his paws to his eyes,
And imagined himself such a pleasant surprise:
“I’ll pretend the chrysanthemums turn to a bed
Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red)!”
The Doctor next morning was rubbing his hands,
And saying, “There’s nobody quite understands
These cases as I do! The cure has begun!
How fresh the chrysanthemums look in the sun!”
The Dormouse lay happy, his eyes were so tight
He could see no chrysanthemums, yellow or white.
And all that he felt at the back of his head
Were delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red).
And that is the reason (Aunt Emily said)
If a Dormouse gets in a chrysanthemum bed,
You will find (so Aunt Emily says) that he lies
Fast asleep on his front with his paws to his eyes.
–A.A. Milne
