The Mad Weeder Strikes Again

I was indifferent to gardens in my 20s and 30s. I started appreciating them in my 40s. L loves wildflowers and wildflower walks and he has a front yard with columbine (including a hybrid created by his aunt), hens and chicks from his mother's Downstate yard, irises, poppies from his mother, hibiscus, ajuga groundcover, lilies of the valley (see photo at right), vinca and other plants I'm forgetting. In back he has cacti, false Solomon's seal, asparagus, chives, green onions, yucca, day lilies and gingham girls. He has lilac, honeysuckle and forsythia bushes. All this he will leave when he sells his house this or next year, though he will dig up some of the plants for our new place. We started taking rocks from his front yard to put in our yard. We put them in the trunk of his car and then when we got here we weren't sure what to do with them. I would've just let them sit in the trunk for the next week (We close on the house--see photo--June 30). But he didn't want to drive around with rocks in his trunk. So we put them in my storage area.

This morning I went to Michael McColly's yoga class. I recommend it. What's good is the he talks about breathing and clearing your mind and paying attention to your body. It was odd, though, to be taking a class from someone I know, and to have his familiar voice telling us what to do with our bodies and breathing. My mind buzzed around, as always. The only time I've ever been about to truly concentrate and focus is when I took yoga at the Alliance Francaise. When the teaching was in French, I had to really listen. Alas, the class wasn't always in French. The teacher would let in people who barely knew how to say Bonjour, and then she'd repeat everything in English. That's why I no longer take yoga at the Alliance. When it was an all-French experience, it was like being in a trance, wrapped in a haze of foreign language, and the haze made it feel like you were in a different place.

The yoga room was warm, because for some inexplicable reason, the heat had gone on earlier. I was hot and slightly dizzy. Perhaps the dizziness is caused by gabapentin, which I'm taking to help with the hot flashes. So what should I take for the dizziness?

Yesterday L and I bought flowers in Indiana and today I planted them in two big pots out front. We decided to put them in pots so people wouldn't trample them. Someone walked on some columbine (brought from his yard to mine) and killed it recently. Now I'm afraid that people will pick the flowers because they don't have to bend down to touch them. We shall see. We have cosmos in the middle, and around them I put snapdragons, begonias, and something that looks like impatiens but isn't. At the checkout counter yesterday I noticed special pink garden gloves for sale. With each sale, money goes to Susan G. Komen [foundation] for the Cure--at least $100,000. Both L and I looked at the gloves disparagingly, though I have to admit that $100,000 going to the Komen foundation is better than zero dollars going to the Komen foundation. But I'd rather have $100K going for research on the causes of cancer.

After yoga I walked along Broadway, where there were huge round planters holding flowers in various stages of health. Some pansies were dried up. There were weeds in all the planters and as I walked along on my way to Metropolis Coffee Company and back, I pulled weeds. I love to pull weeds. I love when all their roots (see dandelion taproot on left) come up, clean, like a thorn pulled out of a paw. It is so satisfying. Once last year I had a computer mishap and I was so upset I went in the front yard and pulled weeds. It helped. I used to squeeze the blackheads on my father's back and carefully put them on Kleenex so he could see them, dark on one end and light on the other. That was satisfying, too. You'd think I'd love to clean and would be obsessive about it, but I'm not.

As soon as we close on the house, we're going to hurry to it and start yanking out weeds and pulling off the ivy from the sides. We've already surreptitiously pulled a few lamb's quarters from around the tree in front.

Weeding

I discovered only a few years ago that I like weeding. There's instant gratification. You see the plant that doesn't belong, you pull on it, and if you're lucky you get the root. Clean margins. Leaving in its place dirt, a kind of dark clean slate. Blank canvas. I think the reason people like gardening so much is because it's a way of doing something while you're doing nothing. Today I was tired and a little worn out and run down. I could feel a slight headache and some body aches, like I'd had acutely last week because of the Taxol. L was saying I should go outside because it was so beautiful. He went off into the wilds of Downstate Illinois for work. I couldn't decide what to do. I wanted to the Little Cafe Down the Street but I thought I shouldn't sit inside. So I got some petunias and banderas (?) that have been waiting on the balcony in their little plastic pots to be planted. I went out front and dug and pulled out a bunch of weeds and planted the flowers.

I've noticed in ads for hospitals and treatments there are often photos of crouching women, spade in hand. Look, I can plant now that my arthritis is under control. Look, I can bring new life into the plant world now that my cancer has been zapped. To me these pictures indicate lack of ambition. They indicate Retirement. Retreat from the real world of achievement. It's as if these people, now that they're cured or no longer in pain, can, well, cultivate their gardens. They can pursue safe avenues. You never see a picture of an angry performance artist saying, Look, now that I'm in remission I can jump on the stage and offend people again. Or a CEO at his desk saying, Look, now that I'm cured I can fire dozens of people again. Does that mean that ambitious people should not stop and plant the flowers? There's a kind of giving up of power in planting. You are following rules. The perennials won't flower all season (I don't think). The annuals won't come back even though you want them to. The shade-loving plants won't flourish in full sun. There is room for creativity: You can be original in your arranging, you can cultivate new species and name them after your friends. You can pollinate by hand, even, pre-empting the bees. But you can't change the rules.

That's the difference, I think, between nature and art.

Years ago when I worked for the Miami Herald an editor suggested I write about amateur orchid growers, focusing on a couple who had lost their only two children in a bizarre plane crash in the city. I met with them and asked them questions about orchids. When I saw pictures of their sons on top of the TV I asked about them, but they didn't want to talk about their dead boys at all. I was in a quandary. My editor had suggested that they were putting their efforts into orchids to channel their grief, but they would have none of it. So I got deeper and deeper into the orchid world, and berated myself because I couldn't get excited about orchids like they and all the other members of orchid societies in South Florida. Finally I wrote the story and it was fine. I wrote about other people's excitement. Over the years I've come to be interested in orchids, in their still, insect-like yet sculptural appearance. I think then I was trying too hard to cultivate my own orchid appreciation.

L and I pretend to be looking for a larger place, one we can live in together full time. He still has his house in Gary, which he frequents and I visit. He will be sad to give it up and says, I'll never be anywhere again where I can plant a sapling and watch it grow for 30 years. This is true.

What's in Bloom?

Several years ago, when I was a garden docent at the Huntington, a volunteer wrote a popular column called "What's in Bloom?" Since gardening, one of my passions, is now a forbidden fruit, I'll do the same thing that I do when I can't stomach food - I'll write about it, starting with my own version of "What's in Bloom (and in fruit)" in our back yard.

I'm a big fan of David Austin English roses and have a dozen varieties in our rose garden, including my favorite, the Gertrude Jekyll shown above. I love the way the flowers grow in clusters and ruffle like a peony in the center. But the best part is the intoxicating fragrance. You'll have to come by for a whiff.

Our apricot tree is more prolific than ever. Every year I hope to "manage" the crop, but each year the same thing happens: hundreds of overripe fruits fall to the ground. I'm determined that this will be the year that more fruit is devoured by humans than by squirrels and birds. Between freecycle, this blog and some new recipes I've found, I'm sure to accomplish that goal.

I came close to purging our plum tree this year. I figured the ancient, scraggly tree had come to the end of its life because it hadn't produced fruit for four years. But this year we got a miraculous surprise. It's bearing hundreds of baby plums that promise to turn into the juiciest, sweetest, messiest fruit of the season.

Now it's your turn to tell me what's in bloom in your yard or patio.