Poppies in June

The weatherman says we’ll have at least five days of “no rain.”  I’m hoping that my resolve and my energy last long enough to spend at least half of each of those days in the garden.  I’m after the weeds.

In our garden, that means a lot of yanking and pulling and, in desperation, hacking and sawing – as in how did that alder tree in the midst of the roses get to be three feet high before I noticed it?  The merry, merry month of May was a total loss, weeding-wise.  It was either raining (I am definitely a fair weather gardener and proud of it) or I was otherwise occupied most of the month.  However, the weeds (which include unwanted trees) are single-minded of purpose:  they grow.  Period.

A few weeks ago, my neighbor Bradley said that he was spending the weekend in his garden “fluffing and buffing.”  Were it not for the fact that he had mentioned his “gardeners” a few sentences previously, those ‘f’ and ‘b’ words probably would have gone right by me.  As it is, I’m wondering if I can ever get to the fluff-and-buff state at our place all on my own.

Along those lines, I had a long, one-sided conversation with the plants in the south garden beds as I was working there yesterday.  One of ‘our’ first topics was the concept of Personal Space.  Plants apparently don’t share that particular value with people.  (Which led me to ruminate on whether or not those people that crowd in too close are really more vegetable than human?)  Plants apparently couldn’t give a fig about encroaching on someone else’s territory.

Take the Oriental Poppies, for instance.  Last year there was only one under the library window.  Now there are dozens.  So many, in fact, that they are crowding out one another and actually having to lie down and grow sideways for lack of vertical space.  They have absolutely no sense of sharing or of crowd control (to say nothing of birth control!) or even of appearances.

Yet, it’s difficult for me to just say the poppies are “too aggressive” and pull some of them out.  I think that’s because they are so pretty.  And with that realization, I began to wonder about the shallow nature of my own value system; are appearances everything after all?  Certainly, I have no trouble rooting out the buttercups.  But are they less attractive than the poppies or do I just resent their take-over -right-down-to-the-roots personalities ?  And then there’s the bindweed which I refuse to call by its real name, “morning glory.”  If ever there was a flower that is not glorious at any time of day and should be locked away in a plant penitentiary for its strangling, predatory nature, it’s bindweed.

Hyacinths and Primrose in April

About the time I was pondering (aloud, mind you) all of those weighty matters, I discovered Ruth’s primrose.  It had been completely surrounded and covered up with hyacinths now past their prime and awaiting removal.  The primrose, though not blooming and with leaves closer to yellow than to green, looked healthy but cowardly.  Obviously one of the duck-and-cover sorts of survivors.  I told the primrose that I could identify with that survival method and wished her a happy sunbath now that she had been rescued from total oblivion.

And, so it went.  Deep Thoughts While Gardening is my motto!  But I do wish those plants would give me their side of the story.  In plain English.