Tag Archives: gardening

The Disheveled Gardener: Act Two

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There’s something about waking up to a frost-killed begonia that makes me feel terribly sad. Even though I knew the cold was coming and was willing to sacrifice said begonia to Jack Frost, I still was sad and surprised to see the level of forlornness evidenced in that withered plant.

My poor, pathetic, frost-bitten begonia.


I covered my tomatoes and my two pretty marigolds, took in my geraniums – even the scraggly two-year old ones – but I chose to leave the begonias and pansies alone. The pansies are still beautiful and unmolested. The begonias are mush.

My pathetic, leggy geraniums. They were still blooming so I saved their lives.


And so begins autumn in Minnesota.

I like autumn. I like that it’s not so bloomin’ hot outside. I like hearing and seeing the combines at work, leaving the fields surrounding my house stubbly, as if their razors were set on “five o’clock shadow” as opposed to “smooth and kissable”. Yes, this is how I think about fields. I am not a farmer, nor a farmer’s wife, nor even the daughter of a farmer.

Possibly somewhere back in Scotland my ancestors farmed…but I can’t even guarantee that.

The aftermath.


Perhaps that is why my thumbs are a rather pale shade of green. I can grow nice cherry tomatoes, for example, but any big tomatoes I plant – every year, without fail – rot on the vine before they’re ripe and dash my hopes of lining my larder with gleaming jars of canned goodness. I keep trying, though. I’m an optimist.

Why, oh why, do my tomatoes do this?


I’m afraid that the sad truth is that, when it comes to gardening, I’m pathetic. I planted some parsley this year, and thyme, too. They both look lovely, even after the frost. But I never used them. Not once. Okay, maybe once. But my point is, I forgot about them. I watered them. But I never cooked with them. What kind of a gardener forgets to use her garden?

A disheveled gardener, that’s who.

My lovely – and unused – parsley.


But, disheveled or not, I enjoy my attempts at gardening. Just don’t come to my house expecting to chow down on a plethora of my own home-grown veggies.

That’s what the Farmer’s Market is for.

My one success!

The Disheveled Gardener: Act One

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I have read before that gardening is good exercise.

I believe it. My aching legs today prove that fact quite nicely.

Yesterday I spent two hours planting my tomatoes, flowers, herbs and amaryllis bulbs.

Yes. You can shake your head and look at the calendar and predict dire things. I can take it. I know I’m a horrible procrastinator and that, due to my lovely plants sitting on the porch for 20 days I caused at least nine marigolds to die and the lovely, squat, stout pansy plants I carefully selected are now leggy, spindly weird-looking things.

This is abundance from a few years back. Who know such beauty could come from a lowly whisky barrel?

Last night, as I was falling asleep, I thought to myself, “They only sat there for a few days…Okay, maybe more than a week…a couple weeks. But NOT three weeks.” I stopped for a moment, considering the multiplication table. “Okay. One day less than three weeks.”

I am not proud to say it.

BUT, all that being said, I really enjoyed donning my gardening gloves, playing in the dirt and admiring the green fruits already hanging from my five tomato plants.

I did not admire the fat grub I found by my chives.

Incidentally, I love plants like chives that come up each spring without me doing a thing. That’s my kind of plant. I was warned – repeatedly – that mint would do that. That it would take over the universe, in fact. I’ve planted three over the past three years and none of them have even taken over six inches of universe. Bother.

But I digress.

So now I get to water, watch, and wait. The three “W’s” of gardening.

I can do that. Waiting works for procrastinators.

There definitly is beauty in growing things…I mean, the very act of it – the verb of it – not the noun…though, of course, there’s beauty there, too. But in the act of growing, a gardener can just sit back…and watch the flowers do their thing. I love that about gardening.

Stay tuned for The Disheveled Gardener: Act Two in days to come!

I Knew there was Some Reason that I Never Learned to Sew

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I’m becoming resigned to the fact that there simply isn’t enough time to do everything that I want to do. That I will die without having a gorgeous garden. That I will never learn to sew. That my photos will remain in disorganized boxes and never see the light of a beautifully produced scrap book.

Bother.

We all have choices, yes? Choices of how we spend our time. Choices of how many books we read, how many television shows we watch. How many snacks we eat.

I choose to spend my time writing.

The problem with writing, of course, at least for someone like me who is a stay-at-home mom, is that I can do it always, or I can do it never. I can spend any spare moment at the computer on any given day…or I can find no time, ever, to write. In other words, without a set time and place to write…it becomes both impossible and perpetual. I can never do it – yet I am always doing it.

Everything else – the garden, the sewing, the organization – falls to the wayside.

Does that mean my life is not balanced?

Possibly.

Probably.

So what am I going to do about it?

Become a Renasaissance Woman? Learn to garden, sew, cut and paste and, while I’m at it, polish my long-rusted piano-playing skills?

No. Not likely. Because it all comes down to where my heart is. Yes, I’d like to have lovely scrapbooks, filled with ticket stubs, photographs, and zig-zag-edged polka dotted papers. But I don’t want it enough to actually do it.

Or, looked at another way, I want to write more than I want to garden.

Everything else just has to be set aside.

Let it go.

That’s the mantra of my life right now.

Just let it go.

Let go the need to be right.

Let go the sense of inadequacy.

Let go the pressure to be the person other people think I should be.

Besides, turns out they all think I’m eccentric anyway. Why not just embrace that?

I’m willing to embrace the writer-image.

At least to a degree.

Just don’t expect me to start smoking and wearing berets.

Scarves, though…

I’m all over the scarves.