Gardening by Neglect ~ Random Reflections of the Growing Season

Every year I buy a few plants at the end of the season. I troll the home improvement centers for the bargain racks, the"buy it or we trash it" sale at the back of the garden center.  I know it's risky planting trees or perennials in July; the plants take a lot of watering and tender loving care to survive the hottest part of the summer.  But these plants are, after all, survivors.  They have usually had all their top growth die off and are struggling to produce new shoots from the root ball.  I snatch them from their impending doom and say, "Hey, this one wants to live!!  I'll save you, little tree! You can come live with me, scrawny scabiosa!"  Then , if they survive the hottest part of the summer and endure throughout a winter, I deem them worthy of living in my garden.  I call it "Gardening by Neglect."

When we bought this corner lot, it had a four century maples and a few tiny foundation plantings. Over the last 16 years we have planted screening trees, ornamentals and shrubs, and converted hundreds of square feet of perfectly good lawn into expansive borders and flower beds.  The good news is that we can no longer see nor barely hear the car wash behind our alley, we have shaded the house from the hot afternoon sun, we have perennials and re-seeding annuals that bloom in succession all around the house, there are four magnificent rose bushes that border our patio with majesty, clematis climbing all over everything, and bees in abundance.  The bad news is how much weeding and mulching and feeding are required throughout our extensive growing season in this part of Missouri.. Honestly, I just don't have the "spark" anymore to keep it up like I used to.  That  is why I call my technique: Gardening by Neglect.  In other words, if it survives, it survives.  If it doesn't, it doesn't deserve to live in MY garden.  It's a lot like my greenhouse technique.... which means that my houseplants have to be incredibly tenacious to survive my episodic, spasmodic care.

Another thought has perplexed me lately, though.... and that is the tenacity of undesirable plants. I hesitate to call them 'weeds' because one woman's weed is another woman's focal planting. We have a yard FULL of wild violets and clover.  Now, those of you who have battled violets know that they spread tenaciously by bulb.  There are no weed killers known to be effective against them and the recommended treatment is 'pulling."  Yea, in your DREAMS.  Of course, like eliminating any successful invader, if you leave one single bulb, you have lost the battle.  These amazing plants have given me a new respect and possibly a new definition of what exactly is a "weed":  a plant that can grow anywhere, in any light condition, with or without water.  A desirable, on the other hand, must be planted in EXACTLY the right spot with precise amounts of light and water and food. The violets, by contrast, live under shrubs, in full sun, on the dry slope and the bogs, in clay or loam.  They grow literally everywhere, in the cracks of the sidewalk, under the porch, in every lawn and planting area.  Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  The 'lawns' I have over-planted with Dutch Red-Clover and now require no more than one or two mowings a month and, now that the clover is established, very little watering.

A lawn care specialist stopped us the other day as we pulled up alongside our front curb and told us he could take care of our weed problem!  I almost ran him off the block!  What, kill off my clover?  You can call them weeds if you want to, but I call it my lovely, gently waving meadow.  Hey, we live on a corner and nobody has to worry about my meadow encroaching on their boring single leaf lawn.  So do not judge.

I also have learned through observation, that the flower bed always looks less weedy on the other side of the fence, but, if you slow down and walk the neighborhood, as I do every morning with my two dogs, those borders look a lot different upon closer inspection.  The nearer I get, the more weeds I see.  And I do mean, WEEDS.  No one, in their right mind, wants mulberry, black walnut, red bud or elm trees growing up between the zinnias nor do vetch or crab grass belong in the mulch! I am satisfied with a smugness that consoles my urban conformity.  And justifies my claim to having an English cottage-style garden, seemingly random, care less and care free.  Some might just say messy.  To each his own.

So, taking a much more relaxed, laid back kind of attitude works for me.  Sometimes.  Most days. After all the rain we are getting this week I think I will probably have to spend a day or two ripping out the red buds in the seams of the patio and whack along the fences and maybe even 'weed' a flower bed or two.  I'm actually concerned about too much water at this point.  My neglected garden does NOT know how to handle that!

Balance of Nature (continued)

I pray as I work in the garden. It's great alone-time with God. I don't listen to music or talk on the phone. Just me and God against the weeds. I meditate on the parable of the sower and the seed. Jesus tells the story about a farmer who sows his seed; some falls on the rocky path, some on good soil. Some of the seed that falls on the good soil gets choked out by weeds. Jesus explains the parable to his disciples and says the weeds represent the cares and worries of life while the seed is the word of God. I talk to myself and I talk to God and I rip out the weeds and the cares and the worries of my life.

My tools are inadequate. I need machetes and scythes, not clippers. I whack, yank, clip, cut and slash my way through the overgrowth in one particular corner of the yard. I see some bricks and I exclaim, "There's a wall under here!" Honeysuckle vines snarl around Virginia creeper and together entwine some unknown shrub that sends out both vines and branches. Goldenrod has freely sown itself in the area where the Japanese maple tree died. The variegated vinca that I planted a few years ago has gone wild. Ferrel. Cracked the concrete, undermining our whole back porch. The sunflowers have sown freely outside the beds. Of course there is the ubiquitous milk weed which, if left unchecked, will suffocate whatever it entombs. All those and a dozen more unwanted, uninvited plants have taken a stand in one small area of my yard and I am NOT backing down.

I am amazed at how thick and tangled the growth has become. The outer layer of foliage is cut back; I begin to see what is what. There's a lot going on beneath it all. Ho, there's an elm seedling and ah hah! a black walnut tree underneath the vines, too. So I keep snipping and slashing away. Then, as the muscle fatigue is setting in and I am barely able to lift my nippers, I discover the brick border. Tears spring to my eyes; I'm finally breaking through. I may not be able to finish it today, but at least I can see the bones of the landscape again. I want my border and my garden wall and my cultivated plants back.

I don't ever want to let things get this overgrown again. It's not easy to take the garden back after nature has had her way with it. So much of it and so little of me. All I have is a few hours each week to rebuild the broken down walls and restore the borders. All I can do is my best and try to be more vigilant. Some people have memberships at the gym; I have a garden. It's all good.