On a little breathing space
maybe it's not just the garden that's getting too crowded
This last question has been on my mind the most. What needs to be erased?
“She went out! I’m so proud of her. Good girl, honey-mou!” says my spouse Janyce, standing at the window watching the dog coming back in to be wiped off. It’s cold out this morning, with a “fall like” chill in the air. Rain is steadily pelting the canopy of green leaves in our backyard and I can hear its soft percussive rhythm from my open bedroom window.
“Go see Kris,” says Janyce.
I brace myself for the galloping 49 pounds of muscle that comes whipping in through the bedroom door and pounces on me, with both of her front paws on my knees and her long snout peering over the top of my computer.
“It will stop raining, swirly. We’ll go for a walk soon.” I say.
A couple weeks ago, Janyce and I had cocktails and dinner al fresco at our friends’ house who have the most idyllic outdoor space surrounded by beautifully manicured gardens. I’ve been looking despairingly at my front yard garden this year. Like a lot of things over the course of the past two years of dread and uncertainty, I’ve left it alone to do its thing without much intervention from me. When I first planted this small perennial garden, I envisioned the flowers massing together with an overall casual and carefree aesthetic. I mostly achieved that look too, and we spent many summer mornings drinking coffee in full sunshine beside buzzing bees. But this year things are overgrown. The butterfly weed has run amok, infiltrating the evening primrose and squeezing out the wild geranium to a third of its usual size. The coneflowers are all gone.
“I’m happy to come over for a garden consult,” said my friend as we were sipping drinks and gazing out toward the majestic trio of pine trees lit up by the setting sun.
“Okay, you have a deal,” I said. “We’ll pick a date and we’ll make dinner this time.”
“Perfect,” she said. “We’ll come up with a plan, and if weeding and dividing are necessary, I’ll come back and we’ll get to work.”
I joined an online gardening club this spring that included several zoom presentations by my favorite New York Times writer and gardening expert Margaret Roach. I didn’t achieve the goal I set for myself at the start of the class. I didn’t even make it to all of the sessions. But I did take in a few pieces of advice I’ve been mulling around in my brain now for weeks.
Do one thing. Start near the house
Consider gardening in window view
Don't buy a plant unless you know where it’s going to go
Think about natives or pollinators
What needs to be erased?
This last question has been on my mind the most. What needs to be erased? She meant, of course, what needs to be erased in the view— either a plant that has taken over that might now need to be removed, or an unsightly object in the distance that needs to be blocked out by a strategically placed bush, but I heard it another way.
I’ve spent so much time filling the calendar this summer with events I have missed over the past couple of years: concerts, dinners out, parties to host, family gatherings, dog walks, in-gym workout sessions, trips to the cinema, road trips, classes, farmers’ markets. I want to do it all. But I keep forgetting that the best part of summer is simply sitting in the garden and watching the bees and the hummingbirds, or fixating on the fireflies lighting up against the dark green tree line at the edge of the lawn at dusk, or leaning back in the Adirondack chair to look up at bats circling in the sky above while a wood-burning fire keeps the mosquitos at bay.
What needs to be erased?
A couple days ago, I went to see a specialized doctor who cauterized my nose and packed it full of gauze. “Your sinuses are all inflamed and your blood pressure is a little high,” he said. I’ve been having frequent nosebleeds which I thought were all allergy related, but I think stress has something to do with it, too. You can’t grow older, and lose people you love, and live through all of what we’ve been going through lately and not come out unscathed, I think.
Maybe my pounding head and bleeding nose has been signaling to me to slow it down a bit, maybe make some choices, let some things go, and create a little breathing space.
“What time are they coming over?” says Janyce from the kitchen, starting to get the ingredients organized for our day of cooking.
“Later,” I say, “sometime between 3pm and 4pm, we’ve got time, how about we go sit in the garden a bit?”
