When people see my garden, either in photos or in person, they almost always say, “You must have a green thumb.” But I don’t. Until I moved here, I was seldom able to grow anything, and when I did manage to keep a plant alive, it wasn’t for long.
The same thing happens here, to be honest. Plants die. I’d say about half of all plants I bought ended up committing harikari. (Hmm. No, not harikari. I just checked the definition of the word; apparently harikari is a specific way of committing suicide — stabbing a dagger in one’s belly and cutting horizontally. Eek. Not a way I would like to go and a physical impossibility for plants since they have neither daggers nor bellies to stick them in.)
The point is, plants that can’t handle the alkaline soil or the searing sun or the frigid winters or perhaps just me, end up being a vague memory. The plants that hang around are ones that thrive in this yard, and they happily spread out or reseed themselves so that during springs like this one, they make it look as if I know what I am doing, when in fact, it’s the yard doing magic tricks. These gorgeous Asiatic irises were here when I moved in and do well with benign neglect. The purple larkspur, as seen in the top photo and in the background of other photos, are an example of a flower that reseeds itself. Magic, for sure!
The beauty of gardening (besides the beauty of the garden itself) is that mistakes don’t hang around so that when things grow, it seems as if everything grows, when that is not the case. Also interesting is when the plants themselves decide what they want to be. Below is a yellow columbine that decided it wanted to be half white.
I’m lucky, really, to live in a magic yard. I plant things, water them, admire them, and that’s it. No green thumb. Just plants that like being where they are. Even then, some years, like last year, they struggle to put out any blooms. I truly have no idea why this is a lush spring for me. We had almost no moisture all winter, and not much this spring. What we have had this spring is springing temperatures — one day it’s below freezing, the next day it springs up to ninety. Amazing that anything can deal with such extremes!
My grass is doing well so far, and I tend to think that has to do with the skunks. They come around every night and dig in the dead patches of grass for grubs, so what is left looks greener. (In the picture below, you might be able to see clumps of dead grass — that’s skunk work. I used to be upset with them until I realized that they are aerating my lawn for me, so as long as they keep their scent to themselves, I’m okay with their digging.)
Now if I can only find something that will get rid of the weeds for me. Some years, when I’ve had a lush yard like this, come summer, most things were eaten almost to the ground by grasshoppers, leaving only weeds behind. If scientists could develop a grasshopper that ate weeds and left everything else behind, that would be a great service to us non-green-thumb gardeners. Meantime, I’m just grateful I have a magic yard that knows how to do what I don’t know how to do. I’m not the only one who likes my yard. These young turtledoves certainly seemed taken with the sight!
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One
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