The garden of a hopeful romantic

Ah, wild, unruly July. How you have raised my grass and tomato vines to dizzying heights when my back was turned! I despair of ever gaining ground on the crabgrass that infests my flower beds, or taming the fox grapes and hog peanut that twine and bind each stalk and flower.

This is the moment that separates the serious gardener from the dilettante, when I ruefully revise my expectations toward what is practical and away from an ideal that is no longer within my grasp.

My gardens are a Victorian clutter of fond accumulations. I delight in the character they assume over time, even as I wage a losing struggle with the vegetative equivalent of dust in the curio cabinet.

There is a delightful seediness in the progression from new shoots to dry pods, even as the edges blur and the pattern becomes obscure. Who knows the ways of the universe, or how long this clock will run, by chance or by design, before the final frost?

u      u      u

Like children, plants need plenty of space and light and nourishment to grow. When I begin a garden, I am always amazed  at how quickly the plants fill out the available space and reach for more.  

We may fuss over them, but for all our ministrations they can still break our hearts, knocked back by some random wind or withered on the vine. They may become promiscuous, with mutant offspring, or succumb to windblown blights and cankers.

Then again, they may burst forth in the exuberance of life, surpassing all expectations.

There are good life lessons, here. Those of us with the genetic predisposition to be hopeful romantics — the Red Sox and Cubs fans — learn not to resist all this rank growth, this verdigris on the bright copper dreams of summer.

We are pulled hither and yon by the demands of our busy lives and limited leisure time. We bend beneath the cloudbursts and lean on each other for support, like the bush beans in my garden. We bolt like untended lettuce, sweet basil gone to seed. We open each day like morning glories, turning inward in the heat of the afternoon.

If we can’t see the stars, we watch the fireflies.

Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at greensleeves.typepad.com.

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