Are Gardeners Ever Satisfied?
Remember back to early spring. Back then, we would go out to our gardens eagerly, and feel a genuine thrill when we saw something poling out of the ground. Who needed flowers? The pointy white shoots of emerging crocus were exciting. The pink of emerging peony shoots seemed gorgeous. Every individual plant, and the tiniest features of each new one emerging, was loved and appreciated.
And then the daffodil season started, and we got blinded by the show. And from then until fall, we always seem to be waiting for next week or wishing ourselves back a few days.
And then there is the weather. For the past several years as I hauled water to my thirsty plants, I prayed for rain. This spring we got rain. Was I grateful? No - it meant such a long, cold and soggy spring that everything got a late start and what should be in full glory today is still trying to achieve maturity. So once again, here I am waiting for next week, or next month, when the garden hits some hypothetical ideal that is has yet to achieve.
I should be grateful that the rains continue. The more established plants are thriving. So now, I can complain about how it will take a machete to chop my way through the trumpet vines on the arbor. (And it probably will take one if I don't get out there FAST!) If I am not careful to take a few moments to appreciate what is there I will miss the fact that the same trumpet vine is covered in flowers and alive with hummingbirds. Does that please me? No, I'm too busy focusing on how untidy the thing is getting.
And without a dry spell, I am constantly finding that the days I have free to garden are wet ones. Wet and thundery - which means I can't even boot up and write about gardens.
Am I grateful for the rest? Do I kick back with a good mystery and enjoy the break that nature provided? Well- maybe, but I am grumbling the whole time. I haven't even thought to appreciate the fact that the rains have meant a generally cooler summer. I haven't had a single night where I had to toss, turn, and pray for relief from the incessant heat. I'm still too busy blaming that blessed coolness for stunting the growth of my Colocasia 'Black
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