Try asking them in again in the midst of a drought, when they are exhausted from dragging the watering can around trying to save a few special plants, or after an unscheduled frost has blackened a hopeful start to spring. Or after they have done something really stupid like digging too hastily into what has now become a bunch of sliced and slivered spring bulbs. Or when they have innocently planted 'Silver King' artemisia and now must watch it gleefully taking over the beds, strangling the weak in its wake.
That's when you can tell the true gardener from the dilettante. The latter will tell you that gardening, far from being a stress reducer, is responsible for creating it.
But the true gardener? They will smile.
Why? Because they work with two principles firmly in mind. The first is that they look on a disaster as an opportunity. The second is that they know that there are no mistakes in gardening - only lessons.
Take disasters. Last spring a tornado whipped through our yard and took out ten trees. Where we once had a shady tree line leading into a wooded area of the property we suddenly had a line of felled mammoths, their massive root systems exposed. It LOOKED like a disaster. But it also opened up new possibilities.
With those ten trees gone, new light filtered into the woody area and wildflowers that had lain dormant suddenly sprang to life. Suddenly we could see the possibility of a woodland garden.
While Nature herself did a nice job of introducing new color and life into the area, I, of course, felt a great need to lend a helping hand. So I got to trot off to the nursery for ferns and other woodland plants to enhance the effect. All other benefits aside, anything that offers me the opportunity to go nursery-hopping is ok in my book!
The felled trees provided firewood all last winter - except for the smaller limbs which got fed to the chipper shredder to provide mulch for gardens all over the yard. Disaster becomes not just opportunity, but warmth and mulch. Not bad!
My neighbor worked hard on establishing a tidy front yard garden and was finally pleased with it - when urgent repairs to her foundation made it necessary to dig up the whole front yard. Disaster? Not in her eyes. It was a clean slate. Now the lawn is gone and the entire yard is a garden complete with stone paths.
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