P.E. for Gardeners

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I hate to bring this up, but sooner or later your body is going to rebel against the physical demands of gardening.  It is not going to appreciate the fact that, within the course of an afternoon, you hauled 30 cubic feet of mulch on your back, bent to the ground from a standing position 167 times, and — on tiptoe — leaned forward while stretching waaaay out with your hedge clippers to reach the top of the damn yew hedge,  so that the torque on your lower back was approximately 1200 foot-pounds per square inch, or however you measure that.

He will be sore tomorrow. (www.theoccasionalgardener.com)

Physical therapists, yogis, and other healthy types strongly advise against the strange contortions and repetitive stresses such as those we perform out in our gardens.

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Garden Tool Burial Ground

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Yesterday I checked around online to see if I could rent a metal detector.  I thought perhaps they’d be available at Home Depot or Lowe’s or some other equipment rental place. 

No luck. 

Around here, people like to use metal detectors to look for old bullets from the War of Northern Aggression Civil War, since quite a bit of fighting took place in these here parts.  But I thought it would be useful to put one to work in my garden in order to discover the locations of all the tools I have misplaced over the years.

This is the tool I lose most frequently:

Fishtail Weeder. Photo credit: http://www.thisoldhouse.com

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Smug Bastard of Abundance

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You were all proud of yourself when this tomato plant that you grew from seed actually produced fruit.  Hurrah!  So what if it’s only one tomato and the plant is completely disfigured!  You did it!

 

Man, I bet even P. Allen Smith would be proud!!!

“Great job growing that one tomato, my friend!”

Vicious Baby Bunny Devours Defenseless Wildflower

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Photo credit: Sally and Andy Wasowski

I’ve been cool with the young bunny that lives in my yard…until yesterday, when I discovered that he’d chewed my brand new, adorable little southeastern native wildflower Marshallia graminifolia down to a nub!!!!  

You tell me which is cuter: the Marshallia or the gluttonous herbivore that feeds mercilessly upon it.  There is no contest!

Keep Writing, Keep Digging, Mr. Merwin

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Yesterday the Library of Congress announced Natasha Tretheway, a Pulitzer-prize winner and professor at Emory University, as the new poet laureate.  I’m not familiar with her writing, but I like that she is from the South and that she is very young for a poet laureate.  I will check out her poems soon.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share this quote from the outgoing poet laureate, W.S. Merwin.  I have loved Merwin’s poetry since I stumbled upon it in college, but I had no idea that he lived in Hawaii and is totally into gardening.  Apparently, he lives on a former pineapple plantation in Maui, and has made it his mission to plant scores of endangered palms on his land.  What a cool guy.

Merwin in his garden. http://www.oprah.com

This quote comes from his 1997 essay entitled “The Shape of Water” :

“Obviously the garden is not a wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some sense of its composition, its appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty. It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows. It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden. But a garden is a relation, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.” 

I also like that Merwin acknowledges that “the natural world is what is right in front of you.  You don’t have to go to national parks or something, just look in your backyard and you’ll find plants and bugs.”

I think Ms. Tretheway has some big, dirt-encrusted shoes to fill.

Some Thoughts on Garden Ornament

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Nothing announces the mood or atmosphere of a garden more so than Garden Ornament.  Sure, you can plant an Acer palmatum ‘Shishigashira’ and a carpet of black mondo grass, but it’s really the stone lantern that declares:

“This Japanese Garden.  Please now be feeling sense of reverence and quiet awe.”

In the case of one of my neighbors, it’s the red Victorian gazing ball held aloft on the ears of three stone rabbits that announces:

“YOU’RE IN THE PRESENCE OF WHIMSY.  FEEL FREE TO PRANCE ABOUT!  WHY AREN’T YOU PRANCING????”

I love all kinds of garden ornament, from dignified to kitsch, which is why I face a dilemma.  Since garden ornament tends to set the tone of the garden more so than any other individual garden element, there should be some sort of consistency among the pieces chosen.  An overall statement should be made.

Personally, I’m torn about which direction I want to go with ornament in my garden.  On the one hand, as I get older I find myself drawn to more dignified, classic pieces.  I love the idea of a stone column in my garden, surrounded by ferns and set off by evergreens…soothing, dignified, timeless.

But I also like this:

Gnome-B-Gone, by Fred Conlon

I mean, I know my garden is MINE, and I can do whatever I want with it, but I don’t want it to appear completely bipolar.

Luckily, there are some pieces of garden ornament that are more neutral and can fit into any scheme.  Most pots, for example, don’t hit you over the head with their personalities; they’re like the Zeligs of the garden and can blend into cottagy, modern, whimsical, or classic schemes.

This is why pots are all I have at the moment.  Pots and a couple of metal dragonflies hovering among my perennials. 

Perhaps my difficulty with garden ornament speaks to a larger problem with my sense of self.  My garden doesn’t really know what it is, therefore, perhaps I don’t really know who I am.  Should I wear floral scarves or chunky metal watches?  Should I try to do more serious writing or should I learn carpentry? Should I take a stand more often or just laugh stuff off and go with the flow?

Am I a stone column or a Gnome-B-Gone?

Christoph Niemann’s “Bio Diversity”

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Enjoy these amusing botanical images from Christoph Niemann’s wonderful book Abstract City.  Niemann is an award-winning designer and illustrator, and this book is a compilation of creative little sketches/visuals accompanied by Niemann’s commentary, which is often hilarious.  This guy has a delightful imagination and a totally off-beat way of seeing the world.  I’d love to wander into his mind for awhile, spread out a picnic blanket, and just hang out and observe what goes on.

 

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