| Six years.
. . I can't believe it. I've been a power gardener for over six years now.
That means I do something in my half-acre garden every day of the year.
Well, maybe not every day. I did take a vacation a couple of years ago
and was out of town for six days. But usually I'm out there because it
beckons me, it calls me, it teases me and, during the long hot Louisiana
summer, it dares me.
Come into the garden. See what can
surprise. Wow! Look at my Natchitoches Noisette rose bush, a favorite.
Its fresh growth is full of small buds that will lazily open up to light
pink roses with dozens of them on each branch. The clematis 'Henryi'
has several huge clean white blossoms that are wide open, flat and six
inches across. They'll be there for a week, showing forth their beauty,
before falling to the earth to continue the everlasting ebb and flow that
a gardener gets to witness.
This is a continuous cycle that nature
presents to us, if we just watch. Germination, growth, budding and flowering,
seeding, dying, composting, are my garden's plants fulfillment of nature's
plans to make sure that they reproduce. The byproducts happen to
be their immense beauty and the great pleasure I get from collecting, planting
and nurturing the residents of my garden.
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There is lots of beauty, lots of fun,
lots of amazement, every day. But I'm only telling you about the easy side
of gardening. Yes, it's great to have a beautiful garden, but you
must know that gardening is not just a spectator sport. There is
a dark side, but not too dark. Because, for my garden to look wonderful
and amaze those that visit, I have to do the hard work, but not too hard.
In southern Louisiana, the hard work
is called weeding. Yes, not only do the plants that I have deemed worthy
grow in my garden, but also many unwanted, ugly, mean and greedy-for-space
plants try to continually make it their place of residence. It's
that continuous battle, tiny weed by tiny weed, that gives me the opportunity
to know every square inch of my garden. I would say there is just about
a half a dozen varieties of those varmint plants that tend to pop up here
and there. I know just what they look like, even from their first
few days of growth.
I have found that the very best method
of winning each battle is not Mr. Roundup or Mr. Hoe, but a method I will
refer to as "MANUAL ERADICATION". Fancy words for a simple, time-honored
method, better explained as the thumb and forefinger grasping each new
weed and pulling them up by the roots method.
What relief, what satisfaction, and
thank God for air-conditioning after I have taken a section of my garden
- the Annabelle bed or the back Bowman bed - and have gotten on my knees
and made sure that there is not one single weed left in that little area.
Battle won, though the war continues, but progress made…. till tomorrow
that is. |
