In and Around the Garden

I love a good day, when something simple presses through your veins and you can’t help smiling until the nighttime stars appear. To a mathematician a good day would be solving a complicated problem. A surfer looks to the ocean for a good day. For a gardener, it might be tilling the earth, harvesting veggies or flowers or if you’re like me, planting.

If I had a million dollars, I’d buy a million plants. Pot some up and earth-bound the rest. What an exotic dance that would be, a regular ongoing gala drunk in happiness for months. Heaven! Pain and sorrow forgotten for the duration, unanswered questions and forked roads put aside. Inactive dreams and disappointments lost in ecstasy. This is why people have hobbies. For good days, like the one I recently had.

My husband’s cowboy friend who owns the cattle grazing my land rounded them up and hauled them off to the property he recently bought. Cowboy friend won’t be bringing them back. (No, Cowboy’s not tall, dark, and handsome. Heck, he doesn’t even wear a cowboy hat. He does ride a horse and brand cattle. By my standards, that’s a cowboy.) The cattle-less pasture opened up opportunity. The Blue Lake bean seeds that the raised bed couldn’t accommodate could now grow along the fence. No cows to eat the vines.

It didn’t take long to sow the beans. My husband, Joe, helped. Four hands are better than two are. A small project Joe’s tired body could handle after a 16-hour-a-day workweek. Joe turned over the soil with a shovel and stapled wire to the fence boards. I was so excited, standing there holding the wire to keep it from springing back and slapping Joe in the face, I could have been in the Garden of Eden.

Since I didn’t have aged manure, I threw potting mix into the upturned soil. (When you live 17 miles from town, you use whatever’s in the shed.) I don’t recommend using potting soil because it won’t blend with dirt, at least most won’t. But the cheap concoction that Lowe’s employees’ uses, does. In fact, I like it better than the higher-priced outdoor amendments that I’ve used in the past. The best way—the proper way—to prepare the soil is to work fertilizer in at least one month before planting. Sometimes you just have to do what you can, when you can. It all works out in the end.

I can’t explain my excitement of sowing a seed or planting a tree except to say there’s more to it than just getting close to nature. The creative action stirs my soul in the moment and for the future. On Dancing with the Stars, I recently heard it said that Pro Dancer Anna Trebunskaya knows how to bring about situations that will lead her to success. Perhaps this is why I enjoy planting so much. Success is right around the corner. I can’t help feeling rich.

This weekend I’m going plant hunting. My backyard is nice but it needs color for the intimate wedding a week from Sunday. My hope is to find a red Japanese Maple tree, hydrangeas, and maybe some vincas. The bargains have to be there or I won’t buy. Even when Joe isn’t working under wage and benefit cuts, 99.9 percent of my purchases will be discounted. I rarely pay full price. Great buys make me feel like I’m contributing to the household, successful. I’ll need pots and potting mix as well. So wish me luck. I’m looking forward to more planting, this time for a young couple in love. Another good day, for sure. Copyright © 2010 Dianne Marie Andre