|
My Profile
Because I can't bear to eulogize Doug - 2008-08-19
|
4:45 p.m. - 2003-06-11
The peonies are open! As are the iris. The poppies are finished. The poor things hardly had a chance this year. No sooner had they bloomed than the rain started. Weeks of pounding rain beat the petals right off them. The mess in the driveway edge bed has finally gown tall enough so I can see what's a weed and what's not. Total gardening virgin (at least with perennials), it’s been tough for me. I just don’t know what’s what. Like the poppies. The base leaves look like really nasty hairy dandelions. Small mercy that my health has been so crappy this year and I’ve barely enough energy to walk around the yard, let alone go on a rampage weeding and pruning. Otherwise those poppies would have been ripped up. I’d be none the wiser if I had ripped them out, but what a waste! Next year I’ll know that the hairy dandelions are actually poppies and will weed accordingly. Anything with long palm frond type leaves is easy. Tulips, daffs, hyacinth, lily-of-the-valley, iris, etc, even a plant moron like me can tell those are SOMETHING. I might not know what they are before they bloom, but I know better than to yank them out. When MIL was here she wandered my new yard around cooing and sighing. My poor MIL has been struggling for 20 years now to make the blasted barren hardpan of her Central Texas yard grow something more than needle grass and cacti. I think she’s done a marvelous job of making that forsaken desert bloom, but she doesn’t. She’s from Eastern Washington and believes her efforts in Texas have almost been for naught. She grew up in a place with miles deep topsoil and decent weather. Every single person in her hometown has a garden that makes Versailles look like a weed patch. My MIL looks at her Texas rose bushes, stunted twigs with one lonely bloom on each and compares them to the tumbled masses of roses which hide her mother’s garbage bin and cries. During her recent visit MIL would look at a clump of some nascent green tips poking up and say, “Looks like you’ve got some terrific pachysandra here.” And I’d nod and act like I knew what the hell pachysandra was. “And look at this! Bleeding heart! Elephant noses! Heather! Weeping bumblethrush! Gordon fern! Globdecopia!” To me all this stuff looked pretty much the same; green leafy things. MIL was kind enough not to say aloud what I KNEW she was thinking, to wit: That this horticultural wonderland was totally wasted on black thumbed me. But I’m learning. Taking notes too. Next year not only will the poppies be safe, but everything which was lovingly cultivated by the previous-previous owner of the Hobbit House. I mean to do Marie proud. I hope she’s looking down from Heaven and smiling. Newbie or not, I love her garden and WILL rescue it from 7 years of neglect or at least half kill myself trying. Can any of you gardening experts out there recommend a simple straightforward gardening book with pictures? I have “Gardening For Dummies” and “The Idiot’s Guide to Green Things”, but I think I’m going need all the help I can get. Pondering the mystery which is my new garden, ~LA Today’s Pick: “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” by Lynne Anderson
|
