I'm a rather solitary gardener. When I moved to my present house about 20 years ago, I'm sure my new neighbors thought me quite the snob or just plain unsociable.
I was always preoccupied with gardening chores. Sandy ground, which passed for soil, required weekly trips to the town's compost facility as I'd yet to establish a pile of my own, bed designs awaited deployment, and once planting began, the demands of my garden became paramount and daily. With head down, on hands and knees or in the proverbial gardener's pose (bent at the waist and butt in the air) or just lost in thoughts while weeding planting, pruning or turning the newly established compost pile, there just never seemed to be any time to chat. Rushing to water this, apply shade cloth to that, or lying in wait with coffee can and lid in hand to catch and release yet another vole from the hole where once grew a plant, I admit to purposely avoiding conversations with neighbors. My gardener's brain calculated each moment spent talking equated to one less transplanted perennial or one more vulnerable seedling quivering,unprotected, without its cutworm collar. At times, I felt unable to offer a mere quick wave in response to my neighbor's " Good morning" , and the thought of one of them offering to tag along as I went about my chores sent shivers down my spine.
Of course I felt terribly guilty. I'm really not the least unsociable. Quite the contrary. I've never been known to shy away from discussions or pass up an opportunity to initiate a conversation even with a total stranger. But my unapproachable gardening personna in my new neighborhood must have appeared terribly rude. To assuage my guilt I'd reassure myself that my neighbors just didn't understand the reason for my all-consuming preoccupation because they weren't gardeners. Otherwise, they'd surely realize that I must seize every available opportunity to tend my garden. It wasn't a matter of choice, I reasoned. I had convinced myself that my behavior was a necessity. Yeah, that was it. " Necessity" . Or so I told myself.
While a garden certainly requires diligence and commitment, many gardeners are quite capable at multi-tasking their chores with chat and welcome human companionship while they garden. But, I finally had to admit, and do so now, publicly, that I was, and still am, one of those gardeners who simply prefer to garden alone and uninterrupted.
Setting back on my knees, tilting my head upwards and drinking it all in or hauling wheelbarrows, planting, transplanting, edging, weeding, pruning or battling with those infuriating curly hoses, which surely were invented by a non-gardening sadist, is all part of my time in the garden to decompress. Exchange stress, worries and anxieties for the peace, quiet and respite offered there. To fully partake in the whole experience, I have to experience it alone. Or sort of.
I may not want human accompaniment in the garden, but that doesn't preclude non humans.
Barring any ET companions phoning home from my gazebo as I weed, my company of choice are those garden friends who meander through, around and over the garden even when I'm absent. Friends who are there as I sip my morning coffee and plan the day's chores. Friends who find refuge in my garden at night. Friends who still toil long after the sun sets. Friends who keep me entertained, fascinated, intrigued and educated. Friends who make me feel special because they've chosen my garden patch to call their permanent residence or, at least, temporary vacation home.
They don't care if the grass is a bit too tall, or if run off from the rainbarrel has created a muddy gullies. Nor do they mind those weeds I overlooked or the white puffballs of dandelions gone to seed in the lawn. The spent purple coneflowers I never got around to deadheading are welcome sights to their eyes, and the overgrown and grungy parsley planted too far from the kitchen door only amounts to poor planning on my part.
Squirrels and chipmunks, for instance, prefer an unmowed lawn now and then. Provides safe cover for their continuous runs from the woods to the sunflower seed scattered below the feeders. Butterflies bask in the mud puddles pausing to cool and drink. Rabbits, deer and woodchuck always appreciate an appetizer of errant weeds. Parsley that never made it to the kitchen, is a swallowtail larva's open invitation to lunch, and coneflower stems sway under the delicate balance of featherweight goldfinches who find the prickly seedheads quite the treat.
I await no verbal compliments from these garden friends about my (hah) gardening expertise or my perfectly curved borders. No words at all for that matter. We don't even speak the same language. Yet despite our dissimilarities, we do manage to communicate. On a different level. We understand what's important for each others' existence in the garden. I provide them with water, birdseed, understory plants, evergreens, nectar-filled flowers and vines and those occasional weeds... and they provide their company. I consider that a more than fair exchange and often wonder who reaps the greater reward.
For the most part they're well-behaved. Save for the aforementioned voles. No, I'm not exactly thrilled when the woodchuck who lives under my shed, makes daily raids on the tomato plants or occasionally topples a favorite perennial. Nor am I particularly overjoyed when the rotten egg/ garlic/ hot pepper spray no longer deters the deer from grazing my hostas and lysimachia. Neither do I relish constantly removing the scattered clumps of germinated sunflower seed, deposited in every nook, cranny, bed, box and pot by over-stuffed cheeky chipmunks.
Sure, I'll bite my lip and scuff the soil when they push my limits of tolerance, but it's a tradeoff I willingly accepted years ago. After all, I can hardly oooh and ahhh over the monarch gliding on warm currents above the milkweeds and scorn squirrels' divots in the lawn at the same time. Well... I could. But I don't. I'm taking the good with the not so good. That's what friends do if they both benefit from each others' company in the end.
My initial reason for gardening was to please myself and carry on a tradition. Hopefully, I'd educate myself in the process as well. I thought, if I arranged my garden in such a way to bring pleasure to my senses and stimulate my mind, that would be enough. But, endeavoring to please myself, I found I was also pleasing my non-human friends, which ultimately served to enhance my true appreciation and joy of gardening overall. Like every living thing, my garden had a purpose. It just took me awhile to recognize it. My friends, waiting out there in the woods, or on the wing, knew it all along.
To encourage the company of my friends: the songbirds, hummingbirds, birds of all kinds, butterflies, toads, pollinating bees, all other beneficials and...yes, even chipmunks, groundhogs, deer, rabbits and any other creatures who choose my patch over which to fly, on which to trod and into which to burrow, I've devised my garden's objective to provide them all a safe and natural habitat, by using no pesticides or herbicides and trying to incorporate as many native plants and specific plants in the hopes of attracting a variety of species.
Rejuvenating my garden each spring, therefore, requires more than just manual labor, but researching and learning more of how I can improve and maintain an environmentally safe haven for my friends.
For years I refused to cut down the lower, remaining half of a red oak that had cracked and severed the year after we moved here. It wasn't a danger to the house and Downy woodpeckers were returning each year to nest in a hollowed opening just below where the tree had separated. Two winters ago, gale-force winds finally toppled the avian retreat. But, we're still blessed with several new families of downys each year. There's always room at this inn. A perfectly woven nest in my barberry, had been redecorated for four seasons by what I assumed to be the offspring of each previous season's catbird family. Only last spring, did a family of cardinals move in. They put in a new floor, repaired the walls and added flourishes all their own.
While there's still little time to chat, I can always pause to be mesmerized by bumble bees with powdery pollen-covered booties, sinking their proboscis deep inside a single hyssop blossom. Or enjoy the distraction of graceful monarchs, viceroys, hyperactive skippers and stained-glass swallowtails dangling from pendulous clusters of pink, purple, red or white buddleias. Their wings breathing...in...and out. There's no tiring of noting the varied and distinct bathing and drinking habits of each bird species. And how could I not spare the moments it takes to stand motionless as the familiar whirring buzz of tiny helicopter wings hovers near my head. If you've experienced it, you know there's something magical about staring face to face (or face to long-pointed beak) with an iridescent green and red hummingbird.
Over these twenty years, my neighbors have come to understand and respect my penchant for uninterrupted garden time. They know it's not a matter of being unsociable. They know it's just my way of clearing away my mental cobwebs and airing the place out. We've since all become supportive and close. When I do set down my trowel, clean up a bit, never quite removing all the dirt from under my alleged fingernails, and we get together at the road's edge, a bordering hedge or share a cup of coffee on the front porch, the conversation oddly drifts to that strange new bird one saw the other day or how many deer were in another's backyard or the inordinate number of butterflies they'd all seen that year.
I'd like to think some of my garden friends were visiting the neighbors while their innkeeper at home changed the sheets, fluffed their pillows and set rosepetals on the beds.
LINDA
Copyright©Linda M. Frank 2005 All Rights Reserved
(This column is dedicated to my dear friend, Janet, who's heart is as big as the outdoors she loves and who's never met a birdfeeder she didn't like.)