Back in the saddle again! Back to days of dirty fingernails, a sunburned neck, intensive reconnections with the earth...and intense pain!
The end of my first full week of gardening found me lying practically motionless on the couch with an ice pack on my right knee and another across the top of my left foot where my husband accidentally (or so he claims) dropped an iron mallet while pounding in a fence support. Painfully lifting my sore right arm (my digging arm) to adjust the cold compress on my forehead and with my other hand, struggling to reach the controls for the heating pad, radiating its soothing warmth to my lower back, but needing to be kicked up a notch, I froze when the calf muscle in my left leg began its convulsive dance.
"JIM! Come. Quick. Cramp. Calf. Can't move!!", the words reverberating down each vertebrae of my spine. Hobbling from the bedroom, his own knee wrapped in a velcro-secured ice pack, my husband limped to my side and massaged the visibly twitching muscle.
"Ooooh, better. Going away. Oh, oh, no...it's traveling. Hamstring! Have to stretch it! Must stand!" Ice pack falling, compress sliding down behind my neck and defying the swollen knee joint and discs in my lower back as they rubbed and clanked against each other, bone on bone (wonderful sound, even more wonderful imagery), I stomped my foot on the floor out of sheer frustration and to work out the knot that was slowly turning my foot inward in a most unnatural position. With circulation returning, I felt it was safe to sit down without fear of it seizing up again as it often does when you let down your guard.
I grabbed two more Advils and passed the bottle to my husband. As I tossed them back and heard another crack of cartilage in my neck, I wondered if, perhaps, I was getting too old for all this.
With renewed enthusiasm and reason, I returned to the garden this year obsessively determined to immerse myself into all shades of greens and browns and not come up for air till every leaf was cleared from each shrub, every bed was recovered with a new layer of compost, every soon-to-be floppy perennial was surrounded by supports, every seed sown and every seedling I'd managed to start at the last minute, was transplanted.
Spring was dispensing its usual potpourri of weather. Frost warnings and snow flurries one day. Sweltering, dripping-sweat-in-your-eyes heat the next. Soil, plants, birds, and insects were as confused as my furnace. Blowing hot air today and air conditioning tomorrow. It's that time of year when nurseries can lose entire displays, yet recoup their losses the following week by hauling out their greenhouse-protected inventories and selling the same varieties to those, dissapointed, overly impatient gardeners, who just two weeks before jumped the season and regrettably purchased and planted tender annuals and tomato plants too soon before the last frost free date, having them turn to mush overnight.
Finally, the weather would commit itself to the season and temperatures consistently hovered in the upper 50's and 60's, presenting those picture-perfect Spring planting days. The soil no longer oozed mud or formed a plaster-like cast in my fist when a handful was squeezed. It had become warm and friable. So, as soon as I found a pair of last year's gardening pants that actually fit (my hardest gardening challenge thus far this year) and I scavenged a pair of gloves (even though they didn't match at least one was a right hand and the other a left) I enthusiastically sallied forth into my patch of the great outdoors with pruners, bucket, rake, hose connecters and wheelbarrow in tow. I sallied and I sallied. Till sundown. The first, second, third and unto the seventh day, I sallied my gardening buns off. Till finally, my buns and the rest of my body cried out: "Please! No more. We need to lie down. We need a hot bath. We need to remember we're no longer 25 or 35 or even..." (Well, we won't go there).
I'd knelt, bent, stretched my legs to degrees they weren't meant to be stretched, raked, dug, hauled, shoveled, planted, transplanted and must have walked about 10 miles alone that first day just traipsing back and forth from the front garden, to the shed, to the back vegetable garden, to the garage, again to the shed, to the front garden once more. Again and again and so on. For a bigger shovel. A container of kelp. Another rake. A razor knife. A piece of string. A tissue. I expended a winter's worth of pent up energy in one week and my muscles and joints were facing major meltdown.
Referring to tasks which were left undone last fall, thus creating that much more to do now, served as my explanation to excuse such overzealousness this year. Clearing the beds alone would cut into precious time usually spent with spring chores. I would never get everything planted. Seed would never be sown in time. I'd have to drastically cut back potentially floppy perennials, delaying their bloom even further because there wouldn't be moments to spare to fashion proper supports for them. However, in the light of yet another picture-perfect gardening day, I had to confess this sense of urgency and masochistic disregard for my aging joints and muscles was pretty much par for the course each year. No matter what the reasons, my gardening mentality in early spring for over 20 years now, has been that everything has to be done "yesterday". But, when I realize the heating pad is attached around my waist for longer periods of time than my garden tool belt and that for every day I garden at this pace, my penance is two days on my back, I'm forced to once again remind myself that everything finds its balance. Some things will get done. Some won't. I shouldn't lament those I can't accomplish, but spend that time concentrating on those which I can. Moreover, acknowledge the support which serendipitously picks up my slack, purposely pitches in wherever I need it, and, in general, enables me to enjoy my garden rather than be a slave to it.
The first players on my support team come in the form of those reliable garden helpers: the volunteers. Not a cadre of white-gloved ladies in gingham and straw hats serving tea and potting up a geranium or two. These volunteers are the seedlings which fortuitously germinated from seeds of last year's annuals and veteran perennials. I’ve come to rely upon them more and more each year. The key to cultivating them is to recognize them in their baby state. I never pull anything when it’s merely sporting its cotyledons unless I'm 100% certain of its lineage. Weed or welcome visitor? Friend or foe? I wait for positive i.d. of its true leaves, and if I recognize it as a friendly, I'll coddle and leave it where it grows. Initially. I don't count on remembering what each seedling looks like in its infancy and years ago found that pictures taken at this point can be a helpful guide in successive seasons. Nowadays, there are many websites which specifically provide both weed and desired flower seedling identification. Unless it falls into that "I-don't-know-what-the-heck-you-are-but-I-know-you're-not-a-weed category", I'll leave it. Even then, there's some mighty attractive weeds that I don't mind cultivating in my garden. As they say, "One woman's weed is another's wildflower".
I wait till they're about six or eight inches tall and they've developed a good enough root system. Then, under cover of an overcast sky, after or during (my personal preference) a light rain when the soil is nicely pre moistened, I'll slap on my rain hat and slicker, half fill a wide tub or basin with some soil or shredded leaves and go volunteer search and rescue. Most I'll leave right where they grow. Others, I'll either pot up or move directly to another spot in the garden that's more to my liking. In the fall I'll hasten things along by popping the ripe seed heads on as many plants and varieties as I can and just scatter the seed where their host plants grew. I figure if I liked them where they were growing that year, why not hedge my bet that they might flourish again in the same spot. But the unexpected, unplanned for surprises are those propagated by the wind, the plants themselves, or “other elements”.
Those "other elements" are the unpaid, often unnoticed and, yes, sometimes, unwelcome undergardeners. The paws and beaks of those critters flying over and scurrying under most gardeners. A seed or two is picked up on little feet or caught in a feather and deposited elsewhere. Sometimes it’s a more direct give and take. Eat a seed. Leave a seed. It all comes out in the end or it’s regurgitated. Whichever way the deposit is made, the arrangement of volunteers can seem less haphazard at times and almost purposely planned as if by some masterminding cheeky designers.
"Hey, Chip, (Dig...Dig...Dig) I personally think The Lady's all wrong about the placement of these Salvia farinacea. (Dig...Dig...) They belong further back in the border for more contrast. (Dig...Dig...) Here. Near this variegated artemesia. (Dig...Dig...Dig) Ptooey!"
"Oh, Dale, what an eye you have! You are ever so the Martha Stewart of chipmunks!" (Tamp...Tamp...Tamp)
Volunteers as a result of a gentle wind, a toppled seed head, or my designing undergardeners, are all welcomed, encouraged and appreciated with each new spring.
Then there are those literal supports which appear during the course of early gardening chores. Somehow, I may still find time later in the season to grab a couple pairs of needle-nose pliers, some heavy-gauge, galvanized wire and make my own plant supports or just cut down old store-bought tomato cages to prop up multi or weak stemmed floppers. But, the trimmings from shrubs and the perennials themselves which I prune now can be saved and ready for use as soon as I need them. Plus (music to a gardener's ears): They're free! Especially coveted are branches with a "Y" or a "V" notch or a little upward curl or hook at the top. Whole clusters of stems can be laid in the crotch or one little hooked branch can support a single, plump peony blossom. When tidying up, I’m accomplishing two tasks at once by also collecting ample, natural supports which will disappear and blend in with the plant's foliage.
Admittedly I sometimes foolishly take on far too many tasks which I'm certain will take a terrible toll on my body after the fact. But, there are those times when even my pigheadedness gives way to reason. (I must still be loopy from the pain to have admitted that.) That "reason" being: My Husband. Not only is he physically stronger, but of infinitely more patience than I.
On an unseasonably oppressive 85 degree day, he hacked, dug, wrenched and slid a 5' by 5' full-bloom spirea, with a root ball the size of a small Volkswagen, into a freshly excavated chasm he’d dug but 4 feet away. Which would have been supportive enough. But, as my husband lay prostrate and spent on the front lawn, I stared at the newly replanted monster, rested my chin in my hand and mused, "Hmmm?" Glaring up at me, in-between gasps for air, yet in a firm monotone he pleaded, "What? What's wrong?". I feared I might have pushed the supportive envelope just a wee bit too far when I dared ask if he could just nudge it over another foot or so. "Nudge? Nudge?? This thing doesn't do nudging!" But he wiped his brow, got on his belly and redug, removed and replanted the thing again. Any man who'd do that without one single, yet totally understandable expletive, as sweat blurred his vision...any man like that is my quintessential garden support. That, and the fact that he never even rolls an eye when I come home from a "short" jaunt (Hah!) to the nursery and proceed to unload plant after plant from the car like so many clowns jolting from yet another tiny Volkswagen. Rather, he stands patiently as I introduce him to each new garden addition. I used to think he was just being kind and really didn’t care if it was a new columbine or heuchera taking up residence. Until he started asking if I remembered to get the lamb’s ears or heliotropes or gaillardias he liked so much. What a perfect combination, I thought. A willing accomplice, a strong back and a strong enough love to overlook the fact that my gardening pants don't fit anymore.
Mindful of my support system and that everthing doesn't have to be accomplished in one day (a proposition I’m sure my lower back would find simultaneously hysterical and heartening), I dragged myself from the couch that evening. The only bed I looked forward to tending was my own and any vestiges of strength left would be expended on fluffing the pillows .
Our cats felt like two little elephants as they slept on our tired ankles, but we were too exhausted to move them. Before I drifted into much needed sleep, I turned my stiff neck to the right and above the blanket’s folds, I smiled at my personal and most appreciated garden support. He hadn't quite dozed off yet and winked back at me with his one open eye. "Considering the amount of pain you're in", his words muffled by the pillow and his own aches, "what are you smiling about?"
"Oh, I was just thinking of some old songs", I assured him. "It’s nothing. Get some rest and you can sleep late tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain so we can't do much outside anyway".
He opened the other eye. "So what if it does? You know you love to garden in the rain. I've got a slicker too, you know!"
Just when I think he's given me all his support, he throws out another lifeline.
I smiled again. Thinking of those songs. The Beatles had it right. In or out of the garden, I'll get by with a little help from my friends and, truly, all you really need is love. And a good heating pad.
LINDA
~~For Jim. My most treasured garden and life support.~~
Copyright©Linda M. Frank 2005 All Rights Reserved
Linda M. Frank
Linda is a writer, dried-flower crafter and above all, a passionate gardener, who lives with her husband and two cats in New Jersey. Comments can be sent to Linda at: lmfrank@farm-garden.com.