A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself. — May Sarton
Your first job is to prepare the soil. The best tool for this is your neighbor’s garden tiller. If your neighbor does not own a garden tiller, suggest that he buy one. — Dave Barry
Early Rhodie
Tim is the product of a full-blooded English father and a half-English mother, so it’s no surprise that he loves to garden. In the matter of gardening, I clearly did not get my Italian family’s genes (except when it comes to tomatoes) because I can kill most plants just by looking at them, and my wimpy, weak back is not made for bending over for hours on end. Oh, sure, I can cultivate a mean african violet or two, but that’s about it. I’d rather buy sunflowers from the grocery store and admire them on the kitchen table while Tim is sweating up a storm outside.
It’s spring here in Virginia as I write this and we’ve already had a few different weather patterns thrust upon us in the last few weeks – temperatures ranging from 36º to 95º with both thunderous rainstorms and near-drought conditions. The locals say it’s pretty typical, but we still can’t get used to it. In New England, where we came from, spring was a very predictable 24-hour affair that happened some time in early June and then immediately gave way to summer. Today is, as a friend of mine used to say, “a perfect San Francisco day,” but it will be up near 90º within 48 hours.
A little contemplative spot
So it is spring and Tim has been planting for weeks. His tomato seeds are coming up nicely and he’s augmented them with some mature plants from the store. He’s put in peppers and spinach and a variety of lettuces. He announced yesterday that his cantaloupes look healthy and that if we watch them very carefully we might be able to get one or two away from the squirrels this year.
The lovely Climatis
I love that he does this. Vegetables and a full herb garden are wondrous things to have for the four or five months that we can enjoy them down here. But Tim’s flowers are what really get to me. They come early and last only a short time. But they make me smile. Here are a few pictures of this year’s selection — and a few garden-related poems.
Travel into our picture garden and then into a few poets’ words: my poem about tulips and then, for a grin, Dorothy Parker’s thorny piece about one perfect rose . . .
Peonies, just before the big bloom
Tulips
In four years I have not taken the tulip bulbs
out of the ground and done what people say I should:
bury them in the basement, hide them in the dark —
as if it isn’t dark enough under ground?
It is part of my continuing carelessness with plants.
Nevertheless, they grow, a little wild, perhaps, and unpredictable.
The tulips, once pure whites and stately reds, are now all pink,
a heathered pale hue that seems honest, a pink that joins
the best of both in their strong petals, not quite filled in
completely, like the haphazard coloring of an inattentive child.
Still, they return each year when late April chills give way
to the warming skies of May. And for a while they stand
above everything else in that little plot of promise,
announcing another safe passage, in spite of my neglect —
proclaiming the covenant of cycles, fueled by water, sun,
and the spirit-rich earth which holds the memory of tulips
for another year.
© 2010 Linda Dini Jenkins
One Perfect Rose |
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Buon viaggio!
Linda Dini Jenkins is a card-carrying Italophile, travel planner, freelance writer, and amateur photographer. Travel is her passion, so writing about her travels just comes naturally. She hopes all her travelers find a way to express their joys, surprises, and fears as they travel and gives every traveler a nifty journal to help smooth the way. Learn more…
