the miserable gardener

A favorite line from H. Allen Smith’s How To Write Without Knowing Nothing. I could use a haircut, though; I look like a dandelion gone to seed, or at least I feel like one.

Coming back from our morning walk, before the garden is opened for visitors, what’s the first thing I see? Weeds, of course. They must have sprung up overnight. Now, if I pulled them, no one would notice that they were there in the first place, so how could I say something like “Look at this area that was filled with weeds and now isn’t” without sounding like a complete weirdo?

In truth, I don’t care as much about weeds as I pretend to. I do care about contemplating piles of junk, and after the recent construction here, that’s what I have. A small one, to be sure, but still a pile of junk I have to do something about. A pile of junk that will be the first thing people see when they come into the back yard.

Wait. I know, I’ll call it something. Still life, with wood and steel. Perfect.

It’s for sale, too.

The garden is going to be open for a tour tomorrow. I made a list of things to do and promptly lost it. Whatever I do will be the wrong thing, anyway.

There are some obvious things like “leave shed door open so no one will notice you never finished painting”, and less obvious things that I only notice when people are standing right next to it.

I have a pool, or, rather, a “water feature”. It’s a hole in the ground with water in it. I did this all by myself, so you can see the rubber lining, and even the huge wrinkles in the lining where my genius for design failed me. The water level keeps dropping, too.

It used to have a dwarf water lily in it, but the dog, when he was much younger, spent so much time in the pool the water lily lay on it side in two feet of water. The dog lost interest in the pool about the same time I lost interest in water lilies; now I have a corkscrew rush and a variegated iris growing it in. The plants stay in their pots over the winter.

Every so often I put some fish in the pool; they’re happy for a couple of weeks and then they mysteriously disappear.

I have to empty the pool, which has no pump or filter, every few months, when a thick film of scum lies on the surface and evil-looking bubbles rise to the top, but other than that, it’s pretty much maintenance-free, and a real joy to behold.