the September garden:
Thinking of year one in the garden, all I can say in summary is "surprise." I put a few sunflower seeds down, only to watch the young stalks be mowed down by rabbits, then miraculously shoot up again and bring hundreds of bees out of hiding. I put a few little herb transplants side by side, then struggled to find enough room for them as they outgrew my expectations. My kale grew short and bushy and my amaranth grew tall and spindly, completely messing up my attempts at ornamental-edible.
Surprise, we accomplished more in a summer than I was going to allow myself to do, surprise, home ownership makes a fiend out of me, surprise, let's put rocks between the pavers and not creeping chamomile. Surprise, we have really great friends, though that should not have come as a surprise.
I treat gardening as an experiment. Part of me thinks that after a few good experimental years I would have a better grasp on this stuff: what works in Minnesota, how big things get, how to get carrots to germinate... but I still feel like I'm just fooling, just playing around, and I never know what to expect. Now I'm beginning to think that that's how gardening is supposed to be - that "experiment" is the wrong word because it connotes repeatable results, and no garden I know has grown the same way twice. Maybe "conversation" is a better description of what I'm doing out there - making little suggestions, getting some sassy vegetable retort, confessing "I love you anyway," and seeing the discussion from a different perspective - but that makes me sound a bit crazy, doesn't it.
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| the changing landscape |
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