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psychedelic label with the cartoon-y frog on it so I grab a bottle. On the
counter are those new neoprene-and-cloth two-toned garden gloves that
look like something you’d wear while urchin diving. My gloves at home
have more dirt in them than on them, so I add a pair to my purchase.
On the way home I shamelessly snatch a leafless Charlie Brown ficus
tree from a neighbor’s curbside green bin. I gently place it in the bed of
my truck and hope nobody sees.
Back at my garden I realize I didn’t remember the squatty tub-shaped
container I originally went there for. I put aside the pot-bound bamboo
and move on to the tomato plants. Since I have an urgent need to amend,
I think it best to work some compost into the bed first which works me up
into a weeding frenzy.
“This furor of planting, potting,
and pruning is a phenomenon
known to every diehard gardener.
It’s puttering or tinkering but with
a mad vengeance – a manic,
frenzied, task-driven, euphoric
state of horticultural bl iss.”
The phone is ignored. Friends invite. It is imperative that I divide
another orchid. Task completed, I hang orchid and new, wood slatted
basket in the lemon tree. While up on the ladder I remove some of the
dead wood from the tree and pick some lemons for a neighbor. I fill a
bucket then go back up to get some more for the gals at the coffee place.
While spiraling into this vortex of gardening, cuttings are taken and
seeds are saved or planted. Heirloom plants are divided, soaked and fed and
as those same cuttings, shoots and sprouts morph into hanging baskets,
vines and shrubs, I can’t help thinking another plant sale is imminent...
Gardening
Is Its Own Reward
Personally, I don’t always need a striking or surprise bloom as a reward
for the gardening I do. Watching the newborn, almost iridescent green
root tips emerge on a fleshy-leaved laelia orchid that I’ve recently mounted
onto an oak slab is usually all it takes. The sparkly lavender-colored flowers
are a bonus.
The longer I play with plants, the more I love playing with plants.
After a workday of pruning, feeding, weeding and watering for other folks,
I enthusiastically go home and do the same in my own garden. Once there,
as I go from one pruning or repotting task to another, time stands still or
rather it goes so fast that before I know it I have to tear into another sack
of bat guano-fortified potting soil by the dim glow of my porch light. This
furor of planting, potting, and pruning is a phenomenon known to every
diehard gardener. It’s puttering or tinkering but with a mad vengeance – a
manic, frenzied, task-driven, euphoric state of horticultural bliss. Picture an
over caffeinated zombie with a green thumb and a rake.
One friend refers to it as being in “the gardening zone.” Another calls
it dinking. “I was out in the garden dinking,” she’ll report to me with a
blissful sigh and a pair of Felco #2 pruning shears holstered on her hip like
a six-shooter.
Dinking for me goes something like this: I venture out into my
garden in the morning and discover that I should thin out and clean up
my special “variety unknown” container-grown bamboo. Deciding instead
that it should be divided, I go to the nursery to pick up a second squatty
tub-shaped container. At the nursery, I spot some tomato plants that I
must
have. I remember to get potting soil for the bamboo and then can’t
resist some Veronica ‘Georgia Blue’ ground cover that I always wanted to
try in a large pot. At the checkout counter there’s a flashy display featuring
a new liquid organic plant food. I don’t need any but am drawn to its