The Garden Has Entered Its Baroque Period

It’s July and everything has changed.

Now the garden is a grand opera production. No one here seems to care about etiquette or decorum. There is no restraint. That boat sailed months ago.

Each year during the height of summer season, something happens. The garden literally explodes. One day it’s a pristine and well-behaved garden of greens, and the next it’s an explosion of color and foliage. At first, you don’t really take notice. In May everything is small and neatly arranged. Lettuce behaves itself, tomatoes grow straight and strong. Each little bed is carefully groomed and tidy. You can walk through the garden without being attacked from behind by the runner beans. The entire area appears to have been manicured so well that it makes you want to announce “I did that” to anyone nearby while pointing at your tidy rows of lettuce.

You stand there with your arms crossed admiring your creation thinking, “I’m good at this.” Nature catches wind of your confidence and begins to laugh.

July comes along and brings its flair of bling and gold brocade. All of a sudden, you’re not planting anymore - you’re lost in a garden version of 1800s Versailles. Stems wrap around each other, bloom, collapse, grow. Every part of the garden is excessive - as if every single plant thinks it’s the main attraction; loaded with flowers, fruits, even mold, dripping with whatever wildness nature decided to pull out of the back of her closet.

Tomatoes hang heavy with juicy red gems that seem to know their time is limited. You bring in trellises and stakes and bind them tightly together. You talk softly to them hoping some sort of magic will happen. It doesn’t matter how hard you fight it, they still fall to the ground.

A single yellow leaf pops up and suddenly the rest of the tomato plant is acting like it might pass out at any moment. You spend hours digging in the dirt searching for clues (insects, curses, etc.) while the tomato drops several of its blossoms as revenge and turns its back on you.

Meanwhile, the squash is on a mission. It takes over everything, burrowing under fences and sending monstrous zucchinis wherever it pleases. Under a leaf, you’ll find a zucchini the size of a baseball bat, just waiting for you like it was the punchline of a joke.

No one needs this much zucchini, but you’re helpless to stop it. Squash vs. Humans = a match made in heaven. Or hell. It’s hard to tell which. By August, all illusions have disappeared. Now, you’ve resorted to hiding zucchinis in baskets on porches, stuffing them into mailboxes and passing them out in old grocery bags like they were gifts from a crazy aunt instead of an admission of desperation.

Flowers? Sunflowers tower above you like smug guards. Bee balm blazes bright red and buzzes with bees like it’s the hippest new nightclub in town. Dahlias change outfits daily. And trumpet vine? Trumpet vine goes Miami-spring-break wild, ripping through gutters and dragging chunks of the house with it.

Not even the weeds are immune to the madness. That pesky thistle you thought you killed? It’s back - bigger and badder than before - daring you to try again. Pokeweed lurks in the shadows ruling over everything in sight. And bindweed wraps itself around poor rosemary like an angry ex.

Under all this mess somewhere is probably the chair where I’m certain I used to sit.

As for the herbs, they showed their true colors, too. Cilantro rolls over at the slightest provocation. Basil bolts when you finally see it. Parsley is temperamental, dill throws in the towel entirely - and mint? Well, mint is out of control - you can’t contain it - maybe you can’t even describe it anymore. It has a map of your yard and is planning the next patch it wants to conquer.

But every morning we’re out there. Carrying baskets and armed with pruning shears, trying to look composed (although we’d love to admit otherwise). We tie things up and pluck off leaves, crawl through the dirt underground and emerge with plants we never wanted to grow in the first place. We mutter “needs air” like it matters a whit, trapped in a jungle big enough to lose a rock band in.

Okay. This isn’t gardening anymore. This is theater: plants, insects, plots galore.

In springtime we dream and draw up plans. Summer arrives and our gardens have other ideas. And by mid-July we’re nothing more than gluttons feeding excess.

That’s why we keep coming back. Because it defies us - disregards our plans - hides all of our attempts at organization beneath an endless sea of excess and zucchini.

It spills across stone slabs, drinking from everywhere it likes, demanding even more compost as if it owns the joint.

So, we surrender. What else can we do?

May your garden run amok, may your shade hold firm, and may your zucchini capers remain safely under the radar.

-G