I would never claim to be a gardener. For starters, I don’t like getting my hands dirty. I know very little about flowers and greenery, and I don’t have a lot of interest in learning more. I don’t like bugs or worms or what-have-you. And I don’t like kneeling on the grass or weeding.
But! I like beauty. My home is very important to me and no matter where that is, I quickly make the space mine. My friends tell me I’m a “nester.” I used to change my dishes and trinkets every season and love changing different color schemes that each season brings.
These days, I live on the first floor of a two story condo building. My patio faces a fence and when I sit on the couch, my view out the sliding doors is what I lovingly call my “land.” Sure, it is small. But it is my view, and I make sure it’s pretty since I sit on the couch a lot!
When I first moved here almost 10 years now, the fence was the only thing I could see (boring). I started adding a little area for mulch and flowers. Each year I came up with a few new ideas. One of my best decisions was to add a slow-growing evergreen tree between each fence panel.
This year, I asked a lovely woman who does love gardening to help me. I paid her a very modest sum to do the things I don’t like to do, like the edging. Planting flowers is not my favorite thing to do, but I do enjoy the maintenance. I’m faithful to watering, fertilizing, and trimming the buds. And my flowers do very well.
Like many of you, I sometimes go too fast through life and don’t take time to appreciate each day. As I work on my land this summer, I stopped and realized some of the joys and lessons my little garden has taught me.
There were several reasons I didn’t start buying flowers until June (which is typically around Mother’s Day) this year. When I was ready, I discovered everything seemed “picked-over.”
As you might imagine, a fence is a perfect place for hanging flowers…of course! I have hooks on every fence panel. Working part time at Wegmans, I saw a lovely cone flower hanger back in May, full of pink petunias (Yes, pink is my flower theme). But, it was more money than I wanted to spend.
Fast forward to June, that same planter was 50% off. How could I resist? As I was checking out and the cashier was trying to find the price tag, I mentioned how pretty it was. The cashier kind of gave me the “eye,” as I was placing it carefully in my cart. When I looked down in the cart, I saw what she saw. Since no one had clipped the dead flowers off, the plants/planter was actually pretty sad. No wonder the cashier had looked at me like that.
Once I got home, I quickly cleaned up all the dead buds, watered them, and fertilized it. It wasn’t too long before the flowers returned to their original beauty. I wish I could show that cashier how its beauty has returned—with some love and care.
Last year I bought a little container I thought was perfect for my little patio table. When I bought it, the garden store had already planted several unknown plants in it. I watered it all summer and was very pleased with how they all grew and lasted all season.
I wasn’t sure what to do with that container this year and even thought about bringing it back to where I bought it to fill it again. One day, I found a package of little artificial plants at Goodwill. It gave me an easy solution. I used some soil I had in a bag from last year and added some to the container. Perfect. It looked almost real and it would be green!
As the weeks went on, we had some rain here and there, and I started seeing a few leaves that I didn’t think were part of those fake plants. Hmmm. How could that be? I decided maybe I should give the container a little water. To my surprise, yes indeed, the leaves grew, and in time, some cute little flowers emerged!
What a fun surprise to see those little flowers. Who could have imagined that the soil, a year old, still held a few flower seeds that given the right care, would find their way to blossom!
Several years ago, I bought a 10” pot of a blue hydrangeas (at Wegmans, of course). When I was growing up, my mom had them all along the side of our house. People used to compliment her on them. I didn’t get it at the time, now, when I see hydrangeas, I think of her.
I planted that pot near a couple of unsightly fans next to our building on “my” land. My hope was that the bush would grow large enough to hide its ugliness.
The next spring I was surprised the flowers that appeared were pink—not blue. Not knowing anything about hydrangeas (re-read first paragraph), I decided to do a little research. I learned that hydrangea flowers can start out as blue, but it doesn’t mean you will get blue flowers ever again. I discovered it was all about the soil. It doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever. At the time, I was determined to get my blue flowers back and experimented with the suggestions I found., To no avail.
Eventually, I embraced pink flowers or whatever color showed up. I just wanted flowers. (And since I have recently come up with a pink “theme” on my land, they fit in perfectly.)
Over the years, the bush grew quite nicely. But last year, I was disappointed to only get 2 pink flowers. Early this spring, I was ready to pull the whole bush up and plant something else. Thank goodness I didn’t act too soon! This year, the bush is full of (pink) blooms. My gardener friend credits the wet spring we had. I even have enough flowers to cut and bring in to enjoy indoors. It brings me a lot of joy seeing all the flowers.
Unfortunately, the bush doesn’t really hide that ugly air conditioner. Luckily, I can’t see it from my couch.
Of course, there are many things in life when I have wanted to throw in the towel and give up.
But can you imagine being a spider? I go around almost daily, removing all the spider webs along the fence and my patio. I clean them off and Wah-la!
The next day, the webs are back! Sure, it’s annoying for me to have to remove them yet again, but can you imagine being that spider (if he escaped my wrath) thinking, “Oh no. I have to rebuild yet again…”
Don’t give up!
Final garden joy for you:
Although this song has been around for several decades (and sung by a few of my folk/country favorite singers), I only heard it a few years ago.
I smile every time I hear it. I encourage you to take a few minutes and listen to it too.. follow the YouTube link to John Denver’s “The Garden Song.” Enjoy!
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