Summer here is about the garden and travel around
Maine and art shows with Ed, the photographer. We’ll see how it all fits together.
I’ve been working on the spring clean-up, planting, and
general garden chores for the last 6 weeks now. The vegetables are in, the peas are climbing, the
beans are up, the asparagus delicious. The shade garden and perennial beds are weeded, the
roses are fertilized and mulched, the raspberries are (mostly) cleaned
out. The parts that get
mowed are mowed. The garden
and fields look so neat.
It’s taken the two of us 6 weeks to get to this point.
I know that all this neatness is just an illusion – and
temporary.
One day of rain and a couple of days of sun, and all the
weeds will be back, the peas will be doing their best to avoid the trellises,
and the tomatoes will have suddenly sprawled before I remembered to stake
them. The peonies will bloom
and the next downpour will flatten them, at the same time that it knocks over
the delphinium stalks and bends their flowers into S curves.
Bugs I’ve never seen before will materialize and chomp their
way through the squash or the eggplants, late blight will blow in from
somewhere, and a three day absence will produce what looks like a hayfield
instead of a lawn. The
chipmunks will plant sunflower seeds in the middle of the tomatoes. The bamboo will do its best to
jump forward another three feet.
The grapevine will attempt to swallow the deck.
Until August I’ll be racing to catch up, and then, finally,
racing to catch up with the sudden bounty of vegetables, tomatoes, apples
– and leaves.
But for right now,
my garden looks very neat.
It’s trying to fool me.
