It's that sad-happy time of year when I take down my cottage garden - all in all, a little more complicated than folding up a beach umbrella, but the idea is the same. Summer is over, and Life is about to get Real again. I know there's a lot of that going around now and you, Gentle Reader, can relate.
I've always liked flowers. I grew up in the 'burbs, and my father grew roses, espaliered against the backyard fence. Most were the standard crimson, but the ones by the house were fancier - I recall one bush that yielded a bright, egg-yolk yellow bloom, and another, my favorite, was called "Tropicana" - deep orange, with the barest hint of cream staining the petals at their base. A magnificent wisteria grew up one entire side of the house - I could lean out my second-floor window and pick its flowers, if I so fancied.
The neighbors had an immense lilac that spilled over into our yard, and, feeling like a thief, I used to cut sprays of the pale purple flowers, dripping like grapes, and perfume my bedroom with my spoils. I would put them on the nightstand, next to whatever book I was currently reading under the covers by flashlight and by the side of the glass of ice water I never went to bed without, and I recall that I was as happy as a little girl with a good book and a bunch of heady, redolent blossoms to refresh her nose with from time to time could be - a latter-day edition of Francie Nolan on her fire escape in Chapter One of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.
When I was in college, I became one of the founding members of the Friends of Moningside Park, which, at the time (early 1980's) was in dire need of friends. It had been badly neglected for decades at that point, and I was told during Freshman Orientation to stay out of Morningside Park if I didn't want to be murdered. They weren't kidding. But since I never do what I'm told, and since I had a chainsaw and an ax to chop down the underbrush that had taken over the sinuous lines of this Olmsted gem, I wasn't too worried, and I went in anyway. Nowadays, like everyplace else in New York that was grungy and kind of dangerous when I was young, it's prime real estate and you can't get an affordable apartment within two dozen blocks of it.
But I had wonderful times grubbing away there, and as I worked, I would hum and sing to myself, and think of the words of Mary Lennox that I'd read under the covers on that glorious occasion when I first happened upon The Secret Garden (and I have to say, anybody who is reading that book for the first time has my envy):
"It's a secret garden, and I'm the only one in the world who wants it to be alive. . . It's the best fun I ever had in my life--shut in here and wakening up a garden."
Then I graduated, moved into an apartment, and didn't even have a window box for a very long time.
But about nine years ago, I began to spend my summers in a small Adirondack cottage that has a yard behind the house. That first year, John Wirenius and his wife Catherine came to visit. I had quite forgotten about gardening as a pastime or a pleasure by then, but my guests were living on the first floor of a house in Queens at the time - and they had a backyard. Catherine had caught the gardening bug, and she'd caught it bad. Before I knew it, there was a small patch of turned-up dirt edging the tiny patio that I'd never thought of using for anything but putting the grill and a couple of Adirondack chairs on. An unbelievably large pile of rocks and pebbles she'd dug out of the dirt was heaped on the patio itself, and Catherine, sitting on the back steps of the cottage, her hair tied back in a whale-spout, a smudge of dirt on her nose, pounding together a witch's brew of cow manure and rich black dirt that she'd bought in a bag, was explaining, "Your soil is very poor, and I've never seen so many rocks in one place, so we're going to have to put down some decent dirt or nothing's gonna grow here. By the way, I'm putting in a raised bed over there."
I was dubious, but interested.
Never one to do things by halves, Catherine spent much of the visit hollering for us to "Pull over - I see a plant nursery!" I quickly discovered that it's more fun to buy plants than jewels. Plants are bigger, the colors are brighter, and their sheer variety puts Tiffany's to shame. Pretty soon I, too, was squinting judiciously at the astilbes and muttering, "Well, yes - these will do for the shaded area next to the woods, but what about that sunny patch by the patio? Astilbes don't like too much sun . . . what about some black-eyed Susans?"
We drove our husbands crazy. Mine was waiting impatiently for us to get back in the car so we could go have some real shopping fun at the Organic Food Co-op, and hers was rolling his eyes and wondering whether there would be enough room in the car for all the books he was planning to sneak past Catherine as soon as we spotted a secondhand bookstore.
Over the years, the garden expanded, which is the way these things go. My husband has grown somewhat resigned to the fact that there is always dirt in the trunk of the car, and refers sardonically to our Saab as the Rolling Greenhouse. Pretty soon I discovered that the bright hues of the garden were attracting hummingbirds, so then of course we had to put up a hummingbird feeder. A romantic trip to the Gaspé Peninsula turned into a quest for the Perfect Birdbath, which I discovered in a shop in North Conway, NH on the way home. (It has a little mermaid perched on the edge, and the finches like to sit on her head.)
In short - I was obsessed.
Since the backyard is small-ish, I very soon found that, like Alexander the Great before me, I was grieving that there were no new worlds to conquer. Fortunately, there is a wooded area just past the lawn, impenetrably overgrown with scrub pine, maple saplings, and crappy-looking underbrush that I refer to collectively as the "Nobody-Invited-You's." Majestic pines and lissome birches are barely discernible through the thickets of junk that had sprung up over decades of neglect.
Do I have to tell you that I bought myself a present, and that it was a pair of loppers?
So I have been having a grand old time clearing out all the Nobody-Invited-You's, and every day I totter in happily after a morning of lopping, all covered in scratches and with twigs in my hair, but supremely joyful that I can now see blue sky and dappled sunlight when I look up the hill.
If there is any truth to the theory of reincarnation, then in a past life I was Pa Ingalls.
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