I don't like gardening.
I've decided.
I hate gardening.
I really hate gardening.
I'm fed up with feeding slugs - being a slug food production factory.
What I like is a garden.
Not a park. Parks are lonely.
What I like is a garden I have made - and sitting in it.
I don't care what it looks like; not especially anyway; but I do like to know it is me that put it there.
When I moved here (when there was nothing) I planted the plants which would become big(ish) trees - Cordylines, Spanish Broom, Golden Bay. Then I planted things to grow up them - Honeysuckles, Rambling Rector, Vines, Jasmine.
Then there were the slower growing plants which counted as lower growing plants - Windmill Palm, Antarctica Fern (which died) and Cordylines in pots which I grew from the seeds of the ones which now were tall.
And the never grow big plants - Blackcurrant, Whitecurrant, Crocosmia, Lavender.
And all along there have been the box bushes round the edges and an apple tree against the wall - cos that is where I began.
And the Olive Tree.
And the Lemon Balm lives. So do the chives. Tucked against the dryness of the bushes.
So now I've got down to ground level - bare because everything else has gone up or gone . . . (pause for fanfare) . . . enter annuals. And the slugs say "How kind. We liked the Lilly of the Valley you gave us last year - and the little Hyssop Plants which were supposed to become bushes behind the Box - but we've eaten them all up and were wondering what we could turn to next".
And the Jasmine! The Jasmine with the beautiful leaves. I've been longing for it to flower. This year it did - and made the garden smell as if someone had taken a bath in it. I put up with the scent for a while for the sake of its little white stars - but now I've chopped it back, leaving enough to climb into the Bay; enough so its twisted trunk remains and there are leaves high up to admire. That's it.
And I've trimmed the apple early because it was reaching across the path and getting tangled with a tomato (plant). And I've chopped back the Rambling Rector because it was threatening to lacerate passers by when it waved about in the wind and because everyone except me was fed up with wrestling it aside to get in through the back gate - but I've decided . . I've decided I'm fed up with gardening.
I shall sit back and admire the Convolvulus which is gratefully climbing the branch I put there for a nasturtium. And I shall put out the rest of the annuals for the slugs to eat - and the Lupins too. They can feast - for I won't be gardening. The earth beneath the trees will stay bare. I'll walk on it or admire it for its earthiness and sit and enjoy what's left.
Cos I've stopped. I've stopped. I've stopped gardening.
So there!
8 comments:
24 hours and you won't be able to resist a bit of gardening again.
Once a gardener always a gardener.
Joanne - less. It's getting dark and I've just come in from tying things up, repotting a tomato, pulling out Convolvulus and chucking as many slugs and snails over the wall as I could find.
(I'm still feeling cross though and I'm doing it with resolutely bad grace.)
(Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.)
Esther
P.S. And I really am planting out all the annuals to fend (or otherwise) for themselves. The pleasure of seeing the them germinate has given way to being irritated by the clutter of too many pots to be looked after. And if it weren't for slugs, I'd have got them all into the ground ages ago anyway.
Oh I feel the same way today Esther with everything wilting and dying in the heat. I am sure I will feel better after a good nights sleep. (And so will you!)
Oh Esther my sentiments a bit about the clutter of too many pots. I have been busy digging up ground elder and buttercup that took over in my inability to garden. I have been planting up with lupin delphinium lavatera cosmos and nicotiana sprinkled with plenty slug pellets and have taken great delight in seeing the slugs and snails squirm, so many end up on the path to die not sure why that is. Any I find that are alive I throw into the road when I am in the front garden in the hope the birds will eat( not after slug pellets) or the cars will squash before they get chance to get back to my garden.
I cannot believe how many there are this year must get a duck!
Actually I came back to ask if you have a link to a picture of Belle of Woking sounds great. This is a new addition to my now 50 clematis this year but hasn't flowered yet. I decided as I live not far from Jackman's old nursery near Woking I really should have a Belle of Woking.
I think you need to throw the slugs further. They definitely all have homing devices installed.
Mo - I'm not sure that my mind is changing. It's the 'ing' bit of gardening I've realised I don't like. I like planting things which I know will be there for many years, not working in the garden as a fun thing in its own right. I like maintaining (pruning type activities). I like seeing trees and bushes grow. I like growing vegetables because their fruition and their completion are more or less the same thing. Very satisfying - and harvest festivals make a lot of sense. But flowers are different. I watch them anxiously to see if they will bloom - and then they do - and then that's it. Nothing more. I'm wasting my year away. It's going too fast because I'm waiting and looking ahead instead of enjoying what is. Once annuals are established and self-seeding, that's different. They are the same as bushes - just there, you don't have to do anything, they part of life and its continuity. Meanwhile, I'm definitely 'off' gardening.
Esther
Oh, Joanne - now, if I used slug pellets . . .
Unfortunately, my garden isn't big enough for a duck.
Belle of Woking - I first came across it on Alice Anastasia's blog and she has a picture there
http://bayareatendrils.blogspot.com/2009/02/clematis-belle-of-woking_24.html
The one I have promises to be pink though.
If you read what Alice says about planting conditions and then I tell you that we have planted mine in very poor, very dry soil in a spot which gets sun only in the morning, where there is rarely any wind but, when there is, it is strong and bitter . . . you will get a sense of the need for humour. Added to that that I like single flowers, not multi-petalled blooms . . . and never like pink . . .
We bought it because my husband wanted Wisteria (which I do like) but I said we wouldn't have any way of supporting it - then he saw the Woking Belle and fell in love with it and I thought it funny because it is so inappropriate for where we planned to put it (and have put it) and because its name is so unromantic . . . and I like things which are funny so we carried our not very healthy plant home with its stems waving about our heads for all the two miles . . . and it hasn't died yet.
(It's even grown a bit.)
If it 'works' though - it'll be lovely.
Esther
P.S. The lable says the flowers are good for cutting. Vases, in our household, either get knocked over or get moved from pillar to post because we need the space for other things. So that'll be another saga (if we get as far as flowers!) E.
P.P.S. I did give it a present of some leaf mould. E.
Frugilegus - I pick snails up by their shells but couldn't possibly handle slugs so I scoop them up on a trowel. Trouble is, I then have to toss them over a vine to get them over the wall and out of the garden and, as the vine is grown more for its leaves than its fruit, it is getting very leafy and I'm having to throw the slugs higher and higher every day to get them over the wall and sometimes I don't throw them high enough and they land in the leaves of the vine and sometimes they go almost into space and I stand, anxious and silent for a few seconds, to check they haven't overshot and landed on the postman . . . or in a pram . . . one day there will be a shout . . .
Esther
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