a garden of ignorance

I have a lot of interesting plants in my garden. Whether plunked there by me, or inherited, or discovered to be growing even though I don't recall bothering myself about them, the great variety of flowers and whatnot making a go of it is a source of fascination and wonderment to me for the simple fact of my own ignorance. I don't know what any of them are and I have no idea how to go about finding out and honestly I don't really have time anyway.

For example, all year long this strange tropical spiky thing sits there, it's lower element being run over and over by the car as it is driven in and out, candy wrappers blowing gently up from the road on garbage collection day to stick in its spikes. When you walk by, it reaches out and pricks you. But, for the end of the month of June, every year, it sends up these amazing spires and then bursts abundantly into bloom. It's so beautiful. I stand in my back garden and stare at it instead of weeding. And then, just as suddenly, the blooms give up and die and we return to our old discouragements.

Last year I bought these orange and yellow flowers in the clearance section of a garden shop. The tag had come out. They and the purple things--the deep purple not the light purple (probably weed?) growing behind it--I extravagantly purchased for a whole dollar. I had no idea they would come up again, but there they are, robust and bright as ever. 

This I carefully cut from its much larger parent growing out front. Someone (see, who needs a memory, you wouldn't remember if I told you) told me if I cut it low by the root, with some root still on, it would grow in another location. And it is! The large spotty leaved thing behind it was a present and the name of it was included as part of its being given, but I didn't write it down and so I have no idea what it is.

I could go on photographing nearly every plant but I think you get the idea. The thing is, what would be the point of my knowing? I wouldn't remember. Probably I wouldn't remember. And in this way, everything is such a happy surprise. 

emerging

Slowly.
Slowly emerging.
We had some lovely visitors. Stand Firm Family, as it were. All the lovely pictures are on Matt's computer. And you know how it is. You have to go to that computer and sit down and turn it on and go to the Internet and laboriously send the pictures on email and then open them and so on and so forth...so I don't have pictures, yet...
And then we were all sick. Horribly and wretchedly sick. The tummy thing. The head, nose and throat thing. The Maybe I'm Actually Going To Die Thing. The Anne Has To Go Grocery Shopping Alone Thing.

But in spite of everyone still not really breathing, there is an imperceptible feeling that Things Are Looking Up. Elphine and Alouicious have plugged out two full days of school cheerfully and industriously. Upon examining everyone's school work I discovered that if we work really really really hard for the next ten weeks we might really finish all our work on the day I imagined we would. Praise be.

I've endured the dentist visit that worried me the most--the one wherein I expected to be told I needed a root canal. After a great deal of suffering and pain I was told that I still have a thin but real amount of tooth before the root and so, for today, I am spared. Tomorrow I go back to have the big gaping hole in a tooth coped with. Turns out there is a real and true reason for me to be in such pain I have to take no less than 9 ibuprofen over the course of 24 hours. And then one more visit after that and I will be in the category of Normal, Basically.

My little tiny tomato and pepper seedlings are coming up and have not yet been destroyed by the 'babies'. They're actually large little girls who go around chattering and holding hands. They play with dollies and dress up and color and have their hair brushed. And if they would sleep all the way through the night we would probably like them.

As for Gladys and Romulus, they do a generous amount of whining and tattling.
On the whole a good measure, shaken tighter, pressed down, flowing over...

And then today we watched the white smoke appear and rejoiced with so many who welcomed the new Pope. Well, I won't lie, Elphine and Alouicious were horribly sarcastic about the news coverage...and wanted to snarkily debate theology. But I finally told them to go away so I could watch it all in peace. And now I'm listening to them all clean the kitchen and bicker gently. So I think I'll have another glass of something, just to be sure. Pip pip.

the fence post

As many of you know, we live right next to our place of work, Church of the Good Shepherd (COGS). Matt once did a little video of his 30 second "commute" with much smug hilarity. On Sunday mornings we get all dressed up and trip lightly up our little walk to the back door of the church. Of course, when I say we, I mean Matt and all the children. It takes me a teensy bit longer to get there what with the fact that I can never find my shoes and someone has walked off with my Sunday School Lesson and then it turns out that the person who hid my shoes had also carefully scattered all the other shoes in the whole house all over the living room so that if we invite anyone home for a nip of sherry they will have to remove a wide ranging assortment of all fashions/all season's footwear. So anyway, this is the view out of my bedroom window. Matt "opened up a bed", a habit to which he has recently become addicted, and then, in a stroke of brilliance, filled it with all this lovely pebble so that we can sit about feeling practically French (except that it's way to muggy and buggy just this moment).

 If you stand on our walkway this is the view towards the parking lot. I've said before that if you sit quietly in this little area you can hear everyone going by across the parking lot, to and from the bus and grocery, and you can hear everything that's said in the church kitchen. Not that I would every sit and listen, mind you, but it may be that other people, who might be in my back garden, might be sitting quietly. You never know. Mostly, though, I don't sit. The moment I sit I leap up again to destroy some weed or slug or horrible beatle or something.

The space between our house and the church is very sheltered and safe. But by the point of the walkway, there has been a wide open vast expanse of green encompassing a straight shot to the main road on one side, and a straight shot to the other quieter, though highly foottrafficked road on the other. Either way, if a child or dog or cat wanted to make a break for it, there wasn't a thing besides our vigilance to stop them. Although, to be fair, my children, because of all the fear of God we threatened into them, are pretty obedient. Its all the strangers walking by and/or breaking into the church (well, I say 'all' but its only happened twice) that make me really nervous.

So now, when you look at the church from the quieter road, here is what you see. And who knows how many children and dogs might be back there? None, maybe, or a dozen. Ha!

And notice that the lovely big church airconditioner is outside of my bit. So guess whose children aren't out there wrecking and breaking everything? That's right! Mine aren't. They're on my side wrecking and breaking their own toys.


And here is that same section from the otherside, in what is now a capacious amount of lawn and what will eventually be filled with beds of flowers and vegetables. Matt is planning to "dig out beds" until there is only one tiny section of grass and there he will put in a "water feature". Knock yourself out, babe.
We chucked the pink plastic house fifteen minutes after Gladys climbed up and then slid down head first. I'd been biding my time for an excuse. Its the innoncence of children, I always say, that leads us forward.

 
Here is the fence in its initial stages.
There was a whole day of a huge post hole digger and cement mixer and many people to help put in the posts. And then another hot week of dedication by Wardens (that's an Anglican thing, not a prison thing) themselves who put the whole thing together, slat by slat. Every morning the dogs would rush out to attack and then stop for a long pat.

Alouicious, after observing the proceedings from some amount of time, realized that the space was quickly narrowing up and pitched a little fit. Turns out, though, that when we sit about eating our suppers of a long summer evening, when they go over to the other side of the fence, its much quieter. On the whole, a beautiful arrangment.





And here are the old arborvitaes. All green and fine and sheltering. Matt watered them faithfully until we started having rain every single day. 





 I hope to plant fruit trees all along here, or something. Who knows what tomorrow may bring.


Meanwhile, the children strut around and complain about how everything is too hot. Stupid northern children. Don't they realize this is the right temperature?

i'm so embarrassed

It is really really hard not to become soppy and cliche about growing things in a garden. One would think, or at least I always did, that putting your fingers in the dirt and mucking around with cheap packets of seeds and flinging slugs over the fence to the poor neighbor (whom, of course, I love as Christ has commanded me) would be a task sent to ground me in terminal Reality.

And yet, morning after morning the nearly same euphoria of having a new baby is constantly attacking me as I Inspect My Garden. I am daily grossed out by my own nostaligic love for the various badly arranged plants in my back yard and bit of community garden.

I know you must all be horrified to hear that on occassion I am overcome by delight for my own children, and now also my own garden. Soon you will find me canning and driveling. And before that, swooning over my new fence.

I'm so sorry, and yet, I think, not really.

a little gardening

Last Monday we forced the children to help in the community garden. They worked hard for five minutes and then the boys started whining. "Its too hot. I'm too tired." Told them to "man up" or they would be in for a "world of hurt". There's nothing like a cliche here and there to carry forward a morning of great parenting and helpful gardening.

Gladys and Marigold got to help plant tomato plants. Marigold just helped herself to the plants without being asked. That's just the way she rolls.

Here is my own plot! Look! Its not dead! Amazing!

 These are alive carrot plants. Don't say what you're really thinking. Say something nice instead.

 A lettuce and a half.

 Cucumbers

 Someone planted lovely flowers to dress up the whole garden.

 More children working hard, or something.

 And when we were all through, Marigold put a tea cozy on her head.

the gentle idiot gardens

I have acquisitioned a plot in Good Shepherd's community garden. I plunked some seeds from a trusting and knowledgeable friend who never-the-less has seriously overestimated my abilities. Things like "swiss chard" and "peppers" went from her seed packets into my plot, and a tomato plant I acquired on Amazon (did you know you can buy plants on Amazon? Weird). Even so, it looks pretty dismal.

But then yesterday someone from church, let me rephrase that, lovely people from church brought vast amounts of tomato and squash plants and set them carefully next to my dead brown smear of earth. In the evening, as an act faith (the American kind, not the biblical kind) I tossed back a glass of wine and mucked them about into the soil. So now half my plot is alive and thriving (at least for the night) and the other half still looks rather dead. I'm going to give it three more days before I plow it under and move the squashes over.

And on Saturday I dug up a very sick rose bush and moved it gently and prayerfully to a different spot. And along the side of the house sunflowers are coming up where I didn't plant them. And I took a clipping from a bush in the front and plunked it in the ground in the back in the hopes that it will not die, but will live and grow.

Matt generally watches me messing around in the dirt with a tolerantly sarcastic air. Apparently he knows how to make plants stay alive. That being the case, he doesn't understand the terror and thrill of putting something in the ground and having it come up. He is nonchalant. He is breezy. He says lightly, "it will be fine." But also he doesn't know what a miraculous and tenuous occurrence it is, to have the wretched thing actually grow.

She who dwells in the Kingdom of Incompitence, How does her Garden grow?

Some of my seeds are coming up.

I didn't expect to be amazed but I'm beyond amazement, living solidly in the land of shock. As one notoriously bad with plants, the wreckage of my gardening endeavors lies behind me like a compost heap of destruction. I've managed to kill every single African Violet I have ever laid a hand on, plus a nice purply thing that was supposed to live forever and be able to start more plants off by cutting bits off, a perfectly shaped little evergreen tree that I intended to plant out but couldn't decide where to put and so it gave up, my Christmas poinsettia which someone brought it back to life while we were gone but appears again to be sick. And these are only the plants I can remember off hand.

But for some bizarre and mysterious reason, there are little tiny zinnia plants poking through, as well as spinach and radishes (I think the radishes are supposed to be indestructible but I have a hard time believing it). Now I'm filled with anxiety that rabbits will come, or blight or bugs or something. And then there's horror of the instructions on the backs of all the seed packets that say 'thin plants when established' which sounds like a perfect opportunity to ruin everything.

The things my mother planted last year are doing beautifully, of course. The pink rose is covered in waxy fragrant blooms and the larger pink thing is an array of glory. Even though I look at the label every day, I can't seem to keep the name of it in my mind. I read my fine, sensible gardening book straining and trying to dimly understand what on earth the splendid author is talking about. I've read carefully about a hanging tomato contraption but darkness veils my understanding of how it works.

It will be no surprise to you how much comfort I take from the words of Jesus, that we plant and water, but God makes seeds grow. We tear down and kill, but he binds up, heals, and gives life. We forget to water, but he, out of mercy, sometimes brings rain.

this cat has too much hair

I increasingly can't move because of the cat. After ignoring me for two weeks after our trip, he climbs up on my lap every time I sit down, puts his claw-ridden paw on my chest and stares unblinkingly at me. You can't look anywhere else, you can't go anywhere, the claws pretty well keep you motionless (I say you, but obviously I mean me. I don't think he does this to anyone else).

If he would get up, I would, of course, leap up with a cry and a song and go water all the seeds that are sitting, newly planted, in the ground, probably being eaten by all the horrible bugs Elphine carefully dug up to show me and try to make me touch. She has entered, with full force, the Moral Stage whereby she wants to know whether or not Jesus likes whatever it is we're doing. "Does Jesus want us to plant this here?"
"Does Jesus think we should be doing this today?"
"Are Muslims Christians?"
"When is the next election? Who does Jesus want to win?"
"Does Jesus like this kind of grass?"
All these questions where hurled at me in the space of a few minutes. My first instinct, of course, is always to shout, "How should I know!" But I tried to think of answers to this myriad of wondering.

But I can't move yet, howsoever hot this cat may be (hotter as he's stopped chewing off his own fur and its all grown back). So, I guess I better just read more stuff on the internet. Its God that makes the seeds grow, anyway.