We gardeners are a funny lot, we strive to do our best, spend money we most likely don’t have on a plant that we don’t really need, which we plant, and wait for it to perform. It’s kind of like being a backstage Mom, on one of those teeniest terrors shows, here we are fussing about, curling hair, [adding compost] straightening up ties, [staking, and pruning] and making sure to spit shine the garden for it’s big performance debut [summer].
We constantly compare our gardens to others, all the while pretending not to… in my case it’s how my country baby performs against the warmer city gardens nearby… we live on the mountainside, so spring comes later here.
Driving through town I see something blooming, but know that it’s going to be at least a week before I see it here, I know that I have to wait. Iris, poppies, hosta, all springing from the dark ground, and mine are barely showing. Stage Mom… that’s me, “hold still, you have a smudge on your petal.”
I’m not lamenting it’s just a garden, really truly… and each garden has it’s own microclimate, and individual performances all are beautiful to those who tend to them. But it would be nice if it could keep up with the other kids I mean gardens…
Then there are my friends down on the coast… where it’s about 2 weeks ahead, during phone calls I have to listen to “oh my blah blah, blah, is in full bloom,” while I grit my teeth and coo, “oh how lovely.”
All the while plotting how to get a fully heated greenhouse going in the backyard in order to once and for all have gardeners bragging rights.no just kidding.
Seriously, just kidding, the snow would probably collapse it…
So I wait patiently, and each blossom I coax from a leery garden is treasured more then those that gleefully show up earlier… Now grow won’t you?