Green fingers, brown knees, red face...

My virtual friend, Michelle the Fontologist, had a great post this morning, about gardening. I'd include a link, if I had a clue as to how to do that, but you can look her up on my side-bar of friends and family. I've been studiously avoiding the topic of gardening because, well, it's hard to write about it without getting tears in my eyes when there was snow in April, here! You have to get down on your hands and knees, with your nose 2 cm from the dirt to find anything green on the prairie or in my flower beds. I did that, this afternoon, and found the bravest columbine sprigs! (Or, for Anne, Aquilegia vulgaris) So now I can write about it.

Do you garden? And by gardening, I don't mean just vegetables and useful plants. I mean, do you grow ANYTHING, in a can, a boot, a well-composted bed, sandy knoll, gumbo hole? Do you cultivate?

AND (to me, this is the more interesting question) why do you garden?

So, here's my story. (Yeah, you were just waiting for the big reveal, weren't you? I hate to disappoint followers, so here you have it.)

I really didn't have much to do with gardening or flowers growing up, because we had wicked gumbo ground, alkali water and my mom wasn't all that interested in growing things, I guess. I'm not sure. With those conditions, it had to be discouraging. We did little vegetable gardens, but didn't have a lot of success.

I had a boyfriend whose mother had the most glorious yard and garden, in North Dakota, on the Missouri River, and that was the first time I ever understood that gardening could be more than just to fill the pantry with jars. She had lovely flowers, and really, really enjoyed the whole process.

When I married Wayland, we moved to the ranch after about 9 months, just up the road from my mother-in-law and the Cohagen Botanical Gardens (my title, not hers). It was intimidating, to say the least. AND on top of that, we moved into a little trailer house on a prairie hill. With no existing yard. No native trees. No old homestead flowers. It was the pasture! We didn't have a fence!

My first stab at growing something was a black feed tub with petunias planted in it. My puppy, Molly, dug it up and I cried. The next try was to plant sunflowers in a circle around a birdbath, sitting by the house on prairie ground....which, as I write about it, probably looked pretty funny! Only two sunflowers grew, and not even big enough to flower. One day, when the guys were here building the fence, my father-in-law handed me one of the sad, sad little sunflower stalks and told me that he'd gotten the weed out of the yard. I didn't cry, but I wanted to. He felt bad, when I explained the situation, but there was no fixing it! I can't blame him, because in his yard, it WOULD have been a weed!

We ordered trees from the Conservation District. We ordered 120 trees, to plant in a windbreak. One day, my husband called me at the school I was subbing at and told me to pick up the trees on the way home. I was driving a Geo Prism at the time, and I informed him there was no way to get that many trees! I'd go back with the pickup. He assured me it was entirely possible. I pulled up at the fair building to get my 120 trees and loaded a black garbage bag of soggy sticks. I'm telling you, when I ordered trees, I thought I was going to get TREES! It all made sense, then, how they could sell us trees for $.98 each. I thought that was a bit much to pay for soggy sticks. The next day, we made 120 holes, planted 120 sticks, and today a strong 89 of them live. And look like trees. (I'm STILL a little in shock, over this phenomenon!)

When I put in my first flower bed, I had it all graphed, proportionately, and had spent the winter researching my perennial options. I went to the nursery, and could afford about 4 of the 50 plants that were planned. So I spent the extra $5.00 at the grocery store and bought about 5 packets of annual seeds. Little did I know that those little packets would fuel a gardening disease for which there is no cure!

My mother-in-law, sensing some desperation on my part, offered me portions of her plants. Things like iris, hardy geranium, daisies, and, because I begged, johnny-jump-ups and yarrow. Looking back, I can't believe she could keep a straight face when donating those last two, but she graciously sent them with me. My friends know, now, that yarrow is an evil plant sent from Satan, and that the only reason the johnny's are tolerated is because theirs are the first bright little faces I see in the spring and the last bright little faces I see in the fall.

Now, I garden because it's balm for my heart, and it's constantly surprising and new, and comfortingly the same. I have old friends, like the daisies and irises, and new friends, sedum and lime basil. I long ago scrapped the graph, and now plant lettuce in with the annuals, and beans with the zinnias, because I like their funny shapes and contrasts. And I like grazing as I weed. My beds are messy, and that's distressing sometimes. I forget how topsy-turvey things can get, and promise that I will, next year, more clearly define the territories. I grow sunflowers every year, in remembrance of the ones that perished at the birdbath. I grow scarlet runner beans because they are beautiful and the one annual hummingbird that flies through adores them. I grow hollyhocks from seeds I took from the Texas Tech botanic garden AND from those growing behind the old hospital.

So, do you garden? How did you get started? Why do you do it?