about all year garden

If you are like me, come spring your garden starts breeding an abundant, energy intensive list of chores, such as cleaning, weeding, annual planting, watering, feeding, cutting the grass, planting more grass, steps 1, 2, 3 and 4, mulching, deadheading, cleaning again, replanting, a lot more watering, more deadheading, planting bulbs, digging out bulbs, fall cleaning and raking of leaves, pruning, protecting tender perennials, and finally giving thanks for the arrival of winter you abandon all interest for the outdoors till spring.

You put a lot of time and energy into maintaining your garden for three seasons and it is only fair that your garden should reward you with the fruits of your labor.  What if you plan for scent and beauty and your garden fully delivers, and then on top of that it also gives back an abundance of food for your table, provides for next year's harvest, offers fragrant herbs and flowers for perfume, skin care, remedies for minor health ailments, habitat for little critters, birds and butterflies that will enchant you with color and sound, and colorful contrasting shapes and colors in the dead of winter.

Inspired by the kitchen garden, where vegetables and flowers grow together, your garden can reward you with produce beyond expectation. It only takes a little planning and picking the appropriate locations for planting. Remember, a plant will produce more blooms, fruit, and fragrance in the tiniest spot where it receives what it needs (which is usually lots of sunlight, plenty of water and reasonable fertilizing) than in a large spot where any of the above are lacking. That makes the shade loving companions even more valuable, for they provide color and texture in spots where nothing else will thrive.

If you thought that winter was supposed to be the off season, think again: winter is the time for the colorful twigs and berries to show off in bright contrast with the snow. Also, winter is the time to feed the birds, and if you have ever seen a cardinal bird on a black branch, on a background of fresh fallen snow, you can't think of the winter landscape as drab anymore.

In addition to that, winter is the most important season for garden planning, starting seeds indoors, organizing and using the plant material you gathered all summer long to make herbal remedies and scented sachets.

Last, but not least, winter is the season to enjoy your warmer climate plants indoors. The bright yellow of lemons in your little lemon tree will cheer you up on a dreary February afternoon.

So read and enjoy.
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the art of waiting

You walk along the garden path one morning, look around and wonder where did it all come from. Naturally, you planted them all, or nearly all, with a few pleasant surprises here and there of self-sown perennials that sprung out from under annual growies before you got to notice them. Otherwise, though, the tall, stately beauties surrounding you are always taking you by surprise, because the first lesson in humility that is served to obstinate gardeners is the unwillingness of living things to develop according to your plans. They have their own internal clocks, their own environmental sensitivities and a completely different relationship with time than you. So, those lupines that you planted and thought dead sprung up on you two years later, after you planted cosmos over the following year, which self-seeded, and now both plants are gracefully mixing together in a fluff of stringy and palmed leaves, taking over an entire portion of your garden that you were intending for a completely different purpose this year. Or the snapdragons whose seeds you spread evenly over an area, but they decided to all come out bundled together to the left of the patch, leaving the rest of the dirt barren. Or the lily-of-the-valley that you tried to start from roots in the same spot for three years in a row, and now it decided to come out all at the same time and completely take over. Maybe you were planning, but your garden begs to differ. And when the garden and the gardener have different opinions, the garden usually wins. The struggling plant that you moved because you needed the space and didn't feel like throwing away now thrives in its new location with a vigor beyond expectations. Sun loving plants keep blooming in the shade behind the house, in a place that, of course, is not a showy feature of your garden. After a while, the oddities and surprises of your garden become familiar and dear to you, like an old friend's little idiosyncrasies warm up your heart after you haven't seen her in a while. A sense of peace descends upon the wiser gardener, a sense of acceptance that in this dialogue with nature, nature has something to say back to you. If those plants that you failed to recognize when you transferred them outdoors and planted them at the front of the flower bed turned out to be tomatoes, or if the sun garden you neatly organized according to height and flowering season exploded into a jumbled jungle of healthy growth, or if the miniature zinnias developed into four foot tall tree-like structures, or if all those tens of berries you saw on your strawberry plants were gone the second they turned slightly ripe because squirrels and rabbits believed in sharing, enjoy it, allow it, embrace it. If gardening only taught me one thing it would be the art of waiting. If you have enough patience and time, things kinda turn out the way you planned, sort of, eventually.

your private outdoors

Sitting at the table under the tree canopy, a book in one hand, the other hand mindlessly rubbing your temples, you lose track of time. The splotches of light filtered through the branches above move slowly opposite the sun path, while the day merges into evening. The light becomes gentler, more tired, almost horizontal. Around you two full walls, one half wall, a tree for a roof, and a balcony: your private outdoors. Noises come and go, the chirping of birds, the passing cars, people chatting while walking their dogs, the syncopated rhythm of joggers, the soft rubbery noise of bicycle wheels. The words on the page start fading as the evening shadow descends into the night, the contours are less precise, the contrast becomes nonexistent. Your cat comes around rubbing against your leg to remind you of dinner. The kids go in and out of the house abruptly, slamming doors, running down stairs and giggling plenty. Night flowering plants release their fragrance in the warmth of the day's end, and as light becomes more scarce, the sounds and scents intensify. The cat settles down in your lap, purring. Eerie little blue solar powered garden lights dot the darkened contours of the plant masses, and you discern more than you see the familiar garden path, the lilac bush, the archway above the gate. White flowers look like reversed shadows in the headlights of passing cars. The heavy summer night air, thick with humid fragrance, slowly cools down into a breeze.