Every day, the world gets greener. Appalachia in spring is lush. It fills your eyes with emerald and peridot, your ears with birdsong in twirs and twees, your nose with cool crisp mountain air.
To ease stress, I watch my garden grow. I pay attention to the flowers. The catmint is blooming in soft blues, and the salvia in indigo spires. The roses have started opening their deep red blossoms, the columbine shiver in lavenders and pinks, and the poppies have buds the size of a baby’s fist.
I have been watching the snapdragons in my flower baskets out back. They’ve seemed on the verge of opening for over a week. Yesterday, they finally began. Now I get to watch as each of those buds opens into a crimson flower. I hope the bees climb in.
The forsythia blooms in bright cascades out back. Daffodils beam in butter yellows. Cherries froth in pastel pinks, and tulip tips emerge from the earth. The grass has come to life again: its green growth waves in the wind. We’re not mid-March yet and it’s already time to mow.
The end of winter is in sight. The spring equinox is this Friday, and my annual gardening vacation begins immediately after. I’ll take a whole week to cut back dead stems from perennials, clear leaf litter, and spread mulch. I called my mulch guy yesterday and left a message; I hope I’m not too late to get it delivered on Friday. If not Friday, then Monday at the latest. It takes a few days to spread it all.
If there are still days left of my vacation after all of that, and if the nursery has anything in stock I can put in the ground or in flower boxes, the reward for my labors in browns will be fresh greens and bright bursts of colors.
I can’t wait. If the weather is nice, I’ll take breaks on the back deck in the sunlight. I’ll eat smoothie bowls while I gaze out over the beds and plan what to plant in the open spaces. I’ll imagine what the garden will look like when the flowers grow in. I’ll need to go down and see the bare ground close up to remind myself what was there before and whether I expect it to come up again. I’ll walk laps among the flower beds, thinking and planning, touching the warm earth. Each day will feel wide open: no schedule on a calendar. Just “spread the mulch” or “run to the nursery.” I love it so much.
In the garden, I lose track of time as told by hands on a watch face. Instead, time is told by the warmth of the sun, the growl in my belly, the reapplication of sunscreen, the length of shadows. The garden is one of the few places where time becomes irrelevant to me.
Bunnies snack on the leaves of my rudbeckia out front, but not enough to do any damage. The plants are still full, and the bright yellow flowers still bloom.
Out back is a different story. Out back, the five rudbeckia I planted at the beginning of my sabbatical are mowed to the ground; a few gnawed stems and a couple strips of leaf remain. There are no yellow flowers with black centers in sight.
When my friend Jessica visited last week, we spent a lot of time together watching the happenings in the back garden. In the mornings we’d see four deer — a doe, two speckled fawns, and a young buck with fuzzy antlers. The doe grazed at the platform feeder filled with seed for the birds, and the young buck looked right into my eyes as he bit a broad leaf off a hosta. He looked right into my eyes as he chewed it, then bit another leaf off.
When we ate inside, my friend and sat on the same side of the table so we could face the glass door and look out. We watched the cardinals and finches at the feeder. We laughed when the squirrel took his turn, and we’d get up to open the door to scare him off, and he’d leap to the nearby tree branch with all four legs spread like he was doing a belly flop, desperate to catch the leafy branch rather than fall to the far away ground.
When we were outside on the deck, we sat at the tall table so we could look out over the railing. We watched chipmunks dash, and hummingbirds drink. We watched bees bumble and bunnies nibble.
One day, we looked out and saw the tops of the echinacea swaying and shaking at the back of the patch. The plants are filled in with leaves now, so the creature rummaging around in there had good cover. We couldn’t see it to identify it. We had no idea what this animal could be — bunnies and chipmunks don’t create such a ruckus. I thought the only things eating my garden were the deer and the rabbits. This obviously wasn’t a deer, and if it was a rabbit, it was a mighty big one. We watched as the swaying moved towards the edge of the patch. I saw a patch of brown bristly fur on a substantial body. “Is it a raccoon?!” Then, a round brown groundhog emerged, pawing the echinacea stems to the ground, stripping leaves off, eating as it went.
“Eeeeeee! It’s so cute!!! Look how fat!”
We watched the groundhog decimate my echinacea plants, then squealed as it waddled off — faster than you’d expect! — fat rolling, its blubbery body low to the ground as it ran up the hill.
The garden has grown quite a bit since I finished mulching at the beginning of my sabbatical. Now the animals are mowing it back down. I’m not sure what all will survive them grazing at the buffet I’ve created, but I am certainly entertained by the tableau.
AprilJunePoor hostas. Three down, one to go.Gus the groundhog was here.Bees don’t do much damage.The back yard buffetThere’s still plenty of echinacea left.Nothing seems to be eating the daisies.
After almost four weeks of being on the go, I’m back home and can rest. I wrapped up work, the garden is mulched, I visited my besties in Utah, and we’ve moved our daughter home after her first year of college.
Now, I sit in my favorite chair by our living room window with a cat on my lap and my coffee by my side. Birds twitter in the darkness outside our open windows, and I eagerly await the sunrise. Yesterday, after being in the desert for a week, I savored the wet dew and the profusion of emerald all around me: green mountains, green leaves on trees, green grass. After a landscape of red dust, hard rock, and a scarcity of life, the landscape of home quenches a thirst I didn’t know I had. Here in Appalachia, the world explodes with life. All these lush green plants, making food and beauty from light and water, then feeding the buzzing bees, the chirping birds, the crickets, deer, bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels, beetles, and me.
Because of my trip to Utah, and to Florida to pick up our daughter from her dorm, I wasn’t able to put plants in the ground after I finished mulching the garden a couple of weeks ago. That changed this weekend. I overspent my garden budget in two large trips to the nursery, and am giddy to say that the flower beds out back are finished. Well, finished as much as a garden is ever finished, which is never, but they are finished for now.
One section of the back garden has become shaded by our growing oak tree, which has presented a challenge in recent years, as the sun-loving flowers I originally put in no longer thrived. This year, I tried some new plants I’ve never planted before, including begonias. I’ve always loved begonias — they look like little roses, their foliage is a deep, luscious green, and I could not resist the buttery yellow of the flowers. I bought yellow petunias to match, purple columbine, and a variety pack of coleus for foliage.
I ate lunch on the back deck to admire my work yesterday. When I’m inside, I find myself standing at the back window just to look at it and imagine what it will look like when the plants have grown and established themselves. I think it will fill in nicely over the next few weeks, and I am eager to watch the green grow, the flowers bloom, and to welcome butterflies and hummingbirds later in the summer.
Today will bring another trip to the nursery, this time for the front flower boxes. Once those are filled, the garden will be mostly done, other than weeding and other maintenance. I can’t wait to be able to relax outside in it with my book, my coffee, my sketchpad, or maybe even just my eyes and ears.
I have spread all the mulch. Today I can rest. Thank heavens.
I’ve spent the past 3.5 days almost fully outdoors, shoveling, carting, and spreading 1.5 tons (12 cubic yards) of shredded tree bark across all the flower beds. I took breaks to move plants around, eat lunch, go to the nursery to buy new plants, stand panting to observe my work, and talk to my mom and dad on the phone. I just need to spread weed and feed on the lawn this morning while the dew dampens the grass, and then I’ll really truly be done. Well, done until May when I will be back in town and can go plant shopping, which I am very excited about. Sabbatical is the best!
It should be warm enough to eat my lunch outside in the sun today. I’m eager to sit on the deck and admire the plants I put in yesterday, especially the bleeding hearts which are just a marvel. Sometimes I look at things in nature, like a flower shaped like a heart, or the brilliance of the peacock, and my mind is blown. How did these things happen? How many mutations over how many millions of years? Why this? It’s staggering to think about. Incomprehensible. I feel awe that in my lap right now is a purring animal that’s not going to kill me, that posing around a resort in Punta Cana are iridescent birds with tail feathers that spread like a fan and are covered in eyes and rattle a rhythm as the peacock struts its dance, that in my garden is a plant with pink heart-shaped flowers.
Bleeding heart
As I eat my lunch and gaze out at the freshly mulched beds, my mind will race about what plants to put in when I return from a few upcoming adventures. There are a lot of empty patches to fill. I’m going to need to be careful with my budget.
Today is the final push in the garden. I’ve spread about 9 cubic yards of mulch and have 3 more to go. As usually happens, the closer I get to the end, the more I want to put plants in the ground.
With each wheelbarrow of mulch I spread on the back hill yesterday, I stood and surveyed the beds. After one barrow-full, “I think pincushion flowers here, and brown- eyed Susans there.” After another, “What’s a good shade plant to fill in under the tree?” And another, “Bleeding hearts! Those are good shade plants.” And another, “Maybe calamint here in this sunny spot, I love those.” “Could I redo this whole bed in herbs? Lavender, rosemary, thyme? How would that look?”
On my lunch break, I pulled out my go-to picture books of plants for the garden. When the books come out, a trip to the nursery is guaranteed to follow.
After a couple more hours shoveling, hauling, spreading, and thinking about the plants I’d jotted down, I pulled off my gloves to look at the Crow’s Nest website. Just to check. Would they have anything in stock? “We unloaded three truck loads of perennials on Friday!” I stopped immediately and drove over to see.
They had everything I wanted. All but perennial mums, which I asked about, and maybe they can order for me. The limiting factor was not their stock but my stamina. If I bought everything I wanted to put in the ground, that would have been at least 40 plants. Plus the few hundred pounds of mulch to spread. And the lawn needs mowed and fertilized.
I walked out with 10 plants: 5 pincushions (scabiosa), 3 coral bells, 2 calamints, and 1 bleeding heart. This seemed like a manageable number to bring me the joy of putting new green in the ground without overworking myself.
Temperatures are barely above freezing right now, but in a couple of hours, I’ll go back out and push through to the end. The past two days have been blustery, which isn’t my favorite to garden in. My face is chapped from the wind. Today, the forecast calls for calm and sunny. It will be a perfect day to finish up. I’ll put in the plants and spread the mulch and mow the grass.
This week has been all garden, all the time, excepting my pre-dawn blog posts. I love the fresh air and sunshine, but I’m ready for the labor to come down a notch. Once I’m done today, I look forward to not having to work so hard. I’m excited to sit in the garden to read and watch flowers bloom. I’m ready to draw, and study French, and go to coffee shops, and get out my real camera and start photographing again.
Butterfly Mind 