To Garden Honestly

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From "Minnesota" 1980 by Joan Mitchell The call to action appeared in my inbox: “are we gardening while the world burns?” Yes, I got the easy reference to Nero, Rome and all that, which is, historically, a fairly complicated story in itself. And yes, ornamental—as distinguished from food—gardening, could be considered an oblivious, even oppressive activity, especially if conducted with plenty of staff in the pursuit of displaying wealth using plants and techniques that harm ecosystems. But rebelliousness rose in me. As a serious modern gardener, I wondered, does this person not understand where gardening is situated in the history of our species and how it can be used to make a fierce statement about possible futures? And I’m not talking about utopian ideas of getting back to the Garden of Eden, either. Nettled, I did look around the internet and found that the phrase seems to have come from an essay in which the write ultimately decided gardening to be akin to other creative...
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I've Been Away

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What have I been doing? What gardeners do in June: working outside, away from all things electronic.

At my college, the native plants we propagated this winter and spring had to go in the prairie garden. At home the bee balm overwhelmed the hybrid day lilies and had to be restrained; a thunderstorm demolished the peony blooms, which then needed cutting back; the window boxes needed planting; bees and butterflies needed watching and identifying; and the serviceberries got ripe enough that I had to pick some ahead of the birds (hard to do) in order to clean and plant the seeds. They apparently need warm and cold moist stratification. Hopefully they'll germinate next spring.  It's a long time to wait, and germination is only about 50%, but thus gardeners demonstrate faith in the future.
Photo from "How to Identify Serviceberries in the Wild."

Comments

Benjamin Vogt said…
My servieberries were ripe for about 6 hours--I have the pics to prove it--then they were gone. EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM! I guess that's good. Wonder how long the viburnum berries will last.

I saw my first oriole today ever. I'd like to think as a direct result of my maturing garden. Is that hubris?
June 11, 2010 at 2:45 PM
Adrian Ayres Fisher said…
My viburnum got stripped before the berries were ripe. I think the oriole found a good place at your house.
June 15, 2010 at 1:00 PM
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