Never did I imagine that I would enjoy gardening. But for the past two years, I have found a new pleasure in life.
In October 2009, I moved into my own home (only the second home I’ve ever owned, having lived most of my life in rented houses overseas). In the backyard, there was a small, square patch of weeds, surrounded by an overgrown path, with a cute archway entrance. At that time, I saw only a field of goldenrod—one of the few temperate zone plants I recognized. Our neighbour, the son of the previous owners, told me that it had been a nice, if somewhat chaotic flower garden when his mother had cared for it, but that it had been neglected for four years. I resisted his suggestion that we simply dig it all up and start over again.
I wandered around the mass of vegetation, wondering what was hidden within, not expecting much. Still, something moved me in the spring of 2010 to begin pulling up the goldenrod—I got my husband to remind me of which plants were in fact goldenrod, since at that time the tell-tale yellow flowers were of course no longer in evidence. He also introduced me to another plant with distinctive fuzzy leaves (elephant ears maybe?), which he also suggested I might remove. I began, in a very lackadaisical way, to occasionally spend some time out there, pulling up these two kinds of weeds (the only ones I recognized besides dandelions). I found, to my surprise, that I rather liked sitting in the dirt, messing about with these two invaders.
Gradually, as I reduced the number of weeds, I began to uncover stepping stones, scattered throughout the small space. I was enchanted with their discovery, and began pulling up the weeds more freely around those stepping stones, reasoning that no one would plant anything desirable under or directly adjacent to stepping stones. A small goal emerged: to uncover all the stones—I was sufficiently ignorant of plants to have no idea what lay before me of a botanical nature. Meanwhile, in the springtime, I found that our yard, including the garden, was ringed with daffodils, my absolute favorite flower! There were also violets and crocuses, a few tulips, and more—flowers from my childhood that I had rarely seen as an adult, living as I had, for decades in the tropics.
In May 2010, I left home to spend a month in Portland, Oregon with my mother, my two ‘natural’ children and my grandchildren. While I was gone, my husband sent me pictures of the brilliant and abundant red poppies that emerged in that field of goldenrod. There were also pink and white peonies, harmed by a late frost, but still producing some flowers. Meanwhile, my mother, son and I happened to go to an open house at an iris plantation south of Portland (Schreiner’s Gardens)—I’d never seen so many beautiful flowers. My mother told me of her own and her mother’s particular love for irises. I wondered if I might be able to grow some in that goldenrod field, to carry on what could become a family mini-tradition.
Back home, as the summer drew to a close, the tithonia my husband had planted in the flower garden began to bloom with wild abandon. I’d never heard of them, but they were tall and of a lovely, vibrant orange color. At the Farmer’s Market, we found, and then planted, narcissus and black eyed susans. Meanwhile, my husband found in his mother’s house a beautiful silver bowl, with two layers of a patterned insert, designed to hold cut flowers—his mother happily parted with it, and I began routinely cutting flowers from our garden to fill it. I had always bought flowers in Bogor, Indonesia, from a flower man who came every Saturday to our house (beginning in 1996 (!), continuing until we left in 2009). Now I had my own source, and I made regular use of the flowers. Our dining table began to overflow with flowers—-in the summer and fall of 2010, they were mainly tithonia and black eyed susans.
Having planted some flowers, and having them actually produce—even in this weedy chaos—stimulated me to continue my weeding efforts. I also wrote to the owner of the iris plantation (my son’s friend), and ordered some irises that he considered suitable for Etna’s harsh climate. In the fall, I planted the 12 irises he sent, as directed, some near the dead leaves of the original irises in the garden (which must have bloomed sometime while I was away). More stepping stones emerged among the weeds. My husband encouraged me, readily answering my questions (and planting flowers for me from time to time), with his far greater knowledge of plants.
This past spring, as the snows gradually gave way, I watched with curiosity to see what would emerge. I hoped my weeding efforts would have made the garden a more hospitable environment for the flowers I loved so much. I wanted to see the poppies and the peonies; and I wondered what else might be visible with so many fewer weeds. However, as the spring progressed, the daffodils again arrived, and fewer goldenrod or fuzzy leaved invaders emerged. I found instead a new pest: hogwort weed. It has lovely leaves, but takes over everything; and I found an amazing array of underground roots in part of the garden. This year, my spare time has been spent pulling out hogwort weed and removing unwanted roots.
Still, my weed patch has begun to look like a garden. The lovely purple and white climatis climbing up both sides of the archway thrived (though not entirely evenly). The new irises bloomed, one after another, in a great variety of colors (yellow, blue, purple, pink, orange), each utterly lovely, emerging near the original arc of what turned out to be uniformly light pink ones. We planted cone flowers and cosmos (both bore abundantly in pink and white), yellow and maroon dahlias, pink zinnias. Multicolored portulaca make a bright ground cover; and yellow and orange marigolds peek out from their abundant foliage. The black eyed susans and tithonia produced flowers this year, though they were unhappy with the rainy June and nearly totally dry July. The dahlias and zinnias provided a welcome supplement for my bouquets. The two rose bushes we found in the garden gave us a few small, but pretty pinkish red roses (not quite up to what a Portlander expects—-‘the city of roses’). Now we’ve found pink and purple gladiolas that we also didn’t plant.
I continue to go out every day or so for a short while to pull up hogwort weed; and I look with anticipation every morning to see what new blossoms the garden is offering. All an unexpected delight!