As garden lovers, everywhere we go, we’re given plants and things – delphinium from one person, peonies from another, phlox and forsythia from Connecticut, pansies from Michigan, roses from Pennsylvania. Shasta daisies we have galore, and love. A rich friend sent her gardener to plant some of her choice hardy amaryllis around our picket fence. They came up early, and then the leaves died down. Thinking them ugly things, we cut them away. We didn’t know, until one that had somehow escaped the sickle blossomed in spite of us, that is exactly what hardy amaryllis does – puts forth great blossoms after the leaves have gone.
We had always craved an orchard, unconsciously. Now we have one, complete with ten dwarf fruit trees at the back of the lot, an espalier pear on the back fence, and a grapevine on a trellis to separate “orchard” from garden.
All nature seemed to be out to help us. A Forget-me-not plant pulled out of the brook on the hottest summer day has multiplied into a colony. Around the elm tree, with the Myrtle and Lilies-of-the-valley, we have the most beautiful Forget-me-nots blooming all summer. The old apple tree makes a wonderful outdoor studio for Clara’s portrait photography. “Why,” says she, “I can make old age look like spring under that tree.”
At first we thought we had become property possessors; then we found that the property possessed us. We could neither do our jobs nor rest. Things have come into perspective again. While we still go out right after breakfast to gaze wonderingly at each blade of grass, we find that the major things have been done, and we can settle down to our own professions with the garden as the background. Clara now gets into her jeans at five in the morning, drinks a coffee and gardens until dark.
“Let’s have nothing that God will not take care of,” we had agreed. Well, God must laugh when He sees us plant our seeds, or mow the lawn, or tend the flowers. Then when we have a chance to settle in a chair by the fireside for a minute, do we waste our time on fiction? I should say not. We read the newest rose catalogue, or the book on dwarf fruit trees, or search online at places like plant-care.com.
On rides, we take along a pail and a shovel for woods plants, or rich soil. Wherever we go, we observe other people’s gardens. My, how we criticize, like old hands at the game! When we get home again we just sit in the car and look and look and look at our little house and piece of ground. Does it look beautiful to others, we wonder? What if it doesn’t-it looks good to us!
We have our feet on the ground in a big way, and we wouldn’t have them anywhere else. Our little lot has done a lot for us.
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