I Found Time to Garden
The casual passerby out for a walk would not look at my flower beds and intuit that I am a person who enjoys weeding. Surely a person who enjoys pulling weeds would not let crab grass grow waist high until the flowering plants are nearly choked to death. Yet I do. The trouble is that I forget that weeding is an activity which makes me happy. I wait for the right conjunction of weather, available time, and energy instead of arranging so that those things will overlap.
This evening I rescued my baby butterfly bush from the grass. I am quite happy to see that it has not died. I planted it last fall, but I feared that the cold winter had killed it and then I worried that neglect would do the same. But now it stands in a space of bare earth, putting forth its first flowers. Perhaps next week I’ll be able to rescue the peonies and day lilies. In late August I hope to begin putting new plants into the ground. For once I would like to end the gardening season with the weeds in retreat. I hope for that most years, but perhaps this is the year that I will succeed. If I can just get the plants into the ground, then some of them will thrive despite my neglect. I like that about plants.
