Garden Musings

 

Gardening has this embracing quality in that it colours

the way you look at the world.

Penelope Lively - Life in the Garden

Most of the columbines in my garden are of the pale variety, but these dark violet ones popped up in a dark corner. I'll be saving the seeds to strew elsewhere in the autumn. Pink and white peonies have so many fat buds and I'm longing to see them open. Yesterday evening I watched a bumblebee going from one tight bud to another search for pollen. He didn't linger long and soon moved on to more likely fare, such as the chive blossoms.  

We planted a new fig tree last summer. The one we had was not suitable for our climate and produced few fruits on the first crop and many on the second which arrived too late to ripen. Our new tree is a Desert King which supposedly produces a large breba crop that will ripen. On the four spindly branches there are over a dozen figs fattening nicely. Figs are a fruit I've learned to like over the years. My first introduction to figs was via store-bought Fig Newton Cookies and I didn't like them at all. But a fresh fig with blue cheese, or roasted figs with honey - so delicious!

I've just finished reading Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively, featuring gardens as related to art, literature, and life in general. I especially enjoyed the section on gardens in literature in which she references Rebecca, The Secret Garden, Elizabeth and Her German Garden, among others. Lively also suggests that gardening is somewhat genetic - the desire to garden runs in families. 

I have to laugh at my attempts to grow a garden in the jungle of Ecuador. Early on, Tim found someone selling rose bushes and purchased two of them for me. I planted them in front of the covered porch of our house. They gave few blooms for whenever leaves grew, the leafcutter ants would march in and strip the bushes in a matter of hours. I soon gave up planting anything. Instead I enjoyed the wild and bright impatiens plants growing in massive heart-shape around a tree that overarched another home. How upset I would get when the hospital maintenance crew would regularly mow them down. Then I'd wait for a few weeks until the blooms reappeared. 

In my present garden in Canada, now over 20 years old, things constantly change. The yellow poppies appeared several years ago and show up faithfully every May, growing in profusion each year. The birch tree is filling out nicely, but the buddleia died over the winter, and I lost my large rosemary bush. This week I cleared part of one of my flower beds for a small asparagus patch, digging in compost and spreading out the corms with their long tendrils. It will be a couple of years before we harvest, but I can wait. Gardening is a hopeful activity, one that looks to the future. 

As Monty Don says, "A garden is not a place. It's a journey." On that note I'll end here for today, still thinking about gardens. Do you enjoy gardening?