by Carlene Phillips ·
Friday, September 27, 2024
It's very hard living with a lazy, messy gardener. She used to take care of things, but the older she gets, the more she dismisses my pleas for order.
Take, for example, the monstrosity that has completely taken over a fenced-in garden the size of a living room. It’s not her friend’s fault that the blue pumpkin plant she gave her turned out to be a blue squash on steroids. But she could control it now that it’s spilling out of the pickets and into the lawn. The other day I looked in, and under enormous leaves was this alien blob the size of two misshapen basketballs. I told her we should pull it all up—it’s not as though she’s going to cook some fancy squash dish. But she thinks it’s amazing and wants to see how many other blossoms will turn into squash. Maybe she’ll use them at Halloween. It’s useless to point out that, for good reason, she’s never seen a jack-o’-lantern squash.
In that same garden, the white cloud of autumn clematis is engulfing one whole side of the fence. I kept telling her it was going to pull the whole fence down and we should thin it. Of course now it’s too late, because it is humming with bees. The same with goldenrod. I tried to point out that we don’t need so many, especially the ones that have sprung up in awkward places, like sprawling across the walkway. I almost cut it down just to make a point, but it too is full of bees. She tells me to be quiet—we are feeding pollinators.
Someone gave her a seed of a wild morning glory a few years ago. They are a sweet, pretty purple, but they are climbing over all sorts of other plants; I’m afraid they’ll choke out everything else. But she says they bring color and cheer when not many other flowers are blooming, and she’s never heard of a plant dying from strangulation. She agrees that plants do die of thirst but doesn’t seem to think that applies to the actual plants in pots on the patio that are gasping for water.
I argue that now is the time to move some plants to other beds so as to give everyone more room to spread out. She says moving plants means more beds to make. Like siblings sharing a bed, let them fight it out. She subscribes to Darwinian gardening: May the fittest survive.
But these arguments are minor skirmishes compared to our big battle. Growing up, every fall my mother put the garden to bed, saying it was imperative to tidy things up so they look nice and so you’d have less work in the spring. I think there must be something very gratifying about a garden that’s in bed, all the plants tucked in and cozy. But looking around, it’s clear she’s won again—they’re all jumping wildly all over the beds.
She used to give all sorts of silly excuses, just to rationalize her laziness. She’d say hardy plants can take care of themselves and they’ll fall over when they’re ready. And, she’d add, who knows how they feel when someone cuts off their head. But more recently she has argued her case with quotes from authorities. Her new best friend is author Margaret Renkl, whose advice she quotes to me regularly, particularly from her article “Let Your Winter Garden Go Wild.”
“I don’t tuck in my flower beds anymore,” Margaret writes. “Year by year, the little creatures that share this yard have been teaching me the value of an untidy garden. An unkempt garden offers more than just food for the birds. The late offspring of certain butterflies, like the black swallowtail, spend fall and winter sealed away in a chrysalis clinging to the dried stems in what’s left of a summer garden. Others overwinter as eggs or caterpillars buried deep in the leaf litter beneath their host plants.”
Her new BFF, Margaret, goes on to say that most species of native bees—or their fertilized queens at least—hibernate underground. Yanking out weeds could expose them to the cold, and deep mulch could block their escape in the spring. Other beneficial bugs spend winter in the hollow stems of old flowers. Easy access to decomposing wood is a welcome thing for birds looking for insects and small animals seeking shelter.
I guess I understand her siding with Margaret. I don’t want to be a bee murderer either or deprive a cute bug of a warm jumble of leaves. But, I argue with desperation, our unkempt garden is an embarrassment in front of tidy gardeners. She rolls her eyes.
When we go inside, I know better than to suggest she vacuum the rug.
Carlene Phillips, author of “A Common History: The Story of Harvard’s Identity,” is a regular feature writer who pauses from time to time to reflect on the humor in the everyday.