Imagine

Imagine there’s no tree roots:
It’s easy if you try;
No rocks below us,
Above, a sunny sky.
Imagine all the compost
Mixed in yesterday!

Imagine no samaras:
It isn’t hard to do!
Nothing to pull or uproot,
No spurge or sorrel, too.
Imagine all the peppers,
’Matoes, beans, and peas, oo-hoo!

You may say I’m a dreamer,
And I ain’t got nothing done;
But someday you can join me,
And this garden might be fun!

Or something like that.

Call this an excuse for not posting for awhile, but when it comes to working on my house and garden, I find a strong imagination to be a dire handicap. I'm so good at imagining and visualizing what things are going to look like when I've got them finished, that when I finally get out there and accomplish the work, I have no sense of satisfaction. It's like, "Hey, wasn't it like that all along? What's the big deal?"

Or I obsess about it in my sleep, dreaming about mixing soil or digging out roots or finally finding places for and planting all the flowers I was given by my friend Hannah's* mother-in-law two weeks ago, and then I wake up and yeah, now I actually gotta do it, except it means two more trips to the garden center for mushroom compost and cow poop-- ye gods, I'm broke and I'm spending my money on dirt!!?-- and more rock and root removal.

And then I think, Dammit, just do it, but it rains solid for a week. And then it doesn't rain for a week and the soil turns to dust and I don't want to pay the borough's inflated sewer rates watering the garden, but I have to do it anyway, if I don't want all the new vegetable plants to die.

All right, though. I still have the beans, squash, and cantaloupe to plant in the vegetable garden. But I do have the tomatoes (Brandywine and grape) in, and the bell peppers (red and yellow), yellow and red onions, regular and pickling cucumbers, broccoli, and celery (that last is me getting adventurous). Oh, yes, and the volunteer lettuce.

In the front border, the peonies and balloon flowers I transplanted last November are up and prospering (surprise! thought I'd drowned them!). They've been joined by delphiniums and sweet Williams from the cooperative extension's master gardeners' plant sale, Mona Lavendar plectanthrus from the garden center, and dead nettle and some other low-growing whatever-it-is from my friend's mother-in-law. The poppies are at it, but the front border crape myrtle isn't doing anything. Rot.

I've received my order of three ground-cover roses in the post three (or four?) days ago that'll go in with them, if I haven't killed them stone dead. I was screamingly busy this weekend and I forgot they were coming in little pots, not bareroot. So I just left them in the unopened box, on the dining room table. Where my big cat lay on it, keeping them nice and warm . . .

I've liberated the pots and put them on the back porch, watered, hopefully to recover for planting tomorrow.

Some of the donated gooseneck loosestrife went in the backyard border next to the house this evening. I figure I want something vigorous and agressive there, and if it invades the grass-- well, what grass? That's where I'm always trampling it down on the way to the rain barrel.

Which is finally full again, because it rained all afternoon and evening.

Too bad! Planted the gooseneck in it, and then half the tall phlox I was given. That went next to the giant alliums in the far end of the west border.

I still have sedums, more phlox, Siberian iris, and some kind of reddish basil to find locations for. And more gooseneck loosestrife, if anyone wants any! (Heh-heh!)

But in my imagination this is all perfectly done! At least two weeks ago!

Which does my sense of accomplishment no good at all.