Zanthan Gardens
Garden Essays: Returning to the Garden

August 25th, 2005
Returning to the Garden

Picking up the spade again.

Returning to the garden after time away results in feelings tinged with expectation tempered with fear. After more than two weeks in England we arrived home at 1 in the morning. I was too tired to wander around the garden in the moonlight. I peeked through the window, though, and thought the grass looked unusually perky for this time of year.

When I woke and saw the lawn in the sunlight, the grass looked green and vigorous. Odd for August. The crape myrtles were finally blooming. And the other small flowering trees, Tecoma stans and Rose of Sharon also had flowers.

Apparently it had been unusually cool and rainy while we were gone. Good thing, too. Now we’re back to 100 degree days and I’m out watering, weeding, and mulching the first two hours of every day until the sun starts shining.

The roses are struggling. “Caldwell Pink” was suffering die-back even before we left. I’ve now pruned away two-thirds of it and the rest of it has lost its leaves. ‘Gruss an Aachen’ and ‘Souvenir de St. Anne’s’ are similarly stressed.

Overall the garden seems in not too bad a shape. I feel like tackling it again. If you’ve read The Secret Garden then you know some people’s delight in pulling away the weeds and restoring order to a garden. I’ve not quite reached that point of delight, but I’m over my reluctance. I suppose I could be coaxed into gardening again, especially after this hot spell breaks and we get some rain.

by M Sinclair Stevens