"Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them"-Winnie-the Pooh
Now, I don't believe in garden perfection--sort of unnatural I think to have every petal smile and every plant and shrub stand tall and upright--would be nice however. But I would like to see hundreds of hours of care and attention show a little--OK a lot!
After a loooong cold snowy winter, and a lovely spring where everything popped up magnificently, my hopes for a summer in bloom has faded as July turns. The peonies and roses came in gloriously and then left as quickly as they could. Lavender is filling the walkways fragrantly and then...nothing! Bed upon bed in the gardens at Camp MP have grown in leggy and floppy and there is an insidious vine that wants to strangle the joy out each and every resident, and like a bad movie every tug brings it back stronger.
Every gardener knows there will be weeds, and crazy vines, and bugs that chomp... and sadly there will be plants whose time in the garden is done...
...but our payoff for all the work and disappointment is always a garden in bloom!
"Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
-Hans Christian Anderson
For the gardens at Camp MP so far this season,however, those blooms have yet to make their presence known. My work-worn, not so well manicured, beds have no presence, no grace, no color and hold for this gardener nothing but frustration. I want a summer's beauty.
I pour over images of gracious gardens and fuss and fret.
Scores of hydrangeas just sit, leafy yet bare. I can count on one hand the hydrangea heads that have popped -perhaps I am a spoiled hydrangea hostess, but I have grown not only accustomed, but also expectant that summer and hydrangeas would go hand in hand--like flip flops by the back door and the top down on the convertible.
As always my gardens teach me something if I stop fussing long enough to listen to them. In the garden, as in life, sometimes hard work is just hard work. We have come to demand a gift, a result, a reward for our work...sometimes life and the garden say-not this round. A garden is a process, a never ending chore that calls to me each day. I can clip, and dig, and yank, and tug, and prune, and water, and care with all my heart, but nature will decide how many hydrangeas will bloom, how many weeds and vines will push their greedy way through, and how many days of rain and sun are in the forecast. Deal with it! and find the joy in that one lone hydrangea head that appears beneath the leaves-treasure it and don't be a greedy gardener for as Audrey said...
"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow"
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