If you don't have a garden bench, any chair will do. Photo by Quincy Benton
Gardens require a lot of time. There's the soil preparation, the shopping for seeds and plants, the planting, the weeding, the feeding, the cultivation of soil, the eradication of pests, the deadheading, the pruning, the transplanting, and on and on down the garden path. Not to mention the reading of books and magazines and now blogs and Examiner.com pages on gardening.
In my growing zone (5), many of these demands seem most evident during spring and autumn. But now that June is upon us, now that I have almost everything planted that will get planted this season and have moved out most of the plants that overwintered in the house, I'm seeing a little light at the end of the garden tunnel. And the long days invite me to sit in the garden for the sheer sake of enjoying my mini Eden.
“And this brings me to another observation which I think goes with my original longing for a little shambles here and there. For it seems that proper gardeners never sit in their gardens. Dedicated and single-minded the garden draws them into its embrace where their passions are never assuaged unless they are on their knees. But for us, the unserious, the improper people, who plant and drift, who prune and amble, we fritter away little dollops of time in sitting about our gardens. Benches for sunrise, seats for contemplation, resting perches for the pure sublimity of smelling the evening air or merely ruminating about a distant shrub. We are the unorthodox gardeners who don’t feel compulsion to pull out campion among the delphiniums; we can idle away vacantly small chunks of time without fretting about an outcrop of buttercups groping at the pulsatillas. Freedom to loll goes with random gardening, it goes with the modicum of chaos which I long to see here and there in more gardens.”
-- Mirabel Osler, A Gentle Plea for Chaos: Reflections from an English Garden.
If you do not have a copy of A Gentle Plea for Chaos, I recommend this fine book to you. I have not read it cover to cover, yet every time I pick it up and read a portion, the writing grabs me. Many garden books include lavish photographs, and this book has some, too; but for me it's the language that flowers.
For more info: Click on the link to read about 12 new garden books reviewed by The New York Times.
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