Gardening

Browning did not have weekend gardeners in mind when he said so sententiously, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”—but every summer I recall his Victorian wisdom and decide, reluctantly, that he was speaking directly to me. Not that I’m an ambitious gardener; far from it. After a woodchuck-aborted attempt at tomatoes, I’ve abandoned the vegetable bit; all I want is a few flowers, nothing fancy. Even so, the results to date of the battle between me and nature (animate and inanimate) are a standoff: win a few, lose a few.

Take daffodils. Last fall, filled with visions of them fluttering and dancing in the breeze, I planted not a host, mind you, but approximately three dozen, arranging them with studied artistry near the border of trees ringing the (crabgrass-and-dandelion-ridden) lawn. I also put in tulips along the side of the house, the idea being that as we arrive for that first spring weekend, our tired, city-besooted eyes will be met by serried, multicolored ranks of bloom worthy of a gardening book illustration. Result: some eight spindly tulips, their colors’ clashing in Pop-art disharmony, occupy precisely one-half of the bed: in the other half a single white one plus some dwarfed, misshapen leaves. Six daffodils toss their heads in approved Wordsworth an fashion; elsewhere nice shiny leaves, flowerless but otherwise brimming with vigor, contrast with last year’s brown unfertilized grass. Curiously, over by the bird house, there bloom exuberantly five enormous blue hyacinths, puzzling since I don’t much like hyacinths and am sure, my husband’s recollections to the contrary notwithstanding, that I never planted them. Obviously, they arose parthenogenetically or sprang, full grown, from the head of Zeus.

RB

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Ruth Berenson

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Browning did not have weekend gardeners in mind when he said so sententiously, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”—but every summer I recall his Victorian wisdom and decide, reluctantly, that he was speaking directly to me. Not that I’m an ambitious gardener; far from it. After a woodchuck-aborted attempt at tomatoes, I’ve abandoned the vegetable bit; all I want is a few flowers, nothing fancy. Even so, the results to date of the battle between me and nature (animate and inanimate) are a standoff: win a few, lose a few.

Take daffodils. Last fall, filled with visions of them fluttering and dancing in the breeze, I planted not a host, mind you, but approximately three dozen, arranging them with studied artistry near the border of trees ringing the (crabgrass-and-dandelion-ridden) lawn. I also put in tulips along the side of the house, the idea being that as we arrive for that first spring weekend, our tired, city-besooted eyes will be met by serried, multicolored ranks of bloom worthy of a gardening book illustration. Result: some eight spindly tulips, their colors’ clashing in Pop-art disharmony, occupy precisely one-half of the bed: in the other half a single white one plus some dwarfed, misshapen leaves. Six daffodils toss their heads in approved Wordsworth an fashion; elsewhere nice shiny leaves, flowerless but otherwise brimming with vigor, contrast with last year’s brown unfertilized grass. Curiously, over by the bird house, there bloom exuberantly five enormous blue hyacinths, puzzling since I don’t much like hyacinths and am sure, my husband’s recollections to the contrary notwithstanding, that I never planted them. Obviously, they arose parthenogenetically or sprang, full grown, from the head of Zeus.