Of Writing and Gardens

The longer I garden and write the more I think the two are alike. From the first lines of a new piece to a new or redone garden plot. To rewrites and editing to tearing out gardens and eliminating difficult plants or plants that just don’t work.

Sometimes things take awhile to work out and, sometimes, you have to have patience. Sometimes, a ton of patience. The best things I’ve ever learned about editing I learned in my garden.

When spring comes and I set out to buy seeds or plants, I always end up with too many. I fill my gardens to bursting. The rock cress spilling over the edging until my husband cusses while he mows, the shade garden so full there’s not a patch of bare ground and sometimes O accidentally step on a garden snake. (Suggestion: don’t go out in the garden bare-footed) The daisy fight their way up through the roses and the roses have shoulder space from the Hibiscus.

I always forget how big the plants will be. I have the hardest time when I go into the garden centers picking just one flower. It’s like picking a word. I love them all and maybe, if I don’t get petunias this year, I’ll forget how their perfume rising in the evening, warm and haunting. Maybe, if I don’t plant ‘Lady in Red’ salvia this year, I won’t see any hummingbirds at all.

I tend to write that way, too. That’s all right, too, because I know I have to trim the excess. Once I have it in place, I can relax and see what’s really supposed to be there. It may not be the best way, but it seems to be my way.

This lily, named Elodie, is an example of a plant I had to wait awhile for. It was worth it. I bought the bulbs last and was very disappointed.

Another plant I had to wait a long while for and the redeeming took place in my mother’s yard, not mine. Years ago, more than ten, I found a picture of a Hydrangea bush I just fell in love with in the Wayside Garden catalog. I sent away for one for me and one for my mother. When they arrived, one had been damaged in shipping. I planted that one and gave the good one to my mother. Well, my died over the winter. Wayside replaced it with no problems, but my plant seemed to struggle at first.

My mother’s took off. There have been beautiful blooms over the years and the blooms are so versatile. Perfect to put in a vase on the table, white and creamy with a hint of scent and the blooms remaining on the bush turn green, then pink, and finally in the fall, this gorgeous bronzy brown. Best of all you can bring them inside, put them in a vase without water and they’re lovely all winter.

Very best in a vintage turquoise vase.

My mother’s plant has flourished; mine has grown steadily and bloomed but never with as much enthusiasm as my mom’s. I have a ton more shade and the bush has to compete with a huge snowball bush. And of course, my mother’s soil is much different.

This year, though, the plant has outdone itself and the scent. No hint of scent with all these blooms. Oh, no. It infuses her whole back yard and the bee’s tea party there, of an afternoon.

I’ve always thought of my writing as my work, my garden as my hobby. (Along with crocheting which teaches a lot about writing, too. The biggest lesson: do a little bit every day and before you know it you have something useful: an afghan or a first draft) A perfect day is spending a good long morning in a white heat of writing—when everything is just working along, the words are flowing and they make sense. (Even a bad day writing, though, is a good day) Then, spending the afternoon following the shade through the yard, deadheading spent flowers.

And the perfect end to that day would be a good book. Someday, it might be mine. If I’m patient.