Monday, June 29, 2009

Can You Dig It? - June, 2009

By Tina Gordon

I know it seems like sacrilege, and I’ll probably suffer the 21st century equivalent of whatever non-Amish people do to shun others, but I just have to admit something: I hate gardening.

Don’t get me wrong. I love flowers. Feel free to send me a dozen roses anytime. Even carnations will do. And I love gardens. I love taking pictures of flowers and gardens. I’ve been to Longwood Gardens and Presby Memorial Iris Garden and the Grounds for Sculpture, where there are flowers and sculpture. I lament the passing of Duke Gardens and the lovely greenhouses there. I truly love all these places, the color, the smell and beauty of nature.

I just don’t like to get dirty.

I’ll admit it, in case you had any doubt, or in case you just don’t know me well enough: I’m not a nature person. I love living things – unless, of course, they get into my pool, my basement or my yard, or if they knock over my garbage cans or crap on my windshield. I love the shade of the trees, though, as an owner of a pool, I now consider the falling leaves Public Enemy #1. I see little bunnies hopping around the yard and I picture them getting caught in the pool filter. OK, maybe saying I love living things is a bit of an overstatement. How about this: I tolerate living things. I do love the beauty of nature. Not that I want to sleep under the stars, pee in the woods, or use any form of manure to grow vegetables. The way I figure it, my people wandered around the desert for 40 years so I could enjoy indoor plumbing, cable TV and 24-hour room service.

Growing plants and flowers is what everyone seems to do, so I make my meager attempt at it. But I hate hauling 40-pound bags of dirt in the back of my Mercedes (you should see the look on Gracie’s face when she is treated like a truck…), I hate kneeling on the ground, digging holes and planting. Now I have switched to container gardening, and even there, I can work up a pretty good whine. I have to remove the old, dead plants from last year and replace them with the new plants, hoping they will survive the neighborhood gangs of deer that look at them as a salad bar. And then there is the guilt. Maybe it will rain, I reason, so I won’t have to water them. If there was a DYFS for plants, I’m sure someone would turn me if for being a bad mother to mine.

The challenge with planting flowers is finding annuals that you like that bloom throughout the season, or perennials that last but don’t take over the entire yard – or anything that the deer will reject. The tiny lamb’s ear plant I kindly gave to my sister a few years ago is now a monstrosity that stands guard over her entire front walkway, and, short of removing it entirely, no amount of cutting it back will reduce its middle aged spread.

At my last house, I had extensive landscaping done, and I took particular joy in growing hollyhocks. Each year they would bloom again – never where they were the year before. When I moved to this house two years ago, I learned that the previous owner was quite the gardener. My neighbor said she would be out manicuring the garden with cuticle scissors (personally, I think she should have done a little more work on the inside of the house, like cleaning the dryer vent so it wouldn’t catch on fire…). For me, just seeing her green plants and rocks with weed block looks dull. I’d like to spice things up with bursts of color – but the lawn guy tells me to forget it. The deer will get whatever you plant, he warns. One of my friends, determined to foil Bambi and her gang, sprayed some sort of natural concoction – garlic and other odious elements – on her plants, only to get herself in the face and end up in the emergency room. So the whole scenario spells danger to me.

Besides, I hate to get dirty. I wear the gloves, the chlorine clothes (why ruin two sets of clothes when I can dedicate one pair of pants, shoes and a top to both the pool and the garden?), the hat, and I give it the old college try. Come to think of it, one of my part time jobs in college was working for the Rutgers Agricultural School, as it was then known. I tell people I was a researcher, but the truth is that I washed glassware, picked asparagus berries and sorted out their seeds for the real scientists. Somehow I knew even then that my career as a migrant worker wouldn’t amount to much.

This year I decided to try to grow tomatoes on the deck in a pot. (I couldn't fathom the upside down hanging kind you see advertised on TV). And I now have a tiny basil plant that I hope will yield enough of a crop to eat with the tomatoes. Minimal yield, but minimal digging.

Once upon a time I had a real vegetable garden. I grew juicy, red tomatoes, which I tried to pick before the rabbits and deer ate them. I had zucchini the size of baseball bats and basil with roots from here to China. Eventually, tired of putting out what amounted to a bunny buffet, I built a fence that could best be described as ramshackle. I even fenced the top of the garden. That discouraged the deer and their friends from snacking on my hard earned produce. But, as you might imagine, picking anything with a fence on top of it became a challenge, so I gave it up in favor of flowers. Besides, I live amid farms, one of which is down the road and sells fresh vegetables. I figure that buying fresh fruits and veggies there – after the farmer has done all of the dirty work – is my way of contributing to the local economy while keeping my hands clean.

And now, despite my somewhat limited love (tolerance) of nature, my need for color amid the greenery and my desire to grow things on my own, I have to face facts: I don’t need bushes that attract butterflies and I’m not going to buy bird feeders so birds can come near my house and crap in my pool. I don’t want to be stung by bees or see those obnoxious bug zappers or bags of beetles hanging in anyone’s yard, especially mine.

OK, now that we have established the fact that I hate gardening, I have to run. I need to water the plants in case it doesn’t rain.