"This month's #creativegarden challenge asks us to reflect on why we love the Hive Garden community," @riverflows tells us in Hive Gardeners are My People. I especially love this:
Hive Gardeners are Gentle Souls
I don't know any gardener here who's an asshole. They're consistantly [consistently] kind, considerate and caring.
Cue the diabolical laughter.
Oh, I am a kind and gentle soul, and a gardener too.
A reckless gardener.
With so many disasters, I cannot confine them to a Top Ten,
much less "My worst gardening disaster" - that's like asking me my favorite color, or book, or song, or food. I have so many favorites.
There! I injected a note of POSITIVITY into my a^^hole rant. I love so many things, and so many people, I cannot isolate just one favorite!
Photo by me: The Man (aka my wonderful husband) supervises my Burning of the Garlic Mustard, as I’ve been known to have “incidents” involving scorched redbud branches and…. (not gonna confess to the rest!).
I do confess I am not so kind or gentle,
after so many years of being clobbered by my multitudinous mistakes.
I squeeze Japanese beetles and grimly (with great satisfaction) watch their guts ooze out like toothpaste from a tube.
If I were stronger and less of a klutz and more competent, I would be a raging a^^hole on this acreage. All the volunteer trees I'd grind down! All the poison ivy I'd mow and dredge with big metal implements!
My wonderful husband bought me a little chainsaw with lots of safety features, but I get the blade pinched in the middle of a branch, and worse, I get rotator cuff injuries (very painful with no range-of-motion left in the shoulder), so (what a waste!) I just keep using the little hand saw instead.
This morning, a friend voiced her concern for a young man whose occupation is tree trimming (and felling, and stump grinding). One of the most dangerous occupations. Why you worry, honey? He's a man!
I tried to channel @owasco and compose an ode for these men who are not cut out for "safe" lines of work:
Men
Machines
Power Tools
Noisy motors
Flammable gas -powered engines
Construction equipment
Massive earth-movers
Diggers
Drills
Jack Hammers
Hard-hats
Lumberjacks
Grinding, cutting, pulverizing
MEN
Men who thrive on these things are not going to thrive in "safe" occupations.
My neighbor's husband is a military veteran. He shoots rabbits, badgers, woodchucks, anything that threatens his work in the garden. His wife got him to build elaborate wood-framed cages with chicken wire and clever Open-and-Shut lids to guard the green beans.
Now his hand-hewn, manly frames and cages are rotting in the meadow in the woods behind the treeline... because why? The worst villains just burrow under all fences!
Somebunny chews the stalks and leaves almost-ripe pea pods on the ground unopened and uneaten in my own wee little garden, and I am not pleased.
"Gardeners here (at Hive) are not a^^holes" ...
Well, I did quit using Roundup (years ago!) --
Then, my Slash and Burn had to go (because, pollinators) --
But I will burn again (one small section at a time, one season at a time), because, BAD BUGS (don't even mention the spittle bug!) and weed seeds and debris that provides habitat for the most maddening villains in my world.
My gorgeous driveway, the length of a football field, lined on both sides with pollinator plants, is now (thanks to the No Burn, No Mow) so infested with chiggers and ticks, I cannot dig dig dig and pull pull pull as I once did. And I have but to walk past, and I'm chiggered. Nope. Not gonna say more. Not in this post. I'll show you a pretty picture instead. A derecho has taken down the pines we planted (they'd soared to 30 feet tall in 20 years). Pasture grass choked out my lilies. To be fair, blackberry lily and Queen Ann's lace are not native here anyway. But neither is the d^^^ed pasture grass!
All those native prairie plants.
Consumed. By reed canary, brome, poison ivy (oh yes, that too)! and other things I do not feel like thinking about right now. I am bore myself with the tedium of all my mistakes. Not gonna bore you, too, dear reader.
(Is anyone really reading this?)
If you are, God bless you!
If you want more, here's a few old posts:
Agony in the Garden, by the Decade, Part One
My Agony in the Garden, By the Decade, Part 2
My Agony in the Garden, by the decade, Part 3 - Glory, Glorious, Gloria in excelsis!
I meant well.
I was very nice, at one time.
Let's just say I was kind and compassionate in all the wrong ways.
Mom dug up that ditch lily, the lovely orange "tiger lily," and I rescued it.
Oh, it looked lovely! At first.
(Oh my beautiful driveway, once upon at time)
My mom, in her infinite wisdom, dug stuff up and discarded it.
All the pretty flowers she killed!
For a reason.
I thought my mom was being an a^^hole gardener, killing the beloved lily of the vally, the phlox known as Dame's Rocket, periwinkle (vinca minor).
I, like a kind, compassionate idiot, planted these things in my own soil 90 miles away.
Now I am the a^^hole, chopping and killing, complaining and shaking my puny first of rage at God, Nature, Groundhogs, Rabbits, and rain clouds that don't send a drop our way. Unless it's that teasing 1/16 of an inch. Torment me some more. Go on. Drive me to a homicidal rage!
But wait.
My husband, raised on a Nebraska farm, has held an office job since 1985. He earns enough money for us to BUY VEGETABLES at the grocery store.
News flash: WE CAN STILL BUY FOOD AT THE STORE
So.
No need to plant my own broccoli, lettuce, radishes, peas.
We did that, this year, and got precious little for all our efforts.
For sure, the produce aisle of the grocery store is not the best source of food. Wilted, limp, flavorless, nutrient-deprived carrots, spring greens, celery, all that. Moldy potatoes! Mold in their strawberries! Soggy grapes. Bugs in the broccoli. Maggots (I have proof) in the bags of pistachios...
Am I done yet?
I didn't even get started on what an A^^HOLE gardener I am!
But I will leave you in peace.
And head into the morning sun, in prayer and gratitude,
Wands of Horus in hand,
Barefoot,
Trusting/hoping/trying to believe
in a benevolent
Creator/Mother Nature/God the Father Almighty/Great Spirit
working to make all things come together for the greater good.
Those pink roses in the morning sun? #Native!
Birds planted them in my prized pollinator garden lining the long driveway.
I had been digging the roses out.
Then, last summer, in tribute to my recently departed sisters, I just let them go. Because, #futility. What's one more disaster? Bring it on!
Kelly, did you have a hand in this? On your deathbed in April 2022, during our last phone call, our last conversation on this earth, you told me you'd find a way to visit me in my garden. You'd kill the non-native mantis for me. I said (or thought) No, make it something more life-affirming.
Now I have a 20-feet by 10-foot rose hedge - native roses, the kind rosehips and tinctures are made from, and the bees, oh Lord, the many many bees they fed in June! Now the blooms are gone, but I'm keeping my wall of roses, and letting it take over.
These roses are choking out the pasture grass!
My Beautiful Disaster!
Did you bring it about, Kelly, you who had mocked my thousands of hours in the woods pulling garlic mustard as a "waste of time" (in April 2016) ...?
@riverflows
Forgive me, @riverflows I'm still laughing at this and therefore will shut up again after posting my A^^hole Gardening Rant.
