It goes like this every fall: rooting cuttings; sowing sweet peas; pre-sprouting corms; harvesting flowers; planting bulbs; raking leaves; covering plants; moving perennials; protecting shrubs. If you didnB次元官网网址檛 notice all those active verbs, I guarantee your back did.
So what if we let it all slide?
IB次元官网网址檓 a nature-worshipping urbanite: coffee runneth through my veins (and half of it I donB次元官网网址檛 make myself). But every day IB次元官网网址檓 deep in the green: futzing, pottering, and whatB次元官网网址檚 moreB次元官网网址攖hinking about my garden. I feel tied to the rhythm of the seasons, a Wordsworthian thrum in my heart. For many years I longed to be the person IB次元官网网址檝e become. But on bad days now the beat runs to a samba and I stumble, overwhelmed. Do this. Do that. Now. And gardening, my love, feels like a chore.
For solace, I have long returned Margaret AtwoodB次元官网网址檚 poem, B次元官网网址楶rogressive Insanities of a PioneerB次元官网网址�. It is about the wilderness and the Canadian mind but it speaks to growers in the thick of it too.
He stood, a point
on a sheet of green paper
proclaiming himself the centre,
with no walls, no borders
anywhere; the sky no height
above him, totally un-
enclosed
and shouted:
Let me out!
This past weekend I got out. I ignored the perennial weedsB次元官网网址攖he English ivy sprouts who miraculously appear miles from a vine and the creeping Pacific buttercup that sneaks from lawn to bed. I left dahlia tubers undug, chrysanthemums untied and leaves unraked. I got about as far from my garden as I could get for four nights: I went to New York.
And there, I saw flowers. At the Met I marvelled at urns filled with branches of cherry red dogwood, silver eucalyptus and plum hydrangeas ten feet high. I saw a vase filled with old Noisette roses painted by Van Gogh. I inhaled the sharp scent of my Toronto childhoodB次元官网网址攃oncrete and grimeB次元官网网址攁nd mooched around the floral wholesalers on 28th then travelled blocks underground. I went to a wedding where the bride held more flowers and the men wore boutonnieres of twigs and blooms. I thought about gardening but obtusely, not sharply as I do at home, and all my little horticultural worries fell oddly into place. To have a plot of earth of oneB次元官网网址檚 own is a rarity; to be able to grow what I see on my travels is a gift. Seeking inspiration from abroad is not a step away from the work but a step towards new aesthetic understandings.
Once you see the world in shades of green you canB次元官网网址檛 do anything but. That is the life of a gardener; so be it.
So go.
Christin Geall is an avid Oak Bay gardener and creative non-fiction writing instructor at the University of Victoria.
