Four bananas sit and overipen on my kitchen counter this morning. They are spreading a sicky sweet smell all over. I will have to make a decision soon concerning their fate. Bread? Freeze them to make banana pancakes? What else can you do with overipe bananas? Rather than grapple with this existential conundrum, I wandered out into the back yard, where things are generally less complicated.
I sat down in the swing, to admire the garden. Although it is hard not to see things that need to be done. It makes one figity. And I finally had to get up and give the creeping thyme that is growing in a planter, a haircut. Seems some lazy gardener forgot to water them a few weeks ago and they have crispy dead areas here and there from that traumatic experience. Funny thing is that they keep growing green down under. So I went in and got the scissors and hacked away. Of course that led to pulling a few weeds and snapping the spent marigold blossoms in the planter next to the thyme. I still smell of tangy marigold scent because of it. Then I had to clean up my clippings and decided the patio should be sprayed off and some more dead flowers removed from one of the raised beds.
But all I started out to do was to sit in my garden swing and admire my Forget-Me-Nots. I consider it a minor miracle that I get to do so.
I have been gardening for 31 years. On and off in all those years I have tried to grow Forget-Me-Nots. And in all that time, they would never grow. I even bought plants one year, which upon being lovingly transplanted into my yard, promptly died. I kept buying seed and tried sowing it direct into the beds, or starting them in pots indoors.
Nothing worked.
Now I have developed a rather promiscuous philosophy of gardening. I gather lots of seeds from all over. And I scatter them far and wide in my garden, in no particular order. I gave up on order somewhere back in 1983. If a plant comes up volunteer in my garden, 9 times out of 10 I let it grow where it stands. I think I adopted this technique because it came home to me at some point quite forcefully, that this is just one season. This year's failures might be next year's success. So no use to get all bothered if the gladiolus develop thrips. Next year they will be better. Or they will die. And some other plant will take their place that has more of a will to live. I favor the plants that seem to WANT to grow, not the ones that have to be coaxed overmuch.
Now this does not mean I don't WORK out there. Far from it. But I have just given up the notion that *I* am in charge. The only thing I am supposed to do is pull weeds, provide water, and plant seeds. Lots of seeds. And then get out of the way.
The people who plant Mickey Mouse faces in a formal flower bed would consider me a leper. Ahhhh! get her away from my beds! She's going to let that sunflower plant grow, right in the middle of Mickey's left eyeball! Escort her to the Exit! . . . In the meantime, somebody would be pulling up a perfectly good sunflower plant. I have a very very soft spot for volunteer plants. They are usually the hardiest and best of their kind. They just don't always decide to grow in the most ascetically pleasing places.
Anyway, back to my story. This year, from someplace I cannot remember, I came into the possession of a packet of Forget-Me-Not seeds. I don't remember buying them. But there they were in my seed basket this spring. When I was finished planting vegetables and bedding plants this year, I took out my flower seeds, got a little bowl and dumped them all in there together. I marched out to my prepared flower beds and scattered seeds like I was planting wheat. Somewhere in that mix, were the Forget-Me-Nots.
I now have a huge array of wildflowers and domestic varieties all growing in a cottage jungle style back there. They are beautiful. A few weeks ago, I noticed a plant coming up at the end of one of the raised beds right near where I had potatoes growing earlier. It looked a bit like a Purple Cone Flower to me, but I wasn't sure. Then one day the plant started to send up spikes. And lo and behold, there they were. Forget-Me-Nots. Sweet little deep blue flowers budding all over the place.
My cavalier gardening technique is vindicated.
And just think. It only took 31 years!
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