In her 1932 autobiography “Heritage of Years” Francis Wolcott wrote a telling sentence in her prologue.
“If there be but two passions that survive old age – gambling and gardening – the first I have never tasted, but the making of gardens has still a beckoning hand. It has the cult of beauty, the mystery of birth, growth, sleep, death and resurrection, a place of hopes and a place of graves.”
I suspect that although Frances conceived gardens, she didn’t get down in the dirt, plant the seeds and pull the weeds. Alas, that’s my job and things rarely turn out as envisioned. In retrospect, my trials and tribulations seem like an endless comic opera.
A few years ago I decided to fence off a section of the side yard and plant a few rows of corn. I weeded, fertilized, watered and the corn thrived. The tender ears were almost ripe, and we were looking forward to reaping the fruits of our labor, but the deer got there first.
Soaring over our pitiful fence, the herd quickly disposed of the corn … oh, well.
Fencing off a smaller garden, and planting both flowers and vegetables seemed like a good idea. We grew zinnias, petunias, basil, parsley, tomatoes, iris, peonies, pumpkins and whatever else seemed like fun. We had one great year, a couple of acceptable years and a few calamities. Wind, hail, late and early frosts and ever-vigorous weeds fought with us and usually prevailed – but we were still in the game.
My trials and tribulations seem like an endless comic opera.
Last year, we put an enormous raised bed in the yard, figuring that it’d be easier to tend, weed and water. It was a disaster, because the soil we filled it with was junky and our plants scarcely grew and never thrived. As an afterthought, we put a couple of tomato plants in the old garden, and of course they thrived, as did the sole pumpkin we planted there. Our bounty: three small pumpkins on our solitary vine and a dozen tomatoes.
So what shall we do this spring?
We could think big, fencing off a new and much bigger garden. Why not go with a field of sunflowers, or scores of tomatoes or an enormous cornfield? Our new fences are too high for the deer, and the dogs will miss their dusty summer paradise, but they’ll still have plenty of room to roam.
But maybe we should just concentrate on our existing garden, and plant what has worked in the past. We can count upon our perennials, and plant our annuals at the right time. And maybe we’ll have a great year – no fierce hailstorms, no torrential rains, no tornados, but lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, onions, peas, radishes, dill and whatever else we manage to plant.
Our only problem: me. I’ll have to do all the work, and I’m old, crotchety and incompetent. I need help, and I know what to do. I’ll do what Francis Wolcott never dared to do: go up to Cripple Creek, win a few bucks, and hire a part-time gardener. And if I lose, so what – I’ll grow fabulous tomatoes that I can sell to my neighbors, recoup my losses and head for the mountains once again …
