Day: April 21, 2013

I do not consider myself a gardener at all, but a man who loves to see and take photos of flowers. I had a garden for several years at the cabin where I wrote “Running To The Mountain.” Once again, as many times before, I followed my Beavis & Butthead approach. Because I am stupid, I am free. Because I don’t know what I am supposed to think and do, I am sometimes free to think for myself. I loved my garden, it was pure chaos and there was no one to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.

I love that sense of freedom and exploration you get when your head is not full of warnings and instructions and regulations, and you just follow your own instincts, have wonderful successes and spectacular failures. Isn’t this how we learn? The garden world is, I suspect, like the animal world, filled with traditions and cliques and free spirits and creative geniuses. Will I become a  gardener or just a photographer who likes bright colors? I don’t know. My Dahlia got to me today, I have to say, I think it is a mystical flower. I thought I heard it whispering to me in my office tonight, I thought it caught a shooting star and swallowed it whole. How else to account for that glow off of the late afternoon sun.

My Dahlia says I will become a gardener, but I am doubtful. I do not have a long attention span, my knees hurt kneeling and there are a lot of do’s and don’ts in the gardening world. Yesterday I lost a few young plants because I insisted on putting them out in the garden – I am not patient – and a frost came and killed some. Yet I would do that again. It is my way. I learn more from my failures than my successes.

I wonder where this gardening thing will go? I wonder how far I want it to go. But I won’t take any risks with my Dahlia. She will stay her with me. She told me so.

At the nursery, we got a magnolia tree. I saw a beautiful yellow flower and Maria loved it too. I know it’s name, it is a Dahlia, and I’ll keep it in my study until it’s warm. Maybe I’ll keep it in my study all year. It is quite a beautiful thing.

So here’s the thing. I am all about light, can’t get enough of it, can’t get close enough, can’t be  bright enough. Flowers in April are radiant to me, they signify the creative spark, they show us that the world has darkness in it, but it also has great beauty and light, and if we look for it and see it, it will change the inside of our souls. At least, that is what happened to me. I welcome the humble pansy to our farm, the harbinger of more color and more light to come. I will be there crawling around. Album on Facebook in a bit. Pizzy is almost done.

I promised myself when we moved that I would mow our lawn myself, I wouldn’t hire anyone to do it. I love riding around on Florence’s ancient lawn mower with my earphones on listening to Van Morrison. We were swamped putting in the new gardens today and the grass is coming up, so we pulled out a plastic orange fence we used for crowd control during the Bedlam Farm art shows and spread it out behind the house. I let Lulu, Simon and Fanny in to mow the grass, and they were stellar, happy to take the rising grass down a peg or two.

This is a big new idea for me. We keep the sheep away because they will go through a small fence but the donkeys won’t. I am always amazed at  how quick the donkeys are. They watched me set up the fence and when I opened the gate, they came right out and started mowing.  I will mow the front of the house, the donkeys will mow the back and the dog pen area. They are great at getting in corners and around bushes and trees and they move evenly and cleanly. Talk about green mowing. Photo Album on Facebook in awhile.

We were happy to scatter color all over the farm, including in this basket hanging by the wood shed. We planted, dug, spent an hour wrestling the magnolia tree out of its plastic container. It was ready to be free. For me, the garden is a gift from April, color to the farm, a statement that we are here, that we love and care for our home and will brighten it up at every corner. I’m not sure what most of the things we planted are, but I know we planted trees, zinnas, wildlowers, geraniums and peas. As I’ve said I don’t really pay all that much attention to the flower’s names, I hope for a riotous explosion of color. Our gardens will not be neat and rational. Photo album coming later on Facebook.