Re: Steve French's Philosophical 'Q'
Anne Conlon wrote:
>
> Moira,
> I think for me the most exciting time in gardening is always just
> around the corner, where anticipation of sweet success (usually
> ever just out of reach) meets pleasure in nature's beauty;
> striving in one direction meets unexpected reward in quite another
> direction. I can't wait, for example, until my garden is richly
> organic and crawling with earthworms the way yours must be; but
> I love the process of getting there. I love collecting seeds and
> rooting new plants -- I love giving away surplus plants to friends
> who admire them. I love digging my hands in the dirt and pulling
> out new potatoes, popping strawberries in my mouth while watching
> hummingbirds and butterflies, laughing because my daughter loves
> blueberries and raspberries so much that they never make it inside the
> house. I get so excited just talking about gardening that people say "You
> must have a beautiful garden", and I am always surprised, because I really
> don't -- it's all an untidy jumble but it thrills
> me so that they think it must be beautiful. And finally, I love to
> go to friends' garden and garden with them...such different visions,
> different talents, different preferences, which energize me and
> inspire me to run home to my own garden.
Anne
Our ideas of the joys of the garden certainly do have a lot in common.
Just two points I would like to comment on.
First, my garden is, as you suppose, to my pleasure crawling with worms.
Unluckily for them a pair of English blackbirds which have made this
desirable property their home for many years are extremely fomd of worms
also, but not, alas for the same reasons. It's not just the taking of
the worms, I guess as in most reasonably natural systems the provision
of food for the inhabitants is important, but the awful way they obtain
them by most ferocius digging which disrupts mulched beds horribly
mixing the layers and throwing a lot of the material right out on to the
paths. It is even worse where there are recently set out plants which
get their roots badly disturbed or exposed, in some cases being dug
right out and thrown aside or covered up with thick pads of displaced
mulch.
Fortunately this only lasts from spring to about midsummer after which
they go on holiday till late winter, thank goodness, and I have learnt
to live with it by covering the most vulnerable parts of the garden with
netting and just leaving a few unoccupied and unimportant mulched areas
to allow them to continue foraging (I wouldn't like their babies to
starve!!)
I was also much amused about you surprised reaction to "you must have a
lovely garden" as mine is exactly the same. I _do_ have lovely things
happening in my patch from time to time - the perfectly-sited plant,
the felicitous colour combination or the delighful vista, but these
very largely arise by chance and not to any great extent from a
conscious effort at design on my part. I am really more concerned with
finding places where my plants will be happy enough to look their best.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata (near Wellington, capital city of New Zealand)
