Florence Walrath was a gardener at one point in her life, but towards the the end – she died when she was 104 – she was not able to care for her gardens and they have withered. My big summer project – Maria too – is to ring the house with gardens. I am renting a tiller and digging a garden all around the house, the biggest in the front, sweet peas and morning glories on the fences, we planted two locust trees this week, more pine trees later. I have had several gardens in my life, I was an intense gardener in my cabin on the mountain (where I wrote “Running To The Mountain”). I hired people to do it at Bedlam Farm, and that was a mistake, as I lost touch with it.
People assume because I am a man and because I am me that I will need help and know nothing about gardening. In some ways they are right, in others wrong. Many are suggesting good books for me. I love books but I will share this garden experience with you and I will be upfront, as always. I don’t read how-to books. I don’t ever read dog or animal books – I don’t want other people’s ideas and stories in my head. And my training ideas have worked better than the guru’s books. I never follow instructions, alas. I like to make my own decisions and follow my own instincts. I think a shrink would have a field day testing me for learning disorders. Here’s the way I plant my gardens.
As soon as it is warm for a bit, I will go to a nursery I love in Vermont. I will not read any books or directions or seek any advice from the many wonderful and knowledgeable gardeners around. I will buy an armful of seeds and spring bulbs, bags of potting soil (we will use donkey manure for fertilizer, great stuff and we have plenty). I never know what I am planting, I do not plant it in any particular order or pattern, other than to separate the seeds a bit. I will water obsessively, weed daily, Red and I will hover over the gardens like parents over newborn babies.
What I want is a garden riot, all kinds of beautiful stuff popping up out of the ground and framing the house with color.
I can’t wait to see what comes up, even though I have no idea what it is or what the proper instructions are. The gardens, like my own head, are an explosion of light and color to me, a statement of affirmation, a testament to the house coming to life again. A personal thing that comes from inside of me, and Maria also. People going by will see lots of color and lots of green and when people ask me what my flowers are, I will say I have no idea, they are just bright and colorful, and I will photograph them all summer and my wonderful wife will sneak around with clippers and fill the house and my study with them. We have bought a bunch of plastic portable greenhouses – they each hold about 80 plants – and we have been running to the hardware for soil ad seeds. We have spent the last couple of days filling them up and putting covers on and watering them and putting them by sunny windows.
In a month or so, we will stick them in the ground along with a lot of other stuff. That’s my garden plan, and I have had some beautiful gardens with this plan, and I will keep you posted on how it goes. For me, gardens ought to run amok in glory and defiance.