Ought

 

My dear readers,

It's been months since I wrote, weeks filled with all kinds of distractions.  I'm sorry not to be in touch. 

Today is spring, which has been flowering prolifically hereabouts, the daffodils, especially, blooming in waves front and back...including beautiful, complicated ones I planted from a mixed bag last fall.

I did write in late February, but never sent it: all about how I was struggling to puzzle out the back garden.

I'm about to update that today, but before I do, I thought you'd like to see for yourselves what the struggle has been about.

Part I:

February 23:  Ought...as in I ought to be on my way to the garden shop to pick up mulch, paving stones, plants and vinegar for my back garden, standing unresolved since the back fence was installed, defining a space so different than before.  You would think, with a list like that, that I knew what I was doing.

I don't like fences, but this one was necessary if I was to claim that back jungle.  Like the writer who promised his editor that he'd begin his awaited novel as soon as he polished his tennis shoes, this morning I read, painted, checked airline flights (to where?) and even cleaned the bathroom in another attempt (conscious or unconscious) to avoid facing the giant unknown:

I don't know how that back garden should look.  I ought to, but I don't.

It's been a puzzle obsessing me for weeks.  Seeking advice, letting visions of greater grandeur than I can afford...or find tolerable...clutter my thinking. I can't number the times I've woken to an idea and said, "That's it!" only to undo it by improbability (too complicated; too expensive; won't last; won't grow in shade or that down-to-China depth of clay, tree roots and rock) or, like today, an equally down-to-China depth of inertia.  Ought.

It's not that I've done nothing.  I've collected pots and art for hanging on the wire between the fence posts; arranged a small area of stones in the lowest bowl of clay nearest the house; dreamed of star jasmine  that would entwine, elucidate, bring spring and fall shape and color to the landscape there, even bought large bags of potting soil in hopes.

But now I am thinking I ought to go back to the word "puzzle".  Like those 1,000-piecers my sister, nieces and I like to do together (though I am not as adept at them as they are), why not think of that back wasteland as a puzzle put together piece by piece.

Frankly, I have never been much of a whole-plan thinker.  I paint, collage, wire and sew without knowing what image will emerge.  I write by starting with a few words, which engender more words, line by line til I get to a point I might or might not have intended. I make meals by opening the refrigerator and building with whatever occurs to me to use, changing guest menus even at the last second. 

Even my life (a conversation with a friend the other day is reminding me) has been a piecemeal endeavor, each decade or parts of decades looking, if mapped out, like a jumble of mismatched eras that somehow got me here, together in one piece.  After that, the back landscape should be a piece of cake.

Well, all that comes down to what I do next:  hit the garden store.  Maybe with all the pieces jumbled out of the box in front of me, I can begin.

Part II.

Today: The garden store yields more treasures than foreseen.  I wander around, choosing raised garden boxes (no point in trying to grow anything in that clay and rock); dark  grasses to rise stiffly from new pots; and instead of the mulch I envisioned along the fence line, I choose pebbles and rectangular patio pavers, because...

...suddenly I see there should be a path toward the near corner of the fence, where a cluster of pots will brighten the view from my kitchen window.  The picture is beginning to emerge.

I bring them home and, with some help from Joseph to haul the bags of stone (heavy) out of my trunk, we set to work putting down the path.  I've already lay some of the stone, so now the pavers claim the rest.

I fill pots with new dirt, transplant some old plants and dig in new plants, roll pots into place along the fence.  For a few days, I continue this, shifting things around until I am happy with the composition.  My neighbor gives me an old chair I paint turquoise to sit at the end of the path.  It has no seat yet, but it will clearly be a destination for a quiet sit.

At a new garden shop I spend an hour with the helpful owner ("I love listening to gardener's plans!" she tells me as we walk lane by lane through everything) and buy a few more helibores for the front slope and three clematis I want to climb up the fence wires from the raised boxes.  I plant, water, spread organic fertilizer.

The next morning I look out onto my work, happy.  Then I look further down the fence.  Overnight, the vines have turned to spindly stalks.  Deer.

Despite my repellent, despite hair in the dirt, they've enjoyed their dessert in the dark.  One flower remains testimony to its once-potential.

But it's still growing.  I wonder whether to rip them out and try another vine, moving these to a more sheltered spot.  I order three or four Carolina Jessamine, purportedly indigestible to deer and rabbits.  We'll see what happens.

Once bitten; twice shy.  It's warm enough now to plant my Valentine's gift of a raspberry hydrangea outdoors, but I am on the offensive:  in a large pot borrowed from the front steps (once the home of a gardenia that grew too big for itself), I nest the hydrangea where I can keep an eye on its blooms.  Then I fashion a cage of chicken-wire over it (one dessert is all the deer get).

I'm still working, front to back along the fence, but little by little the pieces are falling into place.  Next, more stone winding further back, and then Alexander's tree house...and finally a secret path toward it.

I know exactly where everything will go.