I never thought that the farmette land, where I plant gazillion perennials and another gazillion annuals, where I scatter seeds, sometimes very deliberately, sometimes almost randomly, where I break my back weeding and twist my knee planting, where I spend too many hours thinking what needs to be changed or redone next year -- I never thought this was a garden and that I was engaged in gardening. I am, in my mind, tending the land, filling spaces with something that is beautiful and beneficial, mostly because the land is there and without my efforts, it would become a jungle of weeds and saplings.
Yes, I will always love flowers, but I've long given up on thinking like, say, a gardener would think while planning a border in Giverny or in one of those exquisite British gardens. My flowers are in fields that at the periphery merge into unkempt grasses and creeping charlie. They are massive, true, but they aren't planned. I just fudge the edge and push it back with new or divided plantings, but there are always the raspberry canes and countless common blue violets that threaten to take charge if I let my guard down too much.
I thought about all this today as I worked many, many hours, giving an all out effort to get the flower fields in order this year. If I learned anything from my countless visits to Giverny it's that the farmette isn't a garden waiting to be developed. One of my Ocean readers hinted at this a couple of years ago when she gently suggested that I not mind all that is wild here. She is correct: there will always be spaces that will have none of our intervention (the old orchard comes to mind). They are there to remind me that we cannot and should not control everything that grows here. And so I work in partnership with what is already growing, and sometimes I am more ambitious (last spring) and at other times I'm a little more realistic (this year), and in the end, I love it all.
Weather report for this May Day? Well, a bit cool again and cloudy. So I keep my jacket on and get to work. After breakfast.
(The path to the farmhouse door is picking up color from the pots...)
The weather will still be messing with us for the next several days, with dips and lows that aren't a farmer's best friend at this late date, but at least I'm relatively confident that we'll stay above freezing at night. Last year, we had a beautiful and early spring, but we dipped into a frost all the way in mid May -- that's a horrible event that does more damage than this cooler, slower growing season.
In the evening, the young family is here for dinner. Snowdrop wants to pick some flowers for her teacher (this is actually an assignment: the school is celebrating teachers this week and on Monday, the kids are to bring a real or drawn flower). I steer her to the daffodils. Honestly, that's all that's pickable right now.
The stems this year are solid. Last year, the early warm air pushed the flowers up before they were ready. This year, they took their sweet time to get strong and stand tall.
Inside: Sparrow is the most reliably committed French cheese eater. Just to take the edge off of total starvation!
(Happy to share with his brother...)
(Sandpiper opts for a bamboo spoon instead)
Dinner.
In the evening, I clear the kitchen and sit back with Ed on the couch, with that deep satisfaction of having had a very productive day. May is off to such a good start for us! We are lucky. And grateful.
With love...
