I see we've all been doing other things for a while. Thursday I went to see a friend in another province. It's a long drive but she can't get away, so I went for a visit. We talked and drove out to see her garden in the country, full of trees and roses and shrubs: the Rosa banksiae normalis covering a cherry was spectacular! I brought her a few roses I'd propagated, plus one from a friend. My friend can't get out to her garden often and she says that roses are about the only plants tough enough to survive neglect. We also went to see her friends, a couple who live in the same town and who have an exquisite garden, not large but full of interesting and beautiful plants.
Friday was sunny and hot, and I did something I almost never do: I cleaned house like mad. It's still far from spotless, but much cleaner than when I began. I drafted my husband and daughter as well, who defrosted and cleaned the refrigerator among other tasks. And I mowed the lawn. Yesterday I began repotting my succulents and Sansevierias. They all look terrible--I'm not good at taking care of plants indoors, to put it mildly--but if warm weather sets in stably and with their soil renewed, I'm hoping to see them pick up. I lost several Sansevierias over the winter, mostly bird's nest Trifasciatas, and the cold killed a lot of my plants that I'd kept outdoors in a cold greenhouse, even with the light bulb we kept burning in it during the cold spell of February. A lot of the aloes and "miseria"s died, while the Opuntias and most of the agaves survived.
The Tea roses began opening their flowers during the two days of warm weather, but I suspect today's wind and rain will bring them to a halt again. 'Clementina Carbonieri' and 'Mme. Antoine Mari' have their first blooms, and 'Jaune Desprez' against a southfacing wall is in full flower, though with blooms paler than usual, probably because it's been so cool. 'Golden Wings' is blooming. The tree peonies are in bloom now, and are making me wish I had more of them. There's a cool pink one with a two-tone effect that's very common in this area, but that I can't find, and that I want badly. Also I want a violet cultivar. I'm working on the yellow-and-purple color scheme in the shade garden, and will have to move a cherry red variety that clashes horribly with the yellow-variegated euonymus growing there.
Is greed in the garden, in this case wanting more tree peonies, a good thing? It isn't anywhere else that I can think of. I don't think I'm a greedy person in most things, or in principle, though I'm spoiled from having lived all my life in a wasteful, opulent culture (the late 20th century western world's middle class, and compared with all the rest of human civilization though history). The garden is the one part of my life where I allow myself to want more, more, more! The garden perhaps offers some excuses, or mitigating circumstances. For example: the garden generates abundance, as from plants the gardener can create more plants. I propagate a lot of plants, and give away quite a few. Then, gardening as I do, I can make a claim to improve the environment: improving the soil, sequestering carbon in the plants I grow, improving air quality, preventing landslides. I garden organically and employ resources frugally. Then, my garden is my creative expression, my work of art; my current garden is my life project.
All the same I'm not sure how much all these valid reasons defend my lust for more tree peonies. Truly. However, if I can find a violet one and force myself to dig out the cherry red one and put it somewhere else, in five years or so, that part of the garden will be more beautiful, and there's a lot to be said for beauty.
Melissa
