Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 13, 1993 TAG: 9305130052
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I took it back the second I saw the first wisteria bloom, hanging there like grapes, spiraling its vine in and around the fence line.
I took it back when the peach-tree tips turned fuzzy pink, when my husband caught our little-boy neighbor making a pile out of the grape hyacinths he'd plucked from our yard - stalk by stalk - looking just too cute to scold.
Except for the throbbing, itchy, drive-me-crazy three-leaved beast bubbling on my elbow, leg, hand and lower stomach (which is just way too close for comfort, if you know what I mean), I have fallen hard for my new yard.
For one thing, it's my yard, not a rental space. For the first time I can plant perennials that will flower well into the late springs of my 30-year bank loan. I can plant an asparagus patch, which takes three years to produce (four years, if the man at Agnew Seed tells you you're a dollar short and a month late).
I can - and have already - tried to recreate the smells, sights and tastes of my youth, from the small raised bed my husband dug up for tomatoes and such, to the six black-raspberry bushes that are already sprouting shoots next to my fence - just like Grandma had. Which happens to be right next to my new lilac bush - just like Mom had.
Which happened to be just in front of this harmless-looking stick shooting up from the ground. Which didn't decide to rear its shiny leaves-of-three till last week . . . after I'd brushed against it several times.
Despite this new worrisome bump on my forehead (I'm hoping it's a zit), gardening is really growing on me this spring, my fifth year trying to sprout things.
The first year was back in an apartment in Columbus, Ohio, when I entered my Early Moosewood Cookbook Phase and decided that growing herbs in my window sill would be real cool, real earth-motherly. I spent a fortune in clay pots and potting soil, and still ended up shaking dry herbs out of little McCormick containers. The next three years my trowel went untouched.
Then we moved to the country where a whole field was available for vegetable gardening, plus patches of daffodils, day lilies, irises and hyacinth from decades past (and, of course, the baneful shiny trios).
This was the classic Biting Off More Than I Could Chew Phase, which culminated in nothing but excess: too many zucchini, too many weeds, too many bugs. When veteran gardeners brought their surplus tomatoes into the office, I took them home and pretended they were mine.
This year I've decided to build upon what's already here, to slow-cook my garden, letting it simmer and blossom like a really fine soup. While I'm weeding around the money plant, peonies and lamb's ear, I like to think I'm carrying on a grand tradition of plant-nurturing begun by the former owners of this house and all the people before them.
When a neighbor gives me some rooted shoots from her shrub and another promises lilies-of-the-valley that came from her mother's garden more than 40 years ago, I like to imagine the circle opening, dividing and growing - like ivy extending up a brick wall.
I could wax downright poetic about it if not for the gnawing, nagging itches enveloping me right now, creeping up above skin level like crabgrass in a raised bed.
If not for the hidden pockets of poison ivy, this gardening thing would be too good to be true.
Beth Macy, a features department staff writer, recommends 1 percent Hydrocortisone - and Roundup - to cure the weed that ails. Her column runs Thursdays.
by CNB