My backyard garden is a tangled mess of native and invasive species. There’s a path somewhere in there that meanders through milkweed, echinacea, native grasses, stubborn roses of Sharon and random plants that have showed up over the years via birds, the wind and secret roots. In the thick of the heat, I noticed the random raspberry bush that materialized a few years ago had some ripe fruit. It is my custom to eat these berries right on the spot like a bear. However, some junk trees sprouted up blocking my access to the berries.
While I love the serendipity of this space, I intend to clean up this tangled confusion before I celebrate my 60th with a small garden party in September.
I’m trying to be less lazy around gardening. Generally, I’m enthusiastic in June and then the heat lands in July. I do like gardening, though, especially when I lose myself in it for a few hours, nudging out anxiety and stress, along with the weeds.
The trees, about my height and stubborn, fell with the help of heavy-duty clippers. Ah, berries.
It was 96 degrees. I retreated to air conditioning at the library, where I picked up Olivia Laing’s “The Garden Against Time” and Karel Čapek’s “The Gardener’s Year.” The next morning, I scored a copy of “The Secret Garden” from a Little Free Library – as serendipitous as my berries.
There’s something about garden writing that gets me every time. These read like tiny hero’s journeys in small patches of land, trying to either force nature to comply or coax native plants back. They are riveting, but also relaxing, reads.
Laing talked about how they yearned for a garden after many years of moving around to different homes. Then they finally got one of their own to restore. One of Laing’s rules for being was “that it is always worth making a garden, no matter how temporary your stay.”
I’m midway through this book, and it’s motivating me to return to the garden. Laing writes “a garden that’s too neglected can be uncanny, disturbing in the same way that an abandoned house is disturbing, the domestic invaded by agents of disorder and decay.” And they note untended gardens often serve as metaphor in literature for neglect.
A few years ago, when I put in a delusional last-minute side garden on the morning we were to welcome the family of my future son-in-law, I lost myself in thought and the dirt. I felt reinvigorated. That feeling, which I long to repeat, was articulated for me in Laing’s book:
“What I loved, aside from the work of making, was the self-forgetfulness of the labour, the immersion in a kind of trance of attention that was as unlike daily thinking as dream logic is to waking. Time stopped, or rather swept me up with it.”
Laing weaves references to literature throughout, including from “The Secret Garden,” which I have never read. Then the next day on my run, there was the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett in a Little Free Library.
But first, after Laing, “The Gardener’s Year.” This was first published in Prague in 1929. It is delightful. To be completely transparent, I’ve only read random passages that mix complaint and delight, like this one:
“But the main July worry is, of course, the watering and sprinkling of the garden. If a gardener uses watering-cans, he counts the cans like a motorist counts the miles. ‘Ouf,’ he announces with the pride of a record-breaker, ‘to-day I wound up forty-five buckets.’ If only you knew what a delight it is when the cold water hisses and splashes on the arid soil; when in the evening it sparkles on flowers and leaves, heavy with the welcome dew; when the whole garden breathes damp and soothed like a thirsty wanderer – ‘Ahaah,’ says the wanderer, wiping the foam from his beard.”
After it cooled down, the garden beckoned, so I searched Libby, the free app for borrowing library materials, and found the audiobook for “The Garden Against Time.” I changed into gardening clothes, tied my hair back and put in my earbuds to face the tangled metaphor for chaos that is my back garden. Laing’s lovely book kept me company.
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This article originally published at Bibliofiles: There’s poetry in gardening and gardening books.
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