Saturday, April 18, 2009
It's Muddy Hands Day!
At last, warm enough, and unobstructed time enough in one long stretch , to do some major gardening today! And , believe me, I am not a pretty sight on such days, but i am pig-in-the-mud happy....no Martha Stewart, casual clean and hair perfect gardener am I ...the downer and muddier and wormier I can get, the better I like it...and as exhausting as my methods are (one does burn calories planting and playing around in the soil), there is no place I would rather be....I remember so well the times when Paul and I would buy 40 or 50 plants at a nursery or market, go home and in the pouring showers, plant them in the beds we had so laboriously dug out of the stony soil of Upstate New York...we used to call the hundreds of stones we had to wrest the soil from "Putnam County potatoes"...a local label...and if it was raining too hard, either Paul or i would hold an umbrella as a shield over the other...and into the soft, wet, maternal soil, we would gently insinuate each baby plant...the feeling of warm Summer wetness everywhere on and around and in some cases in my body, was ecstatic...i remember once thinking I WAS an earthworm....(rather a morbid thought)...in any event, i have since learned that planting in the rain is not all that nutritious for the plants themselves, as the rain waters dilute and soften the soil in ways that were not good for the establishing of the root systems,etc....but right then, I could have cared less about the science...i was into the sensuous art of it , the feeling of it , not the fact....and , on sunny, rain-free days, working for hours under the sun, over the hard-won beds at the Upstate House, i also remember loving the taste of my own soily sweat....sunburn, dirt, salty sweat, Miracle-Gro and small plant life...I was one with it and felt somehow home. Nope...no Martha Stewart I...and i wore the very oldest and shabbiest of my clothing...clothes out of which mud stains were destined never to disappear after my hard use of them. Ah the golden days of discovering gardening for the very first time: and that brings to mind Cleveland.
Yes...Cleveland...I had gone to THe Cleveland Playhouse, at the sweet but ill-advised request of a then friend to be in a re-mounting of QUILTERS, and Paul had just bought the glorious house Upstate. He made me promise , when I accepted the Cleveland job, to read all I could while I was away on the subject of deer-repellant planting and what things to plant on the steep sides of a pond, since the newly acquired Upstate House had both a large deer population And a pond with steep banks! I said i would become the perfect gardener while away.
Little did I know that the wonderful town of Cleveland had an extraordinary Horticultural Society? And that that very Library, gorgeously stocked with books on every known gardening topic and lovely people to guide me to them, would become my refuge when the strains of working on that particular production got too much to bear. The Cleveland Gardening and Horticultural Society and the astonishing Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...well, those two places saved my life that particular cold and eternal Winter.....i read and read and read, books on deer-repellant plants, on soil conservation plants, ...i learned for the first time that deer hated BTS: Bad Tasting Stuff, and that if they were hungry enough, they would eat it anyway...i volunteered to work inn the gardens at the Society whenever the terrible Lake-effect weather allowed, and at the end of my time there, they gave me an honorary pin and hat of the SOciety, and I wear the hat to garden in still. I took notes daily, like the most avid student...I learned for the first time that plants and flowers were my friends, when people were not.
I had a great Cleveland experience, totally unconnected to the theater, and when I think of gardening, Paul, plantings and escape into nature, I remember CLeveland. I also took home flats and floats of wonderful plantings they cleaned from their extensive gardens and put them on the banks of the pond Upstate....in that small way, Cleveland became a part of my life forever, I guess. And i began to understand the metaphorical connection between gardening and Life.
Speaking of Life, gotta go buy a baby shower gift for wonderful friends expecting their first child...more later.
Yes...Cleveland...I had gone to THe Cleveland Playhouse, at the sweet but ill-advised request of a then friend to be in a re-mounting of QUILTERS, and Paul had just bought the glorious house Upstate. He made me promise , when I accepted the Cleveland job, to read all I could while I was away on the subject of deer-repellant planting and what things to plant on the steep sides of a pond, since the newly acquired Upstate House had both a large deer population And a pond with steep banks! I said i would become the perfect gardener while away.
Little did I know that the wonderful town of Cleveland had an extraordinary Horticultural Society? And that that very Library, gorgeously stocked with books on every known gardening topic and lovely people to guide me to them, would become my refuge when the strains of working on that particular production got too much to bear. The Cleveland Gardening and Horticultural Society and the astonishing Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...well, those two places saved my life that particular cold and eternal Winter.....i read and read and read, books on deer-repellant plants, on soil conservation plants, ...i learned for the first time that deer hated BTS: Bad Tasting Stuff, and that if they were hungry enough, they would eat it anyway...i volunteered to work inn the gardens at the Society whenever the terrible Lake-effect weather allowed, and at the end of my time there, they gave me an honorary pin and hat of the SOciety, and I wear the hat to garden in still. I took notes daily, like the most avid student...I learned for the first time that plants and flowers were my friends, when people were not.
I had a great Cleveland experience, totally unconnected to the theater, and when I think of gardening, Paul, plantings and escape into nature, I remember CLeveland. I also took home flats and floats of wonderful plantings they cleaned from their extensive gardens and put them on the banks of the pond Upstate....in that small way, Cleveland became a part of my life forever, I guess. And i began to understand the metaphorical connection between gardening and Life.
Speaking of Life, gotta go buy a baby shower gift for wonderful friends expecting their first child...more later.
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