Allison Batdorff: A janky garden tour
Aug. 7—Good stories bear repeating. Good jokes, too. I'm adding to this list "good phrases," as I recently discovered one that makes people smile.
I offer them a "janky garden tour."
Persnickety gardeners are ghoulishly intrigued, picturing the gardening version of a grisly train derailment. Plots strangled by Queen Anne's lace, perennials melting from their middles. Sure, they'll come.
My fellow janky gardeners also smile, eyes crinkling with relief and recognition. A kindred, disheveled spirit.
Many of us work a lot, are busy with kids a lot, are being pulled in different directions a lot — all which lead away from the garden path.
Our gardens reflect our lives' messy struggle. But we have aspirations — oh yes.
My particular brand of disarray is rooted in these dreams. I have visions of lush, bountiful greenery. Edible lawns. Trellises covered in skyward climbers as aspirational as I.
Big, bushy squashes and cucumbers with leaves that could cover you in a rainstorm. Weed-free fields of flowers, thick, hearty rose and blueberry bushes, beds a-flutter with butterflies and hummingbirds, shady refuges of hale perennials, clusters of ferny asparagus waving in the wind, mountains of rich, black compost, everything marked with tidy lines and a neat garden path leading through it all ... you get the picture.
That picture is the problem. My yard fights back. I start my project with a picture in mind, conveniently forgetting the horribly low water pressure that can't flip a sprinkler, sand dune soil and topography, and the fact that the yard has largely been an invasive species preserve for decades.
Not to mention my own time and the motivation to dedicate weekends to yard work instead of the beach. My janky garden tour shows this conflict in all its harsh reality.
Instead of being embarrassed this year, I'm embracing it. And the magic phrase seems to give others permission to do the same.
Because I love hanging out with my friends in the summer, walking slowly through their gardens. We speak of what finally bloomed this year with the awe of the miraculous, we follow perennial migrations like a soap opera, and vilify weeds with dark hatred.
A cucumber gimlet in hand doesn't hurt.
I tip my wide-brimmed, salt-stained rattan hat to the gardens that make the traditional garden tour. They inspire me, and I love that our community is so lucky to have so many incredible, hard-working gardeners.
But I'm ceding this summer to vigorous weeds, stringy asparagus, hops that won't do what they're told and agoraphobic climbing roses. And to my fellow janky gardeners — let's see what you got.
Email news editor Allison Batdorff at abatdorff@record-eagle.com.
