I Love You—You’re Perfect—Now Change
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The delightful musical comedy by the
above name is about people in love. It’s not quite the same thing, but, my
perfect love is my garden. Not a month ago, I said to Leo, my garden helper,
“I’ve now done everything I want to do with my garden. It is perfect.”
It is. Truly. Leo rolled his eyes
and grinned.
Last week I met a couple from
Seattle at the nearby campground. They wanted to know which house is mine. When
I described my location, she said, “Oh, you are the garden.” That’s how I’m known. I am the garden.
Then—Bingo! Two unrelated incidents
have led me to look at my perfect garden with jaundiced eyes.
Along my north wall, in a narrow
garden area, among canna lilies, oleander and a crowd of bushes and flowers, I
planted three flowering trees. In the summer they give me months of purple,
pink and white pleasure. And no problems.
In the grass along my south wall, I planted five of the same
variety trees. Leaf-cutter ants plague these trees. Overnight, an army of ants
stripped an entire tree and proudly marched off holding aloft green canopies
twenty times their size. I cannot even count the number of times last year we
had to apply the stinky yellow poison. I run ant patrol every morning, as if it
is war.
“The trees on the north wall flourish. The trees on the south
wall are puny. It’s a constant battle with ants on the south wall. Why?” I
asked Leo.
“Ants like the easy road,” Leo said. “It’s hard work to eat
the trees crowded in the garden with other flowers. They like the grassy
highway.”
“Ah, ha! The solution is simple,” I said, “Let’s dig out that
strip of grass where the trees are planted, make a border with bricks and plant
flowers and herbs. Plants that will fill the space, like mint. ” So that’s my
first project in my perfect garden.
At the same time the ants were
munching every leaf from their first free tree-lunch of the season, Jim, a
snowbird from Missouri, found a used hot-tub for me. Yesterday he sent me a
picture of my tub, tied upside down over the bed of his pickup.
“It’s old like us,” he told me. It was cheap. Nearly a gift.
The owner needed to get rid of it. We hope the electronics will work.
The logical place to put my new-old
tub when it arrives next week, is in a patio area to the south side of my
house, where fourteen potted plants flourish. Hibiscus, climbing vines with
trumpet flowers of yellow and violet. Large plants in large pots.
I figure the climbing trumpet-flower
vines will easily train on my wrought iron fence in the west corner of my yard.
We seldom open that gate and all my large projects are finished. I admit to a
twinge of apprehension at blocking my gate. But, everything is in pots. Pots
are movable.
I’ll put the four hibiscus, natural showoffs, in front of the
climbing vines. Smaller, lower pots I’ll arrange around the hibiscus. Beauty
and a bonus: the plants will curtain that back entrance with privacy.
I lay out my tentative plan in front of he-who-does-the-work,
Leo. I design. Leo muscles the heavy pots and bags of planting soil. Leo
suggested we make a concrete slab instead of placing pots in the grass in front
of the gate. It will make it easier to care for the plants and he would not
have to move pots to mow.
“Oh.” I don’t mow so I didn’t think of that. See how a simple
little project to make a perfect garden “more perfect” grew and grew. Oh, well.
My projects for improvement might last the summer. I have Leo only a few hours
each week.
In Mexican folklore, the cicadas sing down the rain. When
they get wound up they sound like a roomful of table saws with crooked blades.
They brought our rainy season early this year. I hear them morning and night.
The “bedsheets butterflies” have arrived. Those huge white ethereal wings make
me smile. The leaf-cutter ants have decimated their first victim-tree.
My love is perfect. And, I’ll always find reasons for
changes.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
May 17, 2018
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