SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
There are those who go out into their gardens armed with cell phones. There are others who can’t move without an iPod. If that works for them, more power to them–literally and figuratively. There is always something to be said for connectedness of all kinds. However, it doesn’t work for me.
My garden is my hobby, my stress reliever, my refuge, my creative outlet and my passion. I pour myself into it. The experience would be incomplete for me if I did not engage all five senses in it.
Last weekend I was clipping Ghislane de Féligond, an old rose variety that has attained enormous dimensions in my back garden. As I clipped away, trying to reduce its seven foot diameter to about four, I could hear a male cardinal singing his intricate and beautiful mating song in the holly tree on the other side of the fence. The neighborhood woodpecker was working hard on a tree two houses away, and the pecking sounds carried clearly. I could feel the rose’s thorns as some of the cuttings hit my arm, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the bright fuchsia blossoms of the scores of rose campion blooming all around me. About halfway through the pruning job I noticed movement in the clippings pile by my right foot. I looked down and saw something the size of a hummingbird emerging from underneath the clippings, beating its wings frantically. When I looked more closely I saw that it wasn’t a hummingbird at all but a large moth, with wings patterned in green, beige and black like Army camouflage fatigues. It was gorgeous. I lifted the moth gently back onto the rosebush, admiring it all the while. When I returned several hours later, it had gone on its way. Later, after some research, I found out that my backyard beauty was a Pandora Sphinx Moth. I had never seen one before and I am not sure that I would have noticed it if I had been giving part of my attention to music or a phone conversation.
I am always touching things in the garden, and that goes beyond deadheading, pruning and the other maintenance chores. For instance, the same rose campion that is currently in bloom throughout the back gardens has fuzzy, velvety-soft leaves, somewhat reminiscent of lamb’s ears. There are several big clumps of a cranesbill called Geranium renardii, which has leaves with the texture of fine felt. Both the rose campion and the geranium invite touching. The dried seed heads of the many columbine plants rustle and shatter as I open them up to scatter the seeds. When the physostegia or obedient plants bloom in a few weeks, I will take delight in turning the individual bell-shaped flowers on the stalks, and watching them “obey” me. I “snap” the snapdragon flowers too.
Then there are the smells. I can always tell that winter is over when I can smell the mud in the spring. High summer makes itself known when the air is heavy laden with the scent of sweet grass and honey. Occasionally when I walk in my garden in the morning I take note of the fact that a wandering skunk visited the night before. At this time of the year I can also stick my nose out the back door at noon and catch a whiff of the much more pleasant aroma of the rampaging honeysuckle that threatens to engulf the boundary fence between my neighbors’ lot and mine.
I try to plant fragrant flower and herb varieties so that the garden has scent in every season. Some of the roses smell fruity, some like licorice and others just smell the ways roses are supposed to smell. Every time I trim the grass I also have to trim back the aggressive lemon mint that grows in my front border. The job is made much easier by the fact that the newly clipped lemon mint gives off such a wonderful fragrance. Right now the lavender is blooming, adding its sweet, clean scent to the potpourri of aromas emanating from all the beds and borders.
When my tiny blueberry bush yields berries, I taste them still warm from the sun. The same goes for fresh basil and tomatoes when they come into season. I only wish I had more property so that I could taste really fresh sweet corn and melons.
Then, of course, there is the visual dimension. I love color, and the garden is full of it–from the gray leaves of the butterfly bush to the brilliant orange of some of the daylilies, not to mention scores of green shades. In the fall there are crimson holly berries and orange-red rose hips and russet colored seed pods on the roses of Sharon. Color never takes a holiday from my garden, even in depths of winter.
I am convinced that even though I could see, feel, taste and smell while attached to a phone or some electronic device, I couldn’t sense my garden fully. Others may disagree, but I think that if you withhold a part of yourself from the garden, it will withhold a part of its benefits from you.