TOO MUCH, TOO FAST
This is the time of year when the garden is a rampaging torrent of growth. Plants—cultivated and wild—are increasing with reckless abandon, vying with each other in Darwinian attempts to attract as many pollinators as possible. Every day I pull out handfuls of garlic mustard, chickweed, immature pokeweed and other noxious invaders. In my more cynical moments, I think of these efforts as a means of helping nature make space for the crabgrass that I know is waiting in the wings.
I enter this fray armed with a pathetically small arsenal that includes a small array of hand tools augmented by a string trimmer, electric hedge clipper and electric lawn mower. By any measure, the forces sustaining garden chaos greatly outnumber the forces bolstering garden perfection.
The smoke from the spring garden battle is thick, but it does not completely obscure the season’s horticultural mysteries. Why, for example, is the soil at the base of an ordinary privet hedge so remarkably fertile for the seeds of oriental bittersweet, poison ivy, Virginia creeper and, especially, maple trees? If I obey the gurus of self actualization and stop to smell the roses, the maples will germinate before my brain has time to recognize the rose fragrance. Why will bearded iris, sometimes called Iris germanica, grow so well in the front hell strip, with its impoverished soil, and grow so poorly in the amended soil of my back garden? Why does my garden, located only twelve miles west of New York City, have deer at all? These are the things I ponder on my daily garden rounds.
I could spend lots of time pondering these mysteries, but I also have to carve out some spare moments to make the season’s important choices. Should I tackle all that nascent growth at the base of the privet hedges or take on the herculean task of trimming the tops instead? Most days lately seem to come with a sixty percent chance of late-day showers. Should I bombard the lilies with deer spray on a given morning, knowing that it will probably rain later in the day? Bombarding early means that if the ravenous local doe rambles through in the morning hours, the lilies will be safe. On the other hand, she may confine her morning foraging to the neighbors’ north forty, meaning that the spray would be wasted at a time when I am already spending a fortune on the stinky smelling stuff. I know that I will have to spray again within twenty-four hours no matter what I do. If I were a conscientious gardener, I would simply buy deer spray every time I go to the big box store and apply it every time I go outside. I am not quite at that point, but I have a feeling that I will get there shortly.
I should add that the ravenous local doe is not all bad. She has saved me at least a bit of labor this year. Normally around Memorial Day, I chop back all the rambunctious ‘Alma Potschke’ asters, so that at summer’s end they will be four feet rather than six feet tall. The doe is apparently fond of ‘Alma Potschke’. The other day, when I took up my Felcos to do the annual chop, I found that she had done the job for me, cropping most of the stands of ‘Alma’ by about one third. This was very helpful and encourages bushy growth. Going forward, I’ll spray both asters and lilies with deer spray, as cropped lilies will not bloom and the asters do not need further attention from the doe for at least another month. Still, it is important to give credit where credit is due. I wish the doe would turn her attention to perilla or poison ivy, but for some reason she finds them unpalatable. It is too bad the same cannot be said for the birds that eat the poison ivy seeds in the fall and distribute them all over the place.
This year’s long winter meant that all of Nature’s frantic spring activity has been compressed into a relatively short time frame. By the Fourth of July, Nature will be tired and growth will slow down to a more manageable rate. My garden will be only marginally more controlled, but I will slow down too. I ought to know better. Garden marauders, both animal and vegetable, tend to bide their time. Onion grass, that bane of the spring landscape, is a perfect example. Untended, it goes about the business of fulfilling its biological imperative, increasing its population by adding bulblets underground. The onion-scented foliage disappears as spring wanes, but the plants are really only waiting to return with a vengeance in the fall.
Clearly, Nature has the upper hand most of the time. However, every once in awhile there are those precious moments when everything goes right, the ravenous doe overlooks a single perfect ‘Black Dragon’ lily and the sun shines continuously for eight hours. At those times, the scent of the sun-warmed roses temporarily overwhelms the stench of the deer spray and garden life seems pretty near perfect.