WINTER GARDENER
A couple of nights ago, I got tired of being an armchair gardener. Having overdosed on glossy catalog copy and over-the-top catalog photos, I longed to get out and do more than just walk around my frozen garden. I felt my muscles atrophying. The weather was relatively mild. The butterfly bushes screamed to be cut back and all the plant detritus that I didn’t clean up last fall demanded disposal. I was looking forward to it all.
When I got up yesterday, it was snowing, with high winds and a dramatic temperature drop predicted for later in the day. Call me a coward, but I decided that the outdoor work could wait.
I still had to deal with the urge to do something more than just flip through catalogs, so I opted to plant pansies. I have a love/hate relationship with pansies. Like ninety nine percent of my neighbors, I buy flats of them each spring. Mine go in the pots that flank my front steps and, if I have enough, into the fronts of the beds. I would love to create a lavish pansy display, but I can’t afford to buy the necessary number of flats. So, every year, I buy packets of seeds.
Unfortunately pansy seeds take a long time to grow to blooming size and I usually start too late. Many times I end up saving the unopened packets and resolving to do better the following year. Today I combined last year’s packet of Swiss Giant mixed-color pansies, some potting soil, a few cell packs and an old cracked bread pan that I made watertight with a lining of aluminum foil. I sowed thickly because the germination rate for year-old seeds can be quite low. The whole process took about fifteen minutes.
Planting the pansies inspired me to get some plant-related aerobic exercise. I went up and down the cellar steps several times, bringing up the dormant amaryllis that have been slumbering in the basement since Labor Day. I checked for signs of life, watered, stuck plant food sticks in the newly-moistened soil and deposited the amaryllis in the sunny dining room. I loped up the stairs to the second floor where I have been keeping the botanical prints that came off the walls when we painted the downstairs two years ago. In a triumph of inspiration over inertia, I hung them, making my house much more garden-like.
Making spaces for the amaryllis reminded me that it was past time to do something about the indoor plants. There is no other way to say it–some of them were dead. Since hope and laziness are irrevocably intertwined in my psyche, I always give dead plants a chance to resurrect themselves before they head off to the compost pile. Unfortunately my bat-face cuphea and miniature pomegranate plants were beyond the reach of resuscitation or even prayer. The plant corpses and soil went into a paper grocery bag and the pots went to the washing pile. After disposing of the dead, I groomed the other house plants, most of which have reached the zenith of their winter sulking efforts and are almost ready to start sprouting new growth in response to increased daylight. All the browned leaves and desiccated stalks found their way to the paper bag, not to mention the petals of the few small, long-departed flowers. Now the house plants look tidy, if not lush. They are nothing if not prima donnas, and every prima donna knows that looking good while sulking is part of the game. I got a bit more exercise by rushing out into the cold and depositing the discard bag in the composter. I rushed back in even faster.
Having cleared some space in my dining room plant area, I went to the refrigerator and removed the two hyacinths that have been cooling their heels in forcing jars on the top shelf since the fall. Both sported a bit of green growth and were ready for a place in the sun. With luck they will be flowering in a few weeks, filling the dining room with scent.
All that movement earned me a moment’s rest, which I spent taking advantage of early bird specials and putting in catalog orders. There is nothing that gets my pulse pounding like a hefty discount, especially on plants that I would buy anyway.
When I finished, the wind was still howling outside and the untrimmed branches of the butterfly bushes waved in the wind. My indoor gardening activities had made me feel much better. Over the course of the next few weeks, there is certain to be an unseasonably warm day when I can go out and get those branches under control. I know they can wait. Gale-force winds may fell mighty oaks, but butterfly bushes always end up unscathed.