Welcome, August…Wait. It’s August? Are you frickin’ kidding me???
Between last night and today, I’ve spent seven hours of intensive labor weeding, trimming, deadheading, and tidying up in the yard in the August heat. Good gracious. I had to take a nap this evening just to function enough to write this piddly little post. But when July is lost to swarms of mosquitoes and a week out of town, there sure is a lot to do when you finally get out there.
Welcoming Back the Shade Garden
Spring has truly sprung over the past week in mid-Michigan, and the shade garden I expanded in the back yard last year is beginning to bloom…
I’ve been busy outside destroying and covering up my neighbor’s sidelot (with his permission) because I’m tired of looking at the mess of English ivy, poison ivy, weeds, dead leaves, weed trees, and trash out my dining room window.
Now it has been mowed, poisoned, shrouded in black plastic, and covered over with mulch.
Over the next year or so it should suffocate.
Then the mulch can be raked back, the plastic can be removed, and the remaining mulch and dead matter underneath can be worked into the soil.
At that point, it should be ready to sustain something beautiful and/or useful.
In the meantime, I’m on the lookout for some cheap or free pots and will try to stage a nice array of containers full of flowers on top of the mulch.
Two days after that big project I am still sore from moving edgers, swinging an ax, and shoveling and dumping and spreading mulch.
But the view is much improved.
Late Summer Love
When I focus in close to home, it truly has been a most beautiful summer.
Summer Spiral
Summer afternoons are just perfect for curling up for a nap–after you’ve chomped on someone’s rosebushes.
Roses, Roses Everywhere
My roses are mostly pink…
…but why miss an opportunity to share some lovely Robert Burns with you?
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
   That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
   That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
   So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
   Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
   While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve!
   And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
   Though it were ten thousand mile.
A Garden Is More Than Flowers
When I was a kid, we had a standard garden plan each year from which we rarely deviated. Constant structure was provided by groomed yew bushes. Red geraniums, dusty miller, and a spike plant populated the flower boxes. The shady side yard became home to multicolored impatiens. The only perennials were a common bleeding heart plant that appeared by the apple tree and an ever-expanding patch of peppermint I had started with transplants from the Heritage House, an old museum of a house by the junior high school we all toured as part of our well-rounded education.
When I started my own garden, I was very interested in creating expansive perennial gardens, inspired by my mother-in-law’s beautiful garden and the glossy pages of her many gardening books and magazines. I envisioned a riotous cottage garden bursting with extravagant flowers all summer. But it’s harder to get constant color than you might think, and I realized at some point that the only moment those gardens in magazines looked perfect was on the day the photos were taken. I’ve also had to adjust my expectations of my back yard garden as I take into account the heavy shade, the heavy soil, the walnut tree that slowly poisons many other types of plants.
Just as with my new garden bed around my new tree and that immovable stump, you have to work with what you’ve got. You can spend years amending the soil, trimming trees, and doing lots of extra watering or fertilizing to get your ideal garden to thrive. Or you can simply look for plants that will be happy in the conditions you already have. And when we start looking at our current situations as opportunities rather than liabilities, we’re a lot happier.
As time goes by and my gardens evolve and new varieties of hostas and huecheras and many other plants are developed, I find I’m just as happy with the many textures and shades of green you can get with the right assortment of plants as I would have been with a garden of nothing but flowers. The above photo collage shows just a few of these.
It’s not hard to extrapolate this lesson into the rest of life. Even when we’re not in the exact job or relationship or state of personal or professional development we might want to be, we can find ways to thrive right where we are. We may need to adjust our expectations. Or we may simply need to recognize that there are different opportunities waiting for us to take advantage of them. You know the term “bloom where you’re planted.” But maybe you don’t even need to bloom right at this moment. Maybe you just want to be a cool green plant with lots of texture. Be assured that you’re just as interesting that way (and a heck of a lot less trouble to keep happy).
Late Spring in Bloom
We’ve hit that point of the year when the days start really flying and we’re busy with life and it’s hard to find time or inclination to sit down and reflect for a few minutes. The past week was a flurry of activity and merriment with friends and family as we celebrated our son’s birthday four separate times (2 with grandparents, 1 with our family, 1 with all his funny little friends at his party at the dojo).
During the same week I realized that it was past time to finish getting the vegetable gardens planted and transplanting some perennials. I finally planted a new tree in the front yard to replace the ice storm-damaged crabapple after two friends worked hard trying to remove the old stump (alas, strange planting practices from a former era foiled them as the entire root structure was intertwined with heavy duty wire that fiercely resisted the ax). So we planted the tree a little further into the yard and were left with a stump. What to do? Create another garden!
With a spade, a wheelbarrow, and my neighbor’s tiller I made a new bed Sunday afternoon and began populating it with divisions and transplants from other areas of my gardens, plus a few new varieties of hostas from a friend. I still have more plants from her house that need to go in the back yard, and lots of work to do back there expanding some of the shadiest parts of the garden into areas where it is clear after eight years that grass simply will not grow.
As much as I wish I could do that all week, I have lots of “real” work to do. My publishing company recently acquired a line of books from another publisher and so there is a lot of work to do to aid the transition. So you’ll find me at my desk most of the week, scouring someone else’s copy, making corrections, and checking a little box to import it into our own database. Tedious work, but someone has to do it!
Maybe when I need a break from sitting I’ll pop outside and pull some weeds.
Rain-Kissed Petals
Late May is beautiful.
Photos of What I Wish the First Day of Spring Looked Like
Not that it looks like this outside right now, but who can resist imagining what spring will look like when it really gets here in mid- to late-April?
A girl can be delusional, right?
Erin Bartels 
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