I love my garden.
It's a suburban quarter acre, which is laughable, I know. But I fixed it up to look like a jungle. I can't help it. Everything I decorate winds up...cluttered.
I even got statues and broken heads of statues for odd corners (all my corners are odd) so the place looks like an abandoned mansion's grounds.
And I hung heads on my wall, so I could pretend it was the Tower of London in the old days.
I also have a bamboo grove! When out of sorts with a neighbor years ago, I asked the Town Board what I could put as a barrier betwixt us. And the lady at the reception desk asked what I wanted to put up...
A steel curtain," says I.
She giggled.
And then,
almost like the man giving the young Dustin Hoffman advice, she whispered --
"I have one word for you: Bamboo."
I put in bamboo. And now I have a grove.
And what does bamboo need, apart from pandas? (which are hard to get) but a little pond. And what does a pond need? Fishies. And what do fishies need?
Aeration - in the form of a little waterfall.
I can't get any writing done near the sound of running water. That's why I hang out there when the book is stalling. I don't so much meditate as phase out.
I grow flowers too, and herbs and slugs, snails and little bitey things that run up my legs and leave huge welts when I go out to fix the water pump in the pond. Still, I love my garden.
In spring, I plant like a woman possessed.
By August, I pretty much leave the garden to the bugs until autumn. Then I break out the bales of straw and giant pumpkins and pots of chrs... crysthanthe.. mums.
Then the fishies hiberate, and so do I.
When it snows, I put up bird feeders and watch them and worry, because of the Hawks. I hate setting up a hot and cold buffet for the birds. Seed for the Cardinals, Doves and Jays. Cardinals, Doves and ...Jays for the Hawks.
::sigh::
Still, for all the work, a garden is a great all-season way to escape working!
