taming a wild dragon

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'Flying Dragon' Hardy Orange (Poncirus trifoliata) at Beal Gardens

I should have taken her picture. (I want to get bolder snapping people.) The college student kneeling at the foot of the Flying Dragon Hardy Orange tree is one of the "slave laborers" in the Horticulture program, and weeding campus gardens is part of her curriculum. When the weather entices, Inge and I head out Fridays at lunch to sit on a bench by a fountain or walk one of the most beautiful campuses in the world. I watched the kneeling student's gloved hands picking at leaves and tiny weeds in black soil and recognized my garden clippers sticking out her back jeans pocket. She flashed us a smile, obviously enjoying her work.

I learn best from watching and imitating, and the student tidying those beds inspired me to put our own beds in order at the farm before winter. In July before the wedding my niece Jennifer worked long, hard - and she said "enjoyable" - hours on the veggie and flower beds to shape and beautify them: ha, wedding weeding. It would be a shame to let them run too far amuck.

Fighting the grass whose roots are bound with my poor iris rhizomes will never end (photo below). I was too lethargic to tend to these ruffley pale iris in their previous bed, and the grass did what grass does, shooting roots far and wide under the iris, herbs and daylilies. Now I pay the price, like I did Saturday in another weekend of warm sun, tediously pulling thin blades and roots, making my carpal tunnel weakened wrists ache.

But yikes, I won't get carried away and manicure the farm with its rustic barns to look like Versailles. I don't just love tended iris, tulips, peonies, columbine, sedum, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and the like. The wild natural beauty of goldenrod, Timothy grass, Queen Anne's lace and sumak in the meadow - maybe not quite as wild as a flying dragon! - is where I go sit to soak in Nature. One day if the whole farm becomes naturalized, will it be by choice, or because of my laziness?

Nature never stops working - it's the ultimate example. But my hat's off to two women of a younger generation for motivating me to get off my butt and take care of all those sweet plants that I depend on in the spring to pull me out of the dormancy of winter.




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