Gwendolyn Young/Fairbairn/O'Halloran, just how Celtic can you get?
Especially after moving to the verdant rolling hills of Middle Tennessee. I couldn't wait to embrace that Celtic love of the land and plant a garden and throw myself into yard work. I wanted to take it literally, you know, grow where your planted. After living in the Sonoran Desert for 8 years, where my weekends were spent by the pool and our gardening was outsourced, I was excited about the possibilities and getting some dirt under my nails. Hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature, that's what I imagined. Jerry was ecstatic about resuming his love affair with Home Depot and some new toys in the form of lawn equipment.
hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_gardening.html#XXkYb78cJc2ottrS.99
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_gardening.html#XXkYb78cJc2ottrS.99
hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_gardening.html#XXkYb78cJc2ottrS.99
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_gardening.html#XXkYb78cJc2ottrS.99
The garden that I had huge plans for this summer ended in humiliation and dashed hope. I spent a year preparing the soil and composting. I researched each plant's spacing needs and growing habits. I built trellises for climbing plants. All the hard work, sweat and weeks of waiting for that first sun-ripened bite of produce… with the hope of many baskets full of peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and zuchinni to follow. I watered and weeded, feeded and pruned, but my tomatillos barely sprouted. I hoed and tilled, and was rewarded with baskets of rotten tomatoes. Just as they were reaching the zenith of their producing power, the cucumbers died. So much for the salad days of home gardening. I'm thinking that it may be time to throw in the trowel. This could be the sad final chapter to my gardening endeavors.
I did experience this amazing feeling of peace that came over me and grabbed me by surprise at the beginning of the summer when my garden had such signs of promise.
Yard work, well what can I say. Lancinate vines that grow back at the blink of an eye, getting flogged by sentient sticker-bushes, awe-inspiring weeds taller that you are, noxious stinging insects that chase you around the yard, and inject you with venom causing bolus reactions and trips to urgent care, limb-severing shrapnel from the brush-cutters,steep grades that cause one leg to grow longer than the other, the inutility of raking leaves on a windy day, and having your hands shake for 12 hours after operating lawn equipment. And grass....! Growing grass is an excercise in futility.
I am humbled and saddened that I don't have the green thumb or the love of the land of my Scotch-Irish ancestors. I'm beginning to think that This Irish lassie belongs in the warm breezy simplicity of shore life and the understated elegance of a high rise on the crystal sands next to a large body of salt-water.
(With a good farmer's market nearby!)
