The weeds were so high this morning that when a kangaroo bounded through them, I could only see the tips of his ears bouncing up and down.
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Instead of tackling those weeds, I could be relaxing in a café with a cup of coffee and an obscure magazine, trying to look sophisticated; or making chicken soup; or reading one of the books in the pile that is toppling by my bed side...
There are many reasons why you might not want a lushly generous garden.
1. You do not want a gloriously productive garden because it grows... and grows ... and grows. Hopefully a lot of that growth will be flowers, veg and luxuriant trees and shrubs, but a lot will also be weeds, or trees and flowers that need pruning back, or gone-to-seed veg that must be pulled out and composted or lugged down to the chooks. Gardening work never stops, except for a short time in mid-winter, because growth never stops, and in seasons when it rains every day you can't even do a little daily unless you like working in sodden socks. In seasons like this, it means weeds as high as a kangaroo's eye, and long grass that is so thick and lush you can almost see the lawn mower tremble as we turn it to face the grass.
2. You do not want a gloriously productive garden because it won't be gloriously productive unless given water which may not fall often enough from the sky for years, thus condemning you to regular watering. Watering in the softness of dusk is relaxing and contemplative ... but only as long as you don't have to do it for two or three years.
3. You do not want a bountifully blooming garden because everyone then expects it to keep looking gorgeous... and then after drought, flood, bushfire, locust plague, a long happy holiday, surgery or just an especially busy time, a friend arrives with a guest and says "I just had to show her your fabulous garden... er, it's a little overgrown, isn't it?" and you want to crawl under a rock but the crevice is already filled with snails.
4. You do not want to grow a profoundly productive garden because then possums, wallabies, slugs, snails, pear and cherry slug, fruit fly and others who are (mostly) unwanted will share it with you, and you will become annoyed when the parrots eat your apples instead of delighting in their presence, and become paranoid that your heritage tomato salad might be decorated by tiny squirming fruit fly larvae.
5. You do not want to grow a lush and vigorously growing garden because a paved courtyard, some grass trees, tree ferns, bulbs, agaves, a rambling rose, the odd trouble-free tree and other "grow slowly and need little work" gardens are quite lovely to sit in, relaxing and drinking tea and not in any way feeling guilty because you are ignoring the weeds in the corner and the standard roses need pruning.
6. You do not want to grow a generous garden because you will then need to give away six cases of apricots just when everyone is busy with holiday celebrations or baskets of limes all through winter, and friends will duck when they see you coming with yet more armfuls of produce, and even your chooks won't eat any more kale or cabbages about to go to seed.
And yet, of course, I am slowly beginning to get the weeds under control despite rain, mud and a gazillion seeds blown on bushfire winds, and am enjoying the challenge and the small areas of achievement. My friends have learned to say firmly "no thank you" to rhubarb and limes, often before I have even offered them. And to make really good chicken soup you need homegrown carrots so orange that they will turn your soup bright yellow, plentiful fresh parsley, thyme and winter savoury and bay leaves out the back door, plus some snips of tender young celery and onion tops...
Gardening is a bit like climbing a mountain. It's hard work. Don't climb a mountain unless you are going to enjoy doing it. But the journey is wonderful and the view from the top amazing and even though once you get there you have to clamber down again, you will have the joy and memory forever...
Just as you'll have when you garden. You will also have bunches of flowers to give to friends and the ingredients for a most excellent soup. You may even learn to share the apple crop happily with the possums, birds and wallabies, and rejoice that the generosity of your garden gives them lusciousness as well.
This week I am:
- Weeding. And weeding. And doing more weeding any day that has at least a few hours without rain that happen to coincide with times I can take a break from work.
- Also mowing. And whipper snipping. I shall be doing this for some time.
- Planting seeds for winter veg - still - and still without any great certainly they will germinate and produce a crop in time for the cold weather in this cool, damp autumn. But we might just get some baby kale, mignonette lettuces and bok choi.
- Filling the vases with hydrangeas that can't make up their minds if they are green or pink, but still look fabulous and will dry to a rich parchment colour to give us household flowers through winter.
- Eating our Macintosh apple crop - one lone apple. But it had rich red skin, stunning white flesh, and was crisp and excellent.