Plantin’ Time!
Starting tomorrow, I will be embarking upon my favorite week of the year.
Mother’s Day is the unofficial start of the planting season here in the Chicago area. So I will be unearthing my garden gloves (which I’m prone to losing, one from each pair, like socks, so that I putter around in the garden with my hands clad in different colors), throwing out the pots that cracked over the winter, renting a roto-tiller, hauling enormous bags of mulch and compost up the stone steps that lead to my backyard, and then on Monday, bright and early - no shower; I’ll plunk an old baseball cap on my head, climb into my oldest, shabbiest clothes, grab a travel mug of coffee - I will get in my car. (First folding down all the backseats for maximum storage.) And I will drive to my neighborhood garden center and spend and spend and spend - I’ve been saving my money for this for months.
I will grab a huge flat-bed cart and head over to the side of the nursery that’s filled with sun-loving plants; our yard doesn’t have a lot of sun but there is one nice little patch that I will fill to the brim with brightly blooming flowers. First perennials - I always pick up a couple of new ones - then I’ll load up on the annuals.
I’ll take a detour around the garden accessories part, and I’ll be tempted to buy something pretty and functional and expensive, but I won’t. Because I want to save my money for plants.
Then I’ll go over to the shade section. There I start with the annuals - all the begonias and impatiens, so many varieties to choose from. But our yard has mostly shade, so I really load up on these. Then, because this year we’re reclaiming a new section from our overgrown backyard, a little area I’m turning into an outdoor living room (this is why we have to rent a roto-tiller tomorrow), I’ll go over to the shade-loving perennials. I’m excited about ferns this year.
That’s not a sentence you hear very often, is it?
I will be tempted to load up the car so densely with flowers that I will not be able to see out the front window. But I will remind myself, sternly, that this is just the beginning. There’s another garden center - not as big as this one - yet to visit, and where I generally go to pick up the things I will forget. Like hanging baskets, and some trailing plants for a window box I never, ever, remember that I own until everything else is done.
And then I’ll go home, and I’ll start planting. I’ll fill up my rusty old Radio Flyer wagon with all my tools; my spades and trowels, and then I’ll start in the front yard. That’s mostly pots, except for the huge circle of impatiens I will plant around an old bird bath. Then I’ll move to the back yard, which will take me much more time.
But I won’t be in any hurry. I will enjoy it all - every bit of it; there’s no part I wish to skip, no ending I’m in a hurry to reach, and there’s a lesson in that, I think.
I love the hauling of the plants from the car to the yard, laying them out, moving them around, studying them. I love the actual digging; I’m a very hands-on gardener. I get down on my knees and plunge my hands into soil - with or without gloves, I really don’t care; I use my hands where others use trowels because I need to feel the dirt, feel the plants, feel them settle into the ground or the pot.
I will get sweaty, muddy, tired; I’ll require many long drinks of water and iced tea; I’ll have to rest, sitting on a stoop or rock, just listening to the birds, smelling the earth, admiring my own handiwork.
I will not hurry, because I know I have an entire week to get it all done, and it’s my reward.
It’s my reward for working hard this winter; writing and revising and blogging and online serializing, for hauling my son around to untold numbers of college visits he hasn’t wanted to go on, for nagging him about his ACT test and all his grades this crucial Junior year; it’s my reward for putting up with this horrible winter we’ve had, the gray skies and endless onslaught of snow, ice, snow, ice; it’s my reward for not spending much, for coloring and cutting my hair on my own, for only buying two pairs of summer sandals, for cutting back my Starbucks runs from every day to every other or sometimes even less.
It’s my reward for living in suburbia, where there are whole months I chafe at it, chafe at the sameness, the dullness. But come spring, I don’t. And I know I’ll have four months of paradise - a paradise I could not have in that city condo I sometimes dream about.
Gardening is one of the few things I do that is only for me. My sons don’t understand it; they don’t understand why I save my money only to spend it on something like flowers; flowers that will ultimately die.
But they don’t understand that it’s because I know they’ll die that I love this time of year so much. It’s my chance to start over, every year at exactly this time. It’s my chance to play God; to create my own Garden of Eden and if I get it wrong this year - if I plant something that won’t take, if I make a mistake about colors - next year I’ll remember, and try something different.
And I know this is the reward for living in a climate that’s as harsh as Chicago can be; we pay our penance with our long, gray winters but I know I wouldn’t enjoy this time of year so much if I didn’t have to suffer through them.
Plantin’ Time - it’s also an act of redemption. For it’s how I am able to forgive Mother Nature.
So if I’m not around much next week, I’m sure you’ll understand. I need a week in which I don’t have to worry about anything other than the rising and the setting of the sun, the clouds, the chance of rain.
Everybody could use a little time for that. A time to plant ideas as well as flowers, because there’s no better way to clear your mind from all the clutter and noise generated by our busy, Internet-dependent lives.
So go forth and plant your own garden, and if you choose to take that metaphorically rather than literally, I won’t mind one bit.









