Joy of Gardening

 

Joy of Gardening

     Gardening presents a wonderful experience in so many ways!  Watching plants shoot up from seeds, bulbs, corms, and roots in the spring fills my heart with a sense of renewal and also a feeling of expectancy.  These plants will bring with them refreshing oxygenation, delight for the eye, fragrances with memories, and peacefulness.  The smell of soil from last year's freshly composted leaves brings a clean and wonderfully fragrant aroma, the finest perfume on earth!

    Working with the garden provides the exercise needed to maintain a sound mind and body.  Weeding, digging, and pruning all present stretching exercises.  Raking and sweeping make my back feel more loose and provide aerobic exercise. When winter succumbs to the callings of spring, and the trilliums pop through the winter gathering of leaves, then it's time for me to shed those extra winter pounds, pulling the weeds by hand, hauling and spreading gravel on the paths, and establishing new garden beds.  I'm running out of ground space, so now I must garden skywards. What fun, to keep my focus in the air!

     An art form utilizing line, color, texture, balance, designing a garden maintains the same principles as the other arts, but the medium lives, and constantly changes throughout the year.  So, care and maintenance becomes a large part of the art.  So does kinetics.  It only takes one aggressive or invasive plant to completely change the scene in a short time.  Timing becomes so important to the art of gardening, providing a series of focal points that change, ideally throughout the entire year.  My plants sometimes don piano dollies to become more mobile, filling in here and there.  Conifer needed to provide a backdrop for a cobalt glass display...look out, here comes my potted lemon cypress on wheels!  Whoosh! Sometimes, something unexpectedly happens that changes your entire artistic view of the garden.  Wow, those trees with thin, strong limbs gather water droplets like gleaming ornaments in the rain!   How can I amplify or enhance that effect?  The palette commanded by a gardener shaping a garden knows few bounds!  You can sculpt with scent, sound, and touch too!

     Plants, as living organisms, give back so much in return for a little care.  Many gardeners provide nurturing, not only for plants, but for people also.  Most gardeners remain humble despite their accomplishments, and cast an admiring eye upon the most rudimentary of accomplishments, knowing that they started there at one time.  Gardeners encourage other gardeners to enterprise, knowing that the garden will provide so much joy in return.  My wife teases me about finding like-minded gardeners who love to speak Latin, genus and species, photos floating through our minds of plant joy, at the mention of each plant. Those who garden share so much: knowledge, enthusiasm, acceptance, and encouragement.