Late in the Game

[Note: this post was drafted weeks ago, but didn’t go up because… I was too busy in the garden. Good excuse, no? Look for a more up-to-date post soon.]

Previously, in the veggie garden…

Earlier this summer, Inconstance was feeling rather insouciant about execution of garden plans. Whatever, she claimed, was her approach to the garden now. Something would grow. The harvest would yield something—probably too much of it.

There was asparagus under here somewhere…

Well, guess again. I (Ms. Inconstance) have worked like a stevedore since early June, at least when it wasn’t raining or in the nineties. (Which, come to think of it, was most of the time, but still…) And my sister has come over to help out a couple times a week.

Nevertheless, the weeds kept winning, some things got planted a wee bit too late, and even by the beginning of July despair began insinuating its nasty self. All that work and MooDoo, and the scallions languished if they sprouted at all, the cucumbers were playing coy, and the peas—oh, the peas produced only disappointment. While the weeds took over the asparagus trench and crept insidiously inward from the veggie garden’s perimeter faster than you can say I’ll-deal-with-that-tomorrow.

I found some consolation in Margaret Roach’s newsletter in early July, wherein she admitted that by July 1 she’s always tempted to “throw in the trowel.” That one sure resonated!

Inspiration and perspiration

Of course no true gardener would ever act on that urge. The siren call of green growing things is too powerful, and just when you feel like giving up, the liatris sends up its spectacular magenta spires or the zinnias bob their creamy white heads when you walk by.

Keeping track of what’s not gotten done

But while these sights might energize me, I haven’t had time this summer to do anything about the perennial beds. The veggie garden has claimed all my energies. Not just the fenced-in garden, but also the old raised beds closer to the house, where the late-season veggies had to go in.

Before that could happen, my sister and I cleared a ton of weeds from those beds and the area around them. My long-suffering handyman extracted the chicken wire crop coops from the garage rafters. All was in readiness for the late summer garden. I even unearthed my late season gardening guide poster, stuck it into a frame, and hung it on the dining room wall, where I could guilt-trip myself every time I headed into the study (which, I admit, was not often enough).

Past the halfway mark

I was r-e-a-d-y. No fooling around with seed this time. Around July 20, I popped in at the garden store for veggie starts, ready to bung those suckers into new homes before they knew what hit them. Alas, my timetable didn’t match the garden center’s. Come back after Aug. 3, they told me.

Yes, Virginia, romaine lettuce can form towers!

So I had time to note how brazen the rampant bunnies are this year. They won’t run away until I get within a foot or two. After fattening up by chomping the blackeyed Susans and coneflowers down to the ground on two sides of the house, they’ve contented themselves with nibbling the clover in the lawn while eyeing their favorite asters (ooh, they love those juicy asters clear down to their roots!) and carrot greens inside the fenced garden. If they’d gotten in, they could have done a lot of damage.

The hole of the vole

But somebody has gotten in. Voles, I suspect. First I found two messy piles of dirt and two neat round holes outside the fence by the carrots and the asparagus trench. But no evidence the critter had gotten past the 18” of buried fencing. Ha ha! thought I smugly. Then I went to clear out the romaine that had rocketed up to three feet, and found between them and the zinnias a neatly executed hole—inside the fence. Ha ha! said the vole.

So I hauled out and planted my secret weapons, solar-powered gizmos that you shove about 6” into the soil. They emit a high-pitched intermittent shriek, like a soprano version of those thumpers in Dune, but with (we hope) the opposite effect of driving away the quarry. I’ll get back to you about whether that works.

The heavy artillery

Zooming out

Do I sound obsessive? Well, duh. If you’re gonna garden beyond your cute little deck, you’d better be. Unless Whatever truly is your philosophy of life.

Tomorrow is another day

Speaking of which: I can’t help but reflect how much the struggle in the garden matches what’s happening in the wider world. You labor mightily to remove ugliness or insipidity, you see the bloom of lovely results, and then along comes a vole or a woodchuck or a deer or Der Furor DJT and bam! All that work has gone for naught.

With the garden, at least, I can console myself that there’s always next year. The frost will put everything to rest and then I get to start again, wiser, cannier, more strategic than last time. You might say we get seasons in politics too, and maybe the midterms will see a regrowth of democratic sprouts. Or maybe it’ll be the next presidential run. But meanwhile the goons have been bulldozing away the topsoil the nation’s roots depend on.

The best I can say is, we gardeners know the only way out is to keep on trying.

Your turn

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