{"id":4127,"date":"2010-06-09T11:19:47","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T16:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=4127"},"modified":"2016-08-14T13:48:16","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T18:48:16","slug":"in-the-garden-of-benign-neglect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/06\/09\/in-the-garden-of-benign-neglect\/","title":{"rendered":"In the garden of benign neglect"},"content":{"rendered":"

D<\/span>id you ever read Stephen King’s Pet Semetary<\/em>, where dead things mysteriously come back to life?<\/p>\n

Yeah, my garden is like that. When we moved in back in 2003, there were two trees — really, barely more than saplings — in the back yard. Not long after, one of them reverted to upright stick status and leafed no more. It took about another two or three years for me to get around to removing the dead tree, which by then pretty much just snapped off when I pushed on it. And then, much to my surprise, another two years after that I noticed that what I thought was a particularly lovely weed scaling the fence about 2m from where the tree used to be turned out to be the crabapple tree resurrected. It was growing WAY too close to the fence, and I should have cut it down, but I admired its tenacity. It’s now more than 20 ft tall, and does this every spring.<\/p>\n

\"108:365<\/a><\/p>\n

A year or so after we moved in, I planted a clematis beside the front door. It lasted maybe a month, and promptly withered and died. I’m kinda used to that. I’ve got about a 50\/50 record with gardening anyway, and with so many other living things under my care, once they get into the ground, the plants are pretty much on their own. Thus, the garden of benign neglect.<\/p>\n

Just like its crabapple cousin, though, about four years after the clematis died, a mysterious plant climbed the trellis near the front door. Imagine my delight when I realized it was the long-departed and non-since-seen clematis, coming back for another grow at it. It’s currently thriving and covered with fat purple and white blossoms.<\/p>\n

\"159:365<\/a><\/p>\n

I love the things that grow in my garden, and only wish I had more enthusiasm to care for them. I’ve got daisies on the brink of exploding into colour; I’ve got lilacs and peonies and morning glories. Tulips and irises grace us in spring, while lazy susans and coneflowers bloom in midsummer. I’ve got two apple trees, and some wild roses. I’ve got a bleeding heart that has completely taken over its bed, and a honeysuckle that I almost tore out because it chokes out all the other plants, but this summer it finally burst into gorgeous orange blossoms. And all of it? Pretty much does whatever the hell it wants. Every now and then I get out with my pruning shears and fill two or five bags with shrubs that have overgrown their welcome, or daylillies that threaten to take over the yard. But mostly, they have the run of the garden beds.<\/p>\n

You know what’s really delightful about the garden of benign neglect? Last year I had a spontaneous appearance of raspberries in one patch that has now spread to not two but four locations around the property. And by “property” I mean our 100 ft deep by maybe 25 ft wide postage-stamp of a lot. And those raspberry bushes are absolutely laden with blooms. They’re going to be producing by the pint in about four weeks, and I’m positively drooling at the thought.<\/p>\n

Each week when I haul my ass out to cut the grass, I look around my unkempt and luscious gardens and castigate myself for not taking better control of them. I love the idea <\/em>of gardening, it’s just one of those things that I never seem to get around to. And now I’m feeling vaguely disappointed that we’ve nearly reached mid-June and once again I’ve forgotten to plant some tomatoes, and the bushel-baskets I rescued from someone’s garden to fill to overflowing with wildflower annuals are still sitting empty in the garage where I first stashed them. <\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good thing the garden, much like the children, seem to thrive in a climate of benign and affectionate neglect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you ever read Stephen King’s Pet Semetary, where dead things mysteriously come back to life? Yeah, my garden is like that. When we moved in back in 2003, there were two trees — really, barely more than saplings — in the back yard. Not long after, one of them reverted to upright stick status … Continue reading “In the garden of benign neglect”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-happy-home","category-life-the-universe-and-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4127"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12006,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4127\/revisions\/12006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}