Americans In The Garden
Sitting outside contemplating the garden, as the scent of the lilac nearby fills the air. It’s humid, and some butt-kicking storms are heading our way. The roses are lush and not yet victimized by aphids, black-spot and Japanese beetles (the Japanese call them “American Beetles” by the way). The color of the new leaves varies from plant to plant, from pale yellow to crimson. May is the month for roses. The foliage is almost as pretty as the first blooms, when the garden turns into a daytime fireworks show making its upkeep worthwhile the remaining 11 months of the year.
While puttering around I found a bag of Spider flower seeds dated “Summer ‘01”. Spider flowers (Cleome) are like the Americans of the garden. They sprout up in places where they aren’t always wanted and often threaten to take over. They are showy, borderline gaudy with their fat balls of blooms. They also smell rather pungent. But when everything else is wilting under the summer sun, they keep blooming and don’t stop until the plants are buried under the snow. I’ve always liked them and was happy to find the bag at this particular time when the garden is still being planted.
The seeds had been collected in the days after Sept 11, 2001 when the sky above our house was empty of anything – clouds and oddest of all, airliners. Honestly, I don’t remember much about the days immediately after September 11. The pall over the New York Skyline. Sounds of F-16s patrolling overhead in the morning. A sky so blue that it almost hurts to remember it.
Americans in the garden…
When everything falls apart, when illusions that you’ve held for years crumble, when things you’ve taken for granted suddenly are gone, one is left with the Zen command to “chop wood, carry water”. For me that meant tending the Spider plants – pulling their long seed pods which split between my fingers and released their tiny brown seeds. Chop wood carry water. I placed the seeds into a baggie, labeled them, and then stowed them away.
Last year the Spider flowers appeared in my garden as they usually did, but were shredded by beetle. For the first year in many, none made it to the point where they went to seed – and so my garden this year is missing the carpet of green, club-shaped petals as the Spider flowers race with each other to the sky.
So I cleared part of the garden known as the “hospital” – a section reserved for ailing plants – and took fistfuls of the seeds and scattered them. A world without Americans would be a dull world, and my garden is a much sadder place without the Spider flowers competing with the fragile English roses and Japanese maples for attention. Spider flowers are tough – last year notwithstanding. They are often hated by formal gardeners for their uncontrolled appearance and pungent odor. But honestly, I hate formal gardens and look askance at people who don’t.
I raked in the seeds and then watered the garden, priming the earth for the rain.
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