Gardens Gone Wild

February 5, 2006

Well, it's finally happened, after much hemming and hawing, we've finally let Javier, our gardener, go. It's very strange, because everyone I spoke to about doing this (which, neurotically, were many) kept asking me, "Did you fire your gardener yet?"

But I wasn't actually firing him. I just wasn't going to be using him anymore. Or I have great hope not to be using him in the future. Whether or not that actually happens remains to be seen.

I spent Saturday, after taking Abby and Ryan to a friend's Princess Party running the electric mower and weed whacker and it was strangely refreshing. The mowing, of all things, was incredibly easy, because we have so very little lawn. Where I thought we'd get hung up was in the leaf litter and trimming department. Traditionally, I have always done most of the weeding here as well as cutting back the perennials like the Matillija Poppies and Lion's Tail in the fall and winter. That being said, I wondered if I could add on top of that a weekly foray into the jungle to cut, hack, trim, plus do the mow, blow, and go traditional to Southern California. Well, it's worth a try. The worst that can happen is I can decide this was a terrible choice, call Javier and have him charge me an extra $20 a month to do the job he was doing before, right? Or maybe the worst is I could end up with hundreds of dollars worth of hospital bills. But let's not spend time there yet.

What I did find, was I felt more in control of my garden. Not that I ever felt like a stranger, like those folks in those beautiful houses who have landscape architects incessantly building them Zen rock gardens and koi ponds so they are "surprised every time I come around the corner" (I'm quoting an LA Times article). If you're taken aback when you go into your own garden, you really can't call yourself a gardener. The surprises a gardener gets is when they find the area they haven't been able to get to all season has become a pumpkin patch by accident and is chock full of 10 pounders.

There are beautiful things I don't think translate to normal gardeners, or maybe even normal city dwellers. The beauty of fallen leaves, for instance. Gardeners spend every weekday and weekend blowing them around, herding them into, and putting them into bins and lawn and leaf bags. But when you go into the country, it seems like no one's been in the lawn to mow or rake in weeks, if not months. Removing the leaves, also, destroys nature's very process of decomposition. The leaves suppress weeds around the tree, conserve moisture, and allow microorganisms and earthworms to break the leaves back into usable compost to feed the garden.

Ah, the kids have found me. They always find me. And of course they want to play on the computer. It's probably because we limit their time on both the computer and watching videos/television (called "screen time" in my brother Jack's house), so every time one is on they tend to look like deer in the headlights.

Soon, I guess, I'll wonder where they and the time have gone.

Of course, that doesn't nothing for my sanity-preservation moves at the moment, but…