Cincinnati, Ohio
November 3, 2024
Dear Marianne,
I don’t know about you, but I garden a lot more productively when I’m rushed and surly. And I’ve been both lately. Having a hard deadline is why. My hip replacement will be on December 4th, so I’m feeling the urgency. And the pain of a destroyed hip.
Leave the leaves? Precisely. Actually, leave them but in a precise manner. Same with spent perennials. No time for indecision. No time for clever. No time for doing things by the book. Just plow through. Actually, mow through, and my electric Stihl mower is up to the task. Leaves? Mowed. Perennials? Mowed. A blown in paper bag? Mowed. Even a coat hanger that somehow found its way into my yard got mowed, and, boy, was that disturbing.
An Acer miyabei’s worth of leaves mowed, blowed, and off my plate.
I should mention that Michele has been helping out in the garden a lot more than before. Very helpful. I used to worry anytime she went into the garden with anything resembling a tool, but not so much anymore. I mean, I’ve been going into the garden with just a mower and a determined look on my face, so how much worse can she be with a pair of pruners? I’m learning that gardens are actually pretty resilient.
Still a lot to cut back. I’m usually selective about how I go about it, but I know I’ll have limited mobility going into spring. From past years, I know that plants can take a fair amount of abuse this time of year and come back just fine.
Softening my mood a little has been beautiful fall color and crystal blue skies. This is my favorite time of year. Heat on for the drive to work in the morning. A/C on for the drive home. Every year, people find some reason to doubt good fall color will come. Every year, good fall color listens and laughs before eventually asking October 18th to hold its beer. In fact, this afternoon Michele and I took a few hours and enjoyed the beauty of Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum. Past peak, but still quite good.
With a new hip in place, I’m hoping to hand my beer off to April 1st and attack a couple of beds that I hate worse and worse every time I pass them. They have become like junk drawers–random collections of flotsam and jetsam, an assemblage of plants that are of small sentimental value or were at one time of enough interest to keep. But now, looking at some of these plants in the context of a time crunch, while surly, in pain, and after a long, hard drought, I just want them gone. Abducted into a car. Whisked off. And never seen of again. And, yes, surly is my new favorite word.
I’m becoming jaded about small perennial beds. Sometimes it feels like a mile of perennials by themselves makes more sense than a 10’ x 15’ garden bed of them. In such spaces, more and more, I’m thinking a single mass of one selection is the way. Maybe, three different groupings. But dabbling with individual perennials smattered around is just a mess. Maybe a small shrub or two can give them some underwire support, but I don’t know.
Thank you, by the way, for the very nice letter last time. Such a contrast to my previous one, which was pretty rough. Surly even. And I so enjoyed our time together at the Southern Garden Conference in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Although 80% of our time there was a mad scramble to assemble our first ever talk together, it was still a lot of fun and so many laughs.
The work station.
Marianne Willburn at work.
For a first ever such talk for either of us, I think it went well enough to be encouraging. It certainly got laughs, and with a little work on the narrative, I think we could deliver enough horticultural knowledge and insight that people would go home both entertained and informed. I propose we perfect the hell out of it and hope people ask us to present it at their conferences. It would give us more opportunities to hang out and, maybe at future events, we won’t have to spend so much time working and can laugh even more than we did.
Yours,
Scott
Getting It Done in November, Bone on Bone: A Letter from the Midwest originally appeared on GardenRant on November 3, 2024.
The post Getting It Done in November, Bone on Bone: A Letter from the Midwest appeared first on GardenRant.
