Green thumb? Are you kidding!
An old friend with whom I've recently become re-acquainted as it were through the Internet, mentioned in one of her e-mails that although she loves looking at flowers and greenery, she has, alas, no green thumb. Although I love gardening and enthusiastically rush out to the gardens any chance I get, I too am bereft of a green thumb. Fact is, I know there are gifted gardeners who love to garden and appear to do it with the greatest of ease. Green thumb, though? Ridiculous. Even the most avid and knowledgeable of gardeners bemoan their gardening disasters. Everyone has them. We learn to work around them, learn from our mistakes and our successes - still there are no guarantees with perfection with living organisms. It's the successes that make the enterprise rewarding and worth working toward. There's 'green thumb' for you.People who don't garden, and who envy the gardens of those who do, like to believe that gardeners practise a kind of green magic. In a way, it's an excuse for these people who don't really want to bother, to bow out. There's nothing wrong with that, actually. It makes them feel better to believe that others who will spend unstinting hours in a garden patiently working on their palette can just lightly create landscapes of shape, colour and texture with no more care than a flick of a talented wrist.
Nothing wrong with admiring gardens that other people devote time, energy and hopes in, not at all. After all, not everyone feels they have sufficient leisure time when they have children to look after as the highest of priorities, a time-demanding job, and a household in which some semblance of order keeps insanity at bay.
But to those who can and do allocate what time they may to gardening the pay-off is there in spades. The sheer pleasure of being out in the warming, life-giving sun (even a light rain is fine) working the garden beds and borders, coaxing compost and/or peat moss into the soil to enhance the opportunities for healthy, thriving perennials to rise up and burst forth into bloom represents pleasure in the extreme. There is an especial allure in working the soil, recognizing the plants poking through the spring soil and anticipating their seasonal maturity. When the garden is fully in bloom at various stages throughout the growing season, the appreciation of its glorious colour, form and texture, its fragrance and full heady presence delivers a wonderful satisfaction of purpose. Anyone who has worked in a garden can attest to its therapeutic properties. It does become a form of relaxation, despite the physical effort required. It's quite wonderful to realize that anyone with a bit of effort and determination can create a lovely landscape.
Some gardeners get help in dealing with the pests that love to invade gardens and whom nature has equipped to do so in the strangest of ways. The slugs who move on their trails of slime, the immature lily beetles who cover themselves in their own feces to ensure that birds will not see them as attractive prey, the spider mites, countless worms and burrowing pests, the garden rust and scales...these are challenges that the squeamish among us delegate to helpful 'others' less prone to revulsion at the challenge of picking and squashing.
Honestly, though, it's the people who contract out the care of their lawns to lawn-care specialists that earn my ire. These are supposedly intelligent and responsible individuals who have children and family pets and who obsess over the state of their grass. These people see nothing wrong in having pestitides and herbicides sprayed in the very grass where their children and family pets play. Who give no thought to the widespread damage they do to their and our environment because of their overweening (and incredibly stupid) desire to have unblemished green lawns. Funny thing is, it seems to me that these are the very lawns which look the worst throughout the growing season. No one should have a problem with weeds if they pluck them early in the season, don't overwater their grass, de-thatch properly in the spring, and never mow too short during the hot months.
Well, truth is, although I don't believe in green thumbs, I do believe that some people are inherently gifted gardeners. These people observe nature closely, use common sense, are not afraid to try things, to learn from what can transpire, be it success or failure. They do seem almost casual about the manner in which they set about their gardening. It's not casualness, though, it's confidence. I've known some gifted-confident gardeners (who can also bemoan gardening errors and disappointments). One of them is my own daughter. Although I've always admired wonderful gardens and the gardeners who inspire them, I always knew I'd never be able to accomplish anything remotely like them. I did, from time to time, make attempts to. But, after all, I realized I didn't have a green thumb.
I decided to persevere. My daughter taught me that. Example, example. Exemplary gardeners can, will and do discharge their obligations to the rest of us by inspiring us to keep trying despite our reservations. We then demonstrate our willingness to imitate them. And? Achieve some modicum of success, sans green thumb.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, April 25, 2005
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