Almost twenty years ago I wrote that the way to get good at gardening was to get old, and that that, after all, there was no such thing as a child prodigy gardener.

Within weeks, a child-prodigy gardener phoned. One afternoon spent watching this kid buy sophisticated green-hued bedding plants for his “landscaping clients” convinced me I’d been wrong. The old-lady-as-intuitive-genius-gardener theory also turns out to be flawed. Many years further along in my quest to be an old lady, I understand this. I once gardened by the seat of my pants, throwing seeds around and forgetting to water them, but my many gardens were gorgeous, bountiful jungles anyway. I said I loved gardening because it required no striving, and anyway, the imperfections enhanced the beauty.

I didn’t know from imperfections back then. Whereas today, on the eve of my entrance into the AARP, white mottled death has moved from the ground into my peas, destroying everything in its path. My roses remind me of cinnamon rolls-not their lovely smell, but the sticky gunk all over them. Even now, stink bug parents are sending their 7000 children off to summer camp in my tomato beds. And it’s not just acts of god that plague me–my idiot savant design ideas have dried up like scorched tomatillos, and there’s no lack of those around here, believe me. This morning I admired my wine-dark purplish giant snapdragons until I saw a squatty neon red geranium beneath them. It sort of reminded me of Vita Sackville-West, if she’d been around for the LSD years. On closer inspection, there were hundreds of hard little brown things on the snapdragon leaves. With my luck, they’re alive.

Plus, all this doomed gardening takes work, as opposed to airy pronouncements. Now begins the organic-yet-vicious spraying-watery skim milk, hot peppers, stenchy kelp, baking soda and blue Dawn are all just way stations on the way to something more sinister and powdery, and that probably won’t work either. Also, it’s 95 degrees and I’ll have to wait till it’s dark to spray, and that’s when the chiggers and gnats move in.

Growing old is a big, fat disappointment, horticulturally speaking. Bite me, Red Hat Society! Then again, I still count the hours till I can rise from this desk to go out to the garden and fight the pestilence, and lose. I still have dreams of grandeur, or maybe pole beans, if that’s not too much to ask.

This blog ends with an explanation of the impulse that drives us not just to grow things, but to find the process infinitely rewarding, even if it technically isn’t. I haven’t written that sentence yet.

Have you?

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.