I am anticipating ruin in my little paradise, all of my own making.
This week I return from my summer cooler-climate get-away, straight into the maws of Mississippi’s furnace. After abandoning my Mississippi garden since spring, I’m steeled for a burst of horticultural ego.
Because I’m older, wiser, lazy, and often gone weeks and months at a time, over the decades I’ve planned for low maintenance, replacing needy plants with garden-quality natives and hardy heirlooms found thriving around abandoned country homes, proven to withstand back-to-back freezes, unrelenting heat, downpours interrupting droughts, and waves of pest attacks.
Every Spring I give the garden a thorough weeding and trimming, pulling and composting and replacing fading winter annuals with those I think can survive summer on their own. I blanket bare soil with bark mulch so the garden looks nice and fresh, and then leave for the summer, hoping that I have planted wisely.
But prideful Mr. “My garden takes care of itself” knows from experience that in spite of my penchant for durable shrubs and flowers, there will be some rough stuff to deal with. Which leads to my current angst.
Every September I come back to largely the same scene: Thriving weeds, a lot of brown, crispy stuff including even goldenrod and nandina, and a few statuesque dead or dying plants. Impressive, just not in the way I’d prefer. There’ll be some fallen limbs, a lot of leaves on the walks, algae in my water gardens whose pumps were turned off before I left, and dead mosquito larvae in dried-up birdbaths. Compost ravaged and scattered everywhere by possums. And a dead battery meaning my old truck won’t start, which is actually a good thing because it’s better that I walk or Uber after consoling myself at the local watering hole.
Last year I lost a mature magnolia, an 80-year-old cleyera tree, a native yaupon holly, two Japanese maples, and my entire blueberry patch. All normally unkillable. On top of the tomatoes, peppers, basil, zinnias, caladiums, and other hapless annuals left to fend for themselves.
Pity my property-value minded neighbors, who reasonably expect that this garden expert could/would be able to do better. And the mail delivery folks who have to pick through the vines smothering my entry arbors.
But I vow to do better. When I get in, after clearing my way to the cabin and opening windows to air it out, sort through the mail to calm down a bit, I gulp a tall glass of water and steel myself to go out to take stock. After seeing what has done well (I fully expect all my hardy succulents and okra to still be thriving), I’ll check the compost bin for worms, which disappeared almost entirely in last year’s severe heat and drought.
Then I’ll put on some gloves and start clearing fallen limbs and pruning wayward branches and vines, and hauling them on my trusty tarp to my long, narrow, wildlife-harboring “dead hedge” row of big garden debris. Working in the morning, staying in the shade as best I can, I’ll toss faded flowers and weeds onto the compost pile, and take the string trimmer and leaf blower to what’s left.
After scooping muck from my water features, I’ll refill them and the birdbaths, take a cool shower, and start visiting garden center friends to see what’s available to plant for fall and winter.
I suspect that most gardeners do all this a little at a time as needed, rather than in one fell swoop. But I’m stuck in my ways; here’s hoping my approach works better next year.
Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.
