I would love if this week’s chat could be garden-related! (Previous weeks’ chats have been happening in the Substack app, but I thought I’d post this one as a chat thread to remind those of you who haven’t been using the app what you’ve been missing out on…) Please let me know what you’re planting this year, or what you love growing in your own garden!
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This is a – not my, crucially – Chinese peony
I am re-entering my gardening era, as I do, at this stage, every year when the ground thaws and the sun comes out and the shrubs in my garden, which have been bare and thorny and some shade of grey for what feels like an entire year, begin to bud and bloom and remind me of the beauty of nature. And, therefore, the beauty of life! Regeneration! New leaves! New flowers! Herbs I grew myself and can sprinkle over dinners I’ll never cook!
Gardening is very relaxing, although it’s not without its own small degree of stress. For the novice gardener, there’s always the worry that you’ll pull up a peony or a young sapling or something you didn’t know mattered, in your aggressive pursuit of weeds.
“A weed is anything you don’t want there,” my mother always said, and she’s right, but that doesn’t help too much when you don’t know what you want or, when what you want (an aesthetically beautiful garden) clashes with another aspect of what you want (bee-friendly blooms). I’m talking, of course, about dandelions.
Their leaves are so… ugly. I can’t abide them. But the bees love them! So then… what’s a girl to do?!
For now, the dandelions are being let live – not just because the bees love them, but because their roots go so deep that I simply cannot be bothered removing them effectively, and so, they are staking their claim on my garden. Once the mowing begins, possibly at the weekend, the dandelions that are dotted around the grass will be gone, so I suppose I should preserve those that have made the flowerbeds their home.
In my investigations – I use an app called PictureThis, which has not let me down yet – I have discovered that we have Chinese peonies growing along the side of our house. The thorny-looking thing in the front garden I very nearly uprooted is, in fact, a weigela, which produces “beautiful tubular flowers in shades of pink”. We also have purple coneflowers, orange daylilies, bigleaf hydrangea and a lot of purple dead-nettles, which I have designated as being not weeds because they are cute and, so far, not interfering too much with anything else.
I have tulips, too, and more bulbs I have dried out and will plant in September. Every time I go to the supermarket, I pick up another pot. I have yellow and purple and a new “novelty” variety that is mottled light pink.
“Candy for bunny rabbits,” said Neal, the gardener who laid our flowerbeds late last summer, and I think he meant to put me off, but instead I thought, great. Who wouldn’t want to make the bunnies happy?!
Each morning, Atlas and I put on our shoes and our sunscreen and we go outside and I water my plants – it’s been 27 degrees by noon every day for the past week, although it’s set to get back to freezing on Monday, and I’m worried about how this will affect both the plants and my mood – and he pushes his mower and falls over a couple of times and walks next to me and spreads his fingers beneath the spray of the hose and shouts at me angrily when he realises how cold it is but then does it again, two seconds later.
I talk to him about the roses and the hydrangeas and the weeds and how I know what’s what – “see this app? I take a picture of the weed and…” – because Ms Rachel says I should narrate my day, at least, if I ever want him to speak to us.
Then we play in the sandpit for a bit – more shouting because the sand is sandy or it’s in his eye or it’s in his shoe or now it’s in his water cup because he threw the water cup into the sandpit – and we swing on the swing and we run in circles around the trampoline and then he starts crying because he’s tired of doing all of those things and we go back inside and it’s time for his nap.
And I feel like I’ve achieved something because I’ve pulled up some weeds and watered the garden and the baby has got some fresh air. And I guess so have I.
I don’t know that I’ve ever really worked at something with this same level of vigour or commitment, at least not while knowing that I won’t get to see the fruits of my labour for months, maybe years. The crabapple tree I planted in the back garden is my height now, but still looks more like a sapling than a tree; the ornamental pebbled flowerbeds to the side of the house need to be cleared out and dug up and laid with soil and seeds and that isn’t a today, or a tomorrow, or even a this weekend project.
I’d like to extend the patio a bit and reseed the grass and plant some more shrubs at random, to make the garden seem more like my garden at home, where there are daffodils growing in the middle of the lawn and, even though my Mum would love my Dad to do some mowing, she dreads it, too, because he won’t know that he needs to mow around that tiny patch of daffodils, that little growing tulip cluster.
Sometimes I ask Brandin to help me, too, if I can’t lift something on my own, or a large hole needs to be dug. I could probably dig a hole myself, but I don’t want to, and I like to make him feel needed.
He’s not really interested in the garden, I don’t think, at least not beyond its ability to add value to the house and, I suspect, to keep me occupied. But that’s fine. We can’t all have the same hobbies. It’s okay with me that this is mine. That way, I get to make all of the decisions. I get to decide what’s a weed, and what’s not, and that feels important to me right now, in this season of my life.
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I’m loving…
This hummus I made earlier in the week on a bit of a whim. The baby was asleep so I couldn’t go to the shop to buy some, which would be my usual choice, but I’m glad I didn’t because this is top-tier hummus. Just lemony, garlicky, olive oil-y enough and so simple to make.
I’m hating…
The Green Card application process. I know, I know, this is not news, but please allow me to vent for a few moments. If I could go back in time, I would ask someone to take a photograph every single time Brandin and I went anywhere together; I would keep all of our potentially-relevant-to-my-Green-Card-application documentation together in one place; I would put aside $150 per month for the three years of my visa so that, when it came to it, I’d be in a great place to pay for my Green Card. IF I COULD GO BACK IN TIME. But I can’t. So, I’m spending hours searching for documents I never thought I’d need and looking for what few photographs that exist that aren’t (a) pictures of the baby, on his own, being cute or (b) selfies of me, taken in good light at various times of day, around my house. Sob.
I can’t stop thinking about…
This Guardian article, which outlines how Phoebe Waller-Bridge got a $20m-a-year contract from Amazon and has, so far, had to do… no work?! I’m not mad at it – I love PWB as much as the next person, perhaps more – but I am jealous. Where do I apply for this job?!
Hello -- also from Wexford here :) absolutely loving my garden at the moment. I've spent the last 3 years saving seeds, repotting baby plants etc.... About 3 weeks ago I rescued what I thought were 5 beautiful hellebore baby plants... Today Picture this informed me that they are infact Dock leaves, and are worth nothing at the local plant swap I was going to bring them too.
I haven't managed to successfully start a veggie patch, I tried last year with carrots and ended up with some very questionable shapes.
We've also gone a bit and with the sunflower seeds, and may have planted 50-100 of them in seeded trays (thanks to the heavy hand of a 6 year old).
I moved from Scotland to Co. Wexford 4 years ago (fuck Brexit) I’ve never got too excited about flowers, except for peonies so I’m clearly a basic bitch. However, as befitting of my new home county, I’m obsessed with growing potatoes and strawberries. The soil here really does love them. So enjoy your writing Rosemary. I’ll raise a Superquinn to you in the morning.
Ha I cannot garden, we are still renting after 2 years..thanks to a lack of a reasonable priced houses in limerick city that is a:not a wreaked requiring 100k to make livable or B: costs less than 400,000
I do have 2 cactus tho..and a back garden full of dandelions..so go bees
Hello -- also from Wexford here :) absolutely loving my garden at the moment. I've spent the last 3 years saving seeds, repotting baby plants etc.... About 3 weeks ago I rescued what I thought were 5 beautiful hellebore baby plants... Today Picture this informed me that they are infact Dock leaves, and are worth nothing at the local plant swap I was going to bring them too.
I haven't managed to successfully start a veggie patch, I tried last year with carrots and ended up with some very questionable shapes.
We've also gone a bit and with the sunflower seeds, and may have planted 50-100 of them in seeded trays (thanks to the heavy hand of a 6 year old).
I moved from Scotland to Co. Wexford 4 years ago (fuck Brexit) I’ve never got too excited about flowers, except for peonies so I’m clearly a basic bitch. However, as befitting of my new home county, I’m obsessed with growing potatoes and strawberries. The soil here really does love them. So enjoy your writing Rosemary. I’ll raise a Superquinn to you in the morning.
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this but it made me feel better about dandelions! https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0ajJvTRf3WMfyEcyr48rDgvV7zfcgmdGkkPBWuSsi5uWgheeTqWD4spYxtjvbQJ51l&id=100075850093942
Ha I cannot garden, we are still renting after 2 years..thanks to a lack of a reasonable priced houses in limerick city that is a:not a wreaked requiring 100k to make livable or B: costs less than 400,000
I do have 2 cactus tho..and a back garden full of dandelions..so go bees