Bloom Where You Are Planted

I’ve never had a garden. I try to avoid using always and never but I think it’s true. Blaming our itinerant life is tempting, and that is a factor, but many military families have gardens: on base, in rental homes, yard or no yard. We’ve moved 17 times in 35 years. I won’t bore you with the details (you can buy my book for that) let’s just say it was too much moving for me to add gardening as a hobby.

It’s time to PLANT A GARDEN AND WATCH IT GROW.

I tried early on to have a garden. When Lee entered the MECEP (Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program) we moved back to Oklahoma to finish our degrees. We rented a nice ranch-style, three-bedroom house from my mom and dad, one that had been trashed by the previous tenants. I got to pick out new carpet and wallpaper. Adding some flowers out front seemed like a good idea. My mom, who knew a thing or two about flowers, recommended impatiens and salvia, but I’m sure she was thinking, good luck. Oklahoma sits two inches from the sun and that garden bed was as hard as concrete. I don’t think the flowers lasted long. Several plants have given their lives over the years as I tried to have pots filled with flowers on various porches. When my friend, Trudy, planted tulip bulbs at her house on base at Camp Lejeune it seemed an act of faith and hope, a small gift to the future.

Lee has had gardens. In Guantanamo Bay, he grew tomatoes, green onions, cilantro, jalapenos; the ingredients he needed to make salsa. His plants grew in pots, elevated on a round, splinter-filled picnic table left by previous inhabitants, and he did nightly battle with the hutia, or banana rats as they are often referred to. Those rodents could clear an entire mango tree, leaves and all, in no time.

Years later, he used the raised bed garden in our rental home in Jacksonville, North Carolina to grow zucchini, tomatoes, melons, and jalapenos. He planted eggplant. I wish he had asked me. Eggplant was not a staple of our diet; can’t say I’ve ever successfully cooked it (is it supposed to be slimy?) We never got any eggplant from that garden, so in the end it didn’t really matter.

We inherited an entire rose garden when we bought our house in Chesapeake, Virginia. I’m guessing fifteen different varieties complete with labels, on fancy sticks, written in calligraphy: our own garden show. If I remember correctly, we were the second owners after the master gardener, and it showed. We did our best. We didn’t kill them completely or tear them out, just let them drift along like a lost shoe in a slowly moving river.

I’ve enjoyed the bounty of these gardens, but they were never mine.

Our townhouse faces west and sits about twenty feet from the woods. I drug Lee with me to For Garden’s Sake, the nearby garden center and we looked for plants with the little signs that said good in partial sun. I picked out four plants to go into three decorative pots we’d purchased earlier. Back home, I was ready. As a dedicated plant mom I’m more comfortable potting plants than I used to be, although I don’t have a great place to work. I’m on the kitchen island and a prayer (that the garbage disposal doesn’t eat any potting soil) plan. Don’t tell Lee.

Once set up it took no time at all. A cuphea, and a tornenia in the big pot. A salvia and a campanula in pots of their own. The big pot needed something extra. After a quick Google search, I took one of the wandering dude plants that I’d propagated in water and added it. Better. On the porch, I did a bit of arranging. It looked nice. I took a picture, walked the dogs and wished these plants long life.

The next day we walked the dogs, I filled the birdfeeders and admired the flowers. Later, I sat on my couch with my laptop and didn’t know what to write. Seemed like such a trivial thing. Throwing plants into pots and calling it a garden. I had done that before. Maybe not very successfully, but let’s not think about that. I knew, to do this right, I needed to put flowers into the ground.

Lee hit the trails on his mountain bike, I went back to For Garden’s Sake.

The garden center was quieter on a Tuesday morning: a mom with school-aged kids pulling her flower-filled cart, an older woman dressed in loose overalls carrying two pots of what looked like black-eyed susans, and me. Nursery workers buzzed like bees around benches of plants labeled Sun-loving! and flats of colorful bunches beneath a sign declaring Butterflies love me! Their attention to their duties made me hesitant to ask for help. Yet again, I opted for educated guessing instead of seeking assistance.

I found some delicate white flowers that, according to their little tag, were tough and able to handle anything from full sun to partial shade. I found the salvia and tornenia again, they seemed like good options. I was rolling now, feeling a bit more confident, based on nothing other than being decisive. I had white, purple, and blue- I needed some red or yellow. I thought about my mom. Red impatiens.

As I hauled my purchases out of the car, I got the sinking feeling there was no going back. These plants were either going in the ground, and soon, or they were going to be a slowly dying reminder that I don’t always finish what I start.

Reality: 45 minutes to get 15 plants into the ground before the heat of the afternoon sun would be joining me on the front side of the house.

Gardening tools, where were they? I knew we had a small hand spade and maybe some gardening gloves. The right side of the garage is still a maze of boxes and items waiting for us to move again, have a garage sale, or finally figure out where they go. I did a quick recon of the left side of the garage, scanning shelves filled with the miscellaneous types of things you find on shelves in garages. Please tell me you have shelves like this.

37 minutes

No luck on the gardening tools. I grabbed a beach towel, a tape measure, and a large spoon from the kitchen. I pulled the plants from my entryway onto the porch and began to play with where to place them. It felt like a 4^th grade word problem: if you have 15 plants to plant in a 12-foot by 5-foot bed containing five small bushes, including one very prickly one, and eight plants need to be spaced 10 to 12 inches apart, three plants that need to be 12 to 15 inches apart and two sets of two plants that need to be eight to 12 inches apart, what is the name of the gardener?

22 minutes

A spoon is not a gardening utensil. Back into the garage to hunt for any kind of digging instrument.

19 minutes

A full-sized spade seemed too large but was better than a spoon. Flip-flops not great with spade. Back in to change into tennis shoes. Grabbed a hat.

 16 minutes

The concrete next to the porch extended further than expected. Shifted plants, caring less about distancing requirements. The ground felt like clay. Sand? Back inside to Google is sand okay in garden? Yes, good for drainage.

11 minutes

Started digging. Spade helpful. Dug, checked hole depth, removed clay/sand chunks, added plant, covered with dirt, threw clay/sand chunks into the woods, repeated. Ignored grossness of hands.

7 minutes

So hot. Got water.

5 minutes

Thirteen plants to go.

By the time I finished my nails were lined with dirt. My back hurt. My shirt was spotted with perspiration. There were balls and pieces of clay/sand everywhere. I had a garden.

I’ve been holding a very narrow definition of gardening. Obviously, seeds, sprouts, plants in the ground are what we are talking about, but I realized that I’ve been planting other gardens throughout the years.

The family garden required attention, adjustment, and care. New locations, fresh challenges, short roots.

The military community garden varied from place to place; bloom where you are planted, they told us.  Some places had solid social infrastructures, others didn’t. Sometimes you had to sow some seeds, knowing that you would never see the sprouts. The people you leave behind leave holes in your heart. We nourished each other, sharing information and providing sustenance and support as needed, sometimes from a long way away.

The library garden allowed me to meet people, share books and a love of reading with kids and their parents; to make the library a safe and welcoming place for everyone.  Sometimes I tended the vision of those who came before me and other times I could cultivate my own ideas. It was always hard to leave: the kids grow, and you will be the one who remembers them. The garden will change, but there is beauty in that, too.

Where are my gardeners? Are these flowers doomed because I would not ask for help? What do you like to grow? Any advice? I think we are going to add a few more plants, if these hang in there.

Thanks for reading!

Before you go… when I was talking to my therapist about this post, she suggested I should plant asparagus. If not now, then later. She said she learned about growing asparagus while reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. Asparagus has a two-year timeline; it doesn’t get harvested the first year to allow the plant to establish a strong root system. Time and patience are required. Definitely not a plant for the military mover. I might have to give it a try.