Eden grows stale by midsummer

Every year around this time it happens. I end up in a state of torpor about my garden. I no longer really care. It's there, right outside the back or front door, and it looks pretty good to the casual observer. In fact, a visiting friend once said that my garden was "like and oasis in the heart of suburbia." The compliment felt good, because that was exactly the desired effect: a haven, a place away from both the humdrum and tiresome and stressful.

Yet, I look around me and I realize that there are roses that need 'deadheading', there are weeds that haven't been extricated, there is peatmoss that hasn't been spread, even though I intended to do that a couple of months ago.

If you don't scrutinize too closely, it still looks decent. Each year there is a new project I undertake. Two years ago it was the nice side garden and patio you see here, before that it was a rose arbor/grape arbor combo, a number of years ago it was a pond and plantings. They are all still there and look quite pleasing. And now I've lost my enthusiasm.

Don't get me wrong about this. I love my garden, The place looks damn good, if I do say so myself. It's one of three gardens I've caressed and cultured over the course of three different adult life homes with three different wives -- hmm. OK, even that works. As I went from home to home (or relationship to relationship) I wanted to establish a new imprint in each case. Say -- garden as metaphor! No, I don't think I want to go there.

Every year it is the same thing. Throughout the damp and dreary months of winter I long for the coming of spring. By January I start to thumb through gardening tomes and begin reading newspaper articles on plants. I go to the garage and look at the poor plumeria that is being wintered over (my little reminder of Hawaii in this temperate zone) and look towards the day I can actually put it out on the patio. I ponder shrubs and trees I want to put in by the time filthy February has run its course. I go outdoors and check on the progress of the forsythia, crocuses and daffodils, and I wonder if the outdoor koi and goldfish have made it through the winter unscathed. They always have survived so far.

By the time full-fledged spring manifests itself I hit the nurseries. We have a goodly number around here, and I check out them all. I love nurseries. I love the stuff contained in nurseries. I always arrive with a particular purchase in mind, and leave with much more than I had vowed I would buy. It's in the nature of the intrigue; a little gesture towards playing God. Not a very omnipotent God -- moderately potent, when last I checked, but that is another matter, too -- but one who might want to create a mini-Eden in my corner of the world.

I always liked gardening. When I was in university and feeling stressed from exams, poverty, and all the other stuff, I would sometimes travel across town to my mother's garden, and just go and pull some weeds, or set some borders to shape. It was very therapeutic. Even then I looked forward to having a garden of my own someday. Ultimately I did, and I have always cherished the fact.

But, as the season moves on, I sense an encroaching disinterest. I just no longer want to do anything in the garden. By now the lawn grass is getting an amber tinge, despite the underground sprinklers. The hollyhocks are in full bloom, but the hydrangeas are damn near finito. The petunias are getting leggy, and the grapes and tomatoes are plumping up. Enough for this year, something inside me says. I don't want the season to pass, but I know that when the asters are getting buds, it will pass.

And then when it does, I'll feel a bit contrite. I'll feel I should have devoted more time, energy and interest past the middle of July. But, it never seems to happen.

Guess I will have to wait until February to get back on track. Then, just wait and see what I'll do next year. Maybe the plumeria will even finally bloom. I mean, I follow all the rules for overwintering, but never is there so much of a blossom. My chances of getting into a northern climes lei business will have to wait until 2007.