Heaven Forfend in Everyday Ramblings

The garden plot on Monday. The big excitement there with the tomatoes and the basil, the volunteer zucchini, and the marigolds, is that the Zinnia has a bud! I grew them from seed, and they have been like an insect snack bar and so I am thrilled to see the possibility of a flower there. The community garden goes dormant on Halloween, and we need to take out or till under everything in our plots by then so having a late blooming flower is a gift.

The chard and beets have bolted, and I am going to pull them out in the next couple of weeks and put in green manure. Same with the nasturtiums. They threw off a lot of seed that I am still collecting. The tomatoes are starting to slow down their production and with a few judicious gift bags to Most Honorable and Mrs. Sherlock, I haven’t been overwhelmed.

I haven’t done as well with the seedlings. I still have leggy columbines and a few tomato plants I hope to winter over but I have a lot to learn about starts at home.

Also, important learning moment, um, read the labels before you buy starts at a nursery. I got Atlas carrots, having no idea that they are stubby little round things, and the beet roots are long and skinny and not cook-able, though the greens were gorgeous once I netted them. My other carrots, the ones I grew from seeds are adorable little things producing plenty of greens for the wild bunnies that have either been picked off or moved on.

I learned a lot about placement. Next year I hope not to need to contort so much to get into to harvest and weed. Not that weeding was much of an effort in such a small plot.

I was listened to Monty the other day, his audio book, the new one called “My Garden World” and he was talking about some vicious behavior of some local wildlife and then he said, in case one found it disturbing, “Heaven forefend you have a cat”.

Diego is curled up in a ball with his nose under his paw leaning up against my hip.

I have so been enjoying listening to the book; I am almost done. I will listen to it again as there is a ton of fascinating detail in it, particularly about birds, which they don’t talk about much on the show. And I watched last Friday’s Gardeners’ World on which he had a visit in his own garden from the Duchess of Cambridge.

It was fascinating to watch as an American. The deference. They talked about their courgettes. It makes them sound so much grander than zucchini.

Why do we love flowers so much? I heard somebody ask then on a podcast about six months ago, a science thing. But Mr. Sherlock asked me how I could possibly have so many photos of flowers and wanted to know why I took them.

I told him that I did it because they are beautiful, and they are, and I meant that, but it is so much more. The variety, the color, the way people grow them together and apart, how they mark the seasons and the passage of time. The way people express themselves with them.

But mostly, for me, it is the color. I love color as much as when I was younger, I was intoxicated with romantic love until I became disenchanted. I do not think I will ever become disenchanted with flowers.

They had this woman on a show recently with a garden full of only white flowers. She was slightly creepy to me, (she looked a bit like a vampire) but I am sure is a lovely person who gets great enjoyment out of her garden and mental health as a side benefit.

If I lived somewhere else, I probably would not take so many pictures of flowers, so it is also a way to celebrate place. The variety of gardens available to be seen wandering around is a key feature of our battered city, both by Covid and political division.

I saw a projection yesterday that we might see the cases peak in about 10 days. That would be a very good thing indeed because this is crazy making.

And if our President says, “Let me be clear…” one more time I think I am going to lose my mind. Many things are horribly clear, the suffering in Afghanistan, is but one.

Maybe that is why I take pictures of flowers. They provide solace and wonder in a time that is so difficult it has achieved Biblical status. Heaven, indeed.