ALL OVER THE MAP

This is a photo of a possible future cosmo, in a discontinued shade of brazen scarlet. It’s growing in my front yard under the rebar tepee. For weeks now, I’ve complained that seeds are a micro-managing mishegass, that I wish I could just blow money on bedding plants, that the whole thing seems dicey and unworkable. Well, now look what happened.

It rained. Spring sprang, some. Now there are sprouts just about everywhere I remember flinging seed, and some places I had forgotten.

Neat, huh? Yeah, I suppose. I really like cosmos and nasturtiums and lettuce—especially its name, merveille de quatre saisons—but this endless need for trust, which is probably supposed to renew my faith in nature, makes me feel old and cranky instead.

During my early twenties I once stated in print that the only way to get good at gardening was to get old. “There are no child prodigy gardeners,” I wrote. Almost immediately, I heard from a 16-year-old boy who actually was one, but I held to my theory. At my age, gardening was a screwball comedy, and everything that went wrong at least did so in a charming or instructive manner. Apple tree saplings that never progressed beyond sticks were okay because, I mean, a good stick is hard to find, right? It explained the Minnesota Midget melon that produced one cardboard-tasting fruit, but who cared—what a nice anecdote it made, after all.

Well, you can keep your cocktail party chat, because these days I hope, somewhat grimly, to feed my family on the fruit I plant. Furthermore, as my 50^th birthday approaches, the garden actually causes me stress, anxiety, and even a sense of impending doom. Something is suspicious about big items–my soil, my drinking (and watering) water. All, not some, of the leaves of the emerging plants at my place, are a weird yellow. The new plants may have just experienced a little shock. But it’s also possible that our ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD IS FULL OF TOXINS. And groundwater? Don’t get me started!

As to the seeds: I’m relieved they sprouted, but also nervous. Since when do squirrels dig giant holes next to tiny seedlings and for what dire purpose? What if the sunflowers choke out the alyssum? What insect chews perfect half-moons while my back is turned? Can these seedlings be saved?

My old vision of the calm and capable old gardener-savant is nothing but a pile of hooey. The fact that you question more as you age is the problem, not the solution.