"This month's #creativegarden challenge asks us to reflect on why we love the Hive Garden community," @riverflows tells us in Hive Gardeners are My People. I especially love this:
Hive Gardeners are Gentle Souls
I don't know any gardener here who's an asshole. They're consistantly [consistently] kind, considerate and caring.
Cue the diabolical laughter.
Oh, I am a kind and gentle soul, and a gardener too.
A reckless gardener.
With so many disasters, I cannot confine them to a Top Ten,
much less "My worst gardening disaster" - that's like asking me my favorite color, or book, or song, or food. I have so many favorites.
There! I injected a note of POSITIVITY into my a^^hole rant. I love so many things, and so many people, I cannot isolate just one favorite!
Photo by me: The Man (aka my wonderful husband) supervises my Burning of the Garlic Mustard, as I’ve been known to have “incidents” involving scorched redbud branches and…. (not gonna confess to the rest!).
I do confess I am not so kind or gentle,
after so many years of being clobbered by my multitudinous mistakes.
I squeeze Japanese beetles and grimly (with great satisfaction) watch their guts ooze out like toothpaste from a tube.
If I were stronger and less of a klutz and more competent, I would be a raging a^^hole on this acreage. All the volunteer trees I'd grind down! All the poison ivy I'd mow and dredge with big metal implements!
My wonderful husband bought me a little chainsaw with lots of safety features, but I get the blade pinched in the middle of a branch, and worse, I get rotator cuff injuries (very painful with no range-of-motion left in the shoulder), so (what a waste!) I just keep using the little hand saw instead.
This morning, a friend voiced her concern for a young man whose occupation is tree trimming (and felling, and stump grinding). One of the most dangerous occupations. Why you worry, honey? He's a man!
I tried to channel @owasco and compose an ode for these men who are not cut out for "safe" lines of work:
Men
Machines
Power Tools
Noisy motors
Flammable gas -powered engines
Construction equipment
Massive earth-movers
Diggers
Drills
Jack Hammers
Hard-hats
Lumberjacks
Grinding, cutting, pulverizing
MEN
Men who thrive on these things are not going to thrive in "safe" occupations.
My neighbor's husband is a military veteran. He shoots rabbits, badgers, woodchucks, anything that threatens his work in the garden. His wife got him to build elaborate wood-framed cages with chicken wire and clever Open-and-Shut lids to guard the green beans.
Now his hand-hewn, manly frames and cages are rotting in the meadow in the woods behind the treeline... because why? The worst villains just burrow under all fences!
Somebunny chews the stalks and leaves almost-ripe pea pods on the ground unopened and uneaten in my own wee little garden, and I am not pleased.
"Gardeners here (at Hive) are not a^^holes" ...
Well, I did quit using Roundup (years ago!) --
Then, my Slash and Burn had to go (because, pollinators) --
But I will burn again (one small section at a time, one season at a time), because, BAD BUGS (don't even mention the spittle bug!) and weed seeds and debris that provides habitat for the most maddening villains in my world.
My gorgeous driveway, the length of a football field, lined on both sides with pollinator plants, is now (thanks to the No Burn, No Mow) so infested with chiggers and ticks, I cannot dig dig dig and pull pull pull as I once did. And I have but to walk past, and I'm chiggered. Nope. Not gonna say more. Not in this post. I'll show you a pretty picture instead. A derecho has taken down the pines we planted (they'd soared to 30 feet tall in 20 years). Pasture grass choked out my lilies. To be fair, blackberry lily and Queen Ann's lace are not native here anyway. But neither is the d^^^ed pasture grass!
All those native prairie plants.
Consumed. By reed canary, brome, poison ivy (oh yes, that too)! and other things I do not feel like thinking about right now. I am bore myself with the tedium of all my mistakes. Not gonna bore you, too, dear reader.
(Is anyone really reading this?)
If you are, God bless you!
If you want more, here's a few old posts:
Agony in the Garden, by the Decade, Part One
My Agony in the Garden, By the Decade, Part 2
My Agony in the Garden, by the decade, Part 3 - Glory, Glorious, Gloria in excelsis!
I meant well.
I was very nice, at one time.
Let's just say I was kind and compassionate in all the wrong ways.
Mom dug up that ditch lily, the lovely orange "tiger lily," and I rescued it.
Oh, it looked lovely! At first.
(Oh my beautiful driveway, once upon at time)
My mom, in her infinite wisdom, dug stuff up and discarded it.
All the pretty flowers she killed!
For a reason.
I thought my mom was being an a^^hole gardener, killing the beloved lily of the vally, the phlox known as Dame's Rocket, periwinkle (vinca minor).
I, like a kind, compassionate idiot, planted these things in my own soil 90 miles away.
Now I am the a^^hole, chopping and killing, complaining and shaking my puny first of rage at God, Nature, Groundhogs, Rabbits, and rain clouds that don't send a drop our way. Unless it's that teasing 1/16 of an inch. Torment me some more. Go on. Drive me to a homicidal rage!
But wait.
My husband, raised on a Nebraska farm, has held an office job since 1985. He earns enough money for us to BUY VEGETABLES at the grocery store.
News flash: WE CAN STILL BUY FOOD AT THE STORE
So.
No need to plant my own broccoli, lettuce, radishes, peas.
We did that, this year, and got precious little for all our efforts.
For sure, the produce aisle of the grocery store is not the best source of food. Wilted, limp, flavorless, nutrient-deprived carrots, spring greens, celery, all that. Moldy potatoes! Mold in their strawberries! Soggy grapes. Bugs in the broccoli. Maggots (I have proof) in the bags of pistachios...
Am I done yet?
I didn't even get started on what an A^^HOLE gardener I am!
But I will leave you in peace.
And head into the morning sun, in prayer and gratitude,
Wands of Horus in hand,
Barefoot,
Trusting/hoping/trying to believe
in a benevolent
Creator/Mother Nature/God the Father Almighty/Great Spirit
working to make all things come together for the greater good.
Those pink roses in the morning sun? #Native!
Birds planted them in my prized pollinator garden lining the long driveway.
I had been digging the roses out.
Then, last summer, in tribute to my recently departed sisters, I just let them go. Because, #futility. What's one more disaster? Bring it on!
Kelly, did you have a hand in this? On your deathbed in April 2022, during our last phone call, our last conversation on this earth, you told me you'd find a way to visit me in my garden. You'd kill the non-native mantis for me. I said (or thought) No, make it something more life-affirming.
Now I have a 20-feet by 10-foot rose hedge - native roses, the kind rosehips and tinctures are made from, and the bees, oh Lord, the many many bees they fed in June! Now the blooms are gone, but I'm keeping my wall of roses, and letting it take over.
These roses are choking out the pasture grass!
My Beautiful Disaster!
Did you bring it about, Kelly, you who had mocked my thousands of hours in the woods pulling garlic mustard as a "waste of time" (in April 2016) ...?
@riverflows
Forgive me, @riverflows I'm still laughing at this and therefore will shut up again after posting my A^^hole Gardening Rant.
Classic Carol Kean! Cleverly framing one of the two prompts with the other. Nice!
Your entire garden is spectacularly beautiful. Your dogs are lookers, and your son - I can hear the music from here.
Very funny poem! Probably would be cancelled by cancel culture, but funny to those of us who won't budge on that crap.
We gardeners toil, ruthlessly, for the greater good all the time.
gardeners toil -
killing night and day -
for the greater good
I've been talking haiku with @dbooster and @boxcarblue so these things keep popping out
If you want Kelly to be in your rose hedge, then Kelly is in your rose hedge. Niko is in murders of crows, or lone hawks flying low overhead.
This is a very positive post, despite all the mayhem!
Awwww, thank you for reading, and for your kind comments.
You see this as a positive post....! Bless you!!
Lone hawks,
murders of crows.
Why not, Niko?
Why not Niko visiting you via the feathered friends?
You commented two years ago:
My mom, the Bible-believing Fundamentalist, doesn't see "signs" from lost loved ones.
Honestly, I wonder if she really believes, deep down, At ALL, what she tried to instill in us - hope of heaven, faith in God and justice, and a reward for all our suffering, in some next life.
But I see flocks of goldfinches (yellow = Kelly, just as purple = Julie), and I feel a flicker of hope.
Or a goldfinch of hope.
Hope of what...?
That death is not the end?
That our loved ones do live on, not just as some newly recycled part of the Greater Good, but with some sentience and self and identity and remainders (had to get a math term in) of who and what they were in this life?
Sorry. Clearly, even after all this time, I'm not done mourning, and not ready to write again.
THANK YOU for reading and commenting, my dear friend!
Why should you ever be done mourning? Does that mean to never feel sadness or grief again? Your mother's not seeing signs probably helps her to never feel grief. When I see those signs, I am bereft all over again. Today, the anniversary, he came and I spoke to him when I sliced a lovely, locally grown no-nitrates cured ham. Finding ham that Niko liked, and that I thought worthy of consumption, proved impossible. It was nice when he stopped eating pork so I didn't have to keep buying all those hams to try. He wouldn't have liked today's either, but I do.
You hunted for a comment by me from two years ago? You must have some search tool I don't know about.
No search tool.
Just went to my own Hive posts, searched for the Butterflies and Feathers, then found the comment.
My brain ought to be a file cabinet full of folders, easy to access, with memorable quotes.
Nope. Chaos reigns.
But I kinda/sorta remembered your response to my post on signs.
And I love your insight - for my mom, the signs might be MORE PAIN than consolation!
I had not thought of that!
She keeps these things away with a ten-foot pole in one hand, the other hand gripping her Bible...
So it seems...
You have found nitrate-free ham? Here, it's cost prohibitive. I'd raise my own pigs, but I could never kill my own. I like pigs too much. I'd rather not eat bacon or ham at all than kill a pig.
but oh they taste so good
Omg this is hilarious. What an a-hole! I mean, squishing bugs with your thumbs - unbelievable! I take it back! Your rebuttal was absolutely brilliant. I kinda meant a-holes to other people as well - the fact you STILL love a garden means you're a good soul in my book.
Loved your man poem - especially that last line!
I think we probably walk a fine line between being an a-hole in the garden and being compassionate too. Good on you for ditching the round up.
And thanks for making me laugh.
Aww, thank you for taking it all in stride, this brash and reckless rant I offered up (after the deadline, exceeding the word count) in response to your challenge. I do mean well. Really, I do! But:
"No good deed goes unpunished"
and I find myself resorting to awful antics in response to the challenges of life.
Like, the cantaloupe seeds in my compost sprouted.
I have this great big vine with one golf-ball sized cantaloupe growing.
Dare I celebrate?
Of course not.
Leaves turn yellow, little shiny brown insect eggs lurk on the backsides of the leaves...
Eh.
Let the bugs have my melons. If they don't, the possums will.
Fences, chemicals, what deters the pillaging invaders, anyway?
I've yet to see a squirrel-proof bird feeder.
I now deposit a spoonful of sunflower seeds outside the ground-squirrel burrow each day.
Because if I don't, he stands on the deck, looking in at me, scolding me.
How can I resist....?
The impudence!
The unbearable cuteness
Sorry, there we have another rant, rather than a simple #THANKYOU for reading and being so nice!
I love your way with words. Your posts are always interesting/funny to read. I am a plant saver, if I have too many flowers or other plants in one spot, I have to find somewhere to transplant them.
My husband pulls whole plants from the garden, this makes me cry. I have to save its life and replant it somewhere even knowing it might not make it after he unmercifully yanked it out of the soil. I tell him that plants have feelings, he huffs at me. Sometimes I wish I could yank him from his home.
!ALIVE
@carolkean! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @myjob. (1/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want, plus you can win Hive Power and Alive Power delegations and Ecency Points in our chat every day.
Ohhhh I love you @myjob! A plant saver, rescuer, transplanter - a husband who pulls up plants and you take pity on them -
You know, there is a big school of thought on plants having feelings. My niece took an herbology course in Minnesota, founded by the author of a big fat book on herbalism (or founded by Matt Wood, who wrote the foreword to the book):
“The work of the herbalist is to understand the intricate patterns of Nature and how they are woven into the architecture of people and plants, to see them as mirror images of the Earth and cosmos, parts that contain the whole.”
― Sajah Popham, Evolutionary Herbalism: Science, Spirituality, and Medicine from the Heart of Nature
He works in tarot and astrology, and other traditions, so it may be a little suspect.
Or maybe the alignment of the stars, the pull of the moon, all that stuff does matter...?
@owasco, did I already send you links to the book?
I find it funny that someone with the last name Wood writes about plants.
Am I crazy? I feel so sad when I pull weeds, No, I do not replant them but wonder if they can feel it when being pulled. I feel as if everything is here for a reason and just because we do not understand what it is does not mean it is useless.
Am I getting too old and overthinking things?
I can not recall the documentary but I saw it on trees in a faraway land, some sort of animal will start eating the leaves and when they do this to one tree the others start producing a bad-tasting stuff in their leaves that the animals do not like to eat. I know this does not give details but I hope you can get what I am saying. The trees knew when one was being devoured and said, OH NO, you will not eat me. (those were my words).
YES, your world view (tree view) makes sense!
We impose order onto "chaos" (weeds) - or we impose disorder - depending on who's looking.
I love love love the studies on how trees communicate and conspire to help each other.
Matt Wood (don't get me started on funny names; Dear Abby listed a lot of unlikely names matching occupations, such as Mr. Coffin, the undertaker).
Considering how many non-native "weeds" have choked out my native pollinator plants, I feel no pain on pulling the weeds, aside from the usual pains of arthritis (and chigger bites, and poison ivy lurking unseen).
Long live the trees! (Just saw a documentary on the old sequoias being decimated for lumber)....
Oh honey if you sent me that link, I will never be able to find it again! It sounds great and I will order it.
Of course plants have feelings. I read a book The Secret Life of Plants when I was twenty, and have had no doubt about it ever since. It's pretty obvious if you just listen to them. Of course, we have to use senses other than our ears to hear their messages, because they appear in our brains as thoughts of our own. Plants have some highly sophisticated communication technology humans have been told does not even exist.
The Secret Life of Plants - how have I not read this yet? by Peter Tompkins, Christopher Bird, 1973
Only recently, I started reading about trees and their extensive underground communication systems (and healing each other). Makes that talking tree in Disney's Pocahontas seem less like fantasy.
I suspect true stuff shows up in fantasy, sci-fi movies, just so that we will think they could never really be true. When so much of it is! Matrix anyone?
Great insight!
The truth is best hidden in the guise of fiction...
Or, as you suggest, if you hide the truth in a fictional story, people will think, "Oh, it's just another fiction," when in fact... yeah.
Blue pill, or red?
Knowledge, or happiness?
You're a funny gal who has a way with words. Although most of us bloggers don't like to admit it, we tend to skim and scan most posts that catch our eye. But, every so often we start to read an article and we are captured by its creativity and the picture the author paints with their words.
Needless to say, I really enjoyed reading your post and laughed out loud through much of the article. So much of what you included has been experienced by most gardeners, but we garden on.
I love your ode for men who are not cut out for "safe" lines of work: I'm not sure
how most Men would get anything done without a healthy daily dose of everything listed in your ode.
Japanese Beatles are a real nightmare for all gardeners. Killing them with your bare hands is also how I go about it when I don't have my bowl of water with some liquid dish detergent in it, at hand. I find that these pests are very docile early in the morning and just fall off of whatever plant they are perched on. I just hold the bowl under the plant and give it a little shake and gleefully watch them fall to their death into the solution. During the day they tend to fly off, making their demise a little less likely.
Wonderful post.
THANK YOU, thank you so much, for reading and commenting - you are a treasure!
And you are right about those beetles, sluggish in the morning, busily flying out of our grasp in the afternoon.
In the Quiet of the Morning,
the dewy stillness of dawn,
it's time for KILLING FIELDS.
This is priceless: I just hold the bowl under the plant and give it a little shake and gleefully watch them fall to their death into the solution.
Gotta love the a^^hole gardeners!
And your reminder: We garden on!
That post was a treasure.
A few years ago they were all over. I bought a kid's swimming pool, the plastic type, put a gallon or so of water in it with some Dawn dish soap, placed it in strategic spots, swiped the plants, and had at least 10 at a dime meet their demise. Thank goodness we haven't had a year like that since.
We gardeners know how to take the blows!
Congrats, your post has been selected as an author of the week for Leo Threads. Head over to Leofinance to vote for your fave this week! Link below.
Click Here to Visit Leo Threads!
Why, THANK YOU!!
I wasn't expecting that...!!!!
I can't head over to Leofinance to vote for a fave (techno difficulties limit me to Hive)
But
Here's one already! And oh, man, I must stop rewarding my evil little ground squirrel....
https://hive.blog/hive-140635/@scribblingramma/rodent-war-update
My goodness! Tiger lilies AND collies!?! Loved seeing all your plants!
Collies - yes! our second pair!
you for reading and commenting.
(You saw only a fraction of all the plants....)
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