Watering the garden
Here’s to the Good Life!
The home we first inhabited six years ago has a number of areas for planting, too many for my taste, it turns out. There is one on every side of the four-sided house with their own microclimates, a large “lawn area” to which we transplanted crab grass after enough years of mowing weeds down, a row of mulberry trees along one side of it and another bed just south of it, and a row of roses along a smaller lawn nearby. Plus, a front “lawn” that spans two sides of the house on this corner lot.
It’s a lot.
We are not a wealthy people, so full-scale landscaping and maintenance are out of the question.
When we first moved in, the wild geranium and nettle stood two to three feet tall. Not a speck of grass grew except those wild clumps of weedy grasses that seek to take back this land for their own. Under the surface, I found netting from the sod that once made it beautiful.
Over the years, I tried a cut flower garden, sowing a pumpkin patch where there might have been a lawn, installing native plants, planting and replanting rose bushes. Many a dahlia has died. None have lived to tell the tale. There are gophers and ants and cats and children to challenge the gardens, but the greatest battle of all is the water.
It takes three years for a drought-tolerant plant to fulfill its promise of surviving on winter rainwater alone.
Sadly, for this reason, a goodly number of lavender plants went the way of the dahlias. Four have survived: massive mounds that grow in the direction of the light, oddly happy in their crowded state, nestled against 5-foot-tall Russian sage or squeezed between rosemary plants purchased from Trader Joe’s and Spanish lavender received free from a faraway FFA teacher who happens to attend our church.
There is an elaborate system of sprinklers plumbed underground, matching the maze of gopher tunnels. We cannot seem to make them work.
We tried this and that, avoiding overhead sprays, installing drip lines among the cut flowers. I sought to limit water usage and go green by avoiding the suburban lawn. But we have succumbed. The simplest solution will be the best, my thinking goes…this year.
It may be a new year.
This year, we managed to reduce the hand-held hose watering from five areas to two shaded spots that can handle a little neglect.
And I see that one thing persists among all the change, effort, trial and error. It is hard to put a name on it, but the act of taking the hose, turning on the water, standing there, flooding an array of overgrown plants and possible spider nests, that, although it is an inefficient use of time, has something beautiful to it, something still, something good. I see each plant individually, check their needs, pull this and that weed, note the areas that need pruning in order to thrive or create better balance.
The garden needs it.
And I need it.
Obedience to nature lifts me out of the to-do lists of my mind and the flutter of mental activity that goes with stepping into the online world to work or play remotely. As much as I want to attend every event for every news story, alas, there are not so many events, at least that I know of, to keep the pages filled with in-person stories. The online remote work matters to me as I source stories from other outlets and organizations and conduct email interviews, so both the interviewee and the interviewer can work remotely. It is rewarding, busy and challenging.
But the joy is in the in-person event.
The joy is in stepping outdoors, getting away from the office, and stepping into a new space, to turn on my attention, my recorder, my camera, stop and observe, listen, look, and get a sense of how this space is doing, what activity there is, and what story the space has to tell.
And while efficiency is a powerful incentive, it moves so fast and effectively that the individual person’s story or status might be missed.
As an editor trying to fill the pages each week, I am grateful for the efficiency, the email interviews, the people who take the time to write out those answers and send in photos, who share with me their poetry or interesting photographs, and who clue me in to what’s coming next via their email, Facebook messages and texts.
But as a reporter, the joy of my heart is to come to the event, to meet the people, to learn the backstory and hope for the future, to see you, to hear you, and to go back and put the story into words.
The lack of efficiency might mean more mistakes, but it will mean more memories and better relationships.
So, here’s the power of the positive press and of telling stories the old-fashioned way.
Do you have an event, a business, or a story you’d like to see covered in our pages? Email me at newsdesk@midvalleypub.com.
Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on July 14, 2024. The Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch is part of MidValley Publications and is committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.
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