Tag Archives: Oklahoma Gardening

Off-Center Stage

06 Tuesday Oct 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Prayer, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors

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The days are slipping through my fingers just as leaves are slipping from the trees. 

The Magnolia in the back yard is making a terrible mess right now; its yellow nitrogen-deprived leaves are dropping like flies.  As I reach down to pick up the leaf litter scattered across the yard, I notice houseflies resting on the leaf’s shiny surface.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many houseflies, even at a summer picnic.  What do they know that we don’t?  Perhaps their presence is a harbinger of winter’s too early arrival.

My week is slipping away, with a piece of my day allotted here and there.  I am sad that I’ve no signficant blocks of time to devote to gardening and I’m in a mad rush to get my gardens put to bed and the duplex gardens next door completed before winter descends.  Like the piles of leaves and army of flies, I also sense that a winter freeze  is just around the corner.   And this makes me grieve the shortness of autumn.

Tomorrow I’ll attend my graduation ceremonies at the Oklahoma County Extension office, where I will officially be certified as a master gardener.  Like a true gardener, I joked with one of my fellow graduates that I’d rather be in the gardens than at the ceremony; yet, knowing the day is as much about our faithful trainers as it is about us who are graduating, I will go to eat, drink and be merry.  Then afterwards, I’ll rush back to the gardens for the afternoon.  If all goes well, all purchased plants will be installed; and with decent weather, the duplex gardens will be finished by week-end.

Another fly in the ointment to make my week so choppy is the spiritual writing I’ve been squeezing in to the open cracks of  my day.  After three months out of the saddle, I’ve picked up the loose threads of  this curriculum and Thursday night I’ll lead a small group of faithful women in the practice of centering prayer.  That I will be offering this lesson on centering prayer in a week where I am pulled in so many directions merely shows that God does have a great sense of humor.

But as I write, I sense a rightness and order in my world, even in winters that come too early and in graduations that mark a beginning of gardening knowledge rather than an ending and in teaching a lesson in centering prayer when I feel so off-center.

To God be the glory in all my days, especially when I slip off-center stage and reveal my broken humanity. 

A Garden Symphony

03 Saturday Oct 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Mesta Park

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I’m at loose ends after a three-movement symphony of gardening.  If it weren’t dark, I’d still be outside.  

My day began at the annual OSU fall plant sale.  Three days into their six-day sale, the OSU cupboards were almost bare.  But never fear — I came home with my share, with both pansies and snapdragons to plant.

Soon, very soon, I’ll be ready to plant the new beds at the duplex next door, what I’ve renamed Cinderella Two, since the duplex is no longer an ugly step-sister.  I like that Mr. Duplex Owner is interested in my progress.  He must be as tickled about his new garden as I am.  Thursday he asked the upstairs tenant whether I had planted yet.  She told him no, that I was STILL digging.   Today the downstairs tenant, finally realizing the full scope of my gardening intention, asked if I had expanded my horizons.  I assured him that I was only executing my original plan.  Perhaps he too is wondering WHEN the digging will stop.  Soon, very soon.  Maybe another day or two.  But if the downstairs tenant knew me better, he’d have known that I always dream big dreams. 

The second gardening movement sent Kara, Christi and I to the land of big garden dreams.  The season of home and garden tours is upon us and today the three of us enjoyed the Oklahoma Horticultural Society’s Garden Tour for Connoisseurs.  The gardens were inspiring, the weather gorgeous and the company grand, all of which explains why we only made it to three of the seven gardens.   But in our defense, the last garden we toured was spread across five acres.  That’s digging on a grand scale, folks, which puts my little project next door into its proper perspective.  

I came home from the tour to begin movement three, more digging at Cinderella Two.  As I kneeled in the garden to work, I keep company with God and other passersby.  Already I’m receiving nice feedback from my work.  From both quarters.  It’s funny that freshly dug dirt in a defined shape can be perceived so positively.  What comments will come later?  If my well-wishers think a bare bones garden is nice, wait until the plants arrive.  Then wait until next summer when the plants are in their full glory, and then wait another summer and another as they continue to grow to fill their space.

The downstair’s tenant told me today that he couldn’t WAIT to see the garden finished.  I just smiled and said — it’s gonna be gorgeous.  But his remark sent me to wonder:  what does a finished garden look like?  One garden on the tour today has been forty-seven years in the making.  That gardener could tell the downstairs tenant that a garden is never finished. 

Gardeners wait on their gardens just like a waitress waits on a table of customers.  Gardeners bring their gardens food and drink and keep it company and make sure everything is to its liking.  Then they wait.  They wait to see what will come from all their work of waiting.  They wait to see what tips and gifts the garden will leave behind.  And they wait to see what the garden will become.  And then the garden symphony begins all over again.  Wait, wait wait; wait ON it, wait FOR it to unfold, wait ON it….     

Today at the OSU plant sale, my granddaughter Karson asked for her own 4″ pot of pansies.  And her Aunt Kara bought them for her.  Wish I didn’t have to wait to see what this little plant will teach this little gardener of ours.       

Saturday in the Park

26 Saturday Sep 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home, Mesta Park

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Mesta Park is all ready for guests to descend for a Saturday in the park, even if my Mesta Festa Chili never made it off the page onto the stove.  

It was just too lovely yesterday to spend the day cooking in front of a stove.  There’ll be many other cold and wet days ahead for that.  And what gardener can resist being outside on such a perfect gardening day as yesterday?   Instead of cooking, I opted to play in the dirt and the new garden beds next door are beginning to take shape.  And then I went to Lowes for the umpteenth time this week — a girl and her neighbors can never had too many perennials at half-price — and then I enjoyed a nice visit with the neighbors.  And after all of these pleasures, I went to bed.  And I went to sleep  as soon as my head hit pillow, full of that good tired soreness.  

My neighbor who lives right next door to Cinderella —  the one who invited me to come up with a list of garden plants for his new front garden landscape —  came over while I was working.  He was checking in for plant recommendations; and with only a small amount of embarassament, I showed him my choices with actual plant specimens.  Yep.  I confess that I bought plants for this nice man too without even being commissioned to do so.  Balloon flowers and Homestead Verbena and Black Blue Salvia and Russian Sage — all blues and purples and it’s going to be lovely in front of his orange shaded brick home.  And thankfully, my neighbor was as pleased as punch with my plant selections.  And had he not been, I would have planted these purplish blue flowers either at Cinderella or given them to Sis.  I can always count on Christi  — who I’ve baptised St. Francis of Rock Creek — to adopt any stray, whether it be plant or animal. 

Today promises to be just as lovely as yesterday.  And again, I’m taking a day off from the kitchen stove.  Lunch will be at Mesta Festa where I’m hoping to grab one or two Big Truck Tacos.  And then tonight we’ll head to Norman for this month’s installment of our family’s moveable feast.  It’s Amy’s turn to host and she is sacrificing her Saturday to the kitchen stove out of love for Bryan’s family — and my husband and I, as I suspect all the rest of our tribe (as all have sent in their positive RSVPs), are looking forward to tonight’s feast and games.   It’s the best of both worlds — home cooking in someone else’s home  — with a slice of Amy’s home-made carrot cake to tip the scales in Amy’s favor.    

From Festa to feast, and all the errands in between, today is shaping up to be full of good things.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.