Lessons in resilience

Chive flowers open

This was going to be a post about pretty flowers. Just pretty flowers. No drama. Of any kind. Marital, building or natural.

100% pure prettiness.

I wasn't even counting on taking any pictures today. Just post everything upon which my eyes have feasted that hasn't received due attention, but the rhododendron by the gazebo caught my eye; it was blooming. I had seen that the first buds had started to open under an enormous and enormously prolific (this year) 'Pierre de Ronsard' rose against the south-facing wall. So, instead of continue directly down the center stair direct to the wood pile, I took a jag to the left and went to see.

There are no pictures of this. I respect your right to imagine beauty, and I haven't touched this part of the garden in months. It shows.

Making my way past clematis, in which I nearly got my feet all caught up, and a 'Ghislaine de Féligonde' climber that have gone crazy this year (What's this about? Established at last after one full season in place since I planted them May 5 two years ago? Favorable weather? A little of both?), I took the secret stairs down to the lower garden, picked my way through the fresh piles of dog pooh in the weed-ridden and strangled grass, peeked in a skimmer and noted a bloated, small mole that will need to be removed and then went to take in the devastation the presence of direct sunshine and the absence of an automatic sprinkler system wreaked on the hydrangeas. I had already gone to see them a few weeks back.

It was bad. I didn't even know why I was going to look at them, except to remind myself of what neglect will do.

And then... in the very worst of cases, even the ones in the nursery pots my husband had nagged me to plant, and which I had spurned, there were leaves! Down at the base of the plants, brave new leaves had appeared. Life had done it again, gone and given proof of its resilience, its desire to continue.

Instead of pretty, we get to think about Beauty, the Beauty of Nature and Life. I get a second chance.

I went and got my camera.

"Divine!!" I said to my husband, seated at the end of the table in front of his laptop, trying to stay alert after a night on duty, Guess!! He looked up.

"Les hydrangeas qui sont mortes? En bas du jardin, près de la piscine? Elles ne sont pas toutes mortes!"

He raised his eyes from the keyboard to look at me over the tops of his magnifying glasses, the ones he uses to read and see the screen, the ones that when he doesn't use them let him think that I am pretty.

"Il y a des feuilles qui poussent des bases des plantes. Je vais pouvoir en récupérer pas mal, mais pas toutes." I stopped my announcement to draw breath before continuing, reluctantly, "Il y en a qui sont allées trop loin," I admitted, making it sound for all the world like I wasn't really at fault.

I went on to explain that I might remove those that hadn't been done in once and for all and plant them in safer, more protected areas, since the sun has proven itself too much down there. I tried very hard to sound very wise and recalcitrant, like this could happen to anyone. Any gardener, when it absolutely could not, would not.

"Ils allaient très bien dans la cour," he remarked.

It was true. The hydrangeas had done surprisingly well in the entry "courette", despite the abysmal soil for these acid soil-loving plants. I could try put one or more back up near there, enriching their soil, and distribute the others in the shadier areas of the garden, along the sides.



I have my work cut out for me. I have to get out of the house and away from my computer and get to work on the areas of the garden that I shove from my mind, which I can do because I don't have to look at them from where I sit, or bust up a slab, or install oak flooring, or sit, catatonic, and contemplate how small I -- and our means -- am before everything I have to do.
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Another one bites the dust... No! Not a finger...

A stump.

(You can see the red wedge stuck in the previous one.)

The three in this picture were the three biggest and toughest, so far. There are three left, not two as I would have led you to believe had you been paying attention to what I wrote before. I lost track of one. One will stay in that far corner. I'll just devitalize it, since it is behind the pool shed, which looks even more lovely now that it is exposed. Maybe I'll paint it black with tar. It actually looks nice, tar. Sort of modern, mat, goes-with-everything basic black.

The other two are at the other end, and I have to get rid of a lot of dirt and haul it in bags to the dump before I can even get close to removing them. I worked from the first stump in one direction, knowing it would bury in the first two at the other end.

The dirt has to go anyway because it is not good quality, nor is it compatible with the shrubs going in. Hydrangeas, like azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons, require an acidic soil. I bring (as you know) bags of it in. There is already a red azalea (see the entry Balenciaga party dresses) and a light pink rhododendron alongside the pool. I'd love to put in the white Azalea mollis I saw a few weeks ago at Florosny.

I'll have to complement the few hydrangeas I have with a few more to fill in that space along the wall. I have one climbing hydrangea, and I will have to get a few more of those, and perhaps some ivy to grow -- in a controlled manner -- along with it. Perhaps some Escallonia 'Iveyi', too. Good for screening, it can be clipped quite close to a wall, like ivy, and it blooms in the summer.

And perhaps a Robinia pseudoacacia 'Frisia' -- Golden Locust -- alongside the pool shed. You can keep them pruned small.

But, that might be overkill with the fir tree.

We'll see.

Got to feed the boy before he goes off to his preparation for the French bac oral exam tomorrow morning.

By the way, the rain went away. It isn't a glorious day at all moments, but it is mercifully cooler than it has been, the sun comes out and cheers one, and, so, maybe we will be spared our usual July monsoon.
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