Mr. McGregor I am not

      When God handed out green thumbs, he either passed me by or forgot I was waiting, or maybe I was out trying to get a writing gene. Gardening is a mystery to me. Directions say, "Water until established," but apparently when I planted 40 lavender starts, I didn't understand what "until established" meant because they all dried up and died.

       Other directions say, "Plant in full sun," but "full sun" on a piece of land against an east-facing mountain apparently doesn't cover enough hours to fulfill the requirement. On the other hand, "Plant in shade or part shade" doesn't help, since before the "part shade" sets in, the intensity of southern Oregon's summer sun has fried whatever would otherwise have been happy enough in the part shade of the day. "Light shade" is also iffy, as the density of the tree cover makes all shade pretty heavy.

        Then there are deer to contend with. And drought. 

        When I complimented one gardener friend on her garden, she shrugged and said, "It just takes a lot of manure." But how much is "a lot" of manure? In bags or by the truckload? What about all those other kinds of soils gardening centers sell in bags? What works? How much? When to apply?

        Why do my eggplants at the front of the row grow bigger than those in the back row? The soil is the same. The water should be the same. The sun is the same. Who knows? Why is my new rose bush languishing? Too much water? Not enough water? Poor soil? Who knows?

        It's all a mystery the key to which is a green thumb, which I don't have.

        Not to give the wrong impression, however. My deck flowers look fabulous, and, as every summer, give me the greatest pleasure. 

        But I would also like a real garden, a place where flowers and vegetables grow luxuriantly, where one wanders or sits for the joy of being among such beauty and bounty. When I first built the house, nine years ago, I enclosed a spot for a real garden with a strong deer fence. The vegetables I planted were not eaten by the deer but grew sparsely. Weeds, however, proliferated, especially in the walkways. Watering with a sprinkler was inefficient and inaccurate.
        This spring Mike helped me put in a drip irrigation system. Then I covered the pathways with black plastic covered with bark to keep the weeds down. 

        I was on my way, but I still didn't have a beautiful garden. The bark moved around on the slick plastic, all a-jumble and awry. It looked atrocious. Besides, I was told soon enough that black plastic is bad for the soil, anyway. 

      I pulled up the plastic and threw away the bark and looked for a better solution. The answer, according to gardening friends, was to lay down landscape cloth and cover it with something better than bark. I decided decomposed granite (DG), inexpensive enough, would work. Last weekend Mike drove up with a pickup load of DG. He couldn't actually get the heavily loaded truck up the incline to the garden itself, so we hauled the DG in buckets the ten yards to the garden, our arms stretched like elastic For the second load, a week or so later, Mike did the hauling, one bucket at a time because he had a broken collar bone, while I pulled up weeds in the paths, cut the landscape cloth, and laid it in place. When Mike got ahead of me, he repaired the wooden chairs-with-a-table set that goes under the apple tree.

        It was a long day of hot, heavy, physical labor. Mike said he was willing to do it for the tomatoes.

 When we had finished, we sat on the newly repaired chairs in the shade of the apple tree and contemplated the results. I am very pleased. The garden is beginning to look like a garden, a place of beauty, a place where you would want to sit and sip your lemonade (or cocktail, as Mike suggested but didn't get). 

        I looked at my thumb. It is beginning to get a small greenish glow. I have a good watering system (even if I don't understand it). I have a good fence that keeps the deer out. I have beautiful paths between beds. Next I'm going to get a whole truckload of manure up here, even if I have to put it in buckets to get it to the garden. Soon, even if I don't solve the mysteries of gardening, the garden will mysteriously start blooming with color and fruits – tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, lettuces, herbs, and lots and lots of flowers.                

         I love my garden. It's beginning to love me back.