One of my gardening books has a section heading “Control Freaks, Rejoice”. It follows, “Ultimately troubleshooting using smart gardening practices is all about exerting your control on the garden… If that sounds dunting, remember that although the world is out of your control, there is always the garden.”
While I’ve never had trouble exerting my control freak nature in other situations, exerting control over plants, over nature, has always been difficult.
Well, in the past two days, I have finally bucked up, and exerted some control. The irises and lilies that were everywhere, but getting trampled by everything else came out, to be replanted judiciously in the fall. The rosemary bush was pruned. The vines covering everything were pulled. I extended my bed about a foot out or so, planted the beautiful hydrangea given to us as a wedding gift, spread some new seeds after turning some new soil into the clay/rock. I trained the nasturiums, which turned out to be a vining variety, onto cages so they would stop overrunning my young rosemary. I transplanted some of my volunteer tomatoes into pots, and all my pots got replanted with the addition to their soil of perlite, the absence of which was causing the soil in my pots to not be loose enough and while everything had plenty of room, was acting root-bound.
Next up: exert some control over my studio.
