By Clyde

“We are green in Heaven’s eyes; but here too much we moulder,” Alfred Lord Tennyson.

In the backyard and beyond, the Eastern Eden vision fades as reality comes to visit on the wings of Mr. Spring Robin. Weeds hide out and wait to take over before you know it, where the ivy dares not trod. Climate change is not an excuse for lack of labor. A shovel or a hoe can be found in a museum.

Mel says a garden is a lot of work for what you git. Castor beans may get rid of voles but they don’t stop ground hogs. Dirt clods between your barefoot toes still feels good. Every plant has another scientific name in Latin, but we don’t know it or want to. Carol does.

The peonies and irises get the award for their distant fragrance. The sound of the cicadas seems to never end. Crabgrass and gravel weed will be here at the end of the world. Nancy says the best spray smells the worst. “A weed is a flower out-of-place” never met the code enforcement officer. Plants grow where they are happy, but they need water without city fees to keep them happy.

Birds are the most fetching and butterflies are the most beautiful creatures, but fire ants are the most painful. They should have been a plague in Egypt. Fireflies are the most amazing species found in everybody’s backyard. They know no fences.

Don’t mulch your annuals, they won’t re-seed. Seed catalogs and packets must be Photoshopped. “Plough deep while sluggards sleep” was before the no-till method and pollinator gardens. Squirrels sample more tomatoes than we do. They like vine-ripened best, any variety.

The crunch of the first snow pea is exhilarating. If spring comes, can raking fall leaves be far behind? A jonquil emerging thru a halo of dead leaves is inspirational. A tiny bluet in a bed of chickweed is charming. The smell of wisteria at night is overwhelming. Luscious figs right off the tree with the sun on your head is memorable. A field of Queen Anne’s Lace is picturesque. Who knows where spiderwort comes from out of nowhere? A little taste of fennel goes a long way.

Victor Wallace’s brothers David and Isaac ran the Botanical Depot in Statesville and sent herbs all over the world in the late 1800s. Sarsaparilla and ginseng were the most popular, out of more than 300 different herbs gathered from the N.C. mountains. Mother Nature gives us cures and Song of Solomon gives us hope. Chapter 4, verse 16: “awake O North wind and come thou south, blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow: campfire, with spikenard and saffron, calamus and aloes.”

Yard birds do their part. Tony says to put chicken sh-t and coffee grounds on your tomatoes. Funny, we always put mayonnaise and a little salt and pepper on ours.

Roosters don’t care and egg prices don’t enter their pea-brain heads. Tariff or not. They can’t predict the weather, neither can forecasters, lately. The subtle color of a rosebud will soon blossom into full-blown elegance.

A garden nook may change, but never die, it just becomes overgrown. Garden urns, pergolas and sundials with an onion add to the tranquility and need no care. Take a break from our world of polarization and outrage to sit a spell in your own parterre or just stroll thru public parks while singing “I come to the garden alone.” Tennyson wrote about Sleeping Beauty: “When will the hundred summers die and thought and time be born again and newer knowledge, drawing nigh bring truth that sways the soul of man. Pleasant gardening.

Clyde is a Salisbury artist.