Imagine this as a Game Show. (Do they still call them game shows?). I don’t even own a TV so what do I know? We could sell this idea. Make millions!
The contestants go down to the local plant shop and while wearing blind folds – using only touch and smell – collect up a certain number of plants. Vege plants, flower plants, any kind of plant.
Then off they go to a garden in need of rescuing, off with the blind fold and then the people plant them with no research, no Aunty Google. Just hope and the labels from the plants. Outrageously old fashioned.
And planting plants into the ground is great for our environment!
The organisers would enter the plants into a program (probably using AI) that can show what the garden will look like in 1 and 3 and 5 or 10 years. If the garden does not get wiped out by fires or floods of course.
Then the judges have fun with it. Who would the judges be?
Wouldn’t that be fun? That is exactly what I do in my kids gardens but without the commentary and canned laughter. I buy an assortment of rescue plants without applying any criteria then bring them back to the garden.
I just pop them into all the holes in the existing gardens. Where the weeds were. I love this kind of wild behaviour. My tiny little rebellion. Naturally my children are initially appalled then later relieved that the garden is done.
All day yesterday I was loose from my phone and the internet. I did not check anything or send anything. I was adrift. My phone sulked on silent upstairs. Soon I became angry at my phone for its hold on me. And then I forgot all about it. And was thoroughly enjoying not having to think about how to rescue the new website, or keep up my Social Media Platforms or like inane cat pictures or film little before and after videos. I started thinking why am I bothering.
I just gardened.
I think we will call our show. Digged. ( I know Digged is not a word but I don’t care about that either – it is my pretend game show after all).
Another old friend turned up at the door yesterday afternoon – Earth to Celi he called. Don’t you check your phone anymore?! He had brought a bottle of wine that we called Coffee, and drink out of mugs like the old days and we had the most interesting talk about how when we were younger, but old enough to know better, when he and I played together (both visual artists) our relationships were few but so intense. So productive. So fertile. We did not count anything. We did not count our friends. We were homogenous and flowing. Shaken and stirred and challenged.
This was before Social Media came in and called everyone friend. And diluted us. Diluted, or worse, decanted our relationships into little manageable units. And we are the ones being managed. Pacified.
I am not sure how to fix all this, I said.
Why are you living so far away, he said. You are too far.
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
29 responses to “Upgrading the Burbs Garden”
I picture you two as ‘Frog’ and ‘Toad’ having this conversation! 😉
Oh, I love that book! In fact now that you mention it I might read them again. Much of the language from Toad of Toad Hall is ingrained in my vocabulary.
I picture you as ‘Frog and Toad’ having this conversation – Arnold Lobel style. 😉
I love his writing style!
Lots of takeaways for thought here, and beautiful photos. I visited a big permaculture garden yesterday, it was also beautiful but not tidy. Too many people focus on tidy and not enough on as you say just popping plants into the ground. Nature generally is not tidy. Nor is life.
Absolutely! We are doomed when we try to crush nature into straight lines. Weeds capture carbon and clean our air too! How lovely to visit a big garden. So inspiring, I bet.
I, and the birds as they toss seed around, have turned almost all of the lawn in front of my apartment into a proso millet patch. Each week the lawn care folk come with their mowers and trim it down and by the next week it is inches high again- some of it a good 6 inches. I wonder what they think? Also I do not care as the lovely green crop looks so much better than the bare patches in the lawn where all the moss was eradicated. I wish they would simply leave it be so the millet could flourish and I could stop buying bird seed for a time while the birds gorged themselves on self-propagating seed heads 🙂 I cannot plant trees here but I like to think of that patch of millet as a tiny carbon sink
Your millet is a tiny carbon sink and the shearing from garden people will compost into the ground too. But I too wish they would leave it to flourish.
Your kids are lucky to have you play in their garden. And nothing like meeting up for “coffee” with an old friend.
Yes!! he makes a good “coffee” does our Ed!!
I LOVE choosing plants by smell. My favorites are bee balm, tomato, and basil. I have a Secret Garden that I planted to expand the diet of my tortoises. It is in bloom now, so my little friends get the joy of eating seasonally. It brings me great pleasure to see the giant blooms on the hibiscus. I have been drying flowers like crazy so I can offer a taste of summer to them in the dead of winter.
Drying blooms for Tortoise sounds like the title of a book! Don’t they hibernate in the winter- do they occasionally take snack breaks?
Some species hibernate, and some don’t. The ones that continue to eat during the winter will be happy. The ones that hibernate will wake up to fragrant flowers months before they will be available to everyone else. So far, I’ve nearly filled a 5 gallon bucket with dehydrated flowers. In the wild, they would eat 30-40 different species of plants. Currently, I have dried at least 13 species, so I am happily closing the gap in the available variety. I have several other species to tackle soon.
That is wonderful! Lucky animals. One day – I will come to your zoo and meet your tortoises – do you think I could do that?
Your friend’s final comment in response to you not knowing how to ‘fix’ things is very poignant… And no doubt causes food for thought. We moved back to the U.S. after family members expressed the same thought over and over again. By upgrading the burbs garden you leave part of yourself to flourish and remind the occupants of your love for them. So wonderful!
Yes. I could not just up sticks and Our John alone. That would be cruel. The best I can do is this nomadic life.
The nomadic life can actually be quite wonderful. I do miss traveling the world, the adventures, and experiencing the different cultures and people.
I too, have to ask the same question as your friend. Why do you live so far away from the family and land that you Really love the most?
But to live in NZ I would have to leave our John and break up the farm. I am sure that is not what you mean to suggest. Life is not cut and dried it is full of compromise.
No, you’re right, that was not what I was suggesting and yes, I do know that life is not cut and dried, and very, very much full of compromise. We live that every day.
Yes – we do. not all of it is easy either but there you are – its life.
I once (or twice) threw native seeds out into the parched, cracked dryness of the desert dirt…just to experiment… {I think I freaked a few people out when I shared this visual…oh well}.
Another time, a delightful little sunflower pushed its way up into my dry, desert driveway…all by itself… ❤
Did the natives come up after a rain?
No, we learned about large ants, and other hungry creatures…
Oh – large ants do not sound pleasant!
We do not know why the seeds did not germinate… our imaginations just went everywhere…
My backyard lawn is a suitable contestant for your show. The chooks traverse it in their mobile tractor every day, once they have all laid their eggs. They hustle in there, knowing there is fresh grass, and bugs and worms and all sorts of interesting stuff, and deposit poop in return, so my grass and passionfruit vine are both vibrant and green. While they do that, they scatter the organic grains from their feeder about the place, so now my lawn is growing wheat, barley, sunflowers, corn, peas, beans and who knows what else. It’s a wonderful sight. And of course, the Girls nibble it all down willy nilly and our eggs are magnificent.
I encourage people to have chickens whenever I can! They cover so many bases in the garden!
I would love to see your game show on the BBC. Not on a USA-based network, too much DRAMA on those. You should suggest it to them.