When I was obsessed with my cacti collection, I would tend them every single day. I would gradually move the containers to different spots as the sun shifted with the season, I would water them only after testing the soil in each pot to see if that individual plant needed it. I fed them every week with quarter strength liquid fertilizer during their active growth season, so that they were constantly in a state of optimum health. When they flowered, I changed the fertilizer to one that was right for the blooms. And I was rewarded with a remarkable collection of healthy, glowing plants.

Now, I repot once a year. OK, sometimes once every two years. All right. Some of the really wickedly spined ones have been in the same pot for three years. And you know what? There is a "sick room" of specimens that are struggling with woolly aphids but never quite die. About a dozen withered and gave up over various winters, not strong enough to take the cold damp they find so stressful. And the rest? The rest are growing happily on, if more slowly. I couldn't win a prize for them at a show - they have scars from insect attacks and uneven growth depending on when they were fed well or not but they grow on and bloom on. And every time I wander out and think "Oh yeah - how are the cacti doing?", they're doing just fine.

I apply the same principle to our garden, sometimes with too much zeal. Steve is much more inclined to neat paths and clipped edges. I never can find quite the right time to clip things back and pull things up. The lavender looks horrible. It's three years old now and has healthy tips on bare lower stems. I need to take cuttings or remove them but how can I when they are covered in honeybees from sunup to sundown? The nasturtiums are constantly verging on being weeds. They trail and ramble, taking over empty edges. I could pull them back but then what would the hummingbirds drink? And the cerinthe looks awful but I'm collecting seeds for people, so it can't come out till it's dead.

The area under the bird feeder is the biggest bone of contention between Steve and I. I wanted to see what the grasses that sprouted under it looked like at maturity. That means letting them go yellow, then brown. They look hideous during this process. Steve hasn't liked it but he let me have my way and now I have a big weedy looking patch of tall dying grasses under the feeders, ruining the edge of the path.

But here's where I get lucky - I am very nearsighted. From any distance at all, it's all just impressionistic blurs of color to me. But close up, that weedy patch of grasses is a wonder to behold. The birds dart in and out of it, it shields the water dish from prowling cats, it is shading the corokia that grows in a pot among it and for the first time, it is doing well. There are three different types of seed heads, one I think must surely be wheat. I'll take a picture and see if any one knows. Even I will admit, it's time for them to come down.

Now this sounds like a disaster, doesn't it? Overgrown perennials and volunteers where they shouldn't be. Our garden would give Martha Stewart fits. But here's the great part. It's just fine. The ladybugs are cruising, the bees are working, the birds are nesting. The vegetables are trucking along, working with the admendments we added when we planted. (We do keep the raised beds well weeded but then, it's so easy there.) And when the day comes I get up from the computer or Steve gets a day off and we spend all of four hours hacking and hewing back the jungle, it will look as crisp as it should to content the tidiest gardener. That's one of the things I love most about a garden. It is alive by itself. 

Text and images Copyright 1998 Cyndi Kirkpatrick. All rights reserved