Oh, Mr. Parkinson...

Listening to Andrew Parkinson, I realized I've never been 'a gardener'. I like plants, don't get me wrong, but the idea I had of a garden was nebulous at best. What was a garden? My granny used to take care of the plants at home when I was a child, and even I would follow her around and pick up branches and dead flowers with her, it was never a very aesthetically oriented endeavor: the garden just was there, it was part of the house. 

It wasn't until the pandemic stroke that I looked at the patch of mulch behind the house in a different way. The previous owners had children and there was a whole swing set with a little tree house there and a sand pit in the shape of a turtle. Oh, there were two hosta plants planted there, those super practical plants that seem to be everywhere and that so many people seem to have in their gardens. And that was it. That's all I had. And one day the previous owners asked if they could have that playset. We were more than happy to say 'yes'. They came with a U-haul truck and got it. And then there was that space.

I never thought anything would come of that patch of mulch until after they took that playset away. Then I read about the Monarch butterfly and the Illinois Monarch Project. I decided that I wanted to plant silkweed and create what some call a pollinator garden. I wanted that patch to have a purpose. And I started planting seeds for butterfly gardens and bulbs that would have flowers without any order in mind. I guess I wanted it to look that it had always been there, but I wanted it to be useful and open to birds and bees and insects. Oh, and I also got an apple tree on sale. Gotta have a little tree in the garden. It's been doing well, I think. At least I didn't kill it. 

And yes, I got some bug hotels and some birdhouses and started my 'garden'. And it has been a fantastic experience. When I was working from home, I could see the garden from my desk and see the birds flying around and discover that I had new flowers almost every week, and I would go out after a day of meetings and take it on the weeds. So relaxing. Picking up dead flowers and plucking those pesky weeds that seem to grow in every inch of available dirt took my mind off the fuckery that was work. I'd put my Beats on and play Defected and that would be it. An hour or two would pass without noticing. 

Now I got birds living in all the birdhouses (I've got around seven?) and bees and insects live in the bug hotels. And I've had flowers since, like, March, maybe April? It is, like Arthur says, a collective. They nurture me for wanting that nurturing. All those wildflowers have been popping up in waves and are now home to a bunch of insects. All the plants in the patch are perennials and most are native to Illinois, so once they are established, they'll need little to no care. I want for them to eventually take over the whole patch and become just a mass of flowers. There's a little path there, made with Chicago bricks the manfriend got for me from a salvage yard. They're like a hundred years old and mark a little path that is right now partially covered in places by the hosta plants (I found several in a box on the side of the road near Utica and brought them with me), which apparently have a very particular way of growing.

Some of the gladiolus from last year did not come back. I have no idea what happened to them. But there's so many other new plants that I did not notice that until last month. I planted seeds, but of course you know I forgot to put markers, so I have no idea if they're weeds or actual plants until they start to flower. And there's two birdbaths (one is a repurposed ceiling lamp we found in an alley in Chi) and a thermometer that is a sunflower that tells me how hot it is and a red gecko next to the red roses. There's a lot going on in the patch these days. It's not the same patch that had an abandoned playset in it.

So yeah. That's the story behind the patch of plants behind my house. I guess I've got a garden now, huh?

XOXO

P.S. I took these pictures below back in June and July. I forgot I had them until I watched Arthur's video: