The Tao of Martha (13 page)

Yet the whole point of the year of Martha is to get out of my comfort zone, so I really can’t keep doing what I’d been doing. I don’t want another year of 2011 results. What if my future happiness hinges on my efforts in the garden?

Laurie offers, “I can come over and check out your dirt to see what you need.”

I have to smile. “I really never thought the quality of my dirt would be important to me, but here we are. Please, yes, come over!”

“Why don’t we go after we finish our coffee?”

“Thank you; that would be great, mostly because I don’t know what to do with the bed. It’s all…Well, you’ll see.” I’m having trouble describing the wasteland of stunted greens and wan, listless sprouts.

Soon we’re in my yard inspecting the few pathetic shoots that reappeared this spring, aided by three enthusiastic dogs that keep plowing into us while we’re bent over the soil.

I point to the back corner of the garden. “I don’t get it. These were supposed to be sunflowers over here! They’re practically a weed! You see them all over the sides of highways, and guys have to come out on riding lawn mowers because they grow so tall they obstruct drivers’ vision!”

With an expert eye, Laurie assesses the garden placement. “Do these trees cast a shadow?” she asks, pointing to the wood line ten feet back.

A moment ago, the dogs raced circles around us. Now Maisy and Libby are wrestling, while Loki stands a few feet away and barks with much enthusiasm. I love watching Maisy tussle—one, because it means she feels well, and two, because of her fighting position. Instead of standing her ground, she lies on her back and wriggles around, pushing back Libby’s advances with four kicking legs. She still has such abdominal strength that she can spin in a 360-degree circle like a breakdancer without ever losing contact with the grass. Fortunately, Laurie’s a dog person, too, so the racket they’re causing doesn’t faze her in the least.

“They’re showing off for you,” I explain, pointing at the scrum of dogs that’ve just discovered a tennis ball. “But the shade? Not until late afternoon. This plot gets southeast sun all day, starting at daybreak.”

Laurie scans her mental checklist. “What about water?”

I wish the problem were just water—but that’s not an issue. “The sprinklers hit the corners, and I have a hose on the side of the house that I drag over. I keep the soil moist, but never saturated.” Laurie nods encouragingly. “What really pisses me off is that I spent so much money on these damn plants. How do grasses
not grow
? We cut the lawn every week because it’s so hardy. I wish it would grow slower. But the stuff I paid fifteen dollars per container for? Nothing!”

Laurie bends down and pulls off a green, leafy branch and then smells it. “Your mint is coming in beautifully, though.”

At this moment, Libby and Maisy rocket through the bed, stomping directly on the mint, which immediately snaps back into place.

“Yeah.” I snort. “That’s the one plant I didn’t want here. Fletch yanked it all out last year but it keeps coming back.”

“Mint is the STD of the plant world,” Laurie says. “Once it takes hold, it’s almost impossible to eliminate completely.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So what
are
you going to do with the planter? Vegetables?”

I laugh bitterly. “Didn’t I tell you? Fletch kept a corner of the plot for tomatoes, and they grew almost as well as the wildflowers. You know, there’s a book called
The $64 Tomato
. Pfft, we got that beat.

“After the fact, I learned that Fletch was fertilizing his tomatoes every day. He’s since banned himself from trying again.”

“Oh, dear.”

“I know, right? And at the time I was all, ‘Why do we keep buying tomato fertilizer?’ Live and learn. Anyway, we’re planting a big organic garden on the other side once we have those trees cut down,” I tell her, pointing to the area on the east end of the yard. There’s a scrubby old pine tree that’s about to go, even though I do enjoy watching Loki use the lower branches to scratch his ass. The first time we spied him backing butt-first into the pointy needles, we figured it was a fluke. But the next hundred? Not so much.

Laurie grabs the spade leaning against the side of the house and plunges it into the planter’s soil. She turns over a couple of shovelsful and bends down to run her hand through the earth. She decrees, “This is perfect. This soil is truly perfect.” Then she demonstrates how well it drains by filling the hole with water.

Maisy thunders over and demands a drink before we shut off the
water. She snaps and snorts and ends up wearing more than she ingests. Libby takes off, because she wants nothing to do with the hose. I keep telling Fletch we’ve got to teach her to swim, and he keeps saying we should be thankful for the one dog that isn’t always dampening clean sheets during clandestine bed naps.

“You’re kidding!” I exclaim. I really didn’t expect to hear my dirt was decent. “That’s great news. I thought I’d have to replace it all.”

Still, that doesn’t explain why the wildflowers didn’t take, but whatever. New year, new chance to try again.

“Have you considered a cutting garden over here?”

“I don’t really know what that is,” I admit.

Laurie explains how a lot of their clients keep a separate spot for cutting outside of the view of their main rose gardens, which makes perfect sense. I’m perpetually snipping off all the best blooms and spiriting them away inside, leaving big, gaping holes in the bushes by the pool.

Having a cutting garden would neatly eliminate the problem of scalped bushes. Plus, I’d feel like a pseudo-royal announcing to Fletch that I was off to the cutting garden, and he shan’t expect me for tea. This is a capital idea!

I’m all excited, but then I have to stop myself. “Oh, wait—if I have a rose cutting garden, then I’ll be cheating. I’d really need to tend to the flowers myself to stay true to the project.”

“Then take care of them yourself. I can have Mike and his guys plant them, but you could be responsible for their maintenance,” Laurie reasons.

I consider this. “You don’t think that by having my own little plot and working with my own tools, I’d look like a little kid pushing one of those bubble vacuum cleaners, running after their mommy who’s actually using a Hoover?”

Laurie swivels her head around to take in the wall of trees and blackthorn on the periphery of the yard. “Who’s going to see you?”

This? Right here? Is why Laurie is awesome.

“Excellent point. Okay, let’s do this.” I’m excited—I’ll have bonus roses, and I’ll actively be learning from Martha as I review her tips for growing roses. This is great! This is progress! This is going to happen.

Laurie taps herself a note on her iPhone. “Okay, I’ll get you a list to choose from. My suggestion is we mix heavy bloomers and highly fragranced roses for the best variety. Maybe group them by color, too, for the most drama.”

“Excellent! What should I do?” In my head, I’m already shopping for floppy British gardening hats and open wicker baskets in which to place my snipped roses, because the notion of a cutting garden has suddenly turned me into Lisa Vanderpump of the Beverly Hills
Real Housewives
. Yes! Look at me! Life
is
all rosé and diamonds and hanging out with Camille Grammer! Of course, I’ll have to buy lower-cut bras so I can leave my shirt open to midbreastbone, and I’ll need to find men with Rod Stewart haircuts attractive. Also, I must meet and befriend Camille Grammer, but I can make this work if—

“…and you’ll need to prepare the bed.”

“I’m sorry; I zoned for a second thinking about the ex–Mrs. Frasier Crane. Long story. Anyway, what’d you say?”

“Clean it out. Yank everything up and transfer any plant you think might come back and you want to save. Then till down six inches and break up any root-balls.”

“Whoa, wait, I can’t just dump new dirt on top?”

“No need. What you have is perfect. But you will have to get rid of all the superfluous bits so you can start fresh.”

Yeah.

That’s pretty much the story of my life.

Only with more earthworm killing.

I N
EVER
P
ROMISED
Y
OU A
R
OSE
G
ARDEN

A
string of idyllic late-May days pass, all in the low seventies with practically nonexistent humidity. Do I work on clearing the planter bed on those days? Of course not. As is my way, I wait until the last possible moment to address the task, at a time when the sun is fifteen feet overhead and so blazing hot that it’s turning my shovel into molten metal. As I work, I find myself practically blinded because of all the sweat pouring into my eyes.

What I really don’t understand is how these pathetic little shoots have such deep and strong roots. I curse each and every coneflower and butterfly bush as I huff and yank and hurl masses of dirty tendrils into the woods.

Thanks for being a dick, lavender hyssop!

I thought you were cool, bergamot!

How about I give YOU a black eye, Susan?

I’m especially angry when I recall exactly how much I paid for each plant, too.

Maybe I should have just put twenty dollars in the toilet instead, purple lovegrass!

As satisfying as it is to hurl these feckless specimens, I find I have to put Maisy and Libby inside, because each time I successfully chuck a recalcitrant root-ball into the woods, one of my ever-helpful best friends retrieves it.

Argh.

The last time I worked this hard outdoors was when I was a volunteer gardener for the city of Chicago back in 2010. What seemed like an excellent idea on paper went totally sideways in execution. I’d signed up to help an underprivileged neighborhood tend their community plot. The neighborhood association needed volunteers, because no one who lived there actually wanted to help, which should have been my first clue that this was a bad idea.

Ninety percent of my volunteer gardening time was spent picking up empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, and Doritos wrappers, although I did crack up the day I retrieved and reconstructed a whole handful of report card shards from the basil plants. One C, three Ds and an F? Yeah, I’d hide those grades from my parents, too, kid.