Monday, April 17, 2006

The Friendship Garden

A few years ago, I had an idea. (Not to say that was the last time I had an idea, but...just read the blog, OK?)

I love my garden. It's my sanctuary. In the past 10 years I've moved a number of times and had to leave old gardens and start new ones. Now my garden is in an impossible location on steep Georgian Bay granite with 2 inches of mossy-grassy earth on top. To complicate things, the spartan soil is highly acidic.

Do I feel despair? No. I love a challenge.

Oops. Tangential Lisa has taken you in a different direction. I'll blog about the Georgian Bay difficulties another time. Right now, I'm suppose to tell you about friendship gardening.

Every year, I meet new people and make new friends. Every year, I plant new plants in my garden (whichever garden it is this year) A few years back, I decided to name each of my plant after someone new in my life each year. This way, whenever I looked at the plant, I could remember the friend and think about them while sipping tea (or a rum and coke) in the garden.
Initially, I just matched the next name with the next plant, but after a few coincidental character comparisons, the matching became interesting and fun.

A full figured divorced friend was matched with a rose that was drought tolerant with nice hips. A wine connoisseur was paired with a wine-red rose aptly named Tuscany superb. A fellow who avoids white food had to be linked to a white rose. Lily got a lily. Well...you get the idea.

My current garden lends itself more to daylilies and irises, so it will be fun to link specific traits to this year's friends. 'Late bloomer', 'reproduces well', 'easy to split', 'grows best when left alone' sound benign when referenced with a plant, but a bit more fun and memorable when linked with a friend.

Soooooo...what kind of plant are you?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you have a favorite poem?


Then i said, he can stop returning, nobody is forcing him to do so.

I run/walk for 20 minutes every morning because I have no time and/or am too worn out at night.

And because I'm not who I'd want to be. I've just gotta ask this because I ponder weird things while at work. And yes, I did get in trouble and had to be escorted back into the hotel by Chris because I was talking on my phone by the beach too loudly to Brad about these mysterious guys from Winnisquam who worked at the Margate and tried to sneak into the reception and get beer and claimed to know both him and Conner and hotel guestablished heard me and complained...

And I do like the phrase, I was just poking you to see what you'd do...

The challenge of coming up with a subject to write about and the practice writing causes you to start noticing things in your day that you would not usually notice.

The rest of the time in Tucson was a fantastic testament to everything vacation can and should be. A lil of everything.


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best
best

Lisa said...

I'd plant marijuana in response to that if it wasn't illegal.
...the best marijuana of course.