Boulton

Let’s talk a minute about soil. All is not created equal. It can be confusing to know how to amend, how to fertilize, how much and how often. And always, it depends on what you are growing.

Now, where were we? I’m so glad to be back! Winter kill, was it? I don’t know if there’s been a worse year for it. Everywhere I look, desiccated evergreens are everywhere.

I have come to dote on my shade garden like a mother to her child. And its responsiveness to my attention is nothing short of thrilling.

This week’s article could easily be about bending at the hip, lifting with the knees, wearing a hat, gloves and sunblock. In other words, all those safe measures we take to ensure we can keep on gardening.

Now, I’m not one to brag about my abilities, but when it comes to intersecting thugs on runaway motorcycles, I have to say, I am practised. This may not appear to you to have any relation whatsoever with gardening, but I assure you it does.

I ran into my high school English teacher at the greenhouse and we chatted about his tomatoes and about gardening in general. “Gardening is so easy,” I mused. He looked at me curiously. “No, it’s not,” he countered. “It’s hard work.

Until this weekend, the side of my house was hard-packed mud, bordered with thin wisps of grass and the occasional dandelion. Every time I used the hose, which dripped like a nose with a cold, the earth around it softened like a wet Kleenex.

I have, in my care, two linen-bound tomes on the propagations of perennials. Both books, written decades ago, contain an elegance long missing from today’s books on gardening.

This weekend saw three of my girlfriends and me taking a road trip to Piebird, a vegan/vegetarian “farmstay” in Nipissing, just outside of North Bay.

Earth Day marked my first sojourn into the garden.