Days of Sunshine & Sequoia Trees

Or, How I learned to stop worrying and love my garden.

Today, the sun was so bright and cheerful, and I was seized with the strange desire to visit a garden centre that I’d never visited before. They were far out of town on a little road, sandwiched between farms and fields. It wasn’t a place that one just drops by — the journey required a plan, and picking up food in town to eat on the way.

We arrived, and had to slowly cruise down a long driveway, past a house and garage, which gave us both pause. Was this the right place? Or had we simply driven into a hobby farm, and were soon going to have to explain our mistake to the landowner?

But once beyond the house, a series of greenhouses surrounded a gravel parking lot, and the place was HOPPING with gardeners. Seriously, the air was electric. Between the perfume of roses and peonies, one could smell the scent of POSSIBILITY.

I’m not a gardener. Plants cringe when they see me coming. But I felt this odd stirring in my chest, akin to excitement, and I was seized with the sudden urge to make my yard all pretty. We strolled between buckets of rhubarb plants, blueberry bushes, apple seedlings, flowers and bushes of all shapes and sizes and prices. It was magical.

I ended up buying a garden statue, a hefty crimson pot (for $15!!!!), and a giant sequoia tree. Let’s amend that: the giant sequoia is not yet giant. It was still the perfect size to put in the back of my car and secure with a seatbelt.

Give it a few years and it will be a titan in the middle of my back yard.

I spent the rest of the sunny afternoon preparing and weeding, digging holes, up to my elbows in dirt and worms. It was GLORIOUS. I’m not a gardener, but I pretend. Maybe, if I pretend long enough, my skills will grow as big and broad as a sequoia, and I’ll have a kick-ass garden of my own, electric with glorious possibility.