After Memorial Day

     Memorial Day on the garden calendar marks the time for planting annuals, filling pots and baskets, setting up barbecues and lawn chairs, watching parades, visiting cemeteries, showing the flag.  Alas, not much of that this year.

Rhinebeck Memorial Day Parade 2019

We did not assemble as we had in the past. The corona virus death toll was reaching 100,000, falling heavily on communities of color, and we are still cautious.  Reading the sobering front page of the New York Times, listing 1,000 of the dead with a single sentence about how they are remembered, occupied most of my Sunday. 

On Monday, missing the parade, I kept the radio on all morning, listening to the songs of the wars.  As a child during World War II patriotism was universal; we were all on the same side.  It doesn’t seem that way now.  I had my first garden then, in 1942, a Victory Garden, vegetables grown in the backyard to aid the war effort.  Yet in the midst of this great pandemic we are a divided nation with the wearing of masks a subset of the culture wars.  We won’t have a parade today in Rhinebeck, but I will stop at the cemetery to pay my respects to the veterans.

Curbside Garden In Rhinebeck 

Gardens may be a small consolation, but we must continue to cultivate them.  Our local actions may be on the smallest possible scale, but at least we are doing something for more than just ourselves. We can continue to divide, propagate, and plant knowing that we have unfinished business in  our gardens and our communities.  They will both need help with the work that lies ahead. 

As for my own garden, all the plants wintered over, struggling to survive indoors are now moved outside, re-potted, expected to leap forward.  When I can get back to nurseries I plan to buy a few tropicals to add to the mix – cannas, bougainvillea, jacaranda – if I can find them. On an early venture I came across a stash of enkianthus, a favorite plant of mine, bought three out of greed and have no appropriate place for them.  I’ll plant them out in big boxes against the back of the house and hope for the best.   

Wintered-over Flowering Plants 2019

I’ve heard the nurseries are packed, some operating safely and efficiently, while others are careless, crowded and unmasked.   Caveat emptor.  I’m not quite ready to join the experiment, but I’m working up to it.  In the meantime I’m gardening vigorously, with much resting in between.  More resting than working.  

I circle the block every day in the early evening, nodding hello to the neighborhood gardens, their gardeners, and other walkers out and about at the same time.  My plan for a curbside garden disappeared as the village finished paving Livingston Street, filled the remaining disruptions with soil and set out grass seed, obliterating my prospective garden for this season. I’ve added a few photographs of curbside gardens, so as you walk around the village keep your sightlines low.

Another Curbside Garden in Rhinebeck 

Early this spring I ordered white cinquefoil which arrived bare-root while I was between gardeners.  They were eventually planted and appear dead to everyone except me, who continues to water them, expectantly.  Defeats are minor in the grand scheme of things.  You will have noticed by now that gardens are impervious to everything except weather.  Even neglect doesn’t matter in the long run; survival of the fittest prevails.  An unfinished garden is one of the best guarantees of longevity. 

Curbside Garden in Jerusalem

Early May, 2020

The garden takes no notice of the pandemic; it only registers light, temperature and moisture.  The apple tree blooms on time, woodland phlox shows its colors, Celandine poppy opens unexpectedly in deep shade.  I should take pleasure in this, but it feels out of tune with the world. I worry like a Russian during a bitter winter of war, but not yet cutting down the trees for firewood, or turning the garden into a potato patch.

The Apple Tree

I came back to Rhinebeck in mid-March, guiltily fleeing the city, barely closing up the apartment, grabbing what I needed, changing my mailing address with the post office, my delivery address with the New York Times.  I have -- I had -- a choice:  An apartment in the city with a few windows on the street, or a house in Rhinebeck with windows and light on all four sides, and a garden in which to watch and wait out the pandemic.  Everyone who could decamped, but I feel more of a deserter each day.

Through late March and early April it rained and rained, or so it seemed.  My garden was hopelessly dreary, puzzling, until I remembered I was not supposed to be here so early or for so long; the garden was planned to emerge in late April, early May.  And right on time the early scillas appeared in the back of the garden, a sea of deep blue.  No matter how often their beds are disturbed and replanted the scillas return, advancing further into the lawn.  Every year at this time I imagine a bulb meadow in the lawn, only the earliest, so that their foliage like that of the scillas, would be cut down with the first mowing.

Scilla siberica

The garden pattern, for better or worse, is beginning to emerge.  Trees and shrubs provide the structure while the herbaceous materials are the fine-tuning.  This is true in my garden, dominated by the dappled shade of Black walnuts and the deep shade of  Norway maples.

In my mind’s eye I saw a tapestry of color weaving through a sea of green.  The woody plants would bear white blossoms while blue would be the dominant color of the herbaceous material throughout the season… except when it is isn’t.  The Bleeding heart, a lovely deep pink, is spectacular and deserves more room than I have given it.  The earliest blue to work it’s way through the garden is Phlox divaricata.  I mistakenly thought it was a creeping phlox but it mounds instead.  Very beautiful, but the not the creeper I had expected. 

Blue Phlox

It is almost time to move the plants wintered-over indoors back outdoors.  They do not look very promising this year, or maybe I’m viewing them through the lens of the general malaise of these days. Moving them outdoors is back-breaking work, so they have to earn their keep.  I’ll add fresh soil to their pots, but I suspect the indoors/outdoors routine is only good for a few years and then the plants are spent. 

Tender Plants, Outdoors

During this cold Spring the length of Livingston Street has been repaved, encouraging renewed skateboarding among homebound teenagers.  I finally removed the huge ailing street tree, leaving a gaping span that is waiting to be filled with new soil.  The custom is to plant grass on these verges so that people stepping out of cars have a soft landing, but I doubt that there will be many cars parking out front this year.  Instead I’m planting annuals for a flower garden on the verge, something for passersby on foot. Sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, cleome. There are a few of these curbside gardens in the village.

Curbside Garden

I rarely leave the house these days, and the same can be said for some of my scattered childen.  My daughter Liz and her family are in lockdown in Jerusalem.  My son Micah and his family in lockdown in Queens, the children attending school online.  In Jerusalem, Liz’s Aquarium is closed to the public but she is permitted to drive across the city to care for the fish.  My daughter-in-law Sibernie goes from their home in Queens to her job at the VA Hospital in Manhattan every day.  My daughter Pam (formerly and formally my step-daughter but we have dropped all that), a retired physician, is renewing her credentials in Arizona to serve on the front lines in Tucson when needed.

Around here, tempers are short.  Profound differences emerge.  Resolute mask-refuseniks remain resolute.  Arguments that should not happen, happen.  Among the Covid-19 obituaries, ever expanding in the New York Times, appears the not-unexpected death of an old friend in poor health who had lived a long and fruitful life.  No funeral, no memorial service, but nonetheless, we stop for a moment, sit quietly, and remember.