[ Lost in the Landscape ]

garden-deficit disorder

It’s get­ting to be that sea­son. My morn­ings are now see­ing me at work around sun­rise and home at a time when it’s almost dark by when I’ve fin­ished prepar­ing and eat­ing din­ner. And for the next two months it’s only going to be get­ting worse as we head towards the dark­en­ing maw of win­ter. At least I only do these long days four times a week. Still, I’m get­ting a seri­ous case of with­drawal from the garden.

This is the time of year when I really start to feel envi­ous about John’s posi­tion, work­ing out of the house. In between doing what he does on the phone and com­puter he gets a chance to keep up with the hap­pen­ings on the street. The neigh­bors across the street just had a new baby, John reported, and he’s really cute. John also reported that the mother of one of our neigh­bors just died, and the neigh­bor two houses down is now in a nurs­ing home, com­pletely inco­her­ent, after being ambu­lanced away from the house not much more than a week ago.

Look­ing at the implaca­ble facades of the houses on the street, it’s hard to tell that any­thing is hap­pen­ing. But being home, around the neigh­bors, John is able to keep up with dramas.

John is also able to keep up with things hap­pen­ing in the gar­den. A story from the past week was of look­ing out the win­dow to see the cat din­ing on the ten­der new leaves of the mil­let seedlings that I’d set in the ground not many days before.

“You didn’t stop her?” I protested.

“It was soooo cute,” he said.

Well, this was the cat over last week­end. How can you dis­ci­pline basic instinc­tual behav­ior in such a sweet cat? Okay, okay, I calmed down a bit.

But I was still wor­ried about the mil­let plants.

Left: Orna­men­tal mil­let, Pen­nise­tum glau­cum ‘Pur­ple Majesty’ [ source ]

Orna­men­tal red mil­let hit the gar­den world in a big way with the intro­duc­tion of the Pur­ple Majesty F1 strain in 2003. This slen­der four– to five-footer was awarded the All-America Selec­tions Gold Medal, which basi­cally assured that the plant would end up in gar­den cen­ters and seed cat­a­logs all over. That strain spawned oth­ers, includ­ing the shorter ‘Jester,’ which I’ve been start­ing to see a lot of–even at the Home Depot gar­den center.

Even though pur­ple mil­let is now so déclassé, now that it’s hit Home Depot, I decided I wanted to try it. A seed order a few weeks back brought me a hefty packet of the orig­i­nal Pur­ple Majesty. Some of the seeds went into pots and they sprouted in less than a week. And then the lit­tle fel­las were ready for the gar­den, when they were adjust­ing and start­ing to increase in size. And then the lawn­mower cat attacked.

Well, I’m glad to say, I could hardly see any cat dam­age to the seedlings–a chewed blade here and there, but noth­ing major. Here’s a lit­tle clump of them as they stand today. The largest is push­ing eight inches tall, and the red col­oration is start­ing to develop now that they’re bask­ing in full sun half of the day. It might be too late in the year for them to develop the dra­matic seed heads, but I’ll have some nice pur­ple, ver­ti­cal plants in the gar­den in no time. Since these are hardy to zone 8, they’ll make it through win­ter just fine and be bloom­ing away before you know it.

Any­way, now that I’ve have a cou­ple hours in the gar­den this morn­ing I’m feel­ing reju­ve­nated, espe­cially now that I know that the plants I’ve been slav­ing over lately have come through unscathed. And of course it’s been nice to have some gar­den time to spend with the cat. To pro­tect the mil­let, I’ve been point­ing out to her the lit­tle grass seedlings that are real weeds. So far the feline lawn­mower seems con­tent with the other options.

October 17 2008 09:55 am | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles • rambles | Tags: cats • October • Pennisetum glaucum 'Purple Majesty' • purple • purple millet • the neighborhood

2 Responses to “garden-deficit disorder”

1. Daphne on 17 Oct 2008 at 12:54 pm #

   I have to admit. It is really nice work­ing from home. I can gar­den any­time of the day. In the sum­mer it is in the early morn­ings because it is cool. In the autumn once it has got­ten chilly, I tend to gar­den in the afternoon.

   My dog likes to eat grass too. I have to scold her when she goes for the non-weed grass. But your hus­band is right. It is so cute to watch them.

2. Greg on 19 Oct 2008 at 11:47 am #

   I’m glad you got a lit­tle gar­den time. I know how impor­tant it is!!

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