Gardening Birthday

Today is my gardening birthday. I’m one year old. From the snobbish way I speak of plastic plants and annuals, you’d think I would be older, but I guess I’m just precocious.

I’ve been interested in plants for as long as I can remember. Over the years, I’ve grown a redwood from seed (it didn’t live long), started wildflowers in ammo boxes (again, didn’t live long), and maintained oodles of houseplants (lived a bit longer, when I didn’t chop them up in a berserker rage). My undergraduate degree is in botany. I spent a summer identifying meadow and forest plants for the National Biological Service in Yosemite. Strangely, though, I’ve never actually “gardened” until last spring.

When trying to determine the actual day I was “born again,” I wasn’t sure which event to use. Did I become a gardener the first time a contemplated a landscape plan? Was I born when I sowed seeds last winter? I made a somewhat arbitrary decision to choose the day that I first planted something in the ground, April 17, 2005. On this day, I planted a sweet bay magnolia and a gardener was born.

I had no idea what I was doing. I did have the wisdom to place the tree at least five feet from the sidewalk and driveway, in anticipation of its future spread. I did not, however, amend the soil. I chopped the dirt up into golf-ball sized chunks (as directed by Gardening in Ohio), but was not yet aware of the need to add manure and peat moss to the heavy clay. Thankfully, I chose a tree that is tolerant of clay soils. It survived the winter and looks as if it will bloom again this June.

Happy Birthday to me!