I’m just a sucker for anthropomorphizing. I know that animals and insects and plants (and certainly inanimate objects) don’t think and react like humans do. Nevertheless, ever since I was that imaginative child watching clouds and constructing stories around them, I occasionally gift one of the categories listed above with human traits and reactions.
The latest example of this happened in a small, triangular space that I originally called the Moonshadow Garden because it only contained plants with white blossoms. When I tired of the “sameness” of color, I added blue—okay, indigo shades of night, etc. A few years of partial neglect followed, accompanied by more variation in color, while I tried to decide on an actual plan for the little garden plot.
I finally solved my indecision by hiring a garden designer and asking him to design something harmonious for the space. He wanted to know what I wanted; we’ve worked together before, and he knows I have strong opinions. I asked him to leave the trellis in the back free because I always want to have morning glories, and added that I wanted him to plant flowers that were yellow and blue—colors that I love together. I was surprised when I came home from work one day and the garden was planted. The flowers were not exactly what I’d asked for, however—he’d planted flowers that were orange (lantana) and mauve (African daisies). They looked quite nice except they weren’t yellow and blue.
Perhaps I’m being too hard on the lantana. There is a specific spectrum of color that ranges from yellow to golden to orange. When I look at the lantana that I’ve termed orange, it’s not that different from the sunflower I planted this year that I call golden yellow. The lantana (to me anyway) falls on the orange side of golden, while the sunflower stakes out its position on the yellow side of that median gold. I was more accepting of the mauve African daisies, possibly because my husband was born in Burundi, and it seemed appropriate that a plant from Africa should be in our garden.
As I said, the Moonshadow Garden looked quite nice and certainly tidier than it had ever been, either before or since. And I could have lived with it, except that a year or so later, the lantanas decided to reveal their true personality—they were power-hungry and had decided to take over the world, beginning where they had been removed from their tiny pots and inserted into the soil in my yard. They rapidly expanded up and out, apparently under the impression that the African daisies were the first target that should be choked out and eliminated. I, of course, threw myself into the fray. I didn’t like the lantana much anyway, and I resented its efforts to kill something I liked more. My husband transplanted three lantanas to a bare space in the front yard where they could grow as large as they liked. They didn’t, of course—they drooped and pouted and eventually died. I don’t know whether they did so out of pique or because they felt impeded by the roots of two small trees that are in the same area. They had sun and water and plenty of room to expand but, apparently, that was not enough. Perhaps the absence of potential weaker plants that they could dominate caused their malaise and, eventually, their demise.
Three lantanas were left in the Moonshadow Garden. I rooted up two of them, as they appeared to be trying to follow the dominating example of their missing comrades. I left the third one. It was somewhat demoralized by the absence of the rest of the lantana cabal, but I still have hack it back occasionally, to remind it who’s in charge.
But I had a big surprise coming. As soon as the African daisies found themselves free from the suffocating ways of the lantana, their apparent thoughts were, Why can’t we expand now that those overbearing lantanas are out of the way? They can’t take over the world after all, but is there any reason why we shouldn’t? They doubled their growth in no time. Initially, the African daisies had formed a graceful curve around the front of the garden and were in bloom most of the time, if I remembered to deadhead. This activity was more time-consuming that it should have been, because they were pumping out so many blooms. But, in addition to blooming, they were positively leaping into the space formerly filled by lantanas; they were getting taller also. This species of African daisy tends to be 12-18” high, and when those in the Moonshadow Garden had been well behaved, they had topped out at about 15”. But now, a new plant would suddenly appear, taller and leggier than before, growing out of the top of the old one, which then languished. The word tidy no longer applied.
To be continued
