One year of gardening in a new state, so many impetuous plans and mistakes

[Note to readers: This post was originally published as a newspaper column exactly four years ago, on August 13, 2011. With impetuous gardeners, some things never change.]

I have lived in Moscow for one year, and am grateful to the gardeners here in northern Idaho who have encouraged me and given advice about plants that grow well here. Special thanks to the neighbors and passersby who try really hard to keep from laughing when they see me, dirt-splotched and sunburned, digging up and moving entire beds of flowers that I’ve planted in the wrong places.

In this first year, I’ve realized nearly every week how aptly I have named my column: The Impetuous Gardener. Impetuosity has carried me on its fierce wind to three nurseries in one morning and led me up and down each narrow nursery aisle. At each stop, I was wheeling a garden cart, and lovely flowers called “Buy me!” along the way. I also saw some dejected, brown-leafed plants on the clearance table and knew they needed rescuing. (This is why I no longer – ever – stop at animal shelters. Two big dogs and three cats are probably three animals too many at our house already.) I often arrive home with plants filling the cargo space and the floor of my little SUV. Only when I’ve unloaded all those flowers does the common-sense light bulb finally flicker on.

Late in the spring, I dug a new flower bed in a corner of our front lawn. My heart was in the right place, I think. I wanted to give people who walk by a lovely view of delphiniums, roses, snapdragons, and pansies blooming in the sun. The crabapple tree overlooking the new bed had not yet leafed out and thrown the new garden into shade for most of the day. Soon the delphiniums and roses were all but shaking their drooping leaves at me for planting them in that sunless bog.

I often walk past a spectacular English garden in our neighborhood and was invited inside the gates for a delightful tour with the owners. I was so inspired that I vowed to make my own English garden. Never mind that their gardens have taken more than thirty years and are still evolving. I bought more delphinium (and other) plants, dug a new bed in the front-yard sunshine, planted the new ones and transplanted the unhappy ones from the shade. This spurt of energy resulted in one small new garden, sweet, but not dramatic, lush, or even vaguely British. I’m also left with a scraggly, half-empty bed in the shade nearest the sidewalk and another lesson learned in impetuous gardening.

The neighbors' garden also helped me realize we needed a rose arbor arching over our own front walkway. I envisioned red and yellow roses climbing the white lattice, with twining purple clematis for drama. When I mentioned this excellent vision to my husband, he envisioned the heavy labor required to provide concrete footings to support the arbor.

Instead, we bought two light-weight white trellises for the backyard patio, one for the roses, and one for the clematis. (I had already bought the plants and then had the arbor fantasy, so we had to have something for them to climb.) The rose arbor will happen, but not this year – maybe not even this decade.

Being an impetuous gardener can seem like a benign addiction, and most of the time, it is. But, like all addictions, wanting to create beauty can have its dangers. To keep mine in check, I follow a few simple rules:

• I set a specific monthly budget for buying all things garden related – and I stick to it.
• I also never shop for plants with friends. How many of us have, hanging in the depths of our closets, a never-worn outfit that a former BFF assured us looked absolutely fabulous on us? My problem is that my new gardening friends really do know their plants. If they suggested that an acre of perennials would look absolutely stunning in our side yard, I would be tempted. So I shop alone.
• Most important, I live with a wonderful man who knows when to enable my tendencies and when to temper them with reality. Time is the pleasure and bane of impetuous gardening. Sometimes I forget that English gardens should not be planted in a weekend, but over decades of joy in the planning, choosing, planting and nurturing. If my gardens could pop up, lavish and complete in two days, they would have as little heart and soul as the plastic blow-up figures on lawns at Christmastime. In gardens, as in all things worth cherishing, heart and soul take time.

Keeping my garden$ watered; only few more days to vote for Tessa or the BadKitten as chief staffer

Yipes. Our water bill for the 31 days of July arrived this week: $217.40 (not including charges for sewer, garbage and street lights.) The bill is more than twice our normal charge – and probably similar to the surprise many other impetuous gardeners got in the mail. My husband and I don't water our grass, and a timed, nighttime drip system irrigates all of our vegetable beds and some of our flower beds. Even before the bill arrived, I had been watering our two large, front yard flower beds by hand. The only time I took the easy way out and set up an arcing sprinkler, I felt a deluge of guilt when I saw the water pooling on the sidewalk, driveway and into the street. So I retired the sprinkler and rely solely on my trusty hand-held wand for targeted, less wasteful watering. Lee and I try to be responsible, but this summer's drought means we're paying big-time for the privilege of keeping our flowers and vegetables hydrated. I only wish I had more to show for the money, veggie-wise.

 

Because of my unfortunate, though well meant, decision to let a few volunteer sunflowers share space in the tomato patch, the odds of BLTs with home-grown tomatoes are looking even slimmer than usual. A few green cherry tomatoes are hanging on the vines. But above them loom lofty, healthy stalks of golden sunflowers, magnets now for bees and, later, as the seeds ripen, for the small birds I love. Their bed is just below the window of my study, and the plants have grown so tall that I'll have a great view soon of the birds snacking at the Rozen cafe. Meanwhile, the sunflowers' bed mates – my hapless tomato plants – must be cursing me daily for letting the big guys steal all the nutrients and sunlight and suck up most of the precious water.

In our side yard, the raised vegetable beds, also kitted out with a drip irrigation system, are batting below the Mendoza line (.200 for non-baseball fans). Planting three zucchini seeds was two seeds too many for me this year. It took all my willpower not to become a cliché: leaving surprise gifts of enormous green monsters, under cover of darkness, on our neighbors' doorsteps. I grew the Zs for the wrong reason: to avenge last summer's humiliation when the entire crop failed. Pride blanked my memory that my husband truly dislikes the sometimes-mushy results of baked or sauteed squash – and let's not even go near the idea of boiled zucchini. So I'm the only Z-eater left – and have slowly been turning grayish green from too many dinners where it's my main course. I don't eat much sweet stuff, so zucchini bread is out. If our children were small and at home, I would certainly have embraced the brilliant practice of disguising shredded Z in meatloaf, spaghetti sauce and – who knows? maybe oatmeal or mashed potatoes, too. But my husband never complains about my cooking, and I'd feel like a jerk for sneaking his nemesis into the pasta sauce just to use up the latest green torpedo.

The two raised beds of Italian shell and French green beans are growing enthusiastically, but the sugar snap peas look spindly and sparse. It's the result, I think, of early raids by crows or quail, and hanging out at the end of the drip-watering line. By the time the flow reaches their bed, it probably has lost its oomph. As for the broccoli bed, I committed the same mistake there and let a few sunflowers shoot up among them. The brocs rallied more strongly than the tomatoes and formed fat heads last month. But before I could pick even one side dish's worth, the neighborhood rabbit apparently went grocery shopping in the Rozen produce bed. Instead of broccoli heads, I found only gnawed off stalks. Tiny side heads are forming now, but I bet the cute little critter will come back for seconds soon.

We will continue to use our watering system until summer's end, even if the vegetable yield has been puny (except for the dratted zucchini.) Letting the plantings go dry isn't an option– and we'll pay the water bill and be thankful for it. Our alternative, my husband reminded me, is to grow cactus. I vow by the blue delphiniums, yellow and pink Peace roses, and pink, lavender and white Canterbury bells flowering in my garden, I will never grow a prickly, spiny, unfriendly cactus in my Church of Dirt and Flowers. 

 

Readers, you have one more week to vote for who should be my chief garden staffer. Your choices are the incumbent (although, this summer, he has mostly been recumbent,) Benjamin BadKitten, or his challenger, Tessa the Vague, whose name describes her response to her environment. You may vote by posting a comment at the end of this blog post. I will announce he results next weekend– but here's a hint: In early returns, the BadKitten is tanking at the polls. No matter which dubiously qualified candidate you choose, guess who will still be doing doing most of the garden work?

In my home or garden, eccentric pets are part of the family

Note to readers: Although this post was originally written three years ago, it's a recap of the personalities of all four of our family pets -- including the two who are currently competing to be my chief garden staffer: Benjamin BadKitten and Tessa the Vague. You can vote for your choice by posting a comment at the end of this post. (In early voting, the BadKitten is tanking at the polls.)

Readers have been asking lately for an update on my garden staff. After the death of our golden retriever, Kaylee, only two staff members remain: Rags, our 10-year-old Old English sheepdog, and Benjamin BadKitten, age 8 (and currently enjoying Life Number 23 of his allotted nine lives.)

Kaylee’s death has been especially hard on Rags. My heart ached as, for weeks, I watched him make a daily circuit of our backyard, sniffing at each spot on the grass (and there were dozens) where Kaylee had left her mark. Then Rags would lift his big, shaggy head, searching for his friend. Finally he would rest his head on his paws, heave one of his trademark sighs, and close his eyes.

This was the same dog who used to galumph around the yard, knocking me over as I knelt to plant my flowers, chasing Kaylee in their daily game of tag (he always let her win,) and greeting my husband, Lee, every night by stealing the dish towel from the kitchen and waving it, flag-like, with joy.

A month ago, we discovered a large growth on Rags’s abdomen. Lee and I love all our animals so much, and we couldn’t imagine losing another one. We quickly scheduled Rags for veterinary surgery. Afterward, the biopsy report said the growth is benign and not expected to return – and we are thankful beyond words.

His doctor also diagnosed our anxious, protective, sweet-natured sheepdog as showing symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. She prescribed an anti-anxiety drug to stop him from compulsively licking a spot on his leg until the skin is raw. The other alternative was having him wear a big plastic cone around his head for the rest of his life, which he hated and which made me cry in sympathy for him.

So the big guy is on a low dose of medicine and, after a month, is showing flashes of his former goofball personality. In the past week, he knocked over a full bucket of compost I‘d planned to use in a backyard bed, and he peed on a potted, flowering weigela shrub in the backyard. Both incidents made me grin, instead of yell at him.

While Rags’ trouble-making is a welcome sign of his returning exuberance, Benjamin BadKitten has no excuse. Earlier this week, Lee opened the front door to bring in the morning edition of the Daily News and found a goldfinch, neatly delivered postmortem on the porch. Benjamin, a 15-pound brown and black, Maine Coon-type cat, pouted for days after I weeded one of his favorite bird-hunting spots, under the lilac grove in our side yard. If I point out any of his numerous pratfalls during hunting expeditions, he shoots me a glare and begins a vigorous washing of his private parts.

He instinctively knows the most inconvenient time to climb onto my lap when I’m kneeling in the garden. With a flick of his long, fluffy tail, he can send a seedling soaring out of my hand. That leaves me free, of course, to devote myself to a more important garden-related task: petting Benjamin until I have transferred all of the compost, dried grass, leaves, and twigs he has attracted to his fur onto my own jeans.

I adore him. He and Rags have always been best buddies. At times, Benjamin was the only member of our household who could temporarily cheer up our sheepdog after Kaylee’s death. When Rags was recovering from his own surgery and wearing the Cone of Doom, Benjamin would march up to his dog, walk into the cone until he and Rags were nose to nose, and then lick his pal in commiseration. Rags outweighs him by 65 pounds, but the cat is the heavyweight in their friendship.

Lee and I have two more cats, whom I love dearly but write about seldom, because they have no interest in being on my garden staff. Both cats are eleven years old and mainly house cats, although both enjoy a daily trip to the garden for their own personal needs.

Abigail is a beautiful, long-haired, black and white “tuxedo” cat with a grumpy personality and an imperious manner. “Pet me. Now. Scratch my back. Now. Satisfactory. Repeat. Now go away until I summon you again.” Five years ago, she disappeared for three weeks and then showed up on our back deck the day after Thanksgiving, thin and dehydrated, but with her prickly personality intact. I don’t know where she had gone or how she came home, but she is part of our family. A crabby cat is still better than no cat. (Do not ask my husband to agree with that statement. He is a dog person, but our felines think he’s the cat’s meow.)

Our third cat is Tessa the Vague, a lovely little peach and gray calico. Gentle and sweet-natured, Tessa’s calendar has been missing a couple of Tuesdays since the day we brought her home as a kitten. For Tess, every element of the daily routine seems forever new. Often she stares at Lee, as if wondering whether she has met that nice gentleman somewhere. She trips going up a set of stairs, can snag her claw on a smooth hardwood floor, and asks for nothing except to be fed and petted. This seems a reasonable request from a small creature who puts up with Benjamin’s nightly pounces onto her back, and who wakes up each day with fresh delight at her world.

Sheepdog's still with me, but Benjamin BadKitten's job as chief garden staffer depends on you readers

August 1, 2015

A great deal can happen in four weeks, so I'm grateful to let readers know that Rags, our Old English sheepdog, is still with us. Thank you for every message of caring from readers who wrote, emailed or asked in person about his health. I stayed home from our family's July vacation on Priest Lake, to keep Rags stable and secure. Our days followed the pattern he knows: me spending time at my computer, working on writing projects while he slept. After dinner, I read in the living room, with Rags sprawled in front of my chair, doing his usual stellar job of keeping our house and me well guarded.

The big, shaggy guy was so skilled at protection that he literally worked with his eyes shut. Sometimes he even snored. But I knew he was on duty 'round the clock, because, one very late night, he woke me with sharp barks that scared the zucchini out of me. As I grabbed my robe and stumbled to the living room, his staccato barking continued. I gently put my hand on top of his head so he didn't startle, because Rags is nearly blind and deaf, and then looked out our living room window. A midnight dog walker was crossing our street and continuing on his way, with his large, leashed dog jogging ahead of him. The bark-alarm was a false one, but I gave Rags major points for effort and heart, and offered him a peanut butter treat to help him settle back into sleep.

Our sheepdog is nearly 13 years old, and I see him growing a bit more frail each day. But he can still rouse himself when my husband, Lee, comes home from work every night. Rags is still eating, although more sparingly. If he reaches the point where he refuses his specially ordered dog food, I will switch him to homemade meals of scrambled eggs with beef broth, which kept our golden retriever Kaylee, alive in her final days. On most late afternoons, when I guide him outside to the backyard, Rags likes to stand for a moment, facing west, with the sun on his face. He lifts his shaggy head and seems to listen to the wind, as if he is waiting.

While Rags drifts through his days, his faithful buddy usually keeps him company, snoring and spreading cat fur on the living room chair. I refer, of course, to Benjamin BadKitten, my Maine coon cat and chief garden staffer. A staff shakeup may be imminent, though. My BadKitten has been my on-again, off-again chief staffer for more than four years, but his recent employment record is spotty. On the plus side, he has caught no birds since his unfortunate Mother's Day gift to me: a gray and yellow finch. His willingness to stifle his hunting instincts counts a lot with me, and I'm willing to believe this is a conscious act of obedience and goodness, instead of the natural effects of a slightly portly cat reaching middle age. On the red side of the ledger, though, is his lack of interest in helping me in the garden. This summer he has kept me company only once, while I weeded and planted – after I threatened to replace the slacker with the long, plumed tail and round, black and brown tummy.

A lack of qualified candidates has held me back from making the switch. Rags entered permanent emeritus status last year. Abigail Grump, our black and white, long-haired cat, has the brains to take over as garden chief, but lacks the necessary social skills. She'll come out to the flower beds sometimes, select a spot under a spreading phlox plant, and curl up in the sunshine – but if greet her, she'll offer only a crabby “Mmrrrfff” and shut her eyes again. The squirrel that haunts our apple tree is another nonstarter: He would demand I plant nothing but walnut trees and peanut bushes.

But a unique possibility has emerged: Tessa the Vague, our 14-year-old white, peach and gray calico cat. Now that she has learned to use the cat door (after only three years of study,) Tess has become a more confident cat. She will approach me from a distance in the garden, and once came close enough to peer at me with her always-bleary stare and sniff the fingertip I offered in greeting. She is sweet-natured and uncomplaining, and shows no tendency to let fame turn her into a spoiled publicity hound (no names here, but his last name rhymes with GadMitten.) I will wait a week or two to make this important staffing decision, and will rely on readers' opinions: Should I keep Benjamin BadKitten as chief garden staffer, or fire his butt and promote Tessa the Vague? Let me know with your comments on this post.

What's a storybook-loving gardener to do when the neighborhood Peter Rabbit invades her vegetable garden?

July 22, 2015

I have read “Peter Rabbit” many times to each of my three grandchildren and always looked forward to the story's dramatic high point: Just when naughty Peter seems destined for Farmer McGregor's stew pot, the little rabbit – imagine a gleeful three-year-old boy's voice reciting with me here – JUMPS out the potting shed window and escapes under the garden gate. Now my younger grandson is heading for first grade this fall and his older brother is a man-of-the-neighborhood at age eight. Their little sister, 2 ½, is the major Peter fan, although I notice her brothers happen to wander over to the couch whenever the story's climax nears. The childhood classics never grow stale, even for boys who can read their own books.

None of the three has much interest in Peter Rabbit's three sisters, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, probably because they “were good little bunnies” and, therefore, boring. (Kate, my granddaughter, did seem quite taken with the girl bunny's pink dress, but I'm happy to report she switched her focus as soon as she realized which rabbit was having all the adventures.)

So, because of my own fondness for Beatrix Potter's mischievous bunny, and the cuteness factor of the real, wild rabbit in our neighborhood, my options are limited as I deal with the vandalism in my own vegetable garden. Strawberry plants: berries nibbled away, with tell-tale tooth marks as evidence. Broccoli rows:Tooth marks on only the leaves leaves at first – until the broccoli actually brocks into tasty heads, each of which disappears as soon as it reaches edible size. I was really proud of those broccoli plants: grew them from a new seed, called “aspa-broc,” which promised a delicate, interesting flavor that combined asparagus and broccoli. I'll just have to take the seed packet's words as truth, of course – because there is no aspabroc left to sample. Who knew our adorable brown and gray neighborhood rabbit was a gourmet?

The furry little critter's with the refined palate has apparently twitched his nose at my zucchini bed – even though I planted an heirloom Italian variety,“romanesco,” with a nutty flavor and pale greenish gray stripes. I can tell you a lot about those zucchini, because I have been eating them for two months, and the three plants (three! Why did I plant three?) are still pumping out zukes the size of my Subaru. While my husband (who cannot embrace the squishy, bland essence of the Z) dines on variations of marinated beef ribs and roasted herbed potatoes, my main course is, invariably, baked zucchini rounds with herbs and parmesano cheese. And does my little bunny pal have the courtesy to help bail me out on the glut of squash in my garden, by adding a side dish of zucchini to his entree of broccoli, with strawberries for dessert? Mais non.

Even as my angst builds every time I pass the broccoli bed, I know I have done as much to de-rabbit my garden as I'm willing to do. Early on,I put up short, cute decorative wire fencing around all the vegetable beds. Now I see that the wire designs are wide enough for even the chubbiest hopper to squeeze through – and the height of the fence seems perfect for the bunny to steady himself as ihe nibbles on broccoli leaves. Pathetic. I know this. But it's Peter Rabbit. Who's going to take down my grandchildren's storybook hero? Not this grandma.

One of my raised beds is still untouched. In the middle of the bed, I've planted rows of Italian shell beans. Along the bed's edges, three varieties of carrots are showing their lacy green tops. I expect a superb carrot crop to peak in early September. A big honker of a carrot crop – plus one little bunny with a gluttonous appetite– or maybe a rabbit family reunion in the Rozen garden. I will be lucky to salvage enough carrots for one batch of homemade soup. (Or a pitiful relish tray.)

Some of this matchmaker's “blind dates” in the garden just aren't good fits

July 14, 2015

 

I love the surprise and small miracle of windfallen seeds that sprout in unexpected places in my gardens. Even if I have designated another plant for that spot, I'm usually willing to be a matchmaker and hope the two species will live together happily. So when I checked my future tomato bed this spring and found a few volunteer sunflower plants already setting down roots, I only smiled. The sunflowers would grow directly in front of the south-facing, low cement wall and behind the tomato plants. Everybody would get the sunshine and, at worst, the taller sunflowers could block the tomato vines from the harshest heat of high summer. This would be a match made in the Garden Goddess's heaven.

What is wrong with me? I have grown sunflowers for decades – and always buy the seeds that will produce the big honkers – the tall, branching plants with multiple flower heads – so the birds can enjoy healthy autumn snacks. I make sure to plant the sunflowers in the bed directly below my writing room window, so I can watch the finches perch on the stalks while they eat their seeds. And, after the first killing frost, I dig up the dead plants and have to yank hard to wrestle the thick stems and roots out of the soil. Tomato plants are easy to dig up; their stems are more slender and their vines more fragile than the sturdy sunflowers.

So how difficult could it have been to make a small, rational leap of logic? I should have known that the taller, heavier sunflowers could zap all the soil's nutrients and much of the water into their own selfish roots Meanwhile, the tomatoes could fail to thrive, turning paler and paler green as these mismatched couples stumbled through the summer together. Of course, this is exactly what's happening. The sunflowers already are flaunting deep golden flowers and showing off further by turning their smug faces to the sun. My poor, puny tomatoes – victims of an accidentally arranged marriage – have barely set any blossoms, and my bright hopes for August BLTs have gone the way of the dodo bird.

I walk through my neighborhood nearly every day and can't help but notice that the tomato plants in other gardens are heavy with green fruit – some even turning red. Nobody else is growing sunflowers in the tomato beds, either – and now I'm also starting to worry about my broccoli. I grew twelve plants of broccoli from seed this spring and, with great pride, transplanted them into a raised bed in our side yard in mid-May. A couple of sunflowers had just begun to grow there, too – probably victims of a crow that couldn't carry his entire haul from the bird feeder and scuttled some seeds during his flight. I let those seeds remain in the broccoli bed, too.

For the first month, the two species seemed an equal match. The sunflowers (which had fallen and were growing at the north side of the bed) respected their boundaries and gave the broccoli plenty of space and sunlight. My little homegrown brocs were doing me proud. They soon reached my knees [Full disclosure: I top out at a fraction of an inch over five feet two, so we're not talking about The Attack of the Giant Broc Mutants here] and offered every sign that their stalks would soon thicken and start branching into multiple heads.

Then the sunflowers hit their growth spurt. These plants weren't as tall as the backyard variety, because I think they migrated from the bird feeder, instead of from my garden. But although they are shorter, they are branched and mighty. They're acting like sloppy dates, draping themselves over the brocs' shoulders, ignoring personal space, and hogging the food. This is not behavior an accidental matchmaker condones.

At least I'm not worried about the one deliberate pairing I planted this spring: Around the edges of the bean bed, I sprinkled carrot seeds, and so far, everybody is having a blast in there. If the carrots try to pull off a late-season takeover attempt, our neighborhood bunny will deal with it.

Finding joy in home-grown vegetables and hand-watering my garden

Mid-July 2012

 

[Note to readers, since this column was originally published, we have set up a drip watering system for the vegetable beds -- but I still water my front-yard flower gardens by hand.]

 

Our daughter and I enjoyed the first artichokes from my vegetable garden at dinner this week. As I trimmed the prickly tops of the leaves before seasoning and steaming the artichokes, I felt like a genuine gardener. I had grown these plants, which resemble sprawling, good-natured cacti, had watered them and weeded their beds. Now I would serve the first harvest (two artichokes – but it’s a harvest to me,) ready for praise and dipping sauces.

I had been surprised when a veteran gardener told me that artichokes are grown as annuals here in northern Idaho. Years ago, I had grown them in the Seattle area as perennials, wintering them over and welcoming them back in the spring. Within a few years of planting, my artichokes were ringers for the hefty, thick-leafed ones at the grocery store.

The artichokes I’m growing here in Moscow are more delicate, with thinner leaves and a “greener,” less nutty flavor. I confess that I prefer the more mature ones, and will still buy them at the store this fall, when my own plants have gone to compost heaven after the first killing frost. But home-grown vegetables add an extra contentment to dinner time.

We’re also eating a variety of home-grown lettuce in our salads and learning the need to share with our neighbors. In the case of my lettuce patch, the neighbor apparently most in need of garden greens has long, floppy ears and a brown cottontail.

When I checked the lettuce recently, I noticed that the newly mature heads looked ragged. At first I laid the blame on unknown insects who had probably laid siege from under the soil. But the plants weren’t fully destroyed, and their cores looked healthy. Instead, the lettuce looked chewed; when I looked more closely, I could see teeth marks on some of the leaves.

A few weeks ago, I noticed the neighborhood rabbit in the neighbors’ yard. Its cheeks were so full of cherries that it might have had mumps. But a bunny cannot live by cherries alone, so it probably wriggled under the fence and found my lettuce patch. (Note to rabbits: the carrots won’t be ready for another month.)

Most impetuous gardeners don’t need to produce perfect crops or magazine-cover bouquets to find joy in what we do. When we're outdoors, on our knees in the Church of Dirt and Flowers, we can lose ourselves in the small, simple acts of pulling a weed or guiding the flow of water onto our plants. We can set our imaginations free to picture the jack-o-lanterns our children or grandchildren will carve from our pumpkin patches. If the pumpkins turn out to be puny, lumpy or lop-sided, no one will care too much. We can accept our tendency to plant too much zucchini, and take delight from giving some of it away. (And we will identify with stories from mid-West friends, who say they never leave their car windows rolled down in August, for fear of surprise gifts of the long green squash, tossed onto their front seats.)

I understand my late father-in-laws preference for hand-watering his huge vegetable garden, even though he knew a drip- or sprinkler system would be easier and quicker. “I have time, Sydney,” he would say, smiling. “And if not, I’ll make time.”

A sprinkler would be easier for my own eight raised vegetable beds, too. I wouldn’t have to lug the long length of hose out to the side yard, or attach the water wand, or spend part of a morning or evening in the sunshine, taking care of the plants I’m growing. I wouldn’t be out there to notice the latest missile-size zucchini that have popped up overnight. Or to note the subtle color changes on the tomatoes and the pumpkins every day. Or to daydream about whether to accept the challenge of growing watermelons next summer.

If I used a sprinkler on my flower gardens, I could be inside doing laundry. Or ironing. Instead, I wander among the flowers with my water wand, noting which roses need dead-heading, which plants the hummingbirds favor, and whether the bird bath needs more water. I can pause to find joy in the red, purple and yellow waves of color in the perennial bed, and to wonder if I’d be rushing the season by adding autumn-toned bronze and russet chrysanthemums.

For gardeners, there is always another season. So I have time to hand-water my gardens. And, if not, I’ll make time.