My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places

The Grass Menagerie

My father was English, so gardening, I’ve long assumed, is in my blood, along with gin and fryer grease and a fondness for long, tedious war movies. I recently got a chance to test my theory when we moved to our new house and for the first time in my life I had a yard.

For the first few weeks, I ignored it. Denial is apparently the first stage of gardening. When I finally checked back in on the situation, our lawn had disappeared, the victim of a hostile clover takeover. Ed couldn’t see the problem. He pointed out that the clover was coming in thicker and greener than the grass had been. “Let’s just mow it and say it’s a lawn.”

So Ed mowed the clover and the 10 or 20 sad, frightened stalks of lawn grass that the clover were apparently keeping alive as slaves. Presently, he came into the kitchen holding two plastic-and-metal discs at arm’s length. “We’ve got land mines, honey!” Ed had mowed the automatic sprinkler heads.

A yard is not the benign, pretty, passive world it appears to be. It is a war zone. The neighbor’s ivy is constantly scaling our fence and attacking on the western front. From the north, dandelions launch airborne spore assaults. Every evening Ed and I meet in the general’s tent and plot strategy. Usually I get to be Peter O’Toole, but sometimes Ed makes me be Omar Sharif. “Sir, there’s nothing to be done,” Ed will say. “They’re tunneling under the fence now, coming up from below.”

“Bastards.” I’ll narrow my eyes and set my jaw. “Wire headquarters for more Roundup.”

About six weeks into the gardening experience, I noticed that some of our plants were turning brown. “Is this a seasonal thing?” I asked Ed. I had heard of leaves changing color at a certain time of year.

“I think,” said Ed gently, “that it’s more likely a watering thing.”

Watering your plants, I have learned, is not as simple as watering your dog or your car radiator. Not only can you water too little, you can also water too much. To water just right, you must figure out what type of soil you have (brown is not an acceptable answer) and how much shade each area has and how sunny and humid it’s been.

But before any of that, you must figure out what type of plants you have. Ed and I have no idea what’s growing in our yard, though we give them names anyway. “There’s white fuzz growing on the grotticulpis leaves!” I’ll shriek.

“And the pifflewort bush has dibblies!” Ed will yell back.

One day I noticed that the trees in our yard had begun dropping dead leaves onto the lawn. “Are we overwatering?” I asked Ed.

“I think,” he said gently, “That it’s a seasonal thing.”

For three solid weeks, it rained leaves. We raked until we had blisters, and dibblies, and blisters on our dibblies. I was fast approaching the third stage of gardening: the calling-in of the professional.

Here’s what pushed me over my limit. It was a Saturday afternoon. I was down in the basement failing to understand the sprinkler control console, when I came across a small cabinet crammed with bags and boxes. Organic Bulb Fertilizer, said one label. Azalea and Rhododendron Food, said the next. I looked over at Ed. “What—they eat too?” Where would it stop? Would we have to clothe them and drive them to track practice?

So I gave up. As Omar Sharif said in Lawrence of Arabia, “Let the English have their gardens. We will make do with barren ground and brittle, unsightly ground cover.” Perhaps he didn’t say exactly that. But he was thinking it. And I am too.