The Summer Garden’s Wise Chaos
Nature finds a way beyond your planning
Spring time for gardeners is all about order. Moon charts and sunrise tables are consulted. Seeds are laid out in neat rows. The ground warms, green emerges according to the sketch you’ve created in the soil and you feel to a large extent the sovereign of your tiny kingdom. “Here will be lettuce, there will be kale, around this perimeter will climb cucumbers.” To each species its own square inches of space, all inexorably inclining to the desires of you, the master planner.
Except nature has other plans.
By this time in summer what the long-time gardener/observer comes to understand is that, well, it’s a jungle out there. Every species wants its fair share of photons and will stop at nothing to get them. A cucumber will eschew all trellis structures and instead scale the stalk of a tomato plant to win the crown of top shade-maker. The so-called “three sisters” of corn, beans and squash turn more into Reagan and Goneril as they make a grab for the most nutrients they can get while crushing Cordelia underfoot.
So what are you to do about all this?
Here’s its useful to take a page from the above-cited Lear and come to understand what you can and can’t control in your kingdom. You can prune back here and there and give the…
