The cobbler whose children had no shoes. The lawyer without a will, or the doctor who smokes. The anecdotes about oxymoronic professionals go on and on. Here’s another one; the horticulturist who lives in a weed patch. That would be me.

I have always had a tolerance for a few weeds, perennials that flop and faint, or leaves that pile up in October. I love to let the grass grow tall and sweet in May, often forbidding my disapproving husband to mow until it flowers. While my garden is pretty enough to suit my tastes, it has always felt more like a half finished project than a showplace. If I were describing it in charitable, romantic terms I might say it is "as blowsy and lusty as the wench who tends it".

Lately however, lusty has turned to shameful and tolerance to outright sloth. When a patch of escaped ajuga in the lawn grew to a 6-foot circle, I sprayed it once and decided to like it when it failed to die. It looked really bad at this point, half brown and half new growth with stunted blue flowers. Oh dear. It would be a year before it recovered, but I could live with that.




When I failed to cut back the old growth on my ornamental grasses, I watched until the new green blades finally swallowed the old brown ones. When the same thing happened with all of my clematis, I decided that the old growth was good support for the new tendrils. This was just a natural progression wasn’t it? As we mature and become more comfortable in our own skin we welcome a bit more, oh let’s say, serendipity in our lives, and in our gardens. I could live with that. 



Then a fresh-faced young friend, newly a homeowner and eager to start her own garden, stopped by to dig a few plants. I found myself apologizing for the messy garden as usual, but her response stopped me in my tracks. “Oh it’s okay,” she said. “When I’m your age, I probably won’t be able to do this either.” My age? I can’t live with that.
 


I know this scenario. First they drop a comment or two at social functions. “Have you seen her garden? Tragic.” Then someone calls your children to say they saw you babbling to yourself in the grocery store. From there it’s just a matter of seconds before they are buying you diapers and calling around to nursing homes. My plan is to die in my garden, so I needed to wake up and smell the marigolds before someone catches on that I am just too tired and too sore to keep all of this up. Clearly, a plan was needed.

Maybe I don’t need twenty roses when only two of them are performing perfectly. 

Perhaps I'll scale back the perennial border and add more shrubs and groundcovers.

The dozens of annual containers that cost both my sons a college education could be replaced with two spectacular urns on the front porch that could be changed seasonally.


Oddly, the plants I would only give up if forced at gunpoint by roving youth, are those whose bloom period is brief. I have marked time in my life, not by a calendar, but by the bloom of magnolias, lilacs, peonies and iris. The fall colors of serviceberry, Japanese maple, witch hazel and sumac are no less beloved.
 


Yes, I can see it now. A lovely combination of seasonal shrubs, small trees and pools of green, weed-free ground cover at their feet. And me, sitting in a chaise longue, admiring the pair of antique urns that billow with summer bloom.

Best of all, with the money I will save by downsizing, I can hire a broad-shouldered, handsome young thing to edge my borders and refill my wine glass.

"My age" indeed.

— Deb Terrill