We lost a lot of plants in the pre-Christmas freeze – two days when the temperature dipped into the twenties and stayed there. In Houston, those are Arctic conditions. Some plants were dead above ground only, brown and brittle when I cut them down. A few are more seriously dead and will have to be replaced in the spring. The saving grace of cold weather here is death to mosquitoes. A tiny, hard-to-see species is the most common. They hover like online trolls and my conscience is clear when I slap one and leave a bloody splotch on my arm.
All of which
raises another regret associated with our dilettantish attempts at gardening.
Mostly we plant shrubs and perennials like firebush and red salvia, to attract
hummingbirds. Our luck with vegetables is lousy. As a kid I always grew
tomatoes. I can still smell the acrid scent of the plants and feel their hairy
stems. I used to eat tomato sandwiches on white bread with butter. They had that
satisfying, mineral-rich flavor. Every year I plant tomatoes in pots behind the
house and every year the squirrels harvest the bounty. They don’t wait for the
tomatoes to ripen, and they leave the patio littered with green and yellow
morsels. Don’t talk to me about screening. We’ve tried that.
I found a
little consolation (and envy) in a poem by Robert Francis (1901-87), “Tomatoes”
(The Orb Weaver, 1960):
“Nature and
God by some elusive yet felicitous
Division of
labor that I do not comprehend
(Salts of
the soil, rain, the exuberant August sun,
Omniscience,
omnipresence, and omnipotence)
Contrived
these gaudy fruits, but I was the gardener
And in their
lustihood, their hot vermilion luster,
Their
unassailable three-dimensionality,
Their
unashamed fatness, share the glory and fulfillment.
“Now while
the sacrificial knife is in abeyance
They bask
and blaze serenely on the sun-splashed sill
For the last
perfection of ripeness. A thank offering.
A peace
offering. A still life. So still, so lifelike
The fruit
becomes the painted picture of the fruit.”
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