There is something primal about digging my hands in the dark, fertile earth that makes me feel alive and connected to my prehistoric ancestors. Granted there isn’t much call to grow all my own food in the wild and woolly suburbs of Chicago, but I did take some time this year to plant some flowers out front. My ground is rough and sort of rocky so instead of tilling the earth, I took a shortcut and planted a container garden.
Now being tremendously cheap and not wanting to invest in containers, I scrounged through the house and found old pots with no lids, a few garbage cans we weren’t using, and a few baskets to use as my containers. I’d done my research online and found that a lot of other people were using recycled materials to do their planting in, so I figured there was a precedent.
A trip to Home Depot in May yielded a host of plants including dahlias, azaleas, petunias, and a bunch of other plants that I thought looked cool. I brought them all home, sat them outside and went inside to congratulate myself on at least getting the plants purchased. Of course, once I got inside, I got lost in the Web and it was dark before I remembered that I had plants outside that I needed to plant. I figured they’d be okay overnight after all they’d been sitting out at Home Depot for goddess knows how long.
The next morning dawned beautifully so I headed outside with my bags of potting soil and my found containers and started dumping dirt in containers. Realistically, I know that I should have drilled holes in the containers before I started planting, but I figured there’d be enough dirt in there that my plants wouldn’t get swamped, besides they were calling for a really dry hot summer. The plants looked gorgeous once I got them all planted so I headed inside to congratulate myself and take a shower.
Everything looked fresh and green and wonderful the first week. The wave petunias looked fantastic falling out of the baskets and overall things looked great. Then it started to rain. The first few days everything still looked bright and wonderful and then puddles started to form in my containers. I dumped them out and prayed for drought. No one was listening and it continued to rain and drown my flowers. I think it rained every day for three weeks.
A lot of my plants were casualties of the rain, including the Azalea, which looked sick and spindly when the rain was over. Someone with more time on their hands, would have probably dumped out the plants, drilled holes in the containers and started over. However, I didn’t have a lot of time so I left all my poor spindly little plants sitting outside in their makeshift containers and averted my eyes when I walked in the door.
Coming home one evening, I realized that there were beautiful pink flowers popping out of one of my containers. Closer inspection revealed that the Azalea bush that I’d thought was dead was blooming and it’s been blooming ever since. Surrounded by its poor dead little neighbors, it looks like a rock star.
There’s a certain fundamental bliss in knowing that beauty can bloom even when neglected, over watered, and planted with no drainage. It’s a great reminder that life can surprise us with its beauty, its wonder, and its bliss.
Cairn by Cairn 