Welcome Susan Albert and the Lifescape Blog Tour!

Today's post is written by Susan Albert - author of the China Bayles mysteries, set in the Texas Hill Country, and a series called The Cottage Tales, with Beatrix Potter. A couple of days ago more than thirty garden bloggers from all over the USA were part of the first "Spring Fling" held here in Austin. Meeting Susan at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center here in Austin was part of the fun! Today it means something extra special to be able to say...Wecome, Susan, to the Transplantable Rose!

“Unbecoming a Gardener”

A big thanks to Annie for hosting me here at Transplantable Rose today. This blog tour celebrates the launch of Nightshade, the sixteenth China Bayles mystery. China is a former criminal defense attorney who has opted for a quieter life as the owner of an herb shop in Pecan Springs TX. Of course, her life isn’t really very quiet (there are all those dead bodies!) but the time she’s able to spend in the garden helps reduce all that stress. That’s how it works for me, anyway, and for gardeners all over the world.

From Garden to Native Grasses

I’ve had a garden here in eastern Burnet County, on the northern edge of the Edwards Plateau region, for over twenty years. On the 31-acre place we call Meadow Knoll, I have tended a half-acre of garden, composted, mulched, saved my own seed and grown my own seedlings, experimented with new varieties, and canned my own produce. I’ve spent hours every day in the garden and loved (almost) every minute of it. (You’ll find a somewhat fanciful map of our place here.)

But I’ve grown older and creakier, my writing work takes more time, and we’ve acquired a second home—which means I’ve had to cut back. The veggies went first, since they were also irresistibly attractive to raccoons, deer, and various voracious insects. (Bet you know about that!) I stopped planting flowering annuals because they were work- and water-hogs. Then last year (2007), we got over 20” of rain in July, which did in many of the non-native perennials. We were gone in August and September, and since it didn’t rain during those months, the rest of the garden—except those brave old roses, survivors all—gave up the ghost. Instead of replanting, Bill and I spent most of the winter returning everything (except the roses, a few vines, and a daffodil border along the woods) to the native grassland from which we originally wrestled it. Enthusiastic and unrepentant, I plead guilty, as Sara Stein puts it in Noah’s Garden, to conduct “unbecoming a gardener”—a phrase that has a great deal of significance.

Wild Gardening

But I’m not garden-less, and I know I never will be. One of the things I’ve learned over my gardening years is that nature can do a lot better job of it than I can. She knows what grows best, where and when and how. So I’m turning it all over to her—the whole job, from planting to watering to growing. And having lived in this place and observed it for over two decades, here’s what I’m expecting from my Hill Country wild garden.

Color. In April and May, the fields and roadsides will be blue (bluebonnets and mealy sage), purple (winecups and redbuds), and pink (paintbrush). In June, there’ll be a blaze of yellows, reds, and oranges (gaillardia, coreopsis, and standing cypress, which grows along our creek and along the railroad tracks on the ridge). In July, the incredible blue of gentian, and blue ruellia, and in the fall, a burst of azure sage along the fence row. Oh, and goldenrod, and sunflowers and coneflowers and Englemann daisies—my, oh, my, all that astonishing gold.

Shape and form. Landscaping, I’m told, is all about shape and form. My wild garden offers plenty. In winter, there are the strong trunks and bare limbs of pecans and hackberries and mesquite—the mesquite decorated with hanging gardens of mistletoe. The firm, rounded shapes of Ashe juniper, the free-form sprawl of the mustang grape that grows along the fence, the spiny paddles of prickly pear, the spiky thrusts of yucca, the massed forms of Lindheimer muhly grass, the pyramids of bald cypress, bright with autumn color. I can’t take credit for any of it—all I can do is appreciate it.

Harvest. If beauty isn’t enough bounty, consider this. The yaupon holly and roughleaf dogwood that grows at the edge of the meadow provide a feast of red and white berries for the robins in winter, and the cedar waxwings will line up to strip the junipers of their generous purple fruit. The raccoons love the mustang grape in August, the lime-green hedgeapples in September, and the tart-sweet flameleaf sumac berries in November. The oaks and pecans feed the squirrels all winter, and the winter-tourist goldfinch love the dried sunflower heads. The hummingbirds adore the native salvias, Turks’ cap, desert willow, and fall obedience plant, and the native bees are wild about the buttonbush in the marsh and the buffalo gourd along the edge of the lane. The abundant fruits of that enormous buffalo gourd support whole communities of mice, voles, gophers, and such. (Recently, I found a cache of last summer’s seeds neatly tucked under a rock by some furry creature who must have forgotten where he put them.) The wild turkeys join the raccoons and squirrels in enjoying the mesquite seeds, dogwood and sumac fruits, and mustang grape. In the wild garden, there’s something for everyone, and—in a good year—enough to go around.

You get the picture. Instead of feeling that I have to go out and weed, I go for a walk. I don’t bother with loppers or shears. If the mustang grape wants to take over the fence, have at it, my friend, there’ll be more for the raccoons. I’ve hung up my rake, for the leaf litter is home to insects and microbes and lichens, the wild garden’s recycling team. And I don’t bother to spade, either, since the wind and birds and insects and animals carry seeds, and I’m learning to let them do the planting.

But please don’t think this change of heart and habit comes easily. I’m clinging to my old roses, I’m growing my favorite culinary herbs in a wheelbarrow, and I wintered over some really spectacular geraniums for the planter on the deck. But I’m no longer hostage to the garden. I’ve shifted into “admire” mode. I’m not only loving it, but finding it easier to live with.

I live in the country, and my wild garden is all around me, like a green embrace. But people who live in the city can enjoy their wild gardens along roadways, in vacant lots, in untended back yards, in far corners of the neighborhood park. It’s all in what you look for, you know. If the ungardening bug bites you, sit down for a spell with Sara Stein’s Noah’s Garden or (if you’re a Texan) Sally and Andy Wasowski’s Native Texas Gardens. That’ll give you something to think about while you resist rushing out to buy that exotic plant you just read about in one of those glossy garden magazines.

Thanks, Annie, for giving me a place to celebrate my wild garden. And thanks to all the readers who are following this blog tour through cyberspace. If you have questions or thoughts to share, post a comment. I’ll be around today and for the next couple of days to answer questions and carry on a conversation.

About the book drawing and Susan’s blog tour

If you’d like to enter the drawing for a copy of Nightshade go here to register. But you’d better hurry. The drawing for Transplantable Annie closes at noon on April 10, 2008.

Want to read the other posts in Susan’s blog tour? You’ll find a calendar and links here.