Mulch (31 page)

B
IG BLUEGRASS LAWNS AND FUSSY FLOWERS
such as black-spot-prone tea roses are habits we can give up, just like smoking They don’t fit into the American gardening scene as they used to, for leisure is ephemeral. Few of us live the life of the Victorian lady who had the time to walk up and down the borders with a basket on her arm, dallying with the flowers and picking off diseased leaves by hand. Instead, we are a nation of frenetic, fast moving people, balancing our time between jobs, shopping, errands, taking kids to game practice, plugging into the
Internet, ministering to aging parents, and sneaking away occasionally for a couple of hours’ relaxation at a movie.

And still we garden. To many of us, it is an oasis in the midst of our busy lives, a spiritual refreshment that we simply cannot do without. But when is there even the time for gardening? The way we do it is to garden smarter. Through sheer necessity, we are turning to low-maintenance methods that reduce garden labor to two hours or less a week.

There are two principles involved in low-maintenance gardening: plant selection and plant care. Of course, this entire subject may depress the person who has large expanses of bluegrass lawn and beds of perennials with the equivalent of P.M.S. This is a gardener who is chained to his or her garden, both financially and timewise, and who probably doesn’t stint on chemical pest control and heavy fertilization.

The best advice to this gardener is to
change.
Do it little by little, but remember the rewards are great. Put the lawn in its place. Get rid of as much as possible, or replace it with turf that suits your climate. Lawns are water-gobbling, high-care prima donnas. Get your soil right:
Make it rich, loose, friable. Make your motto “Let no bare earth show its face to the sun.” This means mulching heavily to avoid water loss and weed growth. Seriously consider replacing high-maintenance plants, no matter how beloved, with regional plants that are fully as beautiful and don’t need chemicals to stay healthy. Group them together according to their water needs.

These are basic tenets that define “xeriscape.” Xeriscaping is the only smart way to garden, if we are to conserve America’s precious water resources and to guard against the harm done by chemicals. Here are further tips from successful low-maintenance gardeners:

• Design lawn areas compactly for easy watering.
  

• Eliminate hand trimming by putting a barrier between earth and gardens: A row of submerged bricks is an easy, attractive solution.
  

• Plant thickly. This sounds arduous, but spacing plants so that they can grow-together quickly reduces weeding and watering. Besides, it makes a wonderful
  picture. Some plants, of course, are take-over artists; though it is nice to have them filling in, we don’t want them smothering their delicate neighbors. When planting, use polymers to aid in water retention and thus give plants a good start.
  

• When planting shrubs and trees, you could surround them with landscaping cloth, but heavy mulching with organic materials is just as effective, and much cheaper. Keep the mulch away from tree trunks so they can breathe.
  

• Select plants for your climate. Don’t waste your time with plants that won’t thrive there. Visit the best gardens in your area—they may be your friend’s garden or the botanic or civic garden—and copy what you see. Talk to the person who made the plant selection and find out what works and what doesn’t.
  

• Even if you failed physics, get scientific about water use. Use a timer when watering. Establish simple drip systems in gardens and circular watering rings around individual trees. These cheap and easy practices can reduce your weekly workload by literally hours.
  

• Know your yard as intimately as you know your spouse, its temperamental micro-climates, the effect of wind on its well-being, its watering idiosyncracies, how the movement of the sun affects the plant through the seasons. This will lead you to put plants and trees in just the right places for a handsome, carefree garden.
  

T
HE ODORS OF FRYING ONIONS AND DRAUGHT BEER, SOAKED
into the walls and wood floor of Joe’s Raw Bar, went with college days. They awakened memories of the summer of 1975.

Jay had pleaded the need for a cup of coffee, and this nostalgic bar was on the way home. He slowly shook his head. “We really had something going.”

“For a few weeks we did,” amended Louise, stirring her cream soda with a straw.

“Six weeks.” Jay looked straight into her eyes. “Then came that son-of-a-gun Bill down from bloody Harvard.” He grinned, to take the sting out of the words.

“It happens, Jay. I fell in love with Bill. I’m sorry, but remember, you liked Bill. You even came to our wedding. You’ll like him when you meet him again.”

He reached a hand over to cover hers as a gesture of remorse. “I don’t know why I’m sounding like a vindictive spoilsport. But he sure grabbed you up in a hurry.” The pain in his eyes was unmistakable. “I turned my back one day, and you were gone.”

She realized how selfish it was to reminisce about those days. To her, it was romantic, but to Jay, it was painful. Back then, she had found him to be a man for all occasions: They went to foreign films and art events, explored Virginia waterfalls, and hiked the Shenandoah trail, Jay adroitly leading the way over rocks and ridges. She remembered best the simple walks along the C & O Canal at twilight and the canoe trips on the Potomac. Jay would beach the boat and hide their packed lunches so cleverly no animal could find them, while they skinny-dipped in the river.

Her face flushed at the memory. When she looked over at Jay, his pale eyes were shining with the same devotion that she had seen there twenty years ago. “Louise, we would have been great together. Maybe I would have done better if only you’d been with me.”

“Jay, we both know this is useless. Let’s just remember those lovely days, and not regret anything. You married, didn’t you? I thought I heard that.” She stopped, wishing she hadn’t brought up his marriage. Who knows what happened to it?

His eyes changed, grew wary. “I married a wonderful woman named Lannie Gordon; she was in law school at Georgetown. We settled in Sacramento after Lannie got a job out there. She was very successful—became the youngest partner in her law firm. Meantime, I got into investigative reporting at the
Sacramento Union.
Specialized in Death Row cases that were faulty and got a number of people freed, too. If anything in life was satisfying, that was.”

“Was?”

“Lannie had a baby, and that meant getting a house, and Lannie wanted a pretty fancy house. I sure wasn’t able to carry
my part of the financial load on a reporter’s salary, so I ended up joining a p.r. firm to make some bucks.” He attempted a smile that was more of a grimace. “I became expert at writing speeches for candidates; I’d write speeches for anybody, as long as they were a paying client.”

“So you felt like a sellout.”

The faded eyes looked at her from underneath the unruly brows. “Yeah. I was no different from Lannie.” Then he frowned down at the bar-finish tabletop. “Even with those concessions, I haven’t made the marriage work; that left our daughter, Melissa, squarely in the middle.”

“And Lannie …”

“She’s a big-time lawyer now. She’s here in D.C., a top litigator and lobbyist for the tobacco industry.”

“I think I’ve seen her on television, speaking up for the tobacco companies. Shoulder-length red hair, very serious?”

“Yes, that’s Lannie. We divorced five years ago, and a year after that, she moved to Washington for this new job and took Melissa with her. Like a dope, I went along with the idea, and that caused all the trouble. Melissa was nine then, thirteen now. She and I missed each other so much that I went to court to change things, and I succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. Lannie was upset, of course: She loves the girl just as much as I do. Melissa is wonderful and beautiful.”

He strained for an image special enough for his daughter. “Just about as beautiful as that first day of spring. Loves to read and write, loves animals. She has a canny nature, and I like that because she reminds me of me, but maybe that comes from her mother, too.”

“You were so idealistic. Was Lannie that way, too?”

He stared off into space, remembering. “Yes, like we all were in the seventies: idealistic, but with our old values undercut by the confusion of the sixties. She may still be idealistic way underneath; it was the job and the success that changed her. Maybe it’s because she grew up on that pathetic little farm in southern Indiana, with so little in the way of material advantages, that she needs them so much now. Once her career got going out in California, it was as if we were two of the earth’s plates that drifted apart.”

He shook his head. “The funny thing is, I still love her, and if she ever asked me to come back, I’d do it. But she’s heartbroken because of the judge’s decision: He gave me custody for all of the school year. What really wrenched her was that our daughter got on the stand and told the judge she prefers to live with me.”

“What a thing for a mother to hear!”

“I feel sorry for her, too, Louise, but what’s going to happen is for the best. In a week, Melissa drives back with me to California, and then will stay with her mother in Great Falls at Christmas and for three months during the summer.” His face clouded up again.

“Why are you concerned, Jay? It sounds like a great outcome for you.”

“It’s because my ex-wife’s so darned disappointed, Louise. It’s as if I’ve snatched her soul away. She firmly believes Melissa is better off with her: She gave her the best of everything and even took her to Europe a couple of times. I think the girl makes Lannie feel like a better
person.
So now, I’m hoping she doesn’t do something desperate, like taking Melissa abroad to
live. She has a house in Ireland, and God knows she has the money for the two of them to just emigrate.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, intent on his story. “Right after the judges decree in February, which takes effect next Friday, I flew here to D.C. to check things out. I was afraid Lannie might take off with our daughter then. I felt terrible spying on her, but I had to. Then, I came across a story that I first got wind of last fall in California. Got a deal going to stay in Washington, and I’ve been, well, working here ever since. And keeping an eye on Melissa, unbeknownst to my ex.”

He shook his head, as if he had dwelled enough on the matter, and then looked at the clock on the greasy tan wall. “Louise, it’s after six: Are you sure we aren’t running overtime?”

She had called Bill from her office at Channel Five, telling him she was bringing Jay home. He sounded a little put out, but he remembered Jay. She told him they were going out to get coffee first. “We’d better go, so I can dream up something for supper.”

Jay slid out of the booth, protesting. “Louise, I don’t need care and feeding—just a room where I can stay out of sight.”

“You’re having dinner with us, don’t be silly. Bill will be glad to see you again.”

As they walked to the door, Jay looked around the bar. He said, “This place is just like our old college hangouts in Georgetown.”

She smiled up at him. “That’s why I brought you here.”

He followed her the eight miles home on the crowded highway in a dull-colored old Ford that looked like it wouldn’t
pass the emissions test. But Louise could figure it out: Her old flame was going incognito, and that included his car.

Of course, her seven-year-old Honda wagon, which smelled of all her garden acquisitions, from plants to peat to manure, wasn’t much better.