| For Savannah Morning News
We moved pots – or did we kink a hose? – nothing too difficult or esoteric when my friend Sarah paused, got up, turned to me and said: “What do people who do not work in the garden?”
What in fact.
Especially in late May or early June, when everything you put in and look at in the garden seems to respond to the slightest attention. You look at it and the plant grows. What’s so hard about growing eggplant? Nothing. What about okra? Dead easy. And these are the annuals, the plants that we buy in everyday six-packs. Or zinnia seeds. You scratch the earth, throw away the stones, pull on the roots, draw the space with a few sticks so that you don’t forget that you are growing something there and you radiate the seeds, marvel for the hundredth time at the verb ” Transmission.”
Your only job for the next few days is to remember to water the area. And one more thing: never go into the garden in the heat of the day. Nothing looks fresh in the afternoon, nothing is bold. Do you know how to take a 20 minute nap around 3 p.m.? This is what the garden feels like. It’s best to stop by in the early morning or early evening.
More: Georgia Coast weather, sandy soil affects lawn health
More: A pyromaniac for torch lilies in the Savannah Garden
Aside from the annuals, it’s the other business in the garden – the perennials, the stuff that returns year after year – that makes us sit up and take notice, especially for those of us with short memories. They make the whole thing worthwhile. Who doesn’t like surprises? I’m talking about the plants that reappear after summer droughts, hurricane season, and winter winds, the kind that require no attention at all. (My type of plant).
Take the gloriosa lily – or maybe you say fire lily. The colors – red, orange and yellow – certainly read like fire. The name alone is enough to make you want to pronounce it. If you do it a couple of times you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s a lovely plant. The US Postal Service even put it on a postage stamp for a year.
Then there is the voodoo lily. This is a corker. I forget it every year. It’s not like the night-blooming cereus that hangs around all year – sometimes more than a year – without doing anything. Or the Crocosmia, which blooms when it wants. But the voodoo lily? Each year. I’m going to be walking through the back yard to feed the chickens and there it is without warning and showing off all of its erotic – can you say phallic? – Qualities. There is no other plant like her. It’s also called the corpse plant because of the foul smell, but as someone who loves joking around on the compost heap and tucking around the chicken coop, the smell doesn’t bother me.
Right now in a garden that gets neither water nor special attention, the prize goes to the Alstroemeria or Peruvian Lily. If at some point I thought my basically neglected garden was being taken over by the passion vine (Why? Because it climbed, crawled, crawled, invaded, and invaded everything else in the garden), I’m here to take that back. The Alstroemeria has become the No. 1 plant. She is everywhere. If it wasn’t such a great cut flower, I would complain. No wonder that Kroger, who, like many grocery chains, makes a lot of money with flowers, puts them on a billboard. It is a hardy plant.
For those of us in Savannah who care about the garden, this is the heyday, the climax, the climax. But we know we shouldn’t get cocky. Just because we had California weather with no humidity in the 1970s (even the ocean is too cool for comfort) we know it won’t stay that way.
The thermal blanket will come. Our enthusiasm will wane.
While the rest of the country marvels at dahlias, lilacs, forsythias, gladioli, coneflowers, cleomes and iris fields, we sneak in on the coast while eating watermelons and trying to find new ways to cook pumpkin.
As a cocoon of the northerners in winter, we will go inside in summer to cool our garden nozzles, find another book to read and wait until August. Then, even though it’s still hot, we can start our cycle again.
Contact Jane Fishman at gofish5@earthlink.net or call 912-484-3045. You can find more columns by Jane at SavannahNow.com/lifestyle/.
More: Finding the right flowers for your Georgia home can save you a little money
