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Dr. Leda's Rose Journal |
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Dr. Leda's March Gardening Diary
By Dr. Leda Horticulture, O. R.
March 30, 2002
Joining the ranks of such horticultural luminaries as Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West, Dr. Leda chronicles her daily observations in the garden.
March 1: Spring has arrived! The grass is green, the birds are singing, the roses have set buds. I wonder if there's some sort of prize for having the whitest legs in North America.
March 2: The beautiful spring weather has lifted my spirits. I feel compelled to don red stilettos and frolic unbridled through the jonquils with Mother Nature, gleefully strewing cow manure and epsom salts as I go.
March 4: Sunny and warm again today. Voluptuous rose buds are bursting at their seams. The Knockouts by the driveway have bloomed, and I believe Abraham Darby will open tomorrow. By the way, I've noticed an amusing little error in the newspaper: it claims the low temperature tonight will be 19 degrees. Ha! The copy editor is in a coma. They must have meant 49, or more likely 59. I've bought some new sunscreen since I'm starting to look like Tom Hanks in the second half of Cast Away.
March 5: Excuse me, I thought this was supposed to be subtropical south Louisiana. Why are my lips blue? Why are my toes numb? Why is a flock of penguins huddled around my floor furnace?
March 6: Dressed in six pairs of socks along with everything else on pages 2 through 28 of the Land's End catalog, I ventured outdoors to survey the damage. The yard has turned to arctic tundra. The grass has gone brown and there are glaciers in the bird bath. I am weeping over the roses: the buds and shoots are black and mushy. My garden is ruined! What's to become of me? I will end up living in an igloo, subsisting on polar bear gumbo.
March 9: The frost is over. Apparently Mother Nature experienced a temporary lapse in judgment, but she's back on the wagon now, and we will be returning shortly to our regularly scheduled program.
March 11: Oops, we seem to have skipped spring altogether and moved directly from the Pleistocene Ice Age to the Tenth Circle of Inferno. Sweltering record-breaking temperatures in the high 80s! I have taken to my bed.
March 12: The south is not all it's cracked up to be. Nobody ever brings me mint juleps.
March 13: The humidity is staggering. My hair looks like a terminally frightened small animal, and all the roses have come down with blackspot, even the ones with immunity. I believe the freeze damaged the protective cuticles on the leaves. Well, they'll just have to defoliate and start over. It's no worse than a bad case of acne, but those drama-queen roses are all moaning like the English Patient. I have no idea where they learned such histrionics. I refuse to go outside and read to them in this heat.
March 14: The yard is starting to resemble Borneo. I desperately need to mow the lawn but some sinister looking vine has consumed the tool shed. It looks suspiciously like a rose, though I don't recall ever planting a Mme. de Kudzu back there.
March 15: I've borrowed the unabridged cassette of Madame Bovary for the Noisettes and the tea roses. (I've promised them Anna Karenina next week; those old garden roses are inordinately fond of adultery novels.) It's a bit cooler so I've been lounging in the hammock while they listen. We all agree that Claire Bloom is the perfect Emma.
March 16: Stop the presses! More severe freeze warnings! Chop fire wood! Drip faucets! Stockpile toilet paper! Start a roux! I think I have whiplash.
March 17: Toxic relationship update: I am no longer involved with Mother Nature. She's a trashy psychopathic bipolar brute who can't be trusted. What on earth was she thinking last night? 22 degrees in the middle of March! I suppose that's about what you'd expect from someone who wears white shoes after Labor Day.
March 19: The poor roses are having to start all over, yet again. It's especially tough on their fragile egos that they're looking so ratty just when the tacky azaleas are putting on a day-glo circus all over town. I'll fix a shrimp etoufee for their supper, that always cheers them up.
March 20: Torrential downpours of Biblical proportions.
March 21: Still pouring. The whole yard is under water.
March 22: Still pouring. I've set crawfish traps in the floribunda beds.
March 24: Just when I was about to give up gardening and join a bowling league, the sun came out. Ha! Mother Nature thinks she can come crawling back on her hands and knees, begging me to forgive her. This time she really means it, this time things will be different. I've heard it all a thousand times before. I'll never take her back, never!
March 27: The neighbor steps onto her porch and sees me hunched over weeding. I'm crouching in the mud beneath New Dawn, sweating profusely as I try vainly to dodge fire ants and scalp-shredding thorns. The oxalis is growing back much faster than I can pull it. "Oh, you're so lucky to have your garden!" she calls out cheerfully. "It must be such a nice little stress-free way to escape reality." Wiping blood from my brow, I wonder if I have enough gin to fill the bathtub.
March 30: Sally Holmes is in bloom! Don Juan has a flower! So does Fourth of July! And the Knockouts by the driveway are so flashy they're setting off car alarms up and down the block. I don't think there's ever been a more glorious day on this planet.
March 31: So maybe I'll just have Mother Nature by for a cup of tea. But she'll have to take it on the porch, I'm not inviting her in the house.
Next month: Dr. Leda's Mail Bag. Using real-life situations from readers, Dr. Leda will offer firm yet compassionate advice on how to find greater satisfaction in relationships with roses.
