As a child, as a teenager, as a young adult, I have often said, I will never:
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Doing something you said you would never do can be a liberating experience, and an indication of maturity & open~mindedness; or it can be an exercise in self~denial, and an indication of submissiveness & weak personal boundaries.
I suppose it's a matter of self-knowledge and perspective.
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My list included things like, own a spice rack ~ surely, a red flag that I had sold out of the apartment-dwelling nomadic counterculture and bought into the house-owning sedentary bourgeoisie...
...um ...that is what a spice rack signifies, isn't it? No matter how fine it is.
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I have also said, I will never have a garden full of inedible plants. Plants must be edible or otherwise functional, or else they are useless frippery & a waste of effort.
So. Last weekend: I'm scrounging through the seed racks that have been depleted by gardeners more prompt about their spring planting than I. Dearth of choice necessitated a change of expectations.
And somehow ~ I don't know how it happened ~ in the space of five minutes, I was transformed from being a person who would never plant anything as kitschy as a night~blooming garden to being a person who was excited about the prospect of having a night~blooming garden for the first time.
I'm even going so far as to shuffle around plants already planted and seeds already sown in order to accomodate the new garden order. Plants and seeds generally don't like being asked to give up their seat; so it's a bit of a risk to take for something that, up until last week, I said I would never do.
Part of it can be attributed to a gift I was given ~ a mixed package of seeds, now planted by my front door. Most of the seeds were unfamiliar to me, so I researched them. Some were edible, some were medicinal; and one, I discovered, belonged to a family of plants called Night~Scented Stocks.
What's the point of cultivating flowers that bloom at night? I thought. Why have a garden that you'll sleep through the better part of?
And this percolated through my grey matter until last week, when I was standing in front of the ravaged rack of seeds, searching for gardening ideas.
In our temperate zone (5B) no~one can guarantee that summers will be hot; so it is still inexplicable to me how my mind seized upon and justified a night garden as a lovely place to spend those summer evenings when it's too uncomfortable to stay in the house and too pleasant not to lounge outside.
Frankly, I mystify me. And that's probably the way it's going to stay.
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If, later this summer, you pass by my place in the evening, you might discern the scents of: Moonflower; Four O'Clock; Evening Primrose; & Night Scented Stocks.
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Postscript: Incidentally, I also once said I will never blog...
Posted by edgar at May 21, 2003 10:44 AM