Gardening like a quilter

I used to garden, before I became as absorbed in quilting as I have been for a number of years - I gardened in each place I've lived.  The garden here, what was gardenable of it, got, after an initial flurry, some native shrubs, grevilleas and so forth, and pretty much did its own thing.  My palette, my way of playing with colour and design, was fabric.
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There's a circular-ish bed in the front garden which I've cleared out these holidays - overgrown shrubs cut down, bags filled with weeds and trimmings, trips to the tip.  The scrapbooking cupboard project has been suspended these last two days in favour of seizing the opportunity (but here's a glimpse of the next stage...).
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  Sometimes it's been tedious, weed after weed - fishbone fern baubles seem to be endless, every time you turn the soil there's another one, or six, to remove.  It's certainly been good exercise, bending and stretching and levering out stumps and so on.
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After all the clearing, it was time to plant.  I had some agapanthus which had been a tad overwhelmed by everything else, so those got put together in a group.  I hope they will flower this summer, blue and round and nodding in the breeze, like there's a cheerful conversation going on, only you can't quite hear it.

I've created native gardens, with grevilleas and other Australian native plants.  I really have.  But the garden of my heart is a cottage garden, the profusion of colour, the mad wonderful mix of flowers and vegetables and whatever you like, no rules broken because there are none to break.  So I toddled around a couple of nurseries and let my eyes and heart have their way.  Parsley, because I like having that to pick from the garden, and the price for a bought bunch is ridiculous (I think it was $1.50 or $2 last time I bought some).  Cherry tomatoes, for their prolific fruiting and the burst of sunlight and flavour on the tongue.  Daisies, in white and in pink.  Lavenders.  More herbs - rosemary, and thyme and sage, to complete the rhyme; basil, for its summer fragrance and taste, and as companion planting for the tomatoes.  Pink geraniums - one with a pointed petal, another with a wonderfully splotched look.  Dianthus, for their wonderful scent.  White petunias and white salvia, for calm and their ghostly grace in evening light.  Compact dahlias, for their gaudy fifties look, hot bright colours for the height of summer.  I did see a punnet or two of pansies, but they're past their time, for this year at least.

I had what we thought an discussion, and what others thought was bickering, the other night at dinner with friends.  He said, the garden bed out the front of a house should be a showcase.  I said, no, I'm planting it cottage style.  He said, but that's wrong, you do the messy stuff in the back garden.  I pointed out that the back garden is a shallow depth of soil over rock - not promising for gardening.  This front bed has decent soil, decent sun and lots of potential.  OK, I said, going on the offensive, what exactly SHOULD I be planting there?  At which point he got vague, and mentioned potted colour.  Really? I said, thinking, costabunch planting of what anybody's got... And then it was time for rack of lamb and roast vegetables and for dessert, raspberries and posh vanilla icecream, and the conversation moved on to other things.
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But as I chose plants today, I realised that I was gardening like a quilter - assembling my palette, choosing not necessarily based on a specific plan, but a general idea - cottage-style - and a general principle - choose things you like.  I have four shades of pink, and at least one clashes with the others.  Am I bovvered? Nope.  There are perennials and annuals, flowers and vegetables, herbs and so it goes.  I believe it will all go together, because I've chosen them and nature is forgiving - maybe plants are even more forgiving than fabric.  A certain amount of my quilting is instinct rather than logic, and I did the same here.  Going with the heart, trusting that it will work out as I create it - quilt, or garden.
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I had forgotten the mindless state you can get into, gardening.  Just thinking about what might go where.  Wondering how it will be, in a couple of months, to taste veges grown on my land - it's years since I grew any veges.  The young boys next door, whose soccer ball didn't hit my head despite their best efforts, came to retrieve it from time to time when it cleared the fence, and commented that this was looking better (very observant, for boys, although the change is quite dramatic).  An optimistic kookaburra flew down to land quite close to me, to see if my efforts had unearthed any promising worms or other foodstuff - they're such confident birds, with a cheerful, jaunty air. 
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Having a slight hose-connection issue I can solve tomorrow, I filled the watering can several times to put over the planting I got done before the light faded.  The boys headed indoors for their supper.  The kookaburra found some of his, and flew off in search of more, or a roost for the night.  I looked at the parsley seedlings, and the sturdy beginnings of the tomato plants, and the tiny tender leaves of basil, and the deep pink daisy bush, and the lavender hybrid with flying petals - the soil damp around them, the darkness gathering them in, the promise of more to plant tomorrow morning, when a hot shower will have eased the stiffness in my shoulders.  It's good to have my hands in the dirt again, and to be again attuned to the timescale of growing plants.
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Just don't tell my mother.  She's a Notable Gardener and will be far too pleased that I appear to have learned the error of my ways and returned to the fold of Gardens and Wisdom.  She gardens like a gardener.  I garden like a quilter.  And there's nothing wrong with either approach.
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