My Adventure in Horticulture

April 26 2016

The only year I planted bulbs.

Expecting to see stiff green shoots

pierce the barely thawed soil,

erupt from stubborn clumps of snow

still holding out.

A shock of green, on tired white,

riotous reds, yellows, violets

arresting the eye.

So all spring, I was disappointed 

to see the bare brown bed

overrun with weeds;

like metastases,

seeding the yard

from out of nowhere.

Who knew

there was an "up" to bulbs.

That a native plant

would not seek out the sun

as naturally as water,

stem curling skyward

roots U-turning down,

grappling methodically

into wet dark earth.

So you’d think I could count

on the life force,

a plant’s innate knowledge.

Or was it stunted soil

black thumb

killer frost?

Squirrels, perhaps,

pursuing their own survival

with the ravenous drive

of wild things.

A hard winter, a late spring.

No green succulent shoots.

No brilliant burst

of primary colour.

It's true. Although it was only well after that I realized I must have planted them upside down. And, to be scrupulously correct, a single tulip may have struggled up ...only to die soon after. I suppose I'm too easily discouraged; but that proved to be my last adventure in horticulture.

But as the poem suggests, you'd think it wouldn't matter. That a bulb or seed would know how to grow in the right direction:  know up from down; know sun from earth. 

I hope I was able to conjure the image of those first hardy plants of spring, bursting out when there is still snow on the ground:  their nascent green is arresting, their blossoms are luminous, and their succulence is bursting with the life force.