June 23, 2014--Midcoast: Gardening

We've been here seven days and have already made three trips to Moose Crossing, the funky-named garden center 15 miles north on US 1 past Waldoboro.

Rona's last year's perennial plantings for the most part made it through the harsh winter. Just how harsh we heard on Friday at the farmer's market from Mrs. Chase, who makes the best pies in the Northeast (which means anywhere), who told us how her husband managed to keep the house warm all winter.

"We heat with wood and even have a wood-burning boiler for hot water. Usually winters he shovels out the ashes four, maybe five times. This year," she said with a broad smile, "he needed to do it eleven times. Can you imagine, eleven times!" It was clear she thought they had been through an adventure.

A few days earlier, it was with trepidation that we went first to the waterside gardens immediately after we arrived to see how things had fared.

The blue and white Lupine were fully two-feet tall, in extravagant bloom, bending in the wind off the bay. The Delphiniums planted in the center of Rona's rambling perennial border looked as if they had expanded three times since the early fall while the Foxgloves were feeling a bit unhappy. "Maybe they're too close to the Lupine," Rona mused, "The sun gets blocked. They need lots of sun."

But the pink Obedients were anything but obedient as they had naturalized north and south way beyond the boundaries Rona had set for them.

"Looks like I'll need to do some dividing," Rona said, quite pleased with herself as she looked out over her flower beds, "I know just where I can place what I don't want in the beds." Her gaze and gesture swept across the full expanse of her garden kingdom.

"Shouldn't we unpack the car and get settled? We haven't even looked in the house to see how it made it through the winter. There could be all sorts of . . ."

"Stop right there. I don't want you bringing any of your New York anxieties up to Maine and into the house. That's why we're here--to shelter ourselves from all that and to take on the peace and solitude and to . . ."

"I'm with you," I cut her off, "I agree with all that. But how come the garden always comes first and the house second?"

"You'd have to be a woman to understand."

She turned away to wander among her Roses of Sharon (doing very well) and her Dasante Blue Delphiniums (also exploding with new growth).

Rona's comment about gender and gardening caught me by surprise, but through the years I had noticed that almost all the gardening I've witnessed, note witnessed, was done by women. In fact, at Moose Crossing I don't ever recall seeing a man alone pulling a cart full of annuals. Yes, men lug along those rubber-wheeled carts but always, in truth like me as well, trailing a step or two behind while their wives select a Pink Astilbe (False Goatsbeard) or a Red Vein Indian Mallow. Their role, our role, is to try to patiently be of assistance until we can get back to our tool sheds and chain saws.

A couple of days later, after we had in fact ventured into the house (all was as we had left it), settled in, restocked the pantry and refrigerator, and Rona had divided and relocated some of her Obedients, I asked about "this business of women and gardens."

"I imagine you must also be thinking about women, or girls, and their horses."

"As a matter of fact, yes. That too. Do you think it's . . ."

"Rustic things?"

"Sounds possible. But I don't understand the women connection. Why you guys, I mean women, are so attracted to rural matters while we guys would rather spend our weekends lying around watching baseball on TV."

"And it's not because the men work for a living and need to decompress over the weekend and women stay at home, take care of the kids, do the cooking and cleaning so that getting out into the garden is a natural extension of that."

"Well," I said professorially, "in a lot of native societies women do the gathering while the men do the hunting. The gathering being looking for edible plants and roots and tubers. I suppose, a version of gardening."

"There could be some hard-wiring going on," Rona conceded. "But nowadays everyone is working, not that many of us do any gathering, and so clearly there's something else going on. I agree."

"Glad to hear that. What's going on?"

"I'm getting to it. We were up at Moose on Thursday and the place was really busy. It's prime planting time here. We have a short growing season and if new plants don't get into the ground in the next few weeks, they'll be goners by next spring, and not one person shopping for plants was a woman. Like you, there were men trailing along, schlepping wagons full of plants."

"And the meaning of all this is?"

"Simple--women are more connected to nature because they have the natural capacity to bear children and in most societies, even here, have the primary responsibility for raising them. I hope this doesn't sound sexist. What do feminists call this, Essentialism?" I nodded. "Gardening must somehow be related to these DNA-driven female capacities."

"I won't tell some of our friends what you're saying. I don't want to get you in trouble."

"I'm OK with this analysis. But there's at least one more reason."

"Which is?"

"We're just smarter than men about what's important. What sounds more important to you," she winked, "making and maintaining a garden or drinking a six-pack while watching the World Cup."

"I can tell you what the Brazilians would say."

"You mean the guys, right?"