Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Why isn’t it enough to enjoy the beauty in other people’s gardens? You walk by and drink it in. All the pleasure. None of the work.

Other people’s gardens full of black-eyed susans got me started with this color-saturated perennial and its dense drifts of bright blossoms. Desire drove me like a toddler who wants the other kid’s toy. I tucked three or four starts from the garden store toward the back of the dahlia bed for a little extra color. (And I do feel the dahlia lovers shaking their heads going “You stuck that in with your perfect chic dahlias?”)

My bad.

Rudbeckia did not understand the assignment. At all. Two years later, I am weeding the exponential growth. Black-eyed susans send out runners in every direction. If you don’t stop them, they form these matts of new starts in the spring. The slugs love to hide from the sun under them. When you’ve cleared them, the struggling dahlias trying to fight their way up have been all chewed on by slugs, who don’t bother eating the Rudbeckia.

I’m about half done. I would offer these starts to some other gardener. Trouble is I like all the gardeners I know.

Wanting vs. having. There’s some wisdom buried in there. Maybe it’ll come to me while I’m weeding.