is a virtue I don't possess. Frankly Mr. Shankly, I think it's boring and tepid and overrated.
I am impatient. I don't like waiting when there is something that I want badly.
This means: half-baked muffins. Underdone roasts. And yelling at my garden to grow.
I think that the tubers and seeds and bare roots know I'm cross with them. They sense that I am anxious for them to send up shoots - to give me a sign of life. C'MON, I say. THROW ME A BONE, will you? I'm dying ova here. They defy me by taking their own sweet time.
Annuals are instant gratification. This weekend we planted two flats of pansies at the Little House That Could and they looked so lovely and jaunty and sweet. But at home, I am trying to build something that will last - old English roses, clematis, hydrangea. A few double begonias and dahlias, some purply geranium "Roxanne."
I've planted. I've poked. I've watered. I've cuddled up with the David Austin rose catalog every night (dear God, save me from this temptation - it's almost too much to bear), fantasizing about the delicate fragrance of blossoms climbing up ugly city facades.
But now it's time to wait. And it's killing me. The one consolation is the delicious feeling of hope. That, and the brief period of time when there is no evidence that you've screwed up - no moldy leaves, no blackspot, no over-watered roots. Just buckets of earth roiling beneath a quiet surface.
