"How agitated I am when I am in the garden,
and how happy I am to be so agitated.
How vexed I often am when I am in the garden,
and how happy I am to be so vexed.
What to do?
Nothing works
just the way I thought it would,
nothing looks just the way
I had imagined it,
and when sometimes it does look
like what I had imagined
(and this, thank God, is rare)
I am startled
that my imagination is so ordinary....
Mystery cucurbit - a rotted watermelon?
the legacy of the tossed remains of the last
of my overzealous end-of-season squash
purchase? - growing in the compost
(surely a sign of my compost failure, which
sign I instead find delightful)
Potato flowers from gone-to-seed organic
Peruvian Blues cut up and tossed in a bed.
"... Next year (that summer, this summer!)
when I see the results of my handiwork,
the results of my vexations,
I feel sure I will be irritated
with the joy of success
or deeply vexed
by the results of my miscalculation."
- Jamaica Kincaid
Excerpts from "Wisteria" in My Garden (Book):
(line breaks added)
Selfed coreopsis in front of a
thriving flax.
Mystery cucurbit - a rotted watermelon?
the legacy of the tossed remains of the last
of my overzealous end-of-season squash
purchase? - growing in the compost
(surely a sign of my compost failure, which
sign I instead find delightful)
Potato flowers from gone-to-seed organic
Peruvian Blues cut up and tossed in a bed.
"... Next year (that summer, this summer!)
when I see the results of my handiwork,
the results of my vexations,
I feel sure I will be irritated
with the joy of success
or deeply vexed
by the results of my miscalculation."
- Jamaica Kincaid
Excerpts from "Wisteria" in My Garden (Book):
(line breaks added)
Selfed coreopsis in front of a
thriving flax.
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