“Driving at the 10 mph suggested speed up the nursery back entrance, we waved to the crouched workers encircled by black, plastic pots of perennials, some still colorful, some merely hanging onto hope. My position, right arm loosely gripping the truck’s steering wheel, left arm splayed, nonchalant, out the open window, riding invisible waves of pleasure, signals the joy of cruising slow, into beloved territory. I think when Vermont had more farms, and more farm trucks, this was a common sight. An agricultural truck has unbelievable prowess, in a land of agricultural priorities. At the risk of sounding nostalgic, I miss the beat up, rust buckets we all used to drive, or that a boyfriend typically might arrive in: something hard to climb up into, and with great difficulty, shut the door of. Nothing with a GPS; not hardly. I’m definitely more nostalgic for the ritual, than for any particular boyfriend, although that would have been nice. And my first car was, well, a used pickup truck. Despite the fact that I’d never driven standard, I bought it, and somehow got it home, to my parents’ house. Eventually it got me to Burlington, VT, where is commenced to die in the driveway of my rental on Maple Street, as soon as the weather turned frigid. Luckily, I could walk most places: to my job at least, and that was the end of it. I had balked at the idea of a truck being automatic shift, up until 2020, even considered disconnecting the blue tooth. Maybe its a good idea. The less we’re tracked and traced, the more life might decide to return to its former, simpler, ways. But, I digress. August is a challenging month for flower growers, and so anything blooming like there’s no tomorrow, catches the eye. “Wait, what IS that?” I said, and abruptly pulled the Chevy onto the grass, where maybe I shouldn’t be parking. We got out, and made a bee-line for the hot pink, over-sized thing, calling from the tarmac of an otherwise neatly organized, well-behaved row of plant commodities. “Holy crap, it’s a Hibiscus,” I said, breathlessly. She looked at the tag, reading as one does, in first grade. “Wa-ter-me-lon-Ruf-fle”. Nice. The plant namers seem to never run dry, oddly. But, at the same time, I admit the image of the juicy fruit, coupled with what my eyes were feasting upon, did not fail to create a sumptuous enticement. “Let’s get three,” I said, adding “she’ll love these”. To make a long story short, I made a second trip to the nursery, later in the day, urged on by my cohort, to buy four more. I threw in a few Buddleja, & small dots of Stella D’Oro daylilies, to round it all out. My vision was complete. Plant design is part science, but mostly inspired by unexpected encounters with plants, when done well. And our day would not have been complete, without the incursion of a strange, insect, that prompted us to take lunch, immediately. While described in some circles as “a gorgeous and gentle solitary wasp”, our first experience with “The Great Golden Digger Wasp” was not so romantic. It appeared out of nowhere, looking like a drone created by DARPA, as part of its utilizing nature as weaponization program. I must have disturbed a larvae repository, best we could figure. It flew around and around our planting area, with a grasshopper in its clutches, for all of a half hour. This did not jive exactly, with our plans for beautification. Okay, okay. I know flower gardening has its detractors. But we are aware of what goes on around us, on a good day. On a bad day, we admit defeat, or at least temporary insanity, while fighting things that seem hell bent on our destruction.”
