Wish Yu Jie's little garden.
Text | Shi Kang & Zhu Yujie
Edit | West brain wrapped flower
Anchors/David, Xia Yi, Soundtrack/α· Pav "ξ" & "κ", Cheng Bi "Wood"
Zhu Yujie:
Hello.
Do you want to hear me talk about the garden? All right. In fact, it's ongoing.
The first important thing I learned when I arrived in the United States was single-handed, which is difficult to translate into Chinese because very few Chinese experienced it. It literally means going it alone, and it actually means that one person goes about something that requires the cooperation of many people, such as renovating a sailboat for oneself, or, a garden.
It's no surprise that you can design and build a beautiful garden for yourself alone, there are so many books and videos about how a person designs and builds a garden for himself, and I read those books when I was studying English. The point is, it takes a lot of time to learn how to do it, and at the same time, it takes a lot of time to do it.
In 2014 I started a studio for myself in the seattle suburbs for writing. Unattended, the house is densely covered with a variety of wild grasses, which have been left unattended for nearly 5 years, mainly intertwined with thorny and thornless climbing vines.
One evening, I carried the only chair I had to the backyard and sat down in that chair wondering if I needed a garden.
A year later, I had watched some books and videos on how to build a garden, and I tried to start building a garden vegetable garden. I started by cleaning up English Ivy, which is a vine-climbing plant that grows everywhere, covers everything it can cover, it grows very fast, piece by piece, layer by layer, I tried to clean it up, for eight hours, just to clear out a small space of 2 meters x 2 meters, and it covers about two acres of land on both sides of my house, not to mention the hard thorny plants that are full of pointy points, to deal with them, you need to cut the stems first, take them with stab-proof gloves and throw them into the garbage can. Finally dig out their roots.
In addition, my backyard lawn is also covered with dandelions, they are flattened on the ground, both ugly and ugly, how to see it is still ugly, and its roots can be vertically rooted into the ground more than half a foot deep, bare hands can not pull up a few trees, your fingers will be sore and unbearable. In the spring and summer, the dandelions behind the house in front of my house will bloom yellow flowers, that is, you must remove its last signal, otherwise in a few days it can quickly seed and become a small cotton ball, and when the wind blows, those seeds will not drift with the wind to a very far place, but fall on the spot, and then quietly touch it and grow a large piece of dandelion that is exactly the same in the same place, and to get rid of them, you will have to spend ten times the effort.
Fortunately, there are Americans who specially invented a tool to pull it, and I bought a very good one. So I spent 10 minutes a day pulling out those dandelions, and when I finally pulled them almost, the lawn became potholed.
For the next three years, I spent an average of two hours a day removing English Ivy and dandelions before there was a relatively clean land around my house.
For the next year, I leveled the land every day, full of rubble and tree roots, for an hour or two a day, even after I became skilled, I could only level two or three square meters, and it was already a very fast speed to level the ground in a year.
In fact, all of this can be hired or rented with various professional tools to get a little faster, but since I was impressed by the single-handed, and having reached the age when it was time to sweat a little every day to maintain health, I did it all myself in the most primitive way.
When I was in China, I had never heard of single-handed, so I paid for a professional to do everything. But one day I found a passage in a book about the British people who felt empty more than a hundred years ago, they found that after having a lot of money because of luck, they could hire someone to do anything for themselves, resulting in nothing to do, and finally they found that they could even hire someone to live for themselves, and this made their sense of emptiness worse, so the single-handed thing was born: born as a human being, in principle, you can do anything yourself, and you better do it yourself. Because that's your life.
Ever since I thought I needed a garden, I started reading books and videos about garden design, almost after dinner or before going to bed, and I always went out to see how the public gardens were designed, and I found that the difficulty was to plant something in the garden — in general, you have no standard or clue about what you want to see every time you walk out of your room all year round, because you have never made any preparations to admire the plants before.
Then find a plant that you like and can't get tired of.
What a plant looks like all year round, with other plants in general, how to plant, how to manage, reading this information needs to spend a huge amount of time, if you look at half an hour to an hour a day, you can only see hundreds of plants a year. And generally speaking, a garden generally has thirty-four kinds of plants to grow, you just need to be patient, from the book about garden plants one by one to find your favorite plants to try to plant.
There is also soil and fertilizer. A year before the trial planting, I started making organic compost and some preliminary preparations such as the raided bed, learning the basic planting techniques of seed germination, pest control, grafting, etc.
To make a long story short, the first plant is the best choice, that is, green onions, in addition to fertilization and watering, no more management, just cut it with scissors a minute before eating, and it is needed almost every day. But the second kind of thing is a problem, I tried to grow a lot, such as tomatoes and cucumbers, only in the summer there is a three-month growth period, need to be racked up, eat well, but it looks too messy. At the same time, I tried ginger and garlic, and the results were not satisfactory, I grew too slowly, and I always had to worry about watering, and I would freeze in the ground in winter. But I still found the second kind: kale, its leaves can be chopped and mixed in eggs to make an insatiable egg cake, you can also brush a little oil and salt plus a little pepper, put it in the air fryer 300 degrees Fahrenheit 5 or 6 minutes to make a snack, like onions, it is evergreen, as you go, it can also bloom a bunch of yellow flowers in the spring, as a background flower is still OK, at least a little better than rape flowers.
The third is an herb called White Gaura Whirling Butterflies (scientific name Gaura lindheimeri). I once found in an autumn public garden that a path lined with this plant more than a meter tall was planted on both sides, and it did not feel dead at all, but it was vivid and abnormal, and every flower seemed to be flying in the air, but unfortunately its seeds needed to be planted after winter, that is, either planted in the autumn and let it germinate in the spring after wintering, or you had to put the seeds in the refrigerator, trick it into wintering, and then take it out and plant it in the germinator to germinate. I was ready to try both methods, so I bought 1,000 seeds for three dollars to try to germinate on my own.
The fourth and fifth were found together, Blue Grama Grass (Bouteloua gracilis), more than a meter tall, looking fragile and graceful, with long, narrow, thin leaves, paired with its small horizontal spikelets, fluttering and fluffy as if they were about to fly at any moment. And Aster, I like the New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), which is like a purple, more flowing daisy (Shasta Daisy) and at the same time has a sense of trembling, and this flower and grass have a strange beauty when they are put together, not snuggling together, but juxtaposing to create an interesting space, especially in autumn.
The sixth is lavender, there are many varieties, some as the book says, it can repel mosquitoes, so that I can not apply anti-mosquito oil all over the body in the evening of summer, and I need to try to plant slowly.
Then there's the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and I've tried to plant more than thirty of them, but I'm still not sure what my garden looks like, and that's how it looks like to be in a garden, and everything is very slow, it takes a year and a year.
Long story short, so far, I have spent about three years, seen more than a thousand kinds of plants, tried dozens of species, and will continue to see and try to plant. I finally decided to make up my garden of perennial herbs, and I'd love to see them wither in the winter and reborn in the spring. I already had more than fifty trees, so I didn't need trees anymore, and although I looked at dozens of fruit trees, I finally decided not to plant them anymore, because the feeling of throwing the whole tree fruit that fell to the ground into the garbage bin was very bad.
Overall, I think it's ultimately worth it to build a garden you like, because there are a lot of things that will make you feel more comfortable in the garden, doing barbecues, eating, reading, writing, walking in the garden, squatting down to pull a few grasses, painting, camping, watching the stars, doing carpentry work in the summer evening, painting furniture, or just in a daze, before doing the garden, I never thought I would spend so much time looking at the flowers and plants, and using their growth to measure the time that has passed, In order to quietly forget those times, in my opinion, the time that belongs to any life is too little, even if you have seen it, it is good to forget.
About the garden, all kinds of flowers, I also have automatic watering systems and greenhouses and other things to say, as well as all kinds of butterflies, insects and birds, and of course, squirrels and rabbits that steal seedlings and flowers, but I will have time to talk about it later.
Best wishes
Shi Kang
June 19, 2020
Daisies blooming in the garden this year.
Teacher Shi Kang:
Hello Wow!
I haven't seen you for many years, and reading your words is very kind, but at the same time strange and fresh, because in the past, you could not tell people about planting flowers and grass, and now you not only talk about it vividly, but every sentence is a valuable experience - in this world, the most expensive thing that makes you pay your hard work. (Note: Mr. Shi Kang once published a book called "Those Worthless Experiences")
In the past, I always looked at college life, youth, love, and work in the teacher's book, and in the garden, I finally synchronized with the teacher once, and I was glad that I was enlightened. In the past few years, I have discovered that many things in my life when I was a child are particularly precious, and when I became an adult, I was eager to abandon them, and in the era of pursuing efficiency, a leisurely life was not respected, and planting flowers was in it. When I was a child, my grandfather's courtyard and the balcony of my house were all rabbit holes that excited me. Some tropical plants with thorns, although ugly, can also bloom incomparably gorgeous flowers, and I sometimes deliberately let them prick their fingers and express their pain with exaggerated expressions in exchange for the warmth of adults and a Band-Aid, childhood without video games, I ran with a finger wrapped around elastic tape, and I was happy like launching a rocket.
Rose, look closely and find a bee that is collecting honey.
Living in the UK, you can't avoid the fact that every household is keen on flowers, almost every household has colorful flowers in the window, and the family space in the downtown area is limited, and if you go out a little, they will definitely plant flowers in front of the door and trees in the backyard. As a resident, you will feel that what bag to take and what watch to bring is not so important, if your door is bare, it is really humiliating, and you are embarrassed to say hello to your neighbors. British life is about community culture, and each community will have a shop similar to a gardening center, which sells all tools related to gardening. As we saw in Downton Abbey, the manor holds a contest to plant roses every year, and from servants to heroines, young and old, it is the ideal to win this honor. Nowadays, there are still large and small horticultural competitions in the United Kingdom, a bit like the table tennis and chess competitions that I often saw in China when I was a child, floral art is the Activity of the British from the community, school, town, county to the country, world-class, all-inclusive participation, newspapers, magazines, radio and television have special columns to introduce horticultural knowledge. Recognizing the name of the luxury brand is not something to be proud of, if you can count the flowers and plants like the "name of the dish", it should be admired, and the queen will also take off your hat.
Traveling with friends in the UK, I found it so hard to get out. I was heartbroken, the power was pulled, the door was locked, stepping out of the threshold, the heart was not worried; what they thought was that during this time when they were not at home, they were looking for a trusted friend to water the plants at home, and from time to time on the road, they sent messages back, asking Hou Tulip if it was okay, and whether the camellias were still blooming. When you come back, you have to go to the yard to weed, and you must not let your garden be deserted. But also, can the place without concern be called home, and home should make you remember it.
Last year my mother lived in england for a summer, hanging around, whether it was going to the queen's castle or to a friend's house as a guest, she had no interest in what big Ben, afternoon tea, but became a spectator obsessed with the garden, often while watching and sighing: the original British nobles and our preferences are almost ah, like to build red bridges in the forest, Chinese pagodas, queqiao bridges everywhere; the Royal Botanical Garden, like Shandong Shouguang, all take greenhouse breeding, cuttings, root cuttings, sowing, very scientific Although there are not many flowers native to the UK, they are particularly good at learning, taking good care of the rare grasses collected by various countries, and using the concept of ecosystems to make them coexist harmoniously and avoid chemical waste. After my mother returned to China, she refined her own observation experience, inspired to reproduce an English garden, which is now being practiced in my yard, and I secretly enjoyed it: I saved the cost of asking a gardener.
My mother's planting blooms in the moon.
Three years ago, I started building my own garden. The first thing is to change the grass, the previous grass cluster grew like a giant Mac, disorganized, not to mention "ping", the weeds were pulled out of the land with roots, replaced with trampling, pruning, high temperature resistant dwarf grass seeds, watered irrigation, regular pruning, and became regular. I love the smell of freshly manicured lawns, sweet and refreshing, and well maintained as soft as velvet.
This is followed by planting trees and flowers. Difficulties ensued, some trees came very healthy, after a while the leaves were faded, the branches were dehydrated, I found that it was a problem of soil and light, some moving places magically raised their heads, and some rhizomes were blocked by stones to blend with the soil. The removal of stones is a big project, often in the digging soil planting time to find huge stones, pick out these stones, put in a basket to change places, buy organic nutrient soil to pour into, the soil knowledge is too big. Peat soil moisturizing and breathable, mushroom residue balance acid and alkali.
As a spectator, visible to the naked eye or poor, I personally learned that I did not care about the land under my feet in the past. Those who survive and bloom remind you of the incredible power of nature. I sprinkled a lot of seeds into the soil and forgot about them when I turned around, after all, it takes time for seeds to germinate and buds to bloom. In the spring, purple irises grew in the garden, as brilliant as Van Gogh's pen, and I almost forgot to plant irises, and I never bothered to take care of them.
My favorite thing to do is water. The pipe is long and twisted, and I hold it in my hand as if I had subdued a python, and today the spout is not as simple as when I was a child, but a shower that distributes the water evenly, and the water droplets are crystal clear, like broken diamonds. You hold the shower, spray wildly at the grass and trees, and imagine that you are a messenger who sows love and light, and every flower and grass is covered with rain and dew. Watering flowers looks simple, there are also many doorways, do not spray at an area, it will become a pool, do not always ignore a certain area, drought into the Gobi Desert. No matter how small the things in the garden are, they are all about experience and love.
During the Spring Festival, my father had nothing to do all day, and my mother looked at him as an eyesore, and issued an order saying, you will not do anything, you can't help anything, water the flowers. One morning, my father came into the house from the garden and said, "I can water the flowers today." My mother is furious, it just rained heavily yesterday, and she still uses you to water the flowers?
Cut your own leeks, cherries, cucumbers and harvests.
There was never a once and for all sowing, no good gardening. You have to keep loosening the soil, fertilizing, watering, pruning, pulling grass, killing pests and diseases... Some time ago, we re-planned our garden, divided the vegetable garden, changed the position of many trees, adjusted the matching of flower colors, and combined different plants of different heights, like creating works of art. The flowers that bloom at each time are different, like a symphony orchestra, and take turns.
Throughout the summer, cannabis, jasmine, and hydrangeas bloom, and when you go out as a guest, you pick a few plants in the garden as a gift. Recently, my homeland harvested the leeks, cucumbers, cherries, and blueberries that I planted, which was a small harvest, and in order to keep the blueberries from fighting with the birds that sang every day. Self-grown, whether it is ornamental or put into the mouth, it is really different from the outside, looking relieved, eating heartache, after all, every inch of melon and fruit grows, it carries its own careful cultivation.
I went to a friend's house and brought my own hydrangea balls.
How exactly has the garden changed my life? Immersion in it makes people lose their social attributes and return to the original state of life. Spring to autumn, sunny rain and cold heat, for urban people is nothing more than adding clothes or fading shirts, for those who do gardening the meaning is different, good wind like a fan, good rain like a curtain. Seeing the nectar descending from the sky, people are full of joy, as if they are also moistened by the heavens; but when they encounter the fierce wind, you hide in the house, and your heart is worried, praying that those delicate herbs must survive; the sun is shining, you don't care if you tan, first think of going to the stem that has just sprouted.
When you start tending to your garden, you don't care as much about the things you used to overemphasize, but you don't turn a blind eye to weak lives and subtle changes.
May our gardens flourish, the plants thrive and the gardener's life be at its fullest!
Good luck
This article is written by Shi Kang, writer, and Zhu Yujie.
The pictures in this article are provided by Zhu Yujie, and the copyright belongs to the original author.
Because recently the WeChat public account adjusted the rules of push, only if we star and click in the look, will be the first time to receive our push, I hope we do not get lost in the vast sea of people ~ ~
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