While I was moving a shrub the other day, my little girl squeal — an unanticipated side note of gardening — came out.
It’s a high-pitched screech I can’t conjure at will; it comes on its own, always unexpectedly, usually involving wasps or spiders. Walking into a web is second only to coming face to face with a wasp nest, either yielding an instant yelp while I try to not jump out of my skin.
Anyway, as I dug a nandina shrub, I uncovered a wasp nest. Before realizing the wasps had abandoned it for the winter, I hit the ground backwards, the squeal already echoing around town.
Shaken, while calming down and looking for my glasses, I got lost in reflections on the connections between doing something for a reason, and savoring the experience itself, better or worse. And the wasp nest was no partridge in a pear tree.
See, simply getting things done brings several forces into play. The most obvious are the left-brain how-to and physical chores, involving more-or-less efficient procedures and labor in obtaining planned accomplishments. Easy examples include trying to beautify the place, getting accolades with blue ribbons or Yard of the Month, growing food for the freezer or flowers for cutting, attracting wildlife, mowing the yard, and getting that nandina moved to its new spot.
Collectively, all that is under the production-oriented hat of horticulture science, which is calculating, efficient and quantified, can be hired out.
But while just knocking around the yard, we also experience related emotions and thoughts important to our well-being. We may not reach the final goal, but we can savor the processes and little sweet or alarming things that crop up along the way.
These usually unexpected pleasures or pains, though fleeting and usually inconsequential, are worth considering. Examples include stopping to listen to birds singing or frogs croaking. Waltzing with a leaf rake. Seeing the season’s first lightning bug flashes. Savoring smells of wood smoke, steamy compost or an approaching rain. Scrubbing fingernails and marveling at the tingle. And yeah, getting stung.
Those sensory parts of gardening are not horticultural competencies.
Back to the nandina. I pride myself in employing the super-efficient ball-and-burlap methods learned so long ago while working at a commercial field-grown tree and shrub nursery, the how-to that I use every single time I dig a shrub.
First I sharpen my shovel, which is an important first step in proper digging and satisfying in its own right. Slice straight down in a circle, a foot or so from the trunk, all the way around. Cut a second circle just out from the first, and neatly excavate the soil between the two leaving a tight cylindrical root ball standing in a trench. Skipping that second cut and not digging a trench is where most folks mess up.
Using the trench for a better angle, cut underneath the shrub, all the way around, making sure all the roots are cleanly severed. To keep the root ball from breaking when lifting, roll up a towel and unroll it underneath, just like changing a bed with someone in it. Lift by the towel, not the plant. Replant immediately in an already dug new hole, same depth as the root ball but twice as wide, with nothing added to the dirt. Cover the new planting with mulch, and use the leftover dirt to fill the old hole.
Efficient, yes. But I also enjoyed the light crunch as I dug through roots, the smell of moist soil and the hope that disrupted earthworms fared well in the aftermath. And keep a wary eye out for wasps.
• Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.
