WRITTEN BY VALERIE EASTON ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL SCHMID

	"The true joy of life lies in ... being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances." — George Bernard Shaw

But let's face it, most gardening is done in the rain and the mud while you're bundled up in fleece, rubber pants and high boots. It's grimy, down-on-your-knees work. All too often I look outside, hear the hungry, thirsty, neglected plants calling to me, and desperately recite my litany of excuses: too busy, too tired, too hurt, too lazy. With gardening, you can always add something about the weather to bolster your inclination to stay indoors: too wet, too hot, too windy. Then there's the "too ignorant" excuse: Is this really the right moment to fertilize, prune or transplant? Perhaps it'd be wise to do a little more research, consult a friend or a book, which, please note, are all armchair activities.
 

Now In Bloom Silver sage (Salvia argentea) is not your typical willowy sage, but a fat-leafed, furry foliage plant for dry soil in full sun. It looks a bit like a lamb's ears on steroids, growing into wide (1 to 2 feet) rosettes of ghostly, shimmery white leaves so woolly and soft they're pettable. In the second year, the rosettes sport stalks of white and gold flowers, but the plants are most attractive when you cut these off to showcase the foliage in combination with other sun-loving perennials like echinops, coreopsis and nepeta.

If gardening were simply buying a few flowers and nurturing them on, it would be a far more widely practiced pastime. Counterintuitive as it may seem, such a genteel activity wouldn't appeal to the hard-core contingent. Honestly, now, don't we love to trudge out there, complaining all the while, and get filthy digging and mucking about? It's one of those few activities where dirt-caked hands, soil-smeared faces and intense bursts of vigorous activity are socially acceptable. Gardening allows us to spend our days as blissfully absorbed and grubby as children, and we can even act self-righteous about it.

When I was a kid, we were invited to choose between working outside or inside on Saturdays, and I always vacuumed and dusted because I could finish faster. Plus, my mother was always outside gardening, and I knew from bitter experience how one thing led to another in the garden, that no task was discreet. Too often I'd help edge a bed, thinking I'd be off on my bike in half an hour, but ended up planting seeds, trimming shrubs, deadheading flowers . . . The work seemed endless. And it is. I guess you have to be grown up and truly besotted to think that's a good thing.

Recently I was in Eugene touring gardens, and as my guide and I pulled out of one of the loveliest plant-laden properties, she commented on the surely exhausted gardeners. "What I like about them is they're interested in so many things besides plants." I looked at her in astonishment, because after all she'd introduced herself as a "plant-a-holic," and we were riding in her pickup, its bed piled with pots of perennials squeezed between sacks of manure and fertilizer. But it's true that my conversation with these talented gardeners had ranged over far more than their beautiful arisaemas and podophyllums, to encompass politics, yoga and pets.

Maybe it's one of those conundrums of life that only by looking well beyond our gardens do we find the vigor and joy to tend and enjoy them. Perhaps it's as simple as the morning news erasing all thoughts of sore backs as we head outside to seek sanity in the garden. An undivided clump or two of daylilies or even an infestation of bindweed pales beside current events, let alone the daily round of errands and housework. I've become more like my mother (dare I admit it?) and vastly prefer gardening over grocery shopping and folding laundry.

And I don't know about you, but with the November elections on the horizon, I bet my garden will be its tidiest ever this autumn, all excuses overcome as I seek the solace to be found in hard, dirty work far away from the events of the day.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle free-lance writer and contributing editor for Horticulture magazine. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Paul Schmid is a Seattle Times news artist.

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