Southern Indiana Living Magazine - May/June 2024

A Walk in the Garden with Bob Hill
The bubbling April fountain
came last, the watery finish
to a wonderfully sunny day
spent playing in the dirt.
Sure, spring had officially arrived
a few weeks earlier, but to me, the
first full day of useful sunshine is
what really counts as spring, not
some movable number on the calendar.
To lean slightly into the scientific,
there are all sorts of listed
reasons for why gentle sunshine
pushes the mind toward mellow.
One is sunshine, which produces
a hormone called serotonin, which
pumps the brain to cheer you up.
Then there is evidence that the light
can help release endorphins in the
skin cells, a feel-good chemical.
Early morning sun rays also have
vitamin D — and you thought it
came from milk — which warms
the body and mind.
Add it all up. Stick me in a golf
cart dressed in two sweatshirts, a
broad gardener’s hat and yellow,
feed-store gloves accompanied by a
rake, shovel and hand spade. Bring
it on. Work to do. Up and at it.
Starting off with transplanting
some lavender. We hadn’t grown
much of it in previous garden endeavors.
The color was always intriguing,
the fragrance, ah, heavenly,
and last year we were long
overdue to try it.
It was a good move in theory,
but I screwed up in practice. Lavender
requires full sunshine to reach
maximum color and fragrance. I
had stuck it in partial, late-afternoon
sunshine near a row of whitish
birch trees. It was a good pick
in terms of easy aesthetics, dancing
purple flowers and flaky white
bark. It was a dumb idea, given
the birch tree shade. The lavender
didn’t seem very interesting in that
spot, or even interested. Floppy, actually.
Janet Hill thus suggested a
full-sunshine place in the front
yard. The transplant journey began
in the morning chill, the sunshine
casting long shadows across the
back field. Some of the lavender, for
all previously listed reasons, just
looked dead. I dug out fat clumps,
anxiously searching for signs of
life — hints of new growth in last
8 • May/June 2024 • Southern Indiana Living
Welcome, Spring
year’s faded foliage.
Optimism prevailed. Why
else garden? About 10 of the more
hopeful plants were carted to the
front yard, where full sunshine had
risen above the tree line. The lavender’s
new home had been the site
of a front-yard sculpture of some
recycled metal thing that seemed a
good idea at the time. The sculpture
was subsequently banished to the
barn. The site sat there empty for a
couple years, perhaps waiting for
some lavender.
The transplanting first required
the removal of some pea
gravel on the metal-thing site,
which also seemed like a good idea
at the time. The pea gravel soon had
a new purpose: filling in holes in
the driveway, not normally a routine
part of transplanting lavender.
Some of that pea gravel remained
mixed in the dirt of the metal-thing
site, helping to add needed
drainage to the tough soil. The
10 lavender plants were carefully
placed in a zig-zag pattern in what
was now full sun. They looked up
at me, strangers in a strange land.
Now what?
I had to drag a garden hose
about 300 feet for the lavenderwatering
process. It was also the
hose’s Opening Day in the 2024
Garden Season. It performed well;
the hand sprinkler was still locked
in its full and upright position after
four months of off-season cold. The
water-wet lavender looked more
alive, even happy. I was happy.
Bone-deep happy. Damn near euphoric.
Garden sunshine filled the
front yard.
You go, serotonin.
As it can in the garden world,
the day just got better from there.
The air warmed. One layer of
sweatshirts came off. I looked
around, kept going and checked
out our azalea plants. They looked
a little needy, so I found our almost
empty bag of acidic fertilizer and
sprinkled it around their feet. Better
too late than never.
I had made the first 2024 round
of mowing the grass the day before
but missed a few places. I saddled
up my 60-inch mower and cleaned
up the missed spots, leveling the
whole grassy playing field for the
upcoming weekly missions — and
more — once the sun remained a
little more engaged.
To that end, I like to think of
late March and April as “Fool’s Gardening
Season.” This has been the
best spring I can remember — an
incredible parade of hellebores, crocus,
phlox, daffodils, snowdrops,
quince, tulips, magnolias, redbuds,
lilacs, dogwoods and more. Right
on cue. Boom, boom, boom, bang.
With our peonies on the rise.
All of it as yet without the oncoming
onslaught of weeds, heat,