Postcard from Milwaukee

The Weather Votes First

Where the ground is optional

The accidental garden, dressed up as a postcard. Postcard design by ChatGPT from photos by author.

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Dearest Shanti,

How does your garden grow?

Mine grows in pots.

It grows in pots because the weather gets a vote. This is the Midwest, and anything I want to keep alive has to be brought indoors before winter.

I never had the gardening bug. I had red mulch outside, landscaping tarp stapled underneath it, weeds preemptively defeated. This was not supposed to become a garden. It was supposed to be low maintenance.

The original plan: hydrangeas, red mulch, drip irrigation, and no drama. Photo by author.

There are hydrangea bushes and other perennials, the kind that are not supposed to require much maintenance. All with drip irrigation. That was the plan.

Then came COVID. And fairy gardening. And more pots. Maybe I needed something small enough to manage and control when the world had become too large and uncertain.

The infection begins indoors: tiny worlds, air plants, and one very patient Pooh. Photos by author.

Outside. Inside. On the patio. On the table. Near the window. Flowers, herbs, succulents, and air plants. More miniature trees, for a facelift for my fairy gardens.

Flowers, in pots, because apparently the ground was optional. Photos by author.

All evidence that I am thoroughly infected.

Another plant comes home. Photo by author with the Google Photos oil painting effect.

By then, even the front door had been recruited.

The garden reaches the doorstep. Photo by author with the Google Photos oil painting effect.

I started a little late — not in spring, but more summer. I put some wildflower seeds not in the ground, but in the big pots acting as sentries near the garage and the back patio. I see some sprouts in there — don’t you?

The sentry pot, with wildflower sprouts reporting for duty. Photo by author with the Google Photos oil painting effect.

I did manage to get my hands on a Parijat shrub — night jasmine — along with regular jasmine.

The Parijat and jasmine join the crowd, because apparently shrubs now arrive in pots too. Photo by author.

I can’t wait to see if the Parijat blooms this season, or next.

My husband enjoys the hanging baskets. They are really low maintenance. Just water them, and you are done. Or so he thinks. I am the one deadheading them and adding plant food.

The hanging baskets: low maintenance, according to management. Photo by author with the Google Photos watercolor effect.

He is stuck with watering the hanging baskets and all the plants. The teens demand hazard pay because of bees and bugs, and are not always home.

The patio, where the pots pretend they are part of the furniture. Photo by author with the Google Photos watercolor effect.

Husband and teens will move the pots in and out as the weather changes. They will empty the pots that held annuals, weed, mulch, and do the hauling.

The vegetable garden is my older son’s project. He helped his girlfriend and her mother plant one, and then came home and decided we should have one too.

The vegetable garden arrives, in pots of course. Photo by author with the Google Photos oil painting effect.

He planted about eighty percent of it. The remaining twenty percent is still sitting there. There is no girlfriend here, and no girlfriend’s mother to impress.

I know he planted them because the little ones are being held up for support with pencils — the ones that mysteriously appear in laundry room washers and dryers, on the floor of the car, and on the stairs.

At last, the missing pencils have found their calling. Photo by author.

Peppers, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, some herbs. Cilantro that I have already used when cooking. Green, plump tomatoes that are begging to be picked. I better not see Peter Rabbit in my veggie garden. I can turn into McGregor real quick.

Some plants need sunshine, water, and close supervision. Photo by author with the Google Photos oil painting effect.

I have strawberries, blueberries, and grapes too. Your guess is as good as mine whether they will bear fruit.

The edible garden, making promises it may or may not keep. Photo by author.

Meanwhile, the flowers carry on as if this was always the plan.

The flowers, fully committed to the takeover. Photos by author.

So here it is, Shanti: a postcard from Milwaukee, where the garden grows in pots, the weather gets a vote, and even an unwilling gardener can be surprised by what takes root.

This was supposed to be low maintenance. Clearly, the plants had other plans. Photo by author with the Google Photos oil painting effect.

Best, Sunita

This postcard was inspired by Vipul Maurya’s prompt, and by Do Capozucca’s warm garden postcard from Holland. It made me realize that I do sometimes feel like a tourist in my own yard — peering into pots, checking for sprouts, admiring unexpected blooms, and keeping a suspicious eye on the visitors. Some delight me. A few are on notice. Looking at you, Bambi and Peter Rabbit.

Tagging Maria Rattray for a tour of my vegetable garden, because we were talking about vegetable gardens, sons influenced by girlfriends, and garden visitors who help themselves. No roos here, Maria — just deer instead, with similar ambitions.

Thank you, Shanti C K, for this publication, and to the editors at Tourist in My Own Country for giving this little postcard from Milwaukee a home.

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