Chemo Plant #4

I've made it through the worst of the chemo after-effects, so it's time for one last chemo plant. This plant order is particularly meaningful, as it has some history behind it.

When I was a child, I used to pore over seed catalogs each spring. (I still do, though now there are more of them and I get to place my own order.) Each year my eye would be caught by the Canterbury bells (Campanula medium), whose cup-shaped blossoms struck me as perfectly and exquisitely shaped—floral platonic ideals, almost. I never did get to grow them, though. For one thing, money was in very short supply, and I knew better than to ask for things that had purely aesthetic value. For another, these plants are biennials. One would have to plan very far ahead and reserve a place for them in the garden for two years before they would bloom. With these two strikes against them, Canterbury bells remained unattainable and even came to symbolize for me small, impractical, but deeply personal longings.

I grew up eventually and earned my own money and made my own gardening decisions. A couple of times over the years I've tried to grow Canterbury bells, either from year-old roots or from seed. Success has been scant, though, mostly because it turns out that the local white-tailed deer find them quite tasty. I have gotten the occasional Canterbury bell to bloom in my garden, but they have never really lived up to my dream of them.

The culprit, just outside my front door

Then I started this chemo plant enterprise, and I decided that, even if for just once in my life, I would like a healthy, abundant stand of Canterbury bells. So this morning I ordered ten plants. This commits me to finding a way to keep the deer off them, but I have some ideas about how to do that. With my improved health, it may even be feasible.