Gardening in ajumma-land

Garden joys: clematis; columbine; gazania; anemone; tea tree.  

In last week's blog, I described a series of interactions with locals regarding free manure for my new garden.  Today I highlight some other interactions.

Grace, a Korean-American expat friend, took me to her favorite plant-lady (the roundabout in Heunghae) and to her favorite nursery (south of Heunghae on 7). The lady had a small sidewalk display and we admired the array of plants and flowers. I fear that in my joy of seeing old flowery friends (and being introduced to new ones), I squealed and clapped like a joyous four-year-old on Easter morning.  After awhile, the plant lady herself appeared (where was she?  I have no idea) and began watering the plants and chatting with Grace (in Korean), leaving me to just smile and nod, confirming the stereotype of Americans as witless wonders. 

Heunghae plant lady.  Friendliest ajumma ever. 

A man approached--standing WAY too close--and spoke loudly as he smoked (a recent survey showed that 45% of Korean men smoke-compare to 20% in the US.). The lady shoved him away, talking loudly to him in rapid-fire Korean, then continued watering as he wandered across the street. Grace believed the man was probably the plant-lady's son and that the woman reported he was quite drunk--at 11am on a weekday. Ouch. Before we left, I asked Grace if I could take the plant lady's picture and to my great surprise, she paused and then agreed. I happily bought two japanese anenomes (larger, more colorful cousins to my Iowa snowdrop anenomes) and two peonies for only $11, and we managed to get away before the returning son reached us.

Odd pot; orchid (dozens of varieties, all cheap); tiny decor; statues entertaining the greenhouse residents.

Across town at the nursery, we happily surveyed hundreds of houseplants, pots, and flowers in the greenhouse and edging the parking lot. Some of the pots had odd English sayings; some plant arrangements included tiny picket fences and shepherd hooks with teeny bird cages.  We suspect this nursery specializes in what I think of as "Grand Open" pots: when a new business opens, its neighbors and sponsors/supporters send large flower arrangements with supportive messages.

Some "grand open" floral arrangements

Grace chats plants with nursery guy; part of a sea of dog heads in odd English pots; a lady prunes flowers.

Grace chatted with a young man (the owner's son?) about prices and plant names; he clearly loved each plant. We returned two days later with Australian friend Tracey, and I bought loads of old and new flowery friends: gazania, columbines (what Tracey calls "Grandma's Blooomers"), tea tree (officially called leptospermum, which name provoked my inner adolescent), lavender, and clematis. The kind man offered us each a "service," which is Korean for "this is a free gift because you shopped here today and I appreciate your loyalty now and hopefully in the future," and we each received a heliotrope (reminding me of the Pixar short).  After I handed over my debit card, a smiling ajumma boxed up the plants and carried them to the back of my van.  I admired her spirit as she jumped up to (unsuccessfully) grab the hatch's handle to close the back.  I tried not to let on that I thought she was adorable, which is high praise indeed for an ajumma.

In addition to my new garden, I have also rediscovered a small space that had been created in years past by expats but were gradually neglected as folks moved away.  So, I spent many hours there this week weeding, pruning, and removing a year or two of leaves from a dozen small plots, where I found a huge variety of perennials and shrubs.  Sort of like dumpster diving, I suppose, as I mentally reviewed which items could be moved to my sunny new garden.  A few times some ajummas would wander by, stand too close as they watched me work, then walk away. 

On Saturday morning, a pair of ajummas greeted me (a first), with their visors and masks in place. They stood too close as I pulled out weeds and trimmed dead hydrangea branches.  One then pointed at a perennial I'd carefully worked around (a coreopsis I planned to move), announced "POOL!" (translation: pull!), then yanked it out and tossed it over the wooded cliff before walking away, satisfied that she'd taught the white lady something about proper gardening. Ouch. When they were out of sight, I rescued it from the precipice and stuck it in some water for later transplant.  It's been a good week for ajummas overall, but it sure ended on a strange note.

P.S.  In addition to ajumma interactions this week, I have had some wildlife interactions.  I saw a 26ish-inch snake, which Google later told me was a tiger keelback (also called floral snake).  Although it rarely attacks people (it prefers toad-sized targets), it is quite venomous and causes death via hemorrhage.  Nice.  Happily I had decided to watch from a distance rather than pursue my usual practice of picking it up to admire more closely.  Finally, many great tits were in the trees this week; in the US, we'd call them chickadees, but the rest of the English-speaking world calls them tits. In researching them on wikipedia, I laughed so hard my stomach cramped.  (It's not my fault: a certain Joe Walsh song was popular in my formative years, and "tit" therefore has only one meaning which does not refer to birds.)  Take this sentence, for example:  "The Great Tit is generally not migratory. Pairs will usually remain near or in their territory year round, even in northern parts of their range." That's just funny, I don't care who you are.  :)