Optimism in a Bag

I bought daffodils yesterday---fifty of them, papery tan lumps full of the promise of Spring. It’s too early yet to plant them, better to wait for first frost and for the ground to cool. If I plant them now, I risk them becoming confused and beginning to sprout and grow. Of course, if I don’t plant them now I run the risk of being distracted or busy --or lazy-- when the proper time comes… or forgetting all about them until February.

Perfect daffodil planting weather---in MY opinion of course---comes sometime in mid-October. The nights will be chilly and frosty enough that my flowers are done. The ground should be good and cool, but not frozen so solid I can’t dig in it. The sun should be out so I’ll want to be out in it.  The Seahawks need to be having a winning season---and based on the way our offensive line looks I’m questioning if that’s going to be happening much. Can’t we go on eBay and buy and O-line for Pete’s sake? Actually, for Russell’s sake? C’mon man!

Where was I?

Daffodils?

 Oh, right. My point is if the Hawks are winning I will be in a happy mood when I’m planting. But one of the beautiful things about gardening is that it is a Life Affirming Activity--sort of like shopping at Target, only outdoors. Getting out under the expanse of sky, getting my hands dirty digging in the good earth, dropping papery brown lumps into the dirt; believing they will somehow transform into sunny yellow harbingers of spring. 

Gardening is a transformative experience. It can take me out of myself, lift my mood, and turn my crabby into peace.  If to plant a garden is an act of faith, then gardening also feels like an act of worship to me, both homage and prayer. Gardening is good for the soul.

This Right Now Life

In an attempt to embrace “this Right Now Life” I am outside in my beautiful, battered swing under the shedding alder tree; writing, weeping, longing. Trying to find the rainbow, the pearl, the pony in this mountain of sorrow.

This is my life. This. These “exact nows.” Music and words, paper and tears, Kleenex and the beauty that still remains at summer’s end.

This has been, for whatever reason, a difficult week. Transitions are hard. Summer into Fall is breaking my heart all over again.

Part of me wants to go back up and edit out the “mountain of sorrow” part---it seems so overly dramatic, so much hyperbole—but I leave it. It was, in the moment I wrote it, Truth. Some moments truly suck.

Thankfully not every moment is this painful. Grief stills finds me, comes upon me unexpectedly and the stabbing of my heart is swift and deep. But it is—now--brief. Sometimes my step doesn’t falter much and I continue on.

 This week it brings me to my knees.

The philosopher Camus wrote “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” I know this to be true. I will also add that both are true: both winter and summer must have their days.

In Ecclesiastes is says “To everything there is a season... A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted... a time to break down, and a time to build up...A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” I prefer to think of birthdays and building, laughing and dancing, loving and planting---all the positive, beautiful things. Summer, if you will.

And it is Summer I will hold in my heart, even against the days of ice and loss. This Right Now Life has a beauty of its own and I will search it out. There’s gotta be a pony in here somewhere.

Season’s Change

Turning the page on the calendar seems to have turned the season from summer into fall...Vacations have ended, school has started, I can only hope that Indian Summer will re-appear once the weather gets this little bout of rain out of its system and the dust—literally—settles.

I will admit that shortly after the wedding was over I became a bit lax with the lawn and garden up keep. Watering the grass seemed like a lot of work and if you don’t water in the heat the only things that will continue to grow will be the dandelions and then why waste the gas lopping off the dandelion heads when they will only pop right back up as soon as you pass over them?

I did keep on watering my beautiful flowers, and immediately following the wedding the sunshine made them even lovelier. However, I did not keep up the stinky-spray-every-week schedule and the elk took full advantage. The wildflower gardens began to look more like an elk dance floor as the varmints searched for any delicacy I might have missed applying the spray to and stomped the rest of the flowers flat. I got even with them by pretending not to care and focused solely on my flowerpots.

When my flower pots were due for the monthly application of stinky spray it was raining...and I bet you can guess how this story ends...pots have been eaten bare, or pulled up, or dumped over.

This time of year it seems that elk appetites go into hyper overdrive and they eat EVERYTHING, no matter what. My once full flowerbeds that hosted the wedding ceremony are now empty of blooms, containing only a few leafless stalks of phlox and one clump of something that this year’s elk seem to find repulsive--- as it’s about the only thing they haven’t eaten.

Yet.

EPIC Labor Day STORIES

Labor Day is quickly approaching; a three-day weekend is as good a time as any to sit around a campfire, burn some marshmallows and stretch the truth.

As I mentioned last week, sometimes people share their gardening stories with me and we will commiserate with one another on elk attacks or swap tips on the most effective way to thwart them; brag about the size of our pumpkins, talk about which plants were successful and which were flops. Sometimes I think some people are pulling my leg when it comes to the truth of their tale and as I MAY have indicated last week (I don’t think I actually said “liar, liar, pants on fire”), the story of the Zucchini Thief certainly seemed to fall into that category.

Several of you out there were quick to sympathize with Zucchini Man and offer---not only replacement zucchini (and very “generously” too)—but tales of your own garden thievery. I’ve heard the Case of the Missing Green Beans—in which ALL the green beans went missing from a local garden, only (and for my sister, who HATES green beans with a passion, this is where the story takes a dark turn) to have a large brown paper sack of green beans show up on the kitchen table--- but my new favorite tale by far is the Case of the Tattle-Tale Thief.

In the Case of the Tattle-Tale Thief, it was a dark and stormy night (ok, that part might be hyperbole, but I swear the rest of this story is true...or as I was told it, anyway) when five of the seven prize squash suddenly went missing from the vine. The original owner of the missing squash took a dim view of such shenanigans and immediately took action to prevent against further incursions, only to be confronted the next day by an indignant individual demanding to know just when they put a lock on the garden gate!

So, stay safe out there on this, the Last Official Weekend of Summer weekend; hit the garage sales --if that’s your thing—or, better yet, go commune with Nature and as you gather at the campfire (only in an approved fire-thingy, in an approved location of course!) see just how far you can flex a good story into an EPIC STORY.

A Tall Truth

Sometimes, when I’m out and about, I run into people who read Over My Garden Gate and they will entertain me with stories of their own gardening successes or misadventures, and the occasional tall tale or two. Or at least I THINK they’re tall tales...

The other day I was speaking with a friend and I asked him how his garden was progressing. Just fine, he said, and went on to tell me that everything was growing like crazy, that the heat was really helping his tomatoes, his early corn was ready, yada, yada, yada. He spoke of the enjoyment he gets from sharing the fruits of his labor with his family, friends, and neighbors. Our conversation went on in this fashion for a while until he made a claim so outrageous I thought I must have misheard. Right after he finished telling me all about his Swiss chard and the new crop of pears, he claimed that he had yet to harvest a single zucchini.

No zucchini, I asked, didn’t you plant any?

He assured me that yes, of course, he had planted zucchini and that his plants would flower, and set fruit; but each time, before he could pick them, some unknown miscreant would come along and steal every last zucchini.

STEAL zucchini.

Seriously. That’s what he claimed. Not his beautiful heirloom tomatoes or his tender corn, but zucchini. The one thing that every gardener I know can’t GIVE AWAY is now being stolen from his garden! I offered, as one possible explanation, that perhaps his neighbors were stealing it as some sort of pre-emptive strike, to keep from having it left on their doorstep or shoved through their open car windows. He looked so hurt I quickly changed my tune and tried to ask him if he called the police, but the thought of someone calling up the police to report stolen zucchini was too much for me to say with a straight face, and I started laughing. Imagine the police report on that one, I gasped.

I don’t actually know if he was pulling my leg or not, but just in case he wasn’t and there really is a zucchini thief among us---BEWARE. My friend has sworn to go full on ninja and protect his precious zucchini!