Garden Reverie

    Gardening is such a lovely word. It conjures up images of broad brimmed hats, flat bottomed wicker baskets and cute little gardening gloves with a floral motif.

How I imagine gardening to be.

    My reality seems to be a little different, less Jane Austen and more Charles Dickens.
True, I have cute little gardening gloves, but whatever motif was on them is long gone, they are usually crusty with garden grime and have a couple of holes in the finger tips. And while a wicker basket is picturesque, my trusty, rusty wheelbarrow is more practical; I've invariably taken off my hat--provided I even remembered to put it on in the first place; there is a lot of sweating and---if I'm being honest--even a little swearing.

    Elk. Moles. Soaker hoses that manage to get themselves cut in half. Some days in the garden do have more swearing than others. But all that swearing has to have a therapeutic value, right? "Better out than in" as that famous philosopher Shrek once said. And certain words seem to lend themselves to garden use, being agricultural in nature.

    This is the perfect time of year for moving your plants around, relocating them to spots better suited to their needs; more sun for this one, less moisture for that one. Sometime the need is that they go live in someone else's garden. I suggest making a list of friends with gardens and then pawning off some of your extras on them. That way, you only have to dig one hole, not two. Your friend is responsible for the replanting, you seem very generous, and now you have freed up some space in your garden. Win, win, win.

      I have a friend driving over from the east side this weekend to visit, and as luck would have it, I have a few perennials sitting around in pots, waiting for a new home.

     I'll put on clean gloves, find my hat and hide my wheelbarrow. I think she'll fall for it.

How gardening really IS.
PS only one of those brown lumps is a slug.
 The other is evidence of elk with digestive up set.
Serves him right.

Putting the Garden to Bed

It is closing in on that time of year when a gardener's thoughts turn to tucking the garden away for winter...

Or, in my case, when a gardener's thoughts turn to reasonable excuses for not tucking the garden away. I HATE not having a reasonable excuse ready and, instead, have to rely on outright avoidance.

The other day my husband mentioned how nice it would be to have the tall flower bed stalks trimmed back before the snow falls. Before I could even summon my litany of reasons and rationalizations---hello! It's only October!---he hastily added that off course he understands that the birds benefit from picking the seeds out of the black-eyed Susans and the Echinacea, it's just that surely---I hate it when he calls me Shirley--they have finished their work by now and it wouldn't be selfish to trim at least a few back?

Good point. And he almost had me on that point, until he continued on to say how nice the garden would look when it was trimmed back to bare dirt.

Bare dirt?
Bare dirt?!
How would that look nice? How does he imagine that would even work?

Then I realized that he was imagining my winter garden would look a lot like the fields at DeGoede Bulb Farms after the tulip bulbs have all been harvested and then replanted for spring.

You might as well compare apples to artichokes, I told him. And besides, I firmly believe in leaving a few sharp stalks of last summer's phlox will discourage the elk from attempting to eat the tender new growth this spring.

My husband expressed a certain reservation to embracing my belief--I believe Shane snorted.

"How's that?" he asked.

I explained that when the elk go to take a big, greedy mouthful the sharp, dried stalks will poke them in their tender noses and they will run away in pain.

And, as soon as Shane stops laughing, I'm sure he'll see it my way.

My nose! My nose!
 

 

Harry’s Harvest

 I drove down Hwy 508 the other day, past Harry’s old gray house near the blinking four-way stop light.

The sun was coming warm through the windows of the car. The sky was the deep shade of blue that only seems to exist this time of year, its color polished by the change of seasons. Fallen leaves crunched under my tires and swirled up in eddies as I passed.

I looked to see if the pumpkins had been harvested yet, lined up in orderly groups on Harry’s former front porch, the Honor Can with its bills and coins, standing at attention, ever ready to supply the change needed for your selections.

There they all were, lined up and ready to go.  Tall skinny pumpkins stood with rounded shoulders among more rotund pumpkins of all sizes, their blank orange faces an invitation to carve, to create, to bring life to all the emotions of the season.



Gourds to go, just leave your payment in the blue honor can.

The lovely deep red of the Cinderella pumpkins—perfect for pies—shone brightly from their usual place at the side of the house, waiting patiently for people to come and turn them into something magical. They were all nuzzled up next to white pumpkins—one can’t help but imagine them as ghosts—and multi-varieties of gourds for fall decorating.

Sometimes, there are even a few hopeful zucchini hanging out, just in case not everyone has had their fill of them—good luck with that, zucchini!--I am in the mood for spicy Pumpkin Bread with cranberries, or a Pumpkin Roll,  oozey  with cream cheese goodness. I have a new recipe for Pumpkin Dinner Rolls that I can’t wait to try, and I gave the zucchini a wide berth as I made my selections.

Harry is gone now, gone to his reward, gone to that Great Garden in the sky. His daughter still carries on the planting and the harvesting in his honor, and I feel blessed to share in it.

Bloom Where You Are Planted, Dang It!

Ahhh, October!

Falling leaves, corn mazes, and carved pumpkins…

This time of year it seems that I am always waiting for two magical events to line up on the same weekend: for the ground to have cooled enough from summer’s warmth so I can plant tulip and daffodil bulbs, and for the weather to be nice enough that I still want to. It also wouldn’t hurt if those two magical events would also coincide with an early Seahawk’s game---so I can get outside at the peak of the day without missing a single down---and a Seahawk victory, so I’ll be in a good mood while I’m digging and not muttering unkind things about the defense under my breath.

Tulips by the bunch.
By the bulb? Not so much.

So far, I have managed to avoid my usual autumnal pitfall of purchasing far too many tulips. When I am in the garden store or flipping through bulb catalogs, I easily forget how much the deer and elk love nipping the heads off of my just-about-to-bloom tulips---they don’t actually EAT them, they just BITE them---and I get carried away thinking about all the possible color combinations. Alas, I only have secured planting locations for a few tulips.

Daffodils are different. Deer and elk don’t seem to like daffodils and will usually leave them alone, so I feel free to plant them by the bucket full. I have had, on occasion, a random four-footed pest that must have been absent the day they covered Daffodil Avoidance in Elk Class, and would eat them anyway, but they are usually a safe bet.

Moles seem to cause my daffodils the most trouble. In search of delicious worms, the moles undermine my daffodils, leaving the poor roots suspended in mid-air above the tunnel and making them vulnerable to the nibbling’s of mice and—I suspect—even chipmunks.

Occasionally some combination of pests, working in tandem, will result in the odd daffodil  or other bulb sudden blooming in a random location. An early spring walk thru the yard will show stray crocuses popping up all over my lawn. It’s an interesting look, but not one of intention.

Not MY intention anyway, I can’t speak for the chipmunks.

Gardening in Rain

Gardening in the rain can be very pleasant.

At least that's what I hear, I wouldn't know, I've never done it.

If I'm out in the garden and it starts to rain, I take that as a sign that God wants me to go inside and read a book.

My mom, on the other had, is made of sterner stuff.
Got rain? No problem, she has rain gear.

My mom swears that dandelions come up easier in the rain and that woman is death on dandelions. Woe be to the little innocent baby dandelion that dare to try and take root in her yard!

She has a specialty tool for the job of dandelion digging; a multi pronged thing that you jab into the ground next to an unsuspecting weed, step on the little foot peg near the bottom of the tool, and that  levers the dandelion up--viola!---the nasty thing pops right out.

Then you repeat that times infinity, in my yard anyway.

Abby and Annie don't mind dandelions,
but rain is not one of their favorite things
 

 

 

After my mom's knee surgery last year she had to take a break from her full frontal assault on dandelions, but as soon as she was able to navigate the lawn, she was out harrying them with guerilla warfare tactics. Her knee may have been unable to take on the enemy and dig him up,  but her  fingers were plenty capable of plucking their fuzzy little heads off. "If they can't bloom, they can't reproduce." she reckoned, "And at least I'm not falling farther behind."

In her on going battle against the invasive yellow peril, my mom has begun to range farther and farther afield. The other day I caught a glimpse of her in my front yard, beheading the little buggers on her way home from the mailbox.

How very clever of me to live upwind of her!

Bad Gardener

 When it comes to gardening I am too soft hearted to be a good gardener. Oh sure, I’m all for shooting Bambi and his mother, but I have a hard time thinning plants.

When my perennials need dividing I like to find a good home for them first. Will you promise them at least six hours of sunlight daily and frequent watering until they are established? They love chicken poop, so promise to feed them chicken poop at least once a year. I haven’t gone so far as to require background---look Ma! A pun!--- checks before I hand over my unwanted bounty, but I do like to make home visits and see how the little lovelies are faring.

Good gardeners sometimes are required to make difficult decisions and to know when to pull the plug on a languishing plant, and when to thin with ruthless efficiency for the good of the survivors.

That point was driven home to me last week when two of the trees in our Secret Woods suddenly fell over. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the difficult decision was made to take down the rest.

Timber!

As I write this with the sound of chainsaws in the background---9 a.m. on a Sunday morning, yes, we are that neighbor ---my heart is a little sad around the edges. I try not to cringe every time a tree thuds to the ground.

Instead, I try to imagine that this is an extreme sport for trees “Whee! Watch me fall now!” And that they welcome the opportunity to become something else: homes, furniture, or maybe paper for poetry.

A new life awaits...

My gardens will welcome the extra sunlight now available to them, and in time, new trees will raise their branches skyward as the Secret Woods renews its self.

And if I tell myself this enough times, I hope I will come to believe it.

Watching the fall of giants from a safe distance. Notice the guy with the best seat on in the house...

If it is to be done, ‘tis best it be done quickly- Me, misquoting Macbeth

Elk Kill Permit: Year Two

You may remember that there are seven steps to acquiring a kill permit:
 1) Sustain substantial elk damage to your landscaping.
 2) Cry.
 3) Call the people who work for the department of Fish and Wildlife.
 4) Complain.
 5) Cry some more.
 6) When the F&WL officer shows up, show him your elk damage while repeating steps four and five.
 7) Hang the kill permit on your fridge.

 I said that was all there was to it,  that you would now go 30 days without seeing an elk.

But, in Year Two, I found out that on day 29 --plot twist---the elk show back up. Bold as brass, two elk in the middle of my yard, in broad daylight.

Please note the absence of flowers on top of the green stems in
the background. Stupid Elk.

"Get the gun," I hissed at my husband, while shooting pictures of them from the back deck so I could prove to the wildlife officer the audacity of elk.

He complies, as any good husband would. "Which one do you want?" he asks me.
"That one," I say, pointing.

"The baby?" my children gasp. "You want dad to shoot the baby?"

There are now all five Sume's on the back deck, one of them aiming a fire arm; all of us talking, hissing, pointing or gasping. The elk eat on, oblivious.

Baby? Are they nuts? That thing is HUGE. Baby, my eye. That thing is a baby the same way these six-foot tall, nearing 200-pound, big-footed fridge dwellers that I call my children are babies...
Dang.

"Which one?" my husband asks again, "The mama, or the baby?"
Double dang.

"Technically, mom" says one of my long-ago babies, "they aren't in your garden, they're in the grass."
"Seems a shame to shoot an elk for eating grass." says another.
"Yeah," says the third. "Seems that grass eating elk would be the kind you would want in your yard."

Clearly, I have failed to instill in my children a proper respect for vengeance. Bet if elk ate XBoxes instead of flowers they'd feel a little differently, I think grumpily.
"Okay." I sigh, "Just scare them off."

So, there you have it, the sad truth. Kill permit on my fridge, elk in the gun sights, and I blinked first.