THE FUCHSIA IS NOW

The only fuchsias I saw growing up were in conservatories. I wrote them off as being “too ornamental”. The names like ‘Pink Marsnmallow’, ‘Danity Angel Earrings’ and ‘Bouffant’ will give you an idea of what I mean. But when I moved to the west coast and discovered the hardy fuchsias, in particular Fuchsia magellanica and it’s cultivars I was smitten. I could overlook the fussy looking hanging baskets and head right to the nursery to get my fuchias. Of course it didn’t take long before I was seeking out the fuchsias that were marginally hardy, mulching with straw, dragging pots into the basement and generally worrying. This summer really gave me a scare when the extreme heat stopped flower production and generally made my fuchsias look weak. But now that our famous cool moist air has returned so have the fuchsias and without a frost we could have them until November.
Fuchsias are in the Onagraceae, or primrose family. There are between 100 to 110 species, most of which are tropical or subtropical. They are primarily found in Central and South America. The hardiest F. magellanica grows as far south as Tierra del Fuego. There are also 6 species distributed through out New Zealand and Tahiti. This explains their propensity for greenhouse culture. There seems to be only guesses at the number of cultivars world wide, ranging between 5000 to 8000. Most are crosses between F. fulgens and F. magellanica are now referred to as F. x hybrida, the parentage becoming blurred from the enthusiastic interbreeding.
I am particularly lucky to live in the Northwest and to have a client whose garden is well situated for hardy fuchsia cultivation. Here are some of my favorites:



Fuchsia magellanica var gracilis 'Aurea' has performed incredibly well in a very sunny border that tends toward dryness, not usually recommended for fuchsias. It's startling yellow foliage sets off the red and purple flowers. It often winters over without die back, though when it doesn't it shows no reluctance to grow vigorously from the roots.




'Cardinal' was sold to me as hardy. I have my doubts. It absolutely flagged in this summer's heat, I was ready to pull it out. Luckily I didn't, it is now over 3 feet tall and heavy with flower.




'Leverkusen' is a new one in the Northwest, with promises of hardiness. We will see. I bought it in bloom in April and it has not ceased since. It also did not like the heat, dropping flowers and looking fatigued. It bounced back remarkably though and shows no sign of giving up. The cerise flowers packed densely make an incredible display in a half shady corner of my client's garden.




F. magellanica 'Variegata' is another super hardy one with great foliage setting off the scarlet and purple flowers. It reads very nicely from a distance in one of the more expansive parts of the garden.



'Lambada' is a lovely fuchsia possibly hardy with mulching. Though listed as heat tolerant and a prolific bloomer by The Earthworks Fuchsias, it was reluctant to grow or bloom in the summer heat, now it sends out new growth and plenty of flowers. A month after the party , of course.





This is 'California' the only fuchsia I need. The combination of flamingo pink and coral is cheerful without being insipid. The guys at Joy Creek Nursery in Oregon, a great source for hardy fuchsias, said it was hardy for them. This is one I love too much to put to the test, I'll drag it into the cool greenhouse for the winter.

INA RUSH, IN A RUT

I am a “cheater”. Last Tuesday when everyone else was rushing back to school or the grind-stone, I fled to Tucquala Meadows. My reliable retreat from the work-a-day world. All the campers had left the valley. And the rain too, leaving the valley washed and puddled, and cool. This was my little cheater’s holiday getting the whole valley to myself. Selfish I know but I wanted to walk into Fall naked, not literally of course. I know I am rushing things as usual calling the day after Labor Day the beginning of Fall. I know Fall officially starts on September 22. But Fall has really started. The meadows once a pointillistic constellation of colors have gone brown except for the occasional aster or golden rod, tardy and resplendent.



Convinced this was the start of something other than school. I wandered through the meadows collecting seed for next year’s garden, and taking pictures.



One August I came to the valley for a week long camping, botanizing and photography retreat. I didn’t realize I had packed my camera with a dead battery and no back ups. I kicked myself repeatedly the first 24 hours, believing the meadows were more beautiful than I had ever seen them; I was pissed as I watched the long shadows of late summer slip across the canyon-like valley. I felt deprived of my tool. My weapon. No way to grasp this beauty, no way to bag it. I calmed down as the week went on, succumbed slowly to my liberation. I began seeing the glorious valley, it’s meadows, mountainous walls, and the slithering Cle Elum River, not as a series of snap shots but as a living environment. It ended up being one of the most beautiful weeks I spent there. And I don’t have a picture to show for it.
I’m not against taking pictures. My point-and-shoot is my favorite toy right now. Yet I wonder sometimes if I’m taking too many photos, a pick-pocket in a crowd. Always looking for the next dollar. No one safe. Nothing sacred. The Native Americans were reticent to have their pictures taken, saying their souls were also taken in the process. How soulless have I become in this rushed state of point-and-shoot pilfering. And yet I love photography, and photographers like Hans Georg Berger, Lorry Eason and David Perry, whose blog has taught me more about using my point-and-shoot than the manual that came with it or any of the classes I’ve taken. In particular it was his post about making vs taking pictures which has really made me stop to think.
I wish I had his saint-like patience for set up, or that gentle waiting for the right light that is so obvious in many of his photos. As the Artful Dodger I find myself forever in a hopeful state that one of these taken pictures might actually be a photograph. I am looking more, thanks to David, not only at the shimmery light-lacquered surface of things, but also the impenetrably black shadows eating holes in things.



So when I looked into the shiny puddles nestled into the rutted road, I realized their depth, their meaning, was not in how much water they carried but in how much light they reflected. They held the majesty of the trees and the vast blue sky in mere inches of mud fouled water. Certainly I can do as well with my complex little point-and shoot, or even better with this thing I call my life.

THE END IS NEAR

Last Monday was the last day of August. When I woke reluctantly I asked Michael to stop the calendar. I wasn’t ready for Monday after a busy weekend on the farm. Or September.
Even if this summer wasn’t a vacation. I'm already getting nostalgic for the heat induced stupor. But I,m also waxing nostalgic for back-to-school shoes, new notebooks and pens.
And pencils.
No one expresses the beauty of a pencil like Roger Deakin in Wildwood:
“ Nothing is so universally dependable, or comes so naturally to hand as a pencil. What could be simpler? For much of my life, I have lived with one behind my ear: either to mark out saw cuts or mortices for carpentry or to scribble marginalia or underlines when reading. I often write with pencil. It suits my tentative nature. It allows me literally to sketch out ideas before proceeding to the greater definition of ink. It was the first tool I used to write or to draw, and still suggests the close relationship between the two activities. I know I shall never out grow pencils. They are my first, most natural means of expression on paper. It is comforting and liberating to know that you can always rub out what is pencilled. It is the other end of the spectrum from carving in stone. The pencil whispers across the page and is never dogmatic.”



So why had I tucked all my pencils away. Was I reserving them for the day I start drawing again? I wish I could save money like I save pencils. After reading about Deakin’s love affair with the pencil I decided to revive mine and do my daily writing in “lead”. Lead is a misnomer we actually write with graphite a form of carbon, considered the highest grade of coal, but due to the difficulty in igniting it makes it a poor fuel. It is also the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions so will likely not increase our carbon footprint.
I forgot the child-like graphite glide, actually I am a heavy handed writer my pencil probably tromps, across the page. I forgot sharpening, like lighting a cigarette, had a certain sexiness. A doing-ness to it that users of the opposable thumb “clicking their Bics” miss. I surely missed that stop in full sentence to hone the tool.
Now that I write in pencil, my wordy traces leaden gray and fragile, I wonder if in the future someone finding my notebooks in a roadside dumpster will be able to read my ashen scribbling. Will the microscopic particles of graphite clinging to wood fiber slowly decomposing recede? Will this blog even exist in some form? Or is it as erasable as lead?
That end is way too far off to accommodate in my immediately nostalgic musings today: Labor Day. I saw hoards of campers on the freeway on Friday heading out to what they didn’t know was going to be the wettest weekend since April. Our own plans to build the deck were washed out by torrential rains. The lovely end of summer that lingered around in blue skies all week dumped on us. It’s been months. And the unofficial drought ends as squalling, drizzly, fog-swaddled September was born this week.
I tumble leaf like into a soft optimism as my favorite season, Fall, begins. I was corrected by my editor once for capitalizing seasons. “They are not proper names,” she said. To me they are. The Seasons are countries we enter. Forgive me this victorian metaphor. It’s the lovely poetic effects of cooler temperatures, decaf coffee and the scratch of lead across the page.
Labor Day weekend: it’s a funny holiday celebrated by trying to seize the tail of fleeing summer. Not a hello but a good-bye. Do you want to be standing on the shore waving good-bye? Or do you want to be on the cruise ship pulling off, heading into Autumn? My friend, Tsukina, says we only have two seasons here: light and dark. I imagine it is hard for most of us to celebrate the coming darkness. Especially in the Northwest where leaden skies dim what little light we do get at this latitude. There is something sinister in darkness, we don’t want to welcome. Maybe it’s the decaf optimism, but I’m looking forward to fires in the cast iron stove, a book and incandescent light. I’m looking forward to sleeping a little longer, dreaming more than doing, and the muffling of noisy summer. I’m looking forward to bare trees over garish dahlias.
More writing less digging.
But that is a long way off. There are more plums to pick, and the corn and tomatoes are ready. Today is Labor Day. We’re still doing our summer projects, between rain showers, which means digging post holes for the deck, and I’ll have a pencil behind my ear to mark out saw cuts, as the end nears.



It's a muddy job but it has to be done, we can't get into our front door.

FARMLANDER

As the luxurious lethargy of the hottest summer I can remember in the Pacific Northwest abates, and cool, even chilly, mornings spill into the Snoqualmie Valley, I pick up speed, the speed needed for the harvest. Yet closing the windows for the first time in months also breeds a melancholy, a child’s melancholy after being told to come in after a day of play. When I was a child I’d react to my mother’s calls by running away and hiding behind the neighbor’s garage. This cooling down, this turning inward also spawns reaction in me.
And reaction’s what we need. Spring was so active tilling the soil, choosing and planting seed, setting things in motion with a nudge or a shove. Now the table has turned and the Victoria plums, losing their chalky blue bloom as they ripen to near black, nudge back, beg to be harvested. I could see them from the living room window where I sat most of the morning with a cup of tea and the New York Times spread around me like blankets and pillows. If I don’t react to their ripening in the next few days they’ll be lost. It is the cucumbers and beans that shove though. I could not see them from the sofa, but their readiness lodged in my mind yesterday evening as I surveyed the looming harvest. Hopefully the chill instills some lethargy into them in the next few days, so I can focus on the cabbage. Ah, benign cabbage, slow fruit-less cabbage, they hang like slackers around the garden neither nudging nor shoving. They are the act of patience manifest. Unlike the zucchini with their constant impatient call, “Harvest me before I’m too big to budge.” Why did we plant so much zucchini? Why were we so proactive this spring? Why hadn’t we taken into account these cool days when we would rather be wistfully verbal, than agrarian?
Years ago I cracked open a fortune cookie that changed my life. I’ll admit I’m vulnerable to sooth saying and fortune telling, whether it comes from a line across my hand, or a star transversing the great black vault of night. Of all the silly wisdom I’ve garnered over the years from Ouiji boards, tarot cards or Rob Brezsney’s “Freewill Astrology”, the advice which stuck the hardest was in a fortune cookie. “Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it,” is what the slip of white paper dusted with crumbs advised.
“ Uh-oh,” I said in mock horror.
My friend, Susan, who I was dining with at Eddie’s Chinese Food on Farwell Avenue in Milwaukee, raised her brows knowingly, silently. This silence, from someone who had a verbal response to everything, lodged the omen into my 19 year old mind. I was a disco-dancing, drug-addled sycophant at the time, prone to poses and pleasure. More arsty-fartsy than artist. In a constant reactionary state to my “farmy” family and home state, Wisconsin.
In the 80’s a down in the dumps Wisconsin created a promotional slogan to draw visitors, perhaps even new inhabitants or new businesses. It was simple and direct, like Wisconsinites. It read: “Escape to Wisconsin”. Quickly, mutilated bumper stickers appeared everywhere reading “Escape Wisconsin” In the following years as I watched my friends leave Milwaukee one after another for New york, or at least Chicago --one even went to Mexico City , another to Stockholm--, I realized, I, too, would have to leave the Holstein upholstered landscape of Wisconsin. So I applied myself to my studies both in art and botany, and it was the botany that got me out. My travels lead me from St. Louis, where I continued my botanical studies, began my gardening career and received acclaim as a collagist, to Koeln (Cologne) Germany, where I bar-tended, and apprenticed with the florist Heiko Kalitowitsch.
When I was still in those formative years before puberty I had made a wish. No, it was actually more of a proclamation: “I’m going to live on a farm in a swamp when I grow I up.” My family laughed, of course. I still had all my boyish ideals intact. Frog and snake hunting, mucky soakers and being somewhere no one else wanted to be was all that was important to me. Well I lost sight of that goal, probably rightly so. I needed to learn a little bit more about life before I made such a dramatic choice.
But the choice finally came three years ago, when Michael asked me to live with him. I fought at first. “I don’t want a farm. It’s too much work,” I protested. “I don’t want to live in a flood plain. It’s too much work,” I whined. Yet maybe my childhood wish was finally seeking fulfillment. So I moved to the swamp I had wished for so many years ago. From where I landed all my other arrogant strivings and pretenses seem like mere reactions.
It is strange how fast a summer goes and how slowly wishes are fulfilled. When I planted cabbage seedlings in spring in our rich bottom land soil, their floppy waxy blue leaves seemed so hopelessly vulnerable to the early heat and drought. I never thought they would make it. But today, as the sun burns off the chilly fog and the lethargy of Sunday morning, kicking me into a gear that I can only call “High Speed” as if I were a Waring blender I plan to make sour kraut, pick beans,cucumbers, and plums. Maybe I’ll even take a bike ride through this valley I share with beavers, farmers and Holsteins.

READ

I love reading, maybe even more than gardening.
I don’t do enough of it. I rue my youth, when I was “lazy” and “ literary” and only had the compulsion to pick up another book after finishing one.
Now, I seem to buy more books than I read, thanks to Alibris making it so easy to access numerous independent booksellers across the country. I almost always find what I’m looking for at a decent price. How can I resist? Is it passion or compulsion? I think the latter as I order yet another book, that I am not sure I will find the time to read. They pile up in my office, like the numerous trees still in pots in the nursery.
I rarely get caught up in the shimmer of the little screens, TV or internet. I love the sensual pagey-ness of a book, which was programmed into me so many years ago. I am a slow reader, that mythical reader who reads every word. I wish I weren’t, maybe then I could get through all those books I buy. I almost crave a prolonged illness confining me to bed and books. Fortunately my strong constitution does not allow this. But despite all the constraints of time, mostly manufactured by me, I read and read and read.
I would like to share with you, dear readers, what I’ve been reading. A sort of book report, not reviews. I’ve included pictures of the covers, because although I believe a book cannot be judged by it, as the axiom goes, I love book covers and they say a lot, though sometimes deceivingly so. When I went to my shelves to pull the seven books I’ve read since February, I realized though there was a very horticultural theme that runs through them all they are very different books. From the wisely sentimental The Florist Daughter to the imaginatively philosophical Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition. From the playfully historic romp of Beans to the personal history of Wildwood. These writers’ responses to the green world though sometimes overlapping were actually quite different.
This list does not include all the reference books I use throughout the first half of the year for pruning and planting information, nor while researching for my column in “Garden Notes”, nor bird and wild flower guidebooks I use. Literally thousands of books go through my hands each year in my constant search and research.
Here are my seven favorites from the first half of this year:

The Florist Daughter, Patricia Hampl
I love Patricia Hampl’s voice, intimate and expansive, loose yet concise. This memoir is the story of her parents, St. Paul, immigrants, class and the floral industry, and of course Patricia herself. This amazingly “ordinary” story, as Ms. Hampl calls it, is at once eloquent and thoughtful, funny and fumbling. Everything you could want in a friend. Her book actually reads like a long letter from a friend , who has paused half-way to access her life. I dare you to read this and not step back and start accessing your own life. And that of your family, city , ancestry and culture. If you can only read one chapter read about her adventure in cake baking, and the sugaring of lilac flowers.


BEANS: A History, Ken Albala
BEANS is a lovely work of history with recipes. This maligned fruit that “ toots” is given such a loving and thorough treatment by Mr. Albala it will make you want to make a pot of chili or at least plant green beans. I was amazed to discover how important the humble legume was to every culture on earth, and how often frowned upon and used to separate classes. As Charlie Palmer says it’s “ an instructional book that reads like a novel.” A real pot boiler I might add. The chapter on lentils alone will tell you more about the history of humanity than you learned in any high school history class.

The Passionate Gardener, Rudolf Borchardt
Borchardt was a philosopher, poet, novelist and gardener. This book published in 1938 is not only a treatise but also a homage to gardens, gardeners and the green world. His writing has a wonderful 19th century quality to it, presenting his thoughts with rich imagery, and gracefully long sentences. A perfectly slow read for a slow reader, filled with gold. I will definitely reread this one. I know I didn’t catch it all the first time. Every gardener should read the chapter “The Wild Flower and the Cultivated Plant”. Elucidating.


Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition, Robert Pogue Harrison
This is a truly philosophical exploration of real and imaginary gardens throughout human history. From Eden to Harrison’s garden on the campus of Stanford University, this book covers a lot of ground, no pun intended and opens territory I’ve never considered. Bright new thinking appears on every page. The chapter “ Eve” is absolutely revolutionary in it’s thoughts on why we left Eden. Though this book is not necessarily an easy read, I highly recommend the chapter “The Vocation of Care” to all literate gardeners. Finally some perspective, from this book which had the most profound effect on me this year.

Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees, Roger Deakin
Deakin is England’s equivalent to Annie Dillard. Though I have just begun this book I find it hard not to include it on my list. His slow walk through the wooded world is hypnotically personal. He takes you into himself and then out into the world with him. A perceptive man to whom a pencil is as much a wonder as an expansive starry sky.

As a reader I am not only prone to education, research or philosophical enquiry. I also read for fun. One of my guiltiest pleasures is the English gothic romance writer Daphne du Maurier I recently found a copy of Kiss Me Again, Stranger at a thrift store. It includes “The Birds”, the story the inspired the Hitchcock film yet much scarier and a wonderful story about a haunted apple tree called “The Apple Tree”. What I like about du Maurier besides her incredible control of the English language is her ability to invoke the beauty and horror of the natural world. I have no problem calling her a dime store sublime, and though I read her with fervor at times, I would never carry her on a plane, or into a cafe. She is reserved for bed time reading on rainy or gusty nights and rightly so. Another great thrift store find was a Modern Library collection of the tales of Grimm and Andersen. The inclusion of such obscure tales as “The Singing Bone” and “The Salad” are proof that these are not just for children and far from the Disney versions we were brought up on. Creepy, unhappy and downright weird. I get a kick out of these teaching stories of yore.
Then there is the New York Times, which Michael thought he might save from extinction by buying a subscription (only the Sunday Edition). What a monstrous delight and luxury to spend Sunday morning fishing out the most interesting articles to read. I could never read the whole thing. I remember a prison architect I dated way too many years ago who broke up with me because I didn’t read the newspaper. I guessed I wasn‘t educated enough, or informed enough. I was much busier then, as now, with aesthetics than politics. I actually believe politics could use some aesthetics, and I’m not talking graphics. Finally after 30 years I am reading the Sunday paper on a weekly basis. I realized maybe why he broke up with me wasn’t for “political vs aesthetic” reasons, or that I was uninformed, but because I couldn’t sit still and enjoy a languorous Sunday morning pouring over the New York Times, to which this prison architect subscribed, and a cup of coffee, I didn’t drink coffee either. It was just a bad fit and the newspaper excuse was the only way he could describe it. I guess I would have liked him better if he was reading Virginia Woolf.
I also read blogs, less so now that summer is here and I’m outside for hours on end. I will be writing a post on my favorite blogs in the coming weeks.
Writing is sort of reading in reverse. Or is reading writing in reverse? At least I have to reread what I wrote before I rewrite it. What a tangled web we weave. And read.

SWEET WATER

As I flew from Chicago to Green Bay, Wisconsin over a week ago, I sat next to a businessman and rancher from Austin, Texas. The safe topic of weather came up. I hadn’t realized the West Texans were without rain for the past 18 months. He seemed worried as he told of friends’ wells running dry, of having to buy and truck in water and hay to keep their stock alive. When we were about half way up the coast of Lake Michigan, just over Sheboygan, he broke from the conversation and looked out the window at the vast expanse of blue.
“Is that fresh water?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
The wistful look on his face could not hide the gears of a businessman inside. Was he dreaming or scheming? Certainly he was craving just a sip of that vast watery landscape.
When I finally reached Iron River, Michigan, and my parents’ farm, I relayed this conversation to my mother who grew up in Texas and always has a deep affection for the place. But she has lived the latter three-quarters of her life near the Great Lakes, so she became defensive, telling me Canada and the U.S. had made a pact not to sell the waters of the Great Lakes. Already years ago there was plans to build an underground canal to bring the abundant waters of the Upper Midwest to the arid Southwest.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is suffering it’s own drought this year. Yet on the first morning when we woke the dew was so heavy our shoes were immediately wet when we stepped into the grass. A baffling sweetness filled the air.
“ Sweet like flowers,” my mother said, though the nearest flowers were the scalding red zinnias around the front porch.



Then we looked down to the clover pocked lawn.
“ Maybe it’s the clover,” I said, though it seemed the scent was much grander than what those little white flowered weeds could emit.



The dry weather had been good for haying and the fields had just been mown, the hay rolled. But the sweetness was beyond fresh cut hay or clover. Was it the smell of August? The nearly sub-alpine quality of the air at my parents’ farm, which my mother always jokingly calls “ Windy Acres”, was astir with breezes as usual, transporting the sweetness and disguising its source.
I thought how wonderful this sweetness must have seemed to early people who did not live in the soda-poppy, frosted-flaky world that we do. Michael, a biochemist, says that sweetness is the first craving and the first addiction. I‘m sure we all remember spending our first pennies, or quarters depending on how old you are, on candy. Sweetness is a metaphor for all that is good in life. Maybe what we were smelling that day was the joy of our reunion.
We walked to the vegetable patch in our dew soak shoes. My mother, so proud of her poppies and disappointed in her corn, and my dad, making a point of showing me his giant pumpkin which was still under 3 inches, could not understand my excitement over the huge swath of blooming dill they left grow among the beans and tomatoes.
“I rip it out like weeds,” my mother said. She always has as I remembered.
I love dill and yet never seem to be able to get it to grow for me here in the Northwest. I plucked a ferny leaf and popped it into my mouth. The bitter greeness filled my mouth giving way to a sweetness. An after taste? Or a memory of youthful hours in my mother’s garden and the vinegary evenings of pickle making after dinner?
Later that day I dragged out the hose and watered the garden, watching the gophers eat the green opium poppy heads and then head to their burrows to nap. Iron County, where my parents live, was voted the best water in the state of Michigan a few years ago. I can attest to it, I can’t keep myself from drinking glass after glass of the sweet artesian purity. I attribute it to my parents good health.
A few days later I woke to cravings. Cravings for sweets. So I dressed quickly and went outside before breakfast. The jubilant gossip of the sandhill cranes which always remained at a distance, suddenly broke overhead as they swooped over the garage, their wings nearly touching the roof. The air was so lovely, moisture clung to everything like survivors after a shipwreck clinging to debris. The rain the forecaster promised missed the farm again. The sugary dew would hardly suffice. My parents would have to return to their watering, as my visit was ending.
As I drove down M189 through the rumpled post-glacial landscape veiled with a pelt of sugar maples and pot-holed with little lakes, the first hushing melancholy of Autumn overcame me. Some drought stressed maples along the road blushed an October copper. I shooed crows from the black top with my rushing vehicle. Time was passing with the fog sliding off the morning. Everything transpiring, everything expiring.
When I left Seattle it was still in the 90s and we were at the tiring end of a dry spell. Returning to gray skies and rain was sweet. Not that I don’t like sunshine, or live in a flood plain with a seemingly limitless well, but rain, magical rain, beyond what science can describe, is incredible. I don’t think I could have said that last February, nor can I fight off the bitter sweet twinge of melancholy as summer slips back a bit revealing the first glimpse of fall. The frenzy and anxiety of watering has subsided, the lushness I had sought with frequent waterings suddenly emerges after the rain. The plums swell and ripen, the cabbages head up, the cucumbers lengthen in mere hours.
On the first day I was home, I stuffed some of these rain swollen cucumbers with green dill seed heads I had collected in my parents’ garden and tenderly packed in my luggage, into quart jars. I boiled a salty brine, filled the jars and went to bed. I fell into a restless yet heavy post-travel sleep, realizing all the watering would now be replaced with harvesting.
And trying to remember the recipe for sweet pickles.



My parents with the apple "State Fair", the youngest tree in their orchard with many trees over 100 years old. They actually eat an apple a day, keeping them spry.

VACATION POST

I'm on vacation until August 13. If you're looking for something to read visit the Northwest Horticultural Society's website. They post their quarterly news letter Garden Notes there. You can read my column "The Story of Plants" by scrolling through the past 2 years' issues.
Reading is a very cooling activity, I recommend it as highly in summer as I do in Winter.
Soon a post on what I've been reading.
Bye.

IRRESISTIBLE

In my mind roses are dandelions cluttering up grocery store floral displays bundled by the dozen. I have probably spent more time dead-heading, de-leafing and generally fussing over clients roses than I have spent pulling dandelions. Of course I love dandelions, so I probably pull fewer than most people do.
As I have said before I have resisted bringing roses into my life or the gardens I create (unless requested by the client). Maybe I’m cowardly, or maybe I’m brave in my resistance to the most lauded and loved flower on the planet (that’s my assessment). Either way I was destined to partner with a rose lover. Life works that way, drawing you to what you resist to show you that resistance is futile.
So my clever, self-important anti-rose stance is eroding.
Michael ordered over 20 new roses this year. Most from Rogue Valley Roses. I haven’t been able to get a grasp on the actually number of new roses and when I asked him he masked his compulsion with vagueness.
Twenty, or so, roses are a lot if you have a normal city lot. We have 7 acres, or so, once again the numbers are vague with the property lines smearing into the surrounding marsh.
We (you see I could not help but get caught up in Michael’s passion) sought out roses with a very specific qualities. Hardiness, exquisite fragrance, ramblers or climbers to trail among the trees and shrubs in our hedgerow. You might think the conditions we put on our choices would have limited us. But in reality we were both amazed how many roses made it to our list. We certainly couldn’t buy them all.
I have not said “my new favorite rose” since I bought the David Austin rose ‘Othello’ 18 years ago. I don’t think I’ve bought a rose since. Now I have a new favorite rose, ‘Westerland”. It’s an elegant coral pink, long in bud and sweet of fragrance, actually I think it gets a 5 star rating on all accounts even disease resistance (sometimes it good to resist). Finally a rose that has convinced me roses are worth growing.

FAST AND FURIOUS

Ever since my two feet hit the ground over 50 years ago I’ve been running, or at least pedaling. Now it’s more the gas pedal, than the bike pedal. And who has time for walking besides Greenwalks? I don’t know what I’m running from (emptiness?), or toward (the finish line?); but I am certainly apace.
What seems like yesterday was a week ago. Last Sunday I actually sat in one of these chairs when Michael and I hosted the posters of SAGBUTT (Seattle Area Garden Bloggers United To Talk). We gathered out of cyberspace and met in the shade of our ‘Fuji’ cherry. Real space, real time, no matter how short, is invaluable.
Now here I am coming in last.
I never took a moment from my busy week to thank them all for the gifts: a bouquet of lavender, astrantias, generous swags from a ‘Maid of Kent’ rose for striking, coffee bags for mulching, and hand scrub, which has been doing a great clean up job on my gnarly farmers feet -- I’m often a barefoot weeder.
I never took a moment to mention the delicious food left behind which we continued to eat into the week: vibrant green fava bean hummus, “eyeball cakes”, and the lingering tart memory of David’s rhubarb juice-- I’m craving more.



I never took time to send off the recipe for the black currant cake to Jean.
I never took a moment to post. Yet the truly Intercontinental Gardener, Liisa was able to express Michael’s and my space better than I ever managed after only one visit. And Paula’s delight at seeing eggplant growing for the first time echoed our own delight at finally getting it to grow. Thank God for a hot summer for a change.
And thank you all for coming and helping me see our garden with new, and less critical eyes.
Sorry for this fast and furious posting but I have to run off to do some weeding.

A GARDEN RETREAT

Each year I retreat from what seems to be seamless days of gardening. From clients to the farm and back to the clients, I never seem to be anywhere where I am not gardening. Even here in cyberspace I am constantly writing about gardening. My favorite place to get away from it all, is not a beach, nor a movie theater (though I do love a matinee on a hot day), nor a book ( I mostly read about gardening anyway). I escape to the mountains, where I become a botanist. I don't weed, or deadhead, or water. I just study the plants and how they grow. I know this might not sound like a get-away from gardening, but I can't help myself I love plants. Here are some of my favorites from Tucquala Meadows, my favorite place to go to get away from it all. I was there last week one of the peak times to see wildflowers there.



Our native Turk's cap lily, or Columbia lily (Lilium columbianum) being pollenated by flies.




The elegant Greene's bog-orchid ( Habenaria greenei).




The very showy scarlet gilia, (Ipomopsis aggregata).




The developing infloresences of sharptooth angelica (Angelica arguta).





One of the over 100 species of lupine (Lupinus sp) growing wild in our area. I haven't figured out which one this is yet.

THERE WILL BE WEEDS

Before I met Michael I lived the simple life.
I gardened during the week for my clients and lived in a second floor apartment with a 10 x 17 foot deck, cluttered - albiet tastefully - with plants in pots. At one point I had 17 different species of willow. I was obviously a man who needed a piece of dirt.
But I also am a man who loves free time for reading and socializing, so I resisted moving to Michael’s 7 acre farm. Eventually I caved in. A year and a a half ago I moved. The absolutley uncontrolable expanse of 7 acres nestled into Carnation Marsh, a 150 acre Audobon Society bird sanctuary, was quite a jump from the little self-contained world of my deck.
As someone who spends most of his week controlling, or at least thinking he’s controlling, other peoples properties, 3 estates totaling about 10 acres, I was loath to fill my weekends with yet more gardening. That’s where the resistance came in. Actually I looked forward to planting trees it was the weeding I dreaded. I have always been a firm believer in “getting all the weeds out”. I think it was my mother - her garden was always weed free - who put that idea in my head.
But the longer I’m here the less weeds I see.
I find weeds among the vegetables actually keeping the soil cooler and moister in this dry, hot summer. And we still have a bountiful harvest. The bigger weed problems of reed canary grass and blackberries we have on the run. Yet the unstoppable buttercup and morning glory remain unstoppable.
These challenges are equally balanced with blessings. The insurmountable weed problem is letting a little lassez-faire attitude creep into my life. Am I relaxing? Also the extra space - can you imagine 7 acres? - allows us to plant behemoths like gunnera, rambling roses and giant sequoias, and still have room for a 60 x 160 foot vegetable patch.
I never imagined I’d have a garden needing to be managed with a riding mower, a chain saw and a weed wacker. I never imagined weeding willows. I, also, never imagined myself doing battle with nature. So I imagine myself a barber on a giant scale, giving nature just a trim around the edges, because truly that is all I’m doing. I still get down on my hands and knees and tweeze weeds from among the onions with thumb and forefinger. But I’ve stopped imaging the perfectly designed garden composed of all my favorite plants, an exquisite replica of my mind’s eden. Instead we have natures eden to contend with, I wonder sometimes if Adam and Eve weren’t expelled from the garden but walked willingly away from the uncontrollable mess called “Nature”.
Michael and I are trying to strike a balance between wildness and control. Sometimes I think we are just teetering on the edge of the abyss. I know the minute we look away the morning glory just yanked starts growing again. I envy Michael’s seeming ease in the face of it all. My “standards” often get in the way, stopping me from just being happy with what is. It took the flood to make me realize whose garden this really is. Not ours. We’re momentary inhabitants, like the black headed grosbeaks who summer here.
But tomorrow you might catch me out weeding somewhere because we are expecting visitors in the garden.

MURDER!

There is a good reason a gang of crows is called a murder. And it’s not because of the sinister blackness, or sepulchral caw. They’re blood thirsty, or should I say yolk thirsty.
The towhee nest I inadvertently (see last post) exposed, and clumsily and inefficiently tried to cover, was raided. Not one egg is left. I found a few bloody egg shells in the garden. I guess that makes me an accomplice to murder, but that’s nothing new. I had a pork sandwich for dinner yesterday, my tax dollars support the war in Iraq. Even today I cut a slug in half, a very intimate murder. I guess in the big picture a few songbird eggs are minor compared to what we’re doing.

TWO IN THE BUSH

Not that I don’t admire the obvious robin perched high on the fir near our house warbling his heart out each morning and each evening. But when I stumbled upon these nests a mystery opened before me requiring the utmost delicacy of spirit as I peered, as I photographed, as I flitted away bird-like and silent.



Five towhee eggs in the n middle of the perennial border,\.




Literally two in the bush, a rufus hummingbird nest with eggs the size of peas in the thorny tangle of a blackberry thicket.

LEGS MAN

I love legs.
I love the long legs of a Cabernet Franc caressing the inside curve of a stemmed glass.
I love the naked lankiness of the kitchen table after the table cloth has been stripped off, exposing the legs and the floor littered with dog and cat hair, and crumbs.
I loved the first leg of the trip, Seattle to London, the second leg, London to Delhi; but was not so fond of the last leg of the trip London to Seattle, when the trip starts feeing like a millipede, and all I want is to be home.
I loved the unabashed 70s when shorts were short and legs long, but not so much this modern baggy false modesty.
I love my legs, my well used legs. After years of walking, biking, hiking and gardening, they are veiny, prone to cramps, and, I’m ashamed to admit, not very flexible. My mother always likes to tell the story about how, at 2, I walked 4 miles without complaining, until the last block before we got home.
I guess I’ve been legging it a long time.



Once as graceful as chinese acrobats balances plates, the giant alliums are on their last legs, beginning the slow decent to the ground.

A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A CHERRY

I’ve been avoiding something my whole life.
Roses.
Sure I’ve had plenty of clients over the years with roses. But I begrudgingly tended them. Dreading, sometimes, the days of picking black-spotted leaves, deadheading and raking around the thorny beasts. I was invariably bleeding by the end of the day. But I still did not come to love roses. “Miscreants,” I’d cry.
You would think since I inherited my mothers love of gardening, to the point of making it a mania, I would have inherited her love of roses. In our little urban garden most space was devoted to food production. Fruit trees, vegetable beds, and lawn to keep us kids out of her garden. But my mother kept one small bed for roses and asparagus. She grew several hybrid tea roses, but I only remember the one she revered most. The popular and easy ‘Peace’ rose. It’s wimpy color was wasted on this small boy who loved red above all colors. It’s delicate fragrance wasted on a nose that woke only to the smell of french fries frying. Maybe if she had grown some shrub roses, or ‘Abraham Lincoln” I would have caught the rose bug.
But subliminally I was being lured in by the roses, through their relatives the cherries. We had two large cherry trees outside are kitchen door. Climbable cherries covered with fruit each year right when summer vacation started. The first rewards. And they were red.
Cherries are, along with strawberries, plums, apples, peaches, blackberries, et al, in the rose family. They have the same simple five petalled flowers of species roses and , in general, sweet fragrance in bloom. Actually roses produce edible red fruits, or hips, too.
But of all these fruits I have to say cherries are my favorite. Foolishly a few days ago in the heat of the moment I said, “Watermelon is my favorite fruit.” And just a week ago I posted about my favorite vegetable/fruit, cucumbers. Yet it is truly cherries that receive this honor.
The thing about cherries is they are such a perfectly complete package as a plant. Beautiful architectural trees with shiny bark, a beautiful display of flowers early in spring, great fall color and of course those shiny tidy red fruit perfect for popping in your mouth.
Years before I landed at the farm Michael had planted six cherry trees. They are in their prime now. This spring the cherry orchard looked like a wedding cake and hummed with our neighbor’s honey bees. I lied down in the grass under the trees and tasted the first sweetness these trees had to offer. Now, just a little over a month later the cherries are ripening.
It feels like a picnic, so I got out the aluminum ladder to pick some of the highest cherries which were ripening first. Our local robin perched defiantly on the wobbly top of a near by fir tree and scolded me. He had been staking his claim for months, drawing a musical property line around our little cherry orchard with his melodious “ mine, mine, mine.”
We don’t always win at the cheery picking game. Last year when the number of cherries were fewer the birds and the raccoons beat us to most of them. So this year I wanted to be ahead of the game.
The cherries I picked were not quite ripe, lingering at the door of sweetness, just collapsing toward tenderness. Actually some were as crunchy as radishes. I ate a handful of tart redness anyway, like an over-anxious kid. The dogs waited below the ladder incase I dropped a few, their reward for waking me at 2 a.m. the other night to alert me. The raccoon was in the cherry tree again. I let them out and they chased her away. Not that I don’t like to share, but a raccoon can strip the whole tree in a matter of hours.
I even saw the black-headed grosbeaks, those good pest controllers, rapidly gobbling cherries under the radar of the robin. I guess everyone loves cherries, so I have no doubt, they are not ours alone. But with vigilant timing we might get enough for Michael to make preserves, and me, a pie. But up on the ladder it was directly into the mouth like a bird, like a raccoon, with a few falling to the waiting dogs below.
I realize I am still avoiding the roses even though we just bought two more yesterday at Antique Rose Farm in Snohomish. That means we’re up to 20, I think we lost count, new roses this year. They’re out numbering the cherries which is making me uncomfortable. Of course if you add up all the apples, plums, pears, raspberries and cherries we’ve planted it might be about even.
Eventually I will begin to photograph and to write about our burgeoning rose collection. But for now It’s the unavoidable cherry harvest requiring our vigilance.


Our quirky, and totally inedible, native cucumber is setting it's first fruits, too.

CUCUMBERS

Everyone loves tomatoes.
There are tomato taste tests, cook-offs, blogs and chat rooms.
One survey says that tomatoes are the most frequently home grown vegetable. Nearly 85% of all home gardeners grow tomatoes. I may be wrong but ask just about anyone what their favorite vegetable is and they’ll say most emphatically, “Tomato.”
Ask me and I’ll say most emphatically, “Cucumber.”
To me it is the ultimate summer fruit, they are after all like tomatoes a fruit. Though I love to eat them pickled, there is nothing like a cucumber in one hand and a salt shaker in the other on a hot summer day. I’ve read there is actually a 20 degree temperature difference between the outside and the center of a cucumber. Thus the “cool as a cucumber”. They are also about 95% water, so on a hot day with a little salt they make a marvelous re-hydration snack. Unfortunately they are relatively low in nutritional value having modest amounts of protein, fat, minerals and vitamins B and C.
Yet Cucumis sativus has been cultivated with love for over 3000 years, starting in it’s native India and moving westward with civilization. It was grown in the New World only two years after Columbus’ first landing and was quickly adopted by Native Americans. Though the fruits are rather phallic, herbalists have attributed this fruit “ruled by the moon” with the feminine qualities of cooling. It has long been used in cosmetics. My sister used to apply cucumber slices to her eyes, to which my mother would cry , “That’s a waste of a good vegetable.”
Yesterday I transplanted our cucumber starts into the field. We have finally narrowed it down to 4 cultivars after 3 years. Our favorite is 'Poona Kheera' an heirloom cucumber form India which produces well here even in our cool summers. The skin turns an ugly crackled brown color when they ripen but the flesh is white and sweet and crunchy. I haven’t tried pickling these yet. For pickling we grow a variety called 'Delikatesse'. We also grow 'Satzuki Midori' which I reluctantly allowed in our cucumber patch a few years ago. I was never impressed with the Japanese cucumbers I bought either heavily wrapped in plastic or waxed to keep them fresh. “ Overpriced and overrated,” was my assessment. But Michael, insisted so we planted some. They are miraculous fresh from the vine even the forest green skin has a delicate fresh taste and I will not have a summer without them now, except last summer which lacked heat and Suzuki Midori. I’m trying one new cuke this year ' Jaune Dickfleischige'. Michael swears I ordered it for the name alone. But my favorite seed catalogue Baker Creek Heirloom Seed had me convinced with their description ending with: “Rare!” So I had to try it.
The other thing that is rare to find in American gardens is the Mediterranean native, squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium) . I collected seeds of it at il orto dei semplici elbano when I was there last fall and they sprouted like crazy this spring. They are hardly edible, bitter and toxic, though used medicinally for millennia. The Greeks considered it to be a remedy for all ills. And the ancient herbalists lauded it as the medicine with the longest shelf life. Theophrastus mentions a doctor who had 200 year old elaterium pills which had “marvelous healing properties.”

I’m not growing this plant for anything but amusement value. Actually I find it rather attractive, too, with it’s succulent hairy leaves that remind me of plectranthus, yellow nodding flowers held above the foliage and the adorably prickly fruits like unripe hedge hogs.
It is actually hard to think of cucumbers as attractive. The edible ones have rather course foliage, hidden flowers and warty fruits. But we have a native in the Northwest sometimes called “wild cucumber” but more commonly “manroot”, because of the large tuber this herbaceous perennial forms.

Marah oreganus is a vine that climbs 30 feet into the trees each year and when it blooms in late spring with millions of small white stars is quite beautiful. It grows on the banks of the Snoqualmie River across the road from us. Though I will never eat the bitter fruits of this vigorous vine, I’m happy to see it in bloom because that is when we’re planting our edible cucumbers. And because we save them for last it marks the end of the rigorous planting season on the farm. Now its just waiting, and weeding, until harvest.



I built these "Temples for Cukes" from book palettes and goat fencing. The object is to keep the fruits off the ground where slugs might get them. The fruits dangle below the foliage and are easily harvested without damaging the vines. It's an old Portuguese method, so a friend tells me, though it seems too common sense to have occurred only to the Portuguese.

JUNE IS GREEN

June is not white like a bride bound in bolts of lace. June is green, even though the bridal wreath spirea ( the one I’m thinking of is Spiraea x vanhouttei, though many list Spiraea prunifolia as “bridal wreath” ) is blooming, filling me with memories of the Good Neighbor Tap, the corner bar near where I grew up, and the bridal wreath growing in front of it nearly hacked into posts. They bloomed none the less. It was the first plant name I remember learning, my cousin Dawn said “Bridal Wreath” and we pulled off the clusters of flowers and threw them at one another polka-dotting the side a walk in front of the bar.
June is not red like stage blood spilled at the right moment to enhance Shakespeare’s words. June is green, even though I give impatient nodding glances to the one hybrid tea rose we grow. Michael had taken a cut long stem rose from a birthday bouquet and stuck it in the ground 7 years ago. It’s 6 feet tall now and gives us long stem red roses all summer long. “ Love is like...” I’m still waiting, not for love, but for the “...newly sprung in June.”
June is not purple like grandmas in floral print sweatshirts cruising thrift stores. June is green, even though the second flush of lilacs ( Syringa x prestoniae) is purpling up our hedgerow. I’m hesitant to love theses lilacs like I love the earlier lilacs( Syringa vulgaris cvs), that remind me of my always-dress-wearing grandma and the square foil wrapped Choward’s Violet Mints she kept in her purse. She doled them out cautiously on us kids, who found their sweetness pleasurably soapy.
June is not pink like a slapped cheek. June is green even though everywhere you look is a Fantin-Latour moment with heavy-headed peonies dropping over from the weight of too many petals. Like too much talk or too much sleep makes you feel cranky, even angry, capable of slapping a cheek, I like to shake a saggy peony to free it of some petals, they seem so foolishly burdened, when they could just be leaves.
June is not any color, like rainbow oil slick, but green. To me. June, named for a goddess, is the triumph of leaves making so much green it can’t be seen, I walk blindly through all this beauty each day complaining, or making lists or looking for something to buy, or whatever else I do to occupy my mind instead of using them to see all the green.
Beautiful green.
Beautiful June for being green.


Named after another "goddess" this lovely hosta is called 'Marilyn Monroe', who was born on June 1, 1926.


Before flowers are red or pink or purple they are green buds. I started this yellow flowering clivia from a seed 5 years ago. It is sending up it's first flower spike. I'm still waiting.

MORE PLASTIC

Michael loves this orange binder twine. He calls it “ A farmer’s best friend.” It drives me crazy. Too stiff to tie gracefully, too persistent to let rot into the garden like jute. We always find it tangled in the mower blades and the roto-tiller tines. Though I’m an orange lover I also find the color unnervingly “plastic” in the garden. It’s very cheap, so it’s cost effective. But how long will that last? Probably not as long as the little bits do in the vegetable patch.



Who needs vaseline on the lens when plastic makes the world dreamily blurry?



Tarp blue is one of my least favorite colors, but I wouldn't be with out my blue tarp great for covering and dragging debris.


This life-like goose is actually plastic . It floated into our yard during the flood and is now our mascot.



My water bottle is no longer plastic.

ONE WORD

“ I just want to say one word.
Just one word.
Are you listening?
Plastics.”

If you have ever seen The Graduate, you remember this scene. In 1967 plastics were the future and there was money to be made. Now it seems plastics have permeated the very matrix of life. Do we breath it in microscopically? Do we eat it? I have no doubt. In the future when they talk about us will this be The Plastic Age, just like The Stone Age, the Iron Age?
Plastic is undeniably unavoidable. It takes so many forms making a blanket statement like “I hate plastic” seem unfair. Don’t worry, I will not be stepping forward to say “ Hello my name is Daniel . And I love plastic.” But there is a certain amount of plastic in my life that I do love. The sufi sheik Hafizullah Chisti says the plastic is the only dead matter on earth. He also believes water sings and rocks breath. It is certainly this “deadness”, inertness that makes plastic so useful. So amazingly malleable it can take rigid and floppy forms with equal easy. It has been transformed into everything we use from clothing to car parts, pens to plumbing. And things we never knew we needed like Zip-Lock bags. No wonder we fell in love with plastic.
The downside of plastic is well documented. From how its made to how it’s disposed of plastics are problematic. I have no doubt given enough time the earth will create a bacteria that will eat plastic and return it to more usable materials, but until then there is this mountain of plastic. Here in the Northwest we recycle like crazy and luckily a lot of plastic is getting reused. But there is also a lot that doesn’t.
Though I must admit I hate plastic for aesthetic, environmental and prejudicial reasons, I do use it daily. Even in the garden. So in the spirit of Lily Tomlin’s 1970s bit about our endangered unnatural resources (sorry I couldn't find a working link to this very funny bit) I’d like to wax nostalgic about plastic as it slips slowly (perhaps too slowly) out of use.
It all started this past Sunday. I realized I have been painting a false picture in my posting of a garden filled with flowers and rain showers and birds singing, but never plastic. We moved the greenhouse to accommodate the new critter pad (a giant berm where we can store things during a flood. Heaven forbid we have another flood, but we’d like to be ready.) The finishing touch was covering the metal framing with a new huge sheet of plastic. We had already covered the ground inside with plastic to keep the weeds down. We have weeds reaching giant proportions in our rich bottom land soil. You have never seen weeds grow so vigorously as in a greenhouse. We’ve tried cardboard, burlap, mulch and a combination of the 3, but the weeds we have, creeping butter cup ( Ranunculus repens) reed canary grass ( Phalaris arundinacea ) and Morning Glory ( Ipomoea sepium), eat right through it in time. Black plastic is the only thing that seems to work.


So as I stood in the plastic-covered greenhouse on the plastic-covered ground among the tomato plants in plastic pots I knew I was ignoring the elephant in the room. So I decided to take some pictures of the plastic around the farm. I actually feel guilty about the amount of plastic pots I accumulate by the end of the planting season. A deluge. Fortunately it is much easier to find nurseries who will recycle them. Locally “Flower World” will take any and all pots and flats. “Wells/Medina” will take pots within a certain range of sizes and types. We do hang on to a lot of plastic pots " just in case”. Way more than we need to actually. So if anyone needs plastic pots...


It seems obvious to make this a diatribe against plastic in the garden. After all what do you do with all those plastic labels, or plastic bags that soil or fertilizer come in. Is it all really just garbage? Garbage that won’t go away any too soon?
So as our world grows “Greener”, I want to write, almost nostalgically, in praise of plastic, after all it's here to stay.

These are a few of my favorite plastic things.


Though we harvest our own bamboo and hazel poles for staking on the farm, I love to use these plastic covered wire supports in my clients gardens. They actually last a long time, due to the plastic slowing down the rusting process and I love how easy it is to hook the loop around a lily stem and not have to mess with twist ties (there’s more plastic for you)


I wouldn’t be without my plastic grain scoop, indispensable in the fall when picking up leaves.




This Farman’s pickle bucket is my best friend. It follows me wherever I go when I’m weeding. It the perfect size for tucking into the borders next to me.

More to come...

STOP! THIEF!

It seems time is being pick-pocketed away as we speak. Time for relaxing. Time for friends, flowers and fragrances. I’d love to blame spring, but it is not spring’s fault. It’s mine.
I do stop to smell the proverbial roses, actually no roses are blooming here yet. Last Sunday in the midst of disassembling the greenhouse, Michael brought a blossom from the ‘Loderi’ rhododendron for me to smell. It wasn’t a rose, but what a delight to dip my nose into the vanilla ice cream sweetness of that flower. A brief pleasure before I resumed my chores, planted lettuce, mustard greens and spinach, dumped out the faded tulips, potted cuban oregano, cooked dinner, folded clothes and collapsed after losing at Scrabble to Michael (he always wins).
Monday morning the black cat woke me. He was crying at the door. Michael says I spoil him by getting up at 5 a.m. to let him in. But he’s my alarm clock; he gets me out of bed early and gives me the time he pilfered from the night while I slept. I went out on the porch to enjoy this half hour of extra time, to breath it in and to listen to it. The gentle rain had drummed a green fragrance off the earth, off the plants, maybe even off the birds, whose chorus is so seamlessly loud to drown out my early morning mind’s list making: do this, do that; and do the other thing. I breath in this overall sweetness of spring, trying not to name or discern where it comes from. In these few minutes before my day begins I get to enjoy the beginning of springs day, to acknowledge that spring is not demanding anything of me but to breath and to listen.
Having worked in nurseries for years, and as a gardener even longer I have come to think of spring as something to be rushed through. By mid-May I am usually unsprung and disgruntled with spring for being so demanding. This year is no different. The say one sign of madness is expecting different results from the same behavior. This year , with the help of the cat, I’m trying to change that pattern. Trying to see spring not as demanding but giving. I have been told I’m stubborn, not likely to change any time soon. So if I introduce the idea of spring being generously gentle in half hour increments, at a time of day I don’t need to use, maybe I will begin to see spring differently. So as not to miss this opportunity I let the cat wake me in the deliciously dim hour of 5 a. m. when I could have stayed in bed. I go out on to the porch face the mountains to the east and breath in spring’s generosity. I enjoy what spring does best: sing in a most beautiful fragrance.
By the time I breakfasted and dressed for work the black cat had fallen into curled up sleep, and I started checking off the first thing on my list of things to do: load the truck.

As the week hurdled forward, or was it me hurdling forward through the week which lied tranquilly in May? I lost track of my goal. It’s spring after all and I have a lot to do. So exhaustion led to sleeping in, even the black cat did not want to be out all night, so my alarm system wasn’t working. Yet still I found time to stop, because it’s lilac time on the farm. We have over 15 varieties in the hedgerow and when they bloom it is near impossible to ignore, and even harder not to stop to smell the lilacs. My mind raced around for a while trying to find the perfect metaphor for the fragrance of lilacs. But it is not fruity, nor musky, nor sugary (though it is sweet). It did not remind me of my grandma’s soap, nor an apertif I once drank in Paris. Nor did it remind me of my old friend Susan, nor June on my parent’s farm. The bright honest fragrance, took me aback with it’s immediacy. It stole a moment from my precious activity, like my cat steals time from the night, like mice, and brings it to the back door. The lilacs did not need to steal time form me, though. I stuck my hand in my pocket and gave. And got spring back in return.



I swore I'd never post a picture of my cat , but here he is Rubus, aka Bubu.