When clouds of worry gather, I find peace in my garden

Most of us, I think, wake up occasionally to a day when even the sunniest sky can’t burn off the clouds of stress or worry in our minds. I had a string of those cloudy days recently. Every item I’d written on my long list was an indoor task, and every unwritten worry was something I couldn’t do anything about – except to pray and be patient. Major changes were coming to the lives of people I love, and it was impossible to know how those changes would affect them – and how they might change the hard-won balance in my own life.

Having patience is always challenging to me because it requires waiting. To close the karmic circle, of course, I know that, the more important the wait, the more crucial is the patience. So there I was, creating an indoor whirlwind of cleaning, organizing, mopping, laundry, vacuuming, menu planning, ironing – all powered by anxiety. A hard knot of tension balled in my chest, and a returning, familiar panic fluttered around in there, too.

Outside, under an Idaho blue sky, my garden lay waiting, peaceful and beautiful, and seeming as far away as the moon. Finally I unplugged the iron (who irons nowadays? I know; I’m a relic) and nearly ran out the kitchen door to the flagstone path that would lead me to my flowers – and peace. Slowly, I walked through my garden, at first simply letting the jewel colors wash through my mind. As I calmed, I took time to look more closely, to notice which of the plants had begun to bloom since I had checked a few days ago, and which bare spots needed filling.

I stopped to prop a tall, deep blue delphinium and to pinch dead blossoms off a ruffled pansy plant. A graceful stem of pale gaura swayed among the roses and reminded me of the quiet charm of white flowers. My mind had been swirling with the reds and purples of thoughts and worries. I needed this white peace now.

Change. I thought about that word – and its ability to unleash the darkest colors in my mind – as I walked slowly back to the house. We impetuous gardeners tend to focus most of our passion on planting and caring for perennials, the flowers and bushes that will survive the winter and come back every year. We will use annuals as accents, but we know that those bright spots of temporary color will blacken and die at the first frost. We want permanence, in our gardens and in our lives. We create our gardens over years, adding beds, enriching the soil, making plans that involve years of plantings. Every January, we start waiting for spring, eager to welcome back our favorites for another growing season and taking comfort in the predictable return of beauty.

Impetuous gardeners can deal with change – of course, we can. We are known for our willingness to transplant and divide our perennials. We gladly will share them with friends or move them to new spots in our own gardens, where we think they will be happier. But we like to know that the outer boundaries of our gardens – and, maybe, of our lives – will hold steady against the kind of change that can set all the colors of our gardens whirling in our minds.

Before I reached the kitchen door that day, I turned back for one more visit to the white flowering gaura plant. Its stems looked fragile, and its pale, pink-tinged petals could have been overshadowed by the dramatic red, purples, and blues of the flowers blooming around it. But I had seen that delicate- looking gaura bowed by a fierce wind during a summer storm and survive with all its petals undamaged. And among all the colors in my garden, it was to the white gaura that I turned when I needed comfort. The gaura is, I think, a strong and patient flower.

What do our gardens say about us?

JULY 1, 2012

Lee and I spent a recent Saturday morning on a walking tour of four gardens in Palouse, Washington. The friendly hosts also invited us into their homes, but the gardens were the magnets for me. Each garden was lovely, and each seemed to say something personal and individual about its owners.

At the first garden we visited, a family theme came to mind when the owners’ young son greeted us and checked our tour tickets. He exuberantly pointed out the hanging containers of flowers he had chosen and planted. Before resuming his hosting duties, he directed us to the family’s pumpkin patch. His sister’s bike, vivid with potted flowers in its wire basket, stood propped against the house. Pink daisies lined the path to the backyard, where a tea party waited for the family’s daughters on a little table in the shade. The backyard of the three-quarter-acre property looked out onto peaceful hills. It was easy to imagine this family picnicking out there, among the containers of lavender and violas. The children's mom said the family counts on their dog to keep watch on the back porch and bark at the deer, who are all too interested in the tomato garden.

Art and tradition seemed reflected in the second garden we visited. In the front yard, a round rose garden with circular stone borders was dedicated to the owner’s parents. Across the front walkway, a similar stone garden featured a fountain and steel sculpture of herons, titled “Palouse River Blue.” The sculptor is the homeowner’s brother. The backyard’s old-fashioned perennial garden reminded me of my grandma’s garden. Sweet William, delphiniums, monarda, and pansies bloomed alongside herbs and containers of annual flowers. Flowering shrubs and columbine bloomed along the rockery in another raised bed. Along the side yard, a lush mass of deep burgundy and pale pink peonies spilled color and fragrance, and a second rose garden was a lovely surprise.

A respect for the past and a love of nature seemed clear in the next garden, which encircled a lovingly restored 1890 home in the Palouse countryside. The owners had rebuilt the house using recycled materials, including wood from the historic Palouse Hotel. Lady bells and lilacs bordered the front yard, and, to the east, the owner had spent 15 years restoring a prairie area. Native grasses, allium, yarrow, camas, purple prairie flowers, blue lupines, and horse parsnips grew there in their natural setting. Closer to the house, raised vegetable beds held tomato plants, berries, corn and greens – all, unfortunately,big draws for the deer, rabbits, quail and voles that share the prairie. A charming formal garden behind a low fence paid tribute to the past. Lilacs, lupines, iris, white peonies, cat mint, foxglove, hollyhocks, columbine and perennial geraniums bloomed in peaceful shades of white and purple.

At the fourth house, the true garden was the majestic view from the deck onto the Palouse River, the prairie and the velvet hills. The owners also brought nature inside, with a sun room and houseplants. Along the deck, flowers grew in containers – and I noticed a delightfully impetuous choice: tall delphiniums growing in the same pots with tomato plants.

I love garden tours, and always go home with ideas for our own yard. Imagining the time people must spend on readying both their gardens and their homes, though, gave me a case of sympathetic anxiety. If we were part of a Moscow home and garden tour (as if!), I would frantically be vacuuming the living room every five minutes for traces of dog hair and cat fur. And, unlike the well-behaved dogs who greeted visitors on the Palouse tour, our own two bouncing, licking, galumphing mutts would have to be exiled to another neighborhood for the day.

As we drove home from Palouse, I thought about the different garden styles I had seen. What would my own garden reveal about me? Maybe a romantic soul lives in my garden, one who loves old-fashioned flowers and dramatic jewel tones, set off against tall white phlox. Maybe, if you found her digging up more grass to expand her flower beds, you might also decide she was impetuous.

What does your own garden say about you?

As our sheepdog edges toward twilight, we have a decision to make

He lives his days in never-ending twilight now, his vision blurred and milky. His hind legs, which once were powerful enough to send him leaping over fences and galloping down a hill, tremble as he struggles to stand. His great heart murmurs a bit, in this twelfth year of his life, and he spends most of his time in a dozing sleep that we pray is peaceful. Sometimes he wanders into the dining room and stands, staring with blind eyes, as if he cannot remember where he is. And our hearts break a little more. But this thinner, infinitely more frail sheepdog is still our Rags, protector of our home and beloved elder of our family.

Recently Lee and I feared our dog would not live to the end of May. We came home from a two-night trip and found that he had missed us so desperately that he had gnawed and licked a large patch of skin on his haunch. He has always been anxious, in need of the predictable rhythms of our quiet household. I do all of my writing from home, and I always tell him when I'm leaving. “I'm going to the grocery store,” I'll call, loudly enough for his aging ears to hear me, as I ruffle the shaggy fur on his head. Or “I'll be at church for youth group with the kids.” He'll look up briefly at the sound of my voice, lick my hand, and then continue his nap. After the infection on his leg set in, though, he did not respond at all.

How do we know if it's time? I asked our compassionate veterinarian with tears in my eyes. At this point, there is no specific answer, she said. “Consider your dog's quality of life – and yours and your husband's. Does Rags still have a life that is happier than not? Are you and/or your husband losing sleep or becoming ill from worrying about him?” She wrote three prescriptions, for the infection, its side effects, and Rags' long-held anxiety issues. “See how he's feeling in a few weeks, after these meds have had a chance,” she suggested. “And know that we're here to help, whatever you decide.”

Lee has been giving him the prescribed three pills – each coated with Rags' favorite peanut butter – twice a day. I treated the infected patch with ointment until the redness and swelling subsided. Now our dog has rallied. We see his recovery in small details: a more alert lift of his head, an occasional bark at his longtime imaginary nemeses, the letter carrier and delivery truck driver. Hearing that warning bark again – “These are my sheep inside this house, and I will guard them from your dangerous garden catalogs and sinister boxes of new books!” – made me cry with gratitude. Rags also offers a muted but still joyous greeting every night when Lee comes home from work. The two of them used to spend a few minutes playing a vigorous round of tug-of-war with a big, red rubber bone. I'd hear fake growls (from both of them) and a final, triumphant “oomph” as Rags, always the victor, hoisted himself and his prized bone back onto his leather couch. Now their nighttime ritual involves only a lick on Lee's face and a gentle hug for the big dog. But it is enough.

Soon our family – including our daughter, son-in-law and three young grandchildren – will spend a week at a waterfront house on a lake – a house where dogs are strictly prohibited. When we planned the trip, we thought Rags would have drifted peacefully into a dog-friendly, heavenly garden by then. But he is feeling better now: Not great – with blindness, deafness and arthritis, he will never again feel great – but better. And Lee and I know our good dog would not survive a week in a kennel. He would not eat, and he would hurt himself badly again, from sadness and compulsive anxiety. He would not survive even if someone he knew came in to care for him, because we would not be with him.

“I can't see putting our dog to sleep just so we can go on vacation, Lee said, his voice breaking. He is not completely comfortable with our plan, but I am. Lee needs a week away. Time reading peacefully on a deck, overlooking the water. Exploring and entering the fantasy world of his grandchildren. I am a woman whose favorite place in all the wide world – and I have seen a bit of it – is her own home and garden. I will spend vacation week at home, with three cats and a sweet faced Old English sheepdog – my chief garden staffer emeritus – who deserves as many more twilights as he can manage. We will know when it's time, and that time is not yet here.

Taking time for gratitude as her garden’s “second season” begins

Summertime 2012

The last of our June tulips have bloomed. Behind them, a few remaining oriental poppies – crimson, pink,orange, red and white, with petals as fragile as tissue paper – sway in the wind that rolls off the nearby north Idaho prairie. The end of the bright tulip display and the glory of the poppies marks the start of my garden’s second season. I am taking time now to notice and find joy in all the perennials that have come back for another summer, and in the flower and vegetable seedlings I started weeks ago, indoors.

I hope I never lose the sense of wonder I find in successfully growing flowers and vegetables from seed. When the first tiny leaves appear, I say “thank you.” Those tiny seeds, some no bigger than pepper flakes, survived and sprouted in small peat pots on my table-top greenhouses. When I moved them outdoors to the patio, they braved the caprice of sunshine, rain and wind that is springtime here. Watching a seedling turn into a real plant in miniature, with identifiable leaf shapes and a growing stem, makes me want to find a set of filmy Mother Nature wings and swoop around my garden.

There is a special place in my impetuous gardener’s heart for blue delphiniums. One recent afternoon, I transplanted many delphinium seedlings into our perennial flower beds. They looked so vulnerable in their new home, surrounded by fully grown plants. But when I checked on them a few days later, their leaves and stems had grown, and they looked positively delphinium-like.

I was also delighted by an unexpected bed of flowering verbascum growing near the hollyhocks and sweet peas in our backyard. I remember tossing a small handful of flower seeds onto the patch of rocky clay there last summer. The plants, with their lovely petals in soft yellow, white, apricot, and purple, growing on stems from a central rosette of leaves, look too delicate to have taken root in such seemingly barren ground.

The same nature’s miracle has happened in my new raised vegetable beds. Corn, sugar snap peas, pumpkins, zucchini, fennel, celery and basil, all started from seed, are still thriving. Our roses, both the heritage bushes and the new plants I have added, are in bud, and several are already blooming. They also are free of aphids again – not, of course, because of the banana peel “remedy” I wrote about recently but because of the pesticide-free spray I used on the beastly little critters this week.

So, except for needing weeding and watering, the gardens are doing fine without me right now. I would like to say I am content to stroll along the beds and then decide that my current set of plantings is manageable and that I will stop making new ones. But do you know a gardener who is ever ready to stop planting, stop adding just one more bed, or stop scattering just one more handful of seeds?

So, in this brief second season of my garden, I am grateful for all the beauty that is rising around me, all the kitchen-table bounty that is growing in the raised beds. As I pause, I also look at the bare patches where more beauty could begin, and more herbs and vegetables could grow. Hollyhocks near the front porch, Italian shell beans in a sunny bed, a “scatter garden” of sprinkled seeds near the tomatoes. More blue delphiniums anywhere. There is always a new season beginning in the garden.

Remedy for aphids made a monkey out of me

Summertime 2012

The roses in our backyard have survived more than fifty years of north Idaho winters and bloomed for as many summers. Recently, though, I noticed that a colony of aphids had invaded the new rosebuds on two of the bushes. I dislike aphids and the damage they do, but I don’t like to use pesticides in my garden. A dishwashing -soap-and-water mixture in a spray bottle worked fairly well last summer, but I recently read about another remedy that sounded even simpler.

A Facebook friend posted enthusiastically about her banana-peel cure for aphids. Aphids hate banana peels, she wrote. As soon as she started using them on her rose bushes, the little green beasts surrendered and decamped.

My husband, Lee, eats a banana with his lunch on the weekends. So how hard could this be? Last Saturday, I fished the banana peel out of the kitchen trash bag and draped it across one of the infested rose bushes. I wasn’t sure whether to drape it with the outer peel facing the aphids, or the soft, inner peel nearest to them. Were aphids smart enough to find the right side of the banana peel if I’d guessed wrong? And hanging the peel across the tip of the rose stem, where the aphids gathered, turned out to be tricky. The peel kept dropping down onto the middle of the bush, where no rosebuds grew. Would the aphid army be willing to travel downhill to land on the banana peel?

Finally, with patience and luck, I managed to hang the peel in the best possible spot to trap those aphids. I called Lee away from the side yard, where he was building me another raised garden bed, to admire my latest example of horticultural genius. “Sweetheart, there’s a banana peel hanging from that rose bush,” he said. When I explained my strategy, he made an odd sound that might have been a cough, or a smothered snort.

The next day after church, I led him directly to the backyard to gloat over the aphid graveyard. By then, the banana peel, now brown and withered, had dropped a few feet and was dangling from a lower branch. I picked it up, using two fingertips, because I didn’t want to have to touch all those aphid corpses. But...there were no aphid corpses, on the banana peel or lying in even a small heap at the base of the rosebush. There were, however, dozens of aphids having brunch on the rose buds.

When my Facebook friend wrote about using banana peels ON her rosebushes, I took her words literally. To an impetuous gardener, draping a used banana peel on a plant sounds creative, rather than …eccentric. The banana peel fiasco made a monkey out of me. If only I had done some actual research before I started decking the rosebushes, I would have read the following:

In the roses forum of GardenWeb.com, a reader asked if banana peels will eliminate aphids. The rose expert’s response: “I think about the only way a banana peel would eliminate aphids would be if you placed the aphids on a flat surface and beat them with it.”

Reader’s Digest’s online site, in an article titled “Eight Uses for Bananas,” added further humiliating details: “Are aphids attacking your rosebushes or other plants? Bury dried or cut-up banana peels an inch or two deep around the base of the aphid-prone plants, and soon the little suckers will pack up and leave. Don’t use whole peels or the bananas themselves, though; they tend to be viewed as tasty treats by raccoons, squirrels, gophers, rabbits, and other animals, who will just dig them up.”

Bury pieces of banana peels around the base of the bush. Don’t hang them from your rosebushes. Who knew? I’m going to go find a banana tree to climb now.

This Italian gardener cannot cook without fresh herbs

I grew up in an Italian family, where herbs grew a few steps from the kitchen door. When four generations of us gathered for Sunday dinners or holiday meals, fresh rosemary, sage, oregano and thyme flavored the roasted chickens, pot roast or homemade pasta sauce, and perfumed my grandmother’s house.

When I think of long-ago summer meals, I remember my great-grandmother’s spaghetti, simply dressed with Italian olive oil, sautéed garlic, fresh plum tomatoes and fresh basil leaves. Heaven on a platter.

Autumn brings memories of the woodsy tang of fresh rosemary in my grandmother’s beef stew, and the bouquet of sage, oregano, thyme and Italian parsley in her turkey stuffing.

Every Christmas dinner began with her homemade ravioli, whose creation could not begin without a trip to the herb garden. My proudest moment as a cook was the Christmas when my own ravioli drew second and third helpings from our family’s gourmands. The secret to my triumph was the sprigs of herbs I minced and blended with the filling’s secret ingredients. They were a secret because my grandmother never followed a recipe. I learned to make the family favorites by standing next to her at the old kitchen table, watching and scribbling notes while she created her culinary magic.

In every home I’ve lived in, I have grown my herbs, sometimes planted in a garden, sometimes in pots. This summer I did not plant a vegetable garden here in our new home in north Idaho. That will wait until next year, after Lee and I have spent a full season readying the soil and the raised beds. (Also, I’ve had more than enough opportunities for humiliation this summer just by writing about my adventures in weeding and flower gardening.) So this season my only edible plants are containers of herbs and three tomato plants in big pots on our patio. I’m so pleased with the tomatoes’ progress. Tiny yellow flowers dot each plant. If we have hot, sunny weather every day...until Christmastime, I’m sure we’ll have ripe tomatoes fat enough to slice for insalata caprese.

In containers, I’m growing oregano, English thyme, lemon thyme, sweet marjoram, tri-color sage, Genovese basil and three varieties of rosemary. In a separate garden, lavender, pineapple mint, purple-flowering sage, and catmint grow. Next year I will plant Italian flat-leafed parsley there, too. (We Italians sneer at the wimpy curly-leafed parsley – no flavor.)

Several gardener friends, veterans of the winters here, have warned that I cannot expect my rosemary plants to survive Idaho's cold months. But late autumn is the peak season for roast beef, roast chicken, roast turkey, and hearty stews. An Italian cook cannot create these dishes without fresh rosemary. I make dozens of tiny slits in a beef roast, and then insert thin slices of fresh garlic and spears of rosemary leaves into each slit. My turkey stuffing would be tasteless without fresh herbs. For roast chicken, I stuff the cavity with fat sprigs of rosemary, sage, Italian parsley, and oregano, and then add garlic, half an onion, a few celery leaves and part of a lemon. And how would my family know a stew is simmering if they didn’t have the fragrance of fresh rosemary to welcome then into the kitchen?

So I have a plan – and its beginning was uncharacteristically deliberate, rather than impetuous. I planted the rosemary – Tuscan Blue, Arp, and Roman Beauty – in a large container with wheels. Before the frost comes, I will roll my herbal Italian buddies to warmth and safety under the eaves, against the house. Buon appetito!

The plant-eating BadKitten on my staff is in the doghouse

JUNE 18, 2011

When I last wrote about my garden staff, Rags, our Old English sheepdog, and Benjamin BadKitten, my Maine coon cat, were miffed at me because I wouldn’t let them have flocks of sheep and chickens in our backyard. Kaylee, our golden retriever, was offended because I had (accurately) described her less-than-slender silhouette.

Recently I upset the dogs again by deciding to start my next garden project in the front yard, which is not fenced and therefore off limits to them. Their territory is our fenced backyard, where the sheepdog joyously scatters mulch and garden dirt all over the lawn, and the retriever parks herself in the middle of whichever bed I’m trying to weed. It is no coincidence that my favorite place for making new gardens is anywhere except the backyard.

For the past few weekends, I’ve been digging out sod and getting ready to plant a perennial flower garden in a corner of our front yard. If a Seattle Mariners baseball game is on the radio when I’m gardening, I like to listen to the play-by-play while I dig and plant. (Hey, the Mariners are still in contention and it’s already June; last year, my hapless team was out of the pennant race by the end of April.) But, with this garden project, I couldn’t crank up the radio loud enough to muffle the howls from the backyard.

The dogs, especially Rags ,the sheepdog, miss me if they know I’m outside gardening and they can’t see or help me. (Please insert quotation marks around the word help.) Kaylee, the golden retriever, barks, and Rags howls, and the result for me is no radio ballgame, no peace, and a whole lot of guilt for abandoning them.

So, before I started the actual planting, I went to our local pet supply store and bought two sturdy steel anchors and two 30-foot lengths of cable. My husband made sure the anchors were solid in the ground in our side yard, and then he attached the cables to our dogs’ collars. I added a bowl of water for them under a shady oak tree. Result: two deliriously happy goofballs, who can supervise me while I work.

Now all is forgiven between the two dogs and me. Benjamin BadKitten, however, is in big trouble.

One of our neighbors was dividing some of her herbs recently and gave me a starter of catnip (or catmint, as the English call it.) I planted it in front of a rosebush and, the next day, went out to check on whether it had survived the night. I found the little plant eaten to the stems – and the only slug in sight was a 15-pounder with fur and a plumed tail. 

Last weekend our neighbor gave me two more catnip starts. I set them aside, still in their peat pots, for planting later, after I had finished the new flower bed. Unfortunately, I forgot about the little guys until I looked out the kitchen window that evening – and saw Benjamin BadKitten squinting at me, a catnip plant dangling from his mouth. He wasn’t the least bit sorry, either. So that cat is definitely in the doghouse (except every evening, when he has to have a nap on my lap.)

IF YOU GIVE A GARDENER A TOMATO PLANT….

June 4, 2011

During the winter, when we impetuous gardeners are most susceptible to fantasy, I ordered three tomato plants from my favorite catalog. These plants promised the true tomato-y flavor of the heritage Brandywine, the Italian cooking appeal of the San Marzano Gigante, and the just plain cool name of the Japanese Black Trifele. The selling point, for me, was that each variety had been grafted onto sturdy, reliable tomato plant stock. 

After my tomato triumph, I decided to take a final glance through the catalog, and ended up ordering seed packets. Many seed packets. Later, I bought more seeds from local nurseries here in north Idaho. Many more seeds.

The tomato plants arrived recently, and I realized that I had become a character in what should be a grownup edition of a popular set of children’s books. The first in the series, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, follows a little boy through an exhausting day of cleaning up the results of offering a mouse a cookie. The cookie leads to a request for an accompanying glass of milk – with a straw. Then a napkin, nail scissors, a broom, a place to take a nap – plus a naptime story with pictures. Which leads to the mouse’s need for paper and crayons, and then a demand to hang his original art on the refrigerator. Then the mouse gets thirsty again and asks for a glass of milk – and another cookie.

The story ends with the worn-out little boy sound asleep, surrounded by all the mess and chaos the mouse has created. And it all started with one impetuous act: offering a mouse a cookie. For me, it was ordering three tomato plants.

It’s June now, and my shimmery, winter garden-fantasy has turned all too clear in the late-spring sunshine. I have planted most of my flower seeds in two new garden beds: sweet peas, hollyhocks, sunflowers, and perennials. All I needed to do to create the new gardens was to dig up two long, narrow stretches of sod, break up the dirt clods, buy topsoil and compost, haul the big bags into the backyard, hand-mix the topsoil and compost into the newly dug beds, plant the seeds, and water thoroughly.

Almost forgot – I also had to buy and set up forty feet of sturdy, though decorative, knee-high fencing to deter a member of my garden staff (Rags, our Old English sheepdog) from bounding into the new planting beds during his daily nut-out around the backyard.

The flower seeds are coming up well along the fences. But now I still have vegetable seeds. And three tomato plants. Do you see where this is going?

To plant a vegetable garden this summer, all I’d have to do is clear out a large and scary jungle (there are blood-sucking bugs in there!) of dandelions, quack grass, branches, and weeds, as well as bushes and small trees. The lilacs in there would need transplanting to the west fence, so they wouldn’t block the vegetables from the sun. Also, a few volunteer maple trees need to be moved. And I couldn’t risk losing the vintage peonies by trying to transplant them now, so they’ll have to stay where they are.

Tomatoes need a lot of sun, so I’ll have to ask my husband to build raised beds for them, and for the corn, beans, lettuce, garlic, pumpkins, and raspberries. Oh—I’ll also have to move the mulch pile, shovelful by shovelful, because it’s smack in the middle of the raised beds’ site.

I’ll need at least one more hose, probably two, to extend out to the new garden for watering all the crops. Also, I’ll have to write reminders in my daily planner, because I won’t be able to see the vegetable garden from the backyard. Sometimes, for impetuous gardeners, it’s Out of Sight, Out of Mind, and I Forgot to Water the Tomatoes.

Because I was already worrying about the fate of my helpless tomatoes, I planted them in three big pots on our back patio. It’s sunny there, and the hose is nearby. With great optimism, I stuck a big honker of a tomato cage into each of the planters and am assuming my anemic little guys will grow green muscles over the summer and climb high up the rungs.

But what about the unplanted vegetable and pumpkin seeds, the unbought raspberry plants, the unbuilt raised beds, the unweeded jungle, the untransplanted lilacs, and the unrealistic gardener whose fantasy has grown impossible?

The Rozen vegetable and fruit crops will be a little late this year; look for them in 2012. With all this reality crashing down onto my head, I think I need a cookie – and a cup of tea to go with it. And maybe another tomato plant.

Thumbs down on backyard chickens and sheep, so my garden staff is not speaking to me

May 21, 2011

Even though all three members of my gardening staff are not speaking to me, at least I’m hopeful this week that spring has finally arrived. The sweet pea and hollyhock seeds I planted recently along our fence are sprouting. This is a small victory for all things green and growing, in a season where we saw snow – snow! – falling in our town on May 16.

Two of our newly planted apple trees are in bloom, and the other two are starting to leaf out nicely. The new Italian fig tree looks healthy, and my marriage is still intact. (A few days after my husband planted the apple trees, I mentioned that we also needed a bosc pear tree. Lee sighed and then winced at the lingering pain in his back and shoulders – a result of the apple-tree planting. Let’s wait to get a pear tree, he suggested. I agreed. But a few days later, I happened to stop at a local nursery and, suddenly, an Italian plum tree leaped into the back of my little SUV. Please note that we had agreed only to postpone buying a pear tree. There was no mention of Italian plum trees.)

My husband peered at me over the top of his glasses, sighed, and then smiled. So love still blooms at our house – but my staff is not speaking to me. Recently I wrote about my four-legged gardening assistants: Kaylee, our golden retriever; Rags, our Old English sheepdog, and Benjamin BadKitten, our Maine Coon cat and resident troublemaker.

Kaylee is giving me the silent treatment because I described her as elderly and referred to her “considerable bulk.” (Lee, a newsman for more than 40 years, assures me that truth is always a defense again a libel charge.) Benjamin BadKitten is upset because I would not sign up for a Backyard Poultry Class, sponsored by the local co-op. “In two short hours we will cover raising chickens, ducks and geese in a backyard setting,” the press release said. But if we brought a flock of chickens into our backyard with Benjamin on duty, in two short hours we would have a pile of feathers and a mess of chicken feet.

Rags is deeply unhappy because I would not attend a Backyard Sheep Workshop earlier this month in the co-op annex. “Learn about the joys and possibilities of raising sheep in your backyard or on your small property,” the press item said. To me, letting our sheepdog loose with a flock of sheep anywhere, but especially in our backyard, spells “slapstick comedy” rather than “joys.”

It’s lucky that my four-legged staff can’t speak English...or Latin. A former forestry college editor emailed me recently about the value of knowing the Latin names for vegetation. “Who can argue with the Latin of plant names? The understory vegetation in the Douglas fir habitat type is physocarpus malvaceous. Have you ever encountered a better swear word?” Imagine how hurt my feelings would be if Benjamin BadKitten suddenly ruffed up his fur and hissed, “You physocarpus malvaceous! I demand backyard chickens!” (Imagine how wealthy I’d be if my animals could actually talk….)

One of the many joys of living in this college town for amateur gardeners and bird lovers like me is the nearby Arboretum and Botanical Garden on the University of Idaho campus. A birder spent about two hours there recently and reported seeing 52 different species of birds. (Only professional editing standards prevented me from adding six or seven exclamation points to that sentence. I keep a line item in our monthly household budget for birdseed and suet.)

On a warm May morning, the birder spotted Canada geese, mallards, California quail, ring-necked pheasants, a Great Blue heron, an osprey, several varieties of hawks, an American kestrel, a killdeer, mourning doves, a great horned owl, Vaux's Swift (I’ll have to look up that bird,) a Calliope hummingbird, a downy woodpecker, northern flickers, two kinds of flying flycatchers, two varieties of Vireo (no clue what this looks like;) a few crows and a raven (I can’t tell the difference yet;) swallows, including two violet-green ones, chickadees, a red-breasted nuthatch, a house wren, ruby-crowned kinglets, starlings, warblers, spotted towhees, sparrows, a western tanager, grosbeaks, blackbirds, pine siskins, goldfinches, and – the bird I want most to find at our feeders – a lazuli bunting.

Blue flowers and blue birds are my weaknesses in the garden. No matter what color the birds and blossoms – or how mutinous my garden staff – an hour at the Arboretum and Botanical Garden can restore an impetuous spirit.

My furball staff is great excuse for why I'll never be chosen as garden tour site

May 14, 2011

When our daughter, Amanda, was in elementary school, she and I sometimes would go outside to our backyard garden and play Martha Stewart and Her Daughter. As we strolled among the roses and flowering perennials, I would turn to her and say, in my best Martha-esque voice, “Now identify this plant correctly, dear, using the Latin name, of course.” 

Amanda would reply, in mock horror, “Mother, as if you need to remind me to use the proper Latin name!” Then, in her best Pig Latin, she would make up an excellent flower name – ed-ray ose-ray, for instance -- and we would try very hard not to grin at each other. We were not really members of the Martha fan club. Her seeming lack of joy and humor made me sad. I also wondered how she could possibly produce all those spectacular garden projects by herself – until one day I read that Ms.Stewart had a staff of garden assistants.

One of the 840 reasons that my yard will never appear on a garden tour is that I, too, have a staff. (My husband, Lee, by the way, says he is not staff; he’s just unpaid labor.) Unlike Martha’s, though, my three staff members all have four feet. Two have long tails; the third has a nub of a tail that wiggles when he’s happy.

Now that gardening season has – finally! – arrived, it seems only fair to introduce my staff members. They are my excuse for having a garden that no Arboretum Society will want to photograph. Ever. Any garden project I attempt in our backyard automatically involves the help – and I use this word in its most generous context – of my staff: Kaylee, our elderly golden retriever; Winston Ragsdorf (aka Rags,) our Old English sheepdog, and Benjamin BadKitten, our large, black and brown Maine Coon cat. All three take the term impetuous gardener to new lows. And, unfortunately, everything I write about them is true. 

  

Each has a specialty. Kaylee is the supervisor. If I am working in a patch of spring bulbs, she will park her considerable bulk directly on top of the tulips I’m trying to weed, and…meditate. Sometimes she snores while she meditates. She’s not concerned about squashing the tulips because, since they're not edible, they have no value. Kaylee insists on frequent lunch breaks. Her focus is always: “Feed me; feed me now! I would also enjoy a treat! Five treats would be better!” She can tell time and is seldom off by more than a few minutes when the Magic Hour of 4 p.m. – dinner time –arrives. That dog drives me nuts, and I love her. To see her doggy grin always makes me smile. I wonder if Martha’s staff ever grins at her.

Winston Ragsdorf – Rags –is my landscaper. His favorite word is “garden.” Like many Old English sheepdogs, he is a galumphing clown with big feet, a stump of a tail, and a need to herd and protect. He does his best work when my back is turned. Recently, I was potting herbs into two planters on our patio. Rags was out of my sight for less than five minutes – but in that brief time, he enthusiastically dug out and sent flying an entire flower bed’s worth of mulch onto the grass. I know this because several chunks of the mulch landed in my hair.

Our sheepdog’s work ethic is unmatched. He can demolish a row of tall, blooming hollyhocks (his favorite target,) and then spy a lilac bush that needs pruning. He scoffs at fancy pruning shears; teeth and a strong jaw work just fine, thanks. Then he sees a rosebush that, to his artistic eye, looks too tall. No problem. Soon he is wrestling that bush right out of the ground and presenting it, clamped between his jaws, to me for praise. He does not understand why I yell at him during these horticultural frenzies – but he is quick to forgive and to swipe my face with a big, fat, wet kiss.

In theory, Rag is fiercely protective of me; I am his sheep. But he is afraid of storms and will jump onto my lap at the first rumble of thunder. (He weighs about 90 pounds.) Unlike the omnivorous Kaylee,he is a finicky eater, and will not touch his breakfast or dinner unless I sit next to him, praising him for the superb job he is doing in finishing his meal. Does Martha coddle her staff?

Benjamin BadKitten is my micro-manager and Rags’ best friend. He is six years old, but he will always be our kitten. (We also have two other cats: the crabby Abigail Grump, a long-haired black and white, and Tessa the Vague, a sweet calico whose chandelier is missing more than a few bulbs. Neither of them enjoys gardening, for which I am thankful every day.) Benjamin’s major contribution to the Rozen gardens involves providing them with fertilizer. He also reminds me to stop and smell the roses – or the Badkitten. When I’m on my knees, ready to slip a fragile plant into its new soil, Ben will climb onto my lap, stretch his front paws onto my chest, and demand to be petted. Always, I stop whatever I’m doing and indulge him. He likes the soft leather of my garden gloves against his fur. I like knowing that, in our backyard, the gardens will win no prizes, but my four-footed staff members know they are loved.

Even if I'm wearing fleece and wool in the endless chill, at least I’m gardening

April 30, 2011

My April gardening ensembles center on two fabrics: fleece and wool. This is just wrong. But instead of whining about the gray sky and endless chill, I’ve been bundling up and getting on with the weeding. On rainy days, I write in my journal about garden plans while waiting for the weather to warm up. Some recent garden-related journal entries:

• A woman recognized me from my recent speaking date at the Moscow Garden Club and said she is a member of the club – even though she buy most of her flowers from a local crafts store. She has invited the other members for a tour of her silk-and-polyester garden, but so far no field trip is scheduled. This delightful woman knows exactly who she is.

• I am not a morning person. The name of my former editing business was Midnight Writer. All the big garden sales happen in the morning – and the organizers always warn buyers to be there before the doors open. Already I have missed the Washington State University Cougar Moms’ plant sale because I would have had to be in Pullman (eight miles away) before 8 a.m. Arriving at church by 9:30 every Sunday is enough of a challenge. On the Pollyanna side, though, is the money I’ve saved by skipping the sales or wandering in mid-morning, long after all the best plants are gone. 

• On a day when I had had absolutely enough of this anti-spring, I happened to stop at my favorite local nursery. (“Happened to stop” is Impetuous Gardeners’ code for “I want flowering plants right now and I’m going to drive around and see if anybody’s selling them yet.”)  Some things are simply driven by fate: A young woman at the nursery was setting out flats of jewel-colored ranunculae (uptown cousins of the buttercup.) I chose six of those beauties in red, purple, yellow and rouge. Then, of course, I needed pansies for accent, and some small, trailing plants to finish the two potted arrangements I was mentally designing. I found white trailing bacopa, red and purple trailing calibrachoa (which look like miniature petunias), and blue, purple and yellow pansies. (Impressed with those fancy plant names? I have the plant stakes with all the information right here on my desk. In my real life, I just call them really cool red, purple and white trailing stuff. And pansies.)

• When our daughter's family visited here last summer, my three-year-old grandson and I spent a memorable afternoon digging for pirate treasure in our backyard gardens. We dug up dozens of shriveled, dormant bulbs, which, I promised Joshy, I would replant so they could turn into beautiful flowers in the spring. I believe the Garden Goddess has a special love for children, because those sickly little bulbs survived the winter cold and are ready to become blooming treasure to delight a little boy and his grandma. 

• A pair of mourning doves apparently has adopted our lawn and gardens. They arrive at dusk and snack on the bird seed that the goldfinches and other feathered diners have dropped from the feeders. Sometimes they perch together in the (still unflowering) apple tree or stroll around the lawn, checking out the slow progress of the perennials that have overwintered in our front garden. I can’t wait to see how they like the blue delphiniums and purple oriental poppies this summer.

 

Over the past few weeks, I had resigned myself to finishing my first “This bothers me most” project on Thanksgiving weekend, at the earliest. This, I thought, did not bode well for the other 840 weeding projects that are also on the list. But that Saturday, I saw that all I needed was one more day of digging quack grass and pruning dead rose stalks. And then that big old curbside bed of lilacs, forsythia, iris, peonies and wild roses will look…representative. (That’s the word Lou Piniella, fiery and beloved former manager of my hapless Seattle Mariners, used to describe an acceptable pitching performance. It wasn’t outstanding; it for sure wasn’t perfect; it was…representative. And if “representative” was good enough for Lou in one game of a 162-game season, it’s good enough for me for one weeding project among 840.) 

 

As a reward for finishing that first big weeding project, I will dig a narrow trench along our fence line, fill it with good dirt and manure, and plant my beloved sweet peas and hollyhocks. I had to order the hollyhock seeds from a catalog, because I will plant only the old-fashioned, single-flower variety and not the ruffly double-flowered version that’s more easily found in stores. 

Besides the fragrant sweet peas that will climb our fence this summer, I’m also planting a delicate, fragrance-free version called “King Tut.” Seeds of this rather rare sweet pea reportedly were found in the tomb of King Tut. I have had success it in my gardens near Seattle and hope it will grow here, too. I love”King Tut” because its flowers are a beautiful blue – and blue flowers are my weakness.

So this weekend, I’ll be out at our backyard fence, with my shovel, gardening gloves – and fleece shirt and wool socks.

Are you feeling impetuous about your garden projects? I have a plan to help us get organized

April 23, 2011

Snow boots and parka stashed in the darkest corner of the hall closet. Winter gloves, hat and scarves lying dormant in the drawer. Red tulips blooming in the front garden. Winter is over, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Why do I hear snickering?

If I have learned anything in this long purgatory of April,it’s this: When the sun is visible and the temperature is above 45 degrees, it’s time to pull on my oldest jeans and grey fleece Seattle Mariners shirt, and race outside to dig up more weeds. No stalling with a second cup of tea. No wimping out until the sun actually feels warm on my face. Just grab the weed bucket and get out there.

By buying this house and its overgrown gardens, Lee and I have made sure that my worst nightmare will never come true: What if I finally make The Perfect Garden and then there’s no more work to do? In our yard here in Moscow, Idaho, there will always be work to do. The ground still seems too wet for planting, so the work is weeding – and it feels as if I will never get it done by summer. (People have been warning me that a Moscow summer – the hot, tomato-growing season – lasts about two months, so I don’t want to miss a minute of it.)

As I walk around our big yard and pause at each wild garden bed, it’s easy for an impetuous gardener to feel overwhelmed. I’ll prune the lilacs on the east side. No – the lilacs on the west side need weeding and transplanting. And, oh, those poor roses! They’re suffocating among all the dead branches. But I have to go buy steer manure for the sweet peas. Wait – first I have to dig the long trench to plant the sweet peas. Quite soon my head is ready to spiral right off my neck and float away into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.

To preserve whatever mental competence remains – and to get some actual work done in the garden, I have developed a plan that works well for me. It might be helpful for other impetuous gardeners, too. The first two steps of the plan are simple. Step Three is the big challenge for some of us:

• Step One: Decide which unfinished garden project bothers you most.
• Step Two: Start working on that project. Right now.
• Step Three: Do not go wandering off “just for a minute” to weed that little flower bed over there. Stay where you are and keep working until your project is done. Then you can go weed that little flower bed.

Last weekend, I knew I needed to start on a “This Is Bothering Me Most” weeding project, mostly because I felt so guilty for all the hard work my husband Lee was doing. We were talking one evening and I mentioned that I felt a great need for apple trees. The next day, Lee brought home four trees: two Gravensteins (my favorites) and two excellent pollinator trees: HoneyCrisp and Cortland apples. My only contribution to the hard-labor planting of those trees was to offer encouragement, sincere and lavish thanks, and unhelpful questions, such as, “So, how soon do you think we’ll have apples?” “Do you think I’ll be able to make pies this fall?” “Oh, no -- what if the crows steal our apples?”

So I chose my project: weed, prune and de-grass a large bed of vintage lilacs, wild roses, irises and violets that has been an eyesore to our neighbors since before we moved in. Neither Lee nor I can see this mess from inside our home, but I’d been thinking a lot about how lucky we are to live in a neighborhood filled with friendly people. And some of these people had to look at the matted grass, dead twigs and thriving weeds every time they drove past our corner, or parked in their driveway, or walked their dogs on our street.

For the rest of the weekend and into the week, I worked on sorting out that garden: Freeing the roses to find the sun, cutting out dead stalks of soon-to-flower bushes, digging out stubborn grass roots, and untangling delicate violets from the weeds that were trying to choke them. As I worked, I talked to the rose bushes, reassuring them that now they’d be able to breathe again, and soon they can show off their new blooms to everybody who passes by. (I realize that admitting in print to chatting with the roses probably isn’t the best way to inspire trust in your readers. But there it is.)

My This-Bothers-Me-Most project isn’t quite finished yet. But the next time the sun comes out and it’s not snowing, I’ll be out there with my weeding bucket until that lilac and rose garden is beautiful. And then I’m going to go weed that little flower bed over there. Just for a minute.

On Her Knees in the Church of Dirt and Flowers

April 9

Friends sometimes ask why I am a gardener. To them, all the digging and planting is too much hard work – and weeding is just boring. Although I have never thought of gardening this way, I can understand why they feel as they do. It’s the same way I react when I read about a Facebook friend’s daily three-mile runs.

For me, gardening is as much about the heart and spirit as it is about the aching muscles and muddy knees. I’m certainly impetuous about buying seeds and plants, and testy about wanting the growing season to arrive immediately. But in my gardens, I have learned patience, developed the ability to see and feel grateful for every new stage of green life (except dandelions,) and have found a sense of peace I can’t reach anywhere else.

Over the last thirty years, I have come to think of my garden as the Church of Dirt and Flowers. I go to my garden when I’m filled with worry about things I can’t change. Digging into hard dirt with my trusty shovel helps burn off the anxiety that would still be hovering if I tried my usual escape: a cup of tea and a book. Late last summer and into the fall, I spent every afternoon clearing deep-rooted weeds from overgrown beds in the backyard of our new home in northern Idaho. Our Seattle-area house wasn’t selling? Paying two mortgages? Missing family and friends on the west side of the Cascade Mountains? Too shy to get involved at our new church here? All those troubles temporarily blew away like the prairie dust in the nearby fields, while I let my muscles (such as they are) take over, and gave my worries a rest.

My husband Lee’s favorite garden task is pruning shrubbery and trees. Earlier in our marriage – OK, fine, it was last summer – I had an unfortunate tendency to micro-manage any weeding he tried to do near my flower beds: “Ohmygosh! That’s not a dandelion! You just weeded a baby delphinium plant! A blue one! Don’t you have something to prune over on the other side of the house? The far side?”)

For all the years of our marriage, Lee has held high-stress newspaper jobs. Rigid daily deadlines, multiple projects to juggle, stories to edit, people to mentor. Often on weekends, he’s turning my latest gardening brainstorm into reality. (Soon he’ll be digging wide, deep holes and then wrestling four new apple trees into the ground for me.) There’s little time to worry about the newsroom when you’re hoping your back or shoulder doesn’t quit on you. But when I’m between brainstorms that demand his strength and muscle, Lee will find a tree or shrub that needs pruning, or a gravel path to weed. I have watched him sitting in gravel, hand-pulling tiny weeds from among the little rocks, and wondered how he had the patience for such work. I have come to realize that the repetitive, stress-free nature of the weeding is also its beauty for him. No deadlines to race. No editorials to write. No phone calls. He doesn’t have to worry about whether he’s doing it wrong. He doesn’t have to concentrate very hard. He can sit in the sunshine and pull the little weeds. Kaylee, our golden retriever, will be sprawled nearby, usually on top of the patch Lee is trying to weed. Lee can stop and toss her a tennis ball. He can look up at the sky. He can just…be. 

During the seemingly endless limbo between winter and spring, my garden can lead me to patience. I can find joy in little miracles that would be only too easy to overlook. Last week I removed the autumn mulch I’d spread to protect plants I had brought with us when we moved from the Seattle area. The de-mulching held as much drama for me as Christmas morning does for a child. Under the wrapping, what will I find? The doll I’d dreamed of – or a flannel nightgown? As I knelt and gently moved away the wet leaves, I found delicate green shoots. My beloved blue delphiniums had survived their first winter in their new home. Hope and faith. That’s what I, unseeking, find, season after season, in my garden.

I needed both last fall, when I realized I could be heading toward a new life as a semi-recluse unless I reached out beyond my reading chair and flower garden. So I sent a timid e-mail to our new church, asking if I might help with children and teenagers there. And with that small step outward, I have found a new ministry, a new church family, dear new friends, and a roomful of high-spirited kids I can teach and learn from every Wednesday night and Sunday morning. I might not ever have had the courage to walk into that church of brick and stained glass if I had not first spent time on my knees in the Church of Dirt and Flowers.

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Feels like spring? Impetuous gardeners turn impatient

April 2, 2011

On the first spring-like day, impatience adds a layer of urgency to an impetuous gardener's nature. Of course, I've been buying garden seeds since January 1^st – and I want to plant them all now. Recently I visited a nursery near our new town and was all set to start loading two flats of smiling pansies and bright-petaled primroses into a garden cart. But then something went boing! in my head. (The boing-ing isn’t unusual, but a sensible boing! is not typical for me.)

Springtime plants were not displayed on the nursery’s outdoor wooden benches. Those benches held raspberry and blackberry plants. (I want to grow raspberries, too! But buy a blackberry plant? Dude. I moved from a small suburb near Seattle, and, there, if a tiny blackberry seed takes root on your property, you will spend the next twenty years hacking brambles.

Anyway, the pansies and primroses were for sale inside the nursery, in a warm, dry room reserved for indoor plants. That was a clue, and explained the boing! in my head. Still…. Is it too early to plant pansies and primroses in my garden, I asked a nursery employee. He could easily have led me straight down the garden path and sold me two dozen pots of spring blooms. Instead, this honorable young man said I should wait another month, so the little guys won’t freeze in the soil.

In thirty years of making gardens, I have seldom left a nursery empty-handed. So, although I regretfully decided to delay buying the pansies and primroses, I stocked up on sweet pea seeds. Such evocative names on the packets:Jewels of Albion,Velvet Elegance, April in Paris. And wild birds can never have too many sunflowers, so I added those seeds to my basket. Plus one packet of antique French pumpkin seeds: Cinderella’s Carriage. (I passed on the packet of Wyatt’s Wonder Giant Pumpkin seeds, though. Enthusiasm and exuberance, yes; delusions of horticultural wizardry, no.)

By the time I had paid for my seeds, the nursery's owner had returned. So, was your staff member correct about waiting to buy pansies and primroses, I asked her. And when can I plant my sweet pea seeds here in north Idaho? And hollyhock seeds? What about perennial plants? And vegetable starts? And do you have fruit trees? And flowering crabapple trees? I flung out the questions with all the dignity of a golden retriever puppy. Before she could get me sorted out, she was needed in the nursery’s gift shop.I waited in her office and interviewed her associate, Abe, a gold and white short-haired cat, who was rescued and adopted as a companion for long-time employee Gypsy, a black, short-haired mouser. (I met Gypsy last fall, when she hitched a ride in my garden cart immediately after I had placed three catmint plants in the wagon.)

When the owner returned, she found Abe on my lap, purring like a well-tuned engine and trying to turn upside down for a tummy rub. “Watch out,” she warned. “Abe will pee on your lap if he gets too happy.” I am relieved to report that Abe made his exit from my lap well short of ecstasy, but with every promise of a continuing mutual friendship.

Here is a nursery owner's timetable for safe planting in Garden Zone 5 – with this caveat: We are all at the mercy of the weather. The last frost date is traditionally May 15^th here, but we all know what a jokester Mother Nature can be.

• Plant in early April: Strawberries, Raspberries, Blackberries, Rhubarb, Bare-root Fruit Trees (Lee and I have to go back soon with the truck!), Lilacs, Flowering Trees, Shade Trees, Seed Potatoes, Asparagus Roots
• Mid-to late April: Pansies, Primroses, Sweet Pea and Hollyhock seeds, Peas
• Early May: Beans, Squash, Perennial Flowering Plants, Hardy Vegetable Starts
• June: Tomato plants and other tender plant starts

Of course, she added, many gardeners have been starting their seeds indoors since February. I tried to look as if I, too, had seedlings sprouting in my greenhouse…if I had a greenhouse…or even a cleared-off top of my clothes dryer. Instead, I silently repeated my mantra: Next year, I will start my seeds in February. Indoors.

One of the biggest challenges to growing things successfully in north Idaho is “the combination of relatively cool (especially night time temperatures), dry summers, and schizophrenic winter weather,” says Paul Warnick, horticulturalist at the University of Idaho Arboretum and Botanical Garden.

Schizophrenic winter weather? Two days after I visited the nursery – on April 4 – it snowed two inches.

She moved to a small town in Idaho with a garden in her heart

March 26, 2011

We walked through the overgrown yard and there they were, nearly hidden under the weeds and tall grass: Dark red peonies. Wild roses. Lilac bushes. So, of course, we had to buy the house whose former owners had planted those wonderful vintage flowers.  

My husband and I now own the 1950s brick house in a small university town in Idaho. As soon as I had unpacked our boxes and organized my June Cleaver kitchen, I grabbed the weed bucket and headed out to the secret garden. Every day of late summer and into the fall, I dug and yanked and pulled away the undergrowth, watered the dry bushes and added spring-blooming bulbs. Before the first snowfall, those long-neglected flower beds knew that somebody loves them again.

I’ve always made gardens. When I was a little girl, my grandmother and I planted pansies and sweet peas for my dolls to play among. As a wife and mother, I made sure each of our houses had an herb garden. (How can you be an Italian cook without fresh rosemary, basil and oregano?) And always we had flowers – bright tulips, hyacinths and daffodils in springtime, romantic cottage gardens for bouquets in summer, and red and gold chrysanthemums blazing in autumn.

Every winter I draw detailed garden plans. Once, I even did a master design on the computer. Everything looks so neat and organized on paper. So sensible. Sometimes, in the spring, I even follow my plan and start with methodically laid-out beds of seeds and plantings. And then I find a local nursery and buy whichever seeds and plants make me smile and say, “Oohhh….We need that!”

I call it impetuous gardening, and it’s been my style for more than thirty years. I have only two carved-in-garden-stone rules, though: Rule One: Every year, my garden must include pansies and sweet peas. Rule Two: Not too many orange flowers. Great splashes of deep blues and purples, dark reds, lemon yellows, flashes of white for drama. But only a few touches of orange for contrast. (Pumpkins and carrots, however, are always welcome.)

One morning last autumn, I was working in our front yard. I’d dug up a wide patch of sod along the walkway and was transplanting the perennials I’d brought from our former home near Seattle. A young woman called to me from her bicycle. “Yeah! That’s what we do here! We dig up the lawn and plant flowers!” I couldn’t wait for my husband, Lee, to come home from work that night. I showed him the new front-yard flower bed (which already seemed too small,) and told him about the young woman who had explained The Local Way of the Garden.

“We have to dig up more of the front yard! Plant more flowers! It’s what we do here!” Whenever I speak in prolonged exclamation points, Lee’s worry lines come out. From nearly 40 years of experience, he knows that when I start exclaiming about what “we” need to do, the part of the “we” who will have to do the heavy shoveling, lifting or hauling will be he.