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.