Garden fiasco: My primroses took one for the team

Late February, 2012

I remember reading that, during the 1930s, hobos who rode the trains would leave chalk marks on the doorsteps of families who were willing to give them food or money. My own family believes that birds, squirrels, and stray animals etch marks in our yard, letting their hungry pals know they can count on free meals from me. (Note to our town’s wandering moose: I hope you can’t read.)

Maybe there’s a new technology that gives garden nurseries, and any stores that sell plants, an invisible magic marker to brand impetuous gardeners. A potential customer walks in, and the employee activates the decoding device and spots the sucker. “Wow, great timing!” the employee says cheerily. “We just got in our first shipment of primroses! Just what you need for early spring in your garden!”

Is there a glowing mark on my forehead? In the past week, I have learned three important gardening tips:

• First, impetuous gardeners firmly believe that early spring starts in February in north Idaho
• Second, there is no early spring in north Idaho.
• Third, if you plant primroses in February – or any time when there is still a chance of snow and freezing temperatures – your primroses will hate you. Maybe they will die. At best, their petals will wilt and shrivel. Every time you look out your window, you will see them, huddling in their planter, shivering, gasping, and cursing you with their tiny primrose voices.

Of course, there really is no magic technology (I hope) that invisibly brands gullible gardeners. We make our own impetuous decisions. We see the plants, buy the plants, ignore the snow clouds, and prance outside to celebrate an early springtime. So this column is the Dark Side of my previous writing about hopeful signs of spring. It’s still snowing. The ground is still frozen. Wise up. Stay indoors and read. I have never been a cynic, but am a professional at carrying long-term guilt. I feel terrible about sending those primroses out into the cold and seeing them struggle. I should have covered them with protective fabric before the snow fell and the temperature dropped to 16 degrees.

On the day I planted the primroses, I walked around our neighborhood and felt pretty smug. Nobody else’s garden had spring flowers. Nobody else was outside, wearing fleece gardening gloves, humming as she planted. Of course, nobody else was outside –my neighbors are intelligent people! It was 41 degrees, and the winter wind was blowing across the prairie. In the half hour it took me to do the planting, I had to go inside twice to warm up my fingers – so I could go back out and condemn eight trusting little plants to an early doom.

Do not listen to the bad Gardening Angel in your head, urging you to ignore the temperature (not to mention the falling snow) and just go ahead and put those cute plants into the frozen ground. Give yourself time to let the Good Angel flutter closer and whisper, “Whaddya doin’? Take off those garden gloves, put down the trowel, and back away slowly, all the way into the house. And stay there for another month.”

At least the pressure’s off for awhile. I have reported my first gardening fiasco of 2012. My garden staff (golden retriever, Old English sheepdog, and Benjamin BadKitten) is relieved that they are blameless in this one. While I was out planting primroses, Kaylee, our golden retriever, and Benjamin were both deep into their afternoon meditation. Rags, our sheepdog, worriedly supervised me from the warmth of the living room sofa. Several times I heard him whimper a warning that I was making a fool of myself by planting primroses in late February. Since he is the Clown Prince of foolishness, I should have listened.

Don’t misquote the Bard; plant primroses instead

February 2012

“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”

The opening lines from William Shakespeare’s “King Richard the Third” might seem fitting as a gardener’s lament in the greyness of late February in north Idaho. Actually, though, Richard, the future king, is celebrating his brother Edward’s yanking of the crown from Henry VI.If Shakespeare had been less prosaic, he might have written: “The winter of our discontent is now made glorious summer by this sun of York,” the victory of Richard’s family, the House of York, over the House of Lancaster.

Richard does go on, quite soon, to complain about Edward’s carousing ways and his own physical afflictions. Unless we, too, have visions of a brief summer of triumph, involving scheming, treachery and murder, and ending in tragedy, these dramatic lines have little connection to our wish to see the sun again. So we impetuous, impatient gardeners,who want to whine in a more erudite way, will be bumbling down the wrong path if we try to rely on the Bard of Avon here. (Anyway, as one literary critic noted,“Richard's string of metaphors runs adrift when he begins talking about burying clouds in the ocean.”)

Instead of quoting Shakespeare out of context, I suggest planting primroses. While grocery shopping recently,I passed a display of these early spring favorites,flowering in deep red, yellow, purple, and magenta,and put eight plants into my shopping cart.

A waist-high brick planter is part of the design of our front porch. Last fall I planted Lenten roses (hellebores) and winter pansies there. The Lenten roses are showing flower buds just in time for their namesake season, but the pansies have struggled through our quixotic weather. The planter needed bright splashes of color, so I’ve added primroses to the brick garden. When we lived in the Seattle area,my primroses were hardy perennials and often bloomed as the first flowers of spring in my garden. I haven’t seen them in many gardens here, so am hoping the ones I bought will be happy in the partial protection of our porch.

There is visible reason to know that spring is coming, despite the lingering effects of the snows and rains. In the gardens at our house, the heritage lilacs have begun to bud. And every day, when I walk around our backyard, cleaning up after my four-footed garden staff, I find new green shoots in the perennials beds that I planted last summer and fall. I stand, bundled in my winter fleece and gloves, and look down at the bare, slender stalks of newly returning hollyhocks, snapdragons, and Canterbury bells. They are growing, naked to the chill wind off the nearby prairie and the snow that still threatens.

Roses planted here more than fifty years ago have survived the wildest of Moscow winters. I know they will bloom again, with deep purple-red petals. Peonies, whose roots lie shallow in our gardens, have defied the cold for decades. They will be ready to flaunt their fancy skirts again this summer. So I will practice patience – a virtue I admire in others and find too deeply buried in myself – and wait for spring. Meanwhile, I’ll be grateful to look out our living room window, onto the porch, and see the Lenten roses and the primroses blooming. Then maybe I will brew a cup of tea and read a bit of Shakespeare.

I'm still immune, but somebody on my garden staff has an unfortunate case of spring fever

Although he thinks the weather is too chilly to risk freezing his delicate toes by cavorting outdoors, Benjamin BadKitten has a premature case of spring fever. Several mornings this week, he raced in a jagged line from the hallway, into and around our living room. After checking to make sure I was watching, he darted behind my husband's armchair, rose onto his hind legs, and unsheathed his claws. My yelling always began just before he tried to turn the side of the bookshelf into his new scratching post: “Beast cat! Stop it right now!” After the warning – and depending on how many of his lives he's willing to risk,-- he might vary the rest of his nut-out. He could take one more stab (literally) at the wooden shelf, until my decibels rise to a level he considers life-threatening. Or he might take off for another sprint around the room, before he plops at my feet, with his ears flat, plumed tail twitching, and green eyes glowing.

One morning, he added a dramatic climax to his repertoire. My BadKitten leaped onto Lee's leather chair and started to burrow into a corner. Before he could use his razor claws to carve a fat-cat-sized cubbyhole – or maybe poop on the chair, – I did some leaping of my own. I scooped him up and gave him a one-way ticket outside, by way of the dining room door. These daily eruptions always happen before I've finished drinking even half of my morning cup of tea, and while I'm trying to read my Moscow-Pullman Daily News. Most cats save their pent-up energy for nighttime frenzies, but Benjamin is a smart and observant. He knows I need a peaceful entry into my morning so, for maximum annoyance effect, he's willing to adjust his timing. And yet I let him live.

I've learned enough about the changing seasons here in Moscow to know it's too early to start any garden-related projects, except studying seed catalogs. In past years, I've used our dining room table as the base for small, plastic greenhouses, and planted vegetable seeds way too early. This year, that table has other uses. We won't be hosting any big family dinners until this summer, because the dining room will become our makeshift kitchen in a few weeks. Lee and I are having some work done in the kitchen and bathrooms, including new flooring. So we'll need the dining room to store the entire contents of our kitchen. When you're an Italian cook, as I am, you have a big honkin' bunch of kitchen stuff. I've stated packing away as much of the dinnerware, cookbooks, equipment and dry goods as possible before the project starts rolling. As the boxes mount up, I've come to appreciate the big table.

During my writing break in the last month, I reorganized the long desktop and multiple drawers in my home office. The desktop runs the entire length of one wall and partway along another. To completely organize the entire mess, I've learned from past unfortunate attempts, was to clear everything out of the room and deposit it all on top of my new best friend, the dining room table. For several weeks, that poor table groaned from the weight of reference books, notebooks, printer paper, file folders, stationery, wicker storage baskets, bulletin boards, keepsakes, and art supplies. I stacked everything in teetering piles on the big table and did not put anything back into my office until I knew exactly where it should go. I'm two weeks into the newly ordered space and still feeling joy at the results.

We have a little time before all the kitchen packing has to be done, so I'm hoping our false spring will hang on a little longer. Impetuous gardeners need to be outside in the sunshine, even if we have to wear wool socks and fleece vests. Flocks of robins have been swooping onto our lawn lately, and finches of many colors have been hanging out at the bird feeder and birdbath. The mated pair of Asian collared doves visit every day, and I regularly toss peanuts under our big oak tree for the neighborhood squirrels.

I want to be out there with them, clearing away the winter's windblown twigs from my gardens and autumn's last gift of fallen leaves, soggy now and black with decay. I want to scatter-plant some poppy seeds, as I did last winter, and wait to see if they take root for a summer showing. Maybe the pale tips of a few crocuses will be up, and the delphiniums will reveal the lacy hems of their petticoats.

 

Maybe I can convince my spring-feverish BadKitten to come with me. I'll need his advice about how to cat-proof the raised beds. I'll need to observe him before I write the job description for a new chief garden staffer. (My sweet calico cat, Tessa the Vague, is in fragile health and has reached emeritus status after her brief tenure last year.) I wonder if it's illegal to note on the form: BadKittens need not apply.

Back, after a holiday break, and planning more gardens with my four furball friends

 

February 2, 2016

As I write on this Groundhog's Day, a wispy snow is falling, our lilac bushes are in bud – and all four of my garden staffers have failed to see their shadows. Even if sunshine were pouring into our living room window, my furry group of slackers would be in the dark, because all of them are asleep (and two of them are snoring.) My reading table is at near-avalanche level, piled with garden books and seed catalogs. But even impetuous gardeners know it's too early for anything except planning this year's flower and vegetable beds. Faithful readers are probably much more interested in updates about my garden staff, several of whom were in fragile health (or thought they were) when I took a seasonal writing break in December and January.

Benjamin BadKitten, my favorite divo (this seems the right term for the self-absorbed, melodramatic, neutered male Maine coon cat I cater to,) has recovered fully from his hip injury. He no longer limps or cries out in pain when he jumps onto his cat perch or my lap – and I am very thankful. Even though his antics can turn my hair gray , I love my BadKitten. I've noticed his new reluctance to go out into the front gardens in the daytime. He hesitates at the cat door and seems to flinch if he hears a car's motor. I think a vehicle might grazed him and hurt him badly enough to cause the limp, and he's still anxious about crossing the street to visit the neighbors' yard, where birds and mice hang out. I hope his wariness, and the slightly slower reflexes of his ten-year-old muscles, will make him less of an adventurer and hunter this spring and summer.

Two months ago, I dreaded writing this first column of the new year, because I was afraid I'd have to share sad news about Rags, our Old English sheepdog. My husband, Lee, and I doubted that our arthritic and nearly blind, shaggy guy would survive the holidays. But Rags is still with us, enjoying his life as well as he can, even as he grows a bit more frail each day. We know he has a heart murmur and very stiff back legs. He spends most of each day sleeping, needs guidance when he goes outside, and recently has begun having intestinal accidents in the house. We clean up after him and tell him it's OK, because this sweet old dog has been a loyal, loving member of our family for thirteen years. When Lee comes home from work, Rags rallies briefly and looks forward to the familiar routines they share. Every night he finds me in my reading chair, licks my jeans and then my face, and looks forward to watching “Downton Abbey”with us on Sunday evenings. He also enjoyed the football season, unless the Seattle Seahawks were deep into pressure-filled games. Then Rags would have to retire to his leather couch and de-stress for awhile. If our good dog shows symptoms of pain, as we have seen in the past, or loses complete control of his bodily functions, we will make his final appointment with the veterinarian. For now, we're thankful for every day he's with us.

The news is less hopeful about my chief garden staffer, Tessa the Vague, our elderly calico cat. In December she became ill, with raspy breathing and rapid weight loss, neither of which has improved after antibiotics and other medicine. I'm now giving Tessa what her veterinarian calls comfort care – prescription canned food, which she loves, and continuing affection and security as she begins her final passage. Tessa recently started a new, nightly ritual: curling up for a nap on Lee's lap, where she purrs and Lee keeps her cradled against him. Tessa also likes high-fat snacks, and we are indulging her. If Lee wants a slice of pie after dinner, Tessa is waiting to share his whipped cream. I always give her the remains of a tablespoon of sour cream dip on the nights I give in to my potato chip habit.

Abigail Grump, has shown remarkable compassion during Rags' and Tessa's journey into frailty. Abby, a beautiful, long-haired black and white cat, tends to make her wishes known with loud and expressive meows. Lately, though, she's shown a normally hidden kindness to our sweet old dog and always-dim calico cat. She lets Rags slurp her face and sniff her backside if he senses her nearness. Neither Abby nor my BadKitten is accustomed to being anything other than the alpha cat. Those two are longtime buddies and claim power in separate spheres: Abby uses me as her personal servant and door-woman, and Ben has priority on my lap. But now they give Tessa first dibs on the expensive canned cat food, and wait patiently until this tiny, thin cat has eaten all she wants. Benjamin often gives Tessa the best sleeping spot, closest to the heat register in our living room. (My tubby BadKitten has far more natural insulation than she does.) I love the two cats' new deference to Rags and Tessa, who have shown them only love and gentleness all of their lives.

May your reading tables overflow with gardening catalogs this month, and may you have a beloved pet to warm your lap and your heart.

On my reading table this winter: Vegetable Gardening for Dummies

Winter 2011

This winter my reading stack of books includes Vegetable Gardening for Dummies. If you had seen the puny vegetables I grew when we lived in the Seattle area, you might have bought this book for me and insisted I memorize it. I always started out with great expectations and early success. My sugar snap peas grew well, probably because Seattle's cool, wet springs are a pea patch’s heaven. Unfortunately, two of my garden staff’s second favorite vegetable (after tomatoes) is fresh peas.

Every afternoon, Kaylee, our golden retriever, and Rags, our Old English sheepdog, waited impatiently for pea-picking time. As soon as they saw me coming out the back door, holding a red colander, they would race to the garden fence and start panting. Most days I would end up feeding them the peas I’d planned to toss into the pasta for that evening’s dinner. I love to eat fresh, raw peas, too, so very little of my crop seemed to make it as far as the kitchen.

My other vegetable crops were less impressive. (I am stretching the elastic meaning of “crops” so far that, when I let go of the word, it might just shoot backwards and snap me in the face.) The lettuce patch would typically be one day away from picking, for a week of dinner salads, when I would forget to replenish the slug bait around the garden bed. The next morning, I would find only a chewed-off, ragged row of green stems, instead of healthy bibb, buttercrunch and Quatre Saisons lettuce plants. It’s so galling to have to go to the market to buy salad greens, when you know the slugs are passing the bleu cheese dressing around their own dinner table.

I planted corn, beans and cucumbers during one of Seattle infamous false springs: a few days of 70 degree-weather, lasting just long enough to lure impetuous gardeners like me from out of our winter burrow holes. As soon as we planted our seeds, the sunny joke was over, and the cold rains began. My corn seeds never did sprout. Probably the poor little seeds shivered and drowned. A few cucumber plants made it above ground, but languished without sun, turned yellow, and collapsed long before they had even flowered. And the slugs added fresh bean pods to their springtime menu. (I'll wait to tell you about my pumpkin patches over the years, until we’re closer to autumn. There is something to be said for delayed humiliation.)

The pressure to grow vegetables successfully will be greater here in northern Idaho. I won’t be able to blame any crop failures on four months of rainy, cold springtime and three-week summers. In Seattle, only my immediate family and closest friends knew about the vegetable casualties in my garden. This time, I’m writing about it. I will rely on your compassion as you read. This spring my husband, Lee, will build raised beds inn our west yard, and I will fill them with rows of vegetable seeds and young plants. In the meantime, I’m studying “Vegetable Gardening for Dummies” and wondering if gardening here means I won’t have to order a truckload of slug bait.

Using math – impetuous gardener style – to find bargains on seeds

 Winter 2011

There is still some snow in our yard, but this morning I saw five robins perched in the hawthorn tree outside my writing room window. Those red-breasted birds, with their happy chirps, mean the promise of spring to me. Even though it’s only February, for impetuous gardeners, it’s never too soon to start planning our new gardens. It’s also not too early to order from the seed catalogs that started dropping into our mailboxes before Christmas.

I can’t resist seed catalogs. This year, I spent much of January poring over them with the same intensity I once gave to studying for university exams. I always fold down the corner of any page that contains seeds or plants I want to order. Most of my garden catalogs look like accordions, which indicates an unfortunate lack of restraint in the shopping phase of gardening.

I cross-checked catalog prices for the hard-to-find seeds and plants I wanted until my eyes blurred, but my research and early ordering saved me money and irritation. In past years, I’ve ordered from a well-known catalog. This year I found the same seed varieties in a new, unfamiliar catalog – at half the price. Then I used the math skills that make impetuous gardeners who we are: I can order twice as many seeds from the cheaper catalog, because their seeds would have cost twice as much if I had bought them from the more expensive catalog. (When our children had complex math logic homework, they always asked their dad to help them.)

I realize that, until I’ve actually planted the cheaper seeds, I won’t know if I got a bargain or just wasted my money on poorly producing products. But I still think I’m saving money. Also, by ordering early, I got free shipping from one catalog and a sizable discount from another. I buy many seeds and most of my plants from local nurseries and garden centers, but order hard-to-find seeds and plants by mail. I’m a bit of a diva about my plants. I'm not partial to orange , except for sunflowers, or hot-pink or salmon-colored flowers. Instead, passersby will see red, purple, and blue, with splashes of pale yellow (not mustard, gold, or sunshine) in my garden beds.

I love hollyhocks, but only the old-fashioned, single-petaled variety, not the fluffy ones. I found a new, single-petaled hollyhock variety called “Halo” in a catalog so, of course, I ordered some seeds. And, please, don’t ever bring me daisies. Their fragrance reminds me of rusty nails. If ever I find a volunteer daisy plant hiding among my favorite flowers, I feel no guilt about digging it up and sending it off to compost heaven.

Ordering early meant I was also assured of getting exactly the tomato and herb plants I wanted. Late last spring, I finally decided to buy some fennel plants for my herb garden. By then, the only ones left, locally or in garden catalogs, were the bronze-leafed variety. To my Italian mind, fennel (finocchio) should have lacy, pale green fronds, not stringy, dead-looking brown leaves. My garden this summer will have green Italian fennel.

I learned a lesson, big-time, from our first full year in Idaho: Goodbye to the many lush dahlias I'd brought over from Seattle and left in the ground here over the winter. The hard freezes turned them to black mush, and I won't replace them – because I'd forget where I'd planted them and would botch the autumn rescue.

I’m delighted all of my big patio containers of herbs are still breathing. Experienced gardeners warned me there was no way my rosemary, oregano, Italian parsley, sage, and lemon thyme plants could survive a Moscow winter. But our family was coming for Christmas week, and I needed fresh herbs for all of their favorite Italian dishes: cracked Dungeness crab in a tomato, wine, lemon and herb sauce; braised Tuscan pork chops with rosemary; roast chicken with lemon and herbs, roast beef suffused with garlic and rosemary. I toyed with the idea of bringing the herb pots inside, to our dining room, but gave up that plan when I imagined how happy our three cats would be to have their own indoor gardens to fertilize. Instead, I’ve kept the herb pots outdoors on our patio, snugged up against the house wall, where they are protected from the worst of the winter chill. Every time I walk onto the patio, I smile at my valiant herbs and chalk up one small victory for impetuous gardening.

After snow buries mound of shriveled green apples, it's time to read ultimate impetuous gardener's book

Winter 2011

Even if my face is smudged with frozen dirt, an impetuous gardener like me must hold my head high as I face winter on in northern Idaho. I have to forgive myself for the unweeded patches, the unplanted bulbs, and the perennials I forgot to transplant. Soon the snows of November (and December and January and February) will cover my blunders. I am most looking forward to a cascade of snow burying the hulking mountain of worm-riddled apples, which I hauled by the bucketful directly to the compost pile from under the tree where they fell. I love apples, and enjoy eating a crisp Braeburn or Granny Smith every day as part of my lunch. But the little green apples on the tree in our front yard – tasteless, inedible and too small even for sauce – have been the beasts in my garden for weeks.

I muttered at them with every bucket I filled. After a recent windstorm, I looked up from my knees at the apple tree, after gathering the last of my fallen enemies. “I got you all,” I snarled at the bare branches over my head. “And don’t even think about letting a bee near your blossoms next spring.” I glared at the tree, shook my fist, and then yelped when a stray apple hurtled from a high branch and conked me on the nose before it landed.

After the apple fiasco, I knew it was time to come in from the cold. If I wanted to enjoy the holidays without regrets, I had to make my peace with my limits as a gardener.I have a full indoor calendar this month and through December: hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the finest newsroom an editor and his wife could hope to know, taking down the autumn decorations and putting up the angels and garlands for Christmas, directing the rehearsals and performance of 30 fabulous children and teenagers for our church’s Christmas pageant, shopping for and wrapping gifts for our little grandsons, baking 12 million cookies, and making all the favorite family recipes for our family’s Christmas visit here.

I imagine your own November and December is equally jammed. (I’m also pretty sure you noticed that I left out any mention of pre-holiday housecleaning. I am still a believer in the magic of the elves. Maybe this year they will come to my house, armed with their tiny dusters, mops, and cleaning supplies. If not, I have work to do.)

As I watch the snow fall during the next few months,I know I will wonder if spring will ever come again. After the holidays, it will be time to settle into my armchair and start marking the seed catalogs that have arrived in the mail. Also in winter, many of us spend our former outdoor time reading books about gardening. I highly recommend a memoir that can help any gardener put his or her impetuous nature into perspective.

The book, by William Alexander, is titled “The $64 Tomato.” Its subtitle reveals that the author is as impetuous a gardener as any of us: “How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden.” William Alexander belongs on the throne in the Impetuous Gardeners’ Hall of Fame (or Hall of Shame, depending on who’s reading the book.) His journey into a darkly comic gardening inferno began when he and his wife impetuously decided to buy an extreme fixer-upper house, on acreage that also needed major rescuing. He was confident that they could do most of the work on the house and the gardens themselves.

“Alexander had always dreamed of having his own garden, where he could grow healthy, organic fruits and vegetables,” begins a review in the School Library Journal. “When his family moved to the Hudson Valley, he got his wish – there was more than enough land for his vegetable garden, his apple orchard, his wife's flower garden, and a swimming pool.

“He had done his research and knew which crops to plant and when, what type of fencing he'd need, and how to defend his garden against predators. What he hadn't counted on were the facts that planting sod around the swimming pool killed the corn, and that planting rosebushes killed the sod. There were also landscaping contractors always behind schedule, a groundhog that figured out how to get through a 10,000-electric-volt fence, and feasting deer.

“After years of fighting pests, Alexander realized that there was no such thing as an organic garden in the Northeast, and that for each tomato he'd taken from his garden he'd spent $64; ultimately, what was once a hobby became a second full-time job.”

Alexander’s wife, bless her heart, preferred pottering about in her flower garden to joining his battle to tame the vagaries of nature. If you read this memoir, nothing you decide to do in your own yard will seem too impetuous to consider. (I have to go talk to my husband again about transplanting our four new fruit trees.)

May whichever wintertime holidays or solstice you celebrate be filled with joy and peace. I will miss writing for you every week and will look forward to more gardening adventures after the new year.