As the winter rains ceased early this year, sun filled days follow one after the other, warmth and color returns to the garden. With the rise in temperature, so comes a rise in spirits and my somewhat winter-hardened heart begins to soften.  Sweet peas start to climb trellises, roses arch high as they reach for the sky, and lobelia droops in drifts of royal blue.  The first sweet smells of summer linger in the warm air, and the pinks that line the walk to the back forty, beckon again and again. I find myself looking for excuses to pay a trip to the compost bin, to rake the pathways that lead into the isthmus of garden that narrows to a V along the back lane. The oriental lilies are popping up and will soon astound us with their dinner plate size blooms, and their heavenly smell.  Honeysuckle, nicotiana, and dianthus bring us back to earth, conjuring up memories of gardens from long ago.  Aromatherapy in its most remarkable form, raising ghosts like lost friends, shadows that surround you on the path, as you walk in the garden on a sweet summer morn.  

Daffodils and tulips are forgotten as day lilies, crocosmia and roses take over the perennial beds, and the bank that hugs the road above bursts into a kaleidoscope of color.  At least that’s the plan!  I always look at other people’s gardens as we go about the town, and feel sorrow for those that have a bare shriveled lawn, a patch of dirt, a chained up dog, and struggling shrubs.  All so drab, devoid of life and color.   Looking back over the years, my daughter Tracy was quick to point out that no matter where we lived, whether large spacious acreage, a small yard, or a pot outside an apartment door (or two or three or four), I had to have a garden. 

It’s summer, and the fairies are back guarding the ponds after spending the winter on the front porch, and dogs once more get a chance to lie in the dappled shade from the ivy covered Alders that hug the driveway.  The dahlias are in, and last year, thanks to the generosity of a lady needing help in preparing her dahlia beds for the winter, I have a wide variety of shapes and colors coming up in my own garden.  My favorite are the water lily dahlias.  Floated on the ponds, they almost look like water lilies.

In the vegetable garden, having switched to the low carb way of eating, I had to accordingly change planting plans.  Many more green vegetables in the form of broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, leeks, onions, spinach, and even though I do not eat them, Sam and the bunny love carrots.  For tomatoes, from prior year’s experience, I learned that hydroponic produced no better results than planting in buckets, but keeping the tomato plants separated in buckets, only one tomato to a bed, as well as scattering them throughout the garden  really does help.  I think the one judicious spray of “Bordeaux mix” did deter the late blight and extended our harvest, as we were picking tomatoes in November, and were eating garden tomatoes at New Year’s.   This might not seem like any sort of feat to most of the country, but here in the foggy, damp, Pacific Northwest, it is truly a wonder.  I had no luck with my hollyhocks (actually Norman’s), they were taken over by a red rusty type blight, but I had planted them where potatoes had grown before, and this year I will try a different location and promised Norman not to plant them in concrete.

This year we are going for more raspberries, strawberries, red currants, black currants, grapes, and peaches.  Having spent $50.00 at Raintree Nurseries, last year, I was then eligible for a “Free” plant, so I chose something I had not only never heard of, but would probably have never bought and paid for by myself. A Goumi, (Elaeagnus multiflora); this oddity being a Russian import, a 6’ tall bush “covered with thousands of juicy, red, pleasingly tart fruits” and used for sauces, pies and jellies.   So far I have yet to spot any “fruit”, never mind thousands.

I mulched the asparagus bed with bags of compost, hoping to get a real crop instead of a spear here and there, but so far, even though it is early, it does not look good.  I also spent hours digging out the rambunctious wild ranunculus (and I mean wild, never ever in your right mind plant this bugger) from the strawberry beds, adding more top soil, compost, bags of peat moss, and replanting strawberries and surrounding them with straw.

Now that we are in the “new house” with a different vista down to the treetops below and the meadow, there is more garden to cultivate.  I have been transplanting anything that grows at the drop of a hat, to the hillside that drops down to the meadow, made terraced beds, and have dug over a new vegetable plot in the meadow.  We have baby chickens and a couple of Khaki Campbell ducks in the old cottage, and now its time to build a chicken coop and pen.  The more I garden this mere three-quarters of an acre, it seems to grow larger and larger day by day. 

As I take the daily walk (admittedly on some days its a mad dash) through the garden, I check the wisteria vine that clings to the aspen at the bottom of the garden.  I have longed for wisteria, and would have almost died for a large old vine. While living in a little house that was draped with wisteria every spring, I fell in love with the magical scent of the orient, the cascade of purple blossoms that dripped from the roof-line like lace. I did bring a little start with me when I moved, but I may be dead before that one bears blossoms.

Last spring, my friend Dotty called me with the news she was thinking of getting rid of her wisteria and would I like it? (Do bears poop in the woods?); and armed with shovel, pruning shears, and a large plastic bag I packed the old 2-door Dodge we had at the time (can’t get a tree in a Jeep), and proceeded forth ready for battle.  I did not know it was 15’ high, and encompassed an arbor and a fence, but, nonetheless, I forged ahead. The first chore was to try to unravel as many of the long vines from the fence and arbor, which it had spent the last four years clinging to, making love knots around, and forming monkey puzzles through.  A mind boggling challenge that would daunt the finest Mensa applicant.  An hour or two later, after pulling, tugging, wafting and weaving, with a pile of “cuttings” that would reach roof height, we were ready to start “digging” up the roots.  With only a few inches to spare between a fence and an arbor surrounding it, there was not much room to grovel in the damp earth as we kneeled, sat, squatted, dug, pried, sawed, and hacked our way through roots and mud.  Starting out with the shovel which was pretty much ineffective, we graduated to elbow grease and a Swedish bow saw, cutting free the roots, sawing through dirt and mud. Then working our way methodically with pick axe, hand axe, dead weight; but stopping short of TNT, we used the always helpful smattering of cuss words.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, jumping up and down on the now tethered drifts of boughs; squatting down to reach under the root ball, leaning over, sawing blindly in the restricted space between a rock and a hard place, triumphantly, I was at last able to saw through the last remaining reluctant root, and with a tug and a loud "goosh," the darn thing came free.  After being stooped over in the mud for at least two hours, barely able to walk, tugging and lifting the root ball with it’s trailing 20’ of vine, we managed to pack it into the trunk, stuffing in loose limbs here and there, taping the trunk lid down with 50 MPH duct tape.  At last, I was able to wash off the 20 lb of muck and mud that now covered my hands and clothing, and head for home. 

A year or so later, I peer carefully at the long limbs draped over the Alders.  There are leaves this year, but still no blooms.  Is it ever going to bloom?  They say if a wisteria is not blooming to cut a circle around the roots to “stress” it and it will put forth bloom in self-defense.  If this is the case, then this one should bloom its silly head off. 

Now that summer is a sure thing, we spend as much time working outdoors that the requirements of running a business for a living will allow.  Best wishes go out you, dear readers, for a flourishing garden, abundant perennial beds, and a most bountiful record breaking harvest. 

Val C. and the Zoo

Coos Bay Oregon.