Cold Climate Gardening

Okay, it wasn’t really Santa Claus. It was just the mail lady and the UPS man, bringing my two plant orders of the season on the same day. But I felt the same excitement I had felt as a kid on Christmas morning as I made my way down the stairs, wondering if Santa had brought me my heart’s desire.

Well, I knew my heart’s desire was in those boxes. Hadn’t I pored over catalogs, agonized over prices, and checked and rechecked my bank balance? Shoot, I even created some spreadsheets so that the total automatically incremented as I added each plant to the order. That’ll keep your feet grounded like nothing else will, believe me. The other big reality check is to have a column for where you’re going to plant each coveted botanical treasure.

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I can hear, but still not see redwing blackbirds trilling in the trees, and this morning the Canada geese announced themselves with plaintive hooting and great lazy shadows crossing the lawn. We are perched on the edge of spring! I’ve been preoccupied for the last three years with other matters, and gardening has taken a back seat. But as my life calms down somewhat, I’m discovering that one never gets away from gardening; it’s been there the whole time, running in the background of my mind. And I seem to have come back to it with a greater dollop of patience and wisdom than when I left: problems that before were insurmountable, seem much less daunting to me now. Also, the effects I was frustrated in not being able to achieve before, seem to have either happened behind my back or my standards have declined considerably. Probably the latter� But best of all, the old familiar rush of excitement has returned as I contemplate the seasons and their chores before me. Our local Christian Center advertised Easter as New Year’s for the soul. Surely spring is New Year’s for the gardener. I have made all sorts of resolutions.

My first task is to dig up from my memory all the little surprises I managed to plant before the cold drove me into the house last autumn. After our new kitchen extension was put on the back of the house in 2002, the views from those bright windows cried out for garden beds so I started a terraced bank behind the house. It took two years for me to dig the five layers, and still they need constant adjustment. The above picture that I took this morning shows the pine logs that I use to contain each step and how the ravages of winter have left them in total disarray. They are dislodged by water run-off from storms, by deer stumbling across them, by lawn mowers that catch their edges. However, they will do until a better idea presents itself to me. Each row has a footpath behind it, wide enough for me to crawl along, weeding and muttering and generally communing with things. I usually have a cat in attendance, hiding among the daylily foliage and reaching out a paw now and then to let the weeding hand know who’s boss.

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Only I’m still trying to figure out whether I feel like I’ve betrayed Johnny’s or that Johnny’s has betrayed me. One way or the other, one of us has been betrayed.

I’m ordering most of my seeds from a different company this year!!!

Aren’t you shocked? I’m shocked. I always order from Johnny’s. Teman has always ordered from Johnny’s. Everybody orders from Johnny’s. Johnny’s is where you order your seeds from. It just is.

(For those of you who want the short story, I’m doing a lot of ordering from Fedco. But that’s no way to tell a story!!)

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I have planted 400 crocuses (half vernus), 60 daffodils (Tete a Tete and Earlicheer (20ct on sale for no money at Wayside)), 100 iris reticulata(Harmony), and about 15 hyacinths (L’Innocense) so far. Tomorrow I get my Brent and Beckys order - 50 N. Sweetness and 50 N. some early blooming jonquil linnaeus or campernelli something, and a hyacinth called Chestnut. Have trouble finding homes for everyone, and hard to believe that this was a whittled down list. Curse myself for making more work for myself, but hoping it will be worth it come March and April.

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Just got a huge bag of lovely daffodils, 100 dn1 for $15. I should be able not only to finish the row along the side of the quonset barn but put in a row in the lavender field and share a bunch with Mom as well. A lady saw me loading them into the truck and asked if they were onions, a reasonable query as they are in the same sort of net bag and about the same size.
As I can’t possibly plant along the barn until we get a good soaking rain, I will have to figure out how to store most of them in my dinky house. Probably Mom’s basement. . . But …

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