We’re down to the final days of April now. The lengthening and lovely days of May lie just ahead. Plants and trees are budding out or blooming, new life bursting from the ground. The world is greening fast. The juneberry trees are blooming on the edges of the forest. The maples have their first tiny leaves. The lawns are lush with the first blades of grass. These are the days when the weather matters most to me. With the growing world so young and tender and vulnerable, a hard frost or a heavy snow now can mean destruction and disappointment. We had frost on Thursday morning. I anticipated it and covered what I could on Wednesday evening. The damage was minimal. It warmed up after that and rained and I was relieved. Then when I saw snow in the forecast for the weekend, my heart sank. Snows that come this late in the spring are heavy and sticky. Flowers like tulips and daffodils get flattened by them. Budding tree limbs break under their weight. With so much of my time, my energy, and my heart invested in my gardens, these last spring frosts and snows make me despair. I know it’s normal for this to happen here, but that didn’t make it any easier for me when I awoke this morning to find snow on the ground again. It wasn’t a lot – just enough to make me feel sick.
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| Before the snow. |
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| This morning. |
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| This morning. |
I accomplished some good work in the yard and garden last week. I moved some potted plants from the house onto the back porch to prepare them for their ultimate move outdoors. I have an electric heater out there with them for the time being to get them through the coldest nights. I also made a new bed where the old elderberries used to grow by the back porch steps. I will plant herbs there. I set up the rain barrel in a new spot in that bed. And I planted onions. The garden is shaping up. The rhubarb is up, the apples have broken bud, and the garden is filled with the fragrance of hyacinths and narcissus. Now if the weather would just warm up and stay that way . . .
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| Some of last week's accomplishments. |
I wonder if a person can be genetically predisposed to gardening. If it is possible, I’m one of those people. I have always been attracted to plants. I notice them wherever I go. I have memories of encounters with plants stretching back to my earliest childhood. I remember forsythia bushes blooming in my grandmother Rathfon’s yard in a house that she moved from when I was only two years old. I spent the first ten years of my life living in the ruins of my grandfather Howe’s garden on Bridge Street (he died when I was two). I remember vividly the crocuses, hyacinths, and tulips that continued to appear there every spring long after his death. The first rose bush and the first cherry tree I ever loved grew there. I can remember the first time I noticed the heavenly aroma of honeysuckle on a warm spring evening when we were driving with the windows down along a creek bottom where the vines blanketed the bank. I noticed then, and still notice, the plants, bushes, and trees around me. My eye is drawn to them. I need to look at them and identify them.
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| Me, Nancy, and Steve under my grandfather Howe's rose arbor, 1966. |
I planted my first seeds when I was about five. Someone brought me a little kit that consisted of a plastic tray full of soil with a domed clear plastic lid with six indentations. In the soil under the indentations were seeds, larkspur seeds. Following the instructions and helped by my mother, I punctured the indentations with a pencil and poured water in them. I waited (impatiently as I recall) and the seeds sprouted and grew. After a while I transplanted them into the yard and they bloomed – the “bunny flowers” that I still love and grow in my garden every year.
The first real garden I planted was at the house we lived in the country near Ravenna, Ohio, for a year. I was fourteen. We had an acre of land there. There were flowerbeds around the house and I grew portulaca, and balsam flowers, and marigolds in them. Most of our land was steep hill, but I dug my first attempt at a vegetable garden on the slope across the creek and planted corn and tomatoes. They were growing when we left to go on vacation for a month that summer. When we got back, they’d disappeared without a trace.
When we moved to Naperville, Illinois, the house there had a small yard, but nice flowerbeds. Over the years that we lived there, I planted fall bulbs by the dozens, and roses, four o’clocks, and chrysanthemums. I dug a little vegetable garden in the back yard and grew green beans and cucumbers and tomatoes.
When I was on my mission, I immediately fell in love with the gardens of Japan. On preparation days, our day off, we would often go to the temples and shrines and their gardens. I first encountered gardenias in Japan. They were small bushes covered with single white flowers growing from gaps in a stone wall. It was early summer and the evening was warm and their perfume was intoxicating. I also fell in love with daphne and osmanthus and sakura and gorgeous azalea bushes in Japan. I still dream about them sometimes.
Then for twenty years I lived in Southern California, where, despite all its faults (earthquakes, wildfires, mud slides, Santa Ana winds, pollution, crime, traffic, etc.) there were fabulous gardens. Every place I lived there, I planted gardens. I gained experience. My love of gardens grew.
The first real garden I planted was at the house we lived in the country near Ravenna, Ohio, for a year. I was fourteen. We had an acre of land there. There were flowerbeds around the house and I grew portulaca, and balsam flowers, and marigolds in them. Most of our land was steep hill, but I dug my first attempt at a vegetable garden on the slope across the creek and planted corn and tomatoes. They were growing when we left to go on vacation for a month that summer. When we got back, they’d disappeared without a trace.
When we moved to Naperville, Illinois, the house there had a small yard, but nice flowerbeds. Over the years that we lived there, I planted fall bulbs by the dozens, and roses, four o’clocks, and chrysanthemums. I dug a little vegetable garden in the back yard and grew green beans and cucumbers and tomatoes.
When I was on my mission, I immediately fell in love with the gardens of Japan. On preparation days, our day off, we would often go to the temples and shrines and their gardens. I first encountered gardenias in Japan. They were small bushes covered with single white flowers growing from gaps in a stone wall. It was early summer and the evening was warm and their perfume was intoxicating. I also fell in love with daphne and osmanthus and sakura and gorgeous azalea bushes in Japan. I still dream about them sometimes.
Then for twenty years I lived in Southern California, where, despite all its faults (earthquakes, wildfires, mud slides, Santa Ana winds, pollution, crime, traffic, etc.) there were fabulous gardens. Every place I lived there, I planted gardens. I gained experience. My love of gardens grew.
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| Some of my California gardens. |
And then we came here. With three acres of land, this place allowed me to grow gardens on a scale I’d never attempted before. At first most of the property was lawn, but there was a little border in the back yard and a flowerbed full of sumac at the front of the house, all of them much neglected and overgrown with weeds. We’ve lived here almost twenty years now and in that time the yard has changed dramatically. The little border became longer and longer and now is my “Long Border” stretching down the back yard and turning at a right angle to the trees on the northern property line. One acre of lawn became my orchard. Other large areas of lawn became vegetable gardens, a meadow, and a woodland garden. The shape and arrangement of my gardens has shifted from year to year. For many years they grew larger and more extravagant. Now, as I grow older and my children have grown up and left home (most of them), my gardens are becoming smaller and simpler. And after all these years, I’m still learning about gardens, still gaining experience, my love for them growing with each new season of my life.
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| Gardens here over the years. |
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| Gardens here over the years. |
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| Gardens here over the years. |
My whole life moves around my gardens. I’m either planting them, tending them, or planning them in a continuous cycle that defines my year. I like to remember that at the end of the creation of the earth, God planted a garden eastward in Eden and told Adam and Eve to dress it and keep it. I read once in the Pseudepigraphal book The Life of Adam and Eve, that after their expulsion from Eden, Adam spent the rest of his life living where he could see the gates of the garden from afar off and he yearned to return there all his life. I think I possess some ingrained ancestral desire as a son of Adam to be in Eden and to try and make some humbler form of Eden wherever I am. My Grandma Rathfon once sent in a letter to me a poem that she loved. I’ve never forgotten it.
The Lord God Planted a Garden
By Dorothy Frances Gurney
The Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.
So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.
And I dream that these garden closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth, –
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
It’s chilly today. We were glad to see, when we arrived home from church, that this morning’s snow has melted away except in a few protected spots. It’s raining and still trying to snow a bit. After a long stretch without it, we’ve had the wood stove fired up this weekend. It’s supposed to drop into the 20's tonight and give us frost. After that the days should be warmer and it’s supposed to rain all week. At least we’re not getting a blizzard like parts of Montana. I’m thankful for that. And May is just two days away.
The Lord God Planted a Garden
By Dorothy Frances Gurney
The Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.
So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.
And I dream that these garden closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth, –
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
It’s chilly today. We were glad to see, when we arrived home from church, that this morning’s snow has melted away except in a few protected spots. It’s raining and still trying to snow a bit. After a long stretch without it, we’ve had the wood stove fired up this weekend. It’s supposed to drop into the 20's tonight and give us frost. After that the days should be warmer and it’s supposed to rain all week. At least we’re not getting a blizzard like parts of Montana. I’m thankful for that. And May is just two days away.
