Trying to lighten my heart...

Time in the garden helps...a little

My favorite time to garden is in the late fall and early spring, otherwise known as winter around the PNW. I like that the work I do stays done for a bit longer than it does when spring really gets going and I haven’t had to start on what feels like an endless cycle of mowing from April till October.

In the past several winters, it is sometimes hard to motivate myself when days are short, cold, and damp. But those days when the temps hit in the low 50’s and the sun peeks out from the clouds, those are my favorite conditions to garden in.

My garden is pretty Darwinian. My style is more bludgeoning nature into submission, than beautifully manicured borders, teeming with delicate perennials and blooming annuals. I gravitate towards plantings that can stand up to rampaging slugs and unauthorized pruning by local deer. One of my primary goals is to keep the blackberries from growing across the driveway and trapping me forever in my cottage in the woods. Although right now, a barricade of briars might be just the thing from keeping the barbarians from my door.

Just call me Briar Rose!

One of the joys of having acres rather than just a modest city lot (it’s also a curse. sometimes most of the time now I envy a nice petite lot) is that there are LOTS of places to dump plant matter removed from one area where it is not convenient to another spot that is slightly less inconvenient. The edges of the woods, where I draw a line in the weeds and say: Blackberries! You shall not pass this line! Okay…well, okay, maybe not that line, but how about this one over here? are my favorite places to pile up my discarded plant material.

As often happens, things I cut and toss decide they aren’t quite done with that whole growing thing, and they take advantage of any supporting structure to reassert themselves and create a performance art plant. I noticed this in my peripheral vision and discovered a horticultural miracle: The Rubus Armeniacus Lonicera Folia. Bonus points to all my gardening friends who can identify this Frankenplant.

There has been (too) much written about what is going on in the political and cultural clusterfuck that is our daily reality. And really, it’s hard to find a better metaphor for our experience than trying to keep noxious weeds under control in what should be a bit of paradise on earth. In the 25 years I’ve lived in my small patch of forest, I have tried to keep the blackberries and thistles under control.

Oh sure, with the right combination of sun and rain, you might be able to pick enough berries to make a pie, but reaching to snag the sweetest prize, they’ll grab you with thorns, spring back and smack you in the face. They promise a life of ease and bounty if only you’ll let them have their way and accept that their way is the only way. If you get hurt trying to access their sweet treasure, well, that’s on you isn’t it? The best fruit does not belong to every one equally, you know.

And if you let the blackberries and thistles have their way, their seed pods blow across the property lines and before you know it, you have infected your neighbors yard with noxious weeds that you should have kept from doing so much damage to your own yard, let alone that of your neighbor. Maybe we should have spent a little more time keeping our worst impulses under control.

Oh, Canada, I apologize for our inability to keep our noxious ideas to ourselves.

Meanwhile, I will choose the bear to meet in the woods.

Thank you to my new subscribers. I’m honored that you choose to take time to read my mental meanderings and I hope you feel welcomed and entertained. I still don’t seem to be able to follow a regular schedule of posting, but maybe that’s a good thing. You can always see what I’m up to over at The Panda Chronicles on a somewhat more regular schedule.

It’s always good to be friendly to bears!