The Reluctant Gardener Meets Earth Day

 Diana watches over my garden

For the past 44 years, Earth Day has been celebrated annually on April 22.  During the week of Earth Day public events are held globally to remind us that the earth is finite and we need to take care of it.  Earth Day was started in the United States when I was in college.  At that time, air and water pollution were terrible threats to our environment and our health.  Since then, some environmental threats have been reduced but new threats, more worrying threats with much more complex solutions, such as climate change and ocean acidification are unfortunately part of our world.  Despite this, Earth Day has had some success in communicating to a broad population that our earth is fragile and needs our care.  Sometimes I think it is amazing that Earth Day is still celebrated; most of the time I think its original message is still screaming at us – taking care of the earth has never been more important. 

On a local scale, one of the good things Earth Day encouraged was gardening – the practice of taking care of your own patch of ground without using terrible chemicals and ideally by raising something to eat and something beautiful to sooth the soul.  Partly because of my former profession as a water resources engineer and perhaps influenced by the philosophy of Earth Day, my desire to live lightly on the earth and to take care of it is very strong.  That said, I am a bit of a reluctant gardener.

Nevertheless, this past Monday I spent the whole day out in my garden.  My garden was in desperate need of help.  An invasive weed, creeping buttercup was trying to take over!  Truth is I have a love/hate relationship with gardening.  Unlike my older sister and my friend Martha, both of whom are master gardeners, my relationship is more about theory than practice.  I love the idea of gardening and growing beautiful plants, fresh vegetables and fruits in my yard.  But then I remember I have to be outside – regardless of the weather and that I’ll probably get dirty - even muddy and have to scramble around in weeds and likely get pricked by rose thorns.  I’ll have to use tools, admittedly simple ones to manipulate but I have virtually no tool savvy – I do all right with a trowel and a shovel but beyond that I’m almost clueless.  I hate to admit this since I am a former engineer, I live in a green city and I am surrounded by numerous skilled gardeners and many beautiful gardens.  But it’s true.  While I love being outside I am not naturally inclined to gardening or gardening tools.  A full day in the garden was a bit of an anomaly for me. 

In Brazil my gardening is extremely limited…we live in an apartment and our “back forty” is confined to a small balcony.  That is most manageable.  Our Brazilian garden consists of well-behaved potted plants that need only water and an occasional bit of fertilizer.  But in Seattle, although my urban lot is less than 5000 square feet, it requires an extraordinary amount of maintenance.  When my traveling scientist husband is around he takes the biggest load – spraying the roses and the fruit trees in the dormant season, mowing the tiny lawn twice a week in spring, weeding the beds and planting the spring peas and greens and later, the tomatoes and beans and carrots and peppers.  My role is quite civilized…filling the myriad pots on the patio and front steps with perennial herbs, sedums, geraniums and continuous blooming petunias, pruning the roses and deadheading the flower beds as they bloom.  Here and there I find new interesting (ideally native) plants and dig around happily for a short time while I plant them.  But I am far from hardcore…I just I play around the edges.  I would like to be more of a real gardener.  I am constantly thinking about new plants I could add to our garden and new beds I could create. 

My Trusty Rubber Boots

Before I retired I didn’t have time to do more than the minimum.  Now however, I have the time to get more serious about taking care of my little patch of the earth.  Monday was my first big effort – I was encouraged by the garden’s needs – in the Pacific Northwest things grow like crazy in the spring and especially when it has been raining continuously.  The lawn was desperate to be mowed and some bad boy weeds needed discipline.  That was the situation Monday morning at 10 am.  I put on my trusty rubber boots, donned a baseball cap and, with a second cup of coffee in hand, I ventured forth.

Mowing our lawn is quite satisfying.  It is very small so less than 30 minutes is needed to complete the whole task.  We have a self-composting power mower with a hand pull cord.  Starting the mower reminds me of starting outboard motors in my childhood.  First you prime the engine with gas by pushing the little black squishy button three times.  Then you get a firm hold on the start cord and pull the sucker with all your strength.  Ideally the motor turns over with the first pull.  If not then, hopefully just a couple more pulls and you’re ready to go.  I like to vary my pattern of mowing, pretending that at the end it will look like a freshly mowed miniature baseball field.  Ha ha ha.  It isn’t even the same shape, let alone near the size of a baseball field but getting it all nicely mowed is still rewarding.  And with a self-composting mower I don’t have to rake up the grass clippings.  The clippings just add nutrients to the remaining grass.

At 10:30 am, with my coffee drunk, the lawn mowed and the rain holding off, I looked around.  Weeds were invading the blueberry bushes, the early pea beds, the bank overlooking the vegetable garden, the rose and flower beds and the rockeries…the only part of my yard that didn’t seem to have weeds was the herb garden.  I looked up at the sky – it was not sunny but it was not raining.  I found a bucket and trowel.  It was time to start weeding.  After about three hours with much left to do, I went inside and made an egg salad sandwich with one of the hardboiled eggs left over from Easter. 

After that quick lunch break I went back outside.  Although the weeds, especially the pernicious creeping buttercups were everywhere, I enjoyed digging up the roots and pulling them out.  I just kept digging and pulling until almost six o’clock.  This seemed like a reasonable method to get rid of weeds.  I filled my entire green recycling container.  It was a remarkably pleasant afternoon.  Here and there as I hung precariously on the steeper sections of my rockery, neighbors walked by with their dogs.  We exchanged pleasantries.  I wondered if other retirees were out in their gardens digging out buttercups.  I am looking forward to my next gardening day.  Next time I hope to be putting attractive plants into the rich damp soil – not pulling the bad guys out.  Perhaps I’ll become a better gardener now that I have a little more time.

By the end of the day I was tired but satisfied.  Good job I said to myself.  Even I can accomplish a lot in the garden – my back is strong and I pay attention to my gardening posture.  I felt as if I had contributed to the spirit of Earth Day.  I had removed many invasive weeds and protected my young spring vegetables and soon-to-bloom flowers from being chocked.  Lucky I don’t really have a back forty or I’d still be out there. 

Easter Memories Mother Memories

Spring Daffodils

It is Easter weekend and just over two years since my mother died.  I have been thinking about her these last few weeks as the daffodils bloomed.  Daffodils were my mother’s favorite flower – she carried them at her April wedding in 1946 and we decorated the church with them at her March funeral in 2012.  The sight of these bright yellow harbingers of spring remind me of what a wonderful woman my mother was.

My mother was a small and very energetic woman.  She was a born organizer with a never-ending ability to manage logistics no matter how complex.  If she had been born 40 years later, she probably would have been the chief executive of some large organization that did good works.  But she was born in 1923 and although she trained and worked in London during World War II as a nurse (and renewed her RN in her late fifties in California), after she married she never worked at a paid job again.  But that didn’t mean she didn’t accomplish a great deal in her life.  She did.  She was mother to six children, grandmother to seventeen grandchildren and a life-long exceptional community volunteer.  

When we were growing up, we moved from England to Canada and then to the east and then west coast of the United States – each time we arrived in a new city and a new culture but knew no one.  My mother never let this fact bother her.  She immediately made connections with the new community.  She joined the church, she enrolled us in school, she joined the parent teacher associations, she went next door and met the neighbors, she volunteered her help to countless community and charity organizations particularly those associated with her children’s activities and her husband’s medical career.  My mother was the president (and as she liked to say chief cook and bottle washer) of numerous parent teacher associations at the many schools my siblings and I attended; she was an officer, president and chief fund raiser of countless medical charities; she was the parental advisor for the youth church choir and church youth associations; she was my Girl Guide leader; she ran the youth programs at the local skating rink; she worked for more than forty years as a volunteer in endless hospital gift shops; she was president of her community association and successful advocate for preserving the beautiful hills and canyon around her home in Los Angeles from development; the list goes on.  But perhaps her biggest achievement was the extraordinary imagination and fun she brought into the lives of her children, their spouses and grandchildren, her husband, her friends and neighbors.  My mother was simply full of energy and imagination.  At holidays, it is hard not to miss this delightful lady.

My mother embraced the Episcopal Church calendar in an enthusiastic and liberal manner.  Many of the elements she emphasized had little to do with religious beliefs and much to do with pulling the family and extended community together.  Easter was no exception.  One of the traditions that I remember with a great fondness is the Easter outfit.  My mother thought it important to have a new Easter outfit to wear to church on Easter Sunday.   When I was between the ages of eight and fourteen, we lived in a small town in Canada on the shores of Lake Ontario.  Many years, spring had barely begun by the time Easter Sunday dawned.  Often there was still ice on the lake and remnants of dirty snow along the roadsides.  The air would still be cold and early crocuses might be just peaking out of the damp soil.  No matter.  My mother would marshall all six children the week or two before Easter.  Each of us needed a new pair of shoes and a new outfit, perhaps a new spring coat and for us girls a new Easter bonnet, a matching purse and a new pair of spring gloves.  I remember some of my Easter outfits to this day.  One of my favorites was a sailor style dress with a white collar and a loose red bow that tied in front.  I had a blue straw hat with a grosgrain ribbon band that matched the dress.  What I loved about the outfit was its classic look – it was not frilly.  Little did I know that I would become a professional woman and sport similar loose bow ties at work during the eighties!  I was just a young girl at the time but my goal was to look chic – well dressed and sophisticated – never showy or cute.  My mother supported me in this goal despite the fact that it was not the norm for little girls in our small town.  

On Good Friday my mother always had Hot Cross Buns on the breakfast table – white icing sugar crosses on soft sweet currant buns.  Now, fifty years later it is difficult to even find Hot Cross Buns for sale.  The best breakfast was definitely on Easter Sunday itself when we had soft-boiled eggs.  We dyed them red and blue and yellow and green and every color in between.  Invariably we mixed colors until we ended up with one cup of a dirty brown that no one wanted to use.  I don’t really remember what we did for lunch on Easter Sunday after church but I do remember we always had ham studded with cloves for dinner – ham and potatoes and inevitably frozen green beans.  In those days it wasn’t possible to buy fresh vegetable during the winter or early spring.  They just weren’t available and the crazy shipping and refrigeration systems that we depend on today to ship fresh food globally did not exist.  Somehow we were all healthy even though we lived on frozen or canned fruits and vegetables for more than six months out of the year.

Easter Sunday afternoon was reserved for the Easter egg hunt.  When I was young my mother hid foil covered Easter eggs in several rooms in the house, or if the weather was unseasonably warm, in the garden.  When I got older, my sister and I took on the role of egg hiders – that was almost more fun than finding the eggs.  Over the years we had to become increasingly tricky in our hiding places as our younger brothers and sisters remembered the clever places from the year before.  Everyone learned to leave the most obvious eggs for the youngest children and to search the most out of the way places hoping to get more eggs.  Invariably several eggs would never be found during the hunt and we would find them months later hidden between the cracks of a sofa pillow or balanced on a high, out of the way picture rail.

As the years went by and we all married and moved to different cities, my mother faithfully mailed Easter baskets to all her grandchildren.  The contents were delightful – a stuffed bunny; chocolate foil covered eggs; maybe a chocolate bunny or some marshmallow eggs; some seasonal jelly beans and festive stuffing – crinkly colored paper in which to nestle all candy.  My grown daughter remembers visiting my mother and father one spring vacation and helping package all the Easter baskets for her cousins.  I think there are still some little bunnies hanging around my house from those annual baskets.

While I don’t celebrate a traditional Easter anymore, and during my adult life I celebrated Passover with my Jewish mother-in-law as often as Easter with my mother, I love Easter as an enduring symbol of the annual celebration of spring.  Today my neighborhood was full of signs of Easter – cardboard cutouts of chicks and bunnies.  Brightly colored bouquets of balloons decorated doorsteps.  Spring flowers were in bloom.  It was a great day to take an afternoon walk with my brother and his family and share a delicious meal – and a chocolate egg or two together.  It was a great day to remember my mum and her lovely Easter traditions.  Happy Easter!

End of Winter - Projects and Porosity

Winter ended officially on March 20, more than two weeks ago.  The air is still chilly if the sun’s not out and the rain hasn’t gone away completely.  But I see signs of spring everywhere – daffodils in bloom; fallen camelias all over my lawn; yellow forsythia and red quince blossoms along the roadside; flowering cherry trees and tiny green leaves breaking out wherever I walk or bike around my neighborhood.  Yesterday and last Friday we had unusually warm weather – warm enough to have a picnic outside at the Anacortes ferry terminal.  

My husband and I were back on Lopez Island for a few days.  We had garden tasks laid out for us, left over from the tree cuttings a month ago.  First in line were multiple large piles of chips that needed to be moved by wheelbarrow and spread in the woods and the rhody beds as well as many large logs to be cut into rounds and moved to the wood shed.  Jeff and I spent the better part of Saturday and some of Sunday working outside.  It felt good to use my muscles for useful work - rather than merely lifting weights at my Y.  And the rewards were many: great mulch in the garden and woods; lots of stacked firewood; tired muscles and a good night's sleep.  The amount of wood we ended up with is impressive – since we only use our wood stove as an auxiliary heat source, our new supply, when coupled with the firewood we already have, will likely last us many years.

Spring's Satin Flowers

I was also on Lopez a couple of weeks ago with three of my best girl friends for a more leisurely visit.  We used our wonderful time together to do an art project, to cook, to hike and to talk.  Isn't that what friendships are all about?  On the day we arrived, the sun came out unexpectedly and we hiked the rocky shore of Iceberg Point.  Iceberg Point was named a National Monument one year ago.  It is on the southern edge of Lopez – from its steep exposed shoreline you can see all the way south towards the Olympic Mountains and down the mouth of Puget Sound and west towards the Straits of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean.  The view is spectacular – wide open and wild – water is everywhere.  You feel as if you are standing on the edge of an endless expanse of water.  If you stepped into a boat and sailed west you would end up in Japan.  We climbed to the top of a rocky pinnacle and read the United States Geological Marker telling us that we were at the location of Marker 7 of the boundary between the United States and Canada.  We watched with awe and trepidation as two young men climbed up an almost vertical rock wall that rose from the water in a deep, steep crevice.  We saw multi-colored rockweed exposed in tidal pools, deep kelp fronds moving in the surface waves and tiny purple satin flowers in bloom – a true sign of spring. 

My Parrot Tie 

Our Lopez art project, making hand painted silk ties, was the brain child of one of my friends.  She is an amazing artist and teacher.  Check out her blog at http://teabytes.blogspot.com for a description of silk painting and many other projects you can do at home.  Somehow or other, under Alice’s direction, we all managed to create pieces of wearable art.  I am not a crafty person at all but the project was tremendous fun.  My tie depicts a Scarlett Macaw – in honor of my husband Jeff’s work in the Amazon and the fact that we both love parrots.  First I drew the parrot in pencil on a piece of paper – scaling its size to the tie.  Then, following Alice’s instructions, I traced the picture using carbon paper onto the silk, then I traced the different part’s of the parrot’s body with a special glue-like substance called gutta, thereby separating each color or marking into its own area.  Finally I mixed the watercolor dyes in little pots and painted the parrot in its traditional red, yellow, green and blue, ending with the background in a brilliant jungle green.  The painting process happened in stages, with each stage needing time to completely dry.  The gutta prevented the colors from bleeding into each other.  Eventually Alice washed each tie in a setting solution, which both set the silk dyes and removed the gutta.  Each of the four of us created a different lovely tie.  I gave mine to my husband for his recent birthday.  I can hardly wait to do another silk painting project.

These past few weeks, I have been busier than I expected to be when I retired.  I am finishing my children's book; finally taking care of several years of postponed health check ups (ok ok I was up to date on critical annual ones…); tackling several years of postponed house maintenance; and replacing two ancient (AKA leaky) bathrooms and some very tired furniture.  All of these activities were a lower priority when I was working but now that I have time to attend to them, they crowd my days more than I expected.  Most of my check ups are going well – although I discovered to my horror that I hadn’t had a tetanus shot for twenty years or any blood chemistry analyzed for nine years.  Lucky I didn’t step on a nail or find out that my thyroid was out of whack.  What I did find out is that my bone density is lousy – not so lousy that I have fractured bones but poor enough to alarm my doctor. 

I found the news sobering and even annoying.  True, I have all the risk factors for osteoporosis – I am a post-menopausal woman; I am thin; I am Caucasian; and perhaps worst – my genetic history is terrible: my mother and all three of her sisters had terrible osteoporosis.  With knowledge of that history I started a program of weight training when I was in my late forties more than fifteen years ago.  In addition, I had life-long habits of doing weight bearing exercises – I was a serious runner for more than twenty-five years; I am a life-long hiker and long distance walker; a skier; and, in the past dozen years a biker.  And I took calcium and Vitamin D supplements.  I thought these habits would offset my risks of osteoporosis.  But apparently that didn’t happen.  My bone density, especially in my spine, is crummy.   Or perhaps crumbling is a better description.  Well darn.  You do your best and deal with the rest. 

So first off I am grateful that I am basically super healthy and strong.  As my doctor said if I hadn’t had good dietary and exercise habits maybe I would be in much worse shape in terms of bone density; maybe I would have already had random bone fractures.  And certainly having porous bones isn’t in the same league as having a life threatening or debilitating disease such as some of my friends – some of whom are no longer with us – have had.  So who am I to complain?  There are still things I can do from a dietary perspective to help thicken up my bones and for sure I need to keep doing weight training and weight-bearing exercise.  Was that in the back of my mind when I spent the weekend moving and spreading all those Lopezian wood chips?  Hopefully after those two days of hard work my bones are denser – I know I can barely lift my arms!  My plan is to check out more bone building options and keep doing what I’m doing.  I think what I’m facing is called aging -- but just in case, does anyone need any wood chips moved?

The View south from Iceberg Point