July miseries

July is a cruel month.  Have I mentioned that already?  Lush green grasses have withered and become ashen, and in some places a few strands of dead, yellow grass are showing up… some of my potted hostas have been badly scorched, and every houseplant had to be brought inside again—some of their beautiful leaves charred and stressed, and the perennials are looking droopy and exhausted from the blazing sun of July…

This is high desert climate, and whatever patch of grass we want to keep green it must be property and faithfully watered each and every day… I am thankful for our sprinkler system and precious water.

In fact, it’s been so hot around here that I have started envisioning those cooler, cozier autumnal days when the sun shines kinder on my windows in softer golden globules of light, and such was the spirit the other day, that I was prompted to change things around the house—put away the summer bouquets and bring in the calmer greenery of pines and fairy lights of cooler days.  

 

When winter comes around again, and my little world will be cold and white and windows frosted in glittery ice, then I will miss my roses again, and will be wanting to see my house beautified again with summer bouquets of yesterday’s peonies and roses…  

Roses—freshly cut, dried, fake, silk—they will always bring a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.

 

And when it is summer I will be dreaming of winter and when it is winter I will be dreaming of summer... because that’s just the way I am… always changing, always a contradiction within my soul…

The grapevine in the farther corner of the garden has been growing madly.  I decided to let it do what it dictates, but always under my watchful eye and care.  I’m doing this mostly to attract those beautiful Northern Flickers to my garden again this fall… these birds love to feed from very ripe grapes and when my little world turns orange and light acquires that certain ginger tint of the cooler days again, they will be coming by to feed from them.  So, this vine, is just for them, although I’m afraid I’ve started letting it grow a little late in the year and, perhaps, I won’t be seeing any ripe grapes this fall after all? 

The other two vines (which are the only ones I let be this spring); however, are fat with grapes, which will be used for all my green juices this fall.

I always like to read what I was doing a year ago this time, so I went to the little white cottage, and meandered through the pages of time to find me there….  This is what I was doing:

“This afternoon I went outside and collected bunches of hydrangeas to make bouquets... It was hot, but under the canopies of trees that protrude from the woods it felt comfortable and tepid and I found myself mystified by the sounds of summer, and the dark emerald shades of the woods, quiet and timing with life as they are.  This is what I love about summer, the strength and vigor of it.  The being wild and slow, old and yet growing young buds of dreams. For me, it is a magic that must be written in the old pages of my soul. We are all wanderers on this earth, and my heart is full of wonder, and my soul deep with dreams...”

I told you so... I’m an enigma wrapped in a contradiction.  Loving summer, hating July and wishing for June in December.  But always always loving the solitude and grandeur of Nature in whatever season...

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

― Mary Oliver

Wild roses...

Almost all of my old roses have gone ‘wild’, that is died back below the graft while we were away from our house and our roses… and perhaps this house should not be called by its original name any longer? Unless I start thinking of replacing all those wild roses, it should be called something else.  Something like “Robin Nest Cottage”, or “Mourning Dove Alcove”. 

I discovered this most heartrending of things at the beginning of spring, right after we moved back to our house in the roses, when they started putting forth some meagre blooms of single-petal red roses that hadn’t been there before.  This is pretty maddening and discouraging because you can still see growth from the root stock of these rose bushes, they are hardy and vigorous plants, they look every bit like a rose; thorns and all, but they don't show signs of a bud. You wait and wait looking forward to those beautiful buds only to be tricked into a great disappointment. After those few blooms at the beginning of spring, that’s it. 

I have learned that eighty percent of the roses grown in the US come from the Wasco, CA area and are grafted onto red climbing Rosa 'Dr. Huey'. So, if suddenly, all of your roses are red and throwing longer than normal canes, with no bloom whatsoever, pretty good bet your top graft is gone. 'Dr. Huey' is a pretty good rose in its own right, however, if you want a succession of blooms, they are not the best of choices and otherwise not garden worthy roses.

The worst thing is, I can cut all the wild stems back to the ground, and Dr. Huey doesn’t care.  I have tried in vain many times to dislodge the canes, but cutting suckers just makes them come back stronger. They must be carefully torn away, something that it is almost impossible in many cases, and they grow so fast that must be pruned almost every week.  Oh Dr. Huey why did you moved in? You should have gone to live with our renters, wherever they went!

Perennials

It always amazes me—this succession of life, flowering, blooms and demise of the Perennials… this sequence of one plant following the next and the next, as if obeying some secret code in a pattern of respect, and gallantry among each other.

Some of them may coincide with each other, but because this is a small garden, it seems to me as if each plant waits for the other to be done blooming, before they can start putting on their own demonstration of beauty and expression and glory all of their own.  And thus, there’s never more than one variety of perennial blooming at one same time around here, never more than one color; one scent wafting through the sleepy summer garden.  

  

It’ll always be the peonies and irises, the viburnum and snowball bushes, then the June roses, followed by the Asiatic lilies, Columbines and lupines, and as summer draws near and becomes old in one same day (so it seems), there will be the Stella de Oro daylilies and Shasta Daisy almost flowering at once.

The phlox are ones of the last ones, followed by the butterfly bushes and rose of Sharon.  Life is an imitation of the garden; or rather the garden is an imitation of the garden… the same succession same births and rebirths, same finale… and there’s a secret here, as I see it.  So much like the garden we pass by this country road called life putting on our own little show in the soil-prints of our seasons… until we’re done. 

July---I don’t like July.  I have always despised this month in the garden.  July is misery and it is the sizzling sound of heat and distress on every blade of grass.  The garden floor has turned yellow, and cakey no matter how much I water it throughout the day.  The grass withers, the flower fades, skin crinkles and wrinkles forms, and then… this is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear: “It’s time. Don’t fight them… you are growing into your gifts”. 

A garden's diary

June 27—I have noticed that the “Robin” baby birds have not only a momma, but they also have a father whose presence is very much noticeably around them... always, always watching his brood, sometimes from a near tree branch, sometimes just standing strong and defiant above the nest, and often throughout the day, you'd see him sharing duties with momma Robin, as they take turns among themselves to care for their wee babies…  

I have noticed too, that Papa Robins is a daring little thing; less afraid of human proximity, or any sudden movement coming from us. He even allows me to come in and out of the house without giving a flint; not so like his wife Mrs. Robin here, always a little flutter of a bird the very moment I move.  I’ve seen them both looking at each other, eye to eye, and wonder if perhaps Mr. Robin has spoken to her about me not wanting to hurt her or her babies.  He might have even offered a word or two on my behalf?  But, of course, that’s still to be seen. 

June 29—Days are a lovely assortment of birds, fluffy white clouds and the color green.  I sit on my throne in the middle of the garden and count my minutes and my hours in bird songs and the hum on wings of wind at 2:00pm.

But of course, don’t you ever think I would stand being idle for too long—those are just my ‘in between work’ moments of rest and contemplation. 

...because I can never, ever... be still!

  

Work work work—people often ask me why I work so much in the garden.  “Why, what’s there to be done now?”, and “you’ve already done everything”, and “what are you doing now, I thought your job in the garden was all done”.  Done? The garden never sleeps, except for the winter, and even in the winter it’s still working…

It is a constant mumble of growing things around here, things rising up, things mounting, duding, emerging, producing.  As you would understand, I couldn’t sit for too long, could I?  I have to keep up with the garden, or else, Mary Lenox will be moving in, and what would she’ll be finding here, if it isn’t the same chaos I found when I moved here last fall?  I just won’t want her to think that I too had abandoned this garden.  No, that’s not 'going to happen.

July 7—There are no roses to be seen in the garden these days.  Not a bloom not a petal to entice my senses and call upon my soul, and there’s a spot on a certain corner in this same garden that has been afflicted by some evil imp.  One upon a time, a white rose used to bloom just right there, but this spot has been cursed by some peculiar entity from the undergrown, I'm sure... a most execrable thing indeed!  For nothing would grow there, no root would travel deep into the soil nor extract life from the source of life.  Everything I plant in that spot must be taken out—dried as an autumn leaf. 

On the contrary, the Shasta daisy on the opposite side of the garden have flourished madly through the years, and have proliferated beyond limits...

...they will need to be dugout and divided this winter most certainly.  The only problem, as I see it, is to find them a place in this little plot of mine sunnier enough and spacious enough for them to be happy.  But where?

The same is to be said of the salvia; lovely purplish-blue salvia, with its tendency to open out from its center, leaving that epicenter bare, like some open head without a brain.  These beauties must be kept pruned and divided often, or that’s what you’d get.

The other day the mystery of the mixed PEONIES was finally revealed to me… by no other than the Fisherman himself!  Indeed, I do have two variety of peonies growing in my garden.  From that one single plant I bought and later divided, several bushes have been stablished, but then there’s that other variety of peonies growing here, as well—those with the beautiful magenta blooms. They didn’t propagate by a miracle, as I might had thought so.  The other day, while reminiscing about many a thing, the Fisherman reminded me of that Saturday morning long ago when driving around some dusty country roads I spotted a little house where hundreds of peonies grew all around it.  I immediately asked the Fisherman to stop the car, got out and went straight to ask the lady who lived in that little country house if perhaps she would share a little cutting with me?  She most graciously did, and that’s why I have two varieties of peonies embellishing my garden every spring.  I had forgotten all about it, and what a pleasant thing it was to be reminded of it…

Those are the very peonies that I dry in the spring and put in beautiful vases to embellish my home with, throughout the year!

I love them!

I hope you are all doing fine, and enjoying your summer days!  Much love!

Frog pond

Remember what my garden looked like at the beginning of the year?

Particularly this corner of the garden... it was a messy hodge-podge of stones, grasses, weeds and clumps of overcrowded iris bulbs everywhere...

Then, I started pulling it all out... cleaning, removing, sweating in the midst of winter, and such... that's when it occurred to me to build a little POND in remembrance of the one we had at the little white cottage.

I could not dig a hole as deep as I would had wanted it; nor hire some professionals to do the work at that time, I could not bring out electricity to include a pump either or ask anyone for help, but I did what I could, and I so love the end results!

First, I removed all weeds and grasses growing in that space.  I also removed all that jumble of irises that were growing there along with all that grass, then I made the hole as deep as I could and double covered it with some extra strong trash bags that I later reinforced using some big rocks I had previously collected while camping.  

I placed some of the rock around the bags/pond liner to support it and scattered the rest of the rocks around the little pond for a natural feel and look.  Three bags of river rocks from Lowes covered the emptied spaces between the larger rocks, and then I planted some groundcover (my favorite Creeping Jenny) around everything, and finally filled up the pond (or is it more like a reflecting pool?) with water.  

Elephant Ears are also growing there too to mimic that other pond of my yesterday.  They will be all out by the end of summer, which is the usual time they grow around here. The sprinklers made sure the little pond never goes dry and keep the water moving regularly.  Somehow, the water has kept free from algae and mosquitos.  I can’t tell how this is happening, but I’m not complaining either.

   

My little pond has been through a slow transformation all throughout our spring and summer—more rocks, more littler frog-friends, different kind of flowers surrounding it as seasons progress and the garden changes with the ritual of perennials coming and going—snowball viburnum, daylilies, Shasta daisies…  my little pond is now officially called “Frog Pond”, and I love it so much! 

My only regret is, not having used a real pond liner, like I'd have preferred.  Or better yet, one of those heavy-duty Density Polyethylene pond liner.  They won't rust, dent, crack or tear and their scalloped shelves can hold plants, rocks, etc.  The trash bags wasn't my idea, and it wasn't a good idea either.  But I guess I have the Fisherman to blame him for! Eventually, I will have to remove everything and replace the trash bags and start right again, as I should had from the beginning.  

By the time my Elephant Ears grow to a proper high, it will be time to take them out of the ground again for winter!  Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!  Buah!

I'm so loving it!

   

One day I will have a 'real' pond again, but in the mean time, I'm loving this one!  Now, let's see, what else can I come up with next? Oh I know!  This garden needs a cat!

Hope you're having a wonderful 4th of July, my friends!