Wordless Wednesday: To Push the Garden Boundaries

Winter Loss = New Possibilities. 

Reviving the raised bed and kitchen garden. 

Some stratified seeds from this season.

Awaiting the garden fence solution. 

Yellow Venetian glass vase. Venice on my mind. 

Seedlings in the basement. 

My Garden (An Exercise in Garden Writing)

Back of the house as seen from the back corner of my garden. The willow arbor is floating there to the left. 

After having seen many residential gardens over the last few years I think it's safe to say that mine is rather small, a regular city lot, with areas more or less here and there in strips along the north, south, and west sides of the home. The backyard is probably more of what would be traditionally called a garden, but even it is quite small when compared to larger gardens seen in this city. It is square, roughly 30' x 30', and in its heart is my 10' x 10' living willow arbor. For me, this is the shaggy, ragged and often messy heart of my garden. It's my outdoor living room. It's cozy and a bit wild—probably a bit like me.

This area looks sort of finished but if I'd pulled the camera out a bit the illusion of order would disappear. (That's Cryptomeria japonica 'Spiraliter Falcata' there on the right and an Impatiens tinctoria on the far left. Still cannot find the tag for the really hardy evergreen fern there but I'm working on it. The grassy bunch is a lovely Carex.) 

Then there is the rest. The bits and pieces. I see swipes and swatches as I wander around watering in the heat. I see finished areas followed by piles of trash that I've not yet picked up from old ideas for projects. There are the overgrown run-on sentences of the garden—mostly vines. My garden is one that's a work-in-progress, it's an artist's studio. This place really is my mad plant scientist's laboratory. 

Antirrhinum majus 'Oriental Lanterns (TM)' grown from seed I bought from Park Seed. The color is amazing and the plant is a great plant.

My house faces west. The front yard is not really coherent. There is the tiny hell strip, cut up into three uneven pieces. There is a central area, with a privacy planting, meant to keep the eyes of those on the sidewalk away from my large front window. The parking area is there too but it's currently filled with racks and pots and is more of a staging area this summer. An edible garden once ran along the southern side of the house. It is overgrown now and a mass of tangled plants. It was created initially to be the domain of my ex, but I've not yet fully reclaimed it. I hope to soon. 

Life in the hammock on a summer evening as I dream of better times ahead.

I see the memories of each and every plant and space. I see the ghosts of plants who've come before and which are gone now. I want to garden to build a future now more than to remember the past. This will be challenging for me, but I want to do so. So much about gardening requires time and patience. I've finally learned too that gardening can be exhilarating when you rip everything out and begin again. Just like a diseased plant, it's best to rip it out. Some plants struggle in the wrong conditions, I have been one of those plants. 

The real garden here at home. The back boundary has been an eyesore for years. Here is Mona the Cat watching the apartment dwellers. Someday soon I'l have the fence I've been hoping for and planning for years.

The front garden runs along the fence and turns along with the walking path into what is my north garden. It is the access walkway and no one ever wants to go that way even when I encourage them to do so. Someday I'll actually consult someone about how to make that entryway more enticing, but for now, I'll just continue to gently encourage folks verbally. 

My engagement bike along the North Side of the house. (Yes, I'm engaged to be married.) The bike "La Dama" is now my mobile seed-collecting unit. I can bike to homes nearby and collect seeds from gardens locally to be sold in my online store. So far, the whole process has worked wonders for my health. 

I like the small northern strip. I don't like having to look directly at my neighbor's house, but he's a nice man. He just isn't as into privacy as I am. He has landscaped with English laurels (Prunus laurocerasus), Japanese privet (Ligustrum japonicum), and cedar (Cedrus)—all having grown randomly on his property from seeds dropped by birds or else they were blown in on the wind. He then plucked them and rearranged them into rows. Amazing in its own way I suppose as a lesson in patience and he has loads of that virtue. He's a great neighbor and I like to harvest from his ever-growing army of Western Sword ferns (Polystichum munitum). (My first client has also been grateful for this too.) 

Sedum morganianum in my office. I'm taking care of my indoor babies before it gets too dark and cold outside to do so in the fall. I hate transplanting houseplants when the days get shorter. It's best to care for them now. Their roots will appreciate it and they'll be far less likely to fall prey to pests and disease.

Forgive me for not writing about my plants though. Major life transitions recently have made that painful. I'm healing. I've learned a lot. So many memories were tied up in every corner of green in my space. During the past few years I've really come to understand how unusual I am in that sense. My plantings have held such sentiments. But I know that I am not the only one. There are those who garden to decorate. Some re-create a time, or a place, or a feeling. Many just want symmetry and low-maintance. Some want that impression—a replication seen in a magazine. I planted to forget. I planted to create another kind of reality. I remember far too much and I've come to realize recently that I've never forgotten nearly as much in my garden as I've remembered. 

The garden of my mother. 

My home is the home of a woman who up until recently didn't really understand she had a moderately serious case of OCD. When I was highly stressed during the past decade—for the first time in my life—the negative effects of this affliction really showed themselves. Now I'm using my "old friend" to help me to organize, clean and make sense of the chaos I'd created during so many years of unhappiness and loneliness. I've taken my life back and I no longer see OCD really at all. I had no idea that such severe and extreme stress could do this to someone. In hindsight, I have been that woman. 

I'm very detail oriented. This can be a wonderful thing—especially for making pastries. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy I have a light form of OCD but I want to use it for good. The kind I have appears to have helped me in the past with my academic achievements. I have an amazing memory and when I want to organize and categorize things, it's like breathing for me and I find it extremely relaxing. It puts me in my happy place. When I'm stressed though, things fall apart. I've lived with a lot of stress for many years now and my garden shows that still. It's the last frontier of my former life but I'm making sense of it now. I'm re-writing my garden as I'm re-writing my life. 

First harvest of the season from the Ficus carica 'Petite Negra'.

For these reasons I do not see what others see. As I walk the circle around my home I see what never was, I hear the echos of arguments, there were the joyous moments after my divorce, conversations with friends and foster kids, and I see myself wandering, wondering what to do with myself. I see myself crying in pain during times of horrible illness and swelling. In my head the refrain, "I need help," repeats over and over. It is far more difficult to ask for help than it is to prune a Japanese maple. When I walk in my garden, I see and feel the pleasure pruning the Japanese maples has given me during the worst of times. When I felt my worst emotionally, I always sought my pruners. 

The front of the house July 2013. 

You'd think that this would make for an organized garden but mine is not. There are yet many unfinished projects. I'm slowly trashing them now and am making room for a new period in my life. I'm keeping the plants that grow well and which bring me happiness. If the memories are too painful, reminding me of when I fell and broke my fingers, or when I fell and hit my head, I'm trying not to let the plants die. Instead, I am either giving things away or moving them. The memories are dying instead and things are no longer falling apart. 

Maurice the Cat in his happy zone.

I should add more pictures but I'm still ashamed to do so. With a party coming up to welcome my fiancé into his new home I'm making strides. These things take time, energy, and money and I don't have a lot of any of these right now.

I'm one of the many chronically ill divorced people who've filed for personal bankruptcy. I'm not a perfectly comfortable member of the middle class and I'm not ashamed to say so. That's what I feel and see when I see my garden but I've been learning to see so much more.  

I feel that I'm lucky and gifted to be here—to be able to continue living here. I'm loved now too—a lot!—and I'm learning to be part of a team. We plan to buy the house and stay here. These things take time, but sometimes things work out for the best. I'm learning that too and being positive makes a huge difference. I adore all of the positive green people in my life and want to thank them from the bottom of my heart. We gardeners are ever the optimists and you've all helped me feel alive during a time when I really needed the lifeline. Thank you.

Gardens are for people and this garden is a big part of me. I really look forward to sharing it more with others in the future—and I guess that means you'll get a bit more of me too.

(The Grow Write Guild is a creative writing club for people who garden. It's a series of bi-weekly writing prompts created by garden author and blogger Gayla Trail. I'm starting out late with the series but hope to catch up soon. It's just what this blogger needed for some summer fun.)

Wordless Wednesday: The gardener is here, there—everywhere!!!

Rhododendron sinogrande.

What plant for the cat this year?

I'm currently finding homes for all of this poor babies. No. I am NOT a plant hoarder.

Dear St. Fiacre, please grant me garden sanity and grace before I lose my mind. This garden is out of control and I cannot just "let it go". I did that already and it didn't work. 

So I'm still only showing you the same old view of the backyard. 

Roses and cherries as seen during a neighborhood walk. I do love this time of year.

Plants Make Me Ill (Revisiting Chronic Illness in the Garden)

With all of the recent changes it has been difficult for me to sit and think about being chronically ill. Mostly that's because it's what I thought about for so many years; the diagnosis robbed me of many things and it hurt deeply. Gardening kept me busy, but mostly I read about it. Actually being outside all of the time was another thing altogether and that became more and more difficult as I became more ill. But who out there amongst us isn't an armchair gardener at one point or another?

Now I am feeling better, so I don't have as much time to sit and think, but the avoidance is mostly due to my not wanting to accept or even acknowledge what I've seen as a roadblock and an obstacle for so long. So much of my current divorce has to do with the illness, but it is certainly not everything and I know that too.

Peony bloom I snapped from the sidewalk. 

Currently, when I don't have plans with friends on Friday nights, I take leisurely 6-mile walks to Powell's Books on Hawthorne and then I walk back home through Mt Tabor Park. These are productive walks where I not only get the much needed exercise I've missed for the last decade or so, but I also get to feel the joy I used to feel at just looking at things—mostly plants.

Rockery overflowing with Basket of Gold, Aurinia saxatilis.

During these walks I am in awe of how thrilling it is to be able to breathe and to walk. And although plants do still make me a bit ill—at least their pollen that is—I am learning how to better manage my asthma and to feel the symptoms in my body. For so long I was unable to do so because I'd become so numb from all of the swelling but I can feel a lot now. 

Walking past Portland Nursery still makes me giggle a little since it's no longer an escapist refuge for me as it once was when I could barely get anything done all day.

Seeing the cherry blossom petals scattered on the sidewalk while standing amongst them has made me smile with pleasure this year. They won't be here for long and this year I won't have to see them solely from the car as I fly past them. I savored them the other night because they'll be gone next week.

No one knows this yet but I have lived at the base of Mt Tabor Park for almost 8 years and it was only within the last few months that I've been able to visit all of its reservoirs.

False Solomon's Seal, Maianthemum racemosum.

Finding native plants in the park has been a great boon too.

Vine Maple, Acer circinatum.

Lastly, while up at the park, walking and thinking about chronic illness, I thought a lot about the native Vine Maple. It is so tiny among giants, stretching for the sunshine, doing its best as an understory resident. Thinking about how much I've always liked this tree, and how calm I've felt beneath them spring, summer, or fall, seeing them during my walk home in the woods of Mt. Tabor felt like coming across another old friend. 

Somehow this comforting end to my walk on Friday helped me to find the courage to do some research into what to call the current stage of my chronic illness experience. From inside, I have felt so much certainty about so many things but I haven't understood at all why. I have felt very isolated, but I just knew that if I looked hard enough I would find something—and I did!

Just as my disease is new and unknown, so too are the studies of people living as I do. We become chronically ill as adults, suffering for many years with uncertainty and change, there comes a moment when we face death, we get through it, and then with extra medical attention, we improve suddenly after something is changed or adjusted. We are the lucky ones. Many living with chronic illness will never get this opportunity and I think knowing this is part of the catalyst for what happens internally to some of us. I, like many others, have been rewarded with just the outcome we'd spent so much time trying to let go of so as not to create false hope within ourselves. We had to learn to live in that moment between enduring and suffering, committing to ourselves not to dream about being able to live in the reality I have just reentered—one with so much more freedom. 

One study said that there may only be 5-10% who experience what they called self-reformation, but I think that further study will show a higher number of people who enter into this process. Medical science seems to improve daily and there will be more people like me. There must be others out there already too who, like me, simply don't know what to call what they're going through. 

Here are the phases that have so far been identified, but I am putting them in my own order, as they occurred within myself: need for reciprocity (to help others who are suffering), value suffering, appreciate one's abilities, a disregard for material things, maximizing today, reordering priorities and exiting from unsatisfying relationships. 

This last one is the tricky one. It shows my part in the divorce, and I agree with what I read about other people in my situation. When I read the experience of one woman, I was shocked to see myself in her words. This list also points forward for me, and what I read also made me think so much about plants and gardening—funny how that always seems to happen. I am sure that many of you out there already understand this too in your own lives.

Plants might still make me a teeny tiny bit ill with allergy or an immune response but there is no way I am ever leaving the garden again. All roads seem to lead right back to plants in my life and that's just the way it's going to be...

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden (Portland, Oregon)

Ever since I can remember I've been visiting what my family always referred to as The Rhododendron Garden, though nowadays, I've finally started calling it by a name others actually recognize: Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden. 

The garden was started back in 1950, when my dad was a boy, and not long after my Grandfather Salvatore, aka Sam, had returned home from World War II. Situated at the southeastern edge of Portland, it sits right in the middle of my Portland universe. 

For about a decade or so I didn't visit the garden at all. Instead I was spending more time with friends, and less and less with family, and now that I have been gardening for about 10 years, I love to visit there more. 

With over 2,500 Rhododendrons, azaleas, and other plants, the setting is idyllic. 

The garden is great if you need planting ideas. 

Fringe Cup. Tellima grandiflora. 

Wood Anemone. Anemone nemorosa 'Flore Pleno'.

It is also a great place for some color after all the grey rain. 

Not long ago this retaining wall with ferns was added. I have enjoyed watching it grow and change but part of me really wants them to add a stumpery just so I can say that we have one here in Portland. (I know they are all over the place in the woods, but to have an official one would seriously crack me up.)

I have one of these in our garden but it's barely alive. Ours has been broken, stepped on, and tripped over, and it's alive, but it doesn't look this nice. 

Spider Azalea. Rhododendron stenopetalum Linearifolium.

To see a Rhododendron tree in bloom in the middle of the woods is a sight to behold.

Nearby, the carpet of primroses was breathtaking and it was great to see an art class painting en plein air. I want to draw again so badly but I simply have too much to do. Maybe that will be added to my long list of things.

Primula pulverulenta.

Then there are those azaleas!

There are a lot of reds in the Crystal Springs garden, and I know that not everyone loves red, but I am fond of the color. 

Rhododendron ibex.

These colors work too. 

There was no tag on this one, but I found the lighter green foliage rather interesting with the pale violet blooms. It must be an early bloomer since it's already beginning to fade. 

Here is a Cercis in bloom with an accompaniment of Rhododendron. 

Have you ever seen a purple like this reaching for the sky? Neither have I. 

I added these two reds because I grew up with them. The big bloom in the middle is the hybrid Rhododendron 'Jean Marie de Montagu' and the smaller bloom in the back is most likely a Hino-Crimson azalea. The only other classic crimson combinations would be a Rhododendron 'Vulcan' and a Wards Ruby azalea. I only know these because my mom stuffed her acre sized garden with them and I loved red so I was kind of all about those blooms each spring. 

(As a kid, I would sit on my thick fuzzy red blanket in an ocean of lawn at my parents' house for hours and hours at a time. My mom didn't need to put me in a playpen since I wouldn't touch the grass. I know. I was a weird kid.)

Here is another bank of azalea blooms. 

This is my favorite yellow Rhododendron.

Rhododendron lutescens.

Beside the lake, after you cross the bridge to the island, you'll see a weeping cherry tree. 

On the return trip back, this is the same bridge. Even when packed with folks during the springtime, it is enchanting. 

The other bridge is back at the entrance. This is the Moon Bridge as seen from above. It was also at the beginning of this post, but from below. 

 

Before I go though, I should mention the birds. There are a lot of birds, but most of all, there are water birds because the garden is both surrounded by, and is full of, water.

Pair of Mallard ducks sleeping in a tree. 

Geese and a gosling. 

The garden sits across the street from Reed College—a fine institution of higher learning. Though I never attended the school as a student, I did spend a lot of time on the campus with two of my best friends during their years as undergraduates. That was a long time ago though.

Due to the busy season at the garden, and because the small lot was reserved for a film crew, I had to park in the school's parking lot. So, on my way back to the car, I noticed these gorgeous Ceanothuses in bloom and the short walk was worth it!

Back at home I worked on my pile of plants this afternoon. Funny I hadn't noticed that a Candelabra Primrose was beginning to bloom, but I sure noticed it today! How rewarding to see this after having cared for it for a year or two. It is another primrose I've grown from seed and I cannot wait for it to give me more babies.

Primula pulverulenta.

My native Rhododendron occidentale has not yet burst open, but I am watching it closely. This is one of those plants that your nose may notice much sooner than your eyes. 

Lastly, if you made it this far, the American Rhododendron Society will be in Vancouver, Washington this week for their convention. So if you have the time, you should check it out:
American Rhododendron Society Presents The World in Your Garden May 11-15, 2011
Heathman Lodge, Vancouver, WA