Companion Planting: My Husband as Companion

A constant agricultural character in my life is husband. In a sense, due to the fact that he works with wine in California, I jokingly call myself a wine widow. This arrangement may seems odd to some, but for two incredibly independent folks, it seems to be temporarily an acceptable situation. We are not really that far from one another, we love driving all over the American West, the flights back and forth are not that expensive, and let's face it, a change from the Northwest's rainy days is a great thing. (Besides, this means we can garden and cultivate plants SEPARATELY, yes, in different states, but EQUALLY.)

Mr B returns home for winter in a few days so I thought I would write up the 4 most important reasons why we go well together. This is actually about plants and I know that many of you will understand how exciting it is to share a love of tilling the soil with your partner.

1) Mr B is the high-quality dry vinegar to my goofy oil drenched cheesiness. He never laughs much at my bad jokes and I don't always know when he is joking. Somehow, this seriously works, mostly because we are not competing for the same audience.

Visiting Francis Ford Coppola's Rubicon Estate in Napa Valley, 2009.

2) We absolutely love traveling by car together, enjoying all the sights, taking in the agricultural, horticultural, historical, and cultural sites along the way. 

Mr B admiring his G-G-G Grandfather Speed Stagner's homestead on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. We drove there and back and I hope to do the drive again someday. It was beautiful. I am sad though that I was unable to germinate the native Clematis seeds I collected on the site. 

Garden at the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo in Carmel, (CA) c. 2009. We have visited over half of the missions and by far this is our favorite. The garden and the grounds felt like home to us. 

Trucks of garlic. This kind of thing makes us both happy. Besides, it smelled amazing.

Notice the juice dripping near the left flap of the truck. This was just north of Los Angeles on I-5 and it was about 100 degrees F. The smell of hot tomato juice as we followed this truck cracked me up. It was surreal especially when it intermixed with the garlic smell from the other trucks. 

3) The site of this vineyard makes both of us very happy. For Mr B, it means hard work and a challenge, but for me, I see the freedom he gets to have while doing something he loves. Besides, you really cannot grow these same Italian varietals in our area in northern Oregon. (Historically, the Italian immigrant families used to pool their money together to buy boxcars of wine grapes from California at wholesale prices and then they would distribute them for home winemaking down in produce row. My family was one of those families.)

Rosa D'Oro Vineyard, Kelseyville, (CA) c. 2009.

Mr B is a cat lover too, but he also likes other animals.

Our American Gothic.

The tanks.

The olive orchard at Rosa D'Oro, Kelseyville, (CA) c. 2009.

Tasting room sign at the vineyard. Notice the piles of rocks. This was something my husband thought up to make the new cement look more rustic. I have no idea if he finished that tiny pile he started at the base of the sign, but this was his
first attempt at being Andy Goldsworthy and I loved it. 

4.) Lastly, we also both love Oregon very much, and we both love our home and garden even if Mr B still likes to have everything planted in straight lines. We're still working on that, but I really cannot complain. He is one AMAZING hole digger, oh, and did I mention, he likes plant shopping!!!!

There are the Sangiovese grapes in our Oregon garden. Last year they ripened nicely, but this year they didn't even come close. This was due to our El Niño weather pattern. I planted these to remind him of his home away from home and when he is gone during the summer, I am always remind of him and have a piece of his life here with me. I eat these grapes though and they taste great.

If you are interested in reading more about unusual and uncommon Italian wine varietals, I have added a link to the Rosa d'Oro blog. My husband writes it and sometimes he can get really technical about the wine growing and making process and folks seem to enjoy that quite a bit. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even ask him for menu ideas to go with different wines. He is a trained chef, and sommelier, and sometimes misses that kind of thing. Check out what his currently up to by clicking here: Rosa D'Oro's Blog 

A Break in the Storm

This past week has been a brutal storm but I kept afloat during what seemed like a tempest. My novel progressed, without a real plot, but the plodding upon the land is everywhere upon it. (That was what I'd wanted most of all and I am having a lot of fun with it.) Then on Monday an emergency foster child arrived and this pre-teen was with me until Thursday afternoon. Demanding, energetic, and busy does not do justice to describe those days.

Maurice watches as Macavity takes a break on the roof. They had a difficult week
too and often needed to unwind and escape whenever possible. 

Somehow I was able to write, but I ended up with a headache that still has not gone away. It was not the child per se, since it has more to do with my inability to communicate the needs of my health condition while enlivening the necessary empathy in this particular child. Conquering this hurdle is often impossible with most of these kids, yet I need to work at how to do so in the future. The children in state custody have the most difficult time with it, and as much as I understand, I cannot chose to suffer through this again.

Wouldn't you know it though, on the last day I discovered how much she loved to garden so that really helped up both to calm down before her departure. We went on a trip to the nursery down the street when the wind storm finally let up and we bought some bulbs and pansies to plant.

Native Silk-Tassel Bush or Garrya elliptica at Portland Nursery on SE Stark. Notice my car's bumper in the left-hand bottom corner. This shrub is in the nursery parking lot!

Many of the plant racks are empty for the season, but the native licorice fern Polypodium glycyrrhiza still persists. I love these things and have reintroduced them into my garden. Mine is on a Doug fir tree.

Lastly, I am spending my last week alone as a single part-time foster parent. The husband returns home for the winter next weekend, hopefully after the olives are harvested, but that is a whole other story. Needless to say, having him home will be wonderful and we will have a lot more fun, but it can also be stressful because I am daily reminded both verbally and non-verbally of how difficult it can be for a spouse to live with their partner when they are seriously chronically ill. The burden and the sacrifice is heavy, and I don't know if I could do what he is able to do. My goal for this winter is to work harder at moving forward together, but this needs to be his goal too and I hope we are ready for it.

Using my interest in gardening, with a bit more of the purpose of my past, has helped me to tie my many lives together. Plants are so much a part of who I am, and of where I have come from, they have helped me to overcome a great deal of personal suffering as well as the self-pity I have experienced. Somehow I feel as though gardening has really helped me to reintegrate everything I have gone through and much like a garden design, I've just needed the plants to grow in. The picture has revealed itself to me, and I am at peace now. Whatever internal struggle was at play, seems to have seriously subsided.

Vaccinium ovatum with berries. This is our native NW evergreen huckleberry. I have fond memories of picking these once in the woods surrounding Mt St Helen's. I love the berries so much, I had to plant them in my garden so that I wouldn't have to drive too far to pick them. This is an excellent and easy to grow shrub. 

Vaccinium ovatum.

Cutting some people from my life, and having little contact with others, has helped me to feel so much safer too with a sense of being protected. (I imagine my growing hedges have helped to concretely remind me of this action as well. Maybe I will name these hedges accordingly in the future.) Editing or trimming can clean so many things up, making things clearer, and for me, I have really had to come to terms with the fact that I come from a family that cannot cope with chronic illness, and that is just the way it is for them, but it no longer had to be that way for me.

You see, when you have been ill for almost 10 years, and your family still cannot pronounce what you've been diagnosed with, nor have they taken the time to understand what it is, or how it functions, you know it is time to step back and stop trying to reach them.

I feel much like any plant in a garden now. I am complicated, but I have very basic needs. I need my food and water to survive. Sunshine will help me stand up. Sometimes I may flower and bare fruit, but sometimes I may grow weak and need help. The list goes on and on, but what matters most is that no cure or magical fertilizer will make the plant perfect forever—just like me—and we are both in flux. It is a day to day thing, and I am happy in the moment, just as I imagine my plants are sometimes when they put on their show, even it it might be their final one of the year...

The last of my summer roses. This is a Damask rose from Heirloom Roses. This summer I finally harvested petals and made rosary beads. Not sure yet what to make with them, but the rose water was delicious too! I used it in my Syrian lemonade. I will have to share those recipes next season. 

A Gardener Visits the Oregon Zoo

As I write this an East Wind is blowing out of the Columbia River Gorge and I can hear the Doug fir tree as it gently brushes the roof. This winter, those branches will finally be removed. It is late, and the emergency respite child is asleep in bed and I can now openly feel afraid of the dried vines scratching at my window. I wish I could be upset at the person who planted them, but I cannot do that to myself. I meant no harm at the time. The scratching noises they make though are really a bit terrifying. I must remember to trim them back. 

Ah yes, this is really about the zoo. This past Saturday we were at the Oregon Zoo and before we'd left the house with our last foster respite guest, I'd already decided to see the zoo through the fresh eyes of a gardener, and not necessarily just the animal lover that I am. 

This meant—of course—that the first photo was of a bear. I am horrible at these assignments but I was simply too excited since I have not seen the black bears in some time now. 

 

Back on track, I noticed this along the pathway as we continued. These are what we call sheds or shed antlers and they are just sitting around to make the place look more natural in the Pacific Northwest Exhibit. This kind of thrilled me and brought back memories of a mostly horrible camping trip to British Columbia with my father for one month after I'd graduated from high school. I would have preferred a week in NYC to that month of misery, but at least I really did get to know the desolate feeling of true wilderness.

While I was there, I found all kinds of odd animal bones by wandering a bit into the woods but I stopped doing that the day I heard a grizzly for the first time. Back home in Oregon, even after all of these years, I still love to toss out artifacts into my garden for that surreal juxtaposition. This winter I hope to go to the coast to get some more great stuff—another bone or two would be kind of fun—but my mainstay are large oyster shells.

My husband was briefly home this past weekend. He brought home books and clothing from his seasonal wine sojourn in California, and is now wrapping up what loose ends he can before returning home for the next 5 months. The arranged respite for the weekend was very excited to see him again and I think that's something he is beginning to enjoy more and more even if it is confusing or rough at times. He was happy to be back in what we lovingly call the Pacific Wonderland.

The lifecycle of the salmon is represented by art at the zoo. (You cannot really keep salmon in tanks so they have trout instead.) There is an amazing mosaic in the walkway near this sculpture that is a favorite of mine. Salmon fertilizer is one of our favorite fertilizers here at home, so adding salmon again to my blog I do with pride.

This is an owl I caught napping but I cannot imagine it sleeps much with all the kids around it all day.

Owls can be useful for rodent control, even in the city, so of course it gets a gardeners seal of approval. Living at the base of the extinct volcano that is now a forested park, we have some owls living amongst us. There are some bats too, but they don't visit me down here at the base much. (We have them at the zoo too, but by the time we made it to the bat cave, I was too tired to take another picture.)

The native rose hips were really glistening and glowing. I didn't get a full picture of this shrub rose, but it was lit up like a Christmas tree with all of its red hips. It made me crave my favorite black tea with rose petals for some strange reason. 

Near the farm area, where they have the main petting zoo, this salvia was afire. I found it hard to believe that they were blooming away, but nearby there was a native Mimulus in bloom too. I mourned the fact that I was too late to harvest some of its seeds, but maybe next year.

I am not sure if this is the North American native Beauty Berry or not. It is planted between a viewing deck and either the hippo or giraffe and zebra area. This was a welcome sight since the colors are always so beautiful. 

Temporarily the penguins have been moved into part of the polar bear exhibit. If you know any penguins, it should come as no great shock that their filter needs to be replaced at their house. This might take some time so they have made themselves at home.

They were sun worshipping while we were there and a few were swimming up to us as we looked through the glass. It was a great last stop and I am glad I pushed to see them and not the ice cream machine the foster respite was by that time obsessed with.

As we left on Saturday, this was the amazingly romantic weather we saw from the parking lot. Fog was settling in on the West hills, and down below, in the city, it was drizzly. Some folks feel that this kind of climate is heavy, or even depressing or sad, but I adore it. I might even want to add that it can inspire you to get some writing done that you've been meaning to get around to doing.

Today was mostly clear and sunny so we do have some good days around from time to time. I now have over 4,000 words written for this novel of mine, it was a great day, and a great weekend leading up to today as well.

The Garden as Character

In just a few days National Novel Writing Month will begin. My effort last year never bore any fruit, so I am trying again. As someone who is 36 and is facing some serious chronic illness issues, this is something I would like to get out of my system after all of these years. Realizing that the static of rare disease is what came between myself and this dream was the first hurdle. Completing it on time will be the next. 50,000 words in a month is a lot of writing! I only ever wanted to be a writer, ever since the beginning of my being, and I want my nieces to know that even though it has been many years, I am not going to be a woman who gives up. What bothers me is that it is always such an emotional experience, one that draws a lot of energy out of me. I don't know why that is, but I think for many writers the act is similar to that of exercising a demon.

This is a topic here on my blog because I want to use a garden as a character of sorts. I would like to know your thoughts about garden literature in general too in order to help my thought process a bit. Typically I like to write fictional memoirs, but I think that it is safe to say that I enjoy literary fiction and that's the genre I will be in for the month of November. 

My favorite novel involving a garden was called A Man of Character by the Italian auther Paola Capriolo. If you have not read it, you should pick a copy of it up. 

I am late for brunch with my cousin, and I will return to this post tonight after work. So in the meantime, what do you think of garden literature? What do you like? 

PS: For those who read garden books regularly, my birthday just happens to be the same as Beverley Nichols. That gives me some comfort for some unknown reason. 

If you would like to participate in this absolutely crazy activity, here is a link to the Web site. You don't have to be in the US at all to participate. If you sign up, let me know. We can share stuff in a group.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/