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 

Sleeping Bees

If you drive from Portland, through the Columbia River Gorge, towards Idaho or Wyoming, you will see tons of sunflowers guiding you along the highways. Native sunflowers, some consider weeds now, almost pull you over the Rockies towards the prairies of North America. That is one way to look at it, as I choose to do so. I guess that others pragmatically see the seeds of these flowers getting stuck in the wheels of our vehicles, being flicked hither and thither as we drive about the place. Regardless of all of this, at least there is this caveat. It appears as though these blooms offer a soft resting place for the bees that we need so much. And if you are worried about these little guys in the image, we touched one, just to be sure, and it was alive. They were all in a very deep, deep sleep.
It was the kind of sleep I have been searching for during the last few years of my illness. It reminded me of the times when I could enjoy sleeping outside, under the stars, in the arid or mountainous areas of Oregon and Washington. Not afraid of my strength, but in a mood to cherish it. I no longer have that gift. Instead, I instinctively spend every moment looking over my shoulder—as all injured animals do.
That night the train pounded past our cabin at the campground, chugging up the other side of the small canyon and I rolled around outside, on a bench, in a sleeping bag. My husband sleeping soundly inside. At home, I usually use my garden to help me sleep, image by image, task by task, otherwise I focus on the physical pains. I can easily tire and fall asleep if I think about my garden. But that night, I thought only about the bees, tucked away into flower blooms only a few yards away.
My own garden seemed like a far off and unbelievable place—a dream. The bees sleeping in flowers was real at that moment and the image in my mind only intensified that feeling of the possible that only a child can have. And it felt magical. Shooting stars rolled by and I felt more free than I have felt in years, inside my experience, horrible as it may sometimes feel. I easily fell asleep then, like a child lost and not afraid in a wilderness. I wonder though now what bees dream, if they do.