Dear friend Sally,

I was going to start this letter poetically, all about the sun and the warm earth, but I just can't wait to tell you: the peonies are coming up!  I'm so excited!  

Well, at least two of them are poking their little heads out of the soil. One of the others is in a shady spot and will probably be another week. I had almost given up hope. This will have been the third time I've tried planting peonies, with the prior two efforts ending in sad failure. (That's right. Not simply "failure", but "SAD failure".) They seemed impossible. I would enviously drive past yards in Miles City with their abundance of lush blooms, stems drooping with the richness of the flowers....

I would also tell myself (like Emma in the movie of the same name) that really they were drab little flowers and who cared? (I cared. I cared a lot. Has anyone in the world thought a peony "drab"? I thought not. Because they aren't. They're glorious.)

Now, I know you said that they probably won't bloom the first year. That's just fine. And I know I shouldn't count my blossoms before they set on, but I am. 

The cats think I'm nuts, gasping at the ugly little beginnings of the plants, then cheering. (Really, peonies are quite homely on day one and two. Maybe even into day three. They have little alien-like heads before their leaves spread out.) I have to be careful, because if the dogs think I love a plant more than them, they promptly dig it up or lay on it until it dies, gasping and cracking. 

I completely forgot to take a photo to post; I can do that tomorrow and add it here. 

In other, more ordinary news...

The tulips need divided, so they only sent out two or three reminder blooms this week, sulking until they have their way.  All the trees and shrubs have baby leaves, tender and bright. The birds make such a commotion when I venture near! Oh! And for a few days we had two little owls living here! They were grumpy and blinky because they insisted on trying to sleep under the honeysuckle bush right next to the front door. Tough neighborhood for owls. 

I need to get something pulled together for supper, but I wanted to share the news with you and my other friends who read the blog. Or who used to read the blog. It's been a long dry spell, I know. 

Isn't it delightful, though, to have garden triumphs?! 

Happy spring!

The Farmer's Wife

It Takes All Kinds

After gardening and observing gardeners for some time, I've developed a loose theory about people who plant.
I think there are Process gardeners and Product gardeners.

Product gardeners plant and dig and design with the end "product" in mind.  They almost always have a plan; they're the ones you see in the green house with a list in hand, filling their cardboard box with very specific plants. When they get the plants home, they'll plant them according to the plan they made that winter. There may be a diagram, or even a pot how-to that they printed off the computer like so:

When Product gardeners plant vegetables, they only plant the ones they know they have a specific purpose for when the plants mature. If they don't eat swiss chard, they won't plant it, no matter how eye catching it is.  Product gardeners have very neat gardens and pots with well-behaved plants.  There really are no surprises and that's comforting to them. 

When they look out the window, everything is as it should be and the gardens generally look something like this:

Product gardeners are the epitome of discipline and their end products are enviable. In fact, Product gardeners are usually the reason people get into gardening in the first place; they want THEIR yards to look like that, too.

(Incidentally, I presume they're also the people who have their canned goods in order, alphabetically, and their bathrooms are always clean.)

Process gardeners generally begin as Product gardeners, I believe, but once they realize the variety of plants and the magic of a seed turning into a hollyhock, something inside them snaps and they're never the same. 

Process gardeners go to the greenhouse with the vague notion that they're going to get "some flowers" for the pots on their deck and "some vegetables" so they'll have something to put in their salads later in the summer.  They're very open minded and adventurous when buying plants; this is both their charm and downfall...

Process gardeners often get home with an SUV full of plants and not the vaguest notion of where to put them.  Their enthusiasm is bigger than their space (AND their wallets), but they're undaunted.

They love digging and planting, they grow attached to their plants and posies....mourning the loss of a tomato plant as personally as one would a great aunt.  

Their pots generally look something like this:

There could be a tomato lurking at the back of this container....

one never knows with a Process gardener.

Seed packets are always enticing to Process gardeners, with pretty pictures and relatively cheap cost.

To be painfully honest, almost anything plant related is enticing to Process gardeners. 

Their gardens often look like this:

The delight is in the mystery.

Process gardeners are generally forgetful and end up overplanting a zinna in a bed they've already seeded to lettuce or something. 

I assume this is where French intensive gardening got started; someone cleverly thought to make a Process gardener's absentmindedness into a fahncy sounding plan that really just means "I planted too much in this bed and can't bear to tear any of it out". 

I've never really met anyone who lives with a foot in both camps, a Process oriented Product gardener. Some gardeners will try to pretend they're one when they're really wired the other way. It's funny for me to watch Product gardeners try to do a "casual" pot or bed. Try as they may, they can't help making it neat and tidy, with crisp edges.  What is "relaxed" to a Product gardener is considered "formal" to the rest of the world....even if they use sprawl-y plants, the plants will be trained to sprawl in a specific direction. 

Likewise, it's equally amusing to hand a Process gardener a specific amount of money (say, $50) and a detailed list, stating that they must stay within those bounds.  They cannot, and end up cutting deals at the checkout over the extra ivy leafed geranium, 4 pack of banana peppers, seed packets for bachelor buttons that somehow slipped into the cart. 

There's nothing morally superior about either type of gardener, no matter what anyone says.

(I'm a Process person who tries not to envy the Product folks OR pity their lack of adventure.)

No matter how we go about it, gardening makes the world a more beautiful place for ourselves and others. 

And now, I'm going to go plant some flame red salvia and a rosemary plant that called my name yesterday while I purchased a hanging basket.

I think there's room in the carrot/zinnia/pea/cucumber bed....

Hollyhock Hold-Em

Gardeners are gamblers.

There. 

I said it. 

There's no gardener twelve step recovery program, no Alcea Anonymous, no counselling or therapy groups because....get this....gardening has gotten this reputation for BEING therapy. (Can you beat that? It's being introduced in grade schools and prisons, for crying in a bucket! There's all this concern over legalizing marijuana in the U.S., while an insidious addiction is being released to vulnerable and unknowing citizens LEGITIMATELY.)

This time of year is the worst for gamblers....er....gardeners.

Every hardware/office supply/pharmacy/grocery store has a little auxiliary greenhouse set up to "deal" the cards (plants).  It's impossible to resist, even for those without dominant horticultural genetics. The greenhouses are just so...green, and bright, and smell good! After a long Montana winter, the colors beckon even the strongest willed curmudgeon.  

"Ooooo! Petunias! My grandma always grew petunias..."

and

"The tomato plant is $2.00 and will produce, like, 50 tomatoes.  I just spent $2.00 on ONE tomato at the grocery store and it'll be gone in 24 hours..."

or

"I grew a sunflower in a paper cup in first grade.  I could TOTALLY grow a garden this year. With petunias. And a hanging basket.  No...TWO hanging baskets."

You see?

EVIL!

And that's just the beginning!

When the soul is truly lost, one begins cutting moral deals with oneself. 

Example: "I don't spend money on cigarettes or gym memberships or even brand name salad dressing. I DESERVE a few flowers. And a couple tomato plants. And a rototiller."

Or so I've heard.

But the really ugly secret is about the underground plant deals going on in May, between gardeners of a certain level of commitment/addiction...

Here's the thing.

You can't move a day lily, iris, salvia, or viola in these circles unless you have a new varietal bootlegged from a cousin in Texas, say, who got it from Mexico, say, and "borrowed" the "cuttings" or "seed" from a garden they were walking past on a historical tour, say...

These are serious players. 

They're pro. 

Don't think you can offer up a regular old Harrison's Yellow rose *yawn* and get a blue poppy root. 

You'd better have something good. 

Something coveted in that zone.

Something....special.

The tricky thing about putting plants on the table in eastern Montana is that there are very, very few organisms that can survive in these conditions....-40 with windchill and no protection in January, 98 degrees with no humidity in July.  Basically, anything that will grow in either Siberia OR the aforementioned Mexico; preferably something that will grow either/or. 

Kind of like gardening on Mars.

And that's not mentioning the soil factor! 

The plant also has to be alkali tolerant, for the most part, and acclimated to gumbo soil which is basically clay pot stuff...goopy slick to cement consistency. 

This reduces the pool of plants even further.

Montana garden-lers have to learn to bluff really well or discover new species every few years.

If I lived in Missouri, I'd be throwing down Sophora secundiflora starts (Texas Mountain Laurel) and fishing for Aquilegia coerulea (blue columbine)...*wistful zone 5 dreams*...but here in Cohagen, I'm stuck with Russian sage and yarrow. 

I'm down to shuffling my own plants in my own yard, having no talent for bluffing or money for discovery.  

It's bleak.

HOWEVER...

It occurred to me when I was trying to unload some perennial geraniums and Siberian iris this spring that my mother-in-law (of the Pluhar Botanical Gardens) retired and moved last fall, forgetting to pack her abundant inventory of plants. Google searches don't have any information on the "respectable time to wait before garden salvage may commence" so I'm still in flux as to how long to refrain from relocating the loot.
I mean, saving the abandoned plants, of course.
And then...

Deal me in, kids; I'm back in the game!

actually
steal my MIL's plants. I may use the rhubarb and asparagus, but we've had a longstanding agreement about that for years, so it's not a dramatic showdown in any way.>

Here's what's shaking in my garden in the middle of June...

Not EVERYTHING, just the stuff I find charming and lovely.

The Jodi rose, which looks very Photoshopped in pictures but really and truly IS that vibrant and brassy!  She doesn't have a great rose-y scent, but she is such a show off that I have to love her...almost like a junior high girl wearing too much makeup.  You know she's trying, but doesn't know when enough is enough.  There's tasteful and there's tart-y, but the poor dear hasn't made the distinction, yet. 

In June, even the dandelion heads are delightful in all their starriness.  Who knows the wishes blown from this sweet weed? (Did you know starriness isn't a word? Pshhh!)

T

And speaking of stars, my very favorite flower in all the world is columbine (aquilegia for the botanically correct).

My grandma's yellow roses, dripping in dew and rain...

I don't know who's reading this, but for my closest friends and family...please plant these yellow roses on my grave.  I think Heaven will be filled with them, so don't bother with the plastic flowers...tend the sentimental old yellows, instead, and look forward to eternity.

 This is NOT Forellenschluss!  It's some sort of red lettuce and I believe I'll make a salad this week with it.  Why make a regular old Romaine toss when one can have purple leaves with oranges and almonds?!

THIS is Forellenschluss, of course, Fontie!  And now we should go fishing, because spotted trout lettuce demands we do so in honor of the gorgeousness.

Peas with raindrops.
Can you SMELL the freshness?

And then we have baby onions! They're all spindly at this stage...again, junior high boys of the garden. 

Look in the background...do you see...?

BABY CARROTS! Fluttery, feathery baby carrots who are so lovely that one forgets the orange (or purple or red) goodness under the dirt!

I'm all entranced by the water on the clothes line with the Angus cow in the distance.  When I painted the poles and propane tank this shocking green, I know my in laws had kittens, but in the spring and summer, the hardscapes all but disappear in the green of the surrounding grass! The other astonishing thing is how the purple on the raised beds and benches has mellowed into more of a blue-y color and is completely subtle.  I don't know what possesses me to try these things, but some of them work and (accidentally) look brilliantly planned.  It's just serendipity, really.

I also know that the sun on the propane tank was a little unorthodox, but there are some things in my yard that I can't hide, so I may as well make them happy to look at.  You see our cat, Figaro, who is NOT IMPRESSED by the moisture.  It musses his fur and muddies his precious paws and causes him to mold around the whiskers.  Very annoying.

Maggie and Angus made me hanging planters at school for Mother's Day.  This is Maggie's and I love the peace signs and dianthus!  It's hanging on an old picket fence behind the herb bed.

Do you know what this is?

Honestly, until I grew it, I had no idea that spinach was beautiful.

And YUMMY.

(See the purple of the raised bed ledge underneath?)

Sara H. C.!!! 

I have a tomato!

After all the hail, one hardy plant survived and managed a fruit!!!

I'm going to get another couple plants from the greenhouse this week because today Maggie discovered the thrill of home made salsa, and we're going to have to kick it in high gear on tomato production.

Thank goodness we have mountains of cilantro...

And Flo, my flamingo garden angel from my friend J.

I think every garden should have a Flo, but most especially those who plant near a single wide trailer house.

Don't you?

Dear MaryBeth,

I've been on my hands and knees grubbing around in my flower beds, pulling weeds and trying to talk the roses into blooming because I'm weary of all the little blue spring flowers, lovely as they are.  (Flax, salvia and iris all bloom at the end of May.  I look out my window and there are only purple and blue flowers, very calming and elegant, of course, but my heart is just crying out for something yellow! Then, in July, the only things that bloom are yellow and I have to apologize to the blue flowers for taking them for granted...)

When I weed, I think.
And I remember.
And I worry and pray and solve world problems, although by the time I come in to have a drink and write down all my brilliant thoughts, they're gone...pppffft!...like balloons that got away from a birthday party.

Today, though, I was thinking about my friend Karen Yost who made the mistake one time of asking me to weed her daisy bed by the back door.  She really should have gotten my gardening history (none) before she set me to the task.

First, let me say that Karen is like a mom to me; she and her family opened the door and let me live with them for several summers when it became apparent that I, like a stray cat, was not going to leave so they may as well put me to some good use.  I was in my 20's, very lost in a way, and trying to grow up backwardly...life happens like that, sometimes.

Anyway, she showed me the flower bed, asked me to weed it and then went to innocently off to work in town.  I had absolutely no idea what was a weed and what was a flower, but I wanted to do a really good job because I cared so much for her, you know?  I worked on that bed all morning, in the hot sun, weeding my heart out!
And everything else.
When she got home, that was the CLEANEST flower bed you've ever seen.
There wasn't a speck of a green thing in it!
No weeds!
No daisies!
Nothing but dirt.

Now that I garden, I can only imagine how her heart must have just fallen in a big, sad puddle inside at the devastation of her flower bed.
In fact, I call her every year, now, and apologize for it.
EVERY YEAR!

Bless her heart, she told me that she'd been getting tired of the daisies and had wanted to put in something different there, anyway.  Like in Emma..."Daisies are such drab little flowers..."

I don't know if she replanted them or somehow I didn't pull everything out by the roots because the next year, the daisies were back with their happy little faces.  It wasn't until I started trying to grow them here at my own home that I knew how much she must have missed them!

Karen also introduced me to raspberries, but that's another story for another day...

I hope your little garden is doing well.  I love reading about it in your dad's blog!  Your mom says that you weed every day, so I know that we're probably weeding at the same time some days. (If you ever have someone help you, make SURE you interview them a little to find out if they can tell a bean plant from a weed...)

Love from Montana!
The Farmer's Wife

Gardenitis

(I make the spell-check on my computer NUTS because I add words like this to the dictionary against its strenuous insistence that it's wrong, wrong, wrong!)

Gardenitis is an affliction that strikes many people this time of year.  It's an obsessive, compulsive desire to plant and till, and it occurs in many variations.  To find out if you are the victim of this condition, the Farmer's Wife offers this brief, comprehensive quiz.

1. When a seed catalog arrives in your mail, you:
     a. Put it in the "look at later" pile of publications.
     b. Flip through it, turning down pages and circling interesting varietals.
     c. Get out a highlighter. After a completely thorough research on zones and germination, fill out the order
          form and send it off the next day.
     d. Wait until everyone is in bed, then call the seed company with your credit card number and whisper
          "I'll take two of each, thank you..."

2.  The pansies and primroses appear in the stores, with promises of spring color!  You:
     a. Think to yourself, "Who in the WORLD would buy those in February in Montana?"  and walk away.
     b. Buy one little four-pack, justifying it by putting them in a "container" for 6 more weeks.
     c. Take a flat home, create a little niche in your window for them and develop a relationship until the frost
         goes out.
     d. Put the laundry soap and milk back so there's more room in the cart for plants, take them home and
         create a little greenhouse in a south bed with a plug in heater and old shower curtains.  Voila! Spring
         color!

3.  There are weddings near Valentine's Day, of course...it's romantic and all.  While in attendance, you:
     a. Notice that the bride did an exceptional job of coordinating the flower arrangements with her wedding
         party's attire.
     b. Think to yourself, "Ooohhhh...pink roses and delphinium...I'll have to try that in the garden this year."
     c.  Start a discussion with the bride's aunt about gardening and make a plan to have coffee and do a
          greenhouse tour next week.
     d. Pretend to be fixing an arrangement that is obviously off center, then, when no one is looking, pinch a
          cutting of that gorgeous ivy to root when you get home. (Bonus points if you put the clipping in your
          water glass at the reception, pretending you have some sort of exotic cocktail.)


I told you the quiz was brief!

If you had mostly a.'s:  How are your silk plants doing?  I'm sure you're a very nice person, but gardening is not your thing, really.  Try 1-800-FTD-2DAY....

If you had mostly b.'s: You walk a slippery slope in the world of gardening.  You're cautiously optimistic, but I suspect that you're one big landscape success away from Gardenitis.  Beware the yarrow!

If you had mostly c.'s: You're definitely afflicted with the dread Gardenitis. Find more of your own kind (they'll be easy to spot in the supermarket because they'll be mumbling about anemic tomatoes) and share seeds and compost.  Carpe daisy!

If you had mostly d.'s: I'll try to put this gently...you're nuts, dear.  There's a place for lost souls like you and it's called Butchart Botanical Gardens. I'll meet you at the south entrance on Friday...you'll know it's me because I'll be wearing the straw hat with "flowers" (swiped cuttings to start).

Dear Marybeth,

You wanted to know what I was growing in Montana?
Here are some photos with explanations!
It has been brutally hot, this end of June, so some things are very happy (tomatoes and zucchini) and some things are very sad (peas and cucumbers).


This is the zucchini; I think perhaps in your area they're called summer squash (?).  They have the most gorgeous orange-y yellow blossoms (that are edible!) and they produce baskets of little green squash per plant.  I have four zucchini plants which is considered insane around here.  Seriously.  When these babies start putting out the veggies, people lock their car doors for fear of being zucchini bombed, which is when an anonymous gardener who is swamped with the squash leaves a grocery bag full of them in your back seat. This happened to me, once.  Now I'M the zucchini bomber! (It's considered much kinder to first bake the zucchini into bread before leaving it in the car.)

Here are the zucchini plants with their friends the carrots (on the edge of the bed) and zinnias planted in the middle.  I know; zinnias are flowers!  But I love to blend the two !  More on that later...

Little carrots! I had just gotten done thinning them, took this picture and realized I needed to thin them more, yet.  I hate thinning carrots.  It's hard to decide who's going to stay and who has to die.  And it takes FOREVER.  By the time I get done, there are little carrot carcasses laying about and I'm thinking, "I can buy carrots...WHY am I growing them?!?!"  But home carrots actually have flavor, where boughten carrots are really rather bland.

Baby cucumbers....aren't they CUTE?!  I go out and check them every day, smiling at how they are so tiny.  My cucumbers are unhappy.  I think it's because I amended the soil in those beds this spring and perhaps got it a little "hot" with too much manure.  Either that or they're just mad about the weather being so blasted hot.  I can't tell.  But where the zucchini are growing wildly, the cucumber plants are just sitting there pouting and staying stumpy. Yellowing on the edges of the leaves, even.

I think spinach is beautiful.  I love to eat it in salads, I love to watch it explode in the garden...one day, nothing; the next day...SHAZZAM! spinach!

Tomatoes....personally, I think the smell of tomatoes is the smell of summer.  These are little pear tomatoes which will be used for sauce, not eating.  My cherry tomatoes are just setting on fruit and I'll show you pictures of them in another post.  I'm the only, only, only one in this house that eats tomatoes and I have at least eight plants.  I can't help myself!  Part of the reason I plant so many, though, is because tomatoes are delicate, needy things that die easily in this part of the country.  They don't like wind (it blows 20 mph almost every day, here), they need lots of water (it rains once a month), they desire a perfect soil (ours is sandy and needs amendment constantly) and they won't produce unless all these elements are just so.  Also, my dogs lay on them.  That tends to inhibit growth.

I have some herbs.  This is the cilantro.  I make a lot of pico de gallo in the summer and like middle eastern dishes, all of which call for large amounts of cilantro.  This little plant re-seeds itself in my herb bed, but every year I panic and think it might not, so I buy a couple plants just in case.  Then, about 2 weeks later, it's everywhere and I feel so foolish for doubting...but one never knows!  I think it has lovely leaves, all scalloped and fringe-y.

I tuck vegetables in with my flowers wherever possible.  This is a whiskey barrel planter with dahlias (not blooming at the time) petunias and a little patio tomato plant.  The tomato is very happy, the flowers are very happy and when I can snack as I weed, I'm happy, too!

I'm embarrassed to show you OUR pumpkin plant.  Maggie and Angus, my kids, were supposed to be taking care of them but they are not as interested in pumpkins as they are toads, so I'm watering them occasionally and apologizing for the lack of care.  That's salvia in the background because, yes, the pumpkins are planted in a flower bed....

This is a poppy that volunteered to grow by the woven wire fence....I love poppies, with their tissue petals and stubborn will to grow in awful spots.

Columbine, raising its face to the sun. This is my favorite flower.  They look like shooting stars!

Flax, which only blooms in the morning.  The birds love the seeds and I love the true blue-ness of the blossoms.  There are very few honest-to-goodness blue flowers...have you noticed that?  Most are purple-y!  But flax is blue, blue, blue.

I have calves that are named for flowers....here are Poppy, Buttercup and Johnny-jump-up.  Poppy gets in my yard and I noticed this morning that she's been eating the lettuce...how NAUGHTY!  We will have words, later...

Here's my pergola, with the garden beds at each corner.  There's a picnic table under it that we use for just everything...the kids take color books and projects out there, I read and pot plants and have snacks, we have picnics, the dogs lay under it for shade.  There are solar lights strung so that when the sun goes down, the tiny white lights make a soft glow and we can stay out even longer.

That's all I have for right now.
I need to get busy watering because it's supposed to be 97 degrees today, a nice break from the 104 degrees of yesterday, and the plants are gasping!

Your friend,
Mary

Thoughts on gardening...

(The photos don't correspond with the thoughts....work with me, okay?)

I wonder if the ants hear the explosion of bean seedlings pushing through the soil?

Because that's how it happens...one morning, nothing; 15 minutes later, a bean plant. 

Surely that resounds in the minute world of insects...

The roses Grandma gave me smell sweeter than any other.

I've sampled dozens and still, the yellow ones are the most glorious...how dear is that?

Thistles are wicked plants from hell, 

but when my daughter named our latest bum calf "Thistle-bum", they all of a sudden took on some redeeming characteristics....like "tough despite hardships" and "bright frazzled-y blossoms".

For some reason, weeding with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee is MUCH less painful than weeding without.  And weeding without a beverage is really not all that painful, anyway...it's more contemplative than anything. 

One should always over-plant...because the mortality rate on tomatoes and petunias is really awfully high until June 15th.  (Also, the local greenhouse starts cutting prices around June 1st and who in the world can pass up $.75 tomatoes?!) 

The more one adores a plant or flower, the greater likelihood of a dog flopping down on it or the hail pounding it into the dirt.  Nothing decimates marigolds, but the ONE contraband pinched specimen of Akebia quinata that you surreptitiously snuck from the French botanical gardens of Vancouver Public Lands will be flattened just as soon as it's rooted and planted, despite the heavy guarding of woven wire and cactus placed around it. I promise, it will.

There's no such thing as too many zinnias. 

There IS such a thing as too many zucchini plants

Greenhouse Amnesia is a malady that many experience, but few admit to.  

When gardeners go to a greenhouse, they forget many things.

1. The number of pots they actually have to fill.

2. The zone they really garden in.

3. The money they budgeted for the shopping trip.

4.  The time it's going to take in August to maintain all these purchases/plantings, when it's 103 degrees at 10 a.m. and they are buried in zucchini.

How does your garden grow?