Anyone who thinks gardens are all fragrant sweet pea bouquets, tender veggies and gentle green vistas should have their head examined. Clearly they’ve never spent time in the trenches with the likes of the year I’m having in my garden. Granted, I’m a bit cranky and suffering from a most inconvenient summer flu that is seriously getting in the way of Important Things I NEED to DO. Really!
Much has been said among NW gardeners about garden losses attributed to the “great winter of 2008-09.” Truthfully? I love a good weather event and last winter was very entertaining on that score. And frankly, when the dust settled – or would that be the ice melted ? – my landscape was much better for the heavy handed, uh, culling. With scale and contrast restored to the plantings in the front garden (in the absence of my olive tree and the world’s largest New Zealand flax) the space feels once again like a welcoming environment rich with color, fragrance and texture. And less like a jungle about to swallow me whole!
I survived the Hummingbird Nesting Ordeal…barely. And I think we all learned something about loving and letting go. But this latest installment of “life’s lessons in the garden” is the hardest to bear by far. My beautiful Redbud, Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ is dying…quickly. Before our very eyes, each day brings another wilted branch, more drifts of fallen leaves and an increasingly laid bare skeleton of blackened branches.
I love this tree. It’s open canopy of graceful limbs are spangled in tiny, hot pink blossoms in May. Furnished with gorgeous heart-shaped leaves the color of rich red wine, this tree is my living valentine. I know, I know, heartlessly cavalier with the cute little hummingbirds but I see love letters in my tree; the irony is not lost on me. I planted this tree probably 15 years ago or so, a lifetime in this garden.
The center piece of my backyard my tree provides welcome shade for the many plants beneath it, anchoring the garden with a well-deserved “look-at-me, I’m-the-most-beautiful-thing-in-the-land” demeanor. Like a beautiful exotic woman at a church picnic, it is hard to miss an exquisite, poised and dazzlingly lovely specimen smack in the middle of the yard.
'Forest Pansy' blazing color, autumn '08
A couple of years ago I wrote an article for Northwest Garden News entitled “Grow it, Kill it, Know it“:
…Gardeners are too often wary of loosing a plant at any cost. It may be a stalwart planting holdout that came with the house, a division from a generous gardening friend or a tough resilient survivor able to withstand all conditions (coming dangerously close to my definition of a weed), if it has roots, shoots and a bloom, however weak or unsatisfying, we will persist in the campaign for its survival. At the same time most gardeners I know decry a constant list of garden tasks, wail at the never ending battle with pests and bemoan the lack of sufficient space to realize the garden present in their minds’ eye. Why then do we spend our precious time, energy and resources on plants that disappoint and dismay? Off with their heads I say! Remove the offender(s), yes – tear out the plant guilty only of failing to please and forgive yourself – this is horticulture – not medicine!
My tree’s diagnosis may be root rot, it doesn’t really matter. According to nurseries I have consulted, there are swelling numbers of Cercis casualties in the Pacific Northwest. Certainly a case of failure to thrive.
Anyone who has tended the same garden over a period of years will tell you the environment is anything but static, but instead a constant dynamic shifting of changing levels of sun, shade, moisture and pests forever tempered by quixotic weather patterns; so too, our lives, interests and abilities continually alter with the passage of time. Our garden of yesterday, last year or last decade may not be the ideal for our lives and conditions today.
Ok, so I get it. Change is constant. Change is never easy. Change is life.
Lucky for me the sweet peas have been gloriously abundant, producing a posy a day. We’ve got bouquets in every room of the house and nobody leaves the house empty handed. The more I pick, the more they produce in a gluttony of sweetly scented generosity.
The vegetable garden is spilling with greens and the first of the tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, beans, raspberries and summer herbs are revving up for a delicious harvest. Meals are simple, fresh and heady with flavor. I am grateful for long days and warm temperatures.
The pumpkins are racing to cover the weed patch and against all odds, I’ve spotted the first few melons to set fruit. Melons in the Puget Sound area are an example of pure optimism in the face of change and loss and other bitter truths. I am soooo looking forward to their perfumed juices dribbling down my chin in a sticky, aromatic and luscious feast!
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