Hey NBC grads,
Blog here if you’re up for meeting over Old Settlers for the 21st Class Reunion and/or a reason to have a beer and BBQ with your old (strike that)“dear” friends from the class of ’86.
What do you all think?
Hey NBC grads,
Blog here if you’re up for meeting over Old Settlers for the 21st Class Reunion and/or a reason to have a beer and BBQ with your old (strike that)“dear” friends from the class of ’86.
What do you all think?
Park’s, Burpee’s, Breck’s, Gurney’s, Wayside, Springhill, Four Seasons…..
If you recognize the list above and can easily declare what each item has in common, you are a gardener and I know what you were doing or thinking about while the snow fell and you were stranded in your home for a weekend or two this past month. It may sound crazy, but after I got the sidewalks, stairs, and walkways shoveled for the final time after the “Blizzard of ‘07?, I went over to my magnolia bush and dug down through the snow to see if my crocus were blooming yet. What? Like I’m the only one!
I don’t know if it’s the seed catalogs that we are bombarded with through January, February, and March…(by the way, did you know that January is National Mail Order Gardening Month?), the fact that the daisies I brought in before the first frost began blooming and filling my south window with their incredible color, or if it’s just that we find comfort during the uncomfortable, unpredictable weather that is March in Nebraska by thinking about our dormant plots underneath the snow. Whatever the reason, my garden and my trees start calling me around 5:30 am, before the buzzer, each morning and I lay there planning the layout of the rows, dreaming of new varieties to try, and wrestling with the blankets of snow that cover the new flower beds of my dreams. I just can’t wait to get out there!
My obsession with flowers started with simple, petunia pot gardens on second floor balconies; they were always unusual and cheery amongst the rusting grills and empty beer cans that graced the low rent apartments I stayed in near the Air Force bases. By getting my hands in the dirt I was able to clear my mind and decrease stress. When you’re a farm girl chained to a windowless desk job for 40 hours a week; you can find solace in the manual labor of carrying 40lb bags of potting soil up two flights of stairs and across your beige apartment carpet….well, at least I could.
Most of us don’t raise a garden to feed a family or support one, we do it because we love to have the flowers all around, in every view of every window of our homes. It’s a fun and easy pastime that anyone can do. I basically put seeds or plants into the ground and wait, occasionally I weed but that part tends to get away from me and I’ve learned to relax…because it’s okay. I’ve learned most from my closest professional gardener: my Dad. His most important lesson: the best thing you can do to help ensure the crop or the veracity of the plant is to irrigate: don’t be stingy, don’t miss a day, and don’t rely on Mother Nature. You can fertilize ’til the cows come home but if you don’t water enough you might as well forget it. I’ve learned about placement, when to let it grow out, when to cut it back, when to plant, when to harvest, etc. from the ladies around me. In the beginning they even had to explain which plants were weeds and which plants were not. I was definitely familiar with what to cut out of a row of beans with a corn knife but which seedlings are from the seeds I planted and which are indigenous weeds….not really a clue and it’s best to catch them early if you can , so I paid attention.
I don’t know how it is in your town but in Morse Bluff, we tour in the early morning or in the cool evening to check each other’s progress. We discuss techniques over the fence leaning on our hoes, we share bulbs, we exchange seeds, we gather the fruits of our labors and swap tomatoes for cucumbers at each others’ garden gates, we even give it away at the post office. It’s a great way to get to know your neighbor, catch up on gossip, and bypass trial-and-error-gardening by listening to the tips from folks who’ve been at it longer.
I guess I miss that during these winter months when we are all in our houses, barricaded against the cold. I fight the urge on the occasional day in March when the temperature reaches into the 50s to bring my daisies out of their warm window and onto the still cool deck. Fortunately, reality hits and I know I’ll just have to lug them back in again, so houseplants, they remain. Me, on the other hand, I’m venturing out and “touring” each morning or evening; getting in a good walk while checking the firmness of the earth with each step to determine if the frost is actually fading, breathing deeply to hopefully detect that faint, sweet, familiar smell of distant blossoms on the air, and to share the road with the robins bathing in the puddles next to the melting snow piles on the sides of the streets. These are all sure signs that the Spring we gardeners crave, will soon be more than just a dream.
—North Bend Eagle 13 March 2007
A classic, I listened to Jean discuss it when she was reading it for her college course and I had to borrow it. (Finished it last night…loved it until the end when it turned into a propaganda paper about the wonders of Socialism. Really making me rethink my current place of employment and it’s history.)
My personal heroine, couldn’t pass them up but haven’t had a lot of time to get into these yet….have to get past the first 30 pages before I roll.