Preparing for Spring Opening

The stage is set, the lights are coming up, and it’s almost show time.

We are rushing headlong toward our opening. It is coming so fast, as fast as the green shoots emerging from the ground all through the gardens. Our Morningside calendar has filled up with wonderful classes, check them out in events.

This year we are going to be adding a small herb cutting garden for fresh herbs. George is going to be taking some to the market and if people who come here would like fresh herbs we will go out into the garden and cut some. Of course we have to put the garden in first. We do have the spot picked out, we just have to amend the soil, figure out how many of what to put where, and plant them. Hmm Karen, and when is this going to happen? I am a firm believer in miracles, and as miracles go, this one doesn’t seem so out there. Herb cutting garden? Just make it so. Check back later to see if anyone was listening.

I also want to start including a few recipes on these pages and in our class. I love to cook (nothing fancy just what I would call good country fresh food, and the way to get fresh food is from your own yard). So we are putting in our first extensive veggie garden. That should also be fodder for a few laughs here as my small efforts with tomatoes and peppers has been spotty at best. Ornamental gardens I can handle, but the kind of garden I can eat out of, well it is my experience other things want to eat out of it as well. Fences don’t keep blister beetles out of the garden. I learned about crop rotation the hard way last year. This year I hope to fool the little suckers with a new garden location.

George is still working on his rain garden, which is coming into it’s own. He is working on a living willow fedge, which is a cross between a hedge and fence. It is an experiment, but exciting if it works. Our fascination with willows continues...they are cropping up everywhere here. I was thinking next year of having a pussy willow day so everyone who wants to can enjoy them also. Honey bees are enjoying them at the moment. Willows are good bee food as not much else has pollen at the moment. I also love to bring big bunches of all the different kinds of willows (we have about 6) into the house. Happiness is spring, fresh food and willows.

Happy Gardening!

The Call of Nature

Kumson

I think yellow is the color of early spring. It seems to be everywhere: the daffodils, the forsythia (‘Kumson’, right) blooming in pots, and the big yellow twig weeping willow. Even the finches get into the act by changing from their dull winter browns to neon yellow. It catches the eye and lifts the heart with the thought and hope of spring.

As rocky as the economy gets, gardens and gardening will always be just what it always has been, we can count on that. Garden ups and downs can only come from, say, the weather or garden-eating animals or my unwillingness to do the work I know needs to be done. We can adapt our gardens to almost all of these conditions to ride out the rocky times. Plant drought resistant plants, deer proof plants, be more diligent with weeding. In gardening we can be pro-active and take control of our gardens; we have so much control. We can make them as big or as small a garden as we feel like working in. It doesn’t have to be an overwhelming task. A beautiful container at the door is a garden.

This spring, thanks to a very good friend Clara’s suggestion we are going to have two classes that speak to the ability to put a garden anywhere. The first will be an English trough class and, in the next, we will be making a fairy garden in the troughs. Fairy gardens are those petite magical gardens that a fairy would love to inhabit. Gardens don’t have to be the size of Versailles to stop the heart and make you sigh. Sometimes being here at the nursery I am struck by people who like the idea of gardening but think it’s too much work The problem is just semantics. Maybe we could call it "earthly meditation" or "communing with plants" instead of "work." Remove the old idea of toiling away in the hot sun with a hoe, and replace it with the idea of a quiet time to hear the call of the natural world again. You can be anywhere, in a city on a balcony, or in the country, the natural world is always calling we just have to be quiet enough to hear it. And if we listen close enough, we might even hear one of those fairies.

Happy Spring!