For two weeks the broccoli heads stood like princes of the garden, waiting for a kitchen coronation. The wait was too long.
Hordes of aphids stormed the cedar-plank box from which the broccoli grew and blanketed anything green. The heads looked cloaked in a lumpy white soot. Ruined.
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I’m afflicted with vegetable garden envy. Sure, we have many things growing and gracing the dinner table. Way too much lettuce in fact. But our urban bounty has come to harvest slowly because no part of the yard has day-long sun. And there’s one raised bed in which everything seems frozen in time despite the adjacent house wall radiating afternoon sun. (The soil testing kit — pH, nitrogen, potassium, and potash levels — arrived late today.)
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In February on a rare sunny day, I helped friends dig up and move a Japanese laceleaf maple from their backyard to their front. No chance the tree was going to survive the unavoidable mugging at our hands.
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Maybe aches and pains from transplanting a tree explain why I keep thinking about the Japanese maple. But the real reason, I’m afraid, is irrational emotional attachment for something not even in my yard.
The tree belongs to friends in Portland’s Sabin neighborhood. I spent several hours Saturday helping them extricate it from a tight spot between patio and garage, then relocating it to their front yard.
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Even with the onslaught of winter, some flowers refuse to yield to nature. They won’t give in despite the overwhelming forces aligned against them.
Yes, I’m granting powers to plants — thinking, free will, emotions — that to our knowledge don’t exist.
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A squirrel is mocking me. We had a peace pact for a few years. But the critter has had an attitude ever since I removed its nest from the eaves above the front porch. Or maybe it’s because I inadvertently dig up nuts the squirrel has socked away around the yard.
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I have this thing for gardening. Just me and plants and dirt. Creative yet mindless. Mixing and matching. Trial and error. Nobody telling me how to do it.
My three-year-old son draws better than me, but the yard is a canvas on which I can paint something of merit. I say “I” as if it’s me making the art. But in this part of Oregon, any fool can fashion a wonderland of color and texture and symmetry. The climate in Portland, viewed as inhospitable by some, is ideal for growing things.
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