Vote Yes On Nasturtiums.

As we approach mid-July in Anchorage, one might say we are at the peak of the growing season. My dandelion patch is thriving, and my late-planted seedlings are starting to look like at least a bit like adolescents. Weeds lining the sides of my yards are climbing over the chain link fence, forcing me to take to the weedwacker.

It is also the time of year when Mother Nature teaches me some humbling lessons. The Weedwacker is an excellent example of a Foolish Human Tool we use to fight against the Inevitable. I was happily wielding said Weedwacker this weekend to clean up Mother Nature's work when I accidentally nicked one of my precious fava bean adolescents.

The injury was as painful to me as if I cut my own flesh. I fought back tears and like any good Alaskan, got the duct tape out to make it all better.

Some might question this effort, but sometimes it feels better to put a bandaid on a hopeless boo-boo. I had so gently nicked the plant that it was still standing (barely), albeit critically wounded. I guess I was hoping that the duct-tape would encourage my fava bean friend to magically regenerate its xylem, make itself whole, and dutifully resume the transport of water!

I might as well have planted some magic fava beans, climbed up the stalk, and started laying golden eggs.

Mother Nature also threw me a curveball last night when I finally decided that it was time to nuke the lawn. The weed 'n' feed variety I use requires (1) 24 hours of dry weather, and (2) warm temperatures. Sunday demonstrated both, and Yahoo Weather promised no rain for the following day. As Mother Nature would have it, it is pouring today, and the rain is washing away my hard work before it had a chance to take effect. Even worse, the rain will have the effect of not killing the weeds but nevertheless feeding the fertilizer to their roots!

I may have unwittingly just created a Bionic Dandelion Patch.

Under these circumstances, it's hard not to throw in the trowel and just give up. It's as if someone sent Mother Nature a memo letting her know that I'll be gainfully unemployed in a matter of days, and of course, I would enjoy nothing more than spending all of my new free time mowing my dandelions-on-steroids yard! Had I tried not to interfere at all with the natural state of the world, maybe the memo would have slipped past Her desk unnoticed.

In fact, it may be true that the plants that are the most worthwhile in the garden are those which actually persist despite my efforts. It gives me no pride nor comfort to know that I may actually be the Anti-Gardener, but I can't help going back into the garden again and again. Unfortunately, there is no amount of duct-tape that will fix my dandelion lawn, physically or emotionally. Perhaps it would be best if I duct-taped my hands together so that they'll stay out of the garden or maybe I should duct-tape over my eyes so I can't see any dandelions.

I suppose it's some kind of human instinct to strive to feel something more than Inconsequential. I live in Alaska where nature is unparalleled; logic should counsel me to leave natural beauty to professionals like Mother Nature, but my mundane sense of identity as a homeowner motivates me to mimic her finest works (and fail miserably) in hopes of capturing some "beauty" in my own backyard.

But for every ten poor decisions made in the yard, Mother Nature occasionally lets me win one. This week: my first (and so far only) nasturtium bloom. What can I say? It's lovely.

And I'll admit it: well worth the wait.

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Annuals Are For Pansies.

Last year, understandably, the only annuals permitted to exist in my garden were the ones I could eat. As it was my first summer with a yard of my own, frankly there was no time to waste my heart and soul on annuals. If they could be eaten, they were acceptable because they paid their way. But otherwise, I suppose I've always regarded annuals with some suspect as perhaps being a little too carpe diem for me.

They say that you can't achieve the same kinds of colors with perennials, and this is slightly true. Annuals are bright, at times brilliant. But, on the other side of the coin, certain annuals can also be rather showy and flamboyant, somewhat too liberace for my tastes. I've seen my mother wear dresses with patterns exploiting the color of annuals. That alone should be enough reason to keep them out of my garden.

This year, however, I was given a couple of packages of nasturtium seeds as a birthday gift and hence, already had them by early spring. I do like the gorgeous blooms of the nasturtium, so I dutifully wrestled with peaty pellets and pots and started them indoors, rather early if judged by my own schedule. I then painstakingly hardened off these seedlings.

And for what: not a single bloom.

It says on the package that nasturtiums are edible flowers, and indeed, they would look spectacular on any buttercreamed cake. However, if there are no flowers, there is nothing to eat.

So next year, vote no on nasturtiums.

In fact, for the most part, most of my started-indoor efforts fell flat on their face. There was the lettuce I planted too early - now sickly yellow and probably permanently stunted. The basil that for whatever reason decided just to die (maybe I should have kept up with watering). Various other flower seeds that also did not flourish. And above all, many of my peaty pellets got moldy after someone dropped almonds from a cake onto my miniature farm.

Next year, vote no on starting indoors.

Of course a real gardener and lover of land has to start something from seed, so I hear. But in our short growing season in Alaska, it is the antithesis of natural growth to mess with seeds in the darkness of April, setting up grow lights in your basement for confused seedlings, hardening off, covering your kitchen table with dirt, etc., etc.

Most of all, it's all way too much trouble for a lazy gardener prone to disaster.

In fact there are plenty of things to plant into the ground as soon as you can work the soil - things that will even survive a mild spring frost. For example, lots of varieties of peas seem to thrive in the colder climate. I grew them last year, which means even a pony could grow them. And although the gardening gurus say start planting gladiolus bulbs in March, the truth is when I plant 70 bulbs, I can't be bothered with finding coffee cups for each of them and transplanting them into the garden.

After all, gardening, for better or worse, is an exercise in realism. It is about working with, against, and within Nature, gently negotiating what we can achieve with human hands. Of course, if left entirely to her own devices, it seems Mother Nature would prefer a yard of chaotic dandelions. I'm still negotiating with her on that one.

In addition to my non-blooming nasturtiums, I have a few annuals this year due to a sudden rash, live-in-the-moment-loss-of-pragmatic-sense morning I spent at the lovely local nursery. While delicate and beautifully colored, I look upon these annuals with some sadness knowing that they have limited lives and will die out with no long-term future better than feeding the worms in the compost pile.

In contrast, my perennial bed is truly flourishing this year. Sure, there were some Home Depot perennials that didn't make it, but a surprising number of sorry specimens have managed to regain strength now that we are solidly in the growing season. A burning bush that had been painfully pruned by moose has re-leafed itself with enough foliage to provide an exciting vibrant display come fall. Daylilies, columbine, irises, wild geraniums, meadow sage ... they've all been putting on a good show. Strawberries that I tore out my first year thinking maybe they were weeds (that's how little I knew) are back with fierceness and have stretched out their runners to claim more of the garden. Even raspberries planted late summer, on one of the hottest days most hostile to transplanting, will probably bear fruit this year and spread next year.

And of course, there is the perennial, quintessential, Forget-Me-Not. Not only is it the state flower, but it is truly oh so lovely. Delicate, perfectly blue blooms with yellow center ... Forget-Me-Nots capture the true heart of a perennial. Without much care or attention, they beg us to remember them forever - which we do - because they come back every year.

I love perennials because they are seemingly loyal - despite winter's cruelest deliverances, they come back to say hello and make me happy. Beyond being beautiful in the moment, they are also something that I look forward to again and again, year after year.

How could I possibly keep myself from falling in love with that?

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Weeding Is Good For the Gluteus Maximus!

The problem (or blessing) when it comes to a private blog is that one is never accountable to the masses. I can blog with irregularity, about the most undesirable topics, the innermost grumblings of my belly.... I can, for example, have a blog entry touting the benefits of weeding for purposes of firming up the derriere!

Solstice has blown through this joint, "joint" being myself. After a rollercoastery two months of rain, intense sunshine, and so much daylight that I've taken to sleeping with my sports bra wrapped around my head, the pendulum now swings the other way as we are technically on our way to... is it winter??

Don't tell the garden about this turn of events. It is just getting warmed up, starting to share its blooms, and offering glimpses into the harvests to come in the upcoming weeks. This year, I've delayed nuclear warfare on the dandelions, mostly due to a sudden surge in yard traffic thanks to sundry friends and barbecuing folks. Last year, I engaged in a questionable scientific experiment in which I retained a control group (organic lawn) and nuked half my yard. Although it pained me to kill my microbes and threaten the livelihood of my worms, I have to admit that chemicals accomplished over the course of a few days what months and months of devoted, back-breaking hand-weeding could not deliver: some semblance of control over the Chaos that is called Dandelion.

Unfortunately, the organic control lawn has basically turned into a dandelion patch. As for the rest of the lawn, the unintended side benefit of not getting serious about war has been that the lawn has not grown exponentially on steroids as it did last year, thereby allowing me to escape with fewer mowings. In fact, I am so indifferent to the front yard lawn that I am rather pleased to put it through the throes of starvation - anything to avoid that "furry" look it had going on last year!

Weeding can be magical if you have the right temperament and set of circumstances. I find that it maintains my tenuous sanity, and truth be told, I am probably slightly addicted. Rare is the occasion when I'll enter the house NOT bearing a bouquet of puffy dandelion seeds freshly yanked from the lawn. For anyone who doesn't have a pair of idle hands, weeding is second nature. It is my very microcosmic way of trying to create order in a world that will otherwise choose chaos ... if only it were so easy to yank puffy dandelion balls from my psyche. In the meantime, this emotional exercise also yields physical benefits. Very few positions required for weeding can happen without engaging in a set of muscles that would otherwise lie unused.

So get weeding - it's good for the soul ... and the gluteus maximus.

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For the Love of a Gladiolus

The very end of January is about the time when I notice that the light is better in the (late) morning and when March feels like it's within striking distance. But when thoughts of March enter my head, something deeper inside stirs -- some strange call of nature telling me not to forget that I am supposed to be planting gladiola bulbs that month.

This all started the spring of last year, months after I had purchased my first home in the fall. I had bought the little house at the bubbliest time of the housing bubble, and in that competitive market, there wasn't much time then to ponder the state of the lawn or figure out whether any flora was flourishing outside. But as spring started to remove the snow revealing the yard that had been a stranger to me, I realized for the first time that I had never before had any real jurisdiction over any yard. In fact I had never used a lawnmower in my entire life, not that I had ever avoided it. It just never happened.

I started to read dutifully about gardening in the daily paper, although by the time I got around to it, the recommended moment for planting gladiolus bulbs (which take a whopping 90 days to mature, that's right, just about an entire summer) had long since passed. A month past the ideal planting time and against the suggestion that corms (code word for baby gladiolus bulbs) be started in cups and planted days apart "for a continuous display of blooms," I crammed all of them into the muddy ground one night before a redeye flight to the lower 48. The "continuous display of blooms" is a luxury reserved for those who are not procrastinators and who have some clue regarding gardening. I was not one of those so fortunate.

Given the lateness of my gardening efforts, one might ask why I bothered at all. The truth is that the gladiolus is my mom's favorite flower, and it was the flower that she always bought for my grandmother because it was my grandmother's favorite. They have tremendous height and blooms that really can be appropriately described as glorious. I bought a bag of 60 bulbs at Costco and figured late planting was worth an $8.99 experiment.

I waited very patiently (did I mention ninety days) for those blooms to appear. The gladioluses did steadily grow in my garden but spent most of the summer in rather boring and modest green sheaths. It was as if I had planted a row of corn in the back of my garden, except without the corn part.

When the buds and then blooms finally emerged, however, they were absolutely worth every minute of wait and every penny of the $8.99. I truly felt like a Miss Universe when I cradled them in my arms, and I swear the self-esteem of my vases improved whenever I put these gorgeous flowers in them.

My hope was that my mother would come and visit around blooming time so that I could show her the flowers I had planted just for her. Discordant schedules prevented her from coming up, and so I decided to visit my family in LA in late August. After ninety days, however, I was not about to leave those blooms in Alaska. I harvested all of them, coincidentally and appropriately right before my redeye flight to California, and carefully wrapped them in tissue paper along with frozen gel packs I usually use for shipping fish and slid them gently into a box. I had never transported flora in the belly of a plane before, but I figured it would be just like a giant florist's refrigerator, except plane-shaped. For the gladiolus that were already in full bloom, I saved these to hand-carry as a bouquet on the plane, to greet my mom with "Surprise! Gladiolas!"

What I didn't realize was how fetching this bouquet would be. My bunch of gladiolas turned out to be like the beautiful best friend. It literally turned heads. I have never had so many people make small talk with me at the airport. And what was most unexpected was that they were mostly men. First, someone at the baggage check wanted to know what was the name of these beautiful flowers so that he could get them for his girlfriend. The TSA agent who checked my ID remarked how beautiful they were. Another TSA agent almost let me carry on my dangerous bottled water (almost) and asked me if my boyfriend had given me those flowers. (I believe a bitter "I WISH!" was my response.) The blooms inspired the imagination; perhaps people thought that I had just come from quite the emotional and passionate farewell at the airport befitting such flowers. Maybe they remembered a time when they had such a thrilling airport goodbye. And I daresay my own attractiveness improved with these beauties in my arms. Suddenly I became someone worthy of them. Everybody looks better cradling a bunch of pretty flowers.

It turned out that a beautiful bouquet of homegrown gladiolas is something that brings a smile to people's faces, much like a cute puppy or a toddler doing something unbelievably adorable. It is an instinctive response we have to the works of Mother Nature. To each person who asked me where I got these flowers, I proudly told them the truth.

"I planted these myself in my backyard. I planted them for my mother because she loves them, and I am bringing them to her, from Alaska to Los Angeles!"

While not the romance-novel-cover story they perhaps hoped for, this narrative was still warmly received. In LA, where everybody thinks Alaska is a frozen tundra, the irony was even more poignant. "You grew these flowers in Alaska?!" And I am happy to report that the Anchorage Gladiolas were beautiful enough to more than rival those I saw in local farmers' markets in southern California.

That sunny place apparently has nothing on us.

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