garden

THEN & NOW

/ janpriddyoregon / 1 Comment

On my run this morning I thought about how, as a teenager, I used to plan my life. Alone or partnered? With or without children? Horses? Goats? I was still dreaming of five acres and independence in college when I completed a sustainable living plan for a Botany class using a book by that title as a reference. [Five Acres and Independence by Maurice Grenville Kains, 1935]

I was younger than the young woman pictured below, but she must also have dreams of where her life might take her. Life will probably surprise her.

While we were waiting for a friend, I asked for a photo of one of the two girls celebrating her quinceañera in the Portland Rose Garden this weekend. It does not show in this photo, but she sparkled extravagantly! Behind and to the left you can see two of her quinceaños wearing black shirts with white embroidery, one holding his hat over his face. The other quinceañera wore peacock colors.

I’d hoped to meet up with a friend from my MFA program in the garden. I walked with Gary to the park, but she drove. She’d forgotten it was Memorial Day weekend, and I had never visited the roses after 8am. The crowds were astonishing and Felicity could not find a place to park. We walked back down the hill and sat outside Starbucks after she parked in the Zupan parking lot.
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UP HILL

/ janpriddyoregon / 6 Comments

Gary doesn’t want to walk up hill to the rose garden this morning, especially with bears. (Probably just one black bear, but three sightings so far in Forest Park… not anywhere near the area we walk.) Climate change seems to be foremost in the news everywhere in the world but in our country. Recent heat here suggests this may have to change. Reading, writing, walking, and admiring trees.

One of our favorite local beach gardens a couple weeks ago. There is a lovely succession beginning with pale daffodils and hyacinth, the tulips and bluebells, and eventually hosta and hydrangea.
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LAND LINE

/ janpriddyoregon / 8 Comments

No one calls us. No. That’s inaccurate. We have friends in Canada who call sometimes to touch base and one of our sons often calls us during his breaks working from home, especially while he is on a walk.

Our younger son got us each a cell phone and pays our new phone bill, so the land line became a useless expense. Even so it took us months to cancel and unplug our big landline phones. We finally did last week. We dickered about who and how to alert this change. In the end, family. We figured most everyone everyone has my email.

Retirement, gray hair, gardening, beauty and telephones in no particular order—

Last week we saw this osprey land on the snag at the headland north of our home. Usually there is an eagle there, or a raven or crow. We had never seen an osprey there and my zoom struggled in the wind, shot from the north in the next beach. She flew right over us in a long lazy turn.

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TWO DEER

/ janpriddyoregon / 7 Comments

IMG_5799A few days ago Gary was out on the road when he saw the first deer. He backed up against the garage door while she passed. He felt sure there was another. He didn’t want to spot them, though they had passed him before—running straight past as if he were not there.

There have been two does in the neighborhood so he was halfway expecting to see the other one come along.

 

And then it did.

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She seems to be moving along just fine. 

The second smaller one came trotting by and Gary thought it might be lame, seeing some small hitch in her movement, and wondered if it was the one we’d seen in the surf a while back. The pair is known. We often see their tracks in the sand heading north. Last Sunday we walked two miles north to Arcadia Beach and followed their tracks most of that distance.

 

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The top half is nearly clear and colorless. The bottom is basalt, I think.

In the mean time, we’ve had long walks and found sea glass and agates. This one is milky quartz still attached to matrix. Each of us has found these on occasion and labeled them “teeth.”

I think today might be a day to ignore the news. Neither of us slept well last night, and we need a break. Since we do not drive anywhere except to pick up mail and groceries and drop off recyclables (no mail delivery or recycling pick-up in our community) and we are trying not to order from Amazon, we’ve saved some money. But Gary ordered a CD box set yesterday, and that might mean I can order a couple of pieces of kimono silk on Ebay.

I have a couple in mind. I go visit the silks sometimes.

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The horsetails are coming up too. I started seeds for squash, green onions, kale, and tomatoes.

The middle garden Gary has been working on is looking beautiful. The daffodils are done, but my irises are budding, the daphne is still scenting the air, and the rugosa roses look like they are happy. In the “front” yard facing the ocean, we have done nothing, but volunteers are making a show with lamb’s ears, snow-in-summer, and violas.

I am weaving a new warp called “Marigold.” The second shawl is nearly done. I might take a break before weaving the last one with more yellow. I feel like sewing.

In preparation for that next quilt project, I have pre-washed vintage batik and block printed fabric from a favorite store in Portland, which is filling online orders. Cargo has marvelous, odd and wonderful things and they are good people. Calli wrote us a note and urged me to send photos of the quilt I make from the fabric she sent out the other day. I will certainly do that!

I am also taking a break, of sorts, from creative nonfiction and fiction writing beyond this blog. All my submissions are done, I have only a Brevity blog post coming up in a couple of weeks. I want to debrief about “Butterfly Fontanelle” and then maybe I will post a couple of off-the-edge short stories that need homing. I have one particular short story that means a lot to me. I often receive personal rejections in response to this one, but always rejection (close to 70!) every time. Editors have suggested revisions, but have not reached consensus about what is not working. (Tipped my hand too late or too early?) I’ve revised it dozens of times and stopped counting drafts after thirty-eight. Maybe a reader here can tell me what’s wrong with it. I’d like to get it right.

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JUNE ROSES

/ janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments

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The semi-double Hansa is a rugosa rose. This one is planted on the east side of our property. I took it as a volunteer from my mother’s garden. The rose it sprang from is no longer there, and ours has to be cut down from over seven feet high here, where it is also sending out plants to fill the bed.

Oregon is home to the City of Roses, Portland, where there is an official test garden and several beautiful public rose garden parks. My grandmother had roses planted along her driveway, mostly memorably Oklahoma, a deep dark red.

Here on the coast, however, salt and wind and cloudy days are a bit of a challenge for hybrid teas and the other well-known roses. What does well here, aside from the wild roses that we fight from taking over, are mostly the rugosas, which require no special care, are disease resistant, and shade tolerant. I counted ten varieties of rose in our garden. The raccoons takes the best hips, and our tenant eats the hips from Hansa.

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Double De Coubert is another rugosa, marvelously scented. It has long been my favorite. We also have a rapacious single white that would happily take over the world.

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We think most years that this low-growing rugosa in our front (ocean-side) yard has died. It is the last to leaf out, but then blooms for a long time. The flowers don’t look impressive in a photo, but they are five inches across, their spicy scent fills the yard, and the hips are spectacular. They are little small red apples and a chipmunk gets them every year.

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This little beauty was a risk this early spring. It is not a rugosa, but I could not resist the photograph showing the dark burgundy eye and bright stamens. Then it bloomed!

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This rambler has medium-sized flower, good scent, and it is striped. I adore stripy flowers, and the colors are just right. The last striped rose did not survive, but this disease-resistant, shade tolerant variety seems determined. We will build it an arbor if it does. The tag says it reaches 12-14 feet.

It is June and the garden is lush: “Everyone looks like a great gardener in June.” I can’t remember who said that, but it’s true. We look brilliant.