WiseAcre Gardens

 Each day I look to the garden . The scene is both bleak and beautiful. The garden has nearly dissapeared under a cover of deep snow.  Warm lush summer daydreams have been replaced by some cold hard truths. I am not going out to the garden. I need my rest more than it does. Winter needs to be enjoyed if not slept through.

 But I do miss the visitors. I’m even beginning to miss the unwelcome ones. You know,  the ones that show at dawn. Or those that wander around the gardens cutting their own paths through my rows and beds while no one is home. I especially dislike mothers that bring their kids.  And how about the ones that I do catch that just stand and stare back as if I was the intruder.  Some even have the nerve to come right up to the house and look in the windows. Plain and simple - some visitors are nothing more than pests.

 It’s been weeks since I saw the last visitor. Snow has covered their tracks and the only sign of them ever being here are the tops of some disliked plants poking through the snow.  I find myself hoping that it was the cold and deep snow that kept them away. I want to think they are safe with the extended family at their cedar lodgings. They might be a pain in the bud but I don’t wish them ill fortune. (at least not by any means except my bare hands) 

 The deer are missed. I like the fact that wildlife come to my yard. I’ve had to adapt and adjust. I still rant over putting up fences but we’ve reached an understanding. They can’t eat what’s inside the fence and I play Elmer Fudd outside.  Come the end of the growing season the fences come down and the deer are welcome to forage.  They’re pests and it makes it hard to garden freely but I have to admit I enjoy their company.

 I have a deer garden and learned to love it out of spite.

 The visitors that I really hate? The large groups that flock to the garden. The fence is no deterrent to a bunch of old hens intent on having a garden party. When they arrive I let the dog out just to watch them scatter. It’s hard to believe how fast 30 turkeys can turn a garden into a WW1 battlefield scene.

 Carol at May Dreams Gardens started this with her post:

Saving Seeds: A Seed Management System

Nothing like a big bin to store seed pacs. Or coffee cans, zip lock bags, showboxes and all sorts of odd containers. It appears what a lot of gardeners don’t do is organize their seed packages. A number of people had old seed packs, some with leftover seed and others empty. With the mention of “sorting by years ” I went and checked our stash. It may even be that some of us have seeds as old as their childern. I’ll have to go to the garage to find the really old seed packs before I can confirm that.

Why? What makes people hang on to something like an empty seed pack. I don’t have a clue why we did. It couldn’t have been poor organization skills. How hard is it to just throw one away, especially considering how many times some of them were picked up. Yet year after year the seed package collection grew. I didn’t see a reason why but today I realized what we had.

At first I though it was a bit funny. I’ve always teased my wife about the seed collection. I learned early not to downsize any of her collections so she has to take responsiblity for it’s age.  We pulled out the collection. A can from under the kitchen table, a couple more coffee cans from the living room and some boxes from a closet. I’m sure we missed some but we had enough to start rummaging through while I joked about how no one could possibly have an older seed package except antique collectors.  Unfortunatly the house stash only went back to 1992. But if I know my wife we have some that will date back to the late 70s. And when I find them I’ll make sure they are stored in a safe place. 

What we really found were little reminders of the past. The seed packs are keys that unlock memories. We had stopped joking and started to reminisce. And when we go through them again at planting time I know one of us will say “remember when”.

1992

 First full year home after 9 years of working away.

The summer I caught a huge walleye. And my 6 year old daughter upon seeing it yelling out “cut it”.

The year I started to turn Perennial.

A year I was pleasantly reminded to remember.

 I planned to hike into some of the back country and take some winter photos of the waterfalls in the area but the snow changed my mind. I’m going to have to remember who has my snowshoes before I try hiking a couple miles in waist deep snow.

But the urge to go out and take photographs wasn’t smothered by the snow. In a universe of infinite possibilities I figured I could find a couple interesting images within 100 feet from the house. So out I went and returned with these photos.

 Out in the garden I found some Black Eyed Susans.

In the side yard a wild Hawthorn

The sugar maple along the driveway that I don’t have the heart to turn into firewood. I figure it still has more life in it than I do.

 The drainage “stream” along the property line. The snow came early and deep. The ground never had a chance to freeze and water still flows under the snow cover.

The hemlock in the front yard.