Advice from a small town girl

When I lived in Portland, I had (what I considered to be) a glorious garden. My house, which was quite small, sat on a standard city lot. In the eight years I lived there, I dug out most of the lawn and planted things that bloom.

I planted heirloom roses, daylilies, bearded iris, crocus, tulips, daffodils and peonies. I planted daphne, heather and creeping phlox in the rock garden, along with basket of gold and clove pinks. Delphinium, coreopsis and echinacea bloomed all summer.

I can’t begin to name everything I planted. When I bought the house, the yard contained an ancient sweet cherry tree in the back yard, two camellias and an azalea in the front, and approximately three daffodil bulbs in the rock garden. When I left in late 2001, the garden was a riot of color.

Of course, with such success, I began to think of myself as an outstanding gardener. I didn’t bother to take into account the fact that Portland’s amazingly temperate climate makes failure as a gardener virtually impossible.

I’ve noted that it’s just a bit different here.

I haven’t given up – I just spend a lot more money on plants that only last a year or two. I’ve finally settled on locating flowering perennials that can take really hot summers and really cold winters, not to mention incredibly alkaline soil. I have a lot less variety, but I can’t begin to say how much joy I obtain from my flower garden each year.

Every year, I plant some garden mums, which usually survive the summer, but don‘t always get the opportunity to bloom. I have asters and masses of “Autumn Joy” sedum. This year‘s extended fall allowed them all to bloom for an extended period.

Those are the late bloomers.

Kind of like me.

Now that I’m pushing 60, I like to think of myself as a late bloomer.

Those crocus that push their way through the snow in early spring really don’t last very long, you know.

Nor do the tulips, daffodils or my beloved iris.

Roses, given good soil and a reasonably temperate climate, can bloom for a long, long time, one rose at a time. But they require care; regular feedings, plenty of water and deadheading, and I’m not very good at paying attention. So far, I think I have one rose still living.

My late bloomers are more like weeds, I think.

They’re not much to look at during the rest of the year. The sedum has a tendency to fall out from the center of the clump, and the asters get too tall and kind of scraggly-looking.

But, if there’s not a truly killing frost in September, those babies really produce. Tall clumps of tiny purple daisy-like flowers crowd out the summer’s leftovers. Low-growing clumps of magenta and crimson hide the yellowing leaves of other plants. And the sedum absolutely glows an other-worldly pink.

I love them.

I want to be them.

I want to be the flower that comes on strong at the end of the season, that ignores the lack of expectation, that can shrug off the irregular maintenance, and BLOOM.