Consider the word ‘garden.’ It develops by evolution from the Anglo-Saxon ‘geard’ and the Middle English ‘garth’. It means ‘a yard’. It has rather less than nothing to do with wild nature, or any other sort of nature. It is a highly artificial contrivance within hard and fast boundaries. We speak of a zoological garden, a garden of pleasure, a garden of vegetables. To talk of a ‘natural’ or a ‘wild’ garden, is a contradiction in terms. You might as well talk of a natural ‘zoo,’ and do away with the bars, and arrange bamboo brakes for the tigers, mountain-tops for the eagles and an iceberg for the polar bears. ~Eden Phillpotts, My Garden (1906)
12 April 2019 (5:50 pm). Sitting in the sun room, weighed down by my congested sinus cavities and sore throat and cough and a fluid-filled ear, taking cold medicine three times a day; not curing anything but the meds do relieve the symptoms so I can keep going. My main accomplishment today was that I finished editing the Spring ‘19 Garden Quarto. As usual I had trouble with the masthead spacing and margins: took four trips between the garden shed and the printer in the Chemistry Library before I produced a clean copy free of the last editing errors (e.g., an author’s name in 13 point font instead of 12 point, an italicized web address that was also underlined). For the remainder of the evening, I am pretending all the errors have been caught and sent packing.
In the afternoon working in the Coe garden, I cleaned up gravel walkways and removed various boards, bricks, and pots that had been holding down the straw matting on the garden’s lawn. It was very windy this afternoon–plus gray and overcast–but I felt reasonably comfortable, even with my cold. Two of the lightweight benches had blown over, so I tried anchoring them with ornamental steel spikes I purchased at an estate sale last fall. I also used two of those stakes to secure the honeysuckle tower in the “H” bed. I may also apply velcro strips to fasten the legs of the benches and tower to the spikes. Hard for me to remember that when I began working in the garden in 2014, there was not even a bench in that NE corner.
13 April (10:45 pm). My cold is still seeking control of my life: bad cough, back and chest muscles hurting, some flu symptoms but no fever. Fortunately the two medical concoctions I’m taking do counteract the nasal and cough symptoms, and I’m able to keep going. But I’m weak and must move at a slow tempo.
Big disappointment at Wickiup. Some animal–probably a coon–was in the garden and raised hell in a raised bed I planted with carrots and beets three days ago. Ground was totally churned up, almost like a garden tiller had been used. I spent the rest of the afternoon repairing the bed and closing several holes in the fence on the south side–though a coon could easily climb over the fence. For now my plan is to place a wire mesh over the raised bed–or perhaps use one of the green fabric tunnels stored in the shed here at home.
Another depressing factor is that the backyard here at home needs major attention. I did fill our green yardy with fallen tree branches today, and using the mower I vacuumed up three loads of leaves for the compost bin. But a lot of the backyard needs raking, and I just don’t have the strength for that kind of effort–plus I’m afraid of over-exerting myself and making things worse, such as developing pneumonia. On the positive side, the weather forecast is for three days of relatively warm, dry weather–so I may be able to catch up on a couple projects. Just need to choose my battles.
14 April (Sunday). I discovered this afternoon that about half of the Yukon Gold potatoes I planted at Wickiup had been dug up. My friend Dale, who knows far more about wild animals than I do, guesses this was most likely a coon’s work, and an internet search this evening confirmed that coons will dig up and eat potatoes. I found several piles of potato bits, the remnants of their midnight snack. At least the potatoes are much easier to replant than the beets and carrots.
Most of my time at Wickiup I focused on the row of red and gold raspberries. I hoed all around the row, which revealed many baby raspberry bushes. A few of those I transplanted into the middle of the bed. This new berry patch looks promising. Last summer’s transplants appear healthy, and they are producing many baby sprouts via their underground root system. I finished working on the bed by laying down newspapers around the outer perimeter and covering the paper with hay and straw from the big round bale that Marty gave me. I’ve now used about half of the bale. My final act was setting up a live animal trap, using freshly sliced apples as bait–plus a bonus of peanut butter on one slice.
Back at home, I did two flower orders. An Oakes Daylilies catalogue arrived in yesterday’s mail, and the front cover had an orange/brown daylily bloom that I really liked. I ended up ordering ten daylilies, including another late season Minaret. The Minarets are expensive ($30 for one plant) but they are perfect for developing the back range of late-blooming daylilies in the “I” bed. I also ordered another mid-border daylily that should produce orange/red blossoms.
From Strong’s anthology, my favorite gardener passage, which comes from the Gospel of John, Chapter 20.
But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, the stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in which sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet,where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, “Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.’ And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, “Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?’ She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, “Sir, if you have borne him hence, tell me where thou has laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus saith unto her, ‘Mary,’ She turned herself, and saith unto him, ‘Rabboni.’
16 March [I wrote “March” for April, revealing my muddled state of mind throughout the month]. It’s well past midnight, but I still feel like it’s Tuesday, the 16th. Almost no gardening the last two days–though the weather has been perfect. Yesterday morning I did some work at Coe, but I had no energy after lunch and ended up sleeping most of the afternoon. It felt like I was coming down with the flu: my muscles were sore, I had no strength, and I felt on the verge of vomiting. Then last night, I had a long coughing spell and a slight fever. About 3:00 a.m. I took a night-time cold/flu med and eventually got some sleep. This morning I saw Dr. B. He said I don’t have pneumonia, but he was concerned something more serious might develop and he prescribed an antibody. This afternoon I stayed in the house and tried to rest up, including a two-hour nap. Now, at 1:30 a.m., I feel better than I’ve felt for several days.
One significant gardening confirmation: in doing another Google research, I’m convinced the coons are responsible for tearing up the vegetable beds at Wickiup, and it’s the fresh organic fertilizer that has attracted their interest. It finally dawned on me that the disturbed beds have been where I have applied the Territorial organic fertilizer purchased in January, and the beds where I have not used any fertilizer–the beds sowed with peas and lettuce seeds–-have not been vandalized.
Monday morning I did set up one trap at the garden, using apple and peanut butter as a lure. Tomorrow I’m going to put out a second trap and will try coating the apple with the organic fertilizer. [By the end of the summer Marty, the owner of the farm, and I trapped over 20 coons at the garden and her nearby home. This land is fairly close to the Cedar River, which experienced significant flooding in the spring. We think the floods drove the coons out of their preferred habitat, and they decided to spend the spring and summer in our neighborhood. One night Marty’s motion-activated security camera recorded eight coons in one photo. On two different occasions last summer, we caught two young sibling coons in a single trap.]