I lived in Oklahoma for 5 years, and failed at every flower I planted. Our porch planters would burn, our gardens would flood, our sunflowers would be eaten by locust. It wasn’t that it was impossible to keep living things alive, just that one actually had to tend them, and I couldn’t. I was too busy keeping humans alive, and, well, washing laundry.
I just wanted flowers that would follow this rule of thumb:
So enter a move back to the great Willamette Valley. One of the traits of western Oregon is that things just kinda grow on their own. You’re constantly pulling out maple seedlings and blackberry vines and dandelions, trimming back the roses just to have them overtake your window the next time you turn your head. So as far as flower were concerned, I finally had hope.
(This is not a knock to Oklahoma. All of you out on farms with wildflowers galore. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about my barren little military subdivision roasting in the sun.)
Okay, now granted, here in the Garden of Eden – excuse me, I mean Oregon – I still killed my geraniums which in the Land of Rain is kind of hard to do. But.
Look at this:
Begonias. My new best friend. You’re looking at the planter right out my front door, and yes, I will acknowledge that the fuchsias and impatiens are also holding their own…but…these begonias! They are like a jungle!
They just keep growing! Here we are in Fall, and they are about two feet high in some places, wrapping my porch with absolute vibrancy. Every morning I open the door to air out the nighttime stuffiness, and see these through my screen:
Aren’t they incredible?
Oh Harmony, they are so beautiful!
And oh Jean, I do love you. Thank you for still reading these things I write. 🙂
I love walking past your vibrant, lush begonia jungle to get to your door. And…I love the memories of the day last spring when we planted those little starts!
I’m so happy we planted them together. I’m already a bit excited about next spring when we can plant more.
Beautiful! I was just lamenting to Dereck about how I wanted to plant more herbs, but here on the surface of the sun/our hill, things just dry up and blow away. Ohh well, the wild flowers out in the pasture seem to do just fine! I’m with you, I’m too busy keeping humans alive and folding laundry to actually tend to any of the plants.
Aubrey, I actually had your farm in mind as I wrote the sentence about wildflowers. Your bit of earth is magical to me – the beauty and solitude (and hard labor) gave me a glimpse into another world, and when we chose to leave Oklahoma, part of the grief for me was leaving the nearness to a way of of life and a type of land that I observed on homestead farms like yours! Even if I didn’t live that life, it bolstered my spirits knowing that people like you do. I LOVE your “hill and pasture”!
My garden has been languishing for the past three years. I think maybe next spring I will have recovered enough energy to really tend to it. (And, my children will all be older and tending to themselves better!)
Oh, I hope so, Laura! 🙂
They are beautiful, like you, like our Lord who created them.