garden

All of a sudden, this past week, flowers are popping up all over the place: from the ground, on trees, and all over previously skeletal shrubs. We didn’t see our neighborhood at this time last year; the major tree flowering fell in between our first visit to the house and when we moved in the following month. My parents also missed this by a couple of weeks on their recent visit; because the winter was a regular (i.e. cold) one, the early blooming of the past few years didn’t happen. Our dogwood hasn’t bloomed yet, either, and I’m looking forward to that.

It’s really quite pretty, and it’s easy to see why the Bradford pear trees were such a popular choice for the town now that they’re in full bloom. Because of the cold winter the azaleas haven’t bloomed yet, but the forsythia and cherry trees are also in bloom this week. Before moving out here, I didn’t have any allergies: now I have them for these three weeks each spring, when the pollen count goes through the roof. I maintain that they’re not technically allergies, but just a completely predictable and healthy reaction to having my internal head membranes become coated in plant dust.

All these flowers serve as a reminder that spring is really and truly here, and the time to take advantage of weak root structures and soft earth is now. ‘Ivy, begone!’ is the theme of this season’s yard improvement project plans. In practical terms, we’re trying to fill our two trash cans with yard debris (old wood, pulled up weeds, pulled down ivy) every pickup (twice per week) from now until all we’re left with is the lovely mundanity of side beds that are weed-free, soil-treated, and mulch-covered.

With a little luck, that will be sometime before next winter. If that’s all we accomplish this summer and don’t plant a single new thing in our yard, I will still be ecstatic.

On my last day in Portland, I visited the Classical Chinese Gardens, in historic Chinatown. It was really lovely, even in the winter, and I regretted not having my camera with me. I would have liked to have photos both of the archway into the the area—reminiscent of the one in DC’s historic Chinatown—as well as of some of the interior features. Although it was quite a cold day, I enjoyed seeing the winter architecture of the garden perhaps more than I would have the in the summer. It provided a lot of material for ideas for the growth and planning of my own garden, in terms of layout of paths, beds, trees and shrubs, and—of course—the water features. I wouldn’t mind having a few bonsais in the house (I really loved the examples of the forest formations that I saw), nor a gong or garden bell, come to think of it.

It’s my hope that our yard will eventually accommodate a pond (which will have to be small), a walking path (ditto), and a patio of some kind. I would have to say that, of all the features there, the paths and patios at the Chinese Garden were the most thought-provoking; they were done in a variety of pebble mosaics, something that I hadn’t considered for our own (eventual) patio, but which I really liked quite a lot. Although I don’t have any photos of my own, they are in the same style as these ones at the Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver, BC. I had been considering just sand-packed flagstone, but the texture of the pebble mosaic was really nice, and the quality of the stones was somehow both more formal and more homey than the flagstone. We have a rectangular space for the patio, ‘in’ the L of the back of the house, so a formal pattern would fit quite nicely.

We’ll see. Besides being the middle of winter (such as it is), my own skill with mosaics is far from the level needed to start working on major home projects. Not to mention the leaking garage foundation, which takes a slightly higher priority than making our backyard a haven of art and serenity.

But only slightly.

being not doing

letting it be.

spring is sprung & yard work has begun

Classical Chinese Garden, Portland