THE PERSONAL STAMP

Until landing here, I’d never given much thought to selecting a garden plot. Flat, well-drained sunny soil was a given. Crops could be put out in easily marked rows. The Midwestern loam or Pacific Northwest’s volcanic ash-enriched ground demanded little, other than perhaps a bit of fertilizer boost. What came with our house and its small barn, however, were another matter – one abetted by a decade of deferred maintenance. On the driveway side, hedges had grown to overhang what’s now a kitchen garden and the ground was overrun by invasive ivy. Behind the house, one lilac bush stood nearly three-stories tall. Large limbs rubbed against the barn and blocked the pathway. Three garage-size brush piles soon emerged in the swamp, awaiting a fire department burn permit. It becomes a long history. What I was quickly introduced to is what my wife calls “dead dirt,” almost as hard as asphalt (plucking the stealth maples often required pliers), and then squirrels, especially as they dug up daffodil bulbs they had no intention of eating.

The process of restoring soil is another labor, one that becomes evident years later when the stealth maples slip from the earth, offering no resistance, a result of mulching, pruning, appropriate groundcover taking hold, and composting. In short, the improvement reflects a larger repetition of annual cycles of practice.

Moreover, I’d not appreciated the extent to which actions by earlier residents now shaped what we would build on. For starters, the siting of the house, barn, and driveway likely took advantage of drainage. Later, the construction of a gravel patio in shade on the western side of the barn – screened by a row of lilacs – has become so integral I cannot envision another use for the space, which we call the Smoking Garden, with the panels beside it that we filled with ferns, which have proved more difficult to establish than one might imagine. With two “springs” at the top of the swamp (we argue whether the pipes that feed them come from neighbors’ sump pumps or some other source), the seasonal flow of water becomes even more problematic. Combined with variations in sunlight levels and the soil itself – part of the yard remain quite hard, including asphalt fill – to see what grows well, and where, is eye-opening. For instance, our first season, we planted six pussy willow sprigs. One quickly croaked, followed by another. A third has barely grown over the next decade. Two others have shown moderate growth. The sixth, by the more active “spring,” however, has flourished and been the source of a handful of others planted close by.  The asparagus bed, meanwhile, was built atop an earlier raised bed at the top of the yard. And so on.

What has evolved is something that reflects our own style – more natural than formal, low-maintenance or at least relatively low-cost, and often eclectic. Our little city farm hardly provides enough to sustain us, but it does offer a taste of the changing seasons in all of the amazement that truly fresh produce delivers, as well as celebrating the unfolding of the year itself. This is far from the mossy Zen gardens I thought I would have desired, places I now perceive as expensive to build and maintain, or even from orderly, rectangular beds of rational efficiency. I love sitting beside the berm, in the far corner along the street, sipping coffee or wine – or, especially, in the Smoking Garden as late afternoon slips into night, with our torches blazing and clear lights strung overhead twinkling.

I love, too, gazing at the gardens when they’re buried in three feet of snow, appearing so pure and mysterious. They are both all potential and memory of the previous year – the hummingbirds and finches, butterflies and lady bugs.