Garden Mind Honoring the ancestral gardeners: Mom and Dad

Published 8:00 pm Tuesday, June 23, 2015

My earliest memories of my father are of him watering plants in the garden and making beautiful things in his shop. The few pictures I have are from photos carefully composed by my mother. The images created an indelible expectation for me about how people can create beauty in their lives.

The first family garden where I remember seeing them at work together was our garden in Hayward, Calif., where I began grade school and learned to ride a bike. Many family pictures feature the brick patio my father built with the corner planters that my mother filled with red geraniums, and off in an adjacent bed grew castor bean plants, which featured large tropical-looking leaves and poisonous bean-like fruits.

There were no edibles in this mix. Nor did the style of gardening change at another house I remember, mostly because it was the house where I had my own bedroom and my first menagerie. Mother again carefully trained red-berried pyracantha up the chimney and encouraged Japanese aralia to bush out and fill corners, and a big lawn was always encouraged.

I now realize how they planted the same plants, in far different zip codes, a practice I too follow. My parents loved to be outside puttering and always took us kids along on every trip to the garden center. It was clear that garden work was an acceptable outdoor practice, not a labor, and one I willingly adopted.

It was the aunties and uncles who made the food gardens. My father had aunties in Poulsbo and Ashland, Ore., too, with huge food gardens. On summertime visits we’d have trout and steelhead fish fries with strawberry shortcake and new potatoes and peas in creamy sauce. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for sharing your love of growing things; I am still imitating.

Thursday, June 18, marked a historic international event: Where Pope Francis issued a rare encyclical, stating that climate change is due to human interaction with planet Earth on an unmitigated scale. He went so far as to state that if humans don’t begin to shift from the path we are on, this planet will become “a pile of filth.” That is a radical statement!

How does this relate to me and you? Taking part in renurturing the planet is what a gardener does, on any scale. If you already take part in growing a garden you know what I’m saying, and if you want to participate but you don’t know where to turn to begin with gardening, please stay tuned.

When the autumn gold raspberries ripen before the strawberries. When it’s mid-June and the blueberries are getting ripe. My red currants are ripening, several weeks before they made their first bumper crop last year. The foxgloves are in full bloom, they typically are at this stage in mid-July, and ripen out into late July; this I know because I scout for white stands and return when it’s time to harvest the flowers for seed for future crops.

If you need to get rid of a chemical or herbicide or similar product and understand it doesn’t belong in your garbage can or a landfill, there is another solution.

Pacific County Department of Community Development hosts a hazardous waste drop-off site, on alternating Friday mornings from May through September (first and third Fridays), at its site at 318 N. Second St. in Long Beach (old county offices). For more information, please look at the website at http://bit.ly/1I6flGD; it has a complete list of what types of products are accepted. On the “no” list: explosives, paint in containers larger than 5 gallons, no latex paint, no medications, nothing radioactive.

This is a welcome service, a way to keep homesteads and waterways safe. Please utilize it to keep your place clean.