Before the Zombie Years and the heatwave of 2011 in Central Texas, I was once an avid  gardener.  I kept plants in the ground, in raised beds, and in containers.  At one point, I had over 100 container plants ranging in size from 4” pots to heavy 24” behemoths.  Then heat, a lack of water, and my failing health conspired to kill all but the hardiest of my plants, and I let my gardening hobby fall by the wayside.  It was simply too much effort to maintain.

At our last house in Austin, I kept a few plants, having remembered the pleasure of keeping them, but as I was still in an unhappy mental place, I didn’t care for them as I should have and they always looked wan and ill, at least until my husband took over watering.  Then we moved and had to leave them all behind.

Our first year in our new house in the Pacific Northwest was very slim financially speaking, so there was no money for things like flowers, though my husband did pick up some lavender and rosemary starts and a planter box, just to do something homey.  I was still recovering from the move so I didn’t give too much thought to gardening despite finally being in the place where I could grow all of the plants I had drooled over for so many years.

Fast forward to this past spring, and we had to make a stop at a hardware store for a few things.  On the way to the checkout, I spied some bright annuals on sale, and something about the sight of them reignited the desire for plants.  We had the money for a few pots of flowers and clay pots to go with them, plus some potting soil, so I happily took our goodies home and set myself up with my first decent looking plants in a long time.  Nothing special, just some orange, yellow, and purple primrose and a pot of violas to go with them.

The effect was instantaneous.  Somehow the drab wooden deck immediately cheered up and it felt more like ‘our house’ and not just a rental.  The feeling of being in limbo eased up and I felt more ‘here’.  Suddenly I remembered everything I used to do while a gardener and my mind burst with ideas.  When done right, gardening is an inexpensive but incredibly fulfilling hobby, and I found myself recalling all of the projects I could be doing now.

This was an incredibly healthy move on my part as it gave me something to work on and look forward to on an ongoing basis, except maybe for wintertime.  Even then there are seed catalogs to peruse and spring plans to make.  Until rekindling the gardening habit, I had struggled mightily with what to do with my time.  I could only read, write, and paint so much and I was horribly bored.  I still get that way when I don’t have something to occupy my time and attention.

The rest of the spring and summer were occupied with buying more flowers along with herbs, fruits, and vegetables and planters to put them in.  We had left all of our gardening supplies back in Texas, foolishly, so we had to replace some things.  On the plus side, it was an opportunity for a fresh start.  We also had to relearn some things, like a new planting calendar in a place that has six months of cold and wet, as opposed to the six months of heat and dryness like we were used to.

My husband planted some cat grass, old sprouting garlic bulbs, and California poppy seeds to go along with the blueberry bushes and garden starts we had picked up, mostly cool season vegetables and edible flowers like nasturtiums and sweet peas.  We availed ourselves of the many springtime sales on pots and other supplies, quickly replaced some of our missing items, and got to work building our little container garden.  Being renters means we need to be able to take our garden with us if necessary, and our soil here is hard clay anyway.

The only thing that will grow in it are the trees and this beautiful rhododendron, which we have had to learn how to care for.  It obviously took a hard hit in the big “Heat Dome” from 2021 judging from how it was pruned, but since moving in, we’ve tried to take care of it and give it the water it needs through the hot, dry spells in the middle of the summer.  It does get hot here sometimes, just not for nearly as long as where we came from.

I was able to do one thing successfully here that I could never do in Texas because of the heat and dryness: grow things from seed.  In a fit of boredom one Sunday morning and inspired by my husband’s success and the sight of unused potting soil, empty pots, and packets of seeds, I planted a number of things, including catnip, cosmos, more California poppy, and purple basil.  Almost everything came up, which unexpectedly elated my inner child.  Something about the sight of the little sprouts coming up and carefully tending them as they grew fed something hungry inside me.

Over the course of the spring and summer, we collected more and more decorative plants, mostly flowers.  My husband created a beautiful succulent basket for me for Mother’s Day, and after that I was on a quest to collect kalanchoes.  An orange geranium joined the crowd soon after, along with baskets of red petunias and pink pansies.  Later I added orange gazania, red miniature carnations, and purple plumbago.

I also got myself a flower that represents the Pacific Northwest to me: a hydrangea.  I fell in love with these snowball-like flowers when we first visited Seattle in 1999 and was sad  that I couldn’t grow them in Texas.  They would appear in stores around Easter, but unless you were incredibly dedicated, they were impossible to keep alive in the heat, even when shaded.  When I saw them on sale at a nursery one day, I immediately snapped up the biggest one with the most flowers, bought a big pot for it, and took it home.

My next new love from this area is dahlias, something else that should grow in Texas but won’t because it’s too hot and dry.  These are incredibly vivid flowers that are available in over 20,000 cultivars and grow from tubers that readily divide.  People give them away on Craig’s List they’re so prolific.  I only own three at the moment, but they are some of my favorite plants in the garden now.

We spent the hottest part of the summer mostly watching things bloom and keeping everything watered.  It’s not a time to plant things, it’s a time to keep them alive and let vegetables do their thing.  The cosmos seeds I had planted in early June were finally beginning to bloom, showing their bright yellow-orange flowers, of which small insects were a fan.  Likewise with the purple basil, which was growing tall and showing early flowers, which I pinched to encourage bushiness.  The best performer was the catnip, which flourished with huge leaves that the cats devoured happily.

Our herbs did wonderfully all year, yielding quite a harvest in the Autumn.  Even our vegetables yielded a modest harvest, including a few tomatoes, three peppers, and several small strawberries.  Earlier in the year, we had lettuce and nasturtiums for salads, which we also put mint and basil into.

Overall, I’m incredibly pleased that I rekindled my old gardening habit.  It reconnects me to the life force of Earth in a way that nothing else really can.  I was missing it without knowing I was missing it.  In fact, I was so happy to have it back in my life that I started a gardening group at the church I go to (I know, someone of my spiritual inclinations in church? that’s another post…), the first meeting of which went swimmingly.  Gardening is good for connecting to a lot of things beyond the Earth: one’s Higher Self, one’s communities, and one’s creative spirit, just to name a few.  I’m looking forward to spending time planning future gardening pursuits and making new friends.  And I’m especially looking forward to enjoying the fruits of those pursuits and relationships: the flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruits that make a garden the special thing it is.