On the longest day of the year, I feel sad that the days will begin to shorten again. I love this part of the summer, before it is too hot, but when the evenings are long and slow. We have been fooled by the long days recently, working outside in the yard after work until the evening, not realizing dinner is late until we come in to wash up and realize it is 8pm. Last night Lisa planted the last of the lobelia along the front edge of the flower garden to replace the plants eaten by the now-departed gopher, and I put in the strawberries, beans and sweetpeas that we purchased on Sunday. We have the longest growing season here. If we'd been on top of it, we could be harvesting our first batch of beans already, and just planting for the second harvest. But no, we just put in the plants now, in June. We're still lagging on getting the drip watering system in place, so hopefully we'll be able to keep everything watered well enough until that's finally done.
We spent a lot of time in the garden this weekend. Weeding, watering, placing plants to replace those that didn't make it or got eaten. We were having a war with a gopher until recently. Or rather, we were providing him with excellent eating, and he was pissing us off. Every few days one of us would realize we were missing a plant. Or two. No mounds or holes where they used to be, just gone. Two beautiful shell-pink nemesia. One of the black pansies. 2 healthy lobelia plants, then another two a few days later. The last straw was when I found the top 4 inches of one of the casablanca lilies sticking out of a hole one morning when I went out to water. I must have interrupted the feast, as Sir Gopher was usually more sneaky than to leave leftovers laying around. That night Lisa stopped by the hardware store on the way home and got the kit for gassing gophers.
We both had totally mixed feelings about killing the gopher. This gopher was inspiring rage and frustration, eating our garden that we were working so hard at - and eating our favorite plants no less. Why wouldn't he eat the weed starts instead? We looked at a few different options, talked to the gals at the garden store. We considered some of the deterrent products, but the several we tried last year had had no effect. We decided this was the most humane method, if the goal was erradication. You attach a hose to your tailpipe, run it down the gopher hole and let the car run for 20 minutes. It worked. We've been gopher free for two weeks. Lisa assuaged her guilt by talking compusively about it for a few days. She said it was the strangest thing - she'd just start talking about it, even changing the subject to do so. After a few days the compulsion passed, though she still mentions it to me now and then. We both believe in living lightly on this earth. We don't use any poisons in the house or the garden for pest or weed control. But ants and gophers are where we draw the line. I think we both feel guilty that there is a line at all, but there is. Does that make us bad humans?
On Sunday, we took a morning bike ride along the cliffs to the lighthouse and back, then stopped in for breakfast at Kelly's Bakery. I just love this place. The pasteries are great, of course, but the little patio in the center of the shops is the best part. It reminds me so much of the piazzas in Italy. The place where locals go to visit with their neighbors, drink their coffee, let their children play. It has such a neighborhood, relaxed feel to it. Besides Kelly's, there is also a French soap shop, a couple of artistic-home boutiques, and new this week, a small, hip yarn shop. After breakfast we stopped in at the garden shop to pick up our veggie plants - yea for bike baskets! We waited until the cooler afternoon to plant them, and I felt very old south as we were out there with our cocktails, drinking them with our gardening gloves on. Lisa crafted the wire cages for the lettuce boxes, to keep the neighbor's cats out, and I built trellises for the climbing plants using branches trimmed from the apricot trees earlier this year. P. Allen Smith would be so proud. Now, the wait for everything to fill in.
Lisa is forever telling me I'm planting things too close together. I love to crowd, probably a result of my English (cottage garden) heritage. I'm most drawn to gardens where plants are falling all over each other, almost wild. Veggies mingling with flowers and herbs. Sweetpeas climbing the roses for support. I love French potager gardens. Lisa loves the order of old European formal gardens. Long lines of hedges and foundation plants. Symmetry. We will either eventually find a happy medium, some day, or will give up and each own different parts of the garden. Only time will tell. For now, the veggie garden looks bare to me, and I want to plant more strawberries and lettuce around the bottoms of the plants that I know will get tall. Lisa forbids it. At least I got her to agree to let me plant one six pack of lettuces in the front flower garden, as a border. I'll show her. It will be so pretty!
I too am a lot behind in getting the garden in. Just last week we were sewing the seeds. Not knowing much about gardening, I had wondered if it was too late and then decided I would never know unless I emptied the seed packets and watched to see what would happen. I do have 1 sunflower from the one packet of seeds I managed to plant about 2 months back. And I feel your confusin about what to do about the little eaters of our gardens. My problem is slugs. They have already eaten all but one sunflower and now that 8 more are popping up, I worry that they will start again. I am so against slug and snail bait, i love slugs really, I have even had them as pets, and i don't want to hurt them but what is a girl to do? perhaps if I put a little sprinkling of salt around the plants, they will feel it and turn around. It would break my heart to wake up some morning and find one all dried up. asphyxiating the little gopher is probably the best idea I have heard, no pain, just sleep. Good luck to you and your merging of garden styles :)
Posted by: niki | Friday, June 24, 2005 at 01:54 AM
Hey Dona,
Long time.....wish I could sneak out and visit! You are as brilliant a writer as you are an artist, I love your posts. I have started a blog too,
http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=mbshaw
if you are interested.
Or you can get there from my web page.
Take care and you guys give each other a hug from me.
MB
Posted by: Mary Beth | Wednesday, June 22, 2005 at 05:42 AM