In a word

What word comes to mind when you think of spring?  For those of us that spend our free time in the yard, tending a garden, or wandering the aisles of the nursery, I'm sure that there are hundreds of words that could spring to mind depending upon your mood.  Whether it's the name of an iconic flower like the tulip, or perhaps it's the name of the first bird that shows up, or maybe what you think of is having more light, more warmth, or more energy.

When I think of spring I think of those things too.  But I think we all think of it on another level.  We not only think of what spring looks and feels like.  We think about what it means.  And what it means to me is faith, hope, and love.

Those of you who are Christians may be immediately familiar with that trinity of words as they are found in the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.  He wrote, "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.  And the greatest of these is love."

Granted, I'm taking these completely out of context when I apply them to my view of Spring.  But the words remain apt.

I think of faith when I see the trees bursting forth into bloom and into leaf.  We had faith that the winter would not ruin us, that the bleak times would end eventually, that sustenance would be provided again.

How can you not feel hope when you see a bud about to burst forth?  Or when you see new foliage on the rose bush that has been little more than a barbed set of sticks for month?  Our faith was tested and found to be true and now we reap the reward of hope.  Hope for what is coming soon.

And then there is love.  The greatest of all.  The all-encompassing love.  We love our flowers.  We love the colors.  We love new life. We love our alone time.  We love our dogs, our parents, our spouses, our children, our friends, and our own selves.

May love fill your garden this spring and may it fill your life in the rest of your seasons.

Obligatory Fall Color Pictures

Fall in Sacramento isn't all that special and we're always way behind most of the rest of the country when it comes to changing colors.  Things are just now starting to change colors for the season.  Here are some shots from my yard tonight.

Looking way up into the crown of a Liquid Amber

Another Liquid Amber.  I think the impact would be greater if more of the tree changed at the same time.

A black-stemmed hydrangea.

We went to a pumpkin carving party with kids and their families from my daughter's school last weekend.
It was fun getting messy and then shaking hands with people we hadn't met yet.  

Harry, on the right, has been a family tradition for about 4 years now.  Every year he gets a makeover with either black or green mondo grass. and then that grass gets planted somewhere in the garden.  Bones, on the left, was a new addition this year.

Acer palmatum 'Orangeola' just beginning to revert back to its namesake color.  

Japanese blood grass hasn't developed that blood red color yet, but it is starting to fill in a bit more.

This fall color is making up for the fact that the birds beat me to all the blueberries on this young bush.

Spring: In Seven Pictures

Sacramento's spring has begun.  There are still plenty of leafless trees and our record breaking dry winter (part of California's worst drought in 500 years) has left many homes, mine included, with dry, brown lawns.  But it's not all gross to look at.  Here's a peak at what has been blooming in my yard the last few days.

A plum tree of an unknown variety.  But I think it might be a Blue Damson or a "French Improved"
No matter the type, the blooms this year were the first to proclaim the end of winter. 

One morning last week I woke up and saw a Camellia bloom.  A few hours later there were a half dozen opening up.

The Japanese maple cultivar "Katsura" is almost always the first to leaf out in the spring.
It starts out yellow with tinges of red and then turns lime green for a while before darkening a few shades in summer.

This hydrangea managed to hold onto a few leaves from last season and is now putting on new growth.

This is one of my favorite Japanese maples.  The cultivar name is Murasaki Kiyohme.
It's a smaller JM and suitable for growing in a container in a shady spot.
All JMs prefer afternoon shade in hot climates but this one is especially sensitive to hot sun
and the leaves will shrivel up in the wrong spot.
If you look closely, you can see the buds are just beginning to swell.

The birds have returned and their voracious appetites made quick work of what I put out for them.

This pictures sums up Sacramento's Spring pretty well.  There are plenty of weeds to attend to but since they are the greenest part of the lawn I might just decide to let them take over this year.  Who needs a lawn anyway?

Our Unifying Cry: More Light!

Before we sing Silent Night in a Christmas Eve candlelight service, before we open presents by the light of our Christmas trees and a new dawn, before we celebrate the New Year with fireworks, we will go through the darkness of the winter solstice.

Decorating the Christmas tree this year

In my part of the world that means tomorrow will have 9 hours, 28 minutes and 16 seconds of daylight and 14 hours, 31 minutes and 44 seconds of darkness.  The next day we’ll gain just two seconds of light.  The second day we’ll gain 6 seconds, then 9 seconds, 13 seconds, and 17 seconds.  Small gains, to be sure, but the light will come back.

I do not like these dark days.  I get sleepy early.  I am less productive.  I am grumpier than I should be.  But there’s something magical and symbolic about this time of year too.  I have thought lately that it would have been ideal to celebrate Christmas on the 22^nd of December instead of the 25^th.  That would make it both a literal and a symbolic celebration of more light coming into the world.

What I do like about darkness is that it forces us to take notice of it, to contemplate what it is and what it is not.  The darkness can cause us to be introspective, contemplative, and reflective.   

The best network television show of the 1990s (Northern Exposure) had a wonderful episode called Northern Lights.  The show takes place in Alaska where the nights in winter are even longer so of course, light is going to be on their minds.  This last scene from that episode gives me chills.  May it bring some light into your darkest day too.

Leaving My Garden

I have taken some time off from blogging the last few weeks.  As we entered into escrow on our house, the desire to continue to cultivate my garden waned.  Besides, there was work to be done.  There were boxes to build, fill, and tape closed.  We held a garage sale - an event I don't think I'll repeat until the next time I move.  We went shopping for new appliances, called the county about switching our utilities, and worked with the cable company to get us set up right away.

Last night was our first night in the new house and there is still a great deal of work to be done before this place even begins to feel like something close to home.  It's a weird time in our lives.  The place that had been our home for more than a decade is empty except for a few brooms, a mop, and some dog hair we still need to vacuum up.  It doesn't look or feel much like our home anymore.  But this new house is filled to the brim with boxes with suddenly cryptic markings on the outside.  When you move into a three-bedroom home, simply writing "Bedroom" on the side of a box isn't actually that helpful.  It's also a good idea to decide ahead of time which room you and your spouse are going to call the living room and which is the family room.  

I think because there was so much work to do I was able to shut off a lot of my emotions related to moving. I couldn't finish what needed to be done if I allowed myself to wallow in nostalgia.  I don't think I realized this until I took my daughter over to the old house today to check the mail and pick up a few things the movers missed.  We walked around the backyard together.  She noticed the 'Snow Fountains' weeping cherry tree in the corner of the yard.  How could she not?  It had burst into bloom in the last few days and was now a shower of white.

I planted that tree in her honor the week after she was born and I took every opportunity I had to tell her that it was her tree.  I don't think she realized until then that the tree hadn't been taken to our new house.  She asked me why not.  "The new owners expect us to leave all the trees in the ground where they were sow we could only take the trees that were in pots."  She seemed to accept this answer so I went back to looking for overlooked pot risers while she meandered.  Because I was preoccupied I didn't see what she was looking at, I didn't notice the looks on her face, or register the change in her body language.  But when I finally took my eyes off the ground and saw her, I knew something wasn't right.  She had her hands in her pockets, she was standing as close to the far wall of the house as she could without actually touching it, she was looking so small in that empty yard.

"What's the matter, Sweetheart?" I asked her.

"Now I won't have a tree anymore, Daddy."  And then she cried and fell into my outstretched arms.  I felt her little body shake with sorrow.  I felt her arms tighten around my neck as if holding on tighter was the only thing that could make the sadness go away.  I think that I could have said something right away to cheer her up.  But it felt like she just needed to be sad for a few minutes.  And I needed to be reminded that no matter how busy we get, no matter how businesslike life becomes, that we are still emotional beings and a good cry once in a while is exactly what we need most.

I once heard someone say that if someone needs to hug you to get some comfort, you should let them dictate when it's okay to pull away and end the hug.  I thought of that while my little girl clung to me.  And kept clinging.  I worried that her crying was just going to snowball out of control so I pulled away just far enough that she could see my face and I told her that I was sorry but that this tree would always be hers.  I told her that we could go to the "flower store" and buy any tree she wanted and we could plant that in our new yard and that tree would be her new tree.  She liked that.

She has so much to learn about saying goodbyes to people and things in the years ahead.  It's going to be hard for her as it was for all of us.  I knew this all along and I have feared that pain for her.  Until today though, I didn't know that I still had so much to learn about goodbyes or that my daughter would be the one teaching me.

We walked back into the house to lock up.  I saw her pause with a thoughtful look on her face.  "Daddy, can my new tree be in a pot?"

"You bet, Sweetheart."  Just because I know she has to learn to say goodbyes doesn't mean I won't do everything I can to delay it.

Stopping In My Tracks

On Saturday mornings my daughter has a gymnastics class that has become part of our weekly ritual.  We go and sit in the bleachers with our coffee while she learns to somersault, walk backwards on a beam, and perfect the art of making her parents freak out every time she slips.  This is good practice for all of us, I’m sure.  Each week she gets a little more comfortable and a little more coordinated than she was before.  She is growing incrementally and the change is so slight it is hard for someone to see it.  But once in a while she will say or do something that (both literally and metaphorically) stops me in my tracks and I will see her in a new way.  The child I once saw as merely a reflection of her parents has somehow trasformred into a thinking, opinionated, humorous little girl. These changes and these moments are worth remembering.  That’s an easy thing to write and probably an easier thing to just read over.  But these moments in our lives really are worth remembering.     

I normally drive by myself to gymnastics so that I can go home afterwards and start my yard work while the girls do the things that girls like to do when they don’t like to garden.  This past Saturday, as I drove back to our house, I was struck by how swiftly the signs of spring had come to Sacramento.  Many of our trees are in flower, daffodils are nearly finished blooming, and the sun is warm.  I had noticed these changes a little and even snapped a few photos of trees in bloom last month.  But then, just like with my daughter, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks . . . this time my car's tracks.  I actually said, “Wow” out loud when I saw this:   

This is on the corner of a very busy street in town and the entire front yard is walled in by the white-washed stucco wall.  I have driven by this house a thousand times and I have never noticed it before.  I felt lucky to have noticed it that day and I thought it would be worth remembering so I pulled over and took a few pictures with my phone. 

Although the picture above was worth posting on its own merit, I was inspired to put fingers to keyboard this morning because a third thing happened to me that stopped me in my tracks.  Clearly, I am in a time and place in my life where I am feeling compelled to stop and take note of what is going on.  This third event happened to be an e-mail I received.  I have infrequently written about the Library of Congress' weekly e-mail column called American Life in Poetry.  This week's poem has a gardening theme so I think it is appropriate to be shared here and I hope that it finds you in a place where you can stop and consider why we garden and what that says about your life as it did for me this morning: 

Cement Backyard

My father had our yard cemented over.
He couldn’t tell a flower from a weed.
The neighbors let their backyards run to clover
and some grew dappled gardens from a seed,

but he preferred cement to rampant green.
Lushness reeked of anarchy’s profusion.
Better to tamp the wildness down, unseen,
than tolerate its careless brash intrusion.

The grass interred, he felt well satisfied:
his first house, and he took an owner’s pride,
surveying the uniform, cemented yard.
Just so, he labored to cement his heart.

-Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Surprised By Spring Part 2

Have you ever learned a new word and then immediately noticed that the very word you didn’t know a week ago is being used all the time now?  Clearly, the word was being used by others before it was learned by us and it just took us stopping to notice the word once before we really noticed it at all.  That's how this spring feels to me.  Four days ago I didn't think spring was anywhere close and then I turned a corner and came face-to-face with a tree draped in pink blooms.  And now I'm seeing signs of spring everywhere. 

In my own front yard, the daffodils have emerged.

And the hydrangeas, still adorned with last year's dried blooms, are pushing out leaves.  It's days like today when I am thankful to live where I live.



Spring has come and I am going to enjoy this penultimate month in my house before we move.

Surprised by Spring

Sometimes you can sense it coming.  Sometimes you notice when the daffodil stalks break through the ground.  Sometimes you see buds swelling on a tree that has been dormant so long you can't quite remember what it looked like with leaves.  Sometimes you just notice the warmth of the sun on your face and you remember what heat feels like.

But sometimes, the coming of spring surprises you.  Sometimes you don't notice spring bulbs or swelling buds.  And sometimes, on a cloudy day in February, it is hard to remember the warmth of the sun.  But then you turn a corner and see something like this:

And you know that whether you noticed it or not, spring is coming. 

In Escrow

I know better than to say anything is official when it comes to selling a house but we’re getting very close.  We received an offer we liked and the potential buyer was okay with our counter offer so we’re plowing forward with the sale.  Officially we are in escrow.  Of course, several things could still happen that would put us all back at square one.  One of those things is the pest inspection scheduled for this weekend.  I am grateful that dandelions and palm seedlings don’t qualify as pests in this case.  Another hurdle is the appraisal.  If the house doesn’t appraise for the amount we accepted the buyer would not be able to secure the full funding. 

Columbines from last March

As part of the negotiations the buyers asked that we leave our wall mounts for our TVs.  At first I thought that was a strange request but it makes sense.  If we were to take those with us there would be gaping holes in the walls that would need to be patched and repainted.  And really, taking a TV mount would be tantamount (see what I did there?) to taking your curtain rods.  Curiosity drove me to Google which revealed that this request is actually pretty common.  In fact, I got off pretty easy.  In some cases, if your flat-screen TV is attached to the wall mount and requires a tool to remove it, the buyer may have the right to your TV too.

Our weeping cherry was in bloom at the end of March in 2012.  I hope it is again this year.

On our end of the negotiations we asked for an extra month to rent back our house.  This will serve a couple purposes: it will give us a little breathing room and allow us more time to find a house we like that isn’t in foreclosure or isn’t an active short sale (because those can take 6 months give or take).  It will also give me a chance to enjoy one more spring in my garden.  We estimate that we will be fully moved out before April 1^st.  Spring in Sacramento generally arrives in early March.  I am thankful for this because right now the garden looks pretty bleak and I’d prefer to leave it on a good note.

An Iris on April 1st

It also gives me some time to figure out how I’m going to move all my potted plants.

Four Cars and a Chainsaw

I have sold four cars in my life.  Each time I sold the car it was because my life had changed and I needed something different.

My first car was terrible.  Only one of the four doors opened from the outside (and it wasn’t the driver’s door).  It burned through a quart of oil every 80 miles so I always had an entire case of Penzoil in the trunk.  Within six months of owning it the alternator went out and the battery died and along with the battery my resolve to keep the car on life support died with it.  Besides, I was enrolling in college and I would be working three jobs and I needed a more reliable car to get me around – preferably one that friends wouldn’t have to slide through open windows in order to get into. 

My second car was a stick shift.  I bought it even though I didn’t know how to drive a stick because it was so much cooler than my last car.  After a couple herky-jerky hours of practice in a parking lot I thought I was ready to go.  Turns out, you don’t really know if you can drive a stick shift until you get stopped at a red light on a steep hill.  Also, as it turns out, that’s a terrible time to learn that you can’t drive a stick shift.  I kept that car all through college and after I mastered the clutch I fell in love with that car.  I took it on road trips, smoked cigars in it, discovered great music in it, had talks about Life and Love in it.  As far as cars go, it was definitely my first true love.  But then I got married and we had decided to move to my wife’s hometown in California and a car without air conditioning just wasn’t going to cut it.  So I traded that car in and almost made enough money on it to cover the cost of the new snow tires I wouldn’t need any more and the stereo I had loved so much. 

Big enough for two people.  Not quite big enough for two people, a dog, and a baby.

My third car was a pretty normal young adult car.  It was a nearly perfect compromise for that time in our life.  It was sporty looking but reliable, got respectable gas mileage but had a few unnecessary frills and it had A/C and a manual transmission (I did say I learned to love driving a stick shift).  That car served us well for several years and the air conditioning definitely helped me get used to the California heat.  But we sold that car when we found out that we were expecting a child.  You just can’t get a baby in and out of a car seat when you’re driving a low-to-the-ground 2-door.  So we bought an SUV for my wife and I got the truck I had always wanted.

Years later I’m now the one driving the SUV and my wife has a new-to-us car.  We sold the truck last weekend.  True to the pattern, life has changed again.  We have decided it is time to pack up 10-years’ worth of junk and move to a new neighborhood in a better school district because our daughter will (impossibly it seems) start school next fall.  And, frankly we never thought we’d stay in our current house as long as we have.  Now you might be wondering why on Earth I would sell a truck before moving.  I know I am.  I already miss having that thing.  The plain truth is that we didn’t need three vehicles but we did need some extra cash for down payments and real estate fees and all those other expenses that come with moving.  So I let go of the truck I drove for nearly a decade.

A small truck is a great thing for a gardener.

We are feeling cautiously optimistic.  We don’t know if our house will sell or when it might.  We don’t know if we’ll find the perfect house for the rest of our lives.  But we feel like we’re in a good position.  We don’t absolutely have to move.  We can take our time and make the right decisions for our family.  But tempering that optimism is a bit of melancholy.  This was, after all, our first house.  This is where our dog achieved his ultimate goal of becoming an inside dog.  This is where Santa has found our daughter every Christmas of her life.  This is the house we managed to furnish to our mutual liking in spite of my wife’s “denim furniture” phase.  This is the house where we figuratively and literally sank our roots.  I have cut down a bunch of burdensome trees and planted new ones that I was excited to see grow.  I have planted boxwood hedges that haven’t had a chance to fill in yet.  Just a few weeks ago I planted a hundred white tulips that might not bloom before we leave.  So, yeah, I’m a little sad to say goodbye before I’ve seen the culmination of all that effort.

One of several trees that fell under my reign here.

But if there’s one thing that selling cars and cutting down trees has taught me about life it’s that letting go of something old is the only way you can grab onto something new.

Rain Delay

My front yard project has been in a rain delay for the past five days.  In that time we’ve received almost a full five inches of rain.  About a half inch of that came in a single stop-what-you’re doing-and-take-notice 10-minute period Sunday morning.  We stood at the windows and watched the water on the street crest the sidewalk.  If the local news hadn’t brought in all four of their meteorologists that morning and talked at length about this thin yellow band on the Doppler radar I would have been concerned about real flooding.  But I trusted that Mark, Eileen, Tamara and Dirk all knew what they were talking about and that the “extreme weather” wouldn’t stay long. 

The storm has knocked down most of the leaves.

By Sunday afternoon the clouds had finally cleared.  When I stood outside and looked east, I could still see the dark grey clouds and knew they were dumping snow on Lake Tahoe a hundred miles away.   

Berries on an Arbutus 'Marina' - also known as a Strawberry Tree

The sky was still clear this morning so the landscaping crew was finally back at work.  Today’s goal is to dig the trenches for the new sprinkler system.  They are running into some pretty hefty roots leftover though so work is progressing much slower than I’m sure they hoped. 

A red leaf cradled by Lambs Ear

Normally they would also plan to lay the sod today but the landscaper called his supplier and was told that right now the sod is under about 2 inches of water.  If it dries up early in the day they might be able to lay it down but it’ll likely be “heavy as hell” so the sod might have to wait a few more days as more rain is forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday.



Acer palmatum 'Glowing Embers'



It’s a little crazy to me when I think about this being December and yard projects of this type are still being done.  But this is California and, in spite of the storm (or perhaps because of it) overnight temperatures have been in the mid-to upper 40s with daytime highs over 60.  So, why not?  After all, it still looks and feels like autumn.

Lagerstroemia x fauriei 'Natchez' (A white-blooming Crepe Myrtle)

Broken Ground

I am pleased to say that the front yard redo has begun.  The guys came at 7:00 a.m. yesterday morning and brought their sod cutter with them.  I am tempted to ask them to stop here.  Look at all that bare dirt!  I could just go crazy with plants and never bring the lawn mower out front again.  

But I will resist.  For one, I don't think my wife would go for it.  Secondly, the benefit of lawn in this case is that it's actually lower maintenance for me than other options since I can just mow the often-mentioned and much-hated palm seedlings that constantly grow in my yard.  And, finally, if and when we come to a point where we decide to sell our house, I think the "average" buyer would prefer the expected American front yard which means green grass. 

Speaking of grass, in the picture above there is a strip of rock that borders what was the lawn and the walkway.  The landscapers will remove this rock and use it elsewhere.  They will replace it with even more grass.  This is fine with me as I had grown weary of weeding this strip.  I may eventually remove the grass that will be installed where the rock is now and replace it with a curvaceous planting bed or perhaps grow a boxwood hedge, but for now I'm going to let the plan of sodding this area proceed without intervention. 

In the bottom left corner of the picture above you can see a black drip irrigation line.  This line currently runs directly from a hose bib a foot or two away.  This setup has worked for me just fine, but the crew is going to tap into the in-ground system and run the line beneath the stones and re-install the drip irrigation.  This will make the area look cleaner and it will be one less thing for me to worry about.  I find that drip irrigation timers can be unreliable after a while and those pesky batteries die without my permission. 

Unfortunately, what was originally estimated to be a 2 or 2 1/2-day project looks like it's going to end up taking 9 days from start to finish.  The crew has been splitting time between my yard and my neighbor's yard which they are also re-sodding.  They expect to complete the grading of my yard today but they won't have enough time to put in the pipes and lay the sod before the day is done.  And now the rains of Northern California's wet season are scheduled to begin in earnest tomorrow morning and continue for five straight days.  They are warning of potential flooding.  Which means lots and lots of mud in my yard and not a very good time to be trenching sprinkler lines and laying sod.  [Insert grumpy face emoticon here!]

No work will be done in my backyard as part of this project but that doesn't mean things aren't changing there too.  The crepe myrtle leaves are changing and starting to fall finally.  I plan to use the time after the leaves have fallen to study the branching and do some artful shaping - paying special attention to the lower limbs so that eventually I can push the lawn mower beneath it without having to duck.  Those seeds just jump off the tree and attach themselves to my hair.  It's annoying.     

One of my Japanese maples, a 'Glowing Embers' has really gotten orange in the last week. 

The 'Red Dragon' pictured above is still red but it's not the deep maroon that it was this summer.  I love sitting in the iron chair next to this tree.  I love the way they look together.  The colors are so different.  The texture, also, so different.  This is a slow growing Japanese maple.  This is a quality I have grown to appreciate.  This tree looks just as perfectly sited as the day I planted it.  I can't say the same for every tree or shrub I have planted. 

And finally, a seldom-used but fairly old Japanese cultivar called 'Otto's Dissectum' has gone from light green to orange and red.  I've been growing this in a wine barrel for a couple seasons now.  It's such a nice tree.  Some day I hope to create a spot of its own for it - a place where it can sink its roots and grow without impediment and live up to its potential . . . a hope I'm sure we all desire for ourselves and our loved ones.