A half-spring in our step
I’m taking a rule from the joy playbook and calling happiness where I see it.
We celebrate bicentennials and hold biannual events. Some of us see the glass half-full. May I humbly advocate that we celebrate September and October as “half-spring”?
Let’s face it, winter in Northern California really isn’t that miserable. In Autumn, we get an eyeful of yellow and orange leaves along The Esplanade. Not much is “dormant” during the winter solstice. We get to enjoy the cold season as our green season and never need to plow the walkway to reach our cars.
Summer, however, simmers with brown grass, wilted annual flowers and plants that die in the night. The way I remember “the good old days,” July was miserable in Chico but we had a grand old time running through the sprinklers. In August, I was suffering from accumulated heat exhaustion and ready to move to the coast. Then fall would arrive, with the sweet smell of morning dew and leaves in the rain gutters.
Here we are in September and my plants are reminding me why I labored to keep them barely alive through June, July and August.
The Prof, my boss, gave me a drought-worthy one-gallon container of purple daisies two years and several months ago. By mid August, I suspected I had a barrel filled with death. Yet, now that the sun has tilted everso-slightly — or maybe it was smokeinduced shade — new green leaves are overcrowding the brown. Helen Harberts taught me a nickname for these plants — “freeway daisies.” Now I can see how the purple blooms could easily take over the elbow of a freeway onramp.
If “spring” is a time of renewal after darkness (and in this case a summer drought), then this half-spring should make us do a Snoopy happy dance.
I’ve tortured a hardy gerbera in a metal bucket for maybe half a dozen years. It grows robust, then dies back, then grows again. So far it has survived each summer. This week I saw the newest incarnation of the plant bunched up in one corner of the container, where the house must have cast some shade.
Ah, half-spring blooms are beginning to beg for recognition.
We count our blessings where we may. The grass is dead, but my garlic chives are blooming. I never actually “planted” garlic chives. Years ago I filled a glass jar with seeds from my mom’s yard and tossed the seeds over my shoulder. Chives now grow in odd places, and sometimes I remember to grab them for my salads. Mostly, I watch bees buzz the flowers in “half spring.”
One of my favorite things about those months from February to May is the anticipation. I know my garden will soon be bursting with springtime color. For half-spring, maybe the anticipation is even greater because not only do flowers finally bloom, they did not die.
One big barrel is bursting with green geranium leaves. My guess is they will bloom from now until Oct.
30, which is my half-birthday.
Garden enthusiast Heather
Hacking loves when you share what’s growing on. Reach out at sowtheregardencolumn@gmail.com, and snail mail, P.O. Box 5166, Chico CA 95927.