Garden On, Vashon

Now here’s an entry closer to the blog-form than my usual: it’s a maunder through my ruminations as I sweep through chores.

With a promise of clear, dry days this week, I am back to gathering and processing leaves. But it’s getting a little OLD, frankly: my leaf-bins keep settling lower and lower, no matter how often I top them up. Curious, I went back in my calendar and counted up the bags: OMG, is it REALLY 39? Are my leaf-bins EATING these shreddings? And have I just gone completely loony-bins?

I dug a bit in the middle of the most shredded one and found decomposition already in process: the leaves dark as chocolate and smelling of mould. Results already: how gratifying. Or self-rationalizing, anyway.

As I was raking the winter hazel leaves out from under, I got to thinking about how garden writers talk about winter revealing the “bones” of a garden. In this garden, today, it was my rake revealing things: the brick edgers, skeletonized blossom of a “globemaster” allium, the creeping charlie I once thought was so cute before realizing what an invader it was.

It’s good to clear the garden down to the ground, to remind myself of what I’ve planted, of what needs to be moved, yanked, pruned, protected. It’s a way of seeing what I originally intended, before the garden itself laid its own exuberant growth and fallen detritus over all.

The look back in my calendar revealed that, exactly this time last year, I was yanking the quack-grass and creeping charlie from under this very winter hazel. The weather was clear, cold, and fair, and I was rushing to clear and to cover, knowing that a killer freeze was on its way from the north. And we all know what happened then… (3 weeks of snow-cover, in case you don’t).

So I’ll clear now, have a look at my garden’s bones, then re-cover with a mulch of these shredded leaves. I put the reemay cloth over the cole and salad beds, after mulching around the remaining beets, cabbage, and next February’s broccoli raab. Maybe on Thursday, I’ll drain the hose and coil it into its box for the winter. I sure hope this clear, cold weather doesn’t set us up for a repeat of last winter’s snow, but if it does… I’ve got my 39 bags of mulch all ready to go!