¿JUNE'S G A R D E N '
‘DIRT,’ and Then Some!
The real dirt is, I’ve stopped being concerned
oyer unwanted insects, moles, slugs, black-spot, rust,
mildew, questionable wilting and dying of plants I had
faithfully fertilized and watered in the lawn. My green
lawn is quite colorful sprinkled with purple flowering
prunella, yellow buttercups and small white/ pink
daisies.
After reading Rachel Carson’s book. Silent
S o r i n g , some years ago, I stopped using chemicals to
control the above problems. I became aware that I had
other helpers: an abundance of birds and some insects
that garden along with me, finding grubs, aphids or
seeds that have scattered.
In June a tall fennel plant's feathering foliage
was covered by ladybugs. On further inspection I found
that they were feeding on aphids. Later I noticed few
aphids were left. Some of the ladybugs were still at
work, others moved on to other plants. I have tried
spraying off aphids with a soapy water solution, but I
think the ladybugs are more successful.
I've not disturbed the mole’s tunnel that runs
along the fence other than stomping down the raised
mounds. My thoughts are that if I disturb it they will
just make a new one possibly under the lawn or other
flower beds. I did try a mole trap, but never caught a
mole. They just dug around the trap. There are a few
dips and valleys along the run as occasionally I use the
surfaced soil to help fill my planters. So far the fence
posts have stayed intact.
Plastic containers I have filled with beer or other
suggested liquids have never been too successful in
attracting slugs. I found placing a large rock or piece of
wood in the soil of the flower beds attracts slugs to hide
under them. Early in the morning I gather the slugs I
find under the wood or rock and discard them. I mean
really discard them, as slugs are like an army ready to
attack whatever plants they can find. I had a neighbor
who daily gathered any slugs she could find and released
them down on the sand. I don't know if she thought
they’d get washed out to sea, or that the seagulls would
feast on them, but I suspect the next several generations
of those slugs have now traveled back to find my garden.
Some of my hostas and dahlias have many holes in their
leaves. Who has a perfect garden?
Earwigs, sow bugs, and white fly continue to be a
problem. I’ve found hosing off plants affected with white
fly helps. This doesn’t get the flying adults but it can
wash off and destroy immature nymphs. Rolled up
newspapers on the ground will not only attract slugs, but
earwigs also. In the morning dump the contents in a
bucket of hot water. Sow bugs eat decayed wood and I
also suspect some of the seedlings. They love my
wooden planters or hide under the pots on my deck. No
matter what I try to use to get rid of them or hope they
move on, I’ve learned they’re here to stay.
If a plant gives up for whatever reason, or
mildew or rust appears, I remove the infected plant.
This gives me space to try another kind of plant. Besides
over-fertilizing, poor soil, too much moisture, or if the
roots have been disturbed by insects, a plant could have
been weak or infected when it was first bought. It’s wise
to provide new soil when adding a new plant in the same
area.
Good advice given to me by a fellow gardener on
how to clean containers when storing them in the fall, is
to scour each container with soapy water, then pour
boiling water over it. This helps prevent further
problems of disease or hiding insects left in the
container.
Three out of five of my roses have continued to
be healthy: a Double Delight, David Austin Graham
Thomas, and Voodoo. Since spring every six weeks I add
rose fertilizer around the base of the plants and an
abundance of water. Two climbing roses were affected
by black-spot. I think they are planted in an area that
lacks good air circulation. I spent hours removing and
discarding the affected leaves. They continue to bloom
and eventually new leaves appeared. My gardening
daughter Leslie de-nudes all the leaves on her roses in
late fall. She claims this helps keep her roses healthy. I
have also taken her suggestion, as her garden is filled
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with healthy blooming plants. My grandmother always
used a mixture of fels-naptha soap and water once a
week to pour over her rose bushes to ward off insects.
I’m not sure if this helps, but I do remember the
bouquets of roses on her desk.
No matter how I plan to color-coordinate the
garden, each year my plans fail, as candy tuft,
nasturtiums, pansies, fever-few, yellow beach daisies,
annual lavender mallow and lunaria, and the last two
years the lemon-yellow flowers of evening primrose
(Oenothera biennis) I’ve allowed to re-seed throughout
the garden, bring in more color than I planned. Even a
few vegetables appeared here and there from the
compost I added in the spring: a tomato plant that never
bore fruit, a squash plant that produced a strange-
looking squash, and I am looking forward to a potato
crop.
A dark red leafed sorrel found its way to grow in
a planter with a Gartenmeister fuchsia whose leaves are
a similar color as the sorrel. The fuchsia’s flowers are
coral. Both these plants are a perfect contrast with the
yellow -green foliage of marjorium that cascades off the
border of the planter. A visitor who had come to see the
garden asked me to save some seed from the sorrel as
she wanted to repeat this combination. When 1 told her
that sorrel was considered a weed, we both decided who
named which plants are weeds. Later I did send her
some seeds.
The plant I’ve most enjoyed growing this year is
Cerinthe major ‘Purpurescens,’ a hardy annual with
bracts that turn a stunning ultramarine blue as the
reddish small drooping flowers begin to emerge. As each
flower has fully bloomed, it looks like it’s been dipped in
bright yellow. It has grown to about two feet tall and as
wide. I placed it in a large turquoise-colored pot with a
salmon-pink Traudchen Bonstedt’ upright fuchsia. An
unplanned orange vining nasturtium has wrapped its
stem around the pot. The bright orange color of the
nasturtiums helped enhance my original plans.
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*#**♦***♦♦♦#♦
I’m laying down my pen and writing tablet for
now, as winter is the best time to finish some quilting I
started last spring and to read all the garden publications
I’ve saved.
2.18 LaneJa Avenue
Manzanita.Oreqo
503-368-5316
77troufltAi New Eyes
by Bill Wickland
feckless frosh Floht forest fires
Those two trees were actually on fire, and we
found a way to put the fire out. In mid-August in what
is now the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, that was
important, and we all later received honor citations for
having helped the U.S. Forest Service, as plain old
Oregon kids.
Tonight's news reports that a lightning-strike
fire up in Willamette Pass was limited to a single tree. I
know how that happens.
There were 27 of us to start, south of
Government Camp, and nine days later, in The Three
Sisters, we numbered 2 4 .1 was 14. It was 1952. That's the
way I recall the numbers.
O ur path was called Skyline Trail then, and even
then it was linked to other trails from Mexico into
Canada. And it wasn't all that traveled yet. I think we
met five other parties in 10 days; I hear it is Cowabunga
Avenue up there, now. We were Boy Scouts, Explorers, I
guess, by that time. The difference between Explorer
Scouts and the Green Berets is that Explorers have adult
leaders.
One city kid on that trek had been put there by
his parents, to open him up.' He didn't wanna be there.
Gee, whiz. He wanted to stay home and read books all
summer. We hardly saw him, under the gloves and the
tucked-in trousers and the pith helmet with insect
netting tucked in at the throat.
Hey, he helped wash pots and pans, 'cause he
could get his hands out of his gloves for a few minutes
doing that. He didn't sleep in tents with other Explorers,
preferred to have his mummy bag on the perimeter.
So on the evening of day six or seven, on the
side of Three-Fingered Jack, a guy glanced his left inner
ankle with an axe and cut that artery. We took shifts
keeping the fire and changing hot canteens in his bag
until dawn, when a small party of counselors and the
biggest scouts could stretcher him out a few hours to the
highway.
Mabin and I were on the midnight to two a.m.,
and we counted like 27, or maybe 17 deer coming to
water, walking right through our camp. Then we saw
this six-point buck, right at the foot of the bookworm s
bag, nibbling on his sweaty-salty bag strings. Mabin was
a warm-hearted practical joker who later became a
Marine, and lived through that, too. With his hand-sign
direction, we quietly bellied down to Worm’s bag, then
gently lifted him a little upright by the shoulders, then
hissed "Worm! Awaken!"
"Wha?! - hey, you guys; jeez!" He and the deer,
both a little startled, considered each other for a
moment; then, as the deer casually ambled off, Worm
scrunched into his mummy, and worm-slithered right
up to the fire perimeter, where he was to spend each
night until the ordeal ended. We howled quietly, and we
didn't tease him about it the next day.
It was two days later, nearing the Sisters, hiking
down out of Opie Dildock Pass, [I love that name - 1
would have named my son Opie Dildock Wickland, but
his mother wouldn't let me; she settled for Stoneleigh
William Sherman (Buffalo) Eatonville Wickland | that we
entered a thunderstorm area. We were informed about
how the time between a lightning flash and the thunder
in our ears was a measure of the distance of the strike
from where we were, so if those events were close, we'd
best drop our metal poles, our fishing rods, which are
built a lot like antennas or lightening rods. I wasn't
carrying one. Carry twelve hours to use one hour before
dark? We were carrying our food already, Thank you
very much.
Coming down from above the timber line, we
were on a trail with the up slope to our left, just having
descended enough to enter the dry forest, but still with
snow at our feet.
This is how I recall the next scene:
A huge, monster, simultaneous flashBAM! Poles
thrown in the air, and my friend Mabin and nearly
everyone else hitting the dirt like the Marine he would
become, and Worm standing there, with a tell-tale sign
of standard issue khaki pants peed. Me standing there,
also, thinking whatever the word for "Wow!" was, to a
clean, straight Methodist Boy Scout Explorer 14-year-old
in 1952.
We noticed that two trees had their tops on fire,
and that the imaginary line drawn between them ran
only a few feet over our heads. We were in awe. Not
only "Wow!," but also "Gee!" and "Whiz!"
Then we noticed that Worm had gone into
■ action, and it was Mabin who had picked up on it.
Worm was throwing snowballs at the burning twenty-
foot high stumps. So was Mabin. So did the rest of us,
even our adult leaders.
We put the damned fire out with a bookworm's
ingenuity and a Manne's confidence, and we got proud
paper plaques for it.
I've seen Mabin since, so I know he survived the
Marines, and later did good time in the big steel
industry, and still laughed easily the last time I saw him.
I don't know about Worm; he wasn't from our high
school, and he may be too old to be a Micro-soft
Millionaire, but I bet he remains cool.
A morality line, please, mister? If you are out
there in our woods, and something makes a fire start, do
something, OK?
Bill Wickland is delighted to live in Reedsport, which is
sometimes pretty dry.
UPPER LEFT Eb6E SEPTEMBER. 2000