Pat Bertram's Blog, page 3

Heartbreaking?

For about three weeks, ever since my S.A.D. times passed, I’d been getting back into the feel of gardening. I’ve had more flowers this year than ever before, and they were doing well. I especially enjoyed the variation on a theme that was going on in my wildflower garden.

Daisies.

Cosmos.

Chamomile.

Zinnia.

I suppose it makes sense. All four of those flowers are members of the Asteraceae family, along with marigolds, sunflowers, dandelions, and lettuce.

Despite my ongoing frustration with trying to keep my lawn alive, I’d actually been having fun. I’ve been digging up a weed patch to extend my garden as well as digging up the swath were the grass died last year. I’d even cleaned up all the mess in the gravel and rock areas. (People always talk about ornamental rock as being a care-free landscape, but I find it even more troublesome than a lawn. I can’t use the leaf blower to blow the leaves and such off the gravel because the tool blows the rocks around rather than the leaves, and weeds are rampant because of all the rain we had this spring.)

And then came the night before last. Oh, my. Ferocious winds with a tornado-like swirl came charging in, bringing marble-size hail. Because of the swirling pattern, the storm hung around longer than such storms normally do.

When I got up the next morning, I was greeted by an immense mess. Plants were shredded, flowers destroyed, and the ground was covered with leaves and seeds and twigs from my neighbors’ trees. It was utterly heartbreaking.

At least, that’s what went through my mind at the time, but I quickly caught myself. Heartbreak was Jeff’s illness and his dying. Heartbreak was my brother’s struggles for mental stability and finally his death. Heartbreak was losing parents and friends and a way of life.

The damage to my yard was disappointing, of course, and frustrating. It’s also exhausting just thinking of all the cleanup work. But heartbreaking? No. In fact, I’m lucky — my house is fine and the windows are all intact, which can’t be said for everyone who endured the same storm.

On a rather ironic note, I’d been trying to figure out the best time to break up and transplant some of the clumps of daylilies. Apparently, the best time is whenever the flowers are finished blooming, and most of the flowers are gone now, the buds destroyed before they ever managed to bloom. Although I could transplant them now, it’s not a primary concern at the moment.

And on a happy note — the zinnias managed to survive quite nicely. A couple of flowers broke off, but the rest are growing cheerfully.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Blog Update

If you haven’t received a notification about a new blog from me in a while, it’s not because of an issue with your email. It’s that I haven’t done an update recently. I have no real excuse, just laziness, I suppose, though truly, I’ve been anything but lazy. Now that the rains have passed, the days are brighter, and the temperatures are drifting closer to the 100˚ mark, I’ve been able to set aside the Seasonal Affective Disorder that had me dragging for several weeks and enjoy working in my yard again.

The larkspur that had so intimidated me went to seed, and I’ve been spending hours every day harvesting the seeds and pulling up the dead stems.

So instead of this:

I now have this:

The cleaned-up garden is not as dramatic perhaps, but lovely nevertheless.

I’m spending way too much time babying my lawn, but I have a hunch that will always be an ongoing process. I’d give it up, but I do so love the green. And besides, what else would I do? I’m already reading more than I want, and although I’m still playing games on the computer, I’ve cut way back. A few weeks ago when I lost the internet for a week, it got me out of the habit of spending hours and hours on the computer. Now I do other things, like paint-by-number or watch movies, both rather mindless activities. And, as I said, I spend a lot of time outside.

I wonder at times if I have too much invested in my yard, not just money but emotions and work and thought, but when I’m not dealing with S.A.D., I do find gardening worthwhile. So many pretty things to see!

Daisies.

Trumpet vines.

Daylilies.

Hollyhocks.

Madagascar periwinkle.

Blanket flower.

If things go as planned, I should have flowers of some sort from now until the first frost and perhaps even beyond. I’m becoming rather fond of fall bloomers — the foliage is pretty in the summer, and then when other flowers have died out, the chrysanthemums and New England asters take over.

I’ve done all the planting I’m going to do this year, so now my time will be spent weeding, cleaning up all the detritus from nearby trees that has blown into my yard, as well and continuing to expand my garden. There’s still rather a large swath that has never been touched, so I have to dig up all the weeds and other unsightly vegetation so I can plant . . . hmm. Maybe more wildflowers.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

S.A.D. Times

I’m not having all that much fun with gardening this year, at least not so far. It’s too muggy, too buggy, too . . . everything. Normally, this is the sort of spring I like — cool, occasional rain, cloudy days — but this year, because of the rain, the gardening work is overwhelming. Plants that are used to hotter, drier days, are growing out of control. Weeds are growing thickly. And mosquitoes are voracious.

This is the first year that my mosquito repellent clothes aren’t working. I decided to make use of this cool, fairly dry day to work outside, and now I’m covered in mosquito bites in places that are normally covered by those clothes.

Well, now you get a hint of why I haven’t been keeping up with this blog. I don’t like to make a habit of complaining, and I’ve been having a hard time finding delight in much of anything. I have a hunch I have a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I usually have to deal with S.A.D. in winter; having to cope with it in a spring is a first for me, but also understandable. With storms passing us by so frequently (even if we don’t get rain, we still get the clouds), the days are darker than are healthy for my mental state.

There is a change coming — after all, summer will be here in six days, and it won’t be long before I’m complaining about the heat. Also, the larkspur are finally going to seed, so I’ll be able to pull them up to expose the plants — both ornamental and weedy — that have been hidden thus far. It should help me feel less claustrophobic. Although I normally enjoy the larkspur, they grew so densely and so tall they formed an intimidating wall along my pathways.

One thing that has pleased me is that my wildflower garden is really taking off. Some of the perennials that never came up finally did, and many of the annuals seeded themselves and are filling in the area with color.

I also found an unusual stray, this dwarf evening primrose.

It was in the batch of wildflowers I planted a couple of years ago, but this is the first one I ever saw.

And then there was this unusual plant that popped up in one of my garden areas.

It took a long time to trace it — most plant identifier apps didn’t know what it was. But I think I finally discovered its name: bitter candytuft. It’s from the mustard family, which makes sense — all the wild mustard weeds seem to like it in this area.

As it turns out, it’s a good thing I got some work done earlier — I can hear the thunder of an approaching rainstorm, and the morning is growing darker. Yep. S.A.D. times.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Spring of Excess

This spring seems a season of excess. There are way too many bad air days due to wildfire smoke migrating down from Canada, and there is an invasion of miller months because they aren’t migrating. (They are being slowed down by the smoke.) There are hundreds of the moths in my yard, dozens in my garage and basement, but luckily only a few in the house itself. I try to tolerate them because they are pollinators (and because they are pollinators, they are a protected species in Colorado), but I can’t find it in myself to like them, especially not in such vast numbers. Not only do they spook me when they come flying at me out of nowhere, but they are such messy critters, leaving their effluvia on windows, curtains, and anywhere else they happen to land.

There is also an excess of mosquitoes. To me, even a single mosquito is too much, but this year there are clouds of them. Normally, I am fairly safe in the heat of the early afternoon, since they are most active in the early morning and evening, but a short foray outside a couple of days ago netted me over a dozen bites. Luckily, my gardening clothes are mosquito-repellent, so as long as I am careful to wear those clothes when I am outside, I am fine.

I’m not sure why this year is different, but there is an excess of stuff (for lack of a better word) falling from trees. I do know the neighbor’s locust trees are raining flowers (miniscule greenish things that don’t resemble flowers at all), but I don’t know what the slim green things from my other neighbor’s tree are. Perhaps seeds. I don’t remember seeing them before, but this morning they are everywhere. Where’s a good wind when you need it? Oops. I shouldn’t say that — we’ve had way too much wind this spring (my hanging plants spend more time on the ground, safe from the winds, than they do hanging), so a calm morning is welcome.

We’ve had a lot of rain this spring, not an excess, exactly, but enough to make flowers and weeds grow profusely. I would have thought that I’d be appreciative of the floral largess, but to be honest, I find it a bit overwhelming. The larkspur, which is usually about knee-high, is almost as tall as I am. It’s growing thickly, especially where the grass died, making it impossible for me to access the garden bed and the plants that are buried in the larkspur forest.

I am the only one who is less than impressed with the growth. Butterflies love it.

Bees love it.

And visitors are awed. But not me. Oh, I do appreciate the beauty, but I find it unsettling. It’s . . . too much.

It’s not just the larkspur that grew more than expected. The lilac bushes doubled in size, and seeds are wildly sprouting. Normally, I have little luck with seeds, so I tend to plant more than is called for in the hope that some will take hold. Well, the zinnia seeds I planted must have had an extraordinary germination rate or they like the weather or something, because almost all of them managed to sprout. So I’ve been thinning the zinnia bed and transplanting the seedlings elsewhere in my yard; although I’ve moved half the seedlings, the bed is still too thickly planted. I have never had such a problem before, but then, I’ve never lived through a season such as this one, either.

On an amusing note, this fecundity has created an almost magical soil. I wanted to see if my neighbor wanted any of my ice plant.

I pinched off a flower to show her. Afterward, instead of tossing the sample away, I stuck in in the ground, and it’s growing. For all I know, if things continue the way they are, the plant could take over the yard.

It won’t be long before summer is here, forcing all my plants and flowers — and me! — to struggle with heat and aridity, but for now, I’m continuing to be overwhelmed by this spring of excess.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

A Real Garden

During the past three or four years, I’ve often posted photos of the flowers in my yard, which made it seem as if I had a real garden rather than the truth — that those flowers were the totality of my garden. A couple of days ago, as I was showing an acquaintance around my yard, it occurred to me that this year, I actually had a real garden. There is so much to see! The wall of larkspur, of course, that planted itself where the grass died and that mesmerizes everyone who sees it.

Siberian wallflowers have made a big presence in one of my garden areas, though I’m not sure where they came from. There were a few seeds in a wildflower mix I threw out there a few years ago, but this was the first time I’d seen any of flowers. They are such a vibrant color! The pink flowers are cottage pinks, returning from last year’s planting.

At the forefront of the wallflowers are coreopsis, also returning from last year.

My yellow iris are beautiful this year.

Although they’ve been coming up each spring, they never seemed healthy, but this year, they are doing exceptionally well.

The wild roses always do well, both the yellow

and the red. Unfortunately, the flowers don’t last long, but that makes me more appreciative of them when they are in bloom.

I always try to create whimsical vignettes, such as my miniature gnome house,

and corners that come as a surprise. Gardens that can be seen at a glance are beautiful, of course, but I wanted to be able to see different things as I wandered around my yard. One of my favorite corners this year is the flamingo corner. The flamingo was a gift from a friend, and though I didn’t purposely choose colors of petunias for the planters to match the flamingo, they turned out to be the perfect choice.

In another couple of weeks, the spring flowers will all be gone, but then there will be summer flowers coming into bloom, and if not, well, there are always seeds I can plant or seedlings to purchase at the local hardware store.

It’s amazing how with a bit of persistence and a lot of luck, all of a sudden one day, a person can end up with a real garden.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

What a Difference a Month Makes

Sometimes, in life, a month — or even a year — seems to bring no changes; it’s only in retrospect that we can look back and see the difference in our lives. In gardening, however, a month can bring dramatic changes. For example, in this photo, taken a month ago, spring is just making itself known. The lighter green along the right side of the path are larkspur that planted themselves where the grass died last year. The grass I planted (the blue seed) to start replacing some of the grass that died, hasn’t begun to sprout. The greengage plum (the tree in the foreground) is still dormant, and the lilacs (the bushes to the right of the path) are just beginning to green up.

A month later, things are completely different. As you can see from the following photo, many of the grass seeds took hold, and grass has greened up nicely. The tree has leafed out. The lilacs grew more in the past month than they have the past couple of years. And the larkspur have pretty much invaded not just along the path where the grass died, but the whole rest of the garden, too. I had to wade through the larkspur to find some of the plants I put in last fall, such as lilies and chrysanthemums, and clear a space around them to give them room to grow.

This is a sideview of the garden. Look at all those larkspur! To think that all that came from the half dozen or so plants I transplanted from my neighbor’s yard (with his permission, of course). I thought they were a low-growing flower, because that’s how they grew in his unkempt yard, but apparently, when given a bit of care, larkspur grow to monstrous heights. Some of these stalks are shoulder height. And such a lovely sight.

In another month, things will be different again. The larkspur will be gone — after they go to seed I pull up the dead stalks, leaving plenty of room in the garden for the perennials to grow. If there are big spaces left behind in the garden, I plant other annual seeds, such as zinnias. And since I will be able to get to the dead grass, I’ll start clearing the way for replanting the grass this fall. Or I might even plant some zinnias there, too. Since I have not yet learned how to take a photo of something that will happen in the future, obviously, I can’t show you what the area will look like then, but I imagine, at least for a while, it will look very similar to the way it looked a month ago.

And then a month after that, it will all be different again. Because when it comes to gardening, a month makes a huge difference.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Internet Restored!

My internet has been restored. You’ll never guess what was wrong, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you — it was in a car accident. Yep. That’s right. A car accident.

Unlike most of my friends who have switched to a localized internet company that uses fiber optics, I still have the internet I started with. The cable is adequate for my needs — just about the only thing that might suffer a bit from the slower internet speed is the hidden object game I play, but even that’s not an issue since I’m getting a bit bored with it. Anyway, that doesn’t have anything to do with my outage except to explain how a car could destroy my internet connection — this company still has the green cable utility box in the alley, and apparently, someone ran into it and destroyed it.

Since I am the only one who was affected, it leads me to believe that most people on this block who have internet have gone with the fiber optic choice, but I intend to continue dealing with the original company, as annoying as they are. My rate is locked in for as long as I live here, and since I don’t intend to move until I’m dragged out, I figure that static price will be a good revenge for any problems. Not that I have many problems — this is the first real outage I’ve experienced in the past four years.

When they told me it would be a week before they could restore service, I panicked because I spend (waste) a lot of time on the internet, and I had no idea what I would do with all that extra time. As it turns out, it wasn’t a problem at all. I mowed my lawn, did some gardening, gave my house a good cleaning, read books, watched movies on DVDs friends had passed on to me that I never watched (I hadn’t watched a movie in years), did one of the paint-by-number pictures I’d been given as a gift, walked some, exercised some. And then suddenly, here I am, with the internet again.

When I was without service, I discovered that one of the reasons I was online so much was that I’d get bored and restless when I read too much, and it was just habit to go on the internet to play games or look up gardening information or whatever. So now I have other options. Well, I always had those other options, I just didn’t make use of them. Chances are, I’ll go back to my old habits, but for now, it’s nice to be offline most of the time.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Going Cold Turkey

My internet went out yesterday. I didn’t worry because such things happen, especially in times of high winds, but when I wasn’t reconnected after an hour or so, I braved the labyrinth of the company’s automated phone system. Eventually I was transferred to a real person (at least I think she was) and after enduring multiple sessions of being put on hold, I was informed that it wasn’t an area problem but isolated to me. I didn’t even worry when she said that she’d schedule a service call, but when she gave me the day and time — sometime during the day next Wednesday, I panicked. Seven days without the internet? Not possible.

Well, it will be possible since there is no other choice, and I do have my phone, but still, I spend a LOT of time on the internet, playing games, researching, and various other things, and suddenly, all that time will need to be spent doing . . . who knows what. I already read too much, and because of the heavy rains we’ve been having, there isn’t much I can do outside unless I want to slip and slide in the mud.

I am sure I will be okay, it just takes a mental adjustment. After all, I spent most of my life without the internet, and I always found things to do. Of course, I was working full time, which filled most of my hours, so reading was a much-treasured luxury, not a way of life, and afterward, there were the years spent writing, but now? I guess I’ll find out if there is, in fact, life without the internet.

Luckily, I have things planned — working a couple of afternoons, taking my car in for a tune up, going to a farewell lunch for a friend who’s leaving the country for a year or two. When the ground dries a bit, I will
have a huge amount of weeding to do. And there are various projects I’ve been putting off that I can get finally get around to doing.

When I lost the connection, I was in the midst of trying to decide what seeds to buy to plant in my raised garden, which is supposed to be filled with soil next week. The internet going out seems to be a sign to wait on that purchase; after all, I’ve been through this before where a scheduled job was put off indefinitely. And if the garden is actually filled, well, I don’t suppose waiting a week to order the seeds will make much difference. And anyway, having an extra week to plan the garden isn’t a bad thing. It will give me something to think about while I am going cold turkey.

Looking Good!

Except for throwing out a few wildflower seeds between snowfalls this winter, I didn’t do anything for my garden. I wanted to see what of the perennials would come up again and what annuals would reseed themselves so that I wouldn’t plant over something I wanted. Not as many flowers as I expected came up again this year. In fact, as you can see, one of the areas in the bottom lefthand corner remains a blank slate. Oddly, that was one of the areas where the larkspur came up last year, but the larkspur garden moved a bit to the right. That wild growth along the path is where the grass died last year, and now I have a larkspur jungle. It should be gorgeous when the flowers bloom in another week or two, but seeing all those larkspurs was a bit of a surprise, to say the least.

I am grateful that the greensward to the right of the path is still doing well. Some people have mental health animals — I have a mental health lawn. I often stand at the back window and drink in the green. It makes me feel good, so it’s worth the effort to try to keep a lawn going.

Some of the grass that came back from near death last year is forming clumps and going to seed. Not attractive at all! It was just one of those flukes, I think. We had days of rain last week, which made the grass grow rapidly, and the ground was too wet to mow, so I got to see what would happen if I didn’t mow. Luckily, I enjoy mowing.

A nice surprise were the Siberian wallflowers. They were in a small package of wildflower seeds I’d planted three years ago, and not a single flower has ever bloomed. Well, this year, I have dozens of plants that are just coming into maturity. They are supposed to reseed themselves, which would be nice — I wouldn’t mind a swath of these cheerful little flowers.

The lilacs I planted when I first got here are growing fast now, and the blossoms are fully mature. Last year, I did get a lilac bunch or two, but they were scraggly.

It’s too soon to tell how anything else is doing. Well, the weeds, of course are doing well, and it won’t be long before I am unable to keep up with them. But for now, things are looking good!

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

The Joy — and Heartbreak — of Gardening

My yard is greening up nicely. The grass you see in the forefront of the photo is the grass I planted last fall after digging up the Bermuda grass that had taken over the area. The new grass survived the winter nicely. I was going to wait to see how the grass does in the unrelenting sun of summer before I planted more seeds, but I decided to go ahead and do some of the work now. The blue seed is where the old grass didn’t come back after dying off last summer. A lot of the lighter green is a larkspur invasion that took over where the grass along the path died. The larkspur will run its course in the next couple of months, so I’ll be able to plant more grass next fall.

I fretted about the lawn, not sure what to do about the grass that died, but since I often find myself standing at the back window looking out at the shimmering emerald of the lawn in front of the bench and feeling calm settle over me, I decided it was worth keeping up with the lawn as a mental health aid, if nothing else. At the worst, I’ll have to replant some of it every year for a while as well as digging up the invading Bermuda grass, but you never know — this seed might be as heat tolerant as it claims to be. Still, the sun in this corner of Colorado can be fierce, made even more searing by low humidity and high winds, so I won’t blame the grass if it has a hard time establishing itself along the path where it gets no shade. Oddly, even the plants that supposedly need to be grown in full sun do better around here with a bit of shade, perhaps because the shade keeps the moisture in the soil a bit longer.

Because of the volatile weather pattern this spring — temperatures ranging from the twenties to the nineties with almost daily high winds — most of my tulips are stunted. The exception is this small patch that is in the shade most of the time.

I am hoping that if I water the remaining tulips copiously on the very hot days they will still bloom, but I have no idea what will happen. It could be too late in the season for them to recover.

Gardening in this corner of Colorado is certainly a challenge, but I am learning, paying attention to what grows best and where, what need extra care, and what plants that don’t seem to want to thrive no matter what I do. Luckily, plenty of plants seem to like it here, which makes the whole project a joy. Heartbreaking at times, of course, but overall, a joy.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.