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[GWL]: Another reason for quiet list

Title: Another reason for quiet list

I have been writing a garden column every single week for 25 years running...never missed a week.  As the Cal Ripkin of garden columnists I had to struggle with this week's column:


I don 't much feel like writing a garden column any more than I feel like
gardening right now.

 It might be different if this was the beginning of the season, full of
expectations of great and beautiful things from trusted perennials and high
hopes and plans for new annuals, green lawns and flowering shrubs. Leaves
would be growing on the trees instead of falling off.

The end of the gardening season in Alaska is none of those things. It is
usually wet, sometimes damp and almost always just a little too chilly. With
school's return, there never seems to be any help around from family and
there are always other obligations that get in the way of completing tasks.

And then it gets dark.  It is not so much the cold weather, but rather the
shorter days that really do us in.

 It is cleaning up garden beds, putting away tools, raking leaves, and
draining hoses. If you are like me, you have all sorts of rakes, spades,
trowels, mowers, hoses and stuff  that needs to be put away before either
they freeze or freeze to the ground.

 This means you have to find some place to put things and this has to be in
places where they won't get in the way of getting to winter stuff .  This
invariably leads to a round of unexpected cleaning to make room that is as
much work as any other gardening chore. And who among us has the energy to
be excited about any of these things right now, anyhow.

Even during normal times, (whatever that really means), putting gardens to
bed for the long winter, finally deciding to cut back the last few flowers
and harvesting those little heads of broccoli, is at least a cheerless
chore.   These are somber acts, underlain by an acknowledgement that for too
long a time there isn't going to much by way of color outdoors. The days are
getting shorter.

Nonetheless, putting the gardens to bed is a chore that must be undertaken.
Besides, I thought, working to put things in order last weekend would force
me to leave the television coverage and get outdoors. Like you, I needed a
breather, time to think by myself, as we all did and naturally, I turned to
the garden for that time. I am sure many of you, no matter how reluctantly,
found time to be in your garden as well.

 I thought that substituting the TV remote with a rake might help bring me
back to reality. It hardly seemed possible that there was a real world
outside of the tragic one of New York and Washington, D.C seen live, in
every living room in the United States.

Last weekend there was the sun, a gorgeous blue sky and the yellowing leaves
of an Alaskan fall; the first crystal-clear, Alaskan fall day and a real
world out here, far, far away from New York.

The gardening-imposed news blackout allowed my daughter and I to become
absorbed in our own thoughts as we labored to cut down and remove the row of
spent delphiniums.  With hollow stems snapping and seeds falling from the
ripened flowers, I remembered watching the World Trade Centers being built,
walked by them as they were going up. I still couldn't really, really
believe it.

We were silent, each into our own thoughts, pulling and clipping away when
we heard and then looked up to see a big jumbo jet, flying low against that
crystal-clear blue sky, on its way to landing at Ted Stevens.

We both realized that even gardening would never be the same for us.



___________________________________________________________________
Jeff's Alaskan garden calendar for the week of September 21,2001
Spring Flowering Bulbs: Plant tulips, daffodils, squills, galanthus, grape
hyacinths outdoors.  Mulch once planted.
Clean-up:  It has to be done. Pull annuals, mark perennials, harvest all but
potatoes (oh, go ahead if you must) and Brussels sprouts.
Leaves: It is easier to clean up if you do it in stages instead of waiting
for all to fall.
Hoses: Don't forget to drain yours. Prevent frozen pipes by closing off
outdoor faucets. Disconnect all hoses, even if they are drained, if you do
nothing else. 




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