What survives the storms.

I used to like this patch of yard, rose arbor, benches, views. It fit me fine after all the stuff that kept dying from too much water, or too much wind,  or too many pests on this patch of dirt. One year was slugs; then moles; then, baby deer who managed to crawl under the fence and spend the night trapped inside with lots of tender shoots to keep them busy. I found them in the morning, two  tiny rabbit-like mouths, having eaten anything tender, their mother waiting for them outside the fence, watching them the whole time.

This area would be under water most winters, but the Cecil Brunner rose kept growing, and soon an arbor was purchased to contain its exuberance.

The rose was a cutting given to me by someone I barely met, a would-be gardener like m. She too had come to the sea to spend her last years, easily frustrated by the winds, the deer, the constant rain, the little sun, but still attempting to garden by the sea.

She didn't tell me that she was gravely ill. Nancy died the following spring, and this rose, growing beyond her pot, and her border, kept reminding me that life was incomprehensible in its cruelty, and most generous in its beauty.

 After every winter, roses were pruned and staked, dirt rototilled; new plants and amendments added. In the winter of 2011 the whole place was blown over, arbor destroyed, broken in many parts, bushes and trees uprooted, tender roots waterlogged.

As I write this post, my rose is dead. It did not survive the summer transplanting of 2012, when so many people moved, tilled, built.

It had survived so many storms, such intemperate events, and  had continued to bloom under so many difficult conditions. I'm hoping the cutting I took might survive this winter.

Eager for sunny days.

It has been raining and storming for days and days since January. The prospect of six months of indoor life was not what this cat knew in her old days in California.

We are all stuck in the house, waiting for small breaks when we can run out and explore. Here, we are down the path to the boat house, Newkie sniffing around at the tool shed. A minute ago she was whining from the deck, uncomfortable about coming down, begging me to return to her.

She scampers off to this wood pile, and loses herself in the hunt.

She doesn't care for wet surfaces, avoids any creek bed on purpose, jumping over them if they have just been rained on. She has yet to discover slugs and fish and frogs and...

In a month or so, when the rainy season slows down to a trickle and then leaves us for six months, the arbors will rise in my front yard, a new creek bed will join the pond by the front yard,  and Newkie will have a north facing playground to climb on, jump in,  sniff around.
Perhaps, she'll dip her paw in some wet stuff and begin to enjoy the watery world she lives in.
 
She wants to go out first thing in the morning, eager for me to get out of bed and open the door for her. She stands there and sniffs the rain for a while, then returns to her warm bed by the heater.
  

Harmony.

What I like most about gardening is how it makes me feel when  touching dirt, digging holes, pulling weeds.
While my hands are working to clear a patch of land, my eyes see the finished task ahead of me, the vines that will develop from those seedlings, the fruit of those vines that will transported up to the house to become our lunch.

Gardening is all about work with hope.  It depends on our hands, our careful tending, our divining the weather and preparing the right mixture of sand and loam to nourish those tiny roots.

Gently nudging  in concert with mother nature, we try to control as many elements as possible so that we may live by the fruit of our labor, the sweat of our brows: tender shoots are hand watered, predators kept at bay. We are gentle mothers and fathers.  If we can nurture our bodies through this activity, we are truly blessed and satisfied.

Every year I have great plans, great satisfaction and abject disappointment too. Every year, some things die, some things sprout out naturally and miraculously, and some things just take off and invade all my wildest dreams.

The picture above was from last summer's winter squash patch. I harvested so many zucchini, delicata squashes and winter melons that my daughter and  neighbors were kept well stocked/
We accept the results of gardening with grace and patience. We are surprised by abundance, humbled by failure and work cooperatively with the seasons and the elements.