My new and all-consuming passion for gardening continued in 1989. I had discovered species tulips and ordered bulbs for the first time the previous autumn from the Van Engelen catalog. I remember planting dozens of bulbs in fall weather so cold that my hands hurt and I would have to go in the house and hold them under warm water. Here came the results!
species tulips in the parking strip garden
From the attic window of our housemate, Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire:
Wilum’s view
parking strip
back garden wall
Above: my attempt to copy the rock design of Reflective Gardens in Ballard (see end of this post). Left: The little round rock mortared walls in the back garden had been created in the garden by my grandmother, during the time when she asked each of her many friends to bring her a round rock every time they visited.
The back of the house had a bedroom and breakfast nook made out of an old porch, and Wilum could access its almost flat roof from the attic’s back door. (I had also had a drop down ladder stairway to the attic installed in the house; in my Grandma’s day the only access was a outdoor ladder to the roof.) Below: Wilum’s backyard view.
view from Wilum’s roof looking uphill
How I loved the peaceful view over the neighbour’s yards and the alley. Sometimes I would sit with Wilum up there. A couple of years later new neighbours built a horrible (to me) two story deck over that lawn, forever compromising the privacy of my secret back garden. AND a hot tub right outside my bedroom window, which was below this roof. That is possibly one reason I became ready to move away. (If anyone is wondering, the house is on N 66th between Dayton and Fremont. Sometimes I have a poignant look at it on Google earth.)
looking from the back roof down through the pear tree
Wilum’s roof view with pear tree and lilac
Pear blossoms have such a distinctive bitter-sweet scent. I used to bring branches inside to force, and have planted a baby Bartlett pear in my Ilwaco garden in hopes of experiencing that again before I die.
Narcissi by the pear tree
My grandmother had had patio all around the tree but I dug up that area and turned it into garden.
front garden, April, with Orson
parking strip April 1999
Parking strip, April, looking downhill.
Above: Eventually I would take over that strip of grass that was technically my neighbours. I soon felt I needed a bigger garden and soon ran out of space for all my new plants!
Angelique tulips in May
the pink one
Above: Oenothera battandieri. Significant because in Ann Lovejoy’s lecture the previous summer she had recommended this plant. I was trying to write it down phonetically, having never heard much botanical Latin before…(“Ee-noth-er-ah??”) and she just said “ask for the pink one.”
foxglove and columbine by the pear tree in May
back garden with irises
above: In May, looking back from the alley gate. I had cut down two huge camellias to open up the patio to sunshine. Wisteria in bloom by the back porch. There is still one big camella next to the path around the side of the house.
Oriental poppies in the front garden
parking strip: I still was not too much of a plant snob about gladiolas.
lilies and bachelor buttons
Lily ‘Purple Waters’
Some conflict in my marriage had resulted from my gardening obsession. From my point of view, I was getting more annoyed that while Chris would always want me to listen to the latest poem, song, or story he had written, and while I often accompanied him to spoken word and open mike nights where he would read or sing, he showed almost no interest in the transitory art of my making a garden.
The passion flower in the lower right of photo below led to an ultimatum; when he had no desire to even come have a look at the thrilling moment when it had finally bloomed, I told him I was not going to read another thing he had written until he took some interest in my garden, at least enough to come outside to look at a flower. This was my own passion flower! I had seen one blooming on the side of a building in Ballard (see previous entry) and now I had my very own.
Clematis and Passiflora on the greenhouse
That conversation seemed to get my feeling across effectively, and he began to try to get more involved in the garden and built this wacky arbour more or less to my design at the front entry.
rake arbour
And he found and installed a small stained glass window into the back fence.
Chris’s window
Another effective strategy: When I completely tired of him sitting dispiritedly on a pile of potting soil bags every time we went to a nursery, I demonstrated sitting in glum boredom on a box the next time we went to a record shop (his passion).
Verbascum at Gil’s
He understood. We even began to go on a few garden visits together. At Gil Schieber‘s garden in Ballard, I saw Verbascum for the very first time.
I had plant fever and looked everywhere…garden books, nurseries, and other people’s gardens…for plants new to me.
Dahlias at a south Seattle garden
Canterbury Rose, summer 89
The previous winter I had started to order roses from the lovely Roses of Yesterday and Today catalog and in summer I adored their flowers.
Iceberg rose and goldenrod
The goldenrod was a leftover of my Gram’s garden: she grew it and asters outside the fence right along the alley. They towered over me when I was a child.
rosebud
I think the above rose was on one of my Grandmother’s surviving rose bushes, possibly one she called Lulu.
Casablanca Lily
I had never even heard of lilies like this before seeing them in catalogs the previous fall. To my amazement, I could grow such exotic flowers outdoors.
sweet peas and roses by the greenhouse
back garden with sit spot
late summer: dahlias by the greenhouse
dahlia in front garden, autumn
front steps, autumn
Thus ends my first full year of garden obsession.
- flowers picked in October ’89
Tangly Cottage Gardening 