Gardeners serve up their 2005 resolutions
Oh boy, did I open a can of worms. I asked a few gardeners if they had any New Year’s gardening resolutions and it was like taking the cork out a well-shaken bottle of champagne. Some were thoughtful and full of the best intentions. Some were desperate and very honest. Some were just hilarious and the stories behind them even better.
Cinde Johnson, who in her work life rides herd on the group of cats otherwise known as the WSU Spokane County Master Gardeners, wants to “start keeping my toilet as clean as my birdbath and become as familiar with the vacuum cleaner as I am with the garden hoe.”
She also wants to try to “understand that nursery plants are not homeless creatures that I must rescue, and to stop putting Albertsons or Safeway in the checkbook register when the check was actually written to a garden store.” Good luck Cinde.
Ann Murphy, who serves as the recycling education specialist with the Spokane Regional Solid Waste System, wants to “Compost more of my yard and garden debris so that I produce less waste, and then have a wonderful soil amendment for my garden. I would expand my resolution to include maintaining a worm bin for vermicomposting to add that wonderfully rich nutrient to the garden as well.” Given that she oversees the Master Composter program, this is a good example of putting principle into practice.
Cathi Lamoreux, whose traffic-stopping garden on 65th Avenue on Spokane’s South Hill is a gardeners’ garden, has a long but admirable list for someone who says she doesn’t do resolutions. She wants to:
Complete my horticultural therapy certificate and actually put that knowledge into practice.
Help my daughter with her large vegetable garden so that we can contribute to Plant a Row for the Hungry.
Continue the removal of the beautiful, but aggressive anemone sylvestris which is taking over a couple of my gardens.
And lastly, to first and foremost, view my garden as a place of solace, vision and joy.
Sandra Nuesse, who gardens on a fairly new patch of rocks near Chattaroy, slept on my request and came up with the resolution to try “to contract with Fear Factor for cutworm cocktails.” Then she got serious on me and added:
“To finish and maintain current projects before inventing new ones – I just love dreaming up new projects, so the boundaries I set at first on this big piece of ground keeps expanding!” That’s no sooner said than she says that she needs to expand the corn patch because her sons seem to bring girlfriends who like fresh corn on the cob home for Sunday dinner.
Another old friend, Jenny Gibbs, who had to take over the role of gardener this year after losing her husband Dean to a heart attack, showed some pretty strong resolve:
I will spray my seven apple trees more than once and therefore have a worm-free harvest.
I will organize my gardening tools, supplies, chemicals and hoses so I can find what I need, when I need it.
I will fertilize my lawn evenly so it isn’t zebra-striped (although I’m beginning to think that look is attractive…).
Go for it Jenny, you are doing a fine job.
Gary Polser, a WSU Spokane County Master Gardener who, with his wife Carol, shares their garden with deer resolved “to not even consider getting the deer rifle out when the spring tulips pop out of the ground.” Good luck Gary.
Karen Bonaudi, assistant executive director of the Washington Potato Commission kept it short and simple: “Plant earlier – eat sooner!”
Phyllis Stephens, famous garden maven for KXLY TV and radio wants to: “Keep the house as neat as the yard.” If you really figure out how to do that Phyllis, you can retire! Can I be your agent?
She went on to add that this winter she wants to get organized enough to find the rug and floor in her office. She is going to do this by going through six old magazines a day. How old are these magazines? Remember when Organic Gardening Magazine came as a 5-by-7-inch publication?
Down in Tekoa, Wash., Hillary Lawson who runs Balloon Biz wants to “get her husband to put up a new fence in the back yard.” It seems she asked for it for Mother’s Day and her birthday last year. Fortunately for her husband a leak has developed in the basement that, had he finished the fence on the first request, he would have had to take it down to get to the foundation.
Laura “River” Reid, a polymer clay artist from Tensed, Idaho, thought about my request for a minute and then chose her words carefully to say “Never garden without gloves where the neighborhood cats come calling.” On a brighter note she also wants to make more friends with people who have rocks so she can make more sculptures with and “plant something new each year – as long as it’s purple.”
And my resolution you ask? That all of you readers will let me continue to tell stories and share ideas with you. Happy New Year folks.