Jaci Dawn

In typical graceful fashion, I fell flat on my face on the sidewalk Friday night. Ker plat! Well, I managed to catch myself with my hands & knee. I figured the worst would be a scraped knee (and bruised ego, but no one was looking and I only confessed to Don when I met him for dinner). But, no – I just hadn’t begun to feel the effects of my fall. By Saturday morning my upper arms were very sore. By Saturday evening, my left shoulder felt wrenched out of place and some muscles on my ribs had been sorely stretched. By today… let’s just say that I was not interested in any sort of physical work that involved using my left arm! I hate growing old.

But the bonus to the pain was that I could easily nix going out an picking mushrooms today. Not that I dislike picking mushrooms: I like to go. Just not today.

I decided I wanted to go for a drive up the valley to some favorite garden nurseries. I live where “up” is south and “down” is north, so driving up the valley means a long drive south. (All the major rivers in the state of Oregon flow north to the Columbia River: the Snake, the John Day, the Deschutes, and the largest that flows entirely within the state of Oregon, the Willamette. The Snake is not entirely within Oregon, but flows between Idaho and Oregon. Since we live near the mouth of the Willamette, driving south means to drive uphill or toward the headwaters of the Willamette. I know: it confuses me, too.)

We stopped in Woodburn and then we drove on up to Albany.

It was a gorgeous day, but the thunderheads were constantly on the horizon, moving steadily in from the south and east.

The nurseries were crowded with people, too: Mother’s Day is a busy day at garden nurseries in the Willamette Valley.

I didn’t have time to reminisce about my mom or to sit and feel sorry for myself because my should hurts. And we found so many things we want in our garden, from wisteria to clematis to dogwoods to espalier pear trees. All of which we did not purchase lacking the means to get them home (we’d need to take the pickup, methinks).

I did buy some plants, however. I couldn’t resist. At Al’s Garden Nursery (in Woodburn, which is the closest Al’s to us and on our way – I write that for my friend Jodi’s benefit), we found this interesting red flower: Armeria ‘Joystick Red’. There were several blooms on it and they are striking little balls of red that make great cut flowers or nice dried flowers for crafts in the wintertime. They bloom all summer, something my garden needs.

From Woodburn on south, we took the I-5 which sounds dull, but it plows straight through some scenic farmlands (marred only by political billboards and signs: I hate election years).  Past fields of hops, wheat, irises, grass and past fields being plowed, over hills covered in Scotch broom (ah choo!), oak forests and fir trees, wild lupins in bloom, and dreamy floating “cotton” from the cottonwood trees (ah-choo! ah-choo!). We drove on down to Garland’s Nursery in Albany.

Garland’s has one of the best Bonsai collections of any nursery we have been to in the Willamette Valley. But we weren’t there to buy bonsai.

We did leave with some plants, but only after we walked dreamily through all the nursery. I picked up two small rosemary plants that I am going to pot and force into a topiary design ( a large circle: each plant will grow up one side of the wire & meet in the middle. We selected small varieties of rosemary that only grow to 18-24″).

I found some blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) that I can divide and add to my garden. Blue-eyed grass is an Oregon native and very pretty when it blooms.

But the plant coup of the day was a ceanothus ‘Italian skies’.

I’m having a heck of a time locating a good website to direct you to so you can see one. I found a French site with the best photos (but the site is written entirely in French). Wikipedia has a good site, but the photos are not that great and the last one is of ceanothus as I know it in the wild: a white flower. A white stinky flower.

My ceanothus will be blue. Very blue. (Pronounced “see-uh-no-thus”: say it a few times and it starts to fall off the tongue in a sing-song way).

It will stink like the wild ones I am familiar with, but it is not an unpleasant stink: just a heavy sweet scent. I also learned that the blue ceanothus are native to some parts of Oregon; I just am not familiar with them.

We dreamed of ponds and garden furniture, too, but those will have to be for another time.

We turned around and headed back north, racing against the looming thunderheads. Looks like our sunny days are at an end for another little while. I’m just itching to put my new plants into the ground and to enjoy their blossoms!