Jaci Dawn

Thank God it is raining! I would never get anything done inside the house if not for the rain – and I have so much to do inside the house. Rain has forced me to:

1. file Federal and State Taxes.

2. Work on my novel (I’m at a hard part, deciding what stays and what goes).

3. Work on my plan for my art (which is a much longer post and therefore that’s all you get to know about that.

Just a doodle, really. By working on art, I don’t mean actually creating. I need to work on my website and a shop where I can sell my images.

The nicer weather pulls me outside. I have weeded almost all of the flower beds, pulled up sod out of the front (and newest) flower bed, raked off the leaves from under the rhododendrons, cut back the black-cap raspberry bush (old canes, a job which requires leather gloves and long sleeves), sorted all the garden fencing & peony support rings, dead-headed everything left over from last autumn, and… you get the picture.

I’m a woman obsessed when the weather warms up and I can be OUTSIDE. I ordered two roses from Jackson Perkins: one arrived and I have planted it, but it has yet to show signs of life (but neither has my grape vine and it always surprises me late in May with sudden buds). I ordered a hops plant, but it has yet to be shipped. Rose #2 should be arriving this month as well, according to the JP website. I put my Rose of Sharon in the ground (I love these beautiful shrubs! The flowers look a bit like hollyhocks. I picked this baby up at a yard sale and she’s got pink-purple double blooms).

Monday, I asked my husband if he’d like to go to a local nursery. I thought I knew right where it was, but it wasn’t there. It’s about five miles from home, along a little frontage road that takes one into the village of Willamette (will.AM.ette), which is actually part of West Linn to the west of home. Willamette has a 20MPH speed limit through town, lots of cutesy shops, crosswalks, and a 30MPH speed limit to the very limits of the village (where the Tualatin River passes under a bridge. Tualatin is pronounced pretty much as it is written.

That’s where I thought the nursery was. Nope. We drove on out the frontage road and passed a commercial nursery (we’ve shopped there before – yawn) and no sign of the one we were seeking. We back-tracked and took a side road. Crossed the freeway and came back to the frontage road. We even tried driving into West Linn to see if maybe we had faulty memories: nope.

Two things: 1) we mis-remembered having ever been to this nursery before and 2) I didn’t have my phone with me out of deference to my husband who hates smart phones – but he asked me why we couldn’t just look it up on my phone and follow the directions.

We tried again after lunch and after my husband googled the address of the place. We’d never been there before. Go figure.

The road it is on does NOT have a road sign on the main road – we went with “the second left turn after crossing the Tualatin River” . We turned, we drove up, we parked.

Bosky Dell Nursery.

It’s freaking awesome. Native plants. As in: acclimatized to the wet Willamette Valley and shade to part-shade gardens. Great prices. We spent more than an hour there, wandering and drooling.

I wanted an evergreen huckleberry bush to fit into an impossible little spot in my garden. Blue huckleberry, not red. $30. It’s already in a nice shape and about 18″ tall. Lots of blossoms. Loves shade/partial shade.

Don decided he wanted a red-flowering currant. I killed the last one he dug up in the woods for me, and I have no idea how. I had one at our previous home and you couldn’t kill it. They’re very pretty, very native, and grow a lot in the right conditions. Found one in a $20 pot, but they charged us $10 because the one we picked had died back so much. I have a perfect shade/part shade spot for it.

Then we stumbled onto a blue elderberry. I LOVE elderberries. Growing up, they were a high altitude plant that bore berries late (October). The best use of elderberry is syrup, which is jelly that doesn’t quire gel. Those of you who have grown up with wild elderberry know how that goes – the berry is touchy about gelling. I had a secret patch near where we lived before we moved here. They like sun and drought. I have a place for that, too.

They’re sitting in a wagon, waiting for the rains to ease up a bit to be planted.

Total cost: $50.

I’m dying to go out and plant them.