I have a handful of garden chairs stacked in the porch area of my country home, and from time to time lift the topmost  from the stack, dust it off, and carry it through dew-spangled grass to a point below the  fruit trees and above the garden, where a vista opens across the neighbor's field to a bluff, or ridge, locally called Jasper Mountain, in the distance. 

The ridgeline has changed shape a bit over the years, due to human activity. There has been intermittent logging there over the last century and a half, beginning with the harvesting of giant Douglas firs, some over eight feet in diameter, which were cut with long two-man handsaws known as misery whips, and more lately of second-growth or even third-growth timber, efficiently reduced to second-grade lumber and "fiber" by highly capitalized and industrialized systems requiring generous doses of petroleum for their operation. 

A few houses have appeared there also, no doubt built with lumber hauled from somewhere far removed from the ridge and its sometime groves. These homes are expansive, two or even three stories in height, with cupolas and dormers, with each a large veranda and no doubt a swimming pool in the back.

To get to these homesites, roads several miles long were added to the existing network of what were originally logging access roads, removing still more forest cover from the steep slopes, and adding to the burden of silt in the numerous rivulets working their way down from the ridgeline to the river below, which I cannot see from my seat by the garden, but which makes its presence felt by the line of tall black cottonwoods and Oregon ash that runs along the base of the ridge.

The river is stressed -- not nearly so much so as at Portland, a hundred miles or more downstream, with its three-eyed fish -- but where running water is concerned, such stresses are cumulative over distance. Wherever we find them, it is possible to regard them with interest. 

I can also see changes in the massive promontory that gives the mountain its name.

The rock there is relatively high quality, a greenish basalt that makes good gravel for roads and construction sites. A quarry has been built into the face of the mountain, and a road, discreetly hidden among firs and big-leaf maples, provides access for huge dump trucks and wide-bladed dozers with gigantic diesel engines. These I cannot see or hear from my place, but from time to time an explosion gently rocks the valley, and for a few minutes the mountain resembles a small volcano, as the powdered stone drifts along the ridge and down to the long line of cottonwoods.

The quarry does not much spoil the looks of the promontory, because from this distance -- or even up close -- it looks like nothing so much as a natural scree slope somewhere in the high Cascades just east of here. But this, too, with its road and its heavy equipment, adds to the burden of silt, with trace hydrocarbons and heavy metals as well, in the watershed. 

Almost no one here can earn a living from farming now.

We are an amalgam of loggers, retirees, and commuters. The commuters are of two classes: the professionals -- doctors, dentists, and the like -- and the rest. These are mostly school teachers, store clerks, and office workers. I am in this last group.

Regardless of category, almost every one of us has a garden. I can see the gardens from the mountaintop: at every house, a brown patch within easy access of the kitchen door. Some of us have enough pasture for a horse or two, or a few steers; I have room for a flock of ducks and geese; but if there is nothing else, there is a garden. Gardens here have a priority over lawns. This is a thing that I greatly admire in my neighbors.

Dogen tells the story of Great Master Zhenji, who met with a newly arrived monk. 

Last night, not content with the flats already seeded, I stepped out to the greenhouse and planted two hanging baskets with cilantro, and a gallon pot with chives. I have been running low on potting soil, so built up the bottom layer in these containers with sphagnum moss, then a few inches of soil, then broadcast the seeds, then shook all down, then covered seed with a thin layer of peat, then watered gently. I hung the baskets on twentypenny nails long ago driven into the rafters nearest the greenhouse window, sorted pots for a while, then swept the herringbone-patterned floor. I also brought in last year's planter of lavendar and trimmed its dead growth; perhaps there's still something doing in the roots. 

The night is restless; there's a storm front in the area, boiling in beneath the jet stream from somewhere near Hawai'i. Waves are undoubtedly smashing a little higher than usual at the cape, and in the mountains new snow is covering the tracks of the more venturesome animals. I find myself visualizing this, then catch my imagery sliding to a closeup of blood on the snow: a vole taken up by an owl, perhaps. If I hoped to find peace in the night, well, perhaps I brought my own unrest with me. There are sharp doings in the world; so many of us wishing ill upon so many others. 

I have just finished proofing Montaigne's essay on "Coaches," in which he strays magnificently into a long and detailed critical analysis of the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru, implying throughout that the Europeans had, by means of technological advances only, conquered a culture equal to or better than their own in almost every other way. He recounts the torture and death of the Inca king:

The king, half rosted, was carried away: Not so much for pitty (for what ruth could ever enter so barbarous mindes, who upon the furnished information of some odde piece or vessell of golde they intended to get, would broyle a man before their eyes, and not a man onely, but a king, so great in fortune and so renowned in desert?), but for as much as his unmatched constancy did more and more make their inhumane cruelty ashamed, they afterwards hanged him, because he had couragiously attempted by armes to deliver himselfe out of so long captivity and miserable subjection; where he ended his wretched life, worthy an high minded and never danted Prince. At another time, in one same fire, they caused to be burned all alive foure hundred common men and threescore principall Lords of a Province, whom by the fortune of warre they had taken prisoners. These narrations we have out of their owne bookes, for they do not onely avouch, but vauntingly publish them. May it bee they doe it for a testimony of their justice or zeale toward their religion? Verily they are wayes over-different and enemies to so sacred an ende.

   Let us then consider, first of all, what will be their way of life, now that we have thus established them. Will they not produce corn, and wine, and clothes, and shoes, and build houses for themselves? And when they are housed, they will work, in summer, commonly, stripped and barefoot, but in winter substantially clothed and shod. They will feed on barley-meal and flour of wheat, baking and kneading them, making noble cakes and loaves; these they will serve up on a mat of reeds or on clean leaves, themselves reclining the while upon beds strewn with yew or myrtle. And they and their children will feast, drinking of the wine which they have made, wearing garlands on their heads, and hymning the praises of the gods, in happy converse with one another. And they will take care that their families do not exceed their means ... (Jowett, tr.)

   Yes, Socrates, he said, and if you were providing for a city of pigs, how else would you feed the beasts?
   But what would you have, Glaucon? I replied.
   Why, he said, you should give them the ordinary conveniences of life. People who are to be comfortable are accustomed to lie on sofas, and dine off tables, and they should have sauces and sweets in the modern style.

   Yes, I said, now I understand: the question which you would have me consider is, not only how a State, but how a luxurious State is created; and possibly there is no harm in this, for in such a State we shall be more likely to see how justice and injustice originate. In my opinion the true and healthy constitution of the State is the one which I have described. But if you wish also to see a State at fever heat, I have no objection. For I suspect that many will not be satisfied with the simpler way. They will be for adding sofas, and tables, and other furniture; also dainties, and perfumes, and incense, and courtesans, and cakes, all these not of one sort only, but in every variety; we must go beyond the necessaries of which I was at first speaking, such as houses, and clothes, and shoes: the arts of the painter and the embroiderer will have to be set in motion, and gold and ivory and all sorts of materials must be procured.
   True, he said. 
   Then we must enlarge our borders; for the original healthy State is no longer sufficient. Now will the city have to fill and swell with a multitude of callings which are not required by any natural want; such as the whole tribe of hunters and actors, of whom one large class have to do with forms and colours; another will be the votaries of music --poets and their attendant train of rhapsodists, players, dancers, contractors; also makers of divers kinds of articles, including women's dresses. And we shall want more servants. Will not tutors be also in request, and nurses wet and dry, tirewomen and barbers, as well as confectioners and cooks; and swineherds, too, who were not needed and therefore had no place in the former edition of our State, but are needed now? They must not be forgotten: and there will be animals of many other kinds, if people eat them. [Emphasis added.]
   Certainly.

   And living in this way we shall have much greater need of physicians than before?
   Much greater.
   And the country which was enough to support the original inhabitants will be too small now, and not enough?
   Quite true.
   Then a slice of our neighbours' land will be wanted by us for pasture and tillage, and they will want a slice of ours, if, like ourselves, they exceed the limit of necessity, and give themselves up to the unlimited accumulation of wealth?
   That, Socrates, will be inevitable.
   And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not? [Emphasis added.]

Today the sun came out for the first time since I don't know when. The ground rises to the east of the house, and a morning-coffee glance through the living room window revealed a jewelled world -- heavy dew on the rumpled grass, which has grown during the last month, and on the leafless lilac bushes, and the neighbor's apple orchard. Rainbow hues glinted from the drops, and the glow suffused the house like a dream of a better world.

These lilacs, when they bloom, are of a purple-hued variety, and all the lilacs around all the houses hereabouts are of the same kind.

The originals were planted by the first family to arrive here, not long after the original pioneers in our end of the valley. They built a post-and-beam two-story house in the midst of three hundred and twenty acres of Douglas fir forest. Not old growth, interestingly enough: the Calapooya Indians, who had lived here for centuries, periodically burned over the valley floor, to keep it open for game and for defense. But these trees were certainly large, and there were a lot of them; their shade was dense, and it would be a while before this could be farm land. The men, taking stock of their situation, immediately contracted to provide firewood for all the one-room schoolhouses in the area, and fell to work with axe and crosscut. As the clearing around the house grew, the women installed plants they had brought with them: vinca, daffodils, lilacs.

The original house, and the forest that sustained it, have been gone for decades. But the plants remain; the original lilacs form a semicircle around a pile of foundation stones which were used to fill in the cellar, and the vinca and daffodils cover the area. It's part of our neighbors' pasture now.

My house was built in the year I was born, 1949, by one of the descendants of the woodcutting family, and his wife grew the lilacs that are by my front door from cuttings from the pioneer plants. All her neighbors appear to have been invited to do the same. The family across the road have a thick, healthy-looking hedge of them.
 
When we arrived here, the homeyard lilacs were much in need of pruning back, as the winds were scraping them against the house. I went after them with the pruners, taking out dead wood, crossed branches and the like, and noticed that suckers had formed around the root collars of the ancient bushes. These had been cut back, and had resprouted, innumerable times, and the root collars had thickened considerably, providing room for yet more suckers to form.

I was about to cut the latest ones away, when an idea came to me -- would they form roots if I hilled up earth around them? I brought a barrow-load of dirt and piled it round the bases of the lilacs, and went on to other tasks.

Weeks -- or it must have been months -- later, I remembered my experiment and went to the lilacs with a trowel to see how the suckers were coming along. Sure enough, they had formed roots. Cutting the main stems away from the parent, I was able to replant a number of them into number ten tomato cans in the potting shed/greenhouse, where they stayed until dormancy the following winter. I remembered them just in time, before bud break, and set them out at the corners of the house. They have all done well, and I am filled with admiration at the hardiness and adaptability of these pioneers of the valley. I hope our own transplanting here will be as successful.

The lilac has long been hybridized and there are now well over 500 varieties. For best results, plant them in fall, or no later than February, with some compost and bone meal in the hole, which should be spacious enough not to crowd the roots. Top dress biannually with compost, but remember to add some pine or fir needles, or other acid material, from time to time. If you feel that the acidity isn't benefiting the plant enough, you can use a trick that works well for rhododendrons and azaleas: add apple parings to the top dressing and stick a few rusty nails (not galvanized) underneath.

March

Isaac Walton's "Piscator," in the Complete Angler, advises his young friend thus: 

Let me tell you, scholar, that Diogenes walked on a day, with his friend, to see a country-fair; where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks: and having observed them, and all the other finnimbruns that make a complete country-fair; he said to his friend, "Lord! How many things are there in this world, of which Diogenes hath no need!" And truly it is so, or might be so, with very many who vex and toil themselves to get what they have no need of. Can any man charge God that he hath not given him enough to make his life happy? No, doubtless; for nature is content with a little. And yet you shall hardly meet with a man that complains not of some want; though he, indeed, wants nothing but his will, it may be, nothing but his will of his poor neighbour, for not worshipping, or not flattering him: and thus, when we might be happy and quiet, we create trouble to ourselves.

If I pick up a pebble and look at it, I see one thing. If I pick up another pebble, and look at it, I see one thing. If there were no me, these things would lie there, until moved by wind or water, or diminished by these, and the action of sunshine, until they became sand. They are not appreciable as two things of the same kind unless observed by an entity capable of categorizing.

Plants, and relatively simple animals such as hydras, do seem to be capable of categorizing, though we don't tend to think of this as an intellectual activity.

Plants, and animals lacking a central nervous system, categorize by means of immanent statistics.

Some survive, some don't, and those that survive may pass on their genes, with the result that the continued existence of those genes is in itself a record, passively, of there being sets of circumstances favorable to such passing on.

It's not that the fittest survive. It's that those whose circumstances did not finish them off survive. You may not be the fittest, but if you're still here, well, cool.

But a common denominator for a lot of survivors is the utilization, whether accidentally or purposively, of something like set theory: the successful organism found or avoided like things, such as a certain species of predator or annual temperature range.

The next stage beyond passive information gathering is active information gathering. A trout can experiment with sensory data; the object fluttering on the surface of the water, refracting light as it goes, may be a protein-rich insect. If, however, the object, in a number of instances, proves to be a small wad of chicken neck feathers wrapped on a sharp-tipped bit of wire with thread and glue, the trout, if it successfully shakes these off, may in time come to be an old and wise trout.

So, as I am a creature with active information-gathering systems, and the ability to compare, I look at the pebbles and see them as two pebbles.

I categorize.

I note differences, which is what senses are for, and if the differences are sufficiently minor I take the intellectual leap of concluding that for my purposes the pebbles are "the same."

I can gather like pebbles, bore holes in them, and string them on rawhide to make a necklace. I can draw a face in the sand, put the pebbles in the face on either side, and mean them to be taken, by another observer, as a representation of eyes. I can count them: "one, two." These are immensely complex activities, not easily described in all their implications.

Without this capability to recognize, no complex animal would live long enough to pass on its genes. There would be no language, no speech, no writing, no art, no political process, and none of what we call spirituality.

And yet, at its, root, recognition embodies a bit of a falsehood.

This pebble, after all, isn't that pebble.

"There are no generals," asserted William Blake in the margins of a copy of Reynold's's book: "ONLY particulars!" The leap of metaphor is a momentary fiction, which is the fiction that makes possible for us all the discovery of what we call truth.

As I sit for a moment, watching the mists (which I "recognize" as mists) clearing away in the light of a rare sunrise from Jasper Mountain, I wonder where all this leads. Many conclusions are possible. One of them is that I could probably stand to be a little more tolerant of the fictions others live by, having so thoroughly rummaged through my own myths, and discovered their so tenuous hold on verifiability.

People in general are worthy of, I think, a good deal more respect than they usually get.

The tomatoes didn't pan out. I hovered over them with the mister till they keeled over, no doubt with damping-off. I shall have to go to the garden store and surreptitiously acquire replacements.

I put out peas and then got sick and couldn't cover them during the heavy rains, and they rotted.

I put out corn -- I know, it's early, some people never learn -- and it's been snowing up at the pass all day and hailing and pouring half-frozen rain here, and I'm sick again and didn't go out and cover the corn beds, and now I can hear the seeds drowning even as I write.

Gardeners are a masochistic lot -- or sadistic, depending on whether you consider their feelings or those of their seeds and transplants.

I looked out the window at the already tall grass that would be choking the irises if it hadn't been lodged by the constant wind and rain, and howled, or rather croaked: "my seeds are rotting! My garden is drowning!"

Beloved looked up from her easy chair, smiled beneficently, and replied ever so sweetly. "My garden is in the greenhouse, safe and snug."

It's true; that's where her whole garden is, including the pumpkin patch and the sunflowers, waiting for the real spring, which as anyone around here knows, starts sometime between June 1 and the 4th of July. She can do this because she's mastered the art of repotting.

Even in this weather, the greenhouse, which is nothing more than three sliding glass door panels mounted on frame lumber along the south side of the potting shed, is cozy during the day.

She kneels on her feedsack-pillow, trowel in hand, and repots from two-inch pots to four-inch, from four to eight, as needed, while her garden grows. I always manage to wait too late to do this; eventually I'll unpot a veggie only to find that the roots have grown about sixty feet long, or maybe a mile and a half, winding round-and-round the soil plug like thread on a spool. The effect on the growth of the plant is not unlike that of creating a bonsai tree by removing its taproot. I can produce little teeny tomato plants and little teeny zinnias this way, and probably should enter them in the County Fair -- in the contest about how not to garden.

Take a tip from Beloved and repot early.

She takes up, say, a flat of broccoli, thirty-two of them in two-inch pots, and makes sure she has nearby not two but four (try the math!) unoccupied flats and thirty-two four inch pots. A sack of potting mix rests close by, that has been mixed in a wheelbarrow at the rate of three sacks potting soil to one of steer manure and a bit of powdered limestone, and resting on the soil there is a number ten tomato can, which makes a fine cheap scoop.

She scoops up a canful of mix, slings some into the bottom of the first four-inch pot, turns a broccoli upside down, taps two sides of the two-inch pot, lifts it gently off the soil plug, rights the plant into the four-inch pot, shakes mix in on all four sides, tamps it down a bit for a snug fit (roots abhor two things: air and light) so that the top of the soil meets the root collar of the broccoli and is between 1/4 and 1/2 inch from the top edge of the pot, sets it in the new flat, and on to the next one.

This is much faster and simpler, really than the description, and the rhythm of it all is quite relaxing. I prefer doing this with Mozart or Bach in the background. She's more a Golden Oldies girl, but I've never heard Herman and the Hermits in the greenhouse; only the chuffing of the tomato can hitting the rich brown surface of the mix.

Abner, our White China gander, watches her angrily through the "lights" as she works, and when she reaches for the pots nearest him, tries to nip her through the glass, with a thump that's kind of pleasing to hear if you've ever been bitten by a goose.

The glass is stout enough to resist anything that Abner might contemplate, but there are situations that it was not built for. George, a sheep that lived with us for awhile, made this point very clear by escaping from his pasture one fine day. We got him surrounded, and he retreated into the greenhouse, from whence we thought to lead him on a bit of rope. He had other ideas, and sailed through the double-paned safety glass as if it wasn't there, scattering rainbow shards twenty feet in all directions.

Not a scratch on him, either.

And all this time the greenhouse had faced into the pasture. Made me think long and hard about which animals to put where. (The freezer, for example, turned out to be the best place for George.)

Working in the greenhouse pays dividends, though, in opportunities to watch the critters that we own and some we don't own. I've looked up from potting to see a mallard drake and his mate looking in on me from the goose pen, and I enjoy watching the swallows zipping up under the eaves to their nests not three feet from my head. And beyond, in the yard full of dandelions, there are the goldfinches.

Many people in our area prefer the word "lawn" to "yard" and every year they wallop the dandelions with a herbicide-laced fertilizer. So we're a kind of dandelion island in a sea of miniature golf courses. Goldfinches seem to love dandelion seeds above all else at this time of year, so we get to have all the goldfinches as our guests.

They descend upon the yard in troops of twenty, fifty, a hundred, eating, arguing, making love. A goldfinch will land on the seed stalk of a dandelion, barely bending it, and sweep the head clean of the tiny white parasol seeds in moments, then on to the next one. The males are dazzling, and I find myself moving from window to window to get a view of their plumage from a few feet away, empty pot in one hand, a naked plug of soil with a chard seedling held forgotten in the other.

It's a fine way to spend a Sunday afternoon, it really is.

 When I survey the acre of land with which we have surrounded ourselves, the oak and ash trees, rhododendron, hollyhock beds, barn, and house, I turn upon all these things a critic's eye, and keep ready to hand the pruning knife, fence hammer, and trim brush.

They do not yet appear to me as I see them in my mental eye, and I shape them toward an end which I acknowledge as mine, though I sometimes remember they serve other ends as well.

I shape the trees to my own pleasure. But so do children, for whom trees are for climbing. So do birds, whose need is nesting; so also carpenter ants, who must bring nectar to that vast colony somewhere in our eaves.

We knew, long ago, that we would come to such a place, with its diverse longings, so we called for a document to mark the beginning of our life together. Such a thing could be bought, but we both said, " oh, no, it must be hand made." We could see it as clearly as if it were already done.

Each could describe it to the other, and to the other it was the describing of a thing already seen. The young student who volunteered, who shaped our wedding scroll, our fractur, with its brave words, was commissioned also to frame it with a house and trees, flowers, birds, a sense of place in a clearing amid woods.

I think she understood this commission, this designing of a dream, that it was our weaving of a spell to catch our future, to make a future. And all who signed that Quaker wedding certificate, thirty-nine in number, understood: hope made visible. This is what art is, though we are living a time when it is not fashionable (at least among the intelligentsia) to say so.

We get, occasionally, a visitor who signed that document twenty years ago. There is a pause as we come, in the "tour," to the wedding certificate in its placeobove the mantel, and there is an almost invariable recognition. The trees, the house in a clearing, an unimpeded view of a mountain, a circling raptor. They smile.

"You were headed for this place the whole time, weren't you?"

Such a dream is a lot to put one's name to, so we owe our thirty-nine witnesses much.

I didn't know then, and maybe I don't know now, what the painting meant to those gathered round to hear our vows and sign their names. But it's enough to know they liked it, and still do, and so easily make the connection from it to our present life. Their approval leads me to believe, a little, in my own and Beloved's wisdom: that we could see a way forward, and say so; then having said, follow through. This is prophecy, the oldest art, which also called simply the art of living.

Every gardener is an artist in this most ancient sense.

The seeds and starts, balled trees, piles of rocks, and bags of soil amendment are pieces of a vision already seen, to be brought together with a willing toil and persistence.

Even when the planting and placing of the elements of this vision is done, the vision is not yet attained: what was once seen is still a future glory, which the reality must yet grow into. My hollyhocks just now are two to three feet high, and my vision of them towers over me; in my mind's eye they are seven to eight feet, dropping blooms like small ladies-in-waiting among the clumps of spearmint at their feet. These hollyhocks-to-be, hovering in the air above the current scene, are in a sense the real garden, the garden of the mind toward which the outward garden is progressing.

The two gardens will not come together without labor.

I intervene by fighting slugs and removing grass and dandelions, and by watering.

Watering is a different ritual with every gardener-artist.

Some set up their summer sprinklers right away and leave it all to a timer and the available water pressure; those who can afford the initial outlay very wisely invest in a drip system, with the tiny tubes running along every bed, stopping to weep only at a hill of zucchini or at the feet of each of the rhodies.

We're a low-budget outfit, so our tools, especially early in the garden year, tend to be labor-intensive. At each end of the house is a spigot, low to the ground to prevent freezing in winter, and to these we have attached enough lengths of cheap garden hose to reach the ducks and geese, the upper garden, the lower garden, the orchard garden, and the various fruit trees and flower beds.

Beloved does the animals, the upper garden with her lettuces and brassicas and strawberries, and the Front Beds, which are mostly poppies and marigolds this year -- wherever she can tear out enough mint and oregano.

I do the rest.

This involves a constant war over nozzles.

She really only likes one, a greenish fan-shaped thing that hits exactly the right width at four feet to sweep a garden row in one slow pass. She bought it over fifteen years, ago and it has spent enough of that time sunning itself on its coils of hose to have faded in color, and it even seems to have lost weight, as though the years of water rushing through have eroded the plastic from within till we handle it like a blown egg. I dread the day that it falls from some unheeding hand and cracks.

I like the sweep nozzle, too, for the first five minutes, but then I get restive. It hasn't enough reach, and I'm one of those who stands in one spot dispensing favors near and far. So I generally wind up removing the sweep and hanging it in the crook of the nearest lilac, and put in its place an old fashioned brass nozzle. Antique ones are well made; get one of these. With the brass nozzle you can produce a fine mist eight feet across, or a brave fireman's blast that fans out, forty feet away, just enough to water a distant tree without accidentally digging it up. There's really no better tool for demonstrating the phrase "all-purpose." The only disadvantage to these old brass nozzles that I can discover, but it is a very real one, is that Beloved removes them to re-install her green sweep, and puts them down wherever she happens to be.

This can be anywhere on the acre, and I have very bad eyes nowadays.

Our current compromise is the "pistol-grip." You can get a quite good visible one, bright yellow, American-made, too, for only three dollars. Be absolutely sure to get the one that is garden-hose threaded for attachments. The thing is highly functional as is, but once you learn what the threading is there for you'll be pleased.

There is one other gadget in this category that we own, and that is a water wand, the kind that is about three feet long with a valve at one end and a nice aluminum rose at the other, on a slender crooked neck. I like the wand very much, at least when working with young plants, because of the so-tiny droplets it produces without choking back the volume of water the way the brass nozzles do.

The secret to the wand is to hold it "upside down"; the rose should tip up like a flower (a rose), facing the sun, and its drops should rise into the air and fall by force of gravity alone, gently washing the mulch at the feet of your seedlings. The idea is to imitate, not rain, but a long-necked watering can of the English type, with its brass rose. I drape the hose over my shoulder and wander along, visiting plants and offering them the wash of life at their feet, where it's wanted. It's very meditative, using the wand, because there is no back pressure in the hose.

There are times when you want the rain effect of the sweep or the mist of the wand, without losing the flow control offered by the pistol grip mechanism. Because you've bought the one with the threaded barrel, you can simply attach the other nozzles as needed, creating the right tool for the job at hand. I've become fond of attaching just the rose from the wand to the pistol grip nozzle; this results in a gadget that seems exactly what's wanted for perennial herbs and berries.

When I walk about, watering with these various implements, it is generally evening. Direct sun will evaporate much of any water offered at mid-day, and in the mornings I'm off to work. Evenings are good for water economy and good for me. I fall into the routine, still noticing weeds that will need attention, or transplants that have stayed overlong in shock, but mostly I'm able to relax and look around.

Beloved tucks a bit more straw around her newly transplanted lettuce. Canada geese pass overhead here any time of year, though they are at their most spectacular in autumn; we have also mallards who travel in pairs, one green and one brown, and put down in our goose pen to steal cob and talk to our Khaki Campbells across the fence. A swallow sits on the clothesline in his green dinner jacket and scolds me for getting too close to the birdhouse on the potting shed wall. The moon rises, sullen and red-faced at first, then brightens as night comes on, and the last of the sun sweeps up the face of Jasper Mountain and disappears where there will soon be stars. It is altogether restful to water a garden by hand if you have the time.

Take your garden's advice: forget the evening news and the sitcoms. Make the time.

There is in an obscure Emblem Book by one Henry Hawkins, dated 1633, a tribute to one of the garden's great flowers:

The honour of our Gardens, and the miracle of flowers at this day, is the Heliotropion or Flower of the Sun; be it for the height of its stem, approaching to the heavens some cubits high: or beautie of the flower, being as big as a man's head, with a faire ruff on the neck; or, for the number of the leaves, or yellow, vying with the marigold, or, which is more, for al the qualities, nature, and properties of the Flower, which is to wheel about with the Sun; there being no Needle, that more punctually regards the Poles, then doth this Flower the glorious Sun.

For in the morning it beholdes his rising; in his journey, attends upon him; and eyeth him stil, wheresoever he goes; nor ever leaves following him, til he sink downe over head and eares in Tethis's bed, when not being able to behold him anie longer she droops and languishes, til he arise: and then followes him againe to his old lodging, as constantly as ever; with him it riseth, with him it falles, and with him riseth againe.

Nature hath done wel in not affording it anie odour at al; for with so much beautie and admirable singularities, had there been odour infused therinto, and the sweetnesse of odoriferous flowers withal, even men, who are now half mad in adoring the same for its excellent guifts, would then have been stark mad indeed, with doting upon it.

But Nature, it seems, when first she framed a pattern for the rest, not being throughly resolved, what to make it, tree or flower, having brought her workmanship almost unto the top, after a litle pause perhaps, at al adventure put a flower upon it, and so for haste, forgot to put the Musks into it. Wherupon, to countervaile her neglect heerin, the benigne Sol, of meer regard and true compassion, graced her by his frequent and assiduous lookes with those golden rayes it hath. And as the Sun shewes himself to be enamoured with her, she, as reason would, is no lesse taken with his beautie, and by her wil (if by looks we may guesse of the wil) would faine be with him. But like an Estritch, with its leaves as wings, it makes unprofitable offers, to mount up unto him, and to dwel with him; but being tyed by the root, it doth but offer, and no more.

It is like the Scepter which the Paynims attribute to their Deitie, that beares an Eye on the top; while this flower is nothing els but an Eye, set on the point of its stem; not to regard the affayres of Mortals so much, as to eye the immortal Sunne with its whole propension; the middle of which flower, where the seed is, as the white of the eye, is like a Turkie-carpet, or some finer cloth wrought with curious needle-work, which is al she hath to entertaine her Paramour.

In arid regions, the wise seek out plants that require very little water, the use of which is called "xeriscaping" -- whereas those who own a bit of marsh look for attractive water plants: lotuses, sedges, perhaps a bit of cress. Most gardeners in temperate zones, however, have a wide range of choices and possibilities. Accordingly, some will try everything -- from cacti to Louisiana irises -- and insist that the local setting bend to their will. Plants that have no business in northern climes are fussed over ad infinitum, wrapped against chill winds, covered, uncovered, covered again, and finally cursed for disloyally losing their green fingers to frostbite.

On any homestead, the wise will seek out plants that augment the site, not merely visually, but in ways that use what we know of sun and shade, soil, wind, and water, to enhance the lives of those living there and of lives yet to come. When they consider a tree or shrub, they look around them and think. They see not only the height of the plant and its breadth, but also the effect of its presence through time, of its youth, middle age, declining years and inevitable death. How will each affect its surroundings? Many times, the answers will be considerably less complicated to sort out if you will stick with the native species.

Every landscape, and every homestead, has a history, and from this history, if it is known or can be discovered, we can learn something about the site's present and future requirements. Our acre began in the distant past as alluvial deposits at the upper end of a vast glacial-era lake, which once lay, hundreds of feet deep, from here to where our river ends, over a hundred miles north.

When the lake drained away, leaving the river and its tributaries to collect the annual runoff in its place, billions of small round stones from the surrounding mountains, mostly of slow-weathering basalt, lay packed together in a matrix of clay particles for miles in all directions. Seeds, borne in by wind, water, and animals, quickly took root, and a forest sprang up, but one adapted to extremes of wet and dry, of shallow, nitrogen-starved soil, of major disturbances by fire and flood.

The dominant forest types were a mixed conifer forest of hemlock and western red cedar on the damp northern slopes, and Douglas fir along the ridges. On southern slopes, hot and dry in summer, an oak-madrone forest thrived, with an understory of poison oak at lower elevations, and of manzanita higher up. In the bottoms, a mix of cottonwood, ash, black cherry, and willow showed where the water ran along the bedrock, deep in the ground in summer, or became a surface torrent in winter.

The valley was popular with humans from their first appearance here, as a place to live and hunt. From the very first, though, they could never resist altering it to suit their needs. Fire was the agent chiefly used; the resulting clearings increased the supply of grasses and fruiting shrubs, which led to an increase in game both small and large, as well as increasing security by providing less cover for marauders from rival tribes.

Our acre, however, remained forested -- part of a vast tract of Douglas firs that survived in the upper valley until the first Europeans arrived with their steel teeth.

A family of settlers, late arrivals, staked out three hundred twenty acres, and dreamed of putting in, as so many others who had staked out the ancient clearings, wheat -- but didn't have the manpower to clear great swaths of the fir forest at once. So they went into the woodlot business, always whipsawing enough cordwood to meet the bills -- they contracted to provide all the fuel for the one-room schoolhouses for miles around -- but never quite enough to put in wheat.

Lilacs in the dooryard bloomed, but never far from shade.

It took almost three generations for the land to be anything but a stump ranch, and by then farming had become something of a luxury occupation. Filberts could make money, or grass seed could, but it took money to get started, and these were a people too proud, or too honest, to gamble with other people's money. Bit by bit the old home place was broken up, first into four farms, then eight, then twenty. Fences were built along boundary lines, and along the fences spread, first blackberries, then trees. Not firs; though they love sun, those do not usually travel far in open pasture land. These trees were the Oregon ash, black cherry, willow, and cottonwood of the river's edge, working their way uphill along the margins of the annual floods. Also there were, and had always been, patches of great California black oaks, bearded with moss and lichens like live oaks in the hammocks of old Florida.

The ashes, however, predominated. There were second growth ash trees until recently over much of the property, all about two feet in diameter, with the broad growth rings of open-grown timber. The last owner before us, however, fell upon hard times, and felt obliged to convert them into firewood, following the precedent of the pioneers.

Upon our arrival we found all the good shade -- oak, maple, and ash -- on the north side of the house, where it would do least good. To the south and west, where shade would be needed when the summer sun reached the nineties, were mostly stumps.

All was not lost. Oaks, when cut, will not regenerate, but ashes will, and the stumps to the west were all ash. I cleared away the blackberries and the burned cans and tire-wire loops left over from bonfires that the stumps had been subjected to, and watered the stumps. My neighbor, ever alert, was not long in stopping by.

"Morning, ma'am." He watched the water pouring over the stump. I tried to distract him.

"Good morning, sir; lovely day, yes?"

"Mm."

"Have our geese been too noisy for you yet?"

"Mm? Naahh."

"I have noticed your roses, sir. They're coming along nicely."

"Aaahh, I dunno." He gazed steadily at the stream of water coursing over the blackened stump. I could already envision him going back into the house, shaking his head the whole way, and telling his wife what her neighbor was up to this time, but I was forgetting that he had been raised in the family that planted the old lilacs. He looked at me sharply.

"Ash, huh?"

"Yessir, ash."

"Might work." And then he went back in.

The stumps eventually put out shoots, though one of them waited three years. I chose the strongest shoot from each stump, and flagged it, cutting back the others with pruners. One of these shoots is now over ten feet tall. Ash is a quick wood, quick to rise but also quick to fall, as trees go. But I won't live to see the end of this.

On the south side I would have to be more creative. But I had something going for me.

The northwest corner of the property has been allowed, over time, to go native, and is the haunt of wild things: ferns, quail. Someone had planted a bigleaf maple, a generation ago, by the northwest corner of the house, and some of its seeds had helicoptered into the protected zone and flourished. The bigleaf (acer macrophylum) is a native and can be found all along the river and on the mountainsides, too, mostly at lower altitudes. It's also fast growing, and though short-lived compared to, say, an oak, like the ash it's an ideal tree for a short-timer like me who needs shade in her own lifetime.

I flagged a few of the likelier saplings and waited for winter.

On a stormy day after leaf drop, when the maples had gone to sleep, I stole into their sanctuary with a shovel and dug about beneath their feet. One by one, I lifted them, with what little soil would cling to their surprisingly skimpy roots, into a wheelbarrow, and carted them around to the south side of the house.

You can't do this with all trees. I have awful luck moving oaks of any size; the acorn puts a taproot down to the day of Creation as soon as it awakes, and woe unto her that disturbs it at its dinner. Oaks will die if you so much as look at them while carrying a digging tool in hand. The bigleaf maple is much more generous.

Make a hole, stick it in.

Well, it's a good idea to keep the sod back, to add some peat, to stake it for a year or two, and to water generously the first couple of summers, but once it's established the bigleaf will make itself at home --
 
-- so much so that you will want to put it twenty feet from the house, if you want the next generation not to call down curses upon your head. Not that I pay more than lip service to the idea myself; mine are twelve feet from the house.

Pretty things, though.

And while they aren't shading the wall yet, on a hot day I can go out and lie contentedly in their shade -- sort of.