“Life Finds a Way”

Posted by Cynical Sarah on March 22, 2006

Sunday I took advantage of the beautiful weather did a little garden cleanup out on our patio. The first thing that came to mind was “thank goodness I didn’t plant marigolds.”

The weeds I’d let go last fall had managed to last all through the winter months and multiply like crazy. I can’t imagine the damage marigolds would have done by now. These supposed ‘annual’ plants had managed to re-grow every year and take over every inch of my flower bed back in South Dakota and that was after really cold winters and snow.  I don’t think they would have even died off in this mild Vancouver weather.

That’s one of the things I love about it here though. It can be rainy and dreary sometimes, but the grass is green all year long and I couldn’t kill off the flowers on our patio if I tried.

You might think I’m exaggerating a bit, but I really did try to kill off some of the flowers and they made a miraculous comeback. I know it’s a cheesy line from “Jurassic Park” but life really does find a way.

Last year, my husband and I went and picked out flowers that we wanted to plant on the patio. Unfortunately that meant taking out some of the ones that were already there. It really needed it anyway. I think the previous owners planted bulbs and bushes and all sorts of stuff with no rhyme or reason.

There were some sort of bulbs growing up under the rose bush and being swallowed by other groundcover. They must not have thought to read how high some things grow too because little short things were lost back behind everything.

Anyway, I dug up a bunch of the bulbs and planted them in pots thinking they would never survive being transplanted anyway since it wasn’t a good time of year to move them. When I got bored with my “rescue” effort, I just tossed the last few bulbs on the cement out of the way to be cleaned up later.

My attention span isn’t long when it comes to manual labor and cleaning so I quickly forgot about the bulbs laying there and the cleanup job I should have done on the patio last summer. So really, it was an unusual urge that took me out into the nice weather today to clean up the flowerbeds and plant another rose bush.

Depending on where you’re at while you read this, you might think it’s a bit strange to be planting anything in early March. I thought it was odd too since I’m used to this being the big blizzard season back home, but here in the lovely coastal northwest, there’s already flowers blooming on the cherry trees and new leaves coming in and spring flowers pushing up and blooming.

Anyway, if it’s too early I just killed my mini rose bush, but managed to get the weeds all dug up. I was happy to see that the bulbs I’d rescued by planting in pots were already coming up again. That was amazing enough and then I looked down at the concrete and there lay the three bulbs I’d sacrificed to the flower gods last summer, and they were growing!

No dirt, no nothing, and the first two I saw had leaves out and even flower buds starting to form. I must say that sometimes I must be completely blind because I saw those two and decided to save them, but completely missed the third bulb.

The third one had actually found its way to a crack where it had a tiny bit of dirt to work with and was fully grown and the blooms were all open and everything. How in the world did I miss that?

It was crazy though. In South Dakota, I’d have been lucky if they had lived through the winter even if I’d left them planted in the ground. These bulbs had been snowed on a few times, out in the open without protection, left for dead last summer and managed to survive and thrive to bloom again.

I didn’t have the heart to sacrifice them a second time, so now they’re all planted in pots out on the patio. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them, but they certainly deserve to live on after all that.

- Sarah L. Polson

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