The smell of roses is intoxicating. I smell them when I climb down the stairs from the deck into the garden below. The scotch rose, has single creamy white flowers around yellow centers. It is a twelve foot spiny shrub standing sentinel in one of my many garden beds. When I move to my new place I’m not going to have a garden I told myself. The only things I’m going to take to the new house are the rhubarb plants. My friends exchanged knowing looks.
I’ve long since decided that the new owners will not be gardeners. As spring unfolded I decided to take cuttings. I’m only going to grow vegetables at the new place so why rebuy all my herbs, I thought, as I filled a pot with three types of thyme. Wooly thyme is silver green. Its furry leaves spread on runners forming delightful mats hanging over walls and draping around convenient rocks, it is not unruly. Lemon thyme has green leaves edged with yellow and a delightful smell. It is more well mannered then its furry cousin. The other thyme spreads rapidly, its pink flowers reseed and its runners dig roots everywhere. However, the plant is easy to extract from unwanted places and ever since reading about, and looking at pictures of this mother of thyme spreading between the pavers of a walkway in The Harrowsmith book of Herbs, written by Patrick Lima I know I couldn’t live without it.
In another pot I put a cutting of a sour leaf plant, whose young leaves are great for early spring salads. Then there were chives, can't live without those and off course the irrepressible mint. I managed to resist the charms of the giant big leafed comfrey, the imposing Lovage I grew from seed and the rapacious, big rooted horseradish I got from a friend years ago. I have yet to harvest its roots for anything and despite having bought a piece of it down from the Peace I wondered if I would miss it.
Behind me my favourite purple anemone with yellow centers bloomed enticingly, reminding me a of a walk we took down by the Peace River, one early spring day. It was windy and cold. I remember admiring the plant as it clung to the soil. Its fuzzy leaves and perky flowers smiling in the sunshine. In the pot went a piece of it.
The vine I grew from seed, the one with the yellow flowers and furry seed heads, is still small enough to be dug up in its entirety and put into its own pot. OK that’s enough I told myself
But them three weeks later the primulas bloomed, filling the dark areas of the garden with their diminutive neat flowers in pinks and yellows set off so prettily between the deep blue of the muscari bulbs. The trouble is I got most of the primulas from the Dawson Creek horticultural society during one of their annual flower swaps. I can’t let memories like that fade. So when they finished flowering I filled more pots with cuttings of each plant.
I have two silver leafed Dogwoods. the one in the back garden is getting crowded between a gorgeous maple tree, beneath whose shady boughs is a delightful place to hang a hammock, and a bossy lilac. I’ll take the Dogwood with me to the new place I told myself this morning as I stood on the stairs of the deck surveying my soon to be handed over domain.
Next to the bubble fountain sits the healthy looking, amazingly fast growing Dwarf Alberta Spruce my son gave me for Mothers day four years ago. He bought it with his hard earned cash from his first job. Despite growing unusually fast the tiny shrub still barely crests the two foot mark. I’ll have to add it to my stash of departing plants I thought, especially now since my son is gone. I need a more permanent reminder of my first born.
I’ve already decided to take the William Baffin Rose from the front yard. It too is still in its infancy and should pose no problems when I move it. The other roses will not be easy. Especially the white flowering Henry Hudson which had conveniently sucker in my old garden giving me a whole new plant to pot up and bring here to Prince George. The scotch rose had done the same thing. But neither of them have cooperated this time around so I’m desperately trying to take cuttings of both of them. As well, Theresa Bugnet, which right now is filling its corner with many petaled, pink, sweet smelling blooms is another rose I may as well try to get a cutting from.
As I write this down I cast my mind back to all the other plants, delicious smelling dianthus and sweet Williams I grew from seed, Ten foot delphiniums I started in the dead of winter, in the other house, picking out the first seeds to sprout because later sprouting seeds have more intense colour, so the wisdom in the plant book preached. Then there is the Sarah Bernhard Peony, sporting gigantic fluffy pink flowers it’s sweet scent an added bonus, which I coveted and tried to grow unsuccessfully until I moved here. After three years it is a plant I can be proud of but sadly Peonies, whose roots, after many years can attain the size of a small car making them all but impossable to move.
I realize I can’t take it all with me. Sometimes the most poignant scenes are the ones you recreate from memory.
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