Larkspur & orlaya

Chelsea Donoho

Flower growers in North America are seeding their trays indoors now, some just starting, some a few weeks into it, depending on the crops. Some seed larkspur, which to me is unthinkable, almost. Years ago I tried it once, but the plants in the trays struggled while the self-sown seedlings scattered around the garden, from the previous year’s thin crop, plainly thrived. So I learned their natural rhythm, and now they are one of my half-dozen favorites among the hardy annuals.

These half-dozen get no pampering from me; I only give them what they want. I sow them outdoors in the latter half of September (sometimes October, once even later), lay row cover flat on the ground over them and pin it down and leave them. I do not water them—not at all. I have no irrigation on them. When winter rains and snows come, they will take that moisture, but I’ve seen them germinate and grow even before a rain.

It’s true I make sure the seed bed is fine and drains well, and almost always I am seeding into the holes of landscape fabric laid carefully onto raised rows and pinned down, and this long-lived plastic (about which I have mixed feelings, though it does last) holds the moisture in. The row cover—more plastic—protects the seeds from drying winds and from birds.

Nor do I thin the seedlings. I try not to seed to heavily in each hole, and I let all the plants come, so there is a clump of seedlings in every hole. The stems can be a bit thinner, especially the larkspur and nigella, than they would be if I took the time to thin them, but for my purposes, it seems a better approach. I am not selling 10-stem bunches to florists; I never have. I am using the flowers in my own work (which goes for weddings or bouquets for the co-op or the locals on my list of buyers). I am seeing them in the field for my own joy.

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Here are those half-dozen: larkspur, nigella, orlaya, agrostemma, bupleurum, bells of Ireland. Some always self-sow from the previous year and come up in the rows I seed, and there is some mixing of crops. It is a regular cottage garden in the field, and I think I show grow them like that around a house or a shed.

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Today the snow from Wednesday’s storm is melting and the wind is too strong for my preference. Truthfully, I wish myself back on the trail at the western edge of Tucson, where I spent most of January in a rented apartment with my mother. We cooked simply and spent all our time outdoors. I would stay through the end of March.

Our visit overlapped with Jacob’s, Mom’s young friend who is part of her group that collects prairie seed and does other restoration work here, around Kansas City. Jacob had taken an opportunistic trip to Arizona—there was time off, and a friend who offered a place to stay. A good way, and one familiar to me. While he was there, he set himself to challenges, hiking and camping far up in the mountains and facing cold, snow and wind worse than we had here this week. He wasn’t complaining.

Back down in the desert, walking with my mother, who has paced herself all her life and now at 80 is still tall, straight and curious, we studied the plants along the trail, petroglyphs, tracks and scat, and kept steady talk about books and plans. We wore long sleeves, no jackets.

“My socks were soaked, and I was up all night with that wind,” Jacob said. “I thought my rain fly was going to blow off and the tent would collapse on top of me.”

“That’s rugged,” Mom said. “You had quite an adventure.”

“Up there, sitting in the tent, I thought: I don’t have to make everything as hard as possible.”

I remembered a time when I was close to Jacob’s age and thought harder was better. (What was I thinking, inviting faculty members to be my master’s thesis committee who didn’t want to help me?)

But Mom has has always paced herself, her whole adult life. I see her once a week and and see how she lives something like the way larkspur grows, eating moderately, keeping a schedule, following the seasons and living in the present. That day with Jacob was the day I met him, but she had spent whole mornings and afternoons with him in the field over months, and he followed her even pace and spoke with her easily.

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If I wanted to be more direct I would have titled this post “It doesn’t have be hard,” which is its core idea and message, but I want an image in a title. Even so, I ask myself what I might be making more difficult for myself now, what barriers I am imaginatively constructing.