Onward and Upwards

Reading a recent Garden Rant post about the 'White Flower Farm' catalog took me right back to the 1980's when I first had the opportunity to make a garden OF MY OWN!  I collected catalogs, probably under the influence of Katharine S. White's, Onward and Upward in the Garden, which I'd discovered about this time.  My 1979 paperback edition is falling apart & stained from reading in the bath, in the garden & while consuming various foods & beverages on & off for the last few decades.  (Meaning of course, that I've read the book on & off over the years.  Luckily I've been pretty constant with the food & drink).  I've been paging through Onward and Upward the past couple of snowy days.  I still just love it.  Mrs. White writes so solidly, yet with elegance.  She's opinionated (I like that in people), without lecturing.  She's fiercely joyous about gardening & good prose.  I'm using the present tense about her though the book was published after her death in 1977.  She's one of those whom I know only through their writing & feel softly regretful about that.

It may be that I first heard of Roses of Yesterday and Today from Onward and Upward in the Garden'.  I do remember that I got a little nutty about old roses around then & that I bought my first bare roots, mail order from them.  It was agony to choose, but I settled on a Moss Rose, 'Salet' & 'Paul Neyron', a Hybrid Perpetual.  I just looked the nursery up on  the web & they're still around, still family owned, still in Corralitos, CA, south of San  Francisco.   They are still growing both 'Salet' & 'Paul Neyron'. In fact I swear the descriptions in the catalog are the same as now.  Which explains the 'Paul Neyron'.  The catalog is very seductive, while in fact, for me at least, he was something of a disappointment.  'Salet', on the other hand was a wonder.  I think I went overboard on the mushroom compost when I double dug & amended the bed.  'Salet' grew to be 5'X5' (true story), the first year.  She would bloom almost all season & though could look a little tatty because the old blossoms wouldn't drop, worth it.  The fragrance would drift round the corner & up the steps into the house & the resinous scent of the calyx stuck to my fingers when I picked bouquets.

We've been renting the house out for the last 4 years & the garden has suffered.  I haven't had the time, energy or money to keep it up & with one exception, the tenants have not been gardeners.  I've felt so sad & guilty about it that for the most part I've tried not to even look at it.  2 years ago the boyfriend of the, then, occupant took a chainsaw to the 'Salet' & cut it to the ground.  He must have been on drugs.  I wept.   She skipped town.

However, we're moving back in!  M & I have had enough of snowy winters, the long drive into town, the inconvenience of it all & will be moving down the hill, back into town sometime this summer.  I'm thrilled!  M & I are enjoying planning changes inside the house, but he doesn't give a hoot about the garden.  Mine all mine!