Roses, Night Gardening and your love....

roses...roses...sultry nights in the garden
#2 in Tressie's Garden post series...
This one was first published in June 1996...in the Senior Scene...cause back then...only aging flower children...and old folks gardened...maybe some religious folks, but it was a bit of a strange avocation..
After the hippie back-to-the-earth movement of the 60s and 70s, gardening, canning, and making stuff went out of fashion...people wanted to trade stocks and snort cocaine and vote Republican...see where that got 'cha!
At Last a Decent Plot

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...
June is for roses. Roses speak of love and kisses. They require some special care, but they are so worth the time. Gather ye rosebuds and petals while ye may, and use them for potpourri.
Planting
June is still a good month for planting four-inch and bigger size plants. Water well, daily at first, until the plant settles in, then mulch to hold in moisture during the hot summer months. Large-size containers are available all summer but be sure to check nursery stock for good health. You don't want a plant that's been under-watered and chewed up an put under stress. It won't stand the heat and bloom well.

Use annual marigold, alyssum, petunia, marguerites, zinnia and portulaca for sunny spots. Hardy summer perennials for sun that are drought-resistant include helenthemem (sunrose, yarrow, black-eye Susan, hollyhock, lavender, baby's breath, and sedum Autumn Joy.

Many herbs take little water once established. Try thymes, sages catmint, and rosemary. All these plants look great together and take the same care. Accent your plantings with gray-leafed plants. these tend to like drier soil too. Gray leaves soften bright orange, red and yellow, or add punctuation to soft pink, white and lilac.

Several artemesias with their finely cut leaves and fragrance are good for drying. Look for Sweet Annie, mugwort, wormwood or the many varieties of fern leaf artemesias.

Bought some roses in pots? Dig a hole twice the width of the container slightly deeper. Remove part of the soil (put it in the compost along with the peat pot) and work in some well-rotted manure. Soak the rose thoroughly, remove it from the pot, and plant it at the same level as it was. Toss in your prepared soil and water.
Form a watering basin slightly wider than the rose and mulch. When you cut flowers for bouquets, cut the stem cleanly just above an outward-facing leaf with five or seven leaflets. Later, keep the old petals and toss the rest on the compost.
Fertilize monthly until August, then stop and allow the growth to harden for winter.
In late fall, remove all leaves to stop wintering pests and diseases. Consult a garden book for more help.

Fragrant Gardens
Plan now for sultry summer nights outside. Plant your garden beds near entryways, window boxes beneath open bedroom windows, and deck and patio pots with fragrant flowers and foliage.
Nicotiana, alyssum, stock, lavender, roses, petunias, honeysuckle, evening primors and heliotrpe are easty to find. Use boxwood shrubs and mix flowers with pineapple sage and mints from the herb garden. Surround steps and walks with creeping thyme. All these release fragrance when you brush past them.

An especially romantic night garden uses the white flowers of those mentioned above. Mixed with gray leaves, white flowers reflect the stars and moonlight.
A garden should always include comfortable benches and seats. Place tables around to set down a plate of summer barbeque while rubbing a leaf to enjoy its scent.
To encourage long romantic visits in the garden, purchase or make overstuffed cushions. Use duck or canvas in solids or stripes, or heavy printed denim to make a basic rectangle, square and even hearts. Stuff with polyester fiberfill to withstand summer showers. Bring fabric cushions in during a real downpour to extend the life of your cushions.

Stroll through the garden at sunset with candles or kerosene lamps. Many plants release a fragrance only at night. Our summers are so fleeting. Will this season be dry or damp?

Create an oasis under a covered porch and hang a hammock under an arbor. Close your eyes and listen to the birds, and breathe.
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon.

****Rose Recipes ****
Potpourri **
Mix dry wormwood leaves with lavender buds and dry rose petals, your choice of fixative, and a few drops of rose oil. This potpourri sewn into sachets and stored with winter and spring sweaters and woolens helps to protect them from moths. Store garments after dry cleaning or washing because moths are attracted to body soil. The lavender and artemesia seem to confuse the moths so won't damage your clothes.

Rosewater**
Rosewater can be used for many things--cooking, drinks or a hair rinse.It was an essential in great-grandmother's day. Gather four cups of fresh, unsprayed rose petals and bring to a boil with five cups pure spring water or distilled water in a glass or stainless steel pot. Simmer for 10 minutes and stir gently with a wooden spoon. Strain, bottle and refrigerate, and use within a week. This recipe makes about a quart of rosewater.

Let's Get This Garden Started !

I've been a gardener all my life...pulling weeds, which is a vital part of gardening, was my first job (that I remember) when I was 4, and got paid a penny a weed! Them's some big bucks.
I so clearly remember crawling under the big hydrangeas and the scent of the cool earth....the mystery of being the size of a bug under the big leaves and mop-headed periwinkle violet flower balls.......

so, I used to write a gardening column for Tacoma Monthly, then Tacoma Weekly...yes, that one!
I called it At Last A Decent Plot

I researched this article in the Tacoma Library downtown with child (Annie) in tow...she loved it...being inside the library all day...(no really!)

this was originally published April 12, 1995. I've added some internetz links because that is something one can do...that is not too possible with newsprint...much. Besides, I don't think the Google was invented yet.....wow, 1995. Let's go back to the Clinton days of yore, blue dresses and good wars, when acid wash jeans weren't yet ironic.
Each week I'll try to publish a new/old article from those days...and well, continue on writing, cause I like to do things...

Killer Chemicals


The recent subway poisoning incident in Tokyo may seem to have no relationship to gardening--but there is a connection. Sarin, the deadly nerve gas used in Tokyo, was developed during WWII by the Nazis.

American scientists regarding their own nerve gas during the war discovered that low concentrations of some lethal chemicals will act as pesticides, herbicides, or fumigators.
The end of the war left America's large chemical companies with vast knowledge of chemical killers. Knowledge they kept a top secret, right? Not a chance. Seeing the deadly chemicals as a potential money-making bonanza, they aggressively marketed them as new, modern solutions to the "bug problem".

The result has been that, as biologist Rachel Carson exposed in her 1962 book Silent Spring, chemicals synthesized into unnatural molecular chains have permeated nearly every ecosystem on the planet. Scientists have found post-WWII chemicals everywhere they've looked , including in samples taken from the top of Mt. Everest.

Many garden chemicals are billed as harmless, but don't bet on it. DDT, Chlordane and Dieldrin are "chlorinated hydrocarbons", while Sarin, Malathion and Parathion are "organo-phosphates".
Though anything made from elements native to the Earth is by definition, natural and organic, to make this a badge of harmlessness is deceptive. Chemicals in the DDT family are stored in the body. Both the FDA and EPA have agreed that there is no safe storage level because these chemicals interact with other chemicals, producing increasingly toxic results. Sarin and Malathion work on the nervous system, the effects resembling the alkaloid poison, muscarine.

So what are some chemicals to watch out for? Chemical nitrogens available so plentifully at nurseries -- Nu-Life-- is a common brand--work wonders for your plants. The nitrogen makes your plant's leaves green and encourages them to grow. While the nitrogen itself is a good thing, the concentrated chemical soup used to create chemical nitrogen, including ammonia and chlorine -- wreaks havoc on the environment. It's toxic to workers and the area around the chemical plant that produces it. It's harmful to nursery workers who deal with it. And, it eventually pollutes your local water supply.

Phosphorus is another gardening essential. Chemical companies mine rock phosphate, a wonderful source of natural phosphorus, and treat it with acid to create superphosphate. While your plants will become supercharged with phosphorus, they won't thrive. Why? When the superphosphate is added to the soil, it combines with the necessary micronutrients iron and manganese, making them unavailable to plants. Without iron and manganese, the plants become vulnerable to insect and disease damage. To an unsuspecting gardener, this action can create a vicious cycle.

The bottom line is that there is no need to use chemicals in your garden. Unadulterated sources of nutrition such as manure for nitrogen, crushed phosphorus rock for needed phosphorus, and wood ashes for potassium are available for your organic garden. Combined into rich compost, these sources will provide all the nutrients your plants need to stay healthy as well as capable of resisting insects and disease.

Hundreds of organic gardening books and magazines are available to help with basic information. One of my favorites is Rodale Press The Expert's Book of Garden Hints, edited by Fern Marshall Bradley. I also like Organic Gardening Magazine. Once obscure, it's now available on the magazine racks in most grocery stores. Besides information about organic gardening, you'll learn about the latest research on nontoxic insecticides and techniques to lessen the occurrence of fungus or bacterial attacks.

But what about chemicals used by large corporate farms? A scary example of chemicals resulting in tragedy occurred recently in Olalla. Two horses died from eating hay (grown in Eastern Washington) that had been sprayed with an organo-phosphate pesticide. The pesticide had drifted in from an adjacent potato field, said Cliff Weed, program manager for the State Department of Agriculture compliance division for pesticides.

Now that you're afraid of everything you might eat, remember that you're not gonna get out alive. Still the best cure for cancer is to try to prevent it. Requiring multi-national corporations to avoid using dangerous chemicals which contaminate our water, air and food should be an obvious step.

What can we do to save ourselves and future generations of children and wildlife? Make a personal committment to stop using dangerous chemicals in our own gardens as much as possible. Just as important, write letters to congress, imploring them to continue enforcing environmental laws. This isn't an issue that is liberal or conservative. Newt Gingrich and Jesse Jackson breathe, eat and drink the same food and water the same as you and I. Remember, the life you save may be your own.
######################################################

So there ya go....
across the street from the shop is a chunk of land at the top of a parking lot...I"m gonna just go over there and guerrilla-garden it....I suggest you do the same!

Thanks for coming down!

and seeing us on Wednesday.....the first of many many non-events/events we Broadway Babies......will plan for you in the months to come. Lots of folks came down to see us and spread a little cash in downtown T-Town.....
Big Props to Melanie.....the beautiful raven-haired Vanity owner !
Mel's not on our block (up on 6th) but she knows a good time when she sees one for sure.....
All of us in T-Town that sell the vintage and retro are a fresh conspiracy of sorts....We want to take over the world!

What's the RAIN doing here ????
Waaah.....I want my hot weather for Hot Rod A Ramaaaaaa..... Man dig these vids.....FAn -f'n-ing Tastic View of our beautiful little city.....


back to this:
Tacoma is an easy town to get around in....all the vintage and retro shops are within a few miles of each other. Julie's at Urban Xchange down on Pacific near the UWT......Cedar and Jim up at Rector's next to Jason Lee on 6th.......and the world's largest concentration of Vintage and Retro indie shops on one block !!

Since we opened ....thanks to my relentless blabbing (thanks Meghan!) and hard work (thanks Jennifer!)
we're making tons of people happy. Some drop in to see what's going on with the Rampart bldg.....some wanna know where's David? (up on 6th at Vintage Arts)
and some are just amazed at what is packed inside....
pics will arrive in next weeks post about the shop.....
more props to defunked......go read a fun blog about vintage T shirts.....you know we love 'em......

Hey Did you Know ??

There are actually about 12 vintage and retro clothing and accessories sellers on Vintage Row....in Tacoma.....
yeah it used to be Antique Row.....but times change !

Yup come on Down!!



And Hot Rod A Rama!!!! is August 1 & 2 ....
Yippiee...come on let's celebrate the death of middle class car culture...and the LIFE of Outta Control Lowbrow Hot Rod Kulture.......

Summer wardrobe got the blahs? I got lots of fresh new stuff I just put out and.....Wednesday...come and visit
Lots of stuff for guys too....vintage cowboy shirts, holey jeans...and a few cons left.......