A Grower Perspective

 Now is the time to harvest and prune your lavender plants. What a fragrant job! For some folks this is the culmination of a year of growing and the harvest bringing in flowers, which then turn into sachets, bundles, wreaths and oils. For the home gardener it may mean filling the house with bouquets of sweet scent that will last throughout the winter as a reminder of the sunny summer days.

To prune lavender I use two tools, a hand scythe and hand hedge pruners. I harvest the flowers with the scythe and then shape

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Do you feel like taking the whole summer off and lolling around on a chaise lounge, berry picking, swimming in the perfect swimming hole, hanging out with friends and not having a timeline for anything?  I do.  But for some reason being a grown up has gotten in the way of summers like this.  I have thought of a way to bring this about on a daily basis in a small way, just to have that summertime feeling.  The name of my program is One a Day.   You don't need to reserve this for summer only; you can do it all year round.  So all you do is try one new thing a day; a new food, a new way to drive home or maybe a new mode of transportation, visit a new place in your town or city, be the tourist of your own town.  You can do this is your home as well, add a bouquet of garden flowers, move your furniture around, eat outside sitting on the ground with a picnic cloth, go meet your neighbors you've been meaning to get to know, paint a wall, get some watercolors and paint anything.  My sister, when she was around ten, would clean her room at the beginning of summer, put up a canvas tent in the side yard and move out until school started again.   Have some fun.   As you are going around, stop into our nursery for your first time or just to say hello if you've been here many times before.  We'd like to see you.  We'd like to be your One a Day.

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  If you want to know how trees cool the earth, take a drive in the country with your hand outside the window.  As you drive along you will notice the change in temperature between the grassland and the wood areas.  Enough said.

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Go to your local farmer’s market for no other reason than because it is just fun. For me it is pure pleasure with tasty treats added on top. My local market is in Creswell behind the library off the main street, Oregon Street. It is on my way home and conveniently open from 4 – 7 p.m. I can’t wait to get there and see who is selling what and have a chat with my ‘market friends’. This is a very small market, maybe twenty vendors. This is the second year it’s been going on and some of the same folks have come every time to sell their goods and come they do, whether they make much money or not. The showing up every time is what eventually will make them ‘successful’. Success at the farmer’s market comes in many forms. One is not there to ‘get rich’ so there has to be some other benefits. One of the most successful vendors is the cute old guy, Jim, who makes bird houses, ‘guaranteed to house birds’. He also started making boxes and shelves, items that the other vendors buy to display their wares. I noticed he is now making cash boxes. I don’t think he had a grand plan for this is just worked out like that and he has enough money to go fishing with his buddy. Michelle, my co-worker, meets me at the market and sometimes some other friends stop by. One has to look carefully and ask questions and enjoy the process, find out about the sellers, what they like to grow or make, what is the best thing they have today. I found some Meyer lemons, brought up from California, no not locally grown, which is difficult at best, and I bought all three of them for 75 cents each. What Michelle and I like to do is buy a little from each booth or at least say hello and admire their wares.

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  Walk out and cut some flowers or lots of flowers and make bouquets for all over your home. By doing this you encourage more flowers on your perennials. Just cut today: lavender, white lavender, veronica, grasses, salvia.

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