The Hardy Garden
I was startled by a noise at the window. I set the Yukon News down and leaned back in my chair for a better look. A red squirrel was frantically scratching at the window. It seemed intent on trying to get in or at wrestling with its reflected image. Or was it trying to simply get my attention, just as Lassie would bark messages to Timmy about the neighbor being in trouble? After a few seconds of window scratching the squirrel ran off. I looked out the window to see where it ran and it was then that I spied movement in my row of sweet peas.
It was the unmistakable rapid chewing of its small jaws and the large eyes set on the side of its head that betrayed the rodent thief. It was a ground squirrel, an arctic ground squirrel, otherwise known by local Yukoners as a gopher.
For years, I have exercised my ancestral programming and planted a garden. However it seems that wherever I try to plant a garden I am cursed by marauding gophers. In Minnesota my annual battle is with pocket gophers. Two Septembers ago, my total potato harvest was measured in servings rather than bushels and was consumed by Nancy and I during one special supper.
Up here, north of 60 degrees latitude, the greater nemesis has been geography. The garden sits only 10 paces from the river. This initially seemed a good thing as I could easily water the crop of produce.
A seasoned local gardener had a different spin on the river’s relationship to the garden. She told me that the cold mountain water river that passes close to my garden acts like a big air conditioner. This would be a good thing if I lived in a sweltering environment, but in a land that has frost records for each of the twelve calendar months, I might be better off converting the garden into a hockey rink.
When we arrived in May I spaded up the garden and deliberated which vegetables to plant. I queried the gardeners in the area and knowing that the summer days are rich in sunlight, but cooler in temperature, I settled for cool weather crops such as lettuces, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, kale, sweet peas, onions and potatoes. Envisioning cabbages the size of basketballs, bushels of fist-sized spuds, bouquets of crispy lettuce and spinach I rested after the planting and eagerly awaited the gardens greening.
My confidence wavered a bit on June 9th when we received about five inches of snow. Then two weeks later, when sunlight falls nearly 20 hours here, I was chatting with one of the better gardeners in the river valley. She commented, “You know your place is known for being one of the coldest spots along the river. It always freezes early down there.” A
meteorological axiom is that cold air always settles in the low areas first.
My spirits sank even further when I spied my neighbor, just uphill from us (as in higher and away from the cold river) placing hoops of clear plastic over every row of her garden . . .and keeping them there all summer long. We learned that it’s not unusual for a frost to sneak in during any of the summer months.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when my sixteen or so spud plants all, each a robust four inches tall, froze in the first week of August. Most everything else looks like it quit growing by the second week of June. I have a bonsai vegetable garden.
The only planted produce I have tasted thus far was when I plucked a nickel-sized spinach leaf as I weeded the garden. It sweetness elicited a sigh of satisfaction. Little did I realize that the remaining spinach leaves would reach maturation at the same coin size. And now it is too late to have even a tiny “Barbie meal” of spinach as the cute little plants have bolted and yellowed.
One of the primary garden “weeds” has been fireweed, which is the official wildflower of the Yukon. Which ironically is what Nancy has been delighted to pluck from the garden in its early growth to augment salads and stir fry meals. It seems we would have been better off letting the land grow what it grows best and harvest its offering.
I am eagerly awaiting the upcoming celebratory meal that will include our five heads of broccoli that have managed to survive the rigors of summer along the river. Each head measures less than two inches across and is comprised of a single broccoli floret. Count them. . .five.
Additionally, the fact that this summer has been much cooler and wetter than the average Yukon summer and even without rodent raids, I am looking at more visits to the grocery store produce area. And once again, though I am well beyond the home range of pocket gophers, I am reminded of the rigors of putting up my own food.
Now, I rush to the window every so often to catch a glimpse of the ground squirrel that is intent on converting my peas into winter fat. This little guy is the champion hibernator in North America, as it will soon shut down its system for seven months before it emerges blinking in the spring sunshine next year.
It’s likely it will spy a stubborn two-legged building a greenhouse directly over the bonsai garden site.
Imagine the likes of fist-sized spuds, basketball cabbages and armfuls of leafy spinach and . .