A Blog of Personal Thoughts

My Alaska Gardens, Spring 2025

June 2025

This rainy spring we come out of a rainy winter with very little snow. The skies are grey and the land green from our spruce and hemlock trees, and from the ubiquitous moss. I prefer a white winter for the reflective light it offers our winter’s dark days. Now planting time has arrived in my Alaska gardens this spring 2025.

Signs of spring:

Skunk cabbage with salmonberry flowers, one of my favorites since I was 4 years old.		Dandelions along Glacier Bay National Park Road

Shooting stars and dandelions

Bergenia Cordifolia in my garden. It blooms its brilliant hot pink in late May but this year in early June

A trip to Pleasant Island to gather kelp for the garden.

Tulips and daffodils

Robert and Abigail’s Community Garden plot.

Yes, spring is here and the perennials bloom as we plant the annuals and vegetables. We have our Community Garden plot planted before June 1! That’s a first. I can’t believe we planted it all in two days! My usual aim is to get it all done by June 10. Flowers on the left. Vegetables on the right. By late summer it will look like last year’s. Thank you, Robert for planting almost all the flowers. Thank you, garden neighbor and friend, Nina, for your help with the vegetable part.

Vegetables from summer 2024. The poppies you see are beautiful volunteers.

Flowers in August 2024

A cauliflower from 2024.

We live in the forest and on sunny days in this rain forest have about four hours of direct sunlight on our garden boxes at the house. Maybe. Two years ago, I decided to turn the gardens at the house into perennial flower beds, leaving a little room for lettuce, celery, and the occasional vegetable. I shopped too quickly this year and left the store with two flats of beets! Two. What was I thinking. I meant to have one of beets and one of kale. Hm. Where are last year’s kale seeds?

When did I start to like to garden? I was three, almost four and weeding the garden with my father. Weekends always seemed to be garden time. Both my parents and all four children were out in the garden, planting, weeding, picking flowers for vases in the house, trimming the borders to perfect evenness. For two to three hours on Saturdays, my mother took one of my older sisters indoors to clean house. I felt so lucky to be able to stay in the gardens, digging my fingers into the dirt to make a planting hole bigger or to get the roots of a weed. This year I planted my carrot seeds without the two nails and string in between. Sorry, Dad, but in the interest of time, and not having four children, I need to get plants in the ground. The carrot rows will look straight when their greens are a foot tall.

As I learned to weed, I knelt next to my father. I saw some tiny white flowers on a bit of green.

“Daddy, is this a flower?” No, he replied, and I had to pull the beautiful weed out of its spot and toss it into the poplar wood bushel basket.  

I don’t garden because my parents taught me to. I garden because I love putting my hands in the soil. No gloves for me. I garden because I love to watch the plants grow. I garden because I love the taste of the fresh food. I garden because I love fresh flowers in my house. I am grateful my parents taught me how.