Happenings
As I sit here writing this a light snow has dusted the rock garden, the Redbreasted sapsucker that only shows up durings winters dormant days is poking holes in the now naked spike clad sea buckthorn outside my window and an Anna’s Hummingbird is following closely behind to get some much needed sugar out of those holes before the Mahonia’s start blooming in earnest. The barometers needle swings a half inch to the left as I give it at tap and I feel a little bit of joy since I’ve been hoping for more snow. It certainly seems cold enough outside but the light grey and white streaked sky off to the southwest has tinges and layers of cambridge blue in it that tells me the moisture may just not be there and the barometer only for tells a cold night ahead.
Februarys tranquil start to 6 more weeks of winter according to the groundhog.
I thought I would drop a line about the weeks happenings. I’ll be in Portland on Thursday evening to give a talk to an organization I have belonged to for a long time. The Columbia Willamette Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society. Visit the website here to get more details:
link to Columbia Willamette Chapter NARGS website
It’s a great group of people, that I have learned so much about horticulture, plants, botany, and friendship and community from. The talk is titled “From Habitat to the Home Garden, Cultivating Mountain Plants from Around the World”, it’s an exciting talk for me since it encapsulates some of my dreams, passions and ambitions formed long ago of having a nursery business focused on the cool plants I have found and experienced in natures high alpine places. I have gotten to see some great places the last few years and grow some fantastic species, although this talk does cover the failures and lessons learned in search of success as much as it does highlight the triumphs of fruitful cultivation of some of those plants that are by no means considered easy to grow especially in my low elevation, Western Oregon nursery. From the lofty peaks where we saw 10 foot winged andean condors gliding effortlessly on the mountain updrafts, to the odd soils and seeps of Southern Oregon’s Kalmiopsis, Alpine Tundra near the Arctic circle and the uplifted batholiths of Eastern Oregon’s Wallowa mountains to the majestic snow capped Southern Alps of New Zealand this talk covers some latitudes and altitudes. Enjoy a brief teaser but try to make it to the meeting if you can, I really think you will enjoy this talk of botanical adventures, and horticultural endeavors.
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
―Thomas Paine
This is a choose your own adventure and you can accept any of these disclaimers:
a. If you are new to the blog this is the part where you might want to click away if you can’t stomach a voice on politics with your flowers.
b. This machine kills fascists and if you don’t like what I say here, go away and put your head in the sand where it belongs.
c. The following opinions are those of myself and in no way represent the business interests of the nursery blog on which they are being published.
A lot has happened since I last wrote here. Tremendous, dire and disheartening things have happened. In the last few weeks I have watched with a broken heart and a troubled mind at how this country has slipped down a dark and dangerous path. Tyrants and empathy lacking miscreants now rule over us. I watched as decades, nay a century or more of fighting for equality and decency in this country was erased with the stroke of a heartless malefactors wide point sharpie. But we all knew that was coming, I spelled it out here in the months leading up to it. I will be the first to admit what I did not see coming. An egomaniacal Nazi who hoards wealth and has not an ounce of solicitude toward humanity was given the open door to our government and then proceeded to walk in with some of his hitler youth and download every bit of information on every United States Citizen, while bullishly pushing out the Civil Servants hired to keep that information safe. Elon now has our social security accounts under his control after asking the entire Federal workforce to resign. A proud nazi who has even traveled to Germany to try to push further his hate filled, demented, far right agenda has every US citizens social security information in his pocket and probably much more information than we even know now since the news is owned by his buddies they won’t report on it. I will admit I did not see this coming, I saw the ineptitude of Trump coming, and his obvious crash of the economy as failed businessman coming, I saw the installation of party line members with no real qualifications for important roles in leadership coming since loyalists is all that matter to him. But I did not see the wholesale erasing of our social safety nets be it from the social security we payed into our entire working lives, to the information on the spread of diseases or the fair reporting of goverrnment doings to the populous. Elon has only one goal with that information, to erase its existence. If you can’t see the fall of the empire coming now, you are living in Rome in early October 477 AD. My dad and I were talking about the old James Bond films of the 1960’s and how every day now a new Ian Fleming novel is being written right in front of us with the evil overlords as antagonistic towards humanity as any ever seen, where are you 007 the world needs you now more than ever?
Where to go from here? Well, I can say one thing, I will be in the resistance. If the governance of this country has been given over to Nazi leadership, then I will be the maquis. I would rather die fighting them in the streets than live one day under the whip. Maybe that way it’s the Elysian fields for eternity instead of the Asphodel Meadows I figured I would get to see. We are now all the oppressed, some have had their existence erased, some have been pulled from the plow and field where they toil to put food on the tables of those who don’t have to toil and some are being shipped to the new concentration camp they will be using at Guantanamo. Some have had children, parents and loved ones taken away, all of us have had our mental health accosted by those vile and wretched humans that only seek to destroy this country’s foundation of freedom and liberty of ALL. Our once friends and trading partners are now enemies and boycotters of our goods we only want to kindly trade to keep our individual ships afloat on this turbulent sea. Some of us can even sit here for now and write words against this descent into chaos that we are witnessing.
I read that Thomas Paine quote and I understand it, the benevolence of protecting community, neighbors, fellow humans, even if they are different then us in belief, sexuality, skin color or creed is a foundation of humanity and it’s only by the constant fight against oppression that we have made it this far as a species. I fear this time we all fall victim to the shadowy goals, as they sink those blood stained claws deeper into the fabric of the protections for human kind we all thought the constitution provided us. It would be too easy to sit here and just lay out the concerns over the tarriffs and trade wars and how I operate this nursery on such slim margins that it probably doesn’t survive a Trump induced global economic disaster. The game is clear the chess board is set, and we pawns are lined up ready to charge toward the inevitable pecuniary cannon balls while the new Nazi King and his Queen Trump sit ready to clear the board of us rif-raf so that they can then own the game, the table, the house, the bloc, the city and country in which the game is played.
I see the suffering, pain, fear and mental anguish that this politico has caused and I’m filled with rage and vitriol and the warrior spirit probably borne of that ancient Cossack blood that still flows in my veins, for yes I’m a descendant of immigrants and I want to fight this and I have to admit it takes everything I have in me to not let the overwhelming hatred toward those red hat wearing magats and those who just chose not to vote against evil take hold. For even they will suffer under the darkness that is coming if we do not rage against the dying of the light.
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Dylan Thomas