flowers – Whoopsie Piggle

The need to garden is surely encoded in my DNA; my family tree is filled with long lines of farmers. No merchants, tradespeople, masons: just generation after generation of ancestors who, until quite recently, worked the land.

My mother’s uncles both farmed in LaPorte, Indiana, where they were raised with my grandma and another sister on their parents’ farm. Mormon pioneers on my dad’s side settled Utah in the 1800s and most stayed on family farms until the Great Depression when many left to find work in faraway cities ‒ like my grandparents, who met in Chicago.

When someone tells me gardening is not their cup of tea, which is not infrequently, I’m perpetually surprised. The feeling of sore muscles after a day of lifting bags of mulch and rock-filled wheelbarrows, digging deep holes, squatting to plant and weed is vastly more satisfying to me than working out at a gym. Both leave the body aching, but only gardening has the payoff of filling spaces with beauty.

After this year’s long, hardy winter, April’s mostly warm, wet weather has been exceptionally conducive for prepping gardens. I have found it difficult to do much else, and happily so.

When schools closed for Good Friday, several of my 16-year-old’s friends unexpectedly arrived at my house. The timing was perfect. An 8-by-4-foot raised planting bed one of my older sons had built in 2020, and where I’ve grown kitchen herbs since, was falling apart. I moved perennial herbs into buckets and told the teens to transfer the dirt to the newly assembled galvanized metal bed along the south side of my house, where the summer sun shines all day.

And you know what? Those strong-backed kids grabbed shovels and the wheelbarrow and got to it. Sure, they laughed and horsed around, and yet, while perhaps not efficient, they were thorough. When the new bed was filled, the teens joyfully destroyed the old one while I clandestinely darted to the nearest ATM. They had worked at my request, with no promise of payment, and were delighted when I handed each a $20 bill.

Holly Christensen's German shepherd, Otto, checks out the new galvanized raised planting bed for her kitchen herbs. — Otto, our German shepherd, appears to inspect the new raised planting bed.

This year’s biggest project, however, is the front yard. I fenced in my property last spring and, to save money, did not connect the back and front yards with a gate. Without access from the backyard, the lawn mower must now be carried up several stairs to the elevated front plot. This is fine for my 16-year-old, but in two short years he will leave for college.

That’s the practical excuse for what I did.

The truth is, I was eager to convert the front plot into one big garden. Last summer, I removed the grass around the perimeter and planted nasturtium, blanket flower (Gaillardia) and zinnias next to the chain-link fence that runs along the property line from backyard’s privacy fence to the top of the retaining wall that abuts the sidewalk. At the middle of the fence, I planted a yellow trumpet flower that quickly extended its vines the entire length of chain link.

Much of Holly Christensen's front yard in Akron is covered in landscape fabric while awaiting transformation into a garden. — Henry, the family’s Yorkipoo, is the best gardening assistant.

To create a pleasingly balanced space, I don’t expect to complete my new garden this summer. “Have a plan, but follow it loosely” is my mantra for many things, including travel, as it welcomes serendipity. And so it is with my new garden.

This month, I removed all the remaining grass, which, along with flowers, will be replaced with paths, maybe a statue and a shepherd’s hook with a bird feeder. But what goes where will unfold as things present themselves. I recently bought six columbine plants for $12 from the clearance racks at Lowe’s and put three in the front garden.

Recently, a friend posted photos of bluebell fields abloom in the Metroparks.

“Ah, yes! Bluebells!” I thought, and bought a packet of seeds, which I stirred into a half cup of sand before spreading the mixture in the corner where the privacy fence meets the house. If all goes well, next year bluebells will grow like a rivulet streaming from that corner toward the columbine.

I also reclaimed my front porch last weekend with a proper cleaning. I blew away leaves, vacuumed the rugs, hung them on the fence and “power washed” them with the jet function on my hose nozzle. While they dried, I took a bucket of water and Murphy’s Oil Soap and scrubbed it all ‒ the porch’s floors, ledges, window sills and even the walls.

From where they wintered in the garage, this weekend I will return the summer furniture to the front porch and the outdoor dining table, chairs and umbrella to the back patio. And for many months to come, I will regularly dine with family and friends at both locations, enjoying the sights, smells and sounds of my outdoor spaces. I can’t imagine heaven is any sweeter.

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, April 26, 2026.

The return of children to school in late August always sneaks up on me. It’s still summer, vegetable gardens are at peak production, swimming pools are open and filled with cavorting water babies of all ages. Soon thereafter, however, Mother Nature usually sends Northeast Ohio a save-the-date sample of autumn weather. This year, it arrived last weekend. Sweaters, jeans and ankle boots were pulled out after months of wearing T-shirts, skirts and sandals.

Fall in my part of the world is a treasure. Forests filled with trees of multihued leaves rival any found in New England. The humidity, which is never that bad here, evaporates altogether leaving cerulean skies decorated with pretty clouds unique, in my observations, to the Great Lakes region.

And yet, unlike the other season of dramatic change, spring, there is a poignancy to fall. Summer flora is winding down and though it will be many weeks before the last garden bloom turns brown and gifts its seeds to the ground for the coming year, some are already wrapping up their colorful shows. Crickets chirp ever longer each day and spiders have gone berserk making webs like Amish barn builders in competition.

The term spring cleaning comes from an era when homes were heated with wood and coal, fuel that left ash and soot throughout a home. When the cold of winter receded for the warm, wet days of spring, it was time to take down curtains and wash them along with bedding, rugs, windows, floors, walls and all the contents found under a roof.

Springtime fills me with an urgency to go outside and garden. It is fall, in which I make way for everything that must come inside, that has me sorting and editing my possessions. Garages need cleaned out to make space for outdoor furniture. Potted plants, including some flowers, such as begonias, need interior real estate near sun-filled windows. Closets are culled of items outgrown, worn out or plainly no longer in style (though that last one becomes less of a concern with time and age).

One of my favorite things to haul inside is the produce I’ve grown, gotten in my CSA share or purchased at a farmer’s market. I spend several weekends putting up the sweet tastes of summer while imagining the joy it will bring when served on future cold and snowy nights.

Jars of peaches that I canned last year, the succulent syrup sweetened with local honey, still fill an entire shelf in my cellar. I’m glad of this because I’m not sure when I’d have time to put up a new bushel given all else I need to process. This has been a banner year for just about everything in the garden, both flower and vegetable.

Across the United States, people have raved about 2024’s hydrangea blooms and mine are no exception. Two tree-like hydrangeas have for years provided the most delightful privacy scrim when I sit on my front porch. Bouquets of their flowers have filled vases for several weeks, and I’ve also given many to friends. But you could never tell looking at them as they remain laden with white blossoms the shape of grape clusters. In the backyard, round hydrangea bushes produced the first flowers since 2020 — round, multicolored blossoms.

The past several years, I planted several basil plants, mostly Genovese, only to have them fizzle by mid July no matter how much I watered them. Remembering that, I only bought three plants this year, which was a good call because they each grew a yard high, nearly as wide, with leaf-covered branches. A batch of pesto requires two tightly packed cups of basil leaves. I’ve put up two batches and easily have enough basil left for three or more batches.

Established on a section of one basil plant is an intricate funnel web and its arachnid weaver, a member of the Agelenidae family. Unlike many people, spiders don’t bother me. Quite the opposite — I admire their handiwork and industry in hunting and devouring pesky arthropods, i.e., insects like Japanese beetles.

Last Sunday, I put on a new-to-me album, “Another Dimension” by pianist Charles Bell and the Contemporary Jazz Quartet (1963), and then spent the better part of the afternoon chopping tomatoes, onions, peppers (hot and mild), cilantro and garlic. I squeezed the juice of several limes, mixed it all together with freshly ground Himalayan salt and when I had finished, salsa filled an 8-quart pot.

I took one of several containers of my salsa fresca straight away to my next-door neighbors. They ate half of it with chips and used the other half to make meat loaf, a slice of which they gave me the next day when returning my container.

And I think to myself, whatever the season, life in my Akron home is good.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, September 15, 2024.