Legends of Alaska: Gardening in Alaska

In life there are many things we do in seeming futility.  It might be trying to look younger, arguing with a Republican or explaining evolution to a creationist.  Perhaps also on the list should be gardening in Alaska.  

There is some kind of genetic human trait likely explained by the evolution noted above that guides many human beings into the desire to grow.  This can manifest itself in many different ways.  It might be a simple flower or the eternal spring desire to plant things all around ones house that despite our best intentions, will largely be dead by the following year.  That said for a few months we will relish the feeling of our hands in the soil and the vivid colors of the natural world around us.  We will love the hunt for the perfect plant and how, like a freshly cut bouquet of flowers, it will make our world beautiful for a few fleeting moments.  At that point, the cycle will start all over again.  Maybe it is a response to darkness and the cold perception of vegetative death by all things green.   Anyone that lives in a climate with seasons is accustomed to seeing colors change on a yearly basis and understands the pleasure of spring when flowers and green seem to appear everywhere.  

For most people that inhabit the upper portions of the Northern and I assume lower parts of the Southern Hemispheres there is a feeling of renewal that accompanies the arrival of spring.  Somehow within the new growth there is a feeling of new possibility.  Perhaps in the subconscious the metaphor of new life extends into our own psyche as new chances for reformation and directions are presented.  It’s almost like New Years Eve but with plant life!

Some Alaskans seem to want to believe they are living in Iowa.  Sure to be fair it is cold in both places its just a lot shorter in Iowa and the summers are a lot warmer.  In the 30’s as part of the New Deal a farming colony was established in the Matanuska Valley with the goal of turning the place into an agricultural hub.  The region was formed by glaciers and the land left behind them  is rich in nutrients.  The enterprise like most things in independent minded “We don’t need those Feds” Alaska was a heavily subsidized Federal effort.  The same kind of “Socialist” type effort that built the Alaska Railroad and paved the few roads that connect desperate parts of the state.   It was and remains to be federal dollars that fund the construction and maintenance of the numerous military bases that have huge impacts on the state economy and subsidize many general infrastructure projects.  The ugly truth of Alaska is that the state was built and runs on Federal money.  Without it, it would be a remote undeveloped backwater.   

Matanuska Maid

I grew up drinking milk from the state subsidized Mantanuska Maid Dairy and migrating with most of Anchorage to the yearly State Fair held in Palmer.  We would admire the enormous vegetables and then get on a carnival ride and throw up.   The hidden secret that no one knew about Matanuska Maid back in the day was that the milk was only half Alaskan.  They had to import milk from the lower 48 to mix it with.  If not, their milk would be far to expensive to sell.

My mother was not immune to the Alaskan growing sprit.  When spring came I would play with my trucks in the dirt pile as she would wheel barrow it around to the back of the house and attempt to grow vegetables.  She did okay but nothing to scream about.  More a labor of love.  I used to love to pick the peas pods and eat them.  We also had a big Rhubarb bush on a corner of the house she would make jam with. 

My mother, “Bless her heart,” as they say in the southern land she came from, had the brilliant idea that she could use dog poop as fertilizer to augment her less than fertile soil.  Turns out it is not so suitable and far less appetizing than cow manure.  My Mom was always trying to bring green to a world that just didn’t have a long time to host it before the next snowfall came.   She would hang begonias from the

AK State Fair - Palmer

porch and put African violets in the window sills.  She would plant pansies in the front beds for me knowing that they were my favorites.  It wasn’t until I went away to college that I actually realized that trees have flowers.   I never really understood as a child my mom’s obsession with dirt but I do now.  Maybe it is wisdom that comes with 51 years of life.  To a young boy it just seemed like a lot of work. 

It seems like my mother always had a project.  Each weekend was started with lists of what needed to be done.  She did her best to divide it up but my father and I would also do our best to avoid them.  Things just don’t really occur to you until you grow older but I never really stopped to appreciate how creative she was.  Of course I would compliment and enjoy different projects but taken together she was pretty amazing.  A stain glass artist, a photographer and a jeweler.  She could knit, crochet and sew.  She did needlepoint and was a passionate genealogist.  She loved her plants and her animals.  I remember marveling at the grossness of an aquarium filled with meal worms she would harvest for her birds.  She loved to read history and was a former nurse and a teacher.  As a teacher she taught the hardest students, the ones that were one step from total failure.  

How I wish I could talk with her today.  She died when I was in  my early 30’s, before I truly reached a rhythm or feeling of accomplishment in life.  Aside from proving my own worth to her I would so love to tell her how much she was worth to me.  In my early years we would fight like cats and dogs but I am so confident that if I knew her now there would be such harmony and peace.  

I do live with the knowledge that in my mother’s later years she escaped the northern growing cycle and the frustrations and limitations it must have brought.   She finished up in Kentucky with a massive back yard outside an historic house my father and she bought.  She had more flowers than I can count and forged a final vegetable garden in the back.  She was creative until her last breath and the way she lived her life must have impacted so many people.

My mother’s spirit represented a general spirit of Alaska at the time.  It was one of limitless possibility.  It was a place where you could do what you wanted to do. Prior to my generation there were precious few native born Alaskan’s outside of the Alaskan natives.  The Alaska that my parents went to and raised me in was a new land still being tamed and settled.  They would say that everyone in Alaska was running from something but despite that they all brought a piece of the outside world with them.  For my mom it was gardening, for our neighbor and my dear friends father it was a massive ham radio tower erected in his yard.  For my Dad it was his vintage Mercedes and his talent to design.  Each ability filled a niche in it’s own way.  For many however years of trying eventually became too much and they would move away for their last years.  For myself the opportunities I wanted to find in life just could not be satisfied in the Last Frontier.  Despite that fact, Alaska will always be part of my identity and will remain a piece of who I am no matter where in the world I spend my years.  

PS.  I have a lime tree now and it actually makes limes!