Some may find themselves ready to complain about the endless supply of rain descending from on high, but I find myself all the more grateful than I might otherwise be for the fact that the humidity is up and the temperature is down and the water precipitates out of heavy clouds ceaselessly. This may lead my readers to wonder just what it is about the dripping and plopping and rat-a-tat-tat that comforts and encourages me through what should be a warming and drying period of Spring. Well, for one, my future depends on the fate of thousands of stiff, little cuttings plunged into soil filled pots and assembled carefully in rows neatly aligned on black landscape fabric out in the nursery at Sound Native Plants.
Of course, there are other reasons for me to rejoice in the rain, but the health and vigor of these tough, wild plants is the first thing that comes to mind. Out there are Salmonberry, and Snowberry too, Twinberry, Ninebark, Willow, and the great Cottonwood. For those high brow among you it should not be hard to remember the latin equivalents of these plebeian names, so I will spare my readers the repetitive rote of the botanist tongue.
These cuttings were taken in the darkness of Winter, when the ground was sloppy and one's feet were sure to be wet. Traipsing through forest with bundles of stems, some thorny some thick, ducking and heaving and cutting a path to the nursery. There they were processed into neat little sticks, that were counted and bundled and carefully labeled for months of cold storage. Their temporary home specifically designed to prepare them to grow in the spring.
There they waited while we labored. The snow on the ground at the end of February gave way to a blustery wet March. In spite of the gales and hail and punishing rain, we filled pots and made labels and rigorously produced thousands of tomorrow's possibilities in yesterday's used plastic pots.
Now Spring has officially come to Western Washington, (it has I promise it is out there just beyond the clouds) we have stuck all the cuttings and counted their numbers, flagged them and fertilized and protected them from deer. In no time at all, or a few months at minimum, they will grow so large and dense that thinning their branches will be needed to ensure the irrigation water reaches their pot confined roots.
Rest assured all the work will be completed, and the plants will be ready for restoration projects near and wide. These plants will go on to stabilize slopes and mitigate wetlands, restore watersheds and undo the damage done. It is no small effort this one that we make, but it is for good reason and the earth's sake.
With a bit more protection small seedlings are growing; Flowering Currant and Indian Plum, Elderberry blue and red, more Salmonberry and Thimble too, Lupine and Alder and Saskatoon. Thousands of seedlings in one little place will someday grow over acres of rough, rugged land and feed the creatures of the forest and shade the fishes in the streams for generations to come. Though the rain is not felt by these tender babies, the gray humid spring makes their early days easy.
For these reasons and others I rejoice in the rain and the slow steady spring that offers the wild plants a long, slow emergence from wintertime's rest. Forgive those among us who think of them first, from the least to the greatest, ahead of the people who would just as soon have high temperatures and blue skies. Odds are against it but you never know, the skies may clear and the sun may shine for more than a moment or two over Olympia, WA in the month of April. Even if it does we will remember that it is the water that falls persistently from the sky and rises up unassisted from deep in the earth and tumbles down ferociously out of the mountains and hills, that makes this place so beautiful.