I grew up in the Southern Cascade Mountains of Northern California on an antique apple orchard called Hillcrest Orchards just outside the small town of Montgomery Creek.  I loved it there.  My earliest memories are of riding on the wagon behind the old Massey Ferguson diesel tractor under the warm, late summer sun; the pungent smell of ripe and fallen apples rising around us while we brought the harvest in to the cider press.  

     We were a strictly seasonal farm.  Our Apple Shanty where we sold fresh picked apples and fresh pressed cider  at wholesale prices stood out on Hwy. 299 just off of Hillcrest Dr.  The ranch itself sat back away from the Hwy on Old Cove Road and boasted over 100 varieties of apples, most of them heirlooms.  We had customers from all over the Western states come to purchase Pippins, Winesaps, Northen Spye, Macintosh,  and the Old Fashioned Delicious apples that were as big as my head.  One of my mom’s favorite customers was a dentist from San Diego who came every year with two empty suitcases.  He flew to the Redding airport, rented a car to drive to Hillcrest Orchards and filled his empty cases with Spitzenbergs.  He claimed he couldn’t get them anywhere else and he looked forward to his trip every year.

     During the months when the Shanty was closed we still had plenty of work to do, the trees had to be tended even when they weren’t bearing ripe fruit.  We had a herd of Guernsey cows that were milked by hand morning and night, a large family garden, pigs, turkey, geese, chickens, the traditional farm menagerie that had to be cared for.  They kept us busy and fed throughout the year.  Like most farm families, money was tight but there was always plenty to eat.

     It snows in the Cascades.  Alot.  I have to mention this because when we moved from California to the Midwest I had a large number of people say to me “How could you leave all that nice sunshine?”  Mountain weather is mountain weather, it doesn’t matter if it’s in California or Colorado.  From early November until April there was always the chance of heavy snows in the mountain.  The winter after I turned 5 we had a record breaking snow, 2 feet in one storm and 3 feet in another a week later.  It made for a fantastic Christmas card setting.  From the big picture window in our dining room I could look out at the massive wall of snow on the porch and the snow covered tops of the pines above it.

     Inside our home it was warm, heated with the wood that had been gathered in during the summer and fall, and in front of that picture window, warmed by the fire inside, sat a gathering of house plants courtesy of my mother’s green thumb. My mother has grown a jungle of house plants in every home we’ve lived, I’ve only recently adopted the same practice.  I have a Tahitian Bridal Veil and Creeping Fig that I have been training and tending now since Father’s Day.  (They were actually a gift to my husband, but it was a selfish gift, a bit like the proverbial chainsaw from a husband to a wife, though in truth I’d love a chainsaw and William loves the plants!)  Mom had Aloe Vera the size of giant ferns and she had ferns the size of palm trees.  No matter how cold and barren it was outside in the garden and the orchard, it was green inside our home. 

     I suppose Mom learned to bring the plants to her from my Grandpa Stratton.  He wanted to be a forest ranger but was injured in a brickyard during WWII and never realized that dream.  His injuries never stopped him from caring for the forest though.  He couldn’t hike through the trees, so he brought them to his home.  We called Grandma and Grandpa’s place “The Jungle House”.  It was so overgrown with vegetation that you couldn’t even see the front of the home.  Everything thrived for Grandpa, and Mom inherited the gift.

     I married another gifted grower.  William has it in spades.  We teach gardening seminars and people ask us all the time “How do you get your garden to produce so well?”  William answers them honestly “You just plant the seeds and they come up.”  He’s not lying, but I have to roll my eyes and tell them the rest of the story that I don’t think William really sees, because it’s just so ingrained in his behavior, it’s the same thing my Mom did, it’s the same thing my Grandfather did, and it’s what I am just now learning how to do.

     Yes, William plants the seeds, and they do indeed come up.  Sometimes.  And if they don’t he replants them.  And sometimes those don’t come up either, so he gets new seed, he checks the soil temperature, he looks at the seeds that didn’t sprout to see if they have mold or any other signs of disease.  He incorporates more organic material into the soil, he cultivates, he gets out his hoe and weeds, he looks at the leaves of neighboring plants to spot any problems.  He stands in the middle of the garden and really looks at the plants.  He talks to them, he ponders over them and tries to think of what they need before they need it.  He watches the weather, he gauges the water, he records the daily temperatures, he covers them up with a blanket to make sure they don’t get frost damage.  What he does is so natural he doen’t know how to tell people when they ask “How do you get your garden to produce so well?”

     He cares.

     That’s the secret:  he cares.  He cares about the seeds, he cares about the seedlings, he cares about the leaves and the blossoms and the fruit.  And more than caring about them he cares for them.  He does what needs to be done before the garden needs it.  It’s like he has some kind of internal garden radar that can detect problems.  I don’t have it unfortunately.  I usually look around the garden and think “The plants look good to me!”, but I certainly trust him when he says the plants need to be covered, or watered, or pruned.

     He does something that my parents did at Hillcrest Orchards, something my Grandpa did with the Jungle House at 1422 Hester Avenue, something that every gardener since Adam and Eve has done.  He has made the most of December sunshine. 

     My Mom and Dad knew that the cold of December was necessary to a good crop of apples in October,  in fact there would be no crop without the cold.  Trees work on a cycle that will not be rushed, forced or coerced.  I just love that about orchard fruits.  They know what they are, they know where they grow, and they won’t be pushed in any direction but the one they know they will grow best in.  My parents didn’t agonize over the lack of warmth, they were grateful for the cold and the crop that it would bring.  They made the most of December sunshine by letting the orchard rest.

     My Grandfather knew that in the San Joaquin Valley his jungle needed just the right amount of water to thrive during the cloudy December days.  He knew that the limited December sun would keep the plants in a holding pattern, where no new growth would appear, but he could preserve last years growth with good care.  He saved every drop of bath and shaving water that he and Grandma used.  He carried it out, one cut off milk carton at a time to water the palms, pines, plums and kumquats.  He was the original recycler.  He packed any fallen leaves available around the bases of tender perennials and kept his jungle thriving from year to year.

     In his own sphere, William also understands and utilizes December sunshine.  We live in the high desert where sun is plentiful, but so are cold winds and low winter temperatures; and so he follows a cultivation principle as old as the Roman Empire.  By capturing the warmth of the winter sunlight through nothing more than a translucent covering, hardy winter greens flourish and grow.  The Romans used thin sheets of mica, thin sheets of plastic film are more readily available these days.  His greenhouses do, on a larger scale, a portion of what the plants themselves do.   By capturing sunlight  the plants turn light into sugar and sugar into the energy to grow.  A greenhouse captures the light and the air, soil, and water within it warms to temperatures that promote plant growth.  But even with this wonder of ancient technology, William doesn’t push the December sun too far.  It is the month with the least amount of light, not nearly enough to grow tomatoes or peppers or other tropical plants.  It is the light levels, not just the cold that limits plant growth.  And so he follows the ebb and flow of the seasons, even with the extenders that have enabled us to provide fresh greens for over 20 families now.  He plants the crops he knows will thrive in the light available, he balances the need for warmth with the need for light by using sheer row covers that allow as much light as possible to penetrate their fibers, and he knows that the garden soil runs slower during the winter, the microbes that carry nutrients to the roots are sluggish, so he doesn’t fill the rows with as many plants as will fit, he spreads them out to encourage better growth.  He treats each plant with the respect that all living things deserve, and when a plant dies or ceases to thrive he tills it back into the Earth where it’s decomposing body will add to the heat generated by the sun and provide life for all of the other plants in the garden.

     These are our garden secrets; a caring heart and an appreciation of December sunshine.  When we have a loss (and we have them, over 30 last growing season alone) we just replant and move on, giving up is never an option.  When the sun is a little cooler we are grateful for it’s warmth, resenting it for not shining brighter is pointless.

     Someday my children will tell stories of growing up on the Western Slope of Colorado.  I hope they remember picking apples from the Button’s orchard, climbing for apricots in the heirloom trees along the Redd’s creek, and playing horseshoes at the Hayes’.  Most of all I hope they remember that we tried and failed and tried again and failed again and tried again and succeeded with a multitude of garden crops.  I hope they remember that their father found as much joy in the winter garden as he did in the summer. 

     I hope they remember to soak up the December sunshine.