Page B2 Wyoming Tribune Eagle Friday, May 7, 2021 Conner: Managed to FINDING NEW GROWTH IS A finish book within a SPRING GARDENING PLEASURE year during pandemic By Barb Gorges | For the Wyoming Tribune Eagle Continued from B1 We had to buy new grow lights because we had so many When he found himself stuck inside due to the COVID- tomato seedlings this spring. If you arrive at the Laramie 19 pandemic last year, he decided it was the perfect County Master Gardener Plant Sale early enough, you time to take all the notes he’d compiled and fill in the can buy one. blanks. The sale is from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. tomorrow, Saturday, May Conner is a faster writer than he is a researcher, but he 8, at the Archer Events Center, 3901 Archer Parkway. still managed to finish the book within a year. There will be no food, vendors or talks due to COVID-19 “As COVID helped me to spend my time writing, it did pandemic considerations, but there will be plenty of not help me spend my time doing research,” he said. “So it plants of all kinds. was a little bit more difficult, and the biggest challenge Mark saved seed from our Anna Maria’s Heart heir- was that I could not physically get in to see some of the loom tomatoes and our friends’ ‘Sunrise’ cherry tomatoes. documents that I would have loved to have been able to He doesn’t test for seed germination, just seeds thickly. see.” This year, he has 96 tomatoes growing on shelves in the The lost report of 1833, aka the focus of the book, was a bathtub and in the basement. report that Bonneville sent back after his very first year We bought two new shop light-type grow lights. These in Wyoming and in the Rocky Mountains. It currently re- have red and blue LEDs. I was surprised to see that within sides in The National Archives in Washington, D.C., a year of my last visit to Menard’s lighting department, which is closed due to the pandemic. However, a photo- there is not a fluorescent bulb to be found. You either buy a stat of the document calls the Oregon Historical Society new fixture with integrated LEDs, or LEDs in a tube that in Portland home. can be made to work with some types of old fluorescent Conner had been to Portland on several occasions fixtures. while doing research for other projects, so at one point he I thought the 30-inch snowstorm mid-March (techni- made copies of that photostat and brought them back to cally still winter) made my bulbs late to bloom. Then I re- Denver, all before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. alized I needed to remove a layer of leaf litter from over He was, however, able to do some limited in-person re- the crocuses. Later, when I glimpsed what I thought was a search during 2020, including a stop at The Museum of piece of windblown trash, it was really the big white the Mountain Man in Pinedale during a trip up to Yellow- “Giant Dutch” crocuses finally open. stone National Park. There, he learned more about men Last spring my gardening was curtailed when I leaned who explored the region in the early part of the 19th cen- over to pick a piece of trash out of the garden and tury. wrenched my back. This year I’m trying not to do too Other than the difficulties of accessing additional in- much at one time. Then it snows or rains or blows too hard formation he needed to fill in the blanks (particularly in and limits me anyway. closed facilities such as the Denver Public Library), Con- I was out again the last week in April pulling more ner said the project went surprisingly well – it actually leaves, finding many of my perennials sprouting green- came together much faster than his first book, but he ery. Our front yard is a wind-swept expanse on which I’ve thinks that could be attributed to all the academic articles established mini windbreaks by planting a couple he’s used to writing. 18-inch-high junipers and by not cutting back my peren- The experience was rewarding for its treasure trove of nials in the fall. It works great for catching leaves and new facts he hadn’t unearthed previously. snow and protecting over-wintering pollinator insects. “I had a whole lot of information that pertained to the I leave a lot of leaves as mulch to save moisture and to American Revolutionary period, but I did not have as compost in place, but not so many that self-seeding plants much knowledge about the next century,” he said. “And can’t get some light. Later in the summer I add leaves back that’s the 19th century. … I didn’t know a whole lot about to suppress weeds. the fur trade, and I didn’t know a whole lot about moun- I also spent several hours in April cutting back last tain men. And even though I live in Colorado, I still didn’t year’s perennial stems, chopping them into 3 to 6-inch know things about Western history that I probably should segments and leaving them to become mulch/compost. know.” Some gardeners would have you leave old stems up lon- Mark Gorges uses fluorescent and LED (bottom shelf) lights to He also helped answer a crucial question many re- ger or let them decompose without help, but in a publicly augment a skylight over the bathtub of this small bathroom to searchers have had difficulty with: why Benjamin Bonn- visible place like my front yard, or the Cheyenne Botanic grow tomatoes for the Laramie County Master Gardener plant eville left the Army with a two-year furlough and went out Gardens Habitat Hero garden, where a crew of volun- sale. Mark Gorges/courtesy West. teers made cutting back go fast, it’s better to do it in April. “He would have had to return to the Army as a Plus, it makes it easier to see the small, early bulbs bloom- I’ve been studying the front yard all winter from my of- captain,” he said. “It turns out he stayed another two ing: crocus, squill, grape hyacinth and iris reticulata. fice window. There’s still some lawn I can dig up to expand years, and he did it without Army approval. And so he Mark and I bought a new whiskey half-barrel planter, a bed and yet leave a wide margin of lawn along the side- wasn’t AWOL, as we would call it today. He didn’t just dis- with the “Jack Daniels” stencil barely visible. Our old walk for shoveled snow, dogs on loose leashes and ener- appear, but he thought he had permission to extend his barrel lasted more than 30 years and two others the same getic children. I’ll continue to leave little turf trails for the stay, and he did not, it turns out … it just occurred to me, age persist in more protected locations. mail carriers’ shortcuts. like it did many people, that there’s something fishy Five years ago, in one of the few sunny spots in the back- If you are tree planting this spring, be sure to remove all about this. yard, I planted daylilies and iris I received free. Unfortu- the burlap, twine and wire. Gently spread those roots out “I think I’ve added to the argument, by looking at this nately, it is right where anyone needing access to our and get the transition from roots to trunk right at ground report carefully, that it was clear from the very beginning electrical connections needs to stand. I think it is time to level. See Steve Scott’s excellent how-to at www.cheyen- that, even though his expedition was privately funded, move those plants and try a hardy groundcover planted negardengossip.wordpress.com, “How to plant a tree in and even though he was on leave from the Army, the between flagstones, maybe the “Stepables.” The trickiest Cheyenne, Wyoming.” Army was keenly aware of what he was doing, and had a part will be to find some to buy. It’s a grand time to be in the garden, discovering all the purpose. And that purpose was to get him to gather as In February I planted 24 milk jugs with perennial flow- new flowers and green growth, with the accompaniment much information as he possibly could on the Oregon er seeds and left them out in a cold, snowy corner of the of birdsong. Territory primarily … it was a little bit of a cover for what backyard (see “winter sowing” at www.CheyenneGar- could be clearly a surreptitious kind of Army investiga- Barb Gorges writes a monthly column about the joys and challenges of gar- denGossip.wordpress.com). I moved them all to a sunnier tion of the far West for the purpose of expanding the Unit- dening on the High Plains. Find her past columns at http://cheyennegarden- ed States territory.” location mid-April and all but five have seedlings already. gossip.wordpress.com. Readers are always welcome to contact her with The question is, where do I plant them in June? questions and story ideas at [email protected]. Niki Kottmann is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s features editor. She can be reached at [email protected] or 307-633-3135. Follow her on Twitter at @niki_mariee.