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A Gardener's Notebook: The latest incarnation of my column detailing the trails and tribulations of my garden. Join the list and ask your own questions about gardening Subscribe

We finally got a little bit of rain here in the San Fernando Valley so my mind has turned to planting. I have to laugh, though, when I compare my tiny efforts with the energy expended by myself, parents and grandparents when I was growing up. My grandparents regularly planted a half-acre of garden each Spring. We would plow and fit this garden with tractors designed for small scale farming. Of course, this was no flower garden like the one I have today. It was designed for food of all sorts. A perennial asparagus bed and berry patches bordered one side while tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, beans, cabbage, lettuce and others filled the long rows.

Those rows seems so long when you were stopped over scattering lettuce or other small seeds. My back would ache after only a few minutes. I clearly remember cradling a peck basket of potato cuttings on my left arm, dropping each cutting the precise distance required. I would then step on each one to settle it into the soil in preparation for the hilling that would come later.

It would often take a week or more to get the first crops planted. Then, of course, the hard and constant work of weeding would be required. Using a hoe around the corn seedlings was always my most trying time. If I was not very careful I would take out more corn stalks than the grass that had grown up between them. More than once I stuck a cut stalk back in the grown to postpone the head-shaking of my father or grandmother.

I will say, though, that the hard work nearly always paid off. Green beans, fresh picked and snapped into a bowl, were sweet and tasty. I ate more vegetables then than I do now, and I remember the carrots, lettuce and potatoes fondly.

Tomorrow is my 36^th birthday and while I am far from aged I guess the thought of another year past gets any of us thinking about what has come before.

…but enough about the past.

This bit of nostalgia helps me get through my current planting trials more easily. Now instead a nicely prepared plot of ground I have to deal with existing plantings and lots of tree roots. I guess it only seems natural that when you want to plant a shrub a tree root usually occupies the spot first. Regular readers will have heard about my overplanted trees, but I still marvel at how widely they have spread their roots.

I have a package of Hollyhock seeds that will be going into the ground as soon as I get some inkling when the next rain will arrive. These biennials will grow this year, but not flower until the next. Delayed satisfaction, but I do adore the tall stalks and large flowers I see in my neighbors yards. They are also a nice step along the road to the cottage garden I am slowly gathering in the front of the house.

I spotted some Camellias on sale this week and quickly came up with the idea of placing some of them in the empty, semi-shade areas in the back garden. As we continue to edit out the overgrown trees I want to maintain a sense of the pathways that the trees provide. It will also help to provide some mid-range height to the back garden. At the moment it is all low growing plantings or tall trees. It could use a little variation.