View from the North 40: It's a chive-seasoned insight

I don’t know about you, but I never can tell when I’m going to have a revelation.

Like last weekend, I went with a friend to a quiet gem of a lake in central Montana and — boom — there it was a profound moment. I know what you’re thinking, water tends to inspire such things, and this water was clear, warm, glass smooth in a mountain setting, blah, blah, blah. It couldn’t have been more picturesque, but, no.

I didn’t even touch the water.

I was in a long-sleeved shirt, jeans and hiking boots, you know, doing my part to keep America beautiful by keeping as much of myself as possible covered by opaque material.

The chives did it.

You know chives, the green onion-like herb for salads and baked potatoes and such. Chives were growing everywhere up there around that lake. It makes sense, of course, because chives grow in the wild in Montana.

I did not know this at the time.

Neither did my friend when she took a bite of the plant. I was like, “What?! You ate a plant you didn’t know!”

I was being all scientific, with my “Hmmm. it looks and smells like an onion — maybe a different type of wild onion than I have.”

“Or chives,” my friend said. “Yeah, it tastes like chives.”

I was proper worried. We still had three-quarters of that lake to walk around and if she died from the mystery plant along the way I really did not want to have to drag her stupid carcass back to the car.

She was right, though. Once we returned to where the cell towers grow, a quick internet search revealed that wild chives grow in marshy and moist soils in meadows and along water ways — and they are native to North America.

I was delighted by this discovery, and the fact that I could be this happy about learning something new about flora is a miracle because I spent a lot of my life totally uninterested in anything that smelled of botany or horticulture.

Maybe I could’ve been an animal biologist, well, a strong maybe. High school taught me biology was all about dissecting dead things, and I did not like that the animals had to die just so I could poke around in their innards. But plants were not in my wheelhouse either — too many technical terms: pistil, stamen, rhizome, awn, infructescence, et cetera.

Then you read something like: “Bitegmic of an ovule is covered by two iteguments in contrast with unitegmic” — and I’m all, “Don’t talk like that, children are present.”

I can’t even keep track of what annuals and perennials are.

People very nicely, or not nicely, tell me some version of: “That’s easy. Annuals have to be planted every year, ‘annually,’ and perennials endure into ‘perpetuity.’ Get it?” And I counter: “Ooor, annuals come back every year, ‘annually,’ and perennials require continually replanting thus the task stretches into ‘perpetuity.’ It could be that.”

It could be.

And don’t get me started on Latin names, alternate Latin names, common names, regional names, looks like, sounds like, don’t mistake with ... I can’t even remember the names of all my first cousins and who they belong to.

Besides, I can’t get plants to grow. They all die in my care. All of them.

That seems like a real roadblock to employment in the botany and horticulture fields.

Then I got my own place in the country where I want pasture to grow, but the catch is the property has been ill-treated for 100-plus years, is prone to weeds, has almost no topsoil and what little water comes from the well has saline.

It took a few decades, but I finally figured out my niche as a range manager for myself. With trial and error and setbacks from nature and land use, I have, in general, figured out how to set up conditions that allow the good plants to live as they will, spreading their seeds and doing good unto the earth.

And I utilize my gift of killing plants by tending to the weeds. It works. They die.

Admittedly, it takes attention to the long game. Some weeds are persistent and, too, every time the ground is disturbed weeds are the first growers on the scene. Also, I don’t have much for equipment just dogged persistence.

As inspiration I protect two patches of perfect pasture growth near the house just to admire them.

This summer, while on assignment photographing a few local homes for their beautiful gardens that were picturesque riots of flowers, greenery and even vegetables, I thought, you know, my perfect pasture patches are really gardens, with blooming masses of alfalfa, spikes of tall wheat grasses, three species of good brome grasses, golden crested wheat and different low-growing native grasses, with a few native flowers in the mix.

Will I ever have wild garlic growing in this dry, gumbo and gravel desert of land? No. That won’t happen unless it packs up and moves here of its own free will, but I cared enough about plants to notice the garlic and identify it.

My revelation: I am a gardener. It’s a weird rangeland garden, but I’m winning at it — without even trying.

And now that I’ve bragged about it, fire season is here so I have to mow it down. All gardens have their season, that’s another thing I know.

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I feel like a proper gardener for being at peace with the season at http://facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .