GreenPrints 122, Summer 2020

No. 122

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GREENPRINTS UMMER

“THE WEEDER’S DIGEST”

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine to the soul.”

1 —Luther Burbank

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At The Gate

SHELLEY JACKSON

Prayers & Blessings

First off, let me assure you that Becky, our kids, grandkids, and I are all doing well. Becky and I live beside a woodland mountain and creek. We already work at home. We have each other. And, of course, our garden is right out our door. (Heck, I even rode a Onewheel—a kind of electric skateboard that is my new balance/ exercise toy, uh, tool—to go hoe on a neighbor’s property!*) I dearly hope and pray you and yours are well, as well.

Writing this on April 24th, I have no idea what the world will be like when you read it. Let me here share my hopes and prayers for those who are suffering in these times: the sick, those who care for them, those working in other vulnerable environments—and those who are suffering because they currently can’t work at all!

May they all get the help and peace they need.

Dear Readers, we are blessed because almost all of us have gardens right at home to work in, harvest * from, and find comfort in. Enjoy and cherish them—and each other. And may this issue give you enjoyment and comfort, as well.

Love, Pat Stone, Editor P.S. Please patronize the good folks who advertise in these pages. They’re supporting us. Let’s support them.

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The Family That Zooms Together: A March phone reunion of the Stone Clan (including Pascal, our former exchange student, who’s living in Argentina!) reenPrints, “The Weeder’s Digest”™ is brought to you by Pat (Editor, pat@greenprints.com) and Becky (Circulation, becky@greenprints.com) Stone and Circulation Assistant Eva Blinder, with proofreading help from Eva and Harriett Highland and loving encouragement from Nate, Jesse, Sammy, and Tucker Stone (828/628-5452; www.greenprints.com). Contributing Editors: Diana Wells and Becky Rupp. Contents © 2020 by GreenPrints®. Allow four to six weeks for subscription fulfillment. Please notify us when you change your address! Submissions are read in Nov., Feb., May, and Aug. (send self-addressed stamped envelope if submitting by mail). Writer’s Guidelines available at www.greenprints.com/writers-guidelines.

GreenPrints® (ISSN 1064-0118) is published quarterly by GreenPrints Enterprises, 23 Butterrow Cove, Fairview, NC 28730. Subscriptions are $24.95 for four issues ($29.95 to Canada and Mexico. $34.90 to England. U.S. Funds only) from GreenPrints, P.O. Box 1355, Fairview, NC 28730. Periodicals postage paid at Fairview, NC, and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to GreenPrints, P.O. Box 1355, Fairview, NC 28730.

Eva Cover Art by Heather Graham Cover quote sent in by Marianne Owen of Anchorage, AK. 5

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poetry in numerous publications and is working on a novel set in turn-of-the-century New Mexico.

Contributors Cheryl L. Davison: From Florence, CO: “A healthcare worker, I have written for travel and trade magazines.” Cheryl had charming stories in last issue and GP No. 118!

Maggie Meehan: Hudson, MA’s Maggie wrote humorous pieces about being “Gardening Fools” with her friend Marge in GP Nos. 54 and 119.

Caroline Wiseblood MeHenry Clarke Dolive: line: “I’ve been on my “I’ve been around: corner since 1978 and taught at several universities, worked for a governor’s am a real fixture in this neighboroffice, and for 20 years ran a political hood. My twin grandchildren went through a Philadelphia school your jurisdiction of 45,000 people.”

Editor once taught at!”

Karen Keltz: When she knows people are coming to see her garden Marianne Willburn: You can read in Tillamook, OR , Karen sometimes more of this award-winning writer dresses up as a garden elf in red at www.smalltowngardener.com and in GP Nos. 100, 105, and 106! tights, red shirt, and straw hat.

Bobbie Cyphers: Bobbie writes and teaches about gardening and the natural world at her old farm in the hills of East Tennessee. She had stories in GP Nos. 62 and 109.

Chuck Jutz: From Dundas, MN: “I have never before submitted anything for publication, but I hope you will take the time to read my tribute to my wife of 53 years.”

Madeline McEwen: From San Jose, CA: “This piece is dedicated to my dear neighbor, substitute grandfather, and all-around good egg, Gene.”

BUDS CREDITS “A Thing of Beauty” (p.

57) sent in by Linda R. Bell of Knoxville, TN. Contribute your favorite garden quote to“Buds.” If we use it, we’ll give you a year’s subscription.

Teresa H. Janssen: Port Townsend, WA’s Teresa has had prose and 6

KERRY CESEN

MATT COLLLINS

Shannon Smith: “I am a retired highschool teacher and fifth-generation John Hinton: From Frankfort, IN: “As a writer, I focus on Kansan. Christopher is poetry (my first collecnow a seventh grader, tion, Blackbird Songs, was coming over to mow my published in January), lawn soon. And Zephy but I love a good story.” is waving at me.”

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GreenPrints

Summer, 2O2O #122

Mrs. Fortin’s Garden.......................................................................... 12

By Cheryl L. Davison Zephy, Creeferter, and Me................................................................. 16

By Shannon Smith My Rooftop Garden Raccoon War.................................................. 22

By Henry Clarke Dolive Horologium Florae............................................................................. 30

By Diana Wells Garden Fashion................................................................................... 34

By Karen Keltz Wild Things!........................................................................................ 36

By Bobbie Cyphers Did It Myself!...................................................................................... 40

By Madeline McEwen Victory Gardens.................................................................................. 46

By Becky Rupp Ravens vs. Crows................................................................................ 52

By Teresa H. Janssen A Chunk of Heaven............................................................................ 58

By Maggie Meehan Let Me Have My Fury........................................................................ 62

By John Hinton July Gardening Diary........................................................................ 64

By Caroline Wiseblood Meline Grass? Or Garden?.............................................................................. 70

By Marianne Willburn Memories and Butterflies.................................................................. 74

By Chuck Jutz 7

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Forest Bathing Retreat

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An utterly beautiful collection of poems, & reflections on trees. Superb, moving, inspiring, relaxing & restorative.

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Great Garden Quotes 69 inspiring, terrific, and humorous garden quotes, each with beautiful GreenPrints b&w art, ready for you to color—and frame!

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The Gardener’s Year

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This little-known gem is my absolute all-time favorite garden read.

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Elizabeth & Her German Garden Much-loved, but long out of print, this 1898 classic tells of a female aristocrat trapped by life but freed by her garden.

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God’s Word for Gordener’s Bible A complete, lovely, truly informative, beautifully written, and deeply reverent devotional Bible—for gardeners! Hardback.

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The Essential Earthman

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BACK AT LAST! The famous first collection (1981) of Henry Mitchell’s biting, witty, and wise Washington Post garden columns! A true classic! Paperback.

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My Garden Doctor

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Francis Duncan’s longforgotten 1913 classic about an ailing New England woman healed by gardening is finally back in print!!

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The Signature of All Things An exquisitely written, very moving—and very surprising!—novel about an American woman moss botanist in the 1880s. Hardback.

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Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul

IT’S HERE! 101 of the most moving, funny, and inspirational gardening stories ever collected.

Coedited by Pat Stone.

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Weeder’s Digest

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Merry Hall Beverly Nichols, the funniest British garden OUTwriter OF of his generation, is back in print! His PRINT passionate gardenmaking makes delightful reading! Paper $24.95

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating A remarkable chronicle of a bedridden woman’s life with a wild snail as her companion.

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This remarkable anthology contains the 40 absolute best pieces from the first 5 years of GreenPrints magazine —with over 60 illustrations! Paperback.

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How Carrots Won The Trojan War

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The Roots of My Obsession 30 Great Gardeners tell the stories of why they garden. Fascinating. Paperback.

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Mrs. Fortin’s Garden

grew up in Southern California during the 1950s. My father proudly built our square little bungalow alongside several others in a row on Moorpark Street in Los Angeles. All of them were “landscaped” pretty much the same: a small strip of lawn, one ash (or palm) tree plunked into the center, and a few straggly gardenia bushes near the front steps. Occasionally, you would see a stray bird of paradise. And, oh, there was a lot—a lot—of ivy.

Our backyard was taken up with a swimming pool, concrete surround, and a little patch of grass where my father put up my swingset and where, for some reason, I used to make mud pies on the seats (to the fury of my older brother who sat on them). There was also an incinerator (look it up, all you people under the age of 55) and a detached garage with a concrete driveway. That was it. No one on the street had a real garden. There were certainly very few flowers to be seen.

But one day when I was 5 years old, new neighbors moved in next door and my small world was changed forever.

Within days of moving in, Mrs. Fortin was out in her backyard marching over the entire thing, carrying shovels, hoes, and a tape measure. She was wearing a voluminous flowered apron with pockets, a scarf on her head, and pretty, long gloves on her hands.

Now my mother wore gloves, but only the short white kind on Sundays or for a special lunch. These were different—long, all the way up to the elbow. She was pretty, too, with reddish hair and bright, intense blue eyes. (To my very young eyes, she looked old. Now I think she was only in her mid-30s.)

Curious, I watched as she began digging industriously in the 14

ILLUSTRATIONS BY HEATHER GRAHAM

A 5-year-old discovers gardening.

By Cheryl L. Davison

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dirt. I personally loved digging, but had thus far been confined to my little sandbox (that I often had to sieve out because the local felines loved it, too) and my small patch of bare earth under the swingset. I hung over the chainlink fence (ubiquitous in those days) and watched, mouth agape, as Mrs. Fortin began making rows in the dirt: perfect, straight rows, using string and sticks to guide her. I could not imagine what she was doing, but I was fascinated.

A few days later, her behavior became even more baffling.

She emerged from the kitchen door with a bucket of what looked like kitchen scraps—and went to the rear of the property, buried it in layers, then sprinkled the entire thing with water from a watering can. Man! What was all this about? And what next?

I realize now What came next was the day that she that Mrs. Fortin emerged from her house with the pockets of gave me a her apron stuffed full of seed packets. Caregift I have fully, she made depressions in the now soft soil, shook a few seeds into the dirt, then cherished my covered them up with her hoe. Up and down entire life. the rows she went, sprinkling and covering seeds. At this point, although she certainly must have been aware of me all along hanging like a limpet from the fence, she looked right at me and smiled.

“Come through the gate, child, and you can help me plant the flowers,” she said.

I scrambled down and around through the gate. She gave me a few large seeds (they must have been nasturtiums and probably some scarlet runner beans) that small clumsy hands would be able to handle. She showed me how to dig a small hole and put a seed inside and cover it up. She also showed me the pictures on the front of the seed packets, so bright and cheerful, and explained how these humble seeds, tended carefully, would become the wondrous flowers on the packets. I remember being astonished and thinking this sounded unlikely. But I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was an adult, after all. And she was offering me the chance to dig in the dirt, something I loved to do, and then maybe witness something that sounded like magic. I loved 16

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magic! So we toiled side-by-side, planting and watering, she with the hose and I with the watering can.

Then we waited. Waiting for a 5-year-old is not just hard, it is nearly unbearable. I would ask her daily, ”When, oh when will the magic flowers appear?”

She would just smile and say, “Wait.”

Finally one sunny day when I came through the gate, she held out her hand and said, “Come see what nature brought!” We ran to the garden, and there was a fine green fuzz all over the ground.

Seedlings, sprung up as if overnight, were everywhere. But where were the flowers that I had seen on the packets?

Again, she just smiled and said, “Watch.” So every day, I visited the garden and every day, I witnessed the growth spurts, the tiny leafing out—and eventually, the fat buds that she promised held the flowers inside.

That Summer is the first time I learned about patience and how nature has its own pace, its own time. I will confess to secretly using my fingernail to open a few of the buds and gasped when I saw the hint of color and silkiness to come.

Finally, the garden matured into a lovely paradise of color and scent and movement. Masses of white daisies appeared along with glorious hollyhocks and delphiniums, spicy carnations and pinks, pansies with little heart-shaped faces and fascinating fouro-clocks that opened in the evening. We had also planted a lot of herbs (totally outside of my ken), and I was introduced to the delights of basil, thyme, rosemary, and lavender. So many plants that I had never seen, smelled, or gloried in before, all nourished by that pile of lovely compost I had seen Mrs. Fortin make. omething caught fire in me that Summer. I realize now that Mrs. Fortin gave me a gift I have cherished my entire life. She introduced this city child, surrounded by concrete and asphalt, to a greener, scented, more natural world.

I have made many gardens in my long life since then and have greatly enjoyed them all. But none, I think, were quite as magical as that first one: Mrs. Fortin’s garden. v 17

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Zephy, Creeferter, and Me Talking with my favorite flower —and the neighbor’s kid. By Shannon Smith I once lived in an iris-blue Queen Anne house that was bordered with 20 pink, yellow, and white roses, but that was another lifetime. When my husband died, I took a teaching job in another county, farther west, one that provided teacher housing.

The housing was a double-wide trailer, free and sound, but the yard was ridiculously small. There was room for only one rose.

It was a tough choice. I decided on Zepherine Drouhin and have never regretted it. Four times in the past 12 years, Zephy 18

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY HANNAH ENGLAND

has been uprooted and transplanted, without yellowing a leaf.

Needless to say, we have become close.

Eventually I bought a tiny 1902 farmhouse on a sandy Kansas road named Prairie. The house needed work, but there was room for grandkids, fruit trees, vegetable gardens, and flowers. Of course, the yard also needed work. The soil was hard clay, weedy, and parched. That first year, I planted apricot trees, cherry trees, peach trees, pears, pecans, and oaks. Some survived.

“Here, let me Eventually I carved out a flower garden to border the entire back yard. Zepherine clip that sprained Drouhin was the only rose I dared host, bebranch. It won’t cause the location was harsh and windy. hurt. I’ll dab Still, she flowered each June, like clockwork, to celebrate my birthday. some pruning Last Summer was busy with rewiring, sealer on it.” reroofing, replumbing, removing walls, painting, etc. In the blink of an eye, my neglected flower garden turned to foxtail, wild lettuce, and rowdy, shoulder-high cosmos.

(My grandmother warned me never to turn my back on cosmos.)

By frost there was no sign of my rose.

This Spring, as soon as the ice melted, I searched her out, hoe in hand and sick at heart. I found her, covered with plaster dust and the remnants of knob and tube wiring. I cleared the mess and washed her face. She was disgruntled but hanging on.

Naturally I apologized.

“Dang, Zephy! I’m sorry. I told them to dump that stuff by the road! Here, let me clip that sprained branch. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt. I’ll dab some pruning sealer on it. How about a nice cup of manure tea? We have a lot of work to do, you and I. I want to redo this whole border. Can’t use the rototiller because of the tiger lilies—you know how they are. I’ll have to dig it by hand . . . ”

By June, snapdragons, larkspur, and violas had replaced the henbit, studs, and plaster. Best of all, Zephy bore a perfect petticoat swirl of pink blossoms. Their scent wafted through the open windows and filled my house with heavenly sweetness. I was forgiven.

Working together, Zephy and I spent the Summer reworking 19

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that weedy mess. We pulled wild lettuce until our hands blistered.

We rounded up the cosmos. We planted four o’clocks between our garden and the neighbor’s huerta. We wrangled, roped, and trellised a Triffid-sized sweet pea. Mainly though, we debated design, me leaning on my hoe and musing, Zephy listening.

“I’m rethinking the viburnum,” I announced on this particular morning, taking a breather from weeding. “And, yes, I know this is a complete turnaround, but I kind of miss the cosmos.”

“Who are you talking to, Mrs. Smith?”

I jumped a little. The thing is, I forget about Christopher. He is my neighbor’s kid. For years he was Creeferter, but just weeks ago he mastered his first name. (His last name is still a little murky.)

He is theoretically confined to his yard, while his older brother Edwin and the other neighborhood kids ride off on their bikes.

“I’m talking to you, Christopher!” I lied. “Where are you?”

“I’m over here, in my tipi.” A mop of blue-black curls poked out of my sweet-pea tower.

I stepped over and deadheaded a couple of pea blossoms. “I thought this was your rocket to Mars.”

He frowned. Even frowning, the kid has dimples. He pulled two battered plastic figurines from his overall bib. “No. Today I am playing Indians with Yellow Brave and Big Chief.”

“What happened to Buzz Lightyear?”

“He got in trouble. He has to take a nap. Mom says.”

“Do you want to hunt buffalo?” I pointed with my hoe to a couple of concrete hedgehogs that become stampeding buffalo when the Cheyenne are in town. “Go get your bow and arrows.”

“I can’t. Mom took them away. Big Chief shot Edwin last night. He almost put his eye out! I’m making Indian canoes, like you showed me.” He held up a grubby handful of peapod canoes.

“Making canoes is hard work. How about a cookie break?”

“OK!” “Here, let me wash your hands.”

“No. I’ll wash them in the ocean!” He hopped over the four o’clock hedge and ran to the wading pool in his yard.

I had to laugh out loud. “Kids!” I said. “What imaginations.”

Zephy chuckled and nodded. v 20

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Letters to GreenPrints

I’m always grateful to hear from readers. Write me at GreenPrints, P.O. Box 1355, Fairview, NC 28730 or email pat@greenprints.com.

Thank you, GreenPrints family, for providing calm, joy, and wisdom in these crazy times.

—Lee Ann Hawkins

Marion, IN

Your type doesn’t fade or wilt!

—Freida Pearce

Rutherfordton, NC I have enjoyed GreenPrints since 1995. The artwork always fits the stories so well. Each issue is like going to a gallery. I can’t pick a favorite artist.

—Mary Jo Noble

Robesonia, PA

Love your magazine—now more than ever. I am rereading all the back issues I saved. I’m now really glad I did!

—Randy Myers

Summerhill, PA

This is the way I end my day.

Then I can get to sleep.

—Jean Littledale

Fabian, NY

I start each morning with GreenPrints readings. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate my issues, especially during this time of constant dread.

—Jane Wacahutka

Chisago City, MN

Read GreenPrints with a cup of tea in front of the fire, and all will be right with the world.

—Marianne Binetti

Seattle, WA

Fabulous!

Best Little Book Ever.

—Donna R. Bolte Butler, PA

Thank you for the gift of love I receive every three months.

—Paige Rowell

Raleigh, NC I will be a loyal subscriber till the end.

—Suzan Cardile

Cochranville, PA

My copies get shared with folks in rest homes. There are many ways to take flowers to shut-ins.

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Giving Gardeners Ever since we raised subscriphealth is such I can’t manage tion prices last September, I’ve more than one houseplant. included the words You have no idea in the box here in PLEASE: If you are how your magaevery renewal no- on a fixed income or zine keeps me tice we’ve sent out. have another reason connected to the We have had some why you can’t afford circle of life. So subscribers who, to renew, please contact here’s $5.00 to out of necessity, sent us and we will work help someone in anywhere from something out. I mean else enjoy GreenPrints (or for the $12.50 to $0.00 for it. We don’t want you Editor to have their renewals, and to miss out on getting a beer—another we’ve been glad to GreenPrints! good cause!). renew them. Most impressively, a good number of I have an M.S. in horticulture. you have donated money to help Gardening has always been pay for these subscriptions. My ofquite important to me. But now fer has so far been all paid for—by I am 70 years old and disabled. you! Here’re a few things people Thanks so much to the person wrote (I omitted all names): who donated two years to my GreenPrints is important in expired subscription! my life. It is a bright spot, my “ahhh” moment, my grownI really appreciate the price up bedtime story. So I am break and your thoughtfulness making a donation to help subin offering it. I will repay it in sidize subscriptions for those kind, when I can. in need. No one should have to go without GreenPrints!

I’m retired. Volunteering at my church and its community I was once an avid gargarden is basically all I do. I dener—heirloom vegetables, can't afford even a one-year seed-starting, composting, renewal. Thank you, with all the whole shebang. Now my my heart, for your help.

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My Rooftop Garden Raccoon War

Encounters with a most formidable foe.

By Henry Clarke Dolive Author’s Note: I’ve been around, and I like to think I’m a problem-solver.

But I never faced a problem like this—until I retired. ust before the building permit was issued for our RV garage, my wife and I had an epiphany: the roof of the garage was going to be flat, get lots of sunshine, and be well out of reach of deer. Why not put a garden on it?

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY JEFF CROSBY

So after the garage, with beefed-up walls and trusses, was finished, we laid down the appropriate materials over its roof.

Following that, I constructed cedar planter boxes and plasticized lumber walkways, and we contracted to have 50,000 pounds of engineered growing medium blown into the planter boxes. The next growing season, we were finally ready to raise our first—$400—tomatoes!

My wife and I, with our teenage daughOne raccoon ter, live in a heavily wooded suburb of looked into Cincinnati. We thought raccoons were cute! the motion “Awhhh,” said my daughter, “look at the camera—and mask and the way it cleans its face with its front paws. Can we keep it?” thumbed his Even I admired the raccoon who denose at me! veloped a habit of sleeping in the daytime, upside-down in a tree hole, 30 feet above the ground, head and front legs hanging out: “How does it do that?”

Yes, we did know that raccoons could be destructive—to our birdfeeders and the walls of our cedar home—and that their very social nature can lead to family tiffs. This last was evidenced the second night we threw out seed corn for the deer during an exceptionally cold winter. At 3 a.m., we were awakened by 40-50 raccoons fighting over the corn. But we won those battles by bringing birdfeeders inside at night, helping the deer with salt blocks, not corn, and putting metal hardware cloth under our cedar siding.

We had no idea what we were about to face. ur first year’s rooftop crop included cantaloupe, one of our favorite summer treats. After weeks of daily inspections, eager for the first melon to fully ripen on the vine, we finally climbed to the roof garden to ceremoniously pick it—only to discover that, during the previous night, a raccoon had chewed a two-inch hole and completely hollowed it out! We had to repel this invasion!

I hurried to the farm supply store and bought the components for an electric fence, planning to mount its parallel wires up high, just below the perimeter of the roofline. I explained my 25

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project to the clerk and asked, “How closely together can I mount the hot and ground wires without the electricity arcing like lightning from one wire to the other?”

Her response, no doubt derived from working with cattle, was, “Oh, you don’t need a ground wire. The animals’ feet will provide the ground connection.”

Trying to keep a straight face, I re-explained that the fence was, in most places, 18 feet off the ground and added, “If one of the raccoon’s front feet can reach the top hot wire with its back feet still on the ground, I have a much bigger problem than I think!”

At first, the electric fence was effective, but soon the rest of the melon crop and many of our tomatoes were ruined. Desperate, I borrowed a friend’s infrared motion-activated camera and discovered the raccoons were coming up the steps. So I added more strands of electrified wire across the steps and offset the insulating handles. That worked—brains and technology had won the day!

The following year, however, we found more garden damage: the raccoons were bypassing the maze of electrified wires on the steps by walking up the handrail and then jumping onto the landing. I added extensions of the wires on the handrails. That bright idea worked—for a season. The next year, though, they started getting in again, and I wasn’t able to pick up how on my (by now) own infrared camera. Had the raccoons gotten invisibility cloaks?

I set a Havahart trap on the stair landing. In one week, I caught four raccoons and a possum. I released my prisoners in woods about a half-mile away. But could they find their way back? I obsessed over this quandary during several sleepless nights. How could I be sure? Trying to band a snarling raccoon seemed foolish, and I felt sure that they would not agree to wear numbered jerseys.

Then one night, the proverbial lightbulb flicked on. I began spray painting a colored spot on their lower backs, just above their tails (not being, yes, a total idiot, I did this while they were in the trap).

I even wrote down which raccoon received which color spot.

Given the number of trapped raccoons, however, having enough distinctive paint colors soon required a trip to the local hardware store. To the traditional, “How may I help you?” I responded, “I’m looking for small cans of inexpensive outdoor 26

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spray paint in a variety of bright colors.”

“OK. What are you painting?”

“Raccoons,” I deadpanned.

I met, and sprayed, a lot of raccoons. Each one was different.

One cowered in the trap when I approached. One wanted to tear my leg off. Another wanted to be my best friend. But I never saw the same one twice. My catch, paint, and release strategy had won the war—or at least I thought it had!

Toward the end of the season, the enemy started raiding my rooftop again. Could another technological advance save the day?

We tried guarding our tomato planter box with solar-charged, motionactivated, ultra-highspectrum sound. I have always been suspicious of devices which claim to work in ways beyond perception. However, I became convinced when our Border Collie approached within ten feet and the device and its blue sound-activation light came on. She tucked tail and quickly left. (Of course, she wasn’t a threat to the garden, anyway. Besides, she only likes sugar-snap peas.) I wanted to see the same reaction from a raccoon, but had to defer to the evidence: no ruined tomatoes. Season saved!

The next season started with a new wave of attacks. Not only did raccoons ruin our tomatoes, they also developed a taste for our squash: acorn, crookneck, spaghetti, and butternut (although not—the picky eaters!—our prolific zucchini). My infrared camera showed them high-stepping single file through the step wires without any visible signs of shock. I replaced the fence transformer and sanded the wires on the steps. The camera then showed one or two raccoons individually running away as they took a shock, 27

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but, like a trained assault force, others kept coming, taking the shock risk or weaving through the handrail extension wires and leaping over the step wires.

We bought more ultra-high sound makers and turned them to higher frequencies. When that didn’t stop them, I added a motionactivated strobe light: still no effect. I couldn’t stop them! Not only that, each morning, the Havahart trap was triggered and flipped on its side: bait gone, cage empty. The camera showed that the raccoons moved it around from the back until it triggered, and then reached in for the bait. One image even showed a raccoon standing on his hind legs on the top of the sprung trap, looking into the camera­—I think he was thumbing his nose at me! I was only surprised that I wasn’t mooned.

In desperation, I thought about adding more electrified wire and a higher-voltage transformer, but wouldn’t adding more of what wasn’t working be a useless strategy? I thought about sitting in the garden in camo face paint and night-vision goggles, somehow armed for the regular 2-to-5 a.m. raccoon patrols. No, that was truly crossing the line, even for me.

Then, out of the blue, my wife said, “What about human voices?” Worth a try! We bought a shower radio with a rechargeable battery and left it near the top of the garden stairs every night, tuned to the local NPR/BBC station. I also reset the ultrasonic squeals to their lowest frequency, almost audible to humans.

What do you know? It worked! As I write this, we have had no evidence, for the past two growing seasons, of any rooftop raiders. We’ve been able to harvest our own vine-ripened tomatoes—without any teeth or claw marks in them! till, I know that winning a battle, even for two years, is not the same as permanently winning a war. It’s very possible that this man-raccoon confrontation will go on for the rest of my golden years. But I tell you what, I’ve had a fine life, and I’m relatively proud of my accomplishments.

So I don’t really care if, after it’s done, my epitaph reads: “He fought the good fight over and over. But raccoons raid his roof now he’s under the clover.” v 28

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40 Cent Seed Packet If you wish to start a garden or experiment with seeds without spending a fortune, choose from over 200 varieties of herb, vegetable & flower seeds at 40 cents a packet. Plenty of seeds in each packet for a small garden or indoor/patio garden. For a trial offer send $1.00 for a catalog and 4 sample packets of herb seeds.

We also carry Live Herb & Perennial Plants.

Le Jardin du Gourmet P.O. Box 75 GP St. Johnsbury Ctr., Vt 05863 See our web page at www.artisticgardens.com

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C u tti n gs

Winter is cold-hearted, Sping is yea and nay, Autumn is a weather cock Blown every way.

Summer days for me When every leaf is on its tree.

—Christina Rossetti —I found this in A Gardener’s Bouquet of Quotations, edited by Maria Polushkin Robbins (Dutton).

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Summer Days for Me!

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Short selections—both old and new— sent in by our readers.

The Cornfield Cathedral

CHELSEA PETERS

It was the Summer I was almost 5 when I discovered the glory of morning glories in the cornfield.

I rose early (I always was an early riser) and put on a sunsuit—by myself. No one saw me as I padded through the kitchen and out the back door. The dewy wet grass felt delicious on my bare feet, the air was still and cool, and the whole world was washed with gold.

I had a destination. Yesterday Grandpa had complained that morning glories were taking over a corner of his cornfield. I had to see them before he destroyed them. Morning glories were considered a nuisance weed.

I walked the little path that ran along one side of the cornfield and saw them right away, their vines dancing from stalk to stalk, their blue and purple faces turned up to the sun. I walked down the cornstalk aisle. The big leaves were wet and scratchy, but when I looked up— oooh, how beautiful! It was as beautiful as the big round window in our church when the sun shone through it.

Completely enchanted, I stayed in the cornfield cathedral, turning circles, looking up to watch the kaleidoscope-like patterns of flowers change until I was dizzy, thoroughly wet, and wearing a morning glory necklace.

Mom and Grandma were in the kitchen when I returned. Both asked me at the same time, “Where on earth have you been?”

“You’re sopping wet,” Grandma added.

“Go dry off and put on a dry sunsuit,” Mom ordered.

At breakfast I tried to explain why I was in the cornfield.

“It was just like being in church” was the best that I could do.

—By Cora Raiford of Jacksonville, FL. 31

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Horologium Florae

Of time—and floral clocks—in the garden.

By Diana Wells v

v

v

re you a morning person or an evening person? I am very much a morning person. I seldom wake after 5 a.m., but by 7 p.m. it’s dull to be around me! My husband was an evening person. He tended to be withdrawn at breakfast, whereas I never wanted to do much after the sun went down. Our best times together were during the middle of the day: we always had lunch together.

Early mornings in Summer I would have breakfast on the porch, listen to the birds, and feast my eyes on the Heavenly Blue 32

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY BLANCHE DERBY

morning glory. It was always planted exactly where I could best see it from my chair, and it always opened its trumpet flowers in time for my breakfast. The moonflower, though, also next to the porch, opened in time for me to yawn, remark on its heavenly scent—and start to think about bed.

My husband would often remain on the porch, watching the bats come out and saturating himself into the soft dusk. I would plant other evening plants for him—mostly with white, scented flowers that attracted fluttering moths seen through the screenCarl Linnaeus ing. There would be fireflies, too, and when wrote that he she visited, my little granddaughter chased could “plant a them, laughing and dancing fairy-like over the darkening lawn. clock that All living things, including plants, aniwould put the mals, and ourselves, respond to a circadian rhythm. The term “circadian” comes from watchmakers out of business.” the Latin circa, “about,” and di, “day,” and describes how living things respond to the movement of the earth, sometimes (to us) with almost uncanny accuracy, even if their environment is artificially changed. When hamsters were taken to Antarctica and put on a turntable to counteract the normal rotation of their lives, they continued to sleep and wake at their usual times. Unless they have been genetically modified, fruit flies, or Drosophila (the name means “lover of dawn”), wake in the morning, have a rest at midday, and sleep at night, regardless of laboratory conditions. Apparently even bananas always make their new cells just after dawn.

Carl Linnaeus, famous for classifying living things—dividing them into families and species—wrote Horologium Florae in 1751, describing his idea for a “Floral Clock.” This would tell time according to the time of day different flowers opened or closed. He wrote that he could “plant a clock that would put the watchmakers out of business.”

He never, as far as we know, made this clock, although he did make a list of the different flowers that he claimed could be relied upon to open at certain times. “Hawksbeard (crepis),” he wrote, 33

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“opens between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m. and closes at 6:30 to 7:00 p.m.

Indoors, in water it opens at 6:30.” His clock included hawksbeard, dandelion, passionflower, marigolds, pinks, star of Bethlehem, and evening primrose. His list, however, did not specify the season these flowers bloom, the length of day and latitude where they grow, or the weather. He did not, as I say, make such a clock—but others have tried to do so with varying success.

It’s a lovely concept and even inspired the mid-20th-century French composer, Jean Françaix, to write L’horloge de Fleur (“Flower Clock”) for oboe and orchestra. It depicts flowers opening between 3:00 and 11:00 p.m., including moonflower and night-flowering catchfly. Just think if we used such clocks: I can picture secretaries peering out of their office windows to see if the flowers are bright enough for a lunch break—and sending someone down to see if they were properly closed for the workday to end!

In spite of Linnaeus’s plans, the watchmakers, far from being out of business, have prevailed. They, not our circadian rhythms, dominate our lives. Not always to our benefit: high-school students notoriously doze through early classes. Travelers ignoring jet lag struggle to keep awake when making important decisions. Clocks rule our lives. Indeed, at the time of writing this, we have just changed our clocks to “Summer” and must wake an hour earlier. ince prehistory humans have recorded the passing hours in different ways. According to the ancient Egyptians, an instant was the time it takes a hippopotamus to look up and check for danger. From the time of ancient Egypt, sundials were used to track passing time (as long as the sun was out). In the classical world, time was often measured by a dial turned by dripping water. On the whole, though, most people simply worked according to the sun and didn’t need accurate clocks.

That changed with the early Christian monasteries. Monks and nuns had to pray at specified regular intervals regardless of the weather and the season. They could use water clocks and candles with the hours marked off. But someone had to watch these and ring the bells when the right number of hours had passed. The bell was at the top of a tower, and weighted ropes rang it when pulled.

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This bell was called a clocca, which gives us the word “clock.”

By Linnaeus’s time, watches were commonplace. One of the earliest watches belonged to poor Mary, Queen of Scots, in the 16th century. It was heavily jeweled and in the shape of a skull, designed to hang from her neck. It bore what turned out to be a prophetic inscription: “The impartial foot of pale Death visits the cottages of the poor and the palaces of kings.” e gardeners know time in the best way of all—the way of forgetting it. We’ve all spent hours pottering and then suddenly checked the time and wondered where it went. But we are also acutely aware of the slightest changes in our gardens. A century before Linnaeus, the poet Andrew Marvell wrote:

How well the skillful gard’ner drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new; Where from above the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And, as it works, th’ industrious bee Computes its time as well as we.

How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!

But Marvell is like other gardeners, he’s not really watching the time. His mind, he writes, is:

Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade.

And I, too, lingering over my breakfast on the dawn porch, can let a long time pass before I get myself together and start my day. It’s just impossible to stop bathing my spirit in the utter, extraordinary blueness of the morning glory. Whatever I meant to do is forgotten.

And, for a while, time stops. v 35

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Garden Fashion Trendsetter with a trowel? Me! (Riiiiight . . .)

By Karen Keltz I experienced a moment of sadness last week when the bolt-like button on my favorite pair of garden jeans fell onto the floor. The piece of fabric where it had been attached had simply worn away entirely. There’s no way to sew it back on, since there is no fabric left upon which to sew. I fear my jeans’ days are numbered—and I don’t like it! They are still relatively young, somewhere in the 18-20 year range, I estimate. They were just getting broken in.

They are perfect garden pants, forgiving when I may have added a few too many pounds over the Winter. The material is loosely woven now, so air gets through for perfect cooling on the hottest days (as hot as Tillamook, Oregon gets, anyway). My pants are so soft I can bend without cutting off the blood supply to my extremities or pinching the backs of my knees.

All the stains appear to vanish during a I don’t wash, probably because there are but a few fibers for them to stick to. An old oil stain recall when I purchased them, from their early days does still run down one thigh, but the red paint I’d slopped all but I must have over the front of both legs has long been gone been a woman from all the thrashings in the washer.

I’m lucky because the waistband had of some great two bolt-like buttons. One remains, so I can substance. still hold my pants up. I guess everyone is lucky regarding that, neighbors included.

I’ve worn other pants in the garden over the years, but none have been as highly regarded. I do have another pair of jeans, my second favorite pair, which I don when my favorite pair is in the washer. They are some sizes larger than I presently am, and 36

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY HANNAH ENGLAND

I don’t recall when or where I purchased them, but I must have been a woman of some great substance back then.

They, too, are extremely comfortable—the fabric can flap in the breeze to keep me cool, and nothing bunches or binds. At my age, an easy pull-off is another benefit, for those times when I’ve stayed too long in the garden and Nature is raring to take her course. They also have pockets where any number of necessities can reside until needed: weed-trimmer string cassettes, seeds, cellphone.

It’s true that I will never look like the photos of gardeners touted in magazines, with their white sundresses and beribboned straw hats, long-stemmed cutting flowers in one hand and lipsticked smiles on their faces.

Please tell me real gardeners look like me. Underneath their sweat-rimmed, vented canvas hats, they hold a small look of malice, thinking of what evil they’ll next conquer, be it slug or grub, bittercress or thistle, with a wickedly sharp tool of death. Their T-shirt fronts display vivid stains that are diverse and indelible, their garden tool belts are securely fastened around their waists, and their pants are threadbare but comfortable, with big pockets.

Maybe even one bolt-like button missing! v *Actually IN the garden, that is!

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Wild Things!

Bringing kids and nature together.

By Bobbie Cyphers Author’s Note: Every time I begin to despair over how out of touch with the outdoors, with nature, we humans have become, I look up a group of kids and see what I can do.

In the shade of mingling paulownias, eight children sprawled like a litter of puppies atop a blue tarp, fair heads and dark dappled by sunlight. Seasoned veterans of our library’s Summer reading program, they radiated skepticism. Under their scrutiny, all my hours of planning (upwards of 20) and gathering (five, two after twilight the night before) seemed not quite up to the task of engaging such a jaded lot of post-millennial, first-to-third graders.

On the table before them stood discarded turtle shells, abandoned bird nests, and butterfly husks. Plants of various olfactory and tactile properties flaunted their attributes. And in specially prepared, temporary museums (a flat of old potting soil and a quart jar with a perforated lid) dwelled several earthworms and two These were my adolescent tadpoles, all four legs exposed. charges, for one Not really a sea of faces—more a puddle— the children looked up at me and waited. fleeting hour, These were my charges, for one fleeting hour, this small this small congregation of fledgling souls. congregation of So I began: fledgling souls.

“I am a very, very lucky person. Every morning I get to go outside and play. If I really listen, I’ll hear the very first bird of the morning say ‘Hello.’

If I close my eyes and breathe, I can smell fennel that tastes like licorice and roses that smell like tea. I can hug a hickory tree and taste raindrops. Every day I get to watch frogs leap into the pond 38

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY LINDA COOK DEVONA

and feel the water splash on my face.”

My squirming octet stilled. “Now let me show you what I found right outside my door.”

I plucked a nest from the table and held it in the palm of my hand. Upturned faces, expressions rapt, made me feel like Merlin—or Dumbledore.

“Where’re the eggs? Let’s see the eggs!” demanded one bossy 6-year-old.

I told them I never collect a nest until the birds have moved out, finished for the season. “Even this one,” and I lifted my husband’s straw hat off the table. Tucked inside, a nest woven of grasses, fluff, and hair from one Great Pyrenees lay emptied of its small family of wrens.

I pointed to the logs I’d brought, ripe with polypore and parchment mushrooms and oozing gelatinous crustose and foliose lichens, and invited them up to touch.

“Ewww!” one little boy shuddered. “No way!”

Shoved aside by a springy-curled pixie, he watched with admiration as she patted a lumpy lichen. “I like it,” she said.

Then they were all on their feet reaching for a nest, rubbing a 39

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lavender bud, digging into damp soil, rooting out an earthworm.

One puzzled second-grader contemplated the shell of a box turtle, and I told him that one time I watched just such a turtle dig a hole with her fat, clawed feet, lay her eggs, then cover them up. “And it took longer than a ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ show.

“This kind of turtle can live to be 100 years old,” I added.

“That’s even older than me.” They stared at the shell—and me.

For long minutes we immersed ourselves in the natural world, awash in the mystery of it all. “Imagine,” I coaxed, “all this is right outside, in our own backyards.” Astounded at the sights seen through magnifying glasses—89 cents each courtesy of a dollar store—the children studied an earthworm’s belly corsets, the hieroglyphics of a swallowtail’s wing, and the nesting material contributed by man’s—and woman’s—best friend. One little girl trained her lens on the tree where I told them swallows had made a home. “Where is it? Where is it?” she cried.

Good citizenship in action, they shared the four spyglasses among themselves, with minimal prompting, until they all had found the nest.

As the hour wound down, I presented the pièce de résistance— the living, breathing tadpole twins, straight from their home waters and soon to return.

We were almost there. Remembering a long, long time ago, when a band of intrepid Girl Scouts serenaded fireflies by an open fire, I opened my mouth and—rusty voice and all—sang, “There’s a hole, there’s a hole, there’s a hole in the bottom of the sea.” I went on to populate the hole with a log, then a knot on the log, next, a “FROG!” on the knot, followed by a wart on the frog, and a hair on the wart, and so on down the line of memories. When the song ended, the little crowd cheered. One mother even said, “Bravo!”

It was over. My hope was rekindled. It could have been my daughter and her mates from a too-distant childhood on the big blue tarp. Same curiosity, same excitement, same wondrous awe. And I thought: Let them be children. In time they will take on the mantle of caring for the earth. But first they must be allowed outside to play upon it. Only then will they love it.

Only then will they care. v 40

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Did It Myself!

Your neighborhood DIY expert? That’s me!

Well . . . by Madeline McEwen

ow difficult can it be?” I said to my husband, the Silicon Valley computer nerd, on Wednesday morning.

He peered at the magazine article with a cautious expression, no doubt wondering if this was a “Honey Do” item. It wasn’t. This Honey was ready to Do it on her own.

We were sitting in the garden under our new pergola with a pot of black coffee. I pointed at the photograph of a circular brick patio, described as a weekend project. Like the pergola, this would be a perfect addition to our American home—we Brits were keen 42

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY MATT COLLINS

to adapt to our new environment.

“Doesn’t give a cost estimate for the raw materials,” he said in a dubious tone.

“Bricks don’t cost much,” I said, “even in California.”

“You need tools, too,” he said. “Look at the list. We don’t have a tamper.”

“A tamper? Do you mean ‘temper’?”

He rolled his eyes. Ever since he erected the pergola last week—singlehandedly—he was a self-proclaimed expert on everything DIY. I couldn’t understand how he’d gone from geek to handyman in less than seven days. I noticed that Greg, our son, had managed to carve his “How difficult initial, “G,” high on the cross beam. I could almost imagine his small feet standing on the can it be?” I said table in triumph. (Where did he get a penknife to my husband. and why wasn’t he being supervised?)

We Brits were “True,” I said, “but I can pick up a tamper when I buy the other stuff. By the way, eager to adapt what’s a rototiller?” to our new “Er, it’s a machine with blades,” he said, environment. circling his pale soft hands in the air, fresh Bandaids covering his wounds from the pergola project.

“They chop up the dirt.”

“I’ll get one of those, too,” I said breezily.

“They’re expensive.”

He answered so quickly. How did he know about these things?

“Hire one instead,” he said firmly, flopping the magazine closed. I could tell he was relieved to be off the hook.

“Have you read the instructions?” he asked. “All of them?”

“Of course, how else would I know to buy sand?” I wondered what kind of sand? Could I use the dregs from the children’s old sandbox and save a cent or two? nce my husband left for the office, I headed out to the store on a spending spree. Although I forgot to take the magazine with me, I had almost perfect recall of every picture in the ten steps.

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Supplies acquired, I crawled back home. The car’s suspension groaned—bricks and sand are heavy! I stacked everything on the driveway in the midday sun. The thought of hauling it all through the gate, along the narrow side yard, and into the garden wasn’t appealing.

“Hi there, neighbor,” said the jovial man from the opposite house. Gene was a man who’d been married for more than 40 years, which I found hard to imagine. Also, a grandfather to three, a father to four, and a dad to six he’d adopted—which was way beyond my comprehension.

“Good morning, Mr. Gene,” I said.

“I keep telling you, call me Gene. None of that ‘mister.’” He rested heavy arms on our I suspect I lost white picket fence. I liked his threadbare jeans and his yellow tape-measure suspenders. Was more than a Gene short for Eugene? Why did Americans few minutes clip their names to a single syllable? Did they chatting, maybe feel they lacked the time to say more than one? an hour, possibly It was my understanding that Gene used to be a builder before he retired, longer. what Americans called a contractor, which sounded more like a lawyer to my ear. He pushed back his baseball hat and casually scratched his forehead.

“What you doing?” he said.

I handed him the magazine which had been buried in the car all the time, no longer glossy and crisp, but torn and crumpled, with a surprising amount of sand in the seam. He adjusted his reading glasses.

“Looks like a couple of your step-by-steps are missing,” he said casually.

“Never mind,” I grinned. “I’ll manage.”

“You done this kind of work before?”

I pointed at the sundial hiding in the shade. “I made the mosaic top for that,” I beamed. “Although, somehow the gnomon—the part that casts the shadow—has snapped off. Must have bought the wrong glue.”

“More like the wrong type of wood. You gonna level the site 44

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first, I ’spose?”

“No,” I said. I jumped up and down on the weeded circle.

“This looks flat.”

Gene drew his lips together, a puff of air escaping.

“Wait up,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

He headed off, while I fought with the first bag of sand, which didn’t have a zipper.

Sadly, my dull scissors only cut a small opening. I tore the cut larger—and suddenly all the sand poured out at my feet.

Gene reappeared pushing a wheelbarrow full of unfamiliar tools, long-handled and well-worn.

“Why don’tcha go put some work shoes on?” he suggested as I brushed the sand off my sandals. I was about to refuse, but then the phone rang. I dashed inside to catch the call—my mother from England. I expect I lost more than a few minutes chatting, maybe an hour, possibly longer by the time I’d sorted through stilettos and espadrilles to find something suitable for my feet. By then, I needed to go to my doctor’s appointment across town. I waved at Gene through the car window as I reversed from the garage.

Why do doctor’s appointments take so long in this country?

I was used to waiting hours in England because the service there was free, but somehow, now I had to pay for a doctor, I expected to be seen at the exact minute specified on the card. Sigh, I wish . . .

It was mid-afternoon by the time I returned home. I was surprised and delighted to find Gene hard at work in my garden. I took him a glass of water, remembering to add ice, and grabbed my largest wooden spoon.

Gene had worked up a sweat in the heat. He stood next to a 45

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perfect circle of sand.

“You didn’t need to do that,” I said. “You’re too kind.”

“It’s level now,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Now where’s that magazine?” I looked around until I saw the pages flapping under a large cobblestone.

No matter, I remembered most of the steps. Gene leaned against the tree in the shade and watched me count the bricks one-by-one.

“You’ve stacked them by 12,” he said, which I hadn’t noticed.

“Multiply them out.”

I grabbed the first two bricks and pushed them into the sand like two solitary teeth in a baby’s gappy mouth. “Math wasn’t my best subject at school,” I said, “but that looks like . . . about a hundred.”

“Hundred and forty,” he said. “You could start with the paver.

Put it in the center.”

He’d laid the paver on a sheet of burlap which—Clever!— made it much easier to drag to the middle. Or nearly in the middle: Gene shifted it an inch with the toe of his heavy boot, like nudging a golf ball into a hole.

“There,” he said. “Just have to slot the rest of these bricks into place.” I found I couldn’t carry more than four bricks without dropping them. Already, a few had chips, and several had broken in half.

“Why don’t you start around the central paver,” he said, “and work outward to the rim?”

“Does it make any difference?”

“Might,” he said. “Could run out of bricks. Won’t show so much if you work outward.”

He made a lot of sense. I was happy to accept his advice.

“What’s the spoon for?” Gene said.

“To bash the sand in between the bricks.”

“Try this trowel,” he said passing me a triangular-shaped tool.

“Fits together perfect,” I said, wiping my brow.

“You’ve got a few gaps,” he said.

He was right: open spaces stared back at me like gaps in a jigsaw puzzle.

“Where did I go wrong?” I said, defeated.

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“Take a step back,” he said, with a lopsided grin.

“To which step-by-step? Seven, or further back to five?”

“No,” he said, “step back and see where you’ve gone wrong.”

Happy to escape the heat, I dived into the shade and checked out the scene from a few meters away. I sighed. It was hopeless.

“They look fine close up,” I said, “but from here they’re all crooked.”

“You move them,” Gene said. “I’ll guide you.”

As good as his word, he patiently told me to shift them this way and that, this one and that one, until finally he declared himself satisfied. He brought over a broom and brushed vigorously.

“When’s that husband of yours coming home?”

“Back in an hour.”

“Tell him you did it all on your own.”

I giggled, gathered up his tools, and put them into the wheelbarrow.

“I’m tempted,” I said, “but I never could have done this without you.”

“He don’t know that.”

“He’ll guess and I can’t lie. Besides, he’d like the chance to thank you, too.”

“Wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Gene said, lifting the handles of the wheelbarrow and heading for the gate.

“Why?” I said. “I know he’s geeky, but lately, he’s changed.

Now he loves the challenges of DIY.” “Is that so?” Gene latched the gate with care. “I expect that’s because of all the time you spent away last weekend.”

“How did you know I was away?”

“Because I was in your yard with your husband and the kiddies. I bet he told you he put up that pergola, right?”

“Right,” I said. “He has the cuts to prove it.”

“Well next time you’re out there, take a look on the cross beam and see what you find.”

I remembered the “G” carved in the wood.

“Nope. If I were you,” Gene said, pulling his hat down to his eyebrows with a wink, “Say you did it all yourself.

“Just like he did.” v 47

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Victory Gardens Gardening in the city—now that’s a victory.

By Becky Rupp ust to be clear here, I’m not a city gardener.

I live in the country. The closest city to us, here in far northern Vermont, is Burlington (population 42,000) which our oldest son, who lives in New York City (population 8.6 million), tells us barely deserves the name.

When it comes to gardening, all I have to do is walk out the front door to find someplace to dig. If we had the time, energy, and inclination, we’ve got room for an acre of potatoes, a turnip field, and a couple of cows. Granted, I could do with a little less clay and a lot fewer rocks—this is, after all, Vermont—but the truth is that gardening, where we live, practically falls in our laps.

Not like all those city gardeners, who have to blast a hole in concrete to plant a tomato.

There’s a surprisingly lush literature on city gardening, and all of it describes the triumph of Country Mouse hope, optimism, and determination over great and awful odds. Take, for example, Rumer is my kind of Godden’s now-classic An Episode of Sparrows, people—but, first published in 1955. The book’s main from a garden character is young Lovejoy Mason, a street standpoint, kid from South London, who nicks a package of cornflower seeds and starts a garden in Town Mouse the rubble of a church that was destroyed in is a hero. the Blitz. Rubble is lousy ground for plants, so Lovejoy’s passion for her hidden garden ropes in other kids from the neighborhood—notably Tip Malone, leader of the local gang of boys—and leads to stealing dirt from a local private park.

But eventually—because of that charmer of a garden—there’s a 48

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wonderful and much-deserved happy ending.

Paul Fleischman’s Seedfolks begins with Kim, a young Vietnamese girl, planting six bean seeds in a vacant lot in Cleveland—which eventually inspires her neighbors, a multi-age and multiracial collection of people, all with different issues and problems—to collaborate in creating a supportive community garden. Sarah Stewart’s The Gardener is the picture-book story of young Lydia Grace Finch, shipped off during the Depression to help her Uncle Jim at his city bakery, where she ultimately makes her dour uncle smile by planting a marvelous roof-top garden in pots, tubs, and boxes.

And in Peter Brown’s picture book The Curious Garden—a great birthdaypresent pick for kids of every gardening parent and grandparent —young Liam finds a wilting wildflower growing beside an abandoned railroad track and sets out to take care of it. As he experiments and learns, his small garden grows and blooms, spreading in both directions along the empty track—until an entire grim and lifeless city is gradu49

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ally transformed into a vibrant green growing space.

Brown’s book was inspired by New York City’s real-life High Line, once an elevated railroad track on Manhattan’s West Side.

After the rise of trucking put railroads out of business in the 1950s, the track was abandoned, and by the 80s was in danger of demolition. Protests, fundraising, and support from a lot of influential and wealthy people saved it and converted it into a one-and-a-half-mile-long, plant-filled park. This ultimately cost $153 million—a bit of a stretch from Liam and his red rubber boots and watering can, but you get the idea.

Urban gardeners, barring multimillionaire patrons, pretty much have two choices: pots According to or vacant lots.

The idea of planting gardens on vacant the USDA, city lots dates to World War I, when the Naabout 15% of the tional War Garden Commission started urging world’s food people to plant vegetables in every available space, with the aim of alleviating the food supply is now grown in cities. shortage crisis in Europe. Over 5,000,000 people did so; and 25 years later, when food rationing hit during World War II, some 15,000,000 families picked up spades again and planted victory gardens. Boston Common and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park turned themselves into urban farms, and Eleanor Roosevelt—despite protest from the U.S. Department of Agriculture—planted a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. Citizens of New York City collectively planted 400,000 victory gardens, including one along Park Avenue and another on Riverside Drive. The result was some 200 million pounds of tomatoes, beans, beets, carrots, lettuce, and Swiss chard.

Nowadays urban gardeners are more likely to be driven by a desire for healthful and local eating and sustainable lifestyles than by wartime food shortages. Restaurants maintain indoor herb gardens for their customers; hospitals plant rooftop gardens for their patients; families plant tomatoes and peppers in flowerpots on their balconies. Communities pitch in—Seedfolks-style—to turn vacant lots into raised-bed group gardens. According to the USDA, about 15% of the world’s food supply is now grown in cities.

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Which in my opinion is no small feat. There’s more to victory than cabbages for World War II. Aesop’s Fables are a collection of short stories with helpful moral end-tags, generally (though possibly erroneously) attributed to Aesop, a storytelling slave from ancient Greece in the sixth century BCE. Among these is the tale of the Country Mouse and the Town Mouse, in which Country Mouse gets the Aesopian seal of approval. In the story, the two mice visit back and forth.

Sophisticated Town Mouse finds the country uncivilized and the food dull; far-less-cool Country Mouse finds the town awesome and the food scrumptious—but town is populated by terrifying and life-threatening cats and dogs. The take-away lesson is that peace and safety, even with awful cooking, are preferable to stress and danger, accompanied by a feast.

Well, maybe. But now imagine those mice as gardeners.

There’s Country Mouse, in overalls, sitting on the back porch, sipping lemonade, placidly growing beans. And then there’s Town Mouse fending off cats, dogs, rats, traffic, pedestrians, vandals, gravel, asphalt, skyscrapers, and city ordinances while struggling to nurture every sprouting lettuce leaf. Country Mouse is my kind of people—but, from a garden standpoint, Town Mouse is a hero.

More than 100,000 square miles of the U.S. is urban, a number that’s expected to triple during the next three decades—but due to city gardeners, more and more of that urban space is turning green. Detroit, Michigan—home to a depressing 200,000 abandoned lots—now has over 1300 community gardens. Chicago (city of Al Capone) is promoting rooftop farms, apiaries, and farmers markets. Boston (worst highway congestion in the country) encourages vacant-lot and rooftop gardens, and lets city-dwellers raise chickens and bees. ardening in the city is a triumph over odds that those of us in the laid-back boonies never come up against.

You’ve got to give a lot of credit to those city gardeners, doggedly planting where, by all rights, no garden is supposed to grow, fighting off pavement, trash, and taxi exhaust.

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Ravens vs. Crows Who won? Me!

By Teresa H. Janssen v

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t started with the death of my daughter’s horse. The cost of hiring someone to come with a truck to load and cart off its thousand-pound body was daunting, so I agreed to inter Kristina’s beloved Arabian pony near the root cellar, a good distance from the house. The coyotes here in rural Washington had been active at night that Spring, so to prevent 54

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY P. SAVAGE

more carnage, the burial needed to take place the next day. After my desperate phone plea, the county gravedigger, who was not in the habit of digging graves for animals, arrived with his backhoe the next morning, dug a large hole, and as gently as a surgeon with a scalpel, picked up the pony’s stiff corpse and gently placed it in the pit.

After the funeral, I promised Kristina The crows that we would plant a fruit tree above the invaded my grave. But which type? We already had too many pear trees; I had been overwhelmed by cherries in late sheer numbers the previous bumper harvest June. I shouted when they all seemed to ripen at once. I did at them to stop. not want another cherry. Each year dozens of crows moved in from the woods across They ignored me. the street at the first reddening of fruit on our mature Rainiers, and we had to be satisfied with the pickings from the lower branches. Why feed crows?

We agreed on a plum. But what variety? We already had a Mirabelle, a Shiro, and two prolific Italian prunes. We wanted something different. We thumbed through the nursery catalog.

“How about an old-fashioned Green Gage?” I said.

Kristina readily agreed. I think the similarity of the name to Green Gables, the setting of one of her favorite books, convinced her. The catalog described it as yellow-green, juicy with a sweet honey flavor, self-fertile, and adaptable to a variety of climates. The trees were small with low branches and a rounded habit. Perfect!

When the bare-root tree arrived by delivery truck that January, we planted it in the loose soil over the pony’s grave. It was a harsh Winter, but the plum survived and grew. ix Springs later, Kristina had left the nest and was enjoying college life. But the plum had not borne fruit. Perhaps the site was too cold, the soil too rich, or I had overpruned it.

Then, in Spring of the seventh year, the small tree had more blossoms than usual. And so did my cherries. The crows invaded them right on schedule in late June, waking me at the crack of dawn with raucous cawing as they descended en masse. I looked 55

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out my bedroom window to see the tree laced with black feathers as they enthusiastically commenced their gluttonous orgy of sweet cherries. I shouted at them to stop thieving, but they ignored me.

Our orchard dynamics changed, though, when the Green Gage bore fruit that July. Oddly, the small green plums didn’t look like plums at all. I picked one and bit into it. Though still unripe, its texture was grainier than that of a plum. The shape was wrong, too. When the mystery fruit began to turn yellow, what I tasted was a bland, though juicy pear. Not a Green Gage at all. The nursery must have mixed It was then that up the bare-root stock, and I had been sent the Corvid War some type of Asian pear. I had never seen such a small variety of pear, the size of a large began. I felt as cherry—difficult to bite into and flavorless to though I were boot. I didn’t know what to do with them, so living below an I left the fruit on the tree and walked away.

The ravens discovered them shortly aerial battle zone. after. I could see them from my porch, a pair of these large birds, probably mates. They camped out in a fir on the edge of the property and swooped in to harvest. The fruit was the perfect size to carry in their beaks, and the branches were strong enough to support their weight. Over the course of a couple weeks, I watched them pick the tree clean. I think they took a good survey of the property—plenty of open space, fruit trees for food, firs for cover, a large pond, and that gold mine of a pear tree. They settled into the upper branches of one of the firs near the garden and stayed.

That Fall and Winter, I marveled as the shiny black ravens soared over the field, their wingspans at least four feet. I got used to their guttural calls. Often one perched in a tree on the other side of the pond or on a tall fir next to the driveway and called to its mate in their home tree. Sometimes the call was a series of clicks, and other times it was more like a hoarse croak. I started calling to them when walking outside to the garden or after arriving home and stepping out of my car. They learned to recognize my red Ford coming down the driveway and regularly greeted me with loud croaks as I got out.

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Home from college for Winter break, Kristina was amused that the memorial Green Gage was really a tasteless pear and teased me about my talking to ravens. I reminded her how she used to converse with her horse, and she hugged me and said she understood.

That Spring, the raven pair was often in the fir by the garden.

I knew that crows and ravens mated for life. I assumed they were nesting. In May, the cherries still green on the trees, the crows started gathering in the woods across the road, sending a scout from time to time to check on the fruits’ progress.

It was then that the Corvid War began. I don’t know who started it. I have read that crows are more aggressive and more likely to attack, primarily to protect territory or nesting sites because ravens have been known to eat crow eggs or chicks. Though smaller in size, a mob of crows can nearly always chase away ravens, who do not form groups and are usually found in pairs. I assumed they were battling over resources, as humans so often do.

That day I felt as though I were living below an aerial battle zone: a murder of crows bombarded the ravens’ fir tree with piercing squawks, and one of the ravens executed breathtaking acrobatic maneuvers to disperse the mob. My heart beat quickly as I watched one of the pair wing to the far edge of the pond, a bevy of crows chasing it. After a day of skirmishes, the noise quieted. A day or two later, I saw one of the ravens return to the nest from the trees across the road with a small black object in its beak. I think it was a crow chick. I took it to mean raven victory. I knew I shouldn’t take sides in a war that didn’t involve me, but I was delighted that the ravens had won.

The result? The crows let my cherries alone that year. The ravens, each two to three times weightier than a crow, were too heavy to sit on the supple cherry branches and left the cherries, 57

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too, except to glean from the ground below. For the first time, I harvested most of them, leaving the highest to little brown birds I had an affection for.

The July after the war, I was looking forward to watching the ravens harvest from my useless, not-a-plum pear tree. But in this second year of bearing, the tree’s fruits were twice as big as the year before. They were too big for the ravens to carry in their beaks. I left them to ripen on the tree and fall when mature. The ravens could eat them from the ground. In the meantime, I noticed that a central limb on my Mirabelle Plum had been broken.

It didn’t take long to figure out that one of the ravens, in search for a beak-sized fruit it could carry back to the nest, had perched on the branch and cracked it. I wasn’t angry. A gardener makes mistakes and learns. The raven did, too. No other plum branch has been broken since then.

That Fall, I enjoyed watching three ravens pecking in the field or hopping down the dirt driveway. One of their chicks had lived, and the pair were giving it survival lessons. The next Spring, the gang of crows attacked again. Corvids have long memories. It was likely the crows had come back to battle for the cherries. I was afraid for the raven family, but they fought to protect their territory and were victorious again. I was relieved.

A year later, tragedy struck. I discovered one of the ravens dead on the edge of the lawn. The bird had gotten tangled in a tenacious wild blackberry vine, had probably panicked, and had strangled to death. I think it may have been the juvenile, but I’ll never know for sure. I mourned our loss. The other two ravens were quiet for a week. I was afraid that they might have left the area. But shortly after, they resumed their calls.

The ravens have stayed on as my garden companions. The Green Gage plum that is not a plum at all bears an unidentified variety of pear each Summer. They are still tasteless, and I leave them to the ravens and other creatures that search for food in the field during the night. And I have learned that sometimes what we plant bears different fruit than we intended—but the harvest can be better than we imagined. v 58

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KERRY CESEN

Everywhere water is a thing of beauty, gleaming in the dewdrops, singing in the summer rain.

—John Ballantine Gough 59

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A Chunk of Heaven Gardening with the late, great Elsa Bakalar.

By Maggie Meehan chunk of heaven. This was one gardener’s description of the late Elsa Bakalar’s teaching garden in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts. For the 12 students who had come to learn, the title was apt. We ranged in age from 30 to 60. Some of us were professional landscape architects who had found their education in “plant material” sadly lacking; some were beginner gardeners; some were skilled and just thirsting for more. All were thrilled to be there.

Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum had promised that the weekend workshop would provide an in-depth understanding of perennials. It was 1991, and as a novice, I was all-in on that prospect. The two-hour journey for me seemed trivial compared to that of others Compost and who had traveled from Maine and Rhode Island. But any journey was worthwhile for organic matter hands-on learning from a woman the Arnold first, flowers Arboretum described as “the doyenne of second: “You perennial gardeners.” want a $10 hole In the years to come, Elsa Bakalar became not only my mentor, but my friend. I took my for a $2 plant.”

“Gardening Fools” pal Marge to meet her when Bakalar’s long-awaited book, A Garden of One’s Own, was published in 1994. Another year, I introduced my mother to Elsa when she came to visit from England. Sadly, Elsa Bakalar died in 2010 at the age of 91. Her dear husband, Mike, had preceded her, and I know she was lost without her companion. (She once told me the story about the time she received a bareroot plant she’d ordered from a mail-order nursery and Mike remarked, “Someone 60

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY BLANCHE DERBY

has sent you a stick.” She also said that as they got older, they made a pact not to groan upon standing or sitting.) It seemed that a lot of Elsa’s spark died with Mike.

But at that famed perennial workshop back in 1991, Elsa was in her element. With her youthful blond pageboy, boundless energy, and quick dry British wit, she seemed much younger than her 70-odd years. In fact, she joked that she’d had a group of senior citizens come to see the garden—and realized she was older than most of them. “There they were, sitting there being elderly, and they asked, ‘How do you get started?’ I said: ‘Buy a plant, dig a hole, and stick it in!’”

Before this most active of retirements—consulting and working on 15 gardens as well as her own—Bakalar taught English literature in New York City. It was while living there that she and Mike bought a Summer place in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts. It was as basic as a Summer cottage could be. During a photoshoot of the garden for Better Homes and Gardens, the editor 61

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called and asked her to describe the style of her house.

“Style?” she replied. “Hmm, let’s see. It’s like a toolshed, with plumbing.”

Visitors had to leave their cars and walk the final stretch, over a small wooden bridge, around a pond, and up to an elevation of 1,800 feet. There, atop a hill and beneath a big dome of sky, the flower garden dazzled like a multi-jeweled offering to the gods.

Delphinium spires of cobalt, sapphire, and snow reached skyward, dancing on the breeze with airy pincushion flowers (Scabiosa caucasica) and the lacy fronds of meadow rue (Thalictrum). A small, luminous Sedum sieboldii tended the soil, while at mid-height floated a wash of palest yellow, the yarrow Moonbeam (Achillea).

Scattered throughout were the pastel nodding heads of annual poppies—a mainstay of English gardens but illegal to buy in the U.S. “You simply throw the seeds on the snow,” Bakalar told us.

“They come up where they will and cannot be transplanted. But look at them! They’re so delicate and sweet.”

Every flower was beautiful, but the show-off of the day?

Crambe cordifolia, a huge fountain of frothy white lace that erupted a full six feet from its cabbage-like soul. It was a bridal veil, only lacking a bride.

The hilltop location of this garden, spectacular as it was, was also a tool for teaching about soil. Since it was depleted of all nutrients by overgrazing and exposure, Bakalar had started out by dredging silt from the bottom of her pond and dragging it up the hill to the site. The lesson? Compost and organic matter first, flowers second: “You want a $10 hole for a $2 plant.”

Bakalar then asked a local farmer to till the soil for her first garden. He turned up a nice neat, rectangle. When she explained she wanted to “grow some lovely flowers” and sought curves and flow, he said, “Well, if I’d known you wanted a posy patch . . . ” She set to carving out the curves she sought by hand. Curves evolved into terraces that embraced small patches of lawn like a hug. The beds were planted with drifts of perennials in groups of threes, fives, and sevens, creating a gorgeous paisley fabric on the earth. A posy patch, indeed!

“I’m not a trained person, but one who has learned by doing,” 62

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she told this group of students. From a woman who had lectured at the Williamsburg Garden Symposium and the New York Botanical Garden, this was refreshing.

Resembling a school of awkward fish, we eager students spent the day learning by doing. We followed, en masse, about those curves and terraces, wherever Bakalar moved. We pinched and pruned, dug and planted, listened and learned. She had us dig up daylilies that needed dividing, instructing on the two-garden-forks method of prying them apart. She lectured on the importance of teasing out the roots of a pot-bound plant, of soaking the soil in the hole, letting it drain, filling it with compost, tamping it down with our feet, and watering again. Once she turned the nozzle on so high we scattered, laughing as mud spattered our faces. We welcomed it—the day was “The house? in the high 80s. By day’s end we were grimy, It’s like a sunburned, exhausted . . . and smiling.

Mark Twain was once said to have retoolshed, with marked, “If you don’t like the weather in New plumbing.”

England, wait a minute.” This truth was in evidence on the second day of the workshop. Yesterday high 80s, today low 50s and bucketing down rain. Emerging from our motel digs, we eager students gamely crossed the little wooden bridge and trekked around the pond and up to the terraces, shrouded in low clouds and pounding rain. Ah, yes, New England.

In just a short while we were all drenched and chilled to the bone. Finally, Elsa called it a day. She brought us all into her house and started out handing out towels and shots of whisky.

Then out came the ziplock bags of those illegal but innocent annual poppy seeds to take home. “This is a bit like a drug deal, isn’t it?” she said. “Plying you with whisky, handing out baggies. I’m not sure the Arnold Arboretum would approve.”

We students approved, however. We each went home with daylily divisions we had created, wrapped in damp newspaper, and baggies of seeds to create our own pastel drifts. We trekked back down the hill with our treasures, exhausted but blessed.

Hands-on learning from the doyenne of perennial gardening?

It wasn’t work. It was a chunk of heaven. v 63

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Let Me Have My Fury

Getting hot over a pepper. By John Hinton I live on a small property in a small town in Indiana, so I don’t have space to garden as I’d really like. If I could, I’d grow so much I could have a produce stand. As it is, I utilize small plots, a few straw bales, and a zeal that exceeds my allotted square feet.

I like to grow unusual things. Exotic things. Two years ago, I had seedling pots strewn about the house. I knew I was over my capacity before I’d put the first plants into the ground. Still, I had discovered an exotic I just had to try. It was a Habanada pepper, described as having the fruity floral flavor of Habanero without the heat. My wife doesn’t like spicy things and I thought this could be a best-of-both-worlds scenario.

Problem: I was out of places to put plants. Completely out. So I asked my wife, Joan, to let me plant the Habanada plant in her front-yard flower garden. This had always been an off-limits area, 64

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but she reluctantly conceded with a “Just this once.”

And, oh, how the plant grew. Full, bushy, lush green, and filled with tiny white blossoms. My eagerness to see little fruits appear on the plant was teetering on euphoria.

Joan and I have an agreement about yard work. She pulls the weeds, I follow later and clean up the debris. One day late in the season, she went out to do her lopping, topping, plucking, and various other -ings. After an hour, she came into the house and playfully announced, “Time for clean up on Aisle One.” Out I went—and saw that my wife had plucked my Habanada pepper plant from the ground—it was wilting in the debris pile!

“My Habanada I stormed into the house and yelled, pepper plant!

“You pulled my pepper plant!”

How could “What are you talking about?”

“My Habanada pepper plant! You know, you have pulled the one with all the little white flowers! How my pepper could you have pulled my pepper plant?” plant?”

“It was an accident.”

“You know how hard I worked to get that plant to grow!”

“I told you not to plant things in my front garden. How was I supposed to remember that plant was there!?”

“It was the only plant of mine that was there!!!”

“Why are you so angry? OK, I made a mistake, but your reaction is a little over the top.”

It was at this point that I uttered one of the most remembered and now-laughed-at lines in our 16-year marriage: “Let me have my fury!”

Dear Reader, she, she—she laughed at me. That, of course, made me all the more furious. I didn’t speak to her for several hours.

I made an attempt to replant the poor little thing, but it didn’t survive. I’m going try to grow a Habanada again this year. But not in the front garden—oh, no. In addition, I’ll wrap barbed wire around it to protect it from my partner.

And I still say a woman needs to let a man Habanada—I mean, have—his fury.

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July Gardening Diary The uniqueness of gardening along a city street.

By Caroline Wiseblood Meline 66

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY LINDA COOK DEVONA

live on a heavily trafficked corner in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Cars race up the hill from the main drag and routinely collide with other cars crossing the avenue where my turreted stone house sits on its own little hill.

I created a barrier of stones in front of the corner traffic light— but that was knocked over three times in five years, landing in the garden and destroying it. A few years ago, a big SUV drove right through the middle A few years of my big perennial bed. It ended up near the foot of the front stairs leading up to the ago, a big SUV house. This situation caused me to write to the drove right Philadelphia Chief Traffic Engineer—then through the Charlie Denney—so many times that we got middle of my big on a first-name basis.

But then a great thing happened. A perennial bed.

Waldorf School took over the old St. Peter’s Episcopal Church complex, directly across the street from me.

Now there are flashing school-crossing lights on the corner—which really slows traffic down. Hallelujah!

My property slopes downward from the house and is held back by 4-foot stone retaining walls. At the foot of the walls were, for many years, plain grassy strips that bordered both sides of the slate sidewalk along the 100-foot length of our property. I decided to replace all the grass with garden. That way I could stop having to mow, take advantage of sunny areas out of reach of two huge shade trees, and have the fun of reshaping a whole new section of my very visible front yard. I began timidly and became bolder season by season.

Street gardening exposes the gardener to all of the passersby—on feet, bikes, scooters, skateboards, skates, wheelchairs, and motorized vehicles of every type. The results are often interesting. For example, some teenage boys started walking by my house, and one looked me in the eye and screamed, “Bitch.” This happened 67

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periodically for several months. It was always very unsettling.

I told my son Mike that I had consulted one of my neighbors for advice. I don’t know this man very well, and I was unprepared for his response that I should call on Jesus for help. Without missing a beat, Mike said, “Mom, you should have told the man you do call on Jesus. Every time you see the kids coming, you say, ‘Christ!’”

I developed my garden to mature in midsummer because of the Philadelphia City Gardens Contest sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. In eight years of gardening, I entered five times and won several third-place prizes in the large flower garden category and one honorable mention. (I suspect that my garden was never finished enough to get a higher prize: one year a judge mentioned that some areas were a little “unkempt.”) I liked being in this competition because it gave a focus to my efforts and heightened my motivation. The judges always came between mid- and late July, and I made sure to have a lot blooming.

I’ve retired from this contest, but still put in the same fussy care as when I was getting ready for the judges. I suppose I consider the regular passersby to be the judges now. Really, this has always been the case.

Part of my work this week is to weed and edge the vegetable beds. I have peppers, eggplants, pole beans, radishes, and cucumbers, all producing. Next to them are perennial flowerbeds, 68

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arranged for variation in height, width, leaf texture and tone, plus, of course, color. Closest to the street are bee balm, several grasses, false sunflowers, fennel, echinacea, tall phlox, cardoon, Oriental lilies, yarrow, hollyhocks, pink evening primrose, a bushy Japanese willow, cannas, two fruit trees, a grapevine growing on a pergola my sons built for Mother’s Day several years ago, a butterfly bush, and more. Against the garden wall there is a border of daylilies and indigo salvia. On the corner itself, which is in full sun all day, I have a bed of zinnias with rudbeckias behind.

Bastille Day. The French holiday has nothing to do with my garden, except that the date always says to me “freedom.” Freedom (in a different sense) is how I approach gardening. I establish shapes and volumes with found objects—primarily metal things, rocks, and wood stumps. I try The garden is to create conversations between the organic and the inorganic inhabitants. Ultimately, I what makes am not so much growing plants as creating the roadway— spaces for them. I give myself more freedom and life—both in this activity than in any other sphere of my life—I don’t know why that is. Perhaps beautiful and it has something to do with how a garden is bearable. never predictable. Even if you were to grow exactly the same plants every season, you would not achieve exactly the same effect. Weather conditions change year to year, the shrubs don’t stay small, and your eye discovers new possibilities of form and color. Nature gives me my freedom.

Today I got six bucketfuls of free compost from a local recycling center (I do this all season), had a quick lunch, and then tackled the overgrown daylily beds along the front wall.

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One of the passersby took a half-hour of my time, but the encounter was too interesting to cut short. The man was in a wheelchair, but that’s a recent development: I’ve seen him walking the streets of my neighborhood for many years. He is eccentric. He lives in Fairmount Park, under one of the bridges near my house. He has erected a lean-to there and seems to sleep outside all year long. I have avoided him for the most part, taking him to be weird and possibly dangerous. He got mad at my dogs when I walked by him one time, yelling and shaking his stick, and that scared me.

But as we both have aged, it has become clear to me that he is not dangerous. Seeing him approach today in his wheelchair, which he handwheels laboriously, I spoke to him and asked what had happened to put him in a wheelchair. He told me his feet had gotten frostbite, and he’d lost a few toes. He can walk—sometimes he pushes the wheelchair in front of himself—but this time he was riding. He got so enthusiastic about our conversation that he announced he would talk to me every time he sees me from now on. I hope I have not opened Pandora’s Box.

Some people think a garden is only a frill, an extra tacked on to the real business of life; merely a decoration to the roadway that takes us where we really need to go. Not me. I think the garden is the place to go: with its color, its form, its scents and accents, its rhythms, its health. The garden is what makes the roadway—and life—both beautiful and bearable. The worse off society is, the more we need those plants. And they will not fail to oblige us. v 70

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Holey Hoses!

By Phyllis Cochran

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARILYNNE ROACH

It was 90o out, hadn’t rained in days—and no rain was predicted for the week. My blueberry bushes were in desperate need of rain. All the berries were a pale, whitish green. None had turned blue.

I wasn’t about to let them dry up on the branches, so I screwed two long hoses together and dragged them from the outside house faucet to the garden.

They didn’t reach. I retrieved the mini 50-foot hose I had recently purchased from the garage. When I attached this small hose to the larger ones, the line reached our 15 bushes easily.

I turned on the faucet, hurried back to the garden—and found that the small hose was spewing water everywhere! Oh, no, I thought. It must be defective. I’ll have to return it.

I disconnected the leaky hose and dragged it into the garage to dry. Instead of returning it to the store I’d bought it at the next town over, I drove to the hardware store close to home and bought another, similar one.

Mark, my son-in-law, dropped by right when I got back. I told him my story.

“Is the hose on the garage floor the one that leaked?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“That's a soaker hose,” he said. “It’s full of small holes. You’re supposed to bury it underground to water.”

“I saw the word ‘SOAKER’ on it,” I admitted. “I thought it was a brand name—oh, no!”

“What’s wrong?” asked Mark.

I reached in the car, pulled out the hose I had just bought, and pointed. “This one has the same name!”

What’s your worst gardening mistake? Send it to GreenPrints, Broken Trowel Award, P.O. Box 1355, Fairview, NC 28730. If we print it, you’ll get a free one-year subscription and our GreenPrints Companion CD! 71

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Grass? Or Garden?

Who will win this marital feud?

By Marianne Willburn own in a little stream valley in Virginia, where green comes in 48 shades and fireflies delight the senses on warm Summer evenings, a war has erupted between two otherwise sensible people. There has been no bloodshed at this point, as it is of the passive-aggressive variety so common in marriages of a certain age. But as both parties are actively engaged, and there is a machine with three rotating blades at the center of the fray, it would be unwise to completely rule out 72

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY TIM FOLEY

the possibility of escalation.

The story begins with a mower.

The couple had never cared much for mowers. She had always landscaped lawns right out of their tiny properties, and he had never been that inclined to push a mower around on a Saturday afternoon even if she hadn’t.

But with the purchase of the ten-acre property that the couple had always dreamed of, a zero-turn mower came into their lives. The owner, who had built the house forty years before and spent the subsequent years clearing a pastoral scene from amongst the brambles The new and overgrown thickets, kindly included the mower in the sale. machine was He showed the man how to tinker with delivered, the key it, gave him the original manual, and left him with the cryptic words, “You’re going was turned, and The War of the to need this thing—nature wants it back.”

Indeed. It soon became apparent to both Grasses began. the man and the woman that mowing was a defensive strategy, not a design choice. Nature wanted it back indeed, and nature didn’t work in sweet, bluebell-woods fantasies or rippling wildflower meadows. The land had to be managed, or it would become as choked as the impenetrable woods that surrounded it.

But maintaining long stretches of mixed-weed lawns subtracted four hours from a busy week; and as years passed and the structural integrity of the mower began to fail, another hour or two of tinkering and swearing was added to the weekly event.

There was never mowing without jury-rigging. Sometimes there was none of either without Amazon Priming and wallet-gutting.

In the midst of this struggle twixt man and mower, the woman was building a garden. Except it wasn’t so much a garden as it was many gardens, and they suffered from an issue common to properties of size: they were disconnected from each other.

With an unlimited budget, this would of course not have been an issue. Fully landscaped paths would have led visitors from the pergola garden to the sunny serpentine bed through 73

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to the woodland garden 300 yards away, and the visitor would have been none the wiser that he had been led. But as it was, vast stretches of open space separated such jewels, and many a visitor was lost halfway to the glories of woodland trilliums by the easier promise of drinks on the deck.

And so it went: the woman searching for a way to connect the gardens, the man swearing over his mower, until the first of three events happened to change the status quo.

It started raining and didn’t stop.

Saturated turf being no friend to wheels or blades, the man found himself having to watch the grass grow higher between mowings; and as his machine continued to break down, he found himself less inclined to care.

The woman, delighted by the subsequent appearance of thousands of violets and claytonia on the scene, followed by a contingent of ornithogalum and clover, approved mightily. She was saddened when the man would finally muster the energy to swear over his machine in the barn and once again bring the landscape into some sort of order.

Then the second of the three events occurred.

The woman went to England.

In her capacity as a guide for a garden touring company, she led a merry band of fellow gardeners through great English gardens in the late Spring. And when she returned, it was not dreams of roses and delphiniums that occupied her thoughts. It was the idea of using the mower as a pathfinder—a way of connecting cultivated spaces through natural, bulb-filled meadows.

Things had been changing in Europe and the UK—even Hyde Park had climbed on board the meadow craze. Though the woman knew that the process could be complicated, she was enchanted by this new paradigm and, moreover, saw it as a solution to their issues.

But would the man agree?

She cajoled him in the early, beautiful mornings over black coffee and perfectly fried eggs, and found him, surprisingly, persuadable. Though he quite justifiably worried about having the equipment to fell the grasses et al. at the end of the season, he had 74

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noticed that the bees had already stored an inordinate amount of honey in their boxes—and rightly put it down to the clover and dandelions that had been allowed to bloom for weeks.

The man loved honey.

So the woman mowed her paths, trimmed an outline around areas of woods to discourage the rooting tips of multiflora and brambles, and looked forward to the season ahead.

But the third and final event was to change everything.

The old mower breathed its last.

Father’s Day was on the horizon, and the couple, aware that mowing of one sort or another would be an ever-present aspect of their lives, decided to invest in a new, rugged machine. The machine was delivered, the key was turned, and within minutes, all of the early morning conversations over coffee and eggs vanished in a storm of rotating blades and bloodpumping horsepower.

The War of the Grasses began.

And thus we find them. She mows pathways. He mows everything. Each claims his/her space when one or the other of them is away. Neither of them says a word about it.

Weeks later, pondering the issue in hindsight, the woman realized that she had in fact given a Jaguar to a man who had driven a Corolla all his life—and then expected him to leave it in the garage.

She can only hope that, like most Jaguars, this one will spend more time in the shop than out of it, and her vision of grassy, camassia-filled meadows and come-hither pathways may yet come to pass.

Time will tell. v 75

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Memories and Butterflies A gardener’s comfort. By Chuck Jutz ome of my earliest memories, from the 1950s, are of my mother’s huge garden, necessitated by the need to feed 11 children on a small farm in southern Minnesota. On the west side, the garden was edged by a row of hollyhocks that seemed to grow 10 feet tall. Grapevines climbed the fence on the south and east, and a huge old Northwest Greening apple tree stood to the north. Where the hollyhocks ended was a row of what must have been wild plum trees, unlike any that I have been able to find since. They bore large quantities of small, purple, freestone fruit that ripened fairly late in the Fall. The plums were only the size of One warm stuffed olives, but bursting with flavor and quite firm, so I could stuff my pockets with Summer day, them and snack as I did chores.

Painted Lady All Summer long, Mom picked green butterflies by beans, red beets, tomatoes, sweet corn, peas, and her favorite, ground cherries (she turned the hundreds fluttered by me. the marble-sized yellow fruits into a seedy, acidic jam that makes my mouth pucker just remembering it). Mom would spend many days canning all the produce to provide us food all Winter. All the jars were carried upstairs to the “Fruit Room,” since we had no basement or cellar.

Dad died when I was 11, and we moved to a small house in town. Gardening became one chore too many for Mom, trying to raise a large family alone. But the seeds had been planted in me. was working my way through college—this was the Vietnam war era—when I was notified that my student deferment had been revoked: I was a credit shy of full-time student status. Since Kathy, my high-school 76

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY P. SAVAGE

sweetheart, and I were about to get married, my only option was to sign up for the Navy’s 120 Delay Enlistment Program, so I could avoid the draft and report for active duty in 120 days. After basic training, I was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California for nearly a year. Our first son was born there. We were often short of groceries and wished we could raise a garden to help us get by.

Following my tour of duty in Vietnam, Kathy and I returned to our home town in Minnesota so our children—we now had a daughter—could know their grandparents. We agreed that a place in the country with space for a garden and for the kids to run was our goal. We found a large brick country school on two acres only a few miles from the farm I was born on. Turning a one-room school into a home was our first priority, but then came a garden. With a growing family—which eventually included six 77

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children—we needed it! This led to relearning how to can tomatoes, some years over 100 quarts. Kathy and I spent many hours canning and preserving in our tiny kitchen. We marveled at the jeweled colors of the jars of tomatoes, green and wax beans, pickles, applesauce, and jam. We used a dehydrator to make fruit leather from small bright-red crabapples that grew outside our bedroom window. (It was devoured in what seemed like seconds—after all the work that went into it.) Banana chips were made from slightly overipe bananas bought for pennies a pound, and excess onions were dried for soups and stews. The dehydrator also made many, many quarts of yogurt. We froze strawberries or made them into jam; rhubarb, likewise, as well as currants I found growing near the house.

The work was good. ears went by quickly, as they do. Our children grew up and left. After being forced out of her job, Kathy announced that she “needed to go to the mountains to heal.” We found that peace and healing in the Big Horn mountains of Wyoming, but eventually the pull of being nearer to the grandchildren proved too strong, and we returned to Minnesota. Gardening was now confined to several raised beds.

Even so, my garden soon produced too much for the two of us.

Luckily, the grandkids inherited our appreciation for vegetables, so I had an outlet for excess tomatoes, squash, onions, peppers, and herbs. Without the pressure to feed a family, I could finally lavish a bit more attention on flowers and ornamentals.

Actually, “lavish” is way too strong a word. I prefer perennials that require little more than occasional watering and Fall cleanup.

Consequently, much of the front yard is taken up by crocuses and tulips, followed by iris, phlox, lilies, columbine, Dutchman’s breeches, Russian sage, a couple of yarrows and spiderworts, two rosebushes, and daisies, echinacea, and chrysanthemums.

The one finicky flower I grew was an ever-expanding number of calla lilies, which in our harsh climate need to be dug in the Fall and replanted in the Spring. I grew them because they were the flowers Kathy carried in our wedding those many years 78

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ago. Kathy, being a stoic Norwegian, never said much about the flowers, but I know she secretly enjoyed them. As far as romantic gestures go, I’ll leave it to you to judge, but it felt right to me. ast Spring, about the time we Minnesotans start to hope that the weather might become bearable again, Kathy suffered a massive stroke, with no warning and no hope of recovery. She passed away four days later, leaving me with the old question: Why? Why was the most kind and loving person I have ever known gone so suddenly? All her life she had quietly shared her love with me, her children and grandchildren, and friends. She had been my example of faith and trust, encouraging me in my business. She had been the one to worry about how we could pay the bills.

Without her, there seemed little reason to carry on the old planting ritual. My family and friends assured me that Kathy would still enjoy her calla lilies, so I planted them again.

The following Summer it was cooler than normal, with frequent rains. My riot of flowers in the front yard outdid themselves, growing tall and blooming profusely. They attracted legions of butterflies: Monarchs, a Blue Swallowtail, and Painted Ladies, much to the delight of Liam, my 4-year-old neighbor. ne sunny Summer day as I walked past the calla lilies, echinacea, and daisies to pick up the mail, Painted Lady butterflies by the hundreds fluttered by me. I stopped to watch in wonder and delight at their sheer number and their muted grey-brown and orange colors. Then I lifted my face to the sun, watching as they slowly fluttered off.

That night I had the most vivid dream. Kathy and I were looking at the flowers and butterflies. The dream was in vibrant color, and I could talk to Kathy and feel her presence. I was so happy to talk to her, even knowing in my dream that she was dead—but she was there.

I asked her, “Are you really still here to keep an eye on me?”

She replied gently, using her favorite term for me: “You silly old man, who do you think sent all the butterflies?” v 79

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