SUMMER 2O13
No. 94 $6.OO
GREEN R PRINTS “THE WEEDER’S DIGEST”
BEST SMALL GARDEN MAGAZINE! E!
P.12 IN THE NIGHT GARDEN P.58 58 ARE WO WORMS VITAMINS? P. 68 FRIE RIENDS NDS LIVE ON
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At The Gate SHELLEY JACKSON
In Praise of Artists
Wasn’t Spring W Wonderful? Those times when the sun was warm and the air was cool, when you could see the bright, pastel-flecked trees—and still see through them? Nothing, nothing, is better. The older I get, the more I treasure those ephemeral days when the world, and my heart, come back to life. Oh, if only I could bottle just one hour of it to sip, and savor, at a future time. Speaking of W Wonderful: I am always so deeply, deeply grateful to the artists who bring the stories here to life, who both illustrate and interpret your Weeder’s Digest. Just sneak a peek at the nocturnal visitors P. Savage drew for “In the Night Garden” . . . gaze at the beauty Christina created for the cover and Nicole for the flower thief tale . . . laugh out loud at Matt’s work on “I ♥ Worms” and Tim’s on “Save My Parsley” . . . admire Blanche’s intricate “My Gardening Mother” . . . Heather’s sensitive “Garden Angel” . . . Linda’s warm “Friends Live On” . . . Dena’s whimsical “Seeds in the Belly” . . . Hannah’s humor . . . Catherine’s grace . . . Marilynne’s wit . . . Carrie’s beauty . . . Christa’s heart . . . . There are 61 original pieces of art in this issue done by 14 different artists. We are all blessed by every single one. Enjoy Your Summer! Pat Stone, Editor 3
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BEA EAU EA AUTY T FRO R M BULBS RO
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Don’t worry~if you didn’t start your seeds indoors earlier in the spring, you can still sow many wonderfu f l varieties fu directly into the garden now. w We w. W all need the magic of summer fe f asts on warm terraces, surrounded by lush gardens bursting with the goodness of ripening vegetables, aromatic herbs and cascading fl f owers. K tc Ki tch chen Ga G rd rde den Se See eed eds ds off ffe ff fers yo y u a distinctive v line of gourmet ve ve v getable, herb and fl f ow owe wer seeds . . . and the promise of delectable summer fe f asts. Please contact us fo f r our 52-page catalog complete with tantalizing recipes fr f om renown U.S. chefs f , practical gardening tips fr fs f om Barbara Damrosch and precious illustrations by Bobbi Angell. Parsnips • Salvia • Artichokes • Shallots • Broccoli • Melons • Beans • Corn • Leeks Straw a berries • Herbs • Squash • Cosmos • Eggplant • Peas • To aw T matoes • Endive Lav a atera • Onions • Peppers • Potatoes • Salad Greens • Dianthus • Edible Flowers av Sweet Peas • Asparagus • Garlic • Cabbage • Spinach • Nasturtiums • Sunfl f owers fl ST82
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Cute Grandbaby Pictures! Otis naps with Nanna and Jackson flees from Poppa. 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 Julie Wander, with occasional mailing help from Nate, Jesse, Sammy, and Tucker Stone (828/628-5452; www.greenprints.com). Contributing Editors: Mike McGrath, Geoffrey Taylor, Diana Wells, and Becky Rupp. Contents © 2013 by GREENPRINTS®. Allow four to six weeks for subscription fulfillment. Please notify us when you change your address! Writer’s Guidelines (also Artist’s) available at website or by mail (send Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope). Submissions are read in Nov., Feb., May, and Aug. (send SASE). GREENPRINTS® (ISSN 1064-0118) is published quarterly by GreenPrints Enterprises, 23 Butterrow Cove, Fairview, NC 28730. Subscriptions are $22.97 for four issues ($26 to Canada and Mexico. $32 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. Cover “Summer Abundance” by Christina Hess 5
Julie
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story is a real person whose wife died of cancer. I wondered about his thoughts.”
Contributors
LINDA COOK DEVONA
Gwen Lutz: Zelienople, PA’s night Stephanie Jackson: “An Australian gardener has diverse interests: She freelance travel and gardening wrote about dowsing last issue! writer, I have sap, rather than blood, running through my veins.” Jay Maul: Maul Jay lives in Somerville, MA, and works as a lighting and Sarah Parrish: “I am a writer (the stage technician. Jay is a writer at Lablife series) and scientist living helium. com. in Heidelberg, Germany.” Sarah is also a writer at helium.com. Janny J. Johnson: Johnson From Redmond, WA: “I now garden JoAnne Schlicker: “Mission for joy, but I remember when Coordinator of my Dade I gardened to escape a full City, FL, church, I write household.” about my faith—and gardening—at helium.com. Susan Portman: Susan is “a middle-aged, married, Barbara Blossom Ashmun: liberal, reformed attorney “Plant lust drove me to quit gardener.” Susan also had stories my career and become a garden in Issues 88, 89, and 91. designer. The garden became the heart of my life.” Julie V. Foley: Foley ”If I cut myself, I bleed BUDS CREDITS chlorophyll! I’m using the proceeds from this piece to buy a Betula nigra “Bees Have a Smell” (p. 27) sent in Little King river birch.” by Lori Tamblingson of Ocala, FL. “Benediction in My Garden” (p. Christa Chevalier: From Enosburg 51) sent in by Suan Priser of Canal Falls, VT: “The protagonist in my Winchester, OH.
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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GreenPrints
Summer, 2O13 #94
In the Night Garden ...................................................................................... 12 By Gwen Lutz Seeds in the Belly........................................................................................... 16 By Jay Maul Don’t You Know Dahlias?............................................................................ 18 By Janny J. Johnson Garden Therapy ............................................................................................. 24 By Becky Rupp I ♥ Worms ........................................................................................................ 28 By Susan Portman The Flower Thief hief ........................................................................................... 34 By Stephen Orr Save My Parsley! ............................................................................................ 38 By Julie V. Foley My Gardening ning Mother ................................................................................. 40 By Diana Wells The Trouble With Oranges .......................................................................... 46 By Mike McGrath Flying Solo ...................................................................................................... 52 By Christa Chevalier The Brush T Turkey Cometh ........................................................................... 54 By Stephanie Jackson Are Worms Vitamins? ................................................................................... 58 By Sarah Parrish Sprouting Pains .............................................................................................. 60 By Diane Ott Whealy Garden Angels ............................................................................................... 66 By JoAnne Schlicker Friends Live On .............................................................................................. 68 By Barbara Blossom Ashmun 7
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In the Night Garden
What happens when we’ve gone to bed. By Gwen Lutz ❖
❖
t was another of those nights when sleep just wouldn’t come. I tried everything—a long hot bath, meditation, chamomile tea. I finally resorted to taking some melatonin. While waiting for it to work, I wandered outside. Passing the low-voltage lighting along the walk and porch, I 14
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY P. SAVAGE
headed for a lawn chair out by the far perennial bed. There I sat, in the shadows of a massive spruce. The evening air carried the perfume from the evergreens along with the scent of fresh-mown alfalfa hay from the nearby field. A fine place for unwinding and then maybe, just maybe, going back inside and settling down for a few hours of sleep. I had closed my eyes and was concentrating on the scents when I became aware of a My gardens tiny noise nearby. Closing your eyes makes aren’t just mine. your hearing more acute—I might not have They belong to a heard it if I had been looking around. It was whole array a wee rustle in the needles near my left foot. In the very dim light, a tiny creature appeared of creatures and headed into the grass. At first I thought I never see. it was a mouse, but its short tail gave it away as a vole. It moved quickly, jerkily. As it made its way through the perennial garden, I could follow it by its sounds, until—silence. It must have gone out the other side and into the grass again, searching for grubs and insects. Peace descended, and I closed my eyes and relaxed once more. Again, a slight sound caught my attention. I opened my eyes and saw something long, white, and rather homely in the dim halo of light around the porch. An opossum. It made its way to the perennial bed the vole had just left. It rustled through the plants, digging a little here and there in the mushroom compost, making the foxglove sway as it pushed past, sometimes nothing more than its naked tail showing its course through the garden. Not finding anything that kept its attention, it exited through the lupines and waddled back over to the porch. A brief inspection seemed to satisfy it that the grandchildren hadn’t dropped any goodies that day, and it ambled back off into the darkness. Once again, I closed my eyes. his time, there was no sound. I just happened to open my eyes—and had a start! A very large skunk was standing in the grass about ten feet from my chair and inspecting me carefully. I could see a slight gleam of its 15
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beady little eye in the dim light and held my breath. He turned to nose around in the grass, and I started to relax and admire his glossy black coat with its hint of white stripes. The big fellow waddled through the garden almost exactly where the opossum had gone, but then it made a sharp left turn at the echinacea and came my way! I waited, barely breathing, as he inspected the ground on his way, stopping here and there to dig a little, until he came to the bed of pine needles at my feet. He took a brief sniff at my slipper and without another glance calmly wandered away and out into the field. My breathing and heart rate finally started to slow. Sleep was going to be a ways off now! ry to relax, I told myself. Regain that sweet serenity you had a few moments ago. I thought about one of my children’s favorite books, one I’d read many times to them, Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. It was about the amazing adventures that happened to a little boy in the kitchen late at night. This was like that, my own In the Night Garden. Fireflies blinked on and off in the field and above the lawn. A bat flitted above me. All was calm. And then . . . another movement caught my eye. Like a wraith, from the edge of the field to my right, a deer came into the light. We see deer almost every evening through our back windows, grazing in the in-laws’ hay fields. We also hunt deer every fall in the woods. But this was different. I was in her world now, on her terms. It was a doe, with a fawn following with quick delicate steps. I expected them to look for a meal in the perennial beds, but to my surprise Mama walked directly to the birdbath in the middle of the garden and started drinking. I could see her tongue flitting in and out and then lapping up the drops from her nose. She stood directly between me and the lights, only ten or twelve feet away. The fawn began to kick up its heels and frolic around the lawn and, settling back down just as quickly, came over to Mama for a little reassurance. They stepped gingerly out of the garden, when the doe suddenly became aware that something was different under the spruce trees. She stared at me for a long moment, gave a sharp snort, and the two of them were gone back into the 16
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field—just like that. I felt almost lonely, and awed from being so very close to the deer. few moments later, some strange sounds broke into my reverie: a small chattering noise interspersed with some small squeals and an occasional louder screech. A mother raccoon came into view, her three young wandering haphazardly along behind her. She went to inspect the porch and then, disappointed, wandered away as quickly as she had come, brood in tow, as if she were on a mission. And I guess she was: She had four mouths to feed and only a few hours of darkness to do so. They all headed for the compost pile. I wondered if they would encounter the opossum there. A barred owl called from the opposite hillside: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you alllll? After a brief silence, a fox barked several times from the direction of the den they have a couple of hundred yards up the valley. When a coyote howled in the distance, I decided I had met enough visitors for one night. I stepped into the kitchen, pulled the door closed, and tucked myself back into the house. We humans have shut ourselves away from much of nature. How wonderful to get so close to it, even if only for a short while. My whole experience had lasted less than an hour, but it brought home that my gardens aren’t just mine. They belong to a whole array of creatures I never see. Each day now when I work in my garden, I will wonder who was there last night, who dug up the mulch or nibbled on a plant. Are the whole bunch of them there every evening or was I just out there on a good night? I’m sure the time had something to do with it. I was there between 11:00 and midnight. The house lights had been turned out around 10:00, probably signaling that it was safe to come closer. Some night I will have to share this experience with my hubby. But not right away. I want to savor the experience a while first, my own little bit of wonder. In the Night Garden. ❖ 17
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Seeds in the Belly That’s where babies come from, right? By Jay Maul was eight years old and my sister was three when we moved back to America from Germany, where my parents had been stationed with the US Army. I was excited to meet my grandparents. When we pulled up to their suburban home in southern Illinois, we jumped out of the car, and our grandparents hugged us like they would never see us again. I think they truly feared that all the years we’d been abroad. Soon the rest of our family arrived. Aunts, uncles, and cousins we hadn’t seen in years came over, and we had a cookout. It was July and hot. The air was filled with a heavy grass smell—and lots of barbeque smoke. At one point, my uncle Steve said to my father, “Well, bro, you got two darling children, you going to have any more soon?” My dad quietly admitted that even though they had recently had a miscarriage, they were going to try for one more. There “When I’m was a moment of awkward silence, but, as bigger, I’ll have always, my loud, energetic sister took care seeds in my of that: “I know where babies come from!” belly, and I’ll Casey cried. “Unco Steve! Unco Steve! I know where babies come from!” She clambered up be able to have his lap until her face was level with his. babies, too!” “Where’s that, darling?” he asked, laughing. Everyone looked at her. “From Mommy’s belly! A seed grows inside it and turns into a baby. When I’m bigger, I’ll have seeds in my belly, and I’ll be able to have babies, too!” “But not until you’re 35,” Uncle Steve told her. 18
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY DENA SEIFERLING
Casey’s eyes went very wide at this news. Everyone thought this was hilarious. After supper, my grandma offered to take Casey and me to see her garden. Casey tugged my arm ferociously. “Come on, come on, we’re going to see Grandma’s garden!” “OK, OK,” I said. We descended down the steep grassy backyard. My grandparents lived on the banks of the Mississippi River, so the soil was rich and fertile. The corn was plump and sweet, the cucumbers round and fat, and the tomatoes as red as the can of Coke I held in my hand. My grandma then showed us around, pointing out everything. “Is your mommy going to have a garden?” she asked my sister. Casey thought hard, then nodded. “Here, I’ll give you some seeds for your mommy to have,” Grandma said. She went into the shed and came back with several packets of storebought seeds. We left the garden and went back up to the party. My mother was sitting on the porch. Casey handed her the seed pack and jumped into her lap. “Here, Mama,” she said. Almost everyone had noticed the absence of the Belle of the Ball and was glad she was back. “Oh, thank you, baby,” my mom said and gave her a kiss. She examined the packages. “What are these for, tomatoes?” “No,” my sister replied. “They’re for you to put in your belly so you can make me a little brother!” Over 20 years have passed since that day. My sister has children of her own, so I think it’s safe to assume she now knows where babies really come from. But not according to my grandpa. He still tells that story every time we meet. ❖ 19
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Don’t You Know Dahlias? Renewing a precious acquaintance. By Janny J. Johnson n a sunny day near summer’s end, I escape the demands of home and children to stroll through our local farmers’ market. I’m not here to buy anything. I just need a break. I meander among fresh-picked fruits and vegetables. Savory smells of baked goods waft through the air. Some of the booths are lined with flowers, which spill out into the walkway. I’m about to pass one of those stalls when I halt with a gasp. Flowers in two tiers of white buckets line the booth walls—and call to me. Despite the fact that each container holds different sizes and shapes, I know that they are all the same type. But I can’t remember their name. While these My eyes sweep over the colors and shapes. Entranced by a bloom of white petals with blooms last, I maroon centers, I find myself overcome with can return to memories of an unhurried summer day long, being a little girl long ago . . . ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRISTINA HESS
who is cherished. I have purchased a memory.
am seven years old, standing in the midst of my grandmother’s cutting garden. Most of the stalks are taller than me. I gaze up at pointy purplish clusters that remind me of fireworks on the Fourth of July. Growing beside them are small pom-poms of dark red that look like knobs. And across from us are bursts of peach-colored pointy blades. Grandmother explains that the different shapes are all varieties of the same flowers. I take a few more steps. The stalks in front of me bear yellow blooms, and next to them, orange. Following Grandmother down the next row, I see my favorites. They are 21
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pink with long skinny petals curled up at the ends. They look like fairy dresses. Grandmother hands me a basket that has open ends. “Why is this basket so flat?” I ask. “Did Granddad put something heavy on it and squish it?” Grandmother’s eyes sparkle. Although she is a quiet person, she does love to be silly. Best of all, she allows me to just be. “Look, Janny,” she says. “It’s this shape so we can lay the flowers in it, just like this.” She places a few stems with white and maroon blossoms into my basket. “They lie in here so the stems don’t get broken.” “Oooo, look!” I exclaim, pointing at a petal in my basket. “A ladybug!” Grandmother smiles. I reach for the little red bug and coax it onto my hand. “Can I have this ladybug for a pet?” I ask. “Please?” I watch the little insect crawl around on my hand. “I think that would be a fine plan,” Grandmother says with a chuckle. “Your ladybug can live out here in the garden. She will be a wonderful pet, and we can visit her every day.” I laugh and lean against Grandmother for a hug. Even though I know she just said that I can’t keep the ladybug, she’s done it in a way that doesn’t make me feel like she said no. I break away from Grandmother’s side. “Those orange ones are so big!” I say, throwing my arms out. The basket swings wildly. I stare up at stalks that are thicker than my fingers. Tied to a stake to keep them from toppling over, the heavy blooms hang down and show me their flat faces. “That variety is called a dinner plate,” Grandmother says. “Would you like to eat off of one?” We laugh as she cuts one of the flowers and pops its stem through the belt loop on my pants. omeone jostles my arm—and I find myself again surrounded by buckets of blooms in the outdoor market. But the feeling of being with Grandmother lingers. A sign on the side of the booth reads: Ten stems for $6. Oh, I wish I had enough money to take home armloads of these 22
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wonderful flowers. I open my thin wallet. Money is tight, and with four children, every penny counts. Ignoring reason, I quickly begin selecting stems. I simply must have a few of these wonderful blooms. I look around. Some remind me of the soft, frilly skirts of ballerinas, others of brash can-can dancers. The colors and shapes are breathtaking. I choose maroon, dark purple, and some red pom-poms that could have come straight from Grandmother’s garden. How many more can I afford? Four. Bypassing the dinner plates, I reach for some stunning blooms with dark, red centers that grow to the lightest of pinks on the edges. I meet the eyes of an older woman next to me. Holding up my bouquet, I ask her, “What type of flowers are these?” “Why, dear,” she replies in wonder. “Don’t you know dahlias? They’re an end-of-summer flower.” Dahlias! Now I remember. “My grandmother had a dahlia garden,” I say. But that simple sentence doesn’t begin to convey what I’m feeling. Thinking forward to the next paycheck, I mentally budget in money for dahlias. I need to have dahlias in my home. I want my children to know dahlias. The woman taking money acknowledges my excitement and answers my questions. She tells me when to come back to buy bulbs and says she’ll give me instructions for planting dahlias in my own yard. In wonder, I think, I am going to have a cutting garden. Like Grandmother’s. I realize that while these blooms last, I can return to being a little girl who is cherished. I have just purchased a memory. And, soon, I will begin making some more. ❖ 23
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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.
and family. Not GREENPRINTS. GREENPRINTS does not leave the house. Instead, I give gift subscriptions—three so far. A year ago, I decided to expand my kitchen garden by 15 square feet. I worked compost and aged chicken manure in the bed in fall, but just before spring planting time, I fell and broke my left arm. By the time the cast came off, the weeds were waist high. Out came the pickax! I worked with it for an hour or more each morning until the bed was weed-free. I am thankful I can still do this at age 85. —Jim Richings Rusak, TX
To say that I’m addicted to GREENPRINTS would be an understatement. It is a treasure chest filled with stories that make me remember, discover, understand, laugh, and, sometimes, shed tears. “Hummingbird Hope” and “Desert Blossoms” in the Spring Issue were both particularly special to me. GREENPRINTS has also changed the life of Alex Lahue, one of my fifthgrade students. You published a poem he wrote, “The Beauty of the Outdoors” (GP No. 83). Alex was always very shy and silent. When he saw his poem in print, his whole face glowed bright red. He now is more outgoing and wants to be a writer. He is working on it diligently. —Christa Chevalier Enosburg Falls, VT
Here’s my renewal for three years. My workplace got restructured and my pay and hours reduced. I had to make some budget decisions and let some subscriptions expire. But not GREENPRINTS. The stories in this oasis of good tidings keep me at peace. I always
Christa’s own writings have been a treasure in GP, as well. See p.52. I subscribe to several magazines and pass them along to friends 24
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smile when I read this wonderful magazine. —Barb Willliams Goldman Third Lake, IL You are one of our most cherished blessings. And we now puchase from your advertisers first. They support what we believe in—a safe, organic, sustainable, nurturing, blessed garden and home. —Kevin Topping Phenix City, AL I love every issue. GREENPRINTS is like a bit of calm in a hectic world. —Mary McMurphy Oroville, CA
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In the world in which we live, we sure do need to focus on family and down-to-earth and humorous stories to feed our souls. I am so grateful. —Rosalie Snyder Butler, PA Diana Wells and Becky Rupp are treasures. I always turn to their pieces first. They are consistently well-written, well-researched, and interesting. I also enjoy your stories from amateur writers, but those two (along with Mike McGrath and a few others) are the main reason I’ve subscribed for years. —Roxy Knub Love Valley, NC
GP Guerillas, Keep Sowing!
JACK VAUGHAN
We are a small, family business, so your personal recommendations are a huge help to us! I will gladly send flyers and sample issues to readers willing to share them with a garden club, nursery, or other group. Please Help GP Grow: Become a “GREENPRINTS Guerilla!” This issue I would especially like to thank Marilyn Johnson of the Lakeside Garden Club: 25
Thank you for sending magazines and flyers for our Spring Convention at the Tulsa Garden Center. I was glad be a GREENPRINTS Guerilla, and the attendees (fifty or so) were glad to receive sample issues. I hope this brings you several new subscribers from Oklahoma! —Thank you so much, Marilyn! Happy Gardening!
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herapy
an we all agree that hospitals are generally hateful? Don’t get me wrong here; I love modern medicine. It does heart transplants and saves premature babies; it cures cancer and mends broken bones; and it’s eradicated diphtheria, smallpox, measles, and the black plague. But face it: hospitals. We’re talking puce linoleum, uncomfortable chairs, lime jello, awful little bottom-revealing nightgowns, and people who want to take your temperature at 4:00 a.m. A garden, it turns out, makes hospital stays better. Recent research indicates that patients exposed to gardens recover from surgery faster, need less pain medication, and have fewer postsurgical complications. They feel happier. Their stress levels go down. In fact, the bennies of gardens are so powerful that you get The thing them just from looking out the window at that restores a garden, or even from a garden picture. In our directed one study, the walls of patients’ room were attention best decked out with either a scene of trees and plants, an abstract painting, a plain white is interacting panel, or absolutely nothing. The trees-andwith nature. plants people all went home earlier. At the very least, this tells me that everybody should be watching gardening shows on those little hospital TVs. Houseplants are helpful in this sense too—that is, unless you eat one, since a lot of them, it turns out, are poisonous. Undisturbed, however, in the pot, houseplants not only improve household air quality and cut your chances of catching cold, they also cheer you up and calm you down. Plants in call centers improve employee 26
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CATHERINE STRAUS
Gardens do make us feel better. But why? By Becky Rupp
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performance. Plants in office buildings and classrooms enhance productivity, creativity, and focus. There should be a plant in every cubicle and a plant on every desk. Best of all is to actually work in the garden. This practice—the stuff most of us have been calling “weeding” and “digging”—is now known in psychological circles as “horticultural therapy.” It’s good for kids with emotional and behavioral problems, veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer ’s sufferers, depressives, drug addicts, and convicts. You can get a college degree in it, and it has its own professional journal. The thing about horticultural therapy, though, is that nobody really knows how or why it works. Why do gardens make people feel better? One guess is that it has something to do with the savanna hypothesis. This argues that because early humans evolved on the plains of Africa—in fact, we started walking upright there, the better to see the lions coming—to this day, ancient ancestral memory gives us a fondness for savanna-like expanses of grass, peppered with shrubs and trees. In other words, on some level we’re still looking for lions, so we feel safe and happy in landscapes that provide us with both open spaces and places to hide. Like maybe behind the eggplants. Another guess—my favorite—is that it has to do with how we pay attention. According to psychologists, there are two different components to this: involuntary attention, the part that’s 27
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inadvertently attracted by stuff going on around us in the environment (“Sunrise! Cows!”); and voluntary or directed attention, which comes into play when we deliberately think about things. Directed attention is the biggie here. We use it for learning, solving problems, dealing with emotions, and resolving conflicts. We also use it for coping with all the input that involuntary attention tosses at us, and deciding what, if anything, to do about it. Our capacity for directed attention is limited. All kinds of things wear it out: worry, stress, noise, difficult people, unbalanceable checkbooks, unfinishable essays, and all the various slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that wake us up in the middle of the night. Luckily, although directed attention wears out, it never totally goes down the tubes. It can be replenished and restored—and it turns out that the thing that restores it best is interacting with nature. A walk in the woods. A spell in the garden, picking beans. Nature restores by just doing what it does, which ordinarily is nothing much. There are things in the natural environment that attract our involuntary attention—leaves, butterflies, tomatoes, raindrops—but this is peaceful, low-key stuff, nothing our directed attention has to bother with. Contrast this to the atmosphere in mid-town Manhattan, where involuntary attention is grabbed by squealing brakes, blaring horns, crowds of pedestrians, blinking lights, and sirens. All that, willy-nilly, gives directed attention a run for its money: It has to remain vigilant in order to keep us from getting lost, shoved, robbed, trampled upon, or crushed by a taxi. This doesn’t happen in the garden. In the garden, directed attention—our essential thinking-and-coping tool—can just quietly lay back for a bit and chill. A garden literally gives the brain a rest, takes a load off our psyches, and knits up a lot of raveled sleeves of care. It gives us a breathing space, so that we’re better equipped to return to the everyday fray. It restores our reasoning power and patches up our perspective. It makes us feel better. And in exchange for all our troubles, it sends us home with a therapeutic dose of potatoes and carrots, onions and peppers and peas. ❖ 28
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Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers. —Ray Bradbury 29
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Nature’s Little Helpers turn a bad plan into a great one. By Susan Portman am the kind of person who likes to solve problems, once upon a time a mathematician and then a lawyer, both problem-solving types. I had a problem when we bought our house. We have a second housing lot, which came with a full-blown basketball court, 2,700 sq. ft. of cement, six inches 30
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY MATT COLLINS
thick and rebarred, smack in the middle of it. It made my palms sweat to have all that taken out and to design something to fill it up again when I had no idea what I was doing (if you dare tell my husband I said that, I will deny it). So I hired someone to draw a garden plan, opting to go professional in the solution. I was well rewarded for the investment. It was a good design. Amazing even. Almost all my beds are configured exactly as drawn on that proposal, and, looking back six years later, I wouldn’t change it. The problem with the proposal was that it was wildly extravagant. We could have taken a year’s vacation at the Ritz, perhaps in Italy with day trips on Clooney’s yacht, with friends and family in tow, for what it would have cost to see it to fruition. So I went to Master Gardener I had not school, which would allow me to buy plants wholesale (we can do that in our little neck only solved my of the woods), as well as know better how weed problem, and what to plant. I purchased and hauled but my soil my own plants, and I planted them all myself (with some muscle from my husband problem as well. on the trees), and I acted as my own general contractor on all the hardscape removal and building. That combo knocked down the price by a whopping lot and into the realm of “maybe my marriage will survive.” For a year, I hung onto the thought that in the bed against the back fence I really would have the garden-planned pond and stream, maybe even a bridge (a bridge!) over the stream. After pricing it (I am a pick-the-middle-of-three-bids gal), I altered my fantasy (with some effort and a stern talking-to, me to me) to a pondless waterfall and a dry river rock streambed, with a bridge (a bridge!) over it. While that price tag was not small, it was an entire decimal place smaller than that in the first proposal. In any case, that bed back there sat back there with a big ole nothing in it for a year, waiting to see if I could bring myself to spend a bunch of money for something that was guaranteed to take a lot of time and even more money once finished when I already had so much that was taking so much time and money and was unfinished. Well, to be honest, it was not “nothing” back there. It was 75 feet long, 31
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8-1/4 feet deep, and 2 feet high in grassy weeds, well established grassy weeds. My friends will tell you that I am a perfectionist. I am not. I could so continue to live with that bed full of weeds (always turning my face in the other direction, but so what?) until I decided which I would regret more, doing it or not doing it. But I messed that completely up when I applied for Texas Smartscape status. If you are certified as a Smartscape, you are expected to have your garden on the Smartscape Tour. The Smartscape Tour, then, was at the end of August so the participating gardens would be living examples of how nice a garden can look if you do all the things that Smartscape endorses (native and adapted plants, mulch, compost, less water and less turf, etc.), even at the end of a horrid Texas summer. Although those very happy weeds were in fact natives (or at least certainly well adapted), I could not, for the sake of the reputation of the Great State of Texas, leave that bed like it was and be on a Smartscape Tour. It was August in Texas. What to do, what to do? Agent Orange is not readily available and I don’t use chemicals anyway. I was never, ever going to get that bed weeded in time with the August heat. I vividly recalled that I had had a bed in the front with an infestation of betony and I had laid newspaper after weeding it, covering the newspaper with hardwood mulch. I couldn’t see that it had done much good at all, certainly not in comparison to the effort that was put into the attempt. After much thought and research, I had nothing, not even a glimmer of an attack plan. Time was a-wasting so on to Plan B (yes, you can have a “Plan B” be your primary plan if it is a terrible plan but you have no other ideas; surely you would not call a terrible plan “Plan A,” insulting good reliable Plan A’s everywhere). Plan B: Lay newspaper and 32
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mulch over it, with two changes from before, one of necessity, the other out of spite: I would cut off all the weeds at ground level instead of trying to pull or dig them (necessity). And instead of some wimpy three layers of newspaper, overlapped, I would be using nine (NINE) layers and overlapping every single bit by at least four (FOUR) inches (spite, perhaps as much against myself as the weeds, which were, I recognize, far more blameless for my predicament than was I). After cutting down weeds with clippers or scissors or loppers (turns out a few saplings had snuck in, too), I laid newspaper and held it in place with those landscape-cloth metal staples. When I ran out of staples, I covered that area with mulch, intending to pull up the staples and start the next section. This—the staple part—was an improvement over my first newspapering experience because it reduced newspaper wresting/retrieval time. Or so I thought. After the first section, I ran inside, leaving a trail of filth in my wake, got day-glo pink nail polish (surely not mine?), and painted the tops of all those staples because you cannot (seriously cannot) find them under mulch without undoing the whole shebang. Sipping sweet tea while the now-neon staples dried, I congratulated myself on my problem-solving skills. Nonetheless, it was a horrible job. There was no shade and I could only work 3-4 hours a day before becoming a panting limp rag. I quickly learned I needed to take the amount of ground I reasonably thought I could get done that day and halve it. I also learned that if I cut weeds too far ahead of myself I would have to do it again the next day because they grew like, well, weeds. I also learned that if the sprinklers ran even the night before, I needed to strip to 100% skin in the shed and dress in other clothes before coming inside, including to use the bathroom (so absolutely NO sweet tea while working). I also learned that even when you take two big city newspapers a day, every day, and you have saved them up for a week (just in case there was never a Plan A), you will not have enough newspapers for a task this size (fortunately my neighbors already thought me strange so begging old newspapers was pretty tame stuff). I did it in six days, and to me it was beautiful—bare and lifeless, not one single weed in sight. OK, “not 33
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hideously ugly” might be more appropriate, but it would do for my first Smartscape Tour. (Perfectionist? I think not). I know you are waiting for me to tell you how the day of the tour the killer nutsedge finally pushed up through my hard work, just as the betony had triumphed before, and made me the laughingstock of the Smartscape Tour. Nope. To this day I do not have grassy weeds in that bed. I think it was the timing that was key here, the stress of the worst part of the summer, so hot and dry, then denying the weeds their ability to photosynthesize by cutting the plants off and essentially denying them sunlight and water with so many layers of paper. Brutally harsh. Would it have worked if it had been done in the spring? Perhaps not. I don’t really know, and I don’t really care. In August, with the clock ticking, it did the trick. Over the fall and winter, I mulled my pond/stream/bridge situation and decided I just did not want to do it at that point in time (nothing makes a decision easier than to have it not be a decisive decision). So, come spring, I walked over to the giant bed of mulchdom, where a few assorted plants were sitting in the path waiting to make a cheerful dent in the emptiness. As I stood in the path, I rested my spade in the bed, leaning it against my leg while I saw to that small task. The spade sank almost 4 inches into the soil. There was no newspaper left and my clay was fluffy sweet black soil. Turns out earthworms are right fond of newspaper and, as they tunneled their ever-loving way from the nether reaches to get to those nine layers of heavenly chow, they broke up my clay, fertilized it, and ate until they were fat as sticks. The mulch, now mostly gone, had itself rotted and fed the earth, as did the dead roots of all those weeds. I had not only solved my weed problem, but my soil problem as well. My only regret is that I ever dared denigrate it with the title Plan B. Next time I have a terrible solution to a problem, I will have to call it Plan C. With a little luck, I will eventually run out of alphabet to insult. That sounds like a great Plan B. ❖ 34
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Peas
By J. Gibson ●
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LINDA COOK DEVONA
eas are vegetable babies. They squeak And they cling so tightly to their trellis With their curly little tendrils. Their leaves are so smooth, Their blooms are so soft. And see how fast they grow! Their pods are toys clutched and brandished. They hold them out, But you still have to get ’em out of their fists. One splits with a wonderful little pop, And inside, the toy peas are lined up, So neat and round and orderly, Ready to be nibbled right out of the pod. Each pea detaches with a satisfying crunch, Full of sweet green juice. Are there ever enough pea pods? Each one is a secret green world, A row of tiny people in a canoe, Little dolls lined up in a doll bed, A family in a small cosy house. It’s okay to eat them up. And it’s okay to drop the pod halves on the ground. They will go back to Mother Earth. Look—a little bitty pod is pushing out of this blossom! It must be a dolly pod! And here are some that will be ready tomorrow! Oh, peas are worth it! 35
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The Flower Thief A small boy learns to love flowers— by stealing them. By Stephen Orr ❖
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I had a youthful predilection for larceny. It doesn’t affect me much these days, but I must admit that under certain circumstances and in certain gardens, the temptation returns. My problem started early, as a preteen. It was not the daring, shoplifting sort of thievery that I heard about from the cool kids in school; it was something quieter and gentler. I was an unapologetic plant swiper. Specifically, I was compelled One of my to steal any attractive flower that caught my eye in a neighbor’s front yard. favorite plant Why did I do it? I, like most anyone else, stashing spots appreciate the beauty of a flower, and, of was our unused course, I knew my actions were wrong. My doghouse—until parents told me so in no uncertain terms the few times they caught me red-handed with my father loot or discovered one of my flowery treasure discovered it. troves. But my youthful self could never enjoy a perfect blossom at a distance, growing on someone else’s bush; I had to possess and sequester it away only for myself. I would case neighborhood gardens in my West Texas town, watching to see when a certain ‘Betty Prior’ rose would be at its peak or a row of pyracantha berries was about to ripen. Then, under cover of night or even early morning, I would strike—a five-year-old armed with 36
ILLUSTRATIONS BY NICOLE TAMARIN
The last two issues, I’ve run excerpts from Timber Press’s new book, The Roots of My Obsession: 30 Great Gardeners Reveal Why They Garden. Guess what? I like the book so much that I’m going to share another excerpt from it this issue—by Stephen Orr, the Editorial Director for Gardening at Martha Stewart Living. Enjoy!
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scissors and a shoebox, ducking through shadowy foundation plantings to avoid passing headlights. Snipping away here and there like a mad barber, I would help myself. Then I would sneak back home to arrange the plant snippets in one of my favorite hiding places: a hidden corner behind the woodpile, my bedroom closet, or most often, our dog Chester’s unused doghouse, which I could just barely squeeze into. I remember this last stashing spot most of all. I used it for a few months until the day my father discovered its hiding-in-plain-sight location. I can only imagine his bewilderment as he looked inside the small opening to see my macabre shrine to Flora. I would visit my collection from time to time as if stopping in a museum, viewing the carefully arranged flowers, berries, and vines that looped around nails in the unpainted plywood walls—all dried in the Texas summer heat. My dad would have known immediately that we didn’t grow most of the floral offerings in this ersatz temple. When he sternly questioned me, like a young George Washington I didn’t dare to lie or even deny that the plants had arrived at our home from sources outside our own property. I don’t recall the punishment he gave me at the time (sorry, Dad)—maybe because I knew in my heart of hearts that I would be a repeat offender. I do remember the outcome of another case. My mother found a large stash of fresh scarlet nandina berries in my closet one morning. Within five minutes, I was standing at Mrs. Ramsey’s front door, in tears, handing her a box of her now useless berries while my mother stood angrily at the curb. The embarrassment of this punishment did the trick, in a way. I became even more stealthy. I made sure never to pick too many of any one plant, nor did I make the mistake of using such an obvious hiding place. My crime wave continued on a smaller, more surreptitious scale for a few more summers, until one day I grew out of my plant-stealing 38
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stage. Maybe I finally realized the negative moral implications of helping myself to someone else’s property without permission, or perhaps I realized the embarrassment I would suffer having to greet Mrs. Ramsey again with a box of berries as a junior high schooler. I knew if I kept up such activities as a young adult, word would get around—and quickly. I tell you this, not merely as a childhood confession but to describe one of the main reasons I love making gardens as an adult. There is so much beauty out in the natural world, and through the act (and art) of gardening, I can summon it, possess it, The punishment and even sequester it in my garden. But more did the trick, often these days, I choose to share the things in a way. that I grow with my friends, neighbors, and I became even the people who read the articles and books that I write. Maybe I’m making amends to more stealthy. the sweet elderly gardeners in Abilene who felt the disappointment of having their delicate blue anemones plundered in a predawn raid all those years ago. Or maybe it’s the straightforward happiness I see in others and myself when I bake a chicken with just-picked herbs. Or the satisfying feeling when a neighbor stops by the front garden of my co-op apartment building in the city and remarks that she goes out of her way to pass our sidewalk plantings each day with her daughter on their walk to school so they can see what is coming up. I don’t even mind so much when I see that a half-sized passerby has chopped the head off a tulip that dared stick its head outside the wrought iron garden fence. I can easily identify where that childish and ultimately selfish thought process originates. Who knows? Maybe someday that same little flower thief will grow up to make horticulture his or her profession, spreading the joy of gardening through words and actions to a wide audience. And to think all that might begin with someone’s irresistible urge to snatch a bit of passing beauty. ❖ Taken from The Roots of My Obsession: Thirty Gardeners Reveal Why They Garden © copyright 2012. Edited by Thomas C. Cooper. Published by Timber Press, Portland, OR. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. To order, see p. 6.
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Save My Parsley! My husband tried. He really tried. By Julie V. Foley Gardening on Pennsylvania’s Pocono Plateau presents many obstacles. Clay soil that doesn’t drain. A short growing season. Ever-present rocks—fondly known as Pocono Potatoes. And wildlife. Pesky wildlife. Fortunately, we have wonderful farmers’ markets that offer terrific fruits and vegetables. But I do love to grow my own herbs. I love using just-picked herbs in my cooking, and hearing the bees buzz among the plants is music to my ears. Unfortunately, this season brought a different critter to my herb garden—a groundhog with a voracious appetite. When I went out for a handful of parsley and found only stems, I was outraged. I enlisted my husband to be my valiant parsley protector. Marty set out a Havahart live-animal trap, baited with diced 40
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY TIM FOLEY
cantaloupe. “Punxsutawney Phil is as good as caught,” he said. The next morning, we were awakened by frantic cries—from a squirrel! The crazed thing was running in circles in our trap. Marty opened the door with a stick. The poor creature nearly tumbled forward as he escaped into the woods. Marty reset the trap, but nothing happened for the next couple of weeks. The parsley was just starting to come back when one morning the trap door was closed. Hurrah! We’d caught Phil! Marty set out to grab the cage and enter Phil in a woodchuck relocation program—only to find a sleeping skunk in the trap! My noble Guardian of the Parsley turned around and went back inside. He changed into old clothing and then grabbed a garbage can lid for a shield and armed himself with a push broom and rock rake (it’s the Poconos, remember?). Ready at last, he crouched like a gladiator and slowly The skunk inched his way towards the trap. His first few attempts to hook the rake into dipped his head the door latch failed, but they were enough and fluffed his to awaken the skunk. The skunk dipped his tail toward the head and fluffed his tail toward the trap door. Here it comes! trap door. But no, he put his head down on his tail, Here it comes! like it was a pillow, and laid back down to sleep. Marty tried the latch again. Now the skunk looked annoyed. Here he was having a nice nap, and this idiot kept hitting his little bed! The skunk stood up and fluffed his tail again. The rake finally hooked the latch, and Marty jammed the broom handle in the door to prop it open. “Come on out,” Marty said nervously. “Go back in the woods. I’m not going to hurt you.” The skunk stuck his head out the door, looked at Marty, and then stepped out and waddled away, as pretty as you please. Marty removed the trap, took a shower, and put on clean clothes. Then he came into the kitchen and reached for his car keys. “Where are you going?” I asked him. “It’s Saturday and the Farmer’s Market is open,” he said. “How much parsley do you want?” ❖ 41
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My Gardening Mother Contributing Editor Diana Wells tells where she got it from. ❖
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Last winter when it was too cold to go outside much, I finally sorted family papers, in particular my mother’s letters to me. We were separated for most of my adult life—and Mum wrote to me every week. In almost every letter she talked about her garden. 42
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY BLANCHE DERBY
Since she was a little girl, Mummy had loved flowers. Amongst the papers, there was a faded childhood photo of her in a “nurse’s uniform,” tending her “flower hospital.” Her father was a successful doctor, and after parties, she wrote, she would “rescue the flowers that were discarded and nurse them until they revived.” Apparently she got someone to give her aspirin tablets, which she dissolved into the water. I cannot remember a day in our home when there wasn’t a vase of fresh flowers on the table. There was a At supper small silver jug (which I still have), filled with she would her blooms from her own garden. In balmy produce a bowl southern England, she could pick something every month of the year. Even in January of fresh-picked she would write to me about the flowering beans, presenting jasmine, winter cherry, and pussy willows. them like a Still, although she loved flowers as a child, my mother was not then a gardener. As she conjurer. wrote, “My worst humiliation was when I was asked to fetch carrots for a stew, and told my hostess there were none. I had never known that carrots grew below ground!! Once married, and with gardens of my own, I became an addict.” Of her four children, I was the one who inherited her passion. She knew her daughter well. Early on, she would ask me to “do” the flowers, seeming to understand that I loved them so much I would pause and whisper an apology to each as I snipped it for the vase! She gave me a “garden” of my own in the middle of her vegetable patch—a square lovingly enclosed with bricks, with a “pond” (a sunken pudding basin) in the center. I had marigolds, nasturtiums, and a miniature rose bush that was a treasured present on my tenth birthday. I spent hours imagining myself squatting under its arbor of tiny golden roses. For much of my childhood, I saw my mother sporadically. She had tuberculosis, and in those days the only available treatment was rest and isolation. Then we would be reunited, and my life would bloom again. She was very beautiful, my mother, dark and slim, and she almost always dressed in green, from her shoes to her hats. She said it made it easier for people to give her presents, 43
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and indeed her engagement ring was an emerald and her wedding necklace was of jade. But I sometimes think it was because her very nature was bright and light—like new grass. She gardened, like most of us, as she lived—in her case impatiently, spontaneously, untidily. I never saw her weed, and she constantly criticized her gardener for pulling up the wrong plants. In an untidy bed she seemed to see only the flashes of brilliance springing up exuberantly, for most things (including weeds) seemed to grow for her! As was common in her era, she always had a gardener. In Africa, where her married life began (my father was in the Foreign Service), she did little more than direct and appreciate. When my sister was born and carried home to her jungle outpost in a litter, “I fed her,” wrote my mother, “under a huge Baobab tree, with leaves falling on us both.” Salads were grown in huge oil drums, “so as to be safe to eat.” I was born after my father had been posted to Jerusalem, a land of dry rocks and olive trees. In Biblical times, a garden often meant a shady retreat of olive trees. Indeed, the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus spent the night praying, means “the garden with the olive press.” Flowers and vegetables had to be irrigated. We had citrus trees in our own garden, and I remember sitting in the orange branches, my hands, face, and whole body sticky from the oranges which I picked and sucked. This was an era of war in that zone, so my parents kept goats for milk. I hated the milk, and my poor mother colored it pink to try to tempt me! They kept rabbits for meat—which I also refused to eat. My mother’s real gardening began when the family settled in England. She had finally recovered from her illness and took up gardening with the enthusiasm of the reborn, trying every vegetable, flower, and fruit available. At supper she would produce a bowl of fresh-picked beans, presenting them like a conjuror. It was hard not to be affected by her presentation, especially as I felt being reunited with her was such an incredible miracle in itself. I have loved fresh runner beans ever since. Like many English children, I was sent away to boarding school, went away for college, and married far from home. Everywhere I went I was followed by her weekly letter, always describing her 44
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garden. “The garden is Heaven,” she wrote, “and I think of you whenever I’m in it.” When I did come home, before I could take off my coat, she would take me round it, introducing each new plant acquired in my absence. One time, she had started a new yellow bed. She grumbled about her failure to grow a yellow kniphofia in spite of repeated tries. Her complaint was slightly reminiscent of someone trying to make friends with snobbish neighbors and being rebuffed—so she gave up and planted sympathetic sunflowers instead! She was not a patient woman and could never, like many true gardeners, painstakingly raise tender plants. In one letter she had grown lettuces which, she wrote, were very inferior to those on sale at the local produce stand. Grumpily, she bought the latter. I remember when she bought me new shoes, I was allowed to try on three pairs before her patience wore out! She always seemed to be in a hurry to get on with the next thing. When she cooked, the kitchen was foggy with flour that she literally threw into her baking. (The cakes always came out perfect!) I suppose she must have rinsed her lettuces briefly, but it wasn’t until I was grown that I realized grit was not an integral part of a salad! Often when I visited, she would suddenly rush out with me to buy some new shrub she had heard of. On one such occasion, we got caught in a traffic jam. My mother sighed deeply and wondered (in a loud voice with all the car windows open) why scientists bothered to search in outer space for intelligent life—it being so scarce on earth. When she died and I came home, there were no flowers in the silver jug on the table. On her coffin someone had placed the kind of flowers she would have none of—fat, heavy lilies, roses bred to sterile perfection, ferns of the kind she would probably have trampled. Her gardener and I stood side by side at the graveside. He wore a black suit, too tight for him. “I won’t have a job now,” he said. “There’s no one now that understands the garden.” I was holding a small bouquet of flowers picked that morning from her garden. “She’d have liked them,” he said, as I threw them into the grave. ❖ 45
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CU T T I N G S Water Your Way to Health
was herding his cattle, his horse reared and threw him, causing him to have compression fractures of three vertebrae. The doctors told him he would probably never walk again—definitely not unaided. After a few months, Grandfather started crawling with a hose on his hands and knees to water the apple trees he had planted the year before. He did this the rest of that summer and fall. By the following spring, he could water them using a cane. He kept watering and shuffling along. By that fall—1971—he could walk a short ways unaided. One year later, the summer of 1972, he could walk fine without any aid. The only physical therapy Grandfather ever did was watering his trees. He went ten more years before he had to start using a cane again. —By Allen Crowder of C Casper, asper, WY WY.. 46
LINDA COOK DEVONA
In 1970, my grandfather was 63 years old. One day while he
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Short selections—both old and new— sent in by our readers.
Weeds: Why I Love/Hate Them
HANNAH ENGLAND
I have a love/hate relationship with weeds. I hate having them in my yard, but I love knowing their names. It started when I purchased a book titled Weeds of Southern Turfgrasses for my Master Gardener class. I fell in love with this book. It totally changed my outlook on weeds. I still don’t like them—but their names! Names like Redstem Filaree and Asiatic Hawksbeard flow off the tongue like poetry. Think how many mothers have gladly received a grubby handful of Oldfield Toadflax or Rough Fleabane from a smiling child. Now when I stroll thourgh the neighborhood, I think, “Hmm, I see they are dealing with Spotted Spurge, too.” Or, “Hey, they better pull that Chamberbitter before it spreads to my yard!” My personal favorite way to deal with weeds in my flowerbed is to hand-pull them. I find a spot, sit down, and pull everything within arm’s reach. If I do that every day, I can easily keep the weeds contained. I look at it this way: I pull up the weeds that are dumb enough to stick their heads up. It’s like raising your hand in a classroom and asking the teacher to pick you. I am more than happy to oblige them. —By Lori Tamblingson of Ocala, FL. 47
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The Trouble With Oranges…
u th Yo et ra B ur n!® cG …and fruit flies… Yo de M r e a G ik …and Girl Scouts… M y B
It all started with me Paying Too Much Attention. I was listening to the latest episode of “Foods You’ll Never Eat Again,” and they revealed that ‘not from concentrate’ premium orange juice was not the kind of girl I thought it was. Years ago, I was seduced into a vision of Orange Heaven by a news report on how the companies freeze fresh juice up in giant slabs, which get slid onto massive shelves in frozen warehouses. So I assumed that they later just melted down these slabs and packaged them up. (I also fantasized about convincing construction workers in Minnesota in January that the slabs were a cool new color drywall I’m covered in specially made for cold climates [which at green mold, that point they kind of technically were] and surrounded by then hanging around town for the Spring open bottles, and thaw so that I could predict the Miracle of the Melting Houses.) drinking wine Anyway, it turns out that the freezing, from a baby’s thawing, and pasteurization of these massive cup. There’s monoliths of morning steals all the flavor from only one possible the juice, so they add a few drops of some thing I can say: mysterious ingredient and THEN they package it. The mystery additive either gave lab rats x-ray vision or purple tails (I forget which) but it convinced me to go naked . . . . . . As in buying oranges and squeezing them myself every morning, which sure seemed like it was going to be laborious and expensive, but turned out to be neither. A big bag of organic oranges costs about the same as a half-gallon of premium mystery 48
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juice, lasts about as long, and the flavor is spectacular. And I even had an elegant crystal juice reamer from my parent’s kitchen that had somehow survived intact in my hands since the 60s, despite my relative lack of opposable thumbs. It worked great and made my son spit milk when I mentioned the device’s name to him. I am withholding the name of the really big gun—a certain type of vacuum cleaner attachment—until I need to make him laugh so hard it will change his eyeglass prescription. (He’s in his early 20s,
a treacherous time of life to learn new things, especially ones that have the potential to make you wet yourself.) But there was The Matter of The Rinds. I knew that rinds from juice factories were used to make solvents and fire ant killers, neither of which I currently needed, especially in bulk; and I knew I could not ‘throw them away,’ because Al Gore has explained, “there IS no ‘away’—you’re just passing it to someone else to get rid of. And THEY can’t throw it away either!” So I had to find some way to try and recycle these things, which were now approaching critical mass. I knew that citrus rinds didn’t compost well, but I chopped a few into tiny pieces and mixed them into a huge outdoor pile of shredded leaves anyway. The 49
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next day the entire pile was covered in green mold, which made me wonder whether oranges were really that good for you—and if the pile were struck by lightning, would it achieve super powers? And if so, could The Big Green Machine be directed towards the enemies of my garden? “Hulk Smash Puny Squirrels!” At least this year’s tomatoes should be highly resistant to scurvy. I tried to whiz some rinds up; burned out the motor on the blender. I scattered the half-whizzed remnants in the woods and killed a small tree. I then glanced towards my worm bin, which clearly includes my forbidden fruit in the list of ‘No No’s on the lid. (“No pet waste, orange rinds, meat, fat, orange rinds, bones, pine needles, or orange rinds.”) I lingered for a few seconds and the worms raced out on top of the bin to spell “GO AWAY” with their slithery bodies. I can take a hint. But by now I got twenty pounds of orange outsides sitting out on the kitchen counter, and they—and I—are starting to look more than a little green, so I take them down to the ‘beer fridge’ in the basement. Problem solved! (Or at least delayed; that’s just as good if you don’t have to look at it and it isn’t leaking through a ceiling.) A week goes by and more rinds go down. Another week and I have to shift some stuff around to make room. No problem—I’ll just move these dirt-filled pots out of the way. Dirt . . . filled . . . pots? Then I remember my grand experiment in forcing, designed to make use of all the extra Spring bulbs that I—and everyone else—has left over at the end of bulb-planting season. (Actually it’s more than everyone; research shows that in December of any given year, 127% of gardeners have Spring bulbs that have gone unplanted [numbers higher than 100% include 50
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unplanted bulbs from PREVIOUS years]. Some gardeners get so good at this they have heirloom tulips that have been unplanted through several generations!) As my bulb-forcing friend Art Wolk explained to me back in November, you just pot the bulbs up in a loose, light soil-free mix, water them well, write the variety name and date on the pot Research shows (I even did this part!), and then store them that in December somewhere that stays around 40 degrees of any given for the required length of time, like an extra year, 127% of fridge—one that contains no apples, bananas . . . or . . . other . . . fruit. gardeners have I hurriedly call Art and scream, “Oranges Spring bulbs aren’t fruit, right?” that have gone “Of course they’re fruit. Who is this? This isn’t about storm windows again, is it? I told unplanted. you people I’m not buying . . . ” I hurriedly sell Art a fine new set of replacement windows and rush downstairs to rescue my sleeping bulbs. My wife gets home from work, sees the rinds back out on the kitchen counter, and explains that if they’re still there in an hour I’m sleeping in the garage. “But honey—we don’t HAVE a garage!” “Better build one quick.” SLAM! I brush an annoying little insect out of my face and carry some of my orange albatrosses out to the deepest part of the woods, where other people would hide murder weapons or gold coins, and I am instead destroying the career of some archaeologist of the future. (“It appears that an entire civilization was built on this acidic green powder; I’ll bet they even used it for drywall . . . ”) I take out another load, swat at another annoying little flying insect, another load, another insect, and then I try to return to the house—but can’t find it. Used to be right here, near where this massive infestation of tiny insects is . . . Fruit flies! My Oranges of Doom have bred a Legion of Fruit Flies! (The only good part was that I couldn’t actually see my wife yelling at me anymore.) So I did the only thing a responsible grown 51
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man can do in a situation like this—open a bottle of red wine. I filled a glass, put it down, went looking for the “Fifty Ways to Kill a Fruit Fly” website, came back into the kitchen, took a sip—and did a spit-shot across the room that would have made Uncle Tonoose (Wikipedia, anyone?) proud. I had gotten about a dram of wine and a half gallon of fruit flies! To other people ‘butterflies in your stomach’ is an EXPRESSION EXPRESSION, but not the old perfesser here . . . So I leave out little dishes of red wine to trap them, but that only catches a few. I leave out another glass of wine, and in five minutes their remains are floating three inches deep inside. Hmmm—if they have trouble flying back out of a glass . . . I find an empty wine bottle, pour two fingers in it, and leave it sitting out. You can see them flying into it. So I open up a bottle of my least fine wine, pull all of the empty bottles out of our recycling, put a little wine in each one, and place them all around the kitchen. It’s the Gallo Motel; they fly in but they can’t fly out! I am finally winning—but I’m drinking wine out of a sippy cup for fear of going airborne if I ingest one more of the little buggers and am so exhausted I don’t hear the doorbell ring. But my wife does, and answers it without first checking to see if the kitchen harbors—oh, say a man covered in green mold, surrounded by a dozen open bottles of wine and obviously drinking yet more wine from a baby’s cup. “Mike-L!” yells my wife, doing the same two-syllable thing with my name that my mother did when she found those magazines under my bed, “…our Girl Scout Cookies are here.” I look up just in time to see a large icicle form on the last word and fall, shattering on the floor. Then I notice the little girl in the bright green uniform carrying a stack of small green boxes, with her bug-eyed mother right behind, counting bottles. I’m covered in green mold, surrounded by a dozen open bottles, and obviously drinking wine from a baby’s cup. There’s only one possible thing I can say: “We’ll take an extra box of Thin Mints.” ❖ 52
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CARRIE WILD
I do sincerely trust that the benediction that is always awaiting me in my garden may by degrees be more deserved, and that I may grow in grace, and patience, and cheerfulness, just like the happy owers I so much love. —Elizabeth von Armin 53
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Flying Solo
He lives in a small house at the edge of a chicory- and daisy-framed country road that accommodates more squirrels than cars. There he watched his children, like seeds, escape their pods and search for new and fertile soil to spread their roots . . . and the love of his life, Martha, go into battle against cancer and join the ranks of the fallen. He has been on his own now for what feels to him like an eternity. His house shows it. The kitchen sink harbors more dishes than the cupboards. Since there is no one present to remind him to pick up his socks, he usually doesn’t. The sound of the pendulum of the clock on the table beside his favorite chair seems to have gotten louder. It fills the void. It replaces the sounds of voices and bodies in motion. Often now he has the strange feeling that he exists on a desert island. He senses another world just beyond the scan of his vision, but its practices no longer affect him. His passions have grown accustomed to wearing gloves. He feels like he is flying solo, and he confesses to his image in the mirror, as he stretches his gray bristled chin in an effort to shave, that there are just too many knobs and buttons to negotiate. As soon as the spring sun has lapped up the last patches of frozen snow surrounding the house, he puts on his boots and he makes his way through the swelling masses of morning glories 54
ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR
Marigolds and memories. By Christa Chevalier
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to the shed at the edge of the woods that surround the house on three sides. There he picks up his hoe and rake, and he takes them to a patch of lumpy soil beneath the kitchen window where Martha used to grow her favorite flower, marigolds. He hoes and rakes the soil until it is smooth. Then he sprinkles marigold seeds all over it like Martha had done. He had asked her once why she never planted them in a row. Smiling down at the impregnated soil, she had told him that He sprinkles flowers are free spirits that should never be marigold seeds stifled into conformity. Come summer, while weeding the like Martha marigolds, his thoughts often blossom into had done. images of Martha the first time he saw her . . . helping children plant marigolds in a school yard . . . her head tilted . . . her long copper hair flowing seductively over her sunbronzed cheeks. It causes his chest to rise in a sudden elation that quickly slides into a heavy sadness, leaving his heart still in its surrender. That is when his plane begins to sputter, forcing him to drop his hoe and escape into the pines and maples. There, under a soothing canopy of branches folded like fingers in prayer, he gropes through his sorrow, and miraculously finds the knobs and buttons that keep his plane from plunging to the ground. Time passes slowly . . . as it inevitably does at the edge of a nearly forgotten country road. It escapes from under his boots . . . slips through his thinning gray hair, and gently caresses his cheeks, as he heads down the stony path to his leaning mailbox . . . containing, if anything, catalogs offering things that he and Martha used to buy. Proof that somewhere, someone is still aware of his existence, he tucks it all under his skinny arm and heads back up the path. Back to the sink full of dishes, lingering socks, and a gathering of free-spirited marigolds which, for the time remaining, take him as close to the love of his life as he can possibly get. ❖ 55
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The Brush Turkey Cometh A serious threat to the garden. By Stephanie Jackson
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY NICOLE TAMARIN
fter three long years, the drought had finally broken. This cruel drought, the worst in Australia’s history, might have been a symbol of climate change or simply part of the natural cycle of brutal weather events that have wreaked havoc since Adam was a boy. All I knew was that years of watching the life sapped out of plants I’d known since they were seedlings had drained the life from me as well as my garden. But on that glorious summer’s day, as storm clouds drew their thick gray curtain across the searing face of the sun, the earth’s pain, and mine, began to ease. The rain brought new life to my garden. Brown and shriveled shoots I thought had Then a male been claimed by death were suddenly resurrected as tiny green specks of life, and the decided to build subtle perfume of lemon-scented gum trees his nest—a filled the warm, damp air. It’s an immense mountain up garden, a rainforest jungle in which Mother to five meters Nature and I maintain a respectful relationship. I ensure that the plants have everything high—in my they need to thrive. In return, I’m rewarded garden! with lush and verdant foliage, an array of flowers, fruits, and nuts, and subtle perfumes that waft through the air on every minute breeze. The rain brought the birds and animals back, as well as the plants. The bright-eyed possum that liked to gorge herself on my nectar-laden Grevillea flowers returned to her old haunt in the garden shed with a new and tiny baby clinging to her silken fur. Channel-billed cuckoos announced their arrival with banshee-like calls and evicted eggs from nests where they would lay their own. 57
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Kingfishers diligently tunneled into termites’ nests where they would raise their young. And a giant monitor lizard rummaged among the damp undergrowth of fallen leaves and ferns, grabbing unsuspecting beetles, grasshoppers, and winged ants. I’m happy to share my garden with these wild creatures. I allow all creatures great and small to thrive in the environment that I have created. I always have. But then a brush turkey sauntered onto the scene.
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ustralian gardeners usually regard these large and arrogant native birds as their enemy, but it’s always been live and let live as far as I’m concerned. The native woodlands that surround my rambling garden were home to wild turkeys long before I planted my first jacaranda, palm tree, or bauhinia some 35 years ago. It was their domain before I created paths and fishponds. I’ve always been happy to see them saunter past while I’m working. I lean on my rake or hoe to watch them wander through garden beds and scratch among the mulch and fallen leaves for insects or worms. They’ve helped to keep pest species under control, and they’ve turned the mulch repeatedly so it decomposes a little faster. But when a male decided to build his nest in the heart of my garden, my passion for wildlife was sorely tested—for a brush turkey’s nest is not simply a handful of leaves and twigs. It’s a mountain, up to five feet meters high and 12 feet across, created from anything and everything that can be scratched from the landscape. And it’s all hurled, with powerful legs and with long, savage claws, onto the nesting mound. The brush turkey set to work with a will. Hippeastrum and Sprekelia bulbs flew through the air. Newly planted shrubs and trees followed in their wake. Bromeliads, shredded by razor-sharp talons, were ripped from their shaded beds and added to the rapidly mounting heap of debris. Every nearby fallen leaf, twig, and fragment of mulch was claimed by the hyperactive bird, until the ground lay naked and the roots of the plants that had held their ground were exposed to the elements. The vandal’s mate laid her great eggs, and then, as all female brush turkeys do, abandoned the scene, leaving the male to tend 58
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the nest. Each day he added more debris from the tattered bromeliads, more bulbs, and more of the once-verdant ground cover to ensure that the temperature within the nesting mound would be exactly what was required for incubation. Finally, the chicks dug their way out of their personal compost heap and, with barely a chirp of good-bye, scurried off into the woodlands. His job done, the male vanished, too, and I heaved a sigh of relief. I tended to the injured plants, reclaimed surviving bulbs from the abandoned nest, and replanted barren areas, and the garden gradually returned to its former glory. But as the next summer arrived, my pulse As the next began to race again—the turkey had returned! I couldn’t stand by and let him ruin so much summer arrived, of my garden again, so I quickly came up my pulse began with a plan of defense. The first phase was to race again— to move the gigantic mound that he’d built the previous year. The material he’d used the turkey had for its construction was mine after all, so I returned! felt no remorse at clearing it all away. Then I quickly—and defiantly—planted a four-feet-high Philodendron selloum, a large Poinciana tree (Delonix regia), and a bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii). Its savagely spiny foliage, I was confident, would deter the most amorous of vandals. When I finally put down my tools, I soon realized that my efforts had been unneeded—for the war against the turkey had been won without a shot being fired. He’d discovered a mountain of wood chips well away from the most vulnerable areas of the garden and, claiming it as his own, was energetically adding weeds and grasses from the adjacent woodland to his new castle. Soon a hen turkey, with hesitance and a touch of timidity, strolled onto the scene. I watched, with fingers crossed, as she inspected every inch of the vast mound. When she gave an emotive cluck of approval, I wiped a tear from my eye. The battle was over. With winners on both sides, the turkeys would once again be my allies rather than my enemies. And I’d once again be able to live in harmony with the wildlife that brings a touch of paradise to my wild Australian garden. ❖ 59
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Are Worms Vitamins? Only one way to find out! By Sarah Parrish ❖
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I remember Flintstone vitamins. I liked the purple Barneys best. My mother kept telling me there was no difference between the actual vitamins besides the color, but I was a stubborn kid. I knew vitamins were important—and I was sure the Barneys were the top choice. We’d had this conversation many times. “Take your vitamins,” my mother would say. “You need to grow up strong and healthy.” She’d even use my brother as an example: He was four years older, stronger, and taller. “Even the plants in the garden need their vitamins,” she added once. The next day, she caught me planting some vitamins near a climbing rose beside the house. She was angry. “Stop hiding your vitamins!” she yelled. “Just eat them!” “I already took mine,” I told her. “You said plants need vitamins, too.” I stared at my feet. I was just trying to help. “Sarah,” she said, softening, “plants get their vitamins from the soil.” She took a handful of the dark earth surrounding the base of the rose bush. “You “Take your might not be able to see it, but there are nutrients and vitamins in here for the plants. Just vitamins,” my look at how healthy this rose bush is. Let’s mother said. save the Flintstones for you, OK?” “Even the plants “OK,” I said. I took her hand and we in the garden walked back inside. I felt a little better, but need vitamins.” I didn’t really understand. Dirt wasn’t vitamins. If dirt were vitamins, I could just eat that instead of those purple Barneys, but I had tasted dirt once and it wasn’t very good. I decided to ask my brother about it. I found him in his room 60
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY HANNAH ENGLAND
drawing. He was an excellent artist. “Mark?” I said. He looked up from his drawing. “Mom says there are vitamins in the dirt, but I can’t find them.” “Why do you want to find vitamins in dirt?” he said, confused. My brother and I had a lot of conversations with strongly voiced, conflicting opinions. Mother thought we fought a lot. I asked Mark to come outside, then I took a handful of dirt just like Mother had. “Where are the vitamins?” I asked him. “There’s one,” he said, pointing to a worm. “Mystery solved.” He got up, brushed off his knees, and went back inside. Hmmph. He was lying to me, that was obvious. I walked back inside. My mother was getting ready to cook dinner. “Mom?” I asked. “Yes, Sarah.” “Do worms make plants healthy?” I asked the question with complete confidence that she’d expose my brother’s lie. “Yes, they do.” I frowned. “They do?” “Yes, worms are excellent for plants. They help the plants grow up to be big and strong.” She smiled at me, patting my back. “Just like you’re going to be.” I went back outside. Do you want to know what worms taste like? Well, they’re saltier than you might expect. And they’re gritty, like sand when you bite down. The worst part is the wiggling, though. I don’t recommend them. My mother came outside to call me in for dinner, saw what I was doing, and yelled at me to stop immediately. We had a long talk that night about what vitamins are, how vitamins are in soil, and how we don’t eat worms. My brother never let me live it down. ❖ 61
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Sprouting Pains How the Seed Savers Exchange had its first breakthrough. By Diane Ott Whealy ❖
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In 1975, Kent and Diane Whealy had the family morning glory and tomato seeds her grandfather had entrusted to them—and the “modest dream of saving seed with like-minded people.” So they started a small seed-saving network to help preserve people’s heirloom seeds before they disappeared completely. That first year, their network consisted of 29 seedsharing gardeners and was run from the Whealy’s home. Today, the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) is an international nonprofit with over 13,000 members, an 889-acre farm in Decorah, Iowa, and 70 staffers—all dedicated to the important work of preserving our agricultural genetic diversity. Recently, Diane authored Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver, which tells the amazing history of this successful effort, which was an uphill struggle for many years: The Whealys were trying to birth an international preservation effort in the time they had left after supporting themselves and raising their family! Here’s a short excerpt from the book, describing the period of about six years in which the organization finally began to take off. 62
PHOTOS COURTESY OF SEED SAVERS EXCHANGE
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One SSE member, John Hartman, now deceased, told us, “You’ve got a tiger by the tail.” And Seed Savers Exchange definitely had momentum of its own. We had a tiger by the tail—now what? We knew the organization had not even begun to reach its growth potential, and wouldn’t unless we poured our energy into the cause. But how would we support ourselves while SSE grew? Unlike family The publicity that Seed Savers Exchange had received was more than we’d hoped for. jewels or furniSSE had already been recognized in more than ture that needed one hundred magazines and other media. only periodic The interest was at times overwhelming, but the enthusiasm was heartening. A front-page cleaning, seeds story in the Los Angeles Times on June 2, 1980, had to be grown. summed up the situation and drew a lot of attention to John Withee, a noted collector of bean seeds from Maine, as well as to Kent and SSE: As these heirlooms are ceremoniously mailed around the country each winter, planted each spring, and then harvested in the fall for the next year’s mailing, seed savers provide an important genetic “fail-safe”—a chain of small backup seed repositories for the big government center in Fort Collins, Colorado, where thousands of varieties are supposed to be saved for posterity. The backup is especially important because government repositories are so low on funds they cannot always do what they are supposed to . . . The article quoted John Withee: I’ve got a valuable gene bank here, the government tells me. The reason is simple—people won’t correspond with the government. I get 20 letters a day from people who write and tell me about their latest leg fracture and then send me a packet of the family’s heirloom beans. 63
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Gardeners were willing to send seeds to other gardeners. The government seed lab was not set up to participate on that very human scale. In 1984, a duplicate of John’s bean collection was sent to the National Seed Storage Lab in Colorado, giving the government a seed resource that in all likelihood it could never have collected itself. An elderly woman once sent SSE some tomato seeds, saved for years from some that her grandmother had given her. She’d simply squirted the seeds, pulp, and juice onto a piece of newspaper. After the seeds had dried and pasted themselves to the paper, she folded it into a neat little square and sent it along. For her own garden, she picked the seed off the paper each spring to start her seedlings. What would the government facility in Fort Collins have done had it received that tidy newspaper packet? Where was our The staff at the National Seed Storage Lab business plan? often forwarded correspondence and small Why didn’t samples of seeds from back yard gardeners somebody to SSE; they seemed pleased to work with a grass-roots organization. stop us? Meanwhile, Kent and I kept waiting for a slow moment to get caught up, but that moment never arrived. We could catch up on correspondence, but then the Seed Savers Yearbook would be published late. We needed another day in the week. Failing that, we needed to either cut back on our efforts for SSE or quit our day jobs, except for parenting. Even though expanding Seed Savers was not about the money, there had to be enough money to pay for an expansion. SSE’s revenues had exceeded expenses by no more than $3,000 over the previous three years—not even close to what was needed to grow, let alone sustain, such growth. Kent and I had managed to find jobs in the area to support our family and buy building materials for the house. We had minimal health insurance coverage—a policy with a large deductible but premiums of less than $100 a month. We paid as we could for the children’s vaccinations and checkups. Kent had worked at several jobs over the last few years—the 64
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night shift at a battery plant in Trenton, Missouri; the printing plant in Lamoni, Iowa; the Missouri Department of Transportation. I had a part-time job driving a small school bus to ferry children who lived on the gravel roads near our house to the big bus on Route P. I was also a home health aide, caring for elderly people. We knew we could not continue to raise our family, handle our jobs, finish our house, work our homestead, and develop SSE all at the same time. Giving up parenting was not an option, and we had to finish our house and cut wood before winter. Still, quitting our jobs was quite a gamble. Where was our business plan? Why didn’t somebody stop us? Actually, our parents did try to give us valid reasons to keep our salaries. But they had already failed to talk us out of homesteading in Missouri, so they gave up rather easThe heirloom Moon and Stars watermelon. ily this time around. As the worrier in the family—another trait inherited from my mother—I made a deal. I insisted that there needed to be at least one year’s financial cushion, so we wouldn’t starve. When we had that, I would be ready to make the leap of faith. Kent and I could not envision our life without Seed Savers. If we did not try to give 100 percent, we would never know what SSE could have been. The exchange had already encouraged gardeners all over the country and given them a forum to share their stories and their heirloom seeds. About 600 members had already offered about 3,000 heirloom or unusual vegetable varieties to more than 9,000 interested gardeners. We felt SSE had a tremendous responsibility—to the genetic diversity that was being lost in our food crops, to the future of the seeds, and to the histories of so many who had grown them. SSE’s compilation of seed was a living treasure. Unlike family jewels or furniture that needed only periodic cleaning, seeds had 65
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to be grown. Gardeners had entrusted Seed Savers Exchange with their families’ heirlooms. To be a true steward of this resource, SSE had to ensure that this legacy lived beyond Kent and me. One legal entity in the United States capable of living beyond its founders is a nonprofit organization. SSE had been incorporated for some time as a not-for-profit corporation in Missouri; in 1980, we applied for federal tax-exempt status. On March 19, 1981, Seed Savers Exchange Inc. was granted federal tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Our grass-roots organization was now a legitimate tax-exempt corporation. Our board consisted of Kent, myself, and a friend who shared our vision, Gary Nabhan. Now we The first SSE Catalog. could accept grants and donations. In December 1980, while the application was still pending, Kent applied for a grant for SSE from the Soil and Health Society in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, founded by J.I. Rodale and a forerunner of the Rodale Institute, known for its research into organic and sustainable farming practices. The application presented SSE’s goals, which were simple and which still guide the organization today. This was not a hobby for Kent and me anymore; it had become our life’s work. The grant would give Seed Savers Exchange the chance it needed to become self-supporting. We heard afterward that the late Robert Rodale, J.I. Rodale’s son, wrote “$5,000” in the margin of the proposal, and we got a check in the mail. In April, Kent quit his job. We felt that if we could compile and publish a garden seed inventory, it would generate enough revenue to make SSE selfsupporting. We had no business plan, just a worthy goal. Now we could really start to dream. ❖ Taken from Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver by Diane Ott Whealy, copyright ©2011 by Seed Savers Exchange, Decorah, IA. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. To order, visit seedsavers.org/gathering.
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Grandpa, Creeping Charlie, & Me By Jeanne Cronce
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARILYNNE ROACH
When I was growing up, we visited our grandparents every summer. We spent more time outside than in, learning about the birds, rocks, trees—and vegetables. My grandpa could grow anything. His onions were the biggest and best I’ve ever seen, even to this day. But all the while, a little weed—Creeping Charlie (Glechoma hederacea)—was a constant competitor. The more we pulled it, the more it grew. I secretly liked this pretty little weed, but I never told Grandpa! Now I have my own garden. Grandpa is gone, but I bought home a pretty little start of that plant from my childhood, Creeping Charlie. I thought I could keep it under control in a certain place. I was wrong. Creeping Charlie started showing up everywhere, even in our lawn. So now I pull it and it grows, and I pull it and it grows—just like Grandpa. It’s not the way I wanted to remember him, I’ll admit! 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! 67
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Garden Angels
A special child’s special friends. By JoAnne Schlicker “Have you seen DJ?” I asked my son, Mike. “I went in the house for just a minute, and when I came out again, he was gone.” We lived in the woods on a ten-acre site with lots of trees, a creek, a woodpile, and my garden, a showpiece that produced mounds of vegetables. DJ was a visiting relative whom the school system had diagnosed as autistic and mentally retarded. DJ was different, but a special kind of intelligence shone through him like a bright star. He often spouted phrases that he heard on TV: “Call my attorney. You’re fired. PG 13.” Other times he spoke absurdities such as, “Sister lives with two terrorists [terriers].” “Daddy drug lord [takes a lot of prescribed medications].” 68
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY HEA HEATHER GRAHAM
A funny little person with sparkling eyes and dark good looks, DJ had a sense of humor as big as the outdoors. Sometimes, though, if he wanted to go somewhere, he just took off. My other son, Tom, arrived home from his summer school program and joined the hunt. We checked the creek first, as it posed the most danger. Then we went into the woods, searching and calling. No luck. We even let the dog sniff DJ’s dirty socks. “Find DJ,” I told her, but our dog was not Lassie. “You stay here and keep looking,’’ I told the boys. I got in the car and cruised up and down the roads, but saw no sign of him. I drove back and rejoined my sons. The boys stared glumly at me. “We’d better call the sheriff,” I said. “I hate to do it, but I haven’t seen him in over an hour.” I screeched his name a few last times, hoping for some kind of miracle. All of a sudden, I heard an answer. “What, Mikeymom?” It was DJ! He sounded so close! “We’d better call “I think he’s in the garden,” Tom said. We the sheriff,” I rushed over and searched down the rows. said. “I haven’t There was DJ, lying down in the middle of the tomato plants. They were so bushy and seen him in over grown out they almost touched each other. an hour.” “What are you doing in there?” I scolded. “You had us all so worried! We almost called the police.” DJ’s face was regretful, but at the same time almost serene. “Mikeymom, DJ saw angels. Boy angel, girl angel. I go talk them. Boy angel talk to tomatoes and tell them grow. Angel saw DJ and talked him, too. Angels say DJ good boy. Angels love DJ. Girl angel say God loves DJ. DJ fall sleep. I sorry. “Me wake up cause girl angel talked in ear. Angel say Mikeymom sad she can’t find him so to say, ‘What, Mikeymom?’” What a miracle, I thought. I mentally thanked DJ’s garden angels for watching over him—and for telling the tomatoes to grow. I hoped they would go with DJ wherever life takes him. “Well, this calls for a celebration,” I said. “Tonight we will dig into the ice cream. DJ, what do you want for dinner?” “Dog food and pantyhose, with PG 13,” he quipped. Mike and Tom just groaned. ❖ 69
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Friends Live On In my garden. By Barbara Blossom Ashmun any old friends live on in my garden through the plants they’ve given me. Some have passed on, but their memories linger. Every time I walk by the plants they gave me, I think of them with love in my heart. he purple filbert tree that unfolds its pleated leaves every spring started out as a rooted cutting from Loie Benedict’s garden. I first met Loie at a gathering of perennial lovers in Seattle. Her white hair told me she was around 70, yet her unlined face looked a lot younger. 70
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Loie and I hit it off right away. “Come see my garden anytime,” she said. I’m about an hour south of here. Call me when you’re on your way and I’ll make sure the gate is open.” I tucked the paper napkin with her phone number in my purse. Later in the week, heading home to Portland, I called, meaning to visit for an hour and then hit the road. Little did I know that Loie’s garden spread over acres, and we’d be looking at plants until the sun went down. The gate was open when I arrived, but there was no sign of Loie. Instead, a wildflower meadow greeted me—vast stretches of bellflowers, purple Quick to read foxgloves, and some kind of yellow flowers tacked up on sturdy stems. Rose perfume the envy in wafted through the air, and birds twittered my eyes, Loie from the branches of old apple trees. Eventually I found Loie weeding on her went off to get a knees at the edge of a long border filled with shovel and blue and yellow irises, a gray cat perched in a plastic bag. a patch of sun near her feet. As she took me through her garden, she told me the yellow flowers were Jerusalem sage (Phlomis russeliana) and the blue bellflowers were Campanula persicifolia. Every so often she stopped to pick tiny strawberries, growing like groundcovers throughout the beds. “Here, try some.” They were so small I didn’t expect much, but the flavor was sweeter than any berries I’d ever tasted. So we wandered, nibbling berries and admiring poppies with huge petals like crepe paper, in shades of red, coral, and even pink. Every color of iris bloomed in Loie’s garden—purple, ivory, and blue, some embossed with gold and others etched with lines as fine as a cat’s whiskers. I was a new gardener at that time, growing cosmos and marigolds on a small city lot, and many of Loie’s treasures were new to me. But Loie’s purple filbert tree made me moan with pleasure and stirred serious plant lust in my heart. It was my first taste of leaves as dark as Merlot wine. I couldn’t stop staring with wonder. Quick to read the envy in my eyes, Loie disappeared for a moment and returned with a shovel and a plastic bag. She searched 71
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at the base of the tree for a sucker, dug it up, wrapped it in a damp paper towel and a plastic bag, and sent me home with it. Now it’s a fifteen-foot-tall tree with beech-like leaves that contrast gloriously with my neighbor’s yellow house. When I admired her deliciously fragrant ‘Blanc Double de Coubert,’ with crumpled white flowers soft as satin, she excavated a section of the rugosa rose, chopped it off at the base, wrapped it in damp newspaper, and popped it into another plastic bag. “Plant it as soon as you get home,” she said. “You can’t kill it.” She was so right. It rooted down and spread into a happy colony that blooms most of the summer, emitting a cloud of perfume. By the time Loie and I had made a complete tour of her garden, we could barely see the flowers—only the white and ivory ones still glowed in the dark. Swallows swooped low in graceful arcs. Loie insisted I sleep in her guest room. That evening we couldn’t stop talking, sharing our love of plants, books, and philosophy. The next morning after she fixed us Earl Grey tea, oven toast, and peaches with cream, Loie asked if I’d drive us back to Seattle to window shop and browse the University bookstore. On our return, we stopped to pick up some groceries. “Can you stay one more night?” she asked. “I’d love to fix us some Cornish hens for dinner.” “Only if you let me pay for the groceries,” I said smiling. That was the beginning of many visits, of sharing plants, books, and ideas. riving along a road in Hillsboro one summer day, I saw a homemade sign in block letters: “Perennials for Sale.” When I pulled up the steep driveway, I heard a baby screaming its head off. It turned out to be a peacock, strutting along the garden path. Soon a short, elderly woman, wearing old brown pants and pushing a garden cart filled with weeds, came to greet me. “I’m Ruth,” she said. “How can I help you?” “I’d like to buy some perennials,” I said. She parked her cart and took me to the field where rows and rows of peonies and irises were in full bloom. 72
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“You can look at them now, but you’ll have to come back in the fall if you want me to dig them for you,” she said. “Meanwhile, let’s go back and look at the garden.” She pointed out her favorite dogwood tree. “Isn’t that amazing?” I said. “A dogwood with purple flowers! I’ve only seen pink and white ones.” She chuckled and admitted the purple flowers were from a clematis she’d trained up the dogwood tree. It was her little—but effective—horticultural joke. These days, When I admired some golden loosestrife I’m the older blooming in the shade, Ruth yanked out sevgardener eral long stems, complete with roots. digging up “Plant them at home,” she said. “They’re indestructible.” plants for She was right—golden loosestrife surnewbies. vives dry shade, wet clay soil, and will even grow under the house. It’s a thug, but for a rank beginner like me, it was wonderful to have such an easygoing plant. The road to Ruth Kaufman’s garden became well traveled in all seasons. In September, I saw my first autumn crocuses there, flowering like pink water lilies, and hardy cyclamens with silver leaves and bright pink flowers. I would always find Ruth out in the garden weeding, pruning, or puttering. And always there’d be a flower new to me, from the most ordinary coral bell to the most elegant Clematis florida ‘Sieboldii’, creamy white with a showy tuft of purple stamens at the center. first met Faith MacKaness on the pages of Pacific Horticulture magazine. Her article about her Corbett, Oregon, garden, which featured perennial borders in the English style, drove me wild with desire to meet her in person. Fortunately, her phone number was listed, so I called to see if I might visit. “Well, of course, you’re so welcome to come on over,” she said, her voice lilting with the cadences of the South. “How about next Wednesday?” 73
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“Yes, that would be wonderful. I can hardly wait!” I drove up the Columbia River Gorge with all the excitement of a traveler to another planet. Faith and her husband, Frank, lived in an older home that had once been a schoolhouse, and the garden stretched for acres around it. The jewel in the crown was a long perennial border by a yew hedge, which Faith had patiently grown from cuttings. She’d started many of her perennials from English and Scottish seed exchanges. Her cold frame was packed with seedlings. She grew seeds, cuttings, and bulbs, and knew every plant’s name, both Latin and common. I had found the garden mentor of my dreams. Understanding botanical Latin pronounced with a Southern accent proved challenging. I ran after Faith as she showed me her border, writing everything down phonetically in a little notepad and photographing as we went along. She was tireless in her teaching, often giving me a slip of this or a seedling of that. I’ll never forget Faith sitting on a low stool in front of her border, cleaning seeds for the seed exchanges to which she contributed. Paper bags sat on the lawn in front of her, waiting to receive the bounty as she stripped seeds off the stems of spent perennials. And so her plants traveled to gardens all over the world. hese days, I’m the older gardener digging up plants for newbies. When a visitor to my garden oohs and aahs over a perfect white calla lily, out comes the spade and up comes a division. Should someone marvel over my Jerusalem sage, now thriving in most every garden bed, it’s child’s play for me to tug gently on a stem until it comes loose with a bundle of healthy roots. Viburnum slips, daylily clumps, iris rhizomes, cyclamen corns have paraded out of this garden to root down in places I may never see. If I keep giving away plants, maybe I, too, will be lucky enough to live on in other people’s gardens. ❖ 74
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