I can’t tell you how many times I looked out the window at my mostly-dead Mimosa and thought “I could just take that down myself”. Luckily, two things prevented me from making any foolish attempt: The only saw in my actual possession is a Silky Pocket Boy; and I have a friend/fake brother who owns a tree care business (WhippleTreeLLC, 508-55-trees – awesome website – and blog?- coming soon). For the price of a trade that I didn’t even have to fulfill (Z has the skills E was after), I had the pleasure of watching my beloved gay tree felled by a very skilled tree yogi. I freely confess that I have trouble doing anything resembling these yoga poses on terra firma without falling over. I would also like to make a note here that landscrapers – your average mow and blow joes – should generally not be allowed anywhere near your trees even if they’re willing to send an underpaid and under-educated employee out on a cantilevered hydraulic limb during a windstorm. Hire a professional arborist. It’s also worth considering that any arborist without a boom truck in their fleet probably actually still knows how to climb and will not turn down a job for being unable to get their truck near your tree. Any arborist worth the title should know how to prune without leaving cringetastic stubs and how to drop a tree without bouncing branches off of power lines, your house or your garden. Take it from me, hire a professional. They’re totally fun to watch.
Have you done the tree work yourself (confess it – I know some of you have) or have you hired a professional? Did you watch?
While Haiti lies in ruins and orphans need kin; and the Mass. voters have chosen to be catastrophically unhelpful regarding healthcare reform, I opt to focus on my own ridonculous problems instead. Like the tiny little identity crisis I’ve been having. (Honestly, it’s just easier. But let me say, in my defense, that my $$ has gone where the need truly is.)
I used to be the kind of person who put some thought into getting dressed in the morning – I wasn’t terribly adventurous or avant-garde, just ever so slightly creative. (I wore scarves.) When I was in (art) school, I wore my charcoal handprints and paintsplatters like badges (Hello My Name Is Artiste) of devil-may-bite-me cool. Lately though, because gardening is such dirty work, and I’m not 19 anymore, I have filled my closet, thanks to Savers (that’s Value Village to you west coasties), with chinos and khakis and ugly sweaters because I don’t mind ruining those things.
I realized recently that dressing for work in clothes I hate has made me (unfashionably) lazy and invisible way before my time. I have been known to wear the same exact thing all week because I’ve gotten so out of the habit of giving a shit. I generally don’t even bother anymore with cuteness on the weekends – especially if I’m going to be blowing out my knees in this garden. My inner French-girl weeps and refuses to open the shutters.
Maybe it’s because I’m in a hurry to enjoy the last months of my thirties before my butt drops below my knees; maybe it’s because I have to wear an actual uniform at work; maybe it’s because gardening media seems suddenly infused with excessively hip hipsters like Alys Fowler, Gayle Trail and Patti Moreno The-Garden-Girl, who wear vintage scarves and have tattoos and tromp around their gardens in Jack Purcells or exquisitely expensive Hunter wellies. For whatever combination of reasons, I have become increasingly aware that I don’t like what I’m projecting. I’m not liking that I’m not looking as much like me as I used to.
The only thing I can think to do for it (aside from shopping for new “work” clothes and I’m trying to resist that impulse) is to open up my closet. And truly, since most of it, even the cute stuff, is from Savers anyway, nothing is sacred. And I wonder if stretching my creative muscle this way will make it limber in other ways. (Maybe I’ll paint again?) Meanwhile the true woes of the world worry on…
Do you wear a uniform – in or out of the garden?
An exclusive first-listen to Charlotte Gainsbourg’s (avec Beck) new album is here.
I used to enter art competitions occasionally. I never had any particular ambition when it came to my paintings but got a little thrill out of showing them – whenever the work was accepted. (More often than not, it got the big R – but when you paint tiny, quiet things you get used to them not catching the juror’s eye.) I think I must have a little more ambition when it comes to writing – or for whatever reason, I’d rather write if I think someone somewhere might read it. (Thanks, you guys!) But I’ve resisted entering the various interweb and garden blogger competitions because 1. I don’t think it’s appropriate to compete from my work blog (in a very sideways way I get paid for doing that blog) and 2. here at home, I generally just don’t care enough.
Until now. I’m entering my ‘black and white and flamingo’ picture (already shown in my last post) in Gardening Gone Wild’s Picture This photo contest. Not because I care about winning but because I think it fits their winter-y criteria so perfectly I’d be a stupid-head not to try. And secretly, I get a little thrill out of showing it off again.
– This is not my garden. I took it on a dog walk at Juniper Hill Cemetery. Just to the right of the shot were graves incongruously decorated with flags (else they would have been included).
I’ve been wondering lately about the blog and my apparent abandonment of it. I like having it, at least in theory, as a sort of record of (a)musings about the garden. I just looked back at last year’s new years post and can say now with some certainty that my resolutions. as per usual, came to a fair amount of naught. But I like being able to look back on my intentions. It’s good to remember that I had intentions.
I have intentions this year too. Some of them are the very same. I still haven’t painted the shed. And I will. Probably. Sometime. I should. (I shed, even.) But I feel a shift this year to the front of the house. I don’t like what I see in front. Part of that is, when I walk or drive up to it, I see the house itself and it’s a “mid-century” ranch (I love that that’s the description given in the NY Times for ugly things built in the 50’s-60’s. “Mid-century” makes it seem so vintage-cool.), sheathed in white vinyl with red plastic shutters. So some of what’s got to change is a little beyond my ken. But we discovered a leak in the ol’ roof and since Z will have to take a week off in spring to re-roof, he agreed to also think about re-siding, starting with the front, around the same time. And I will think about paint colors if weathered shingles, à la Nantucket, are beyond our means. I’m leaning towards dark black-ish, but can anyone steer me in a more colorful direction?
As far as the front-yard garden goes, I intend to open it back up after having closed it with ginormous plants (remember the crazy-ass grass?). The Mimosa tree (which is, in fact, dead) will come down (hopefully soon) and I’ll make more garden in front that might include a sort of open area somewhere around the (tree) stump. I’m letting go of my front-porch desire. We just can’t do that yet. And I’m thinking of jumping on the veg bandwagon after all. The more I think about food, the more I want to grow it myself and if I do that – order seeds and everything (beets!) – the food will have to live cheek-by-jowl with the ornamentals, front and back.
As far as the blog goes, I’d like to keep doing it too. Part of my hang up is pictures. I love the pictures I take at work. I don’t always love the ones I take away from work and so I don’t post them. And then don’t post anything. Will it it be possible to have a garden blog without any pictures? Should I even attempt such a creature? I’m not sure yet. But it’s another whole year, I have a gin martini in my paw, and anything goes right now, so we’ll see. (And meanwhile we had snow, so I have some pictures.)
Are you giving everything an annual new year’s re-think too? Happy Happy, by the way! And thanks for keeping this little link on check list…
I have to confess that in years past, whenever I read a blog or heard a story about someone who hadn’t yet planted bulbs before it snowed or was otherwise unpleasant and quite late, I felt a tiny bit smug – and a lot relieved – that I had managed to get my bulbs in earlier. (It wasn’t ever much earlier though and my tulips were usually thrown in quick pits at dusk right before a nor’ easter or similarly soggy November weather event.) I’m not sure what happened this year but it seemed to come down forgetting that I even had bulbs to plant – 
mostly foster Allium ‘Hair’ from work, a handful of orphan King Alfred daffs and a found pocketful of October bridal-shower crocus in a coat I never wear. And last night, before we’ve even had a killing frost (what is up with the lateness of winter this year?), it snowed.
There’s nothing like the first wet snow to jazz this lazypants into action. Better-late-than-never I guess, today I finally threw cold uncoilable hoses into the shed with the last terracotta pots and porch chairs; harvested cabbage – miraculously non-rotten yet; and threw the bulbs, as usual, into quick pits. 
But like anyone else who has gone through this, I’ll just look forward to spring and chances are I’ll even get to feel slightly smug that plants grow despite my worst efforts.
Give it to me straight – how happy are you that you got your bulbs planted back when the weather was perfectly pleasant?
No two seasons are ever the same in any garden (I should think) and evidently no two seasons are the same in the jungle either.* It’s not just the acquisitions that change (I did recently receive a Logee’s catalog – you too?) but the whole everything changes. This year I can attribute some of the changes to the foster-children Ponderosa lemon and agave going back to the greenhouse at work (now that they’re beautiful again – bow, applause). Some might say – and have said – that I still have too many plants. To which I can only reply “psshaw” or “not possible” or “bite me” if I’m feeling particularly feisty. But when so many plants come back inside for the winter that I can’t see out of my windows anymore, it might start to feel, even to me, like I might have a lot of plants. But that’s all beside the point of what I felt like mentioning today.
The biggest change to my jungle is that I won’t be bragging anymore about how miraculously my plants survive the plantry over the winter. In another nag-and-ye-shall-receive coup (believe me I know how lucky I am) the needs of my many plants took precedence over other (less important, obviously) house projects. Where previously there were sheet-metal “storm” doors and dog-blanket breeze-baffles there are now actual doors with latches, double-pane glass and weather-proof seals around all of the edges. It’s an amazing thing. So far the tests have been nights in an above freezing but still nose-nipping range and the plantry temperature has not dipped much below 50 as far as I can tell. (My extra-cool digital temperature and humidity thingamabob kicked it this summer and I’m back to consulting an old-school fake-mercury thermometer decorated with a drawing of a daffodil.) The walls of the plantry are uninsulated so the plants will probably still require a heater out there. And as Z found out by muscling rectangles into rhomboids, the entire porchlet may be falling off the house to end up in a heap in the driveway. I say, if that, then greenhouse!
What’s different in your jungle this year?
*I just realized that today is trench mani’s 1st blogiversary – which means I’ve thought about abandoning this blog – but haven’t (yet) for a whole year. Thanks for reading it – and keeping me blahbing. Cheers!
If spring is green-gold with emeralds, summer platinum and winter onyx set in silver then fall is a tarnished copper alloy chain that leaves a smudge on your neck. (But when you spotted it in the junkstore jewelry case, you had to have it.) It’s garnets, amber, carnelian and moss agate.
It’s semi-precious and affordable.
Fall is the people’s season. It’s the view that belongs to everyone. It’s socialized medicine and the pursuit of happiness. Fall has the sweet smell of a well-deserved earthly rest and the sound of desperate crickets in love (slow it down to hear the rhythm). Fall is damp socks and asthma and a really red dripping nose. It’s procrastination. A Fingersnap. A murder mystery. Black and brown dogs. A dream-date.
Fall is poetic license and a big cup of tea with honey.
What is it to you?
I thought about calling this post “The good, the bad and the ugly” because I have all of that to show-and-tell today but I’m just so excited about my – I should say Z’s – most recent discovery in the garden: Z spotted our first praying mantis and I honestly finally feel like I have arrived – that the garden here at chez champignon has arrived. I don’t intend any disrespect to all of the snakes I’ve seen over the two-plus years, the honeybees and bumbles, the hummingbird, or the most enormous earthworm I’ve ever-in-my-life disturbed (today) but to me, it’s the praying mantis that symbolizes all that’s meet and right and so sustainable in the garden. I take his/her presence to mean that I must be doing something (or a whole lot of nothing) right.
Now for the bad and not quite right: My mimosa (Albizia julibrissin) was, for a while, as Miracle Max puts it, “mostly dead”. But there was no “to blave” in this case (or even true love) and definitely no cure and after dropping all of its flowers and then every one of its leaves onto the frontyard garden over the past couple of months I can say that it’s well and truly dead as a doorknob and much much more unwieldy. Hopefully I’ll get to post soon on its removal.
As for the ugly, my crazyass grass (apologies for not properly identifying it – “crazyass grass” is what it goes by in this household) is finally blooming at a good 10′ tall and in as wrong a place as can be. I have determined that the only right place, at least for now, is in my co-worker’s garden and come spring I’ll dig it up and relocate it there. As soon as next spring/summer, the livingroom window bed will hold only a Harlequin glory bower (Clerodendrum trichotomum) and various and sundry other things that are nowhere near 10′ tall.
As soon as Z and I opened the gate into the backyard when we were first house hunting in November of 2006, I knew that we were home. But it’s the good, bad and ugly nearly 3 years later that confirms it. Nous sommes arrivés.
When did you feel like you – or your garden – had truly arrived?
I went to my first ever Buddhist teaching last week. It was on karma and sort of incidentally the teacher monk guy person said that things don’t make us happy; we make us happy. True happiness is found within when we do good things (which is also v. good for the karma and after that it gets complicated. But I digress). Anyway, I don’t think Kelsang Dorje (the teacher monk guy person) is a gardener. Then again maybe he is. In any case, not a day goes by when I don’t think my garden (and consequently my capacity for happiness) would be complete without a particular plant or, as of this past week, a particular plant container that I’ve taken to walking by daily as if the owner might notice my desire for it and bestow it upon me as I pass (I’d have to go back for the car). But if only… If only it were mine! In my garden! Then true bliss.
Then again, I know me. Last week Gail (my coworker) and I went to one of our favorite nurseries to buy things for holes at work (see this post if you haven’t already and you’re curious) and more importantly, buy things for each other as a belated birthday extravaganza. We both fell for, of all things, wisteria. You probably already know what was on my wish-list for the arbor but I was completely taken in by the thought of a native wisteria that “reblooms” and is “easier to control” and “attractive to butterflies”. Never mind that it grows 20′ and needs constant pruning attention at the top of a tall ladder. Never mind that.
Anyway, at the time, standing there at Peckham’s cradling the wisteria like a baby, nothing would make me happier. But now that it’s planted, I’m not so sure. Maybe Dorje is right. Does this happen to you too?
I’d like to state for the record that I’m not a fan of nagging as a means to an end, a pastime or lifestyle. I don’t like the way my voice sounds when I wind (whined?) up to a full nag and I generally resent being on the receiving end. But I learned how to harness the power of the nag back when I was the tiny daughter of a smoker. My mother would tell you that all I had to do was send her “to the cornfields” with a certain sullen stare I perfected and she’d do my bidding. Not true – but I also know from years of experience that nagging, in whatever form, can put a lot of strain on a relationship. Z claims to need to be needled and while I’m not altogether happy to oblige, I am certainly capable.
Recent gentle reminders have resulted in the creation of the handsomest of garden ornaments. Last week Z brought home about $50 worth of lumber and by the middle of Saturday I was grinning ear to ear in the promise of shade under an arbor over the back porch/deck (built by a nagged-on Z last summer).
I want to sit out there always. In the words of The Dude, “It really tied the room together, man.” The arbor only wants for a vine and because autumn clematis is in full bloom this minute around here, that’s what I’m considering. I might throw a native honeysuckle on too though – for the hummingbirds. Anybody have any other suggestions?
