down to earth – April is for narcissists

Printed in the home & garden extra of the April 13-15 East Bay/South Coast Life section of some local rags…

If it weren’t for daffodils we might never register that winter’s well and truly over before summer hits. They are nature’s way of sending a message that’s about as subtle as a smiley face or caution tape. “Pay attention!” shout the daffodils. “It’s Spring!”

Never mind that they are out with the forsythia and too much yellow can lead to madness. In this case yellow is the color of happiness and crayon sunshine and there’s nothing in this world like standing in the midst of thousands of daffodils in bloom. William Wordsworth said it best. “A poet could not but be gay, in such jocund company.” Besides, gardeners know that not all daffodils are ‘King Alfred’ and true enthusiasts (the American Daffodil Society) proclaim that along with other colors like white, green, pink(ish), orange and red, there are a baker’s dozen different divisions of type of Narcissus; and according to the literature, they don’t all bloom in spring. (What a notion.)

Triandrus daffs in Division 5 nod demurely rather than shout about spring while Cylamineus look as if they’re yelling into the wind. Jonquilla, which have grassy foliage and generally more than one small fragrant flower per stem, are the source of a great semantic debate: All jonquils are daffodils, but not all daffodils are jonquils.

Trumpet daffodils need nevermore be confused with the “large-cupped”. “Small-cupped” are obviously more perianth than corolla (the perianth being the outer petals and the corolla the central cup that makes daffodils daffodils and not amaryllis – although those are in the same family.) “Doubles” don’t look much like daffs at all and in any case aren’t the same as the similarly different “split cups” of Division 11.

Tazettas are the paperwhites that either perfume or stink our living rooms to high heaven around Christmas time. They’re not hardy here but you have nothing to lose by planting them along your sunniest south-facing wall because they can’t be forced to bloom again indoors.

Twist my arm and I’ll reveal that Poeticus are my favorite. Round white petals surround flattened green-centered scented cups outlined with a whisper of red. Beat that, Mr. Wordsworth. But I also love Bulbocodium daffodils because their “hoop skirt” cups and insignificant petals make them look exactly like E.T.

Daffodils are just about the easiest, tough-as-nails plant to grow – evidenced by the fact that even most non-gardeners have a few in the yard or popping up through pavement cracks. Truly, if the bulbs are left undisturbed (a challenge for us gardeners) in the right place (not in a swamp or under deep evergreen shade), they’ll increase ranks and outlive us all. We also have to restrain ourselves from removing deflated foliage before it has yellowed – at least give it a good 6-8 weeks to feed next year’s flowers.

According to legend, my Uncle Fuss came perilously close to poisoning his family by slicing up my aunt’s daffodil bulbs for a salad. They don’t smell like onions…  The good news is, the same poisonous alkaloids that might have snuffed my cousins protect the plants from deer graze and squirrel mischief. – But squirrels will occasionally chuck bulbs over their shoulders in search of the tasty fertilizer some of us insist on dusting in the planting hole.

In my own garden, daffodils are among the few plants that preceded me. The one that grows up through a sliver of earth between my driveway and a stonewall makes me laugh out loud. The others were planted out of sight along the north-side foundation. Although I hate to deprive my neighbors of the best view of my garden they’ll have all year, I bring most of those flowers inside. Because, like A.A. Milne once said in an essay on the subject, “a house with daffodils in it is a house lit up, whether or no the sun be shining outside. Daffodils in a green bowl – and let it snow if it will.”

down to earth – on gardening with a dog

This was already published here on 2-10-11 but I thought it might be better avec photos of The Noodle.

Dogs put us outside, not the other way around

I read somewhere once that it’s impossible to have a garden if you share the land with a dog. Baloney. Such anti-canine sentiment smacks of pro-feline propaganda and although cats are picturesque, they have extremely smelly poo, are murderous of wildlife, and just as knuckleheaded about sampling poison as any dog – or child for that matter. Not that I have anything against cats. In fact, I believe that keeping pets, no matter what species, is a natural extension of our gardening way-of-life, the same way eating locally grown food is.

I have three fur-covered “kids”. A couple of LOLcats manage my indoor garden and have a truly ingenious way of alerting me when houseplants need repotting. Our mutt on the other hand is perennially unfazed by the cats’ horticultural enthusiasm and seems to prefer accompanying me on garden tours around town to tending his own patch. Not incidentally, a dog at the end of your leash is the best camouflage there ever was for stopping to study other gardeners’ most interesting plant combinations.

To their discredit dogs are best known for digging, chasing, eating disgusting things, peeing and pooping and unfortunately none of those talents is welcome in most gardens. But dogs also have an adorable knack for napping belly-up in a sunbeam. I am a firm believer that a tired dog is a good dog and after Nino’s and my twice-daily hour-long walks neither of us is capable of doing much damage in the garden.

I don’t put the dog out in the yard to just to pee or leave him in the garden for a whole day unsupervised – and never tied up. That’s just asking for holes dug to China along with aggressive anti-social behavior according to most animal behaviorists. Instead he and I hang out together and work as a sort of team. Nino has let me know that if I allow reseeders and weeds to block his entry to a cool under-deck hideout, he will create a new path by uprooting something far more precious. Good to know.

He obligingly chases the woodchuck away from my cabbage patch and although he won’t yank my shoulder out of its socket in pursuit of squirrels while we’re walking, he has an implicit understanding that they’re fair game in the garden. Nino also marks the perimeter and I hope that the neighborhood raccoons and cats might eventually take the hint and scram.

So far Nino’s favorite forage has been uncut lawn grass and if he had the digestion of a goat, I’d hire him to shear it. But the scamp also grazed a pretty little Hakonechloa macra (Japanese forest grass) to nubs. After I moved what was left of that plant though, he stopped eating it. I’ve known other dogs with cravings for things like tomatoes, broccoli, compost and hosta, and plenty of gardeners who chose to plant in raised beds. One of my favorite gardens ever was a tiny one filled with big English sheepdogs and a grid of chair-height planting boxes, which now that I think about it probably had more to do with keeping the ladies from reclining on the annuals and perennials than eating them.

Despite, or perhaps because of the challenges, most of the gardeners I know have dogs. Famously, there’s Christopher Lloyd of Great Dixter who had his dachshunds’ portraits drawn in an ironically large mosaic for a terrace floor; Martha Stewart – enough said; and if it wasn’t for Tasha Tudor who stated the obvious when she said that corgis make good garden ornaments I might still be exclusively pro-kitteh.

In winter, Nino spends more quality time in the garden than I do. He bounds like a deer to monitor wildlife activity, and eats snow while I stamp my feet impatiently. It could probably be said that one of the best reasons for sharing the garden with a dog is because they put us out in it, all year round.

Interference

One morning a couple of weeks ago, while Nino waited patiently, I spent about 10 predawn minutes herding and urging a salamander along a sidewalk crack to a pile of leaves on the other side. This afternoon I tried – and failed – to relocate a downed dragonfly that clung desperately to the footfall middle of another sidewalk. A few days ago I brought a chilly praying mantis into the relative warmth of the plantry, and I started to feed the birds again. I can’t stop wondering if my interference is a help or a hindrance.

As a gardener I’m a meddler by nature – meddling with nature. Can’t be helped. But the more I ponder the why of gardening, the more I hope my help is a help. When I first started to garden – more than 20 years ago now, I honestly don’t remember considering the wildlife – or nature for that matter. (Nature was what I hiked through with boots on and a backpack full of m&ms.) In the garden I was heebied by bugs and slugs, terrified of spiders and wasps, and only vaguely amused by birds and critters. I wanted plants galore and a yard that looked and smelled good – to me. Lately I’ve started to interfere more on nature’s behalf – in fact, I want wildlife almost more than plants. (Lucky for me, plants are the key.) I’m hesitant to call my interference “stewardship” and in any case I’m not a very good caretaker of the earth because goodness knows I’ve done my share to wreck it. But I hope to be less of a hindrance at the very least.

The last warm day, I left the plantry door open for her and haven’t seen Ms. Mantis since.