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?
What is it about having something new that can make even the old somethings seem cool again all of a sudden? Back in mid-July when I was totally sick and tired of poking things in the ground, as a very last I’ve-got-to-do-this-or-I’ll-be-tormented-by-guilt gasp, I planted about 25 Gladiolus murielae (the artist formerly known as acidanthera). I had zero faith at the time that they’d ever bloom. But here they are – shorter than usual but serendipitously, a perfect height for here. And now the whole garden seems new again. Those blooms forced me off my lazy for a whiff and when I did that, I happened to notice that there were a couple-three other things blooming too and not in that depressed back-to-school way, but fresh and lovely and new. And when I noticed that, my old and nearly gone to seed desire to show off on the interwebs was all refreshed too. So without further ado I give you a long shot of the sideyard/driveway garden, a 4 o’clock, Clematis heracleifolia, and Caryopteris.
(Plus I finally weeded again!)
…never taste as good to me as the fruits of someone else’s labor. I think there’s something sort of perverse about that. I have dutifully eaten a couple of my own tomatoes in the last week but am much more excited about the tomatoes we chose from the growers’ market. I also have an abundant crop of blackberries in the frontyard garden but remember the wild ones we picked at the cemetery last year tasting sweeter. Perhaps in the case of the blackberries, the wild ones in a dry year really were sweeter than my cultivated thornless variety in a wet year but with the tomatoes I think it has something to do with respect and pride. I have very little of either when it comes to the edibles under my jurisdiction and I’m working on figuring out why.
Everyone on the planet it seems is taking great pride in knowing exactly where their food comes from and is growing their own. According to the experts, nothing tastes better than something you’ve grown yourself. I suspect one of my issues might be that I know for certain that all I did was plunk a little something in the ground and move onto the next thing. Even the vegetables we grow at work are more appealing than my own because I at least witness the effort and love that goes into maintaining those plants. And professional local growers’ vegetables seem somehow miraculous and perfect too. My own seem like afterthoughts, wannabes and lucky guesses at best.
The professionals have obviously taken some trouble with their tomatoes to grow them (particularly this year), harvest them and bring them to market. I don’t take any trouble at all. It takes me all of 20 seconds to walk out the door and pluck a ripe tom from my surviving plant. I respect the market growers’ efforts but have no reason whatsoever to respect mine. On the other hand I take tremendous and overblown pride in some of my ornamental plants. These roses that I rescued from the compost heap at work haven’t ceased to amaze me and just like my tomatoes, I didn’t do anything more than plant them either. Ironically some of the ornamental plants I’m proud of are, in fact, vegetables…
Last night we ate Z’s mother’s soaked tomato salad (fresh tomato(es) cut into rounds and laid in a single layer in a shallow dish and drizzled with with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped raw garlic, basil – fresh or dried, oregano and Adobo seasoning and allowed to steep for a bit) and I was halfway through loving it as usual when Z mentioned that the tomato was from our garden. He seemed to take some pride in that and ate his share with gusto. I always think that food tastes better when it’s prepared with thought, love and care – by someone else – and I enjoyed the salad because Z made it. But maybe that’s just it with growing food too. I’ve always been willing and able to create something to look at (hell, I even have a degree or two in that) and take great pride in my successful efforts in visual loveliness even if I’m the only one that ever sees it. But food for me was never Art – and never particularly tasty – unless someone else made it. hmmmmmm… Food for thought! With my very own delicious blackberries for dessert.
Are you proud of the food you’ve grown? Is it the very tastiest? Or, like me, would you rather just look at it?
Bear with me a minute while I try to work out whether I garden because my garden needs me or because I need to garden. To garden or not to garden is the question. Sort of. (Not really.) But I just spent a week in a full-bloom place where I wouldn’t dream of gardening. I had forgotten just how diverse and spectacular the plant life is on the island shores of Georgian Bay, Ontario. I could have spent the whole time cataloging rose, meadowsweet spirea, bunches of grasses, sumac, cardinal flower, mosses, ferns, lichens (bright orange!), chives, shad bush, chokecherry, beeches and wind whipped pines. 
Everything planted by wind and opportunity in rock pockets and more spectacularly designed than any LA’s dreamiest dream. 
I wouldn’t want to mess with any of it. But I had to wonder, if I was there longer than a week or two – say if I lived there for a whole season, would I feel the urge to edit? To add anything? To prune a little? Would the landscape be improved by my ministrations? I answer a resounding NO! to the last rhetorical question – but I would have loved to use snips on the thicket of dead twigs in the wild rose bushes and a few edibles in a raised bed or containers wouldn’t wreck the gestalt, would it? And can’t help but wonder what my own landscape would look like if it had always been left to its own devices. What if the invasive ornamentals like bittersweet, multiflora rose, Norway maples and goutweed had never been introduced? What lovely forest would surround my house? Would I, could I leave it alone? Since the milk was spilled though and the forest was cleared, I figure I pretty much have to tend my garden.
But evidently it grows quite well without me too. In one tiny week, everything that hadn’t even been close to blooming (or so I thought) opened up. I didn’t need to be here at all for everyone to get on with the business of growing.
The weeds also grew gangbusters and so did the Late Blight on the tomatoes and I guess that’s where I come in handy. My garden needs me after all which works out pretty well since I guess I need to garden too.
And it’s so nice to know I’m not alone. A little detour on the long drive to Curly Rocks brought me to the most beautiful garden in Slaterville Springs, NY where Nino had a chance to cavort with his new best Buddy, Z got to talk bikes! with Chris and I got to bask in the gracious company of a favorite fellow plantaholic. Thank you, Lynn – garden on!
The very first garden bed I carved out of this yard is in front of the picture window in the livingroom and facing the street. It’s a half roundish space roughly 8×12′ and when we moved in it was inhabited by 3 large meatball-sheared bronzy-green chamaecyparis and one large perfectly rotund forsythia. All planted in rock mulch. For the entertainment of my new neighbors, I dug the blobs out by myself and as much of the rock mulch as I could scrabble. For the sake of having at least one established shrub in my garden I left the forsythia and imagined allowing it to grow and arch in the way they do when they’re set free.
And then I started plunking. When you only have one bed, it fills up pretty fast. Needless to say, over the intervening couple of years I’ve continued to whack back the forsythia to accommodate everything else. All free. All plunked. Even since creating more garden in the yard, I’ve continued to plunk things – inappropriate things – in that first bed. I’m not sure why it always seems like such a good idea. There’s a very tall variegated grass that resembles corn and will probably run now that it’s established, a tiny buckeye, a suddenly enormous buddleja, and a prized clerodendrum not to mention the lavenders, sedums, sage, and other various and sundry aggressive plants like oenothera, forget-me-not and rudbeckia. Everything planted too closely and looking now more like a giant heap of weedy abandon than a garden. And since I filled up that bed, the rest of the garden is starting to go the same way due to further plunkage. I think it’s time for a design. Some feng shui that doesn’t make my chi feel squished. A plan.
I always think when I’m plunking, “I can move this later when I figure out where it needs to go.” Right. It seems so doable when the plants are only 12″ tall… The clerodendrum is the only thing in that bed I want to keep for sure more or less where it is and I know for certain now that the forsythia has got to go. It served its purpose. That will give the tiny buckeye more light and a prayer but the buddleja is probably still in the wrong spot. What was I thinking with that grass, exactly?
I’m a little worried that when I finally do some editing this fall, I’ll see it as yet another plunkportunity and the cycle will begin all over again. But at least now that I know what doesn’t work (a lot of large plants in a small bed), I might be a step closer to knowing what I want. And isn’t that the keystone right there, of a happy garden design?
What do you do when you realize the neighbors hate you? Do you cower in the house and contemplate relocation? Do you carry on with the frontyardwork, wave and smile but maybe let your dog pee on his hostas sometimes?
I have this across-the-street neighbor – we’ll call him Walter because that’s his name – who is exceedingly jovial. He resembles a Portuguese Jerry Garcia and seems as laid back as your average cigar smoking deadhead. He was the first on my street to give me the thumbs up for ripping out shrubbery and planting a garden and he always waves and smiles when I walk by with the dog. But Walter, like many long haired children of the 60’s, loves the Golden Oldies and is apparently hard of hearing – and only ever plays his current fave on a loop. Last year we were treated to Moody Blues at top volume from his shop. This year evidently his fave is a Portuguese crooner not unlike Tom Jones who covers songs like House of the Rising Sun, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and other earworms now played at top volume from his car in a garage that faces our street.
I think perhaps if he had varied the selection at all this weekend (or if it was this band I found on YT) I might have been more tolerant of the noise. Honestly, the first time through I kind of enjoyed the kitsch of it. But by the 6th or 8th repeat I had pretty much had it. There was nowhere in the yard or house to retreat to. Even with the ipod at high volume plugged directly into my brain I could still hear Walter’s album. We even elected to vacate the premises only to return to the same. So today, Sunday – the God given quiet day, after my dogwalk, I peered into the garage where Walter was working on his car and wrecking his eardrums, smiled and gave the universal hand signals for “Dude, could you turn the music down a notch before I lose my mind? Thanks, man. Peace!” I thought he nodded and said OK.
A few minutes later, blessed silence and I went back out to mow the grass. I spotted Walter and smiled and waved but he was shouting something. Hold on, I can’t quite hear you…
“YOU LIVE HERE FOR A MONTH AND THIS GARAGE IS MY PROPERTY AND YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO” (oh shit.)
“Oh no!”, still smiling, “I just was hoping you’d turn it down a li-”
“YOU MOVE HERE TWO WEEKS AGO AND THIS IS MY PROPERTY AND YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”
Not smiling anymore – wide eyed, panicked, “No, I really just wanted you to turn it down – we could hear it everywhere over he-”
“YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”
Hands up in universal “I surrender.” “Aaargh. OK Walter. Turn it up. We love it.”
It’s been quiet ever since but I can’t help wondering what the hell? Granted, this is Bristol where anyone who isn’t “born” here doesn’t belong and 2 and a half years in the neighborhood is exactly like 2 weeks. But he had been fairly welcoming. Is Walter on a bender and will he be jolly again tomorrow? Is he seething and plotting vengeance for the ruination of his afternoon? Will he forbid his grandchildren to ever pet Nino again? Can we weather this with hilarity or do we need to start house hunting?
