Tag: garden

Faking It

Even after 10 years of gardening on my not-quite quarter of an acre, I sometimes have no idea what I’m doing. Case in point: only two of the Dahlias I planted in pots a few weeks ago are emerging. I pushed aside soil in the other planters until I found the root still a woody end, dry and ragged as a calcified cigar. When I potted these tubers a few weeks ago I turned them over and over, poking the ends, unsure which end was where the plant would grow out of when I buried them. For all I know, the poor things could be smothering under there. (Rob suggested I should have planted them sideways.) Times like these, I feel like an incompetent gardener.

This feeling of being a dilettante extends to other things I love – like cooking. I believe that if you can read, you can cook — it’s just directions, right? I credit great cookbooks and food blogs for deliciousness conjured up in the kitchen.  While I know I make kick-ass sandwiches – (stuffed with roasted peppers, jalapenos, herby-greens) without recipes but otherwise, rarely create something new from scratch. So really, any scrumptious meal I may make is only Tricia’s as designed by (insert recipe author here).

Although in my single years when it was easier to live on a dime, I fancied myself an artist and worked a paying job as little as possible in order to ‘do my art’, I always felt a bit of a fraud, even when galleries showed my work and people bought it. Now, I feel the same way about writing, wondering if I have the right tools or talent.

I marvel at the confidence I see in others. Where did they get theirs, why didn’t I get a dose of it when it was being doled out? But then I think about the Dahlias and the possibility that the invisible ones may just not be ready to bloom yet – and might end up the most spectacular of all.

 

Smelling Spring

I have been inhaling my way through spring, almost drunk on the fragrant shrubs in my garden. Last year’s extreme pruning left me with fewer Lilacs this year but I am reassured by wiser gardeners than me that next year will be better. Tiny Carol Mackie Daphne, on the other hand, is exploding in exotically scented little blooms. The Daphne’s fragrance is more delicate than the larger, almost vulgar smelling Virburnum shrub with it’s heavy white heads of flowers.  I made the mistake of planting these beauties all in the same corner at back of the house where we like to sit in the summer, imagining a scented garden. But it’s still too cool back there at this time of year and we rarely sit, as I’d imagined, inhaling the perfumes while soaking in the sun.  Instead, I regularly venture out to this spot to get my scent-fix and lob off branches of blooms to fill the house. But  after only a day or so, both blossoms and perfume fade. It’s not the same.

What is it about scent that is so evocative? I think it’s the ephemeral, passing quality – like time. We cannot keep it – not for long. There, the poignancy of spring.

 

Preferential Treatment – the Garden

Just shy of a quarter of an acre, our yard bustles with wildlife. Yesterday morning, turning the corner of the driveway with Tetley, I spotted a Bluebird.  No, not a Bluejay – a real Bluebird perched on a recently pruned oak branch. It was perfectly and entirely, an extraordinary royal blue. I hoped this fantastic bird might be considering taking over one of the birdhouses, although I think the sparrows might have claimed them all.

Later, I brought my cup of tea outside and settled into a wicker chair on the un-mowed lawn when a rabbit emerged from the hedge.  With slinky-body moves, he moved out of the shadows into a patch of sun where he proceeded to preen and clean himself not ten feet from where I sat. I made no effort to stay still, shifting in my chair, crossing my legs, yet instead of diving back into the bushes, he came closer. Soon he was six feet away, close enough for me to observe his eating technique.  His mouth moving like a non-stop motor, he leant over and plucked stems of dandelions (ours is an organic, thus interesting patchy lawn) from the bottom, then munched the stem down to the blossom end, he paused before swallowing this last (favorite?) bit.  He seemed to prefer spent blossoms, no longer an explosion of yellow, but not yet turned to seed. Sucking in half-a-dozen dandelions stems like so much spaghetti, I couldn’t help but think of the devastation he and his family (you know there are more) will cause in the vegetable garden. I’ll dust off my camera on the chance I’ll see him today and you can see how cute he is.

Even as I imagine rabbit just as quickly devouring tender lettuce, peas and other produce planted by me, I am charmed by him. Yet I do not delight in watching the big-old groundhog that has sniffed at our traps, (of course humane) circumvented our fences, and ignored our dog for many years. I feel mean and yell at him when I see him loping across the yard. Nor do I watch the surplus of squirrels with much pleasure although their gymnastic technique to reach the dangling bird feeders is nothing short of remarkable. So what kind of double standard is this?

 

Seasonal Reminders

The spectacularly short lives of spring flowers makes me melancholy. Hyacinths, as if overwhelmed by their own perfume, topple over into the dirt. The frill of petals around the face of the Daffodil crinkle like old skin.  The Tulips are next on the scene but it’s a race with the squirrels to score some for a vase or two. The Lilac bush I whittled away at last season has come back with the promise of many blooms in each tightly packed cob, but a tree at the end of the driveway that was a blizzard of delicate blossoms last spring, this year sprouts only leaves.

Maybe it is this fleeting-ness of the season causing my anxiety. I blamed work, but after a week off I still wake with a clenched jaw and thundering heart. I force myself to take deep breaths, stretch out into a yoga move or two, but psychically, I am still wound up. I flail around for another reason, any at all – but I know why I cannot shake this feeling. The scents, light and essence of this season are visceral reminders of the anniversary of N’s suicide. Even though these days are endlessly rainy and that week was incongruously sunny, memories of terrible days are still conjured up by spring.  I can’t shake, ignore or forget — 7 years later at this time of year, a state of strung-out, high-alert is still my lot – as is an eternal unanswerable question of whether there was anything else I could have done.

The Power of Herbs

Yesterday we finally enjoyed a Spring Saturday of sunny warmth. I gardened all day, transplanting, mulching, raking. My body now buzzes with the delicious, all-over, day-after ache of a good workout. I think that’s from wrestling with Mint. For years now, every spring I must rip out the thickly woven roots of this magnificently fragrant, insidious plant that threatens to take over my vegetable garden. And every year I think I have completed the job yet, between tomatoes, basil and beans, stalks of Mint emerge.

Standing, I loosen the roots with a pitchfork, a ripping sound my cue that I can pull them out without injury to my back. Then, sitting down in the dirt, I grab the roots with gloved hands and yank. As I do this, strings of tentacles pop out beneath the soil, leading me to another tangle of growth.  I planted this mint as a fledgling gardener, not knowing I would forever battle this harmless looking plant – so delicious for tea and in salads. Now I cautiously plant perennial herbs only in pots or where I want wild, fragrant coverage. Never in the vegetable garden.

Yesterday, I also pulled out a Purple Sage that for over a decade, has grown beside the vegetable garden’s gate. In spite of ruthlessly cutting it back every spring, by July I must squeeze between the fence and furry leaves on woody limbs, to get to the rest of the garden. With my pitchfork, I easily lifted out the Purple Sage and moved it to a flower garden where I am attempting to orchestrate a constant show of color of perennials and shrubs. Hopefully, it will thrive between the Irises and Azaleas.

Every time I bruised by the Purple Sage, or plucked some leaves for roasting a chicken or to be sauteed in butter for a simple pasta sauce, I think of the friend who brought it to me during my first spring in this house. She was visiting from NYC and arrived with a flat of herbs.  This plant survived those 15 years although our friendship did not. I have never known why she no longer wanted me in her life. She disappeared into silence during the height of addiction drama in my marriage, when she had just launched into her own, happier marriage. I imagine, we were too much for her — and don’t blame her: I would have felt the same aversion to us, her messed up friends. But she had been there at our beginning: she and I were off for a weekend break and were passengers on the same military transport plane out of Sarajevo when N and I connected for the first time. She predicted our future then – with a happier ending. Over those years in the madness that was former Yugoslavia at war, she was my dearest friend – family to N and I. Then, we all ended up here — her in the city, us in Connecticut. We saw each other less, especially as N descended into his hell of addiction and I scrambled to keep the pieces of our lives together. I left her a message or two and sent an email wondering what I had done, but I never heard from her. I still wonder what happened and miss her brilliance and hilarity. I moved this shrubby herb to gain more space to plant vegetables, but also, unconsciously, perhaps to end these flashes of mourning evoked by the scent of Sage.

Believing in Spring

A deceptively bright, Sunday morning — officially spring, but still winter cold. Tetley and I do our morning wander down the street serenaded by birds. Different songs than the desperate beeps and chirps of winter. It’s mating season and the Mourning doves and Cardinals are in full swing of seduction. Sparrows have already moved into one of the bird houses and Robins are everywhere. But at least at this early hour, it’s still cold.

Last week it snowed – burying the mini Daffodils and other blossoms that so bravely appeared a  week ago. The croci wound themselves up like little torpedos and by the afternoon, the white stuff gone, heroically opened up again. Little hand shaped leaves of lupine emerge hopefully along the sunny bank beside the driveway, and on the slope just beneath them, the strawberry plants seem to be spreading by the day. I have meant to read up on what I should do with them — although last year’s harvest was brilliant, in spite – or maybe because of, my neglect.

I began some early season garden tasks last week with very serious pruning.  After a quick computer reference (my poor garden books gather dust) I grabbed my lobbers and shears and ruthlessly cut back the Roses, Autumn Clematis, and Butterfly bushes and grapes, to mere sticks. I love how these plants climb up the side of the house and across our backyard arbor. Tangled in the trellises and half-way up the chimney, they already had such a great head start. So I paused before cutting, but cut them I did, leaving scrawny sticks against the house and piles of thorny branches across the lawn. A gardening leap of faith for the future.

News of the World

Disturbing world events cloud the bright spring light. Beyond sending money to the Red Cross and thoughts to affected friends, I feel powerless. Worried about Japan and now Libya and anxious for word on the 4 missing New York Times journalists, I check the news almost obsessively. In recent years, my dose has been kept to a minimum fix of BBC, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – but these days I find myself switching wildly between the network news stations. Tricky how commercials are timed to run simultaneously – the mute button the only way to avoid the advertising bombardment.

When I lived in Croatia and Bosnia, CNN and the British, Sky News were the only available international new sources.   I appreciate the 24 hour-ness of CNN – but what’s with the scary, music constantly playing as the news people talk? And the bizarre touch-boards of maps and charts? Colbert and Stewart have spoofed this high-tech nonsense, so now, when John King enlarges, shrink, circles and stars, images of the Japanese nuclear plants, it seems comical – although the subject is anything but funny. It’s too much – the constant sound effects and nerve wracking music amping us up to “Be afraid! Be very, very afraid!”, not so subliminally. Flipping over to BBC, a perfectly nice and normal woman with a too-shiny purple shirt (obviously, and refreshingly they seem to have no wardrobe people) sits at her desk and delivers the news, shifting, without fanfare, to field correspondents. No charts, no holograms. Same thing with the PBS stations – while sometimes soporific, they just present straightforward news. Everything is scary enough these day, we don’t need these guys yelling at us.

I feel a little guilty looking away from it all and feeling pleasure at the shift of the seasons out of winter. But there is so much to be done in the garden and family and friends need attention – and it is okay to feel the joy in this. Didn’t I learn that already? In any case, I need to catch up on things. Like clearing last year’s leaves, planning this year’s garden. And yesterday, I was reminded about — forgive me for being so mundane — clothing.

Although only March 18, yesterday turned into a weird, way-too-warm, too-early day. Dressing for work in the dark morning hours, I pulled on wooly socks, corduroys and a sweater. By the time I left the bookstore in the afternoon, everyone was in shorts and flip-flops. How did they make the switch from winter fleeces to summer frocks so quickly? My plastic bins of summer clothes are buried in the basement and the shifting-of-the-clothes is a major weekend undertaking.  Anyway, although I can see from my window, a patch of  daffodils in bloom, I am cautious and will not bury my sweaters just yet.

Dahlias

I’m a sucker for email seed and plant offers.  Dahlias — that’s what I bought this morning. What a deal! Apparently critters don’t like them. The problem I foresee is that you are supposed to dig them up at the end of the season and store them.  That’s a stretch for me — especially because by the time autumn comes around, my gardening energy is on the wane and I’m more likely to catch the last days of kayaking than to remember to dig up bulbs. But maybe this year will be different — and in any case, they were on sale.

Dahlia’s are a big deal in Japan. I remember pedaling my bicycle through the narrowest of old streets in Kyoto – and squeaking my brakes (all bicycle brakes seem to squeak in Japan — better than a bell?) stopping to marvel at blossoms the size of plates growing in pots lined up outside a rickety house. Oftentimes, the usually-ancient gardener would be out tending their prize worthy plants.  This year, I will try these myself – filling my own boxes to tend on one of the decks Rob attached to the house over recent years.

It’s almost March — enough snow has melted so I can see the snowdrops popping up down the street and warm enough this morning that I could smell the earth and I’m thinking garden again.

Another Winter Day

I hesitate to write about the grueling winter, but it may be the only way forward for me, out of the paralysis I feel waking to leaden skies and polar temperatures. Every day of relentless cold, ice, snow – is depressing to the point of being debilitating, and I am curling farther into myself, physically, mentally and spiritually.  I feel pinched – as if I am collapsing into my chest.  I force myself to breathe deeply, shoulders back, stretch. Nothing to be done but carry on, feed the birds, cook, read and mark the days inching towards spring. February, at least, is a short month and the seed catalogues arrive almost daily.

The plows have piled more than 5 feet of snow on top of my strawberry plants – it’s hard to imagine they will survive – but they will and so will the purple sage and all the spring bulbs that bravely push through the last of the frosts. I try and always have a hyacinth or bunch of daffodils on the table as a fragrant reminder for what’s just around the corner. Really. And just for fun, I will inevitably over-order seeds to sow directly in only a few more months and maybe pre-order some heirloom tomato plant collections. The best seed deals and choices I’ve found are Pinetree Seeds of Vermont and Select Seeds from Connecticut.  While sometimes I am enticed by catalogues from Wisconsin or Oregon, it just seems to make sense to get seeds for my Connecticut garden from New England.

I cook.  A recent favorite is a recipe on one of my favorite food blogs, The Wednesday Chef: Zuni Cafe’s Chard and Onion Panade. It’s comfort food extraordinaire. I erred on the side of lots of stock but would use less next time in the hopes that the consistency wouldn’t be quite so soupy. And maybe add a little wine?  Definitely more greens rather than less.  Yum.

Also whipping through books.  David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, while exquisite reading was at first a little slow for me but is now a page turner and I’ll certainly finish this weekend. After reading last Sunday’s sobering review of memoirs in the New York Times Book Review, (“The Center of Attention: Taking stock of four new memoirs – and of the motives for adding to an already crowded genre.”) I read the title reviewer Neil Genzlinger did not pan: An Exclusive Love by Johanna Adorjan and agree with him. It’s beautiful. The author’s poignant exploration of her grandparents joint suicide is like watching a riveting Bergman film — vividly drawn scenes and characters. No surprise the author has written for theater. I was drawn to this, of course, because of the suicide – but while the suicide is certainly a theme driving the story and the damage-done apparent in the author being haunted enough to pursue her questions (it is the questions we survivors are left with), ultimately it is a beautiful love story. And we know the author/survivor, has found her peace.

Genzlinger writes at the end of his memoir reviews: “…what makes a good memoir – it’s not a regurgitation of ordinariness or ordeal, not a dart thrown desperately at a trendy topic, but a shared discovery. Maybe that’s a good rule of thumb: If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it. Instead hit the delete key, and then go congratulate yourself for having lived a perfectly good, undistinguished life. There’s no shame in that.”  I’ve re-read this a few times over the past week – a challenge to myself.  I did not hit delete. It’s just a long, cold, winter – but spring is on the way.

Birds

The front yard flutters with birds.  A dozen sparrows rise from the hedge, swarming the suet cages.  A solitary chickadee is driven away. A male cardinal swoops in, lending a pizzaz of color to an otherwise sepia scene of snow, branches, sparrows. As if on cue, they all take off and the chickadee returns, followed by a tiny woodpecker and then, more chickadees – they must have sent the bravest one out first to recce the situation for them.  Yesterday a larger woodpecker showed up – magnificent pattern of black and white  on his body and a perfect stroke of red from the crown of his head down to his shoulders – as if an artist had brushed it on. Then, a dozen grackles surrounded the pecker and one of them faced off with the formidable beak of the woodpecker, bobbing his head threateningly. Out-numbered, the beautiful one took off.

We know, (we think) some birds from past seasons. Two summers ago, a cardinal nested in the rose bush growing against a window in our sunroom, hatching 4 eggs – undisturbed by the constant human and canine activity a pane of glass away. She seemed to be a single mother – nurturing, feeding  – alone.  When she left the nest, we peered through the window for a close-up of the bizarre looking hatchlings. One day, we were alarmed to see one, now feathered but still tiny, standing out on a thorny rose branch, unable to get back to the nest. Rob went out and gently put it back with its siblings. Later that afternoon, it was teetering again, now on an even farther branch and this time, he fell into the flowerbed below. Again, being sure to keep Tetley in, Rob retrieved the downy creature and returned it to its nest. Soon, with the mother rarely in sight, they all were taking the leap to what we were sure would be their death to predators or starvation. Really, the mother was never far away – we heard her chirps and caught glimpses of her in a distant tree – and soon, tiny cardinals flitted about the garden. A poignant speed lesson in child rearing.

We imagine them out there now, this little family, plucking seed from the feeders along with Woody, the downy woodpecker that on another summer day, (it helps to think of them during this brutally cold and snowy winter) took a wrong turn and became trapped in the sunroom. Again, Rob gently cupped his hand around the petrified creature and released ‘Woody’ (as he christened him) back to the sky. And yesterday Wren – who we always welcome back to one of the houses attached to trees and posts in the back, landed on the sill. She seemed to be sussing out whether or not to build a winter home behind some wood we’d left against the window.

Sometimes, a shadow falls across the snow (oh, so much snow!) and the birds clear-out as the neighborhood raptor swoops dramatically across the yard. We love seeing this majestic bird, although I hope he finds his meals elsewhere.

This quiet Saturday morning, I make another cup of tea and put my feet up on the steamy radiator. I have been here for more than an hour and will linger longer — look!  A nuthatch and two junkos arrive — and with a weird flash of green, one of the neighborhood parrots also joins the fray. At this moment, winter seems lovely.

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