Garden Wisdom from 2009

November 5, 2009

Thanks for the Memories

In my neighborhood an abandoned building lies fallow in the middle of a large, deserted parking lot. Once the home of a popular supper club, the brick and stone structure lies off the main highway that runs through my town, hidden from the highway by another business and shrouded by an overgrown thicket on the residential side. Like an ancient hollow tree, the building has been slowly decaying during the 3 years it's been empty. The roof over the loading dock collapsed years ago, and cracks in the pavement have become linear meadows of grasses and goldenrod. A few months ago, fences appeared at both entrances to its parking lot, a sad sign that it's likely to remain empty for the indefinite future.

This past Sunday, I noticed a wreath of white flowers on the fence that blocks what was once the main entrance. What was the meaning of it, I wondered. I didn't know the owner of the establishment, but I'd heard he was old and in ill health. That got me to wondering. What is it about flowers that they help heal the spirit when it's time to grieve, and yet help us celebrate a new marriage or other major event?

I've arranged flowers for funeral and memorial services and for weddings. Flowers are as important as the choice of a wedding dress for most brides. At funerals, the deceased is surrounded by flowers and sometimes adorned with them. Anthropological evidence points to this practice thousands of years ago, even among the Neanderthals. In spite of the differences in tone, both weddings and funerals are accompanied by tears and laughter. A new beginning is an intrinsic element of both occasions, and so are the smiles that greet the welcoming sight of flowers, which somehow convey both joy and comfort.

An online search of obituaries confirmed my suspicion--the supper club's founder passed away a few days ago. Was it a family member who placed the wreath? A former patron, grateful for the good times? Yesterday I decided to take a closer look. The wreath was twined of grapevines, painted black. Carnations white as snow were draped around the top and down the sides against a backdrop of leatherleaf fern and hydrangea foliage. The cool weather had kept the flowers surprisingly fresh. At the bottom, a black ribbon swayed in the gentle breeze. It was painted with a sentiment that, according to the obituary, the owner was fond of saying--"Thanks for the Memories."

I was a guest at the club just once, a business occasion that was not particularly enjoyable. If I met the owner that evening, I don't recall him. And yet the wreath of flowers evoked a wave of something like gratitude, mingled with sadness and...hope?

Like a wreath, life continues in an endless cycle of beginnings and endings that flow into one another. As Michael Pollan says in his book, Second Nature. "For look into a flower, and what do you see? Into the very heart of nature's double nature—that is, the contending energies of creation and dissolution, the spring toward complex form and the tidal pull away from it. Apollo and Dionysus were names the Greeks gave to these two faces of nature, and nowhere in nature is their contest as plain or as poignant as it is in the beauty of a flower and its rapid passing. There, the achievement of order against all odds and its blithe abandonment. There, the perfection of art and the blind flux of nature. There, somehow, both transcendence and necessity. Could that be it—right there, in a flower—the meaning of life?"

September 19, 2009

Morning Glory Story

In a fit of long-overdue weeding, I accidentally uprooted a 'Heavenly Blue' morning glory that had climbed my front porch railing all summer. I do this way too often with vines, because their roots are usually far removed from their flowers. When I realized what I'd done, I ripped the vine off the railing in disgust, but I was too tired to go after a piece that had twined itself tightly around a column, as if hugging it for protection.

The next day was rainy and mild, and even though the leaves on the vine fragment were wilted, new flowers greeted me that morning, just as large and lush as ever, a deep sky-blue that outshone the overcast sky that day. I know they were new blossoms, because morning glory flowers only last for one day, and the previous day's flowers had already shriveled by the time I uprooted the vine the previous afternoon. The mild, rainy weather continued, and the next morning, my air-borne vine put on another display of flowers. And the next day, I finally got out my camera, took pictures, and counted the blossoms. There were nine.

The following morning, under still-cloudy skies, I counted five blossoms. At that point I decided that this apparent miracle was too strange to be true. There must be another vine growing around the porch that I had simply overlooked. I searched all around, and there was nothing connecting the stem to the ground. Instead I found the torn end of the vine resting flat on the porch, where it had apparently absorbed just enough water from the daily rains to keep it going. When I realized it wasn't giving up just yet, I placed the severed stem in a bowl of water. The flowers became fewer and smaller, but the plant continued to bloom for another week, a total of 11 days.

It's not surprising that the vine ultimately went out in a blaze of blue glory. Plants have so much in common with us. They're born to reproduce, and a flowering plant's sex organs are its flowers. To the end, it will put its resources into flowering and producing seeds. That's why it was putting on that magnificent display at the expense of its leaves. The leaves would have sustained the plant a while longer, but like human nature at its best, it was sacrificing itself for the sake of the next generation.

Plants are genetically programmed to nurture the next generation at the expense of their own. So are we. That doesn't take anything away from the miracle of life. To continue flowering without the support of its roots for days on end, the morning glory was drawing on reserves deep in the tissues of its stem and shriveled leaves. Maybe even its soul. Who am I to say? All I know is that on my front porch, for a few glorious days in September, the spirit of life revealed itself.

July 3, 2009

A Summer Without Sunflowers

I planted hundreds of sunflower seeds this spring, and I have not a single sunflower to show for it. Not even a barren stalk.

Some of the seeds were a year old and may not have been viable, but I planted several large packages that I ordered from reputable sources this spring. Over a period of weeks I pressed them into the moist soil, individually, at exactly the right depth. One day in early May, just as a hard rain began, I scattered the remainder. It rained for days afterward, and should have ensured that at least some of them germinated. But if any even sprouted, they didn't last long.

I've had other years in which disappointingly few sunflowers survived, but never before have I planted so many seeds and had nothing to show for my efforts. It wasn't for lack of rain. In fact, the unusually rainy spring must have been too much for them. It seemed that it rained almost every day this spring, well into the middle of June, when the rains came to an abrupt, sweltering end. I think they rotted in the soggy soil.

I miss the startling enormity of them, their robust stalks soaring into the sky. I miss the sight of their heavy heads bobbing on the breeze and following the sun from dawn to dusk. I miss those brazen ray petals and the concentric rows of seeds packed shoulder to shoulder. The season seems incomplete without the blithe radiance of this flower that for me represents the glory of a perfect summer day.

Neighbors across the street have a row of gorgeous, healthy sunflowers punctuating their vegetable garden. I think they started with transplants, but I'm reluctant to ask, for fear their thumbs are just greener than mine. I can see the plants from my window, leaves swaying, heads nodding to the rhythm of the wind. It's a lovely sight, but not the same has having them in my own back yard where I can step outside and nod right back at them.

May 28, 2009

The Horticulture of Hope, part 2

I don't believe I've ever waited so long for a new plant. It's been more than 7 months, almost as long as a human pregnancy.

My African Violet leaf sat in the terrarium soil month after month, seemingly doing nothing. I moved it around the room from time to time, concerned it was getting too much bright light, or not enough. I sprayed it with water every few days, replacing the terrarium lid to foster high humidity. Other times, worried about disease, I left the lid off to give it some air. I lifted the container to the light and searched its underside for the tiniest thread of a root.

I still don't see evidence of roots, but I know they're there and will soon be pressing against the sides of the glass. Today I finally spotted a tiny nub of a new leaf snuggled next to the old one. Today I know that, as it usually does, hope has prevailed.

February 23, 2009

The Horticulture of Hope

I've had an African violet for so many years I'm not even certain where it came from. I think I rooted it from a leaf given to me by a co-worker about 10 years ago. In spite of my murky memory about its origins, I've become irrationally attached to the plant, and I don't want to lose it.

It flourished for years in my sunny living room and rewarded me with a prolific and almost continuous show of royal purple flowers. I've rooted more plants from its leaves and given some away. But I let my supply of clones dwindle to zero before the parent plant went into a decline last year.

I snipped a few halfway healthy-looking leaves from the plant just days before before it gave up its struggle to live. I don't know what killed it, but no plant lives forever.

I cut the rescued leaves horizontally and stuck the tops into potting soil. Experience has taught me that the tops root more quickly than the bottom portion. Most of the cuttings died. The sole survivor has been in a terrarium jar for months, living but not thriving. Or maybe it is thriving at a level that's not yet apparent. It can take months for roots and new growth to appear, and it has been some months now but I have't counted them. I'm not sure I'm giving it enough light, so periodically I move it around my study, hoping to jar it awake. Still it sits, seemingly content to slumber a while longer.

I would coddle it if I knew how, but I think my best bet is to keep it moist and leave it to its own wisdom for living, embedded deep within its cells. In a matter of weeks my attention will be focused on my outdoor garden. One day when I least expect it, I hope to be rewarded by the sight of impossibly tiny leaves emerging from the terrarium soil, and the sight of white roots against the glass, as delicate as spider silk. It's small miracles like this, repeated season after season, indoors and out, that keep a gardener's hopes alive.

January 12, 2009

The Sunny Side

The common-law doctrine of ancient lights ensures that British citizens have a right to a certain level of light coming into their homes. I love the sound of that— ancient lights. It fires my imagination with visions of my fur-clad forebears, holding hands and chanting with joy as the morning sun arcs over a snow-capped mountain range on a winter solstice thousands of years ago.

In our country, the only sun we can legally control is that which shines straight down over our little piece of earth. Maybe the wide open spaces we found in this new world once seemed too endless to consider restrictions on shade from adjacent property. In today's suburbs, where so many of us garden, sunlight is usually generous—too generous—in a new development. After a few decades, though, the balance shifts to shade, and it becomes challenging to grow vegetables and flowers. Back yards overgrown with evergreen shrubs and trees can become gloomy places in the winter, when we crave sunlight more than ever.

A sunny garden spot was high on my wish list when my husband and I were house-hunting 20 years ago, and we found a pretty good one in the house we chose, the one we're still in. But if I'd been more observant, I'd have noticed that my yard and the two on either side were bordered in the back with a hedge of Chinese privet—an invasive scourge on the landscape that rivals kudzu in the south.

I've not only had to battle the privet in my own yard, but I've had to live with the increasing shade it's produced in my neighbors' yards. On the side that borders our yard on the east, the evergreen privet hedge easily turned a corner and grew densely, swallowing up the morning sun and leaving my flowers and vegetables in deep shade until late in the morning. Sipping my morning coffee, I would watch as the dawn flushed the clouds rose-pink and burnished the treetops while my garden lay torpid in the shadows, dripping with dew. When the summer sun finally cleared the tall thicket, the garden was suddenly awash in sunlight for a few steamy hours, until my grizzled old sweetgum tree threw its shadows eastward.

Granted, we could have cut down the sweetgum tree and gained many hours of afternoon sun, not to mention freedom from those sweetgum balls that make walking difficult this time of year. But the tree probably predates the civil war. A neighbor whose family once farmed this land told me they tied their milk cow to its trunk some 50 years ago. Its roots here go far deeper than ours; who are we to decide it's in our way?

For years, I craved the gentle morning sun in my back yard. For years, I considered asking my neighbors if I could buy a solar easement to guarantee sunlight from that side of the yard. Even raising the question seemed heavy-handed and intrusive, and yet I suspected that they simply hadn't noticed the privet taking over, or were just too busy to deal with it. Finally, the subject of yard work came up during a conversation between my husband and the neighbor, who said he planned to cut down the privet in his back yard. My husband offered to cut down the ones growing beside our mutual border, and the neighbor accepted.

With their permission, we got a tree company to cut down my neighbor's privet along with some work in our yard. The neighbors are as thrilled with the extra sunlight as we are. They want to landscape that back corner, and I've offered to divide and share some of my sun-loving perennials. We're fortunate to have such good neighbors. It could have been a sticky issue, and we could have tiptoed around it indefinitely.

It's been a cold winter, but I'm warmed by the thought of morning sunlight caressing my back as I weed my garden this spring. By July, I'll be seeking the shade that still gathers on the west side of my yard, but the vegetables and sun-loving flowers will be lifting their leaves to the morning sun and saluting my neighbors to the east in silent thanks for the gift of light.

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