Ambient Brightness

or A Good Explanation for Everything

The nursery worker looked at me strangely.  "Where did you move here from?"  "Vermont," I answered.  "Ah," she said wisely, as if that explained everything.  "Forget the plant tags.  You can grow a lot of things here in less sun than they say, because of the ambient brightness."

"Ah, yes," I thought wisely, "the ambient brightness."  As if that explained everything.

I had just moved to New Mexico, to an apartment with a north-facing balcony, and was looking for suitable plants at a local nursery.  The first person I chanced on there was the kind of worker you trust automatically.  She may not have had a floppy hat—the gold standard for knowledgeable plants-people in these parts—but she did have the right sort of outdoorsy, weathered smile-lines around the eyes.  She suggested 'Winter Gem' boxwood (Buxus microphylla japonica), even though the plant tag recommended full to part sun and the balcony only knew sunlight by hearsay.  And she was right:  the boxwood bushes were perfectly happy and didn't resent the shade at all.  Not that they resent much of anything, but they seemed actively pleased with all that ambient brightness.

Over the next few months I paid close attention to the plants I saw growing and blooming smack up against the shady north sides of houses:  lilacs, roses, Russian sage.  The ex-Vermonter in me was astonished and took the lesson to heart.  When I moved to my townhome a year later and toddled off to a nursery specializing in plants of the southwest (Plants of the Southwest, it's called) looking for natives for my part-sun garden, a worker in a floppy hat stopped me from making a purchase:  "That one needs full sun."

"Oh," I said brightly, "Isn't that just what the tag says?  It ought to do OK in less sun, because of the ambient brightness."  He looked at me strangely.  "Where did you move here from?"  "Vermont," I answered, dimming a trifle.  "Ah," he said.  Because that explained everything.

Since then I've learned a thing or two about provenance.  "Full sun" means something different to a desert plant than it does to one from a milder climate, where skies can be cloudy all day (or even longer!) and sometimes ambient brightness is the most a light-hungry little photosynthesizer can hope for.

My appreciation for these nuances of meaning ("sun":  it's complicated) got bumped up another notch when I planted an ivy this past spring.  Ivy is well-behaved here, not invasive, and useful in full-shade areas where you have a wall to cover.  I'd been growing this one as a houseplant in the sunny upstairs bathroom for several years—the only place humid enough to keep spider mites at bay—enjoying its bright green leaves, but finally decided it would be happier in the Sanctuary for Shadows along the garden's north-facing wall.  It's settling in well, but it isn't bright green any more:

It's variegated.  I'd forgotten that.  For several years the ivy had received a couple of hours of direct sun a day, with bright indoor light the rest of the time, and even with all of that the variegation had long since disappeared.  Now, outdoors, in December, on the north side of a wall in full shade, it's well-enough lit that those beautiful highlights have come out again.

Sometimes you need a tangible object lesson to understand apparently simple things like "light."  On the scale of brightness, I would have put a half-morning's direct indoor sun about on a par with full, outdoor shade—maybe even a little ahead.  In terms of my own appreciation of light, I'd vote for a sunny east window over a shady northern exposure any day of the week.  Apparently, though, human perception doesn't have much to do with botanical reality.  Maybe the difference lies in the gap between luminous flux—the amount of light visible to the human eye—and radiant flux—the total power of light across its spectrum (if I'm using those terms correctly); maybe it's just a charming quirk of chlorophyll. 

But it's probably because of the ambient brightness.

Evening Stars

or Out of the Spotlight

I have learned a deep respect over the last few years for my Winter Gem boxwood bushes—for any evergreens, really.  I planted the Winter Gems right outside the glass kitchen door because I knew I would want something cheerful and green to look at during the winter, and because they were able to take the extreme conditions in that little strip of land.  I had always thought of evergreens as the equivalent of background noise in a movie—glasses clinking in a dinner scene, papers rustling in an office—the kinds of things you would miss if they weren't there but don't really pay attention to when they are.  Even so, when a handful of bushes grows half a dozen feet from the kitchen table where you sit morning and evening day after day, you do eventually begin to notice them, and once you do, you realize what amazing troupers they are.

In the boxwood bed a sprinkling of ipheion—spring starflowers—that I planted half-heartedly a couple of years ago has begun to take hold.  At the time, I didn't know whether they would do well or whether I would even like them.  Then the first one bloomed; I loved it so much that ipheion became Microcosm's header.  Even though all the froth and exuberance and vividness of spring, the blooming redbuds and tulips and narcissus, are incredibly exciting, I still appreciate the cool quiet of ipheion.  It's like a pool in a forest, like mint leaves in ice water, like the evening star in a twilit sky.  If I could dive into that blue, that green, I would emerge again refreshed.

Just as the evergreens give their best during the—well, even poetic license won't let me call them the "dark days of winter" here in New Mexico, but I hope you catch my meaning—the ipheion show their best in shade.  Somewhere I read a description of their color as skim-milk blue—white washed with a weak tint—and in sunlight and as the flowers age, that's true.  In shadow, though, their gentle colors and ever-so-delicate shadings come forward; the petals gleam in twilight.

I'm beginning to re-envision the boxwood bed as the Light in Darkness (even if it's only metaphorical darkness, or possibly just shadow, or at any rate, not direct sun right at this moment) bed, as a home for plants that shine brightest out of the spotlight—or, put another way, that are still willing to shine even once the spotlight fades, that will give of their best without one.  Some evening primroses, perhaps, and a soft-textured groundcover; a bowl of water in the shadows.  Nothing in it will be a show-stopper.

But even without a spotlight, the show will go on.

Insignificant Blooms

or A Delicate Subject

I hope I don't embarrass anyone today.  Some people might consider the topic to be a little outré, a bit "specialized" (hem, hem) in a mildly unsavory way.  If we were in an Agatha Christie novel, sitting with the vicar's wife and the flower committee over tea when someone mentioned it, we would raise delicately penciled eyebrows, glance sideways at the person next to us, and try to hide a knowing half-smile by raising a bone china cup to our lips.  After an awkward pause, the vicar's wife would tactfully change the subject.

You've probably guessed by now that I'm talking about plants with  insignificant blooms.  (Blush.)  I had no idea that they were so...you know... until I was looking through a book on houseplant care and came across the section on parlor palms.  The book recommended trimming off the insignificant blooms—all well and good—but then it added, and I quote, "Unless you're into that kind of thing."

Well.  "Unless you're into that kind of thing."  What else was needed to give insignificant blooms a seedy, pulp fiction patina, to transform them instantly from hum-drum to "Oh, la la...", to make them seem dangerous, risky, maybe just a little beyond the pale?  The life of this houseplant owner suddenly became a lot more racy and adventurous, and I didn't even have to do anything.  But then I looked closer at the parlor palm blooms and trimmed them off, because it turns out that I wasn't really into that kind of thing.

All to say, the "Winter Gem" boxwoods are blooming in the narrow side yard by the kitchen door.  Now, I love these shrubs—they are such sturdy little growers.  They flourish in conditions that are hard even on native plants:  full sun all summer, reflected by a south-facing wall; full shade all winter, right where the wind funnels between the casitas; poor soil even by New Mexican standards.  The boxwoods thrive so happily while making so few demands; they are "salt of the earth" shrubs if ever I saw them.

But they have (insert portentous music here) insignificant blooms.  Right outside the kitchen door, too.

And I'm afraid that I might be into that kind of thing.  My camera isn't—the auto-focus rebelled against them, and I must have at least four dozen slightly fuzzy photos (including some of these) of insignificant blooms.  But I kind of, well, like them.  In such a gentle, subtle way, they look like they've stuck their metaphorical finger in a light socket (not that I'm into that kind of thing!).  Mind you, I wouldn't make a special trip to the botanic gardens to see a swath of Winter Gem boxwood in glorious bloom.  They're no magnolias, and you can quote me, but they're not actually objectionable.  Not really.  (Don't raise your delicately penciled eyebrows at me.)  And surely the blooms are significant to someone, even if only to other Winter Gem boxwoods.

If there's any one moral I've learned while writing this blog—and I'm not just saying this to appease the vicar's wife—it's that looking closer almost always yields some sort of wonder, some awe at the novelty and intricacy and ingenuity and (dash it all!) the sheer beauty of the natural world; the peculiar, "specialized" ways that individual species have to cope with the concerns of growth and survival shared by all.  Significance isn't about scale; it's about accomplishment, about filling your niche.  It's also about paying attention.

If you're into that kind of thing...