Odd One Out

or Harmless Eccentrics

Mormon tea (Ephedra viridis)  has only the tiniest of leaves, useless little scales that you'd hardly recognize as leaves at all.  It keeps its chlorophyll in its stems instead, which is unusual behavior in a shrub but an ingenious response to the desert, as Ephedra has no broad surfaces to be robbed of moisture by the wind and sun.  Even in its first year after planting, it doesn't want much watering, and after that it's quite content with rainfall.  It seems to be a unique cross—or a link—between conifers and flowering plants and is a little odd-looking.  But then, the climate it's adapted to is an odd one, too.  In the hottest corner of the garden between the south and west-facing walls, I don't know what would do better.

Ephedra viridis

Years ago I was visiting with a friend at his house back in rural New York state.  He was a grad student in Renaissance literature, and we got ourselves lost in a discussion of Shakespeare.  We had come to a knotty point about Henry V when a squirrel in the garden made its way over the baffle that should have stopped it but mostly didn't, and scampered on up the bird feeder.  My friend excused himself mid-sentence, opened the living room window, picked up a BB gun lying on the sill, fired a few shots at the roof of the feeder, frightened off the squirrel, put down the gun, closed the window, and resumed discussing Henry as if nothing had happened.  "This," I thought, "is how eccentrics are born."*

For many people, I do think eccentricity proceeds that way:  You're off on your own somewhere, in circumstances that call for an intense kind of focus, and don't stop to wonder whether your actions are quirky or strange.  You just do what needs done with the resources you have, without looking up and around at the wider world, and the next thing you know, that focus, that set of responses, has turned into habit.  Shakespeare and BB guns have merged into one harmonious world in your head.  You've shed your leaves, the chlorophyll has moved into your stems, and the neighbors have started to look at you funny.  You may have adapted well to the circumstances, but that doesn't mean you're not a little...odd. 

The micro-garden, showing two colors of orach, along with pepper cress and garlic.

One of my current neighbors and I take turns peeking over our shared garden wall to see what the other is growing.  We have completely different approaches and interests, which is half the fun, of course.  He's particularly fascinated by the micro-garden, the divided, 2' x 4' raised bed where I grow vegetables.  "What's that on the end?" he'll ask, and we'll start working our way around the bed.  Orach, amaranth, arugula, sweet potato vine, pepper cress.  "Don't you ever just grow, you know, lettuce?"

I don't—it doesn't thrive, as my non-vegetable growing neighbor hasn't had to discover.  I find myself going farther afield from lettuce and spinach every year, not in the quest for something new and different, just for something that will get past its first set of true leaves before bolting.  The hunt for leafy vegetables that will do well in strong southern sun a mile above sea level, with single-digit relative humidity, 25-30°F differences between day and night-time temperatures, strong winds, and plagues of leafhoppers, is unending it seems.  The time between last frost and scorching heat, on the other hand, is short.  Lettuce is not adapted.  Anyone wanting greens would be smarter just to break off a twig of Mormon tea and start gnawing.

Failing that, however, I'm growing orach (Atriplex hortensis), as it bolts without turning bitter.  Orach wouldn't be an unusual garden plant if we were in France, say, and it's not an odd plant in itself at all—it's perfectly lovely, in fact, in entirely normal ways.  It keeps its chlorophyll in its leaves and everything.  Its only oddity lies in being rare in a world of grocery stores, where salad means lettuce.  I say all this to my neighbor.

He gives me the humoring look reserved for harmless eccentrics.

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* Squirrels have a lot to answer for.

Inflationary Pressure

or Changing Planes

The only things missing were the balloons.  For the last two weekends I've been comfortably ensconced in the Adirondack chair at 08:15, sunglasses on, camera, coffee, and crossword ready to hand, just waiting for a little floating poetry to drift by.  It never did.

I'm not an avid enough spotter to go out of my way to find hot-air balloons, but usually during the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, which just wrapped up today, I don't have to.  Some of the gathering's 500+ balloons typically come this direction and sail past within hailing distance; this year was apparently the exception.  Contrary winds were possibly the culprits, winds being contrary by nature, although the Albuquerque box effect often overrides them.  When the box is working, winds closer to the ground blow from the north, while at higher altitudes they blow from the south.  Pilots can choose either direction by moving vertically, changing from a lower to a higher plane.  Since I live south of Balloon Fiesta Park, wind direction doesn't usually keep the balloons away like this.  Ah, well.  Maybe next year.

The closest I came to seeing a balloon was this:

The tomatillos in the microgarden are producing enthusiastically these days—producing, but not ripening.  Even the largest and roundest husks are as full of air as any balloon.  The tomatillos wait to set on until the weather cools down, which happened unusually late this year.  Now the pressure's on them to fill out those husks in the few weeks remaining before frost.  Their performance so far hasn't earned them a place in the microgarden again next summer; they've just been wasting water and prime real estate.  The clock is ticking on them in more ways than one.

One of my friends likes to start knitting projects.  Eventually something else claims her time, so she unravels her work and winds the yarn into a tidy ball, and then the next time she has a chance to knit she starts all over again.  Her philosophy is that a ball of yarn is easier to store than half a sweater, and even if she never finishes a project, she's enjoyed the time she's spent knitting, and enjoyment is really the point.  The doing is the fun part; getting anything wearable out of it is a bonus, a happy accident.  She has been cheerfully knitting for years, and so far as I know is still working on that same ball of yarn.

Her approach is admirable in many ways (to those who don't need or want scarves, sweaters, and woolly mittens)—really on a higher plane than a tit-for-tat, "if I put something in I want to get something out" mentality.  The journey is more important than the destination, and all that.  I get the sense that most of us take a similar approach to gardening, at least to some degree.  Overall I do, too, but not so much where edibles are concerned.  If I plant an edible, I really do want something to eat by summer's end.  Or at least, someone should get something to eat, and that someone had better be more interesting than an aphid.  As I wrote a couple of posts ago, the amaranth may not have fed me this summer, but it's fed all kinds of other things, from katydids to goldfinches, and has been more than worth the resources it took to grow.  But the tomatillos?  Even the bees aren't that enthused.

On the other hand, their shy blossoms really are endearing, and their leaves beautifully sculpted. The papery husks are fascinating to watch grow.  When they get big and round you feel like you could blow on one, just a gentle puff of air, and send it soaring like a balloon.  (Whereas actually, you can't.)  (That is, you can blow on it all you like, but it's not going to go anywhere.)  But those rangy, gangly plants are nothing I would give garden room to if I weren't expecting an actual tomatillo to eat at some point.  A big crock of chili verde is calling me, and I cannot answer, because of those slowpoke tomatillos.

I clearly need to put some gardener's version of the Box Effect into practice, move up to a higher plane, and change mental directions.  After all, I fully enjoyed the mornings on the patio with camera, coffee, and crossword (and sunglasses—very important), balloons or no.  They would have been icing on the cake, but weren't necessary to my happiness.  Why not enjoy those irritating lollygagging endearing, sculptural, and fascinating tomatillos for what they are, and forget what I want out of them?  I'm not going to hurry them along by sniping at them.  Most likely.  Or even, apparently, by giving them regular water and the occasional dose of fertilizer.  I'll just put the cookbook away again.

Ah, well—maybe next year.

Tall in the Saddle

or Worlds Unto Themselves

'Kerala Red' Amaranth

The south winds are the worst.  The garden is fairly well protected from our prevailing northwesterlies, but there isn't much shelter for it to the south.  Last Thursday night a windstorm came through, the kind that bends the upper branches of the trees at right angles and has all your perennials leaning to starboard for a day or so.  It was a night of sudden thuds and thumps, of wondering idly whose patio furniture was going to be where by morning.

The raised microgarden took a hit, more than the plants at ground level.  I had just planted carrot seeds—lightweight, insubstantial, surface-sown carrot seeds—and have no idea whose yard they're gracing now.  Judging by where they've begun to sprout, the arugula seeds drifted up against the amaranth on the microgarden's north end before finding safe harbor; perhaps the carrots have done the same.  The tomatillo plants, which are just now setting on nicely, were pushed over into the amaranth, too, and some are still leaning heavily against it.  Without its support, they might have blown over altogether.  I've almost begun to think of amaranth as my right-hand man in the garden—I don't know what I would do without it.

Not that it fared particularly well.  Wind is its Achilles heel, and its oldest, windward leaves are looking extra shreddy and battered now.  It's been having its own private little autumn for about six weeks anyway; it has flowered and set seed and is nearing the end of its life span.  Despite all that, despite age and weather, it's still sitting tall in the saddle, its stems like laser beams keeping the north end of the patio alight, its younger, leeward leaves luminescent in the sun.  It's still feeding the goldfinches (and I do wish they'd let me get a photograph).  When I pulled the spent summer veggies last week, two mantises emerged from the amaranth's shelter to protest, one of them pawing at the air with a front leg, for all the world like a dog, if a dog were green and angular and thought mostly "Oy!"

I begin to understand why the Aztecs gave amaranth a central role in their most important ceremonies, why Montezuma demanded it as tribute, why the Spanish banned the growing or eating of it after the conquest:  it's so useful, and on so many levels, that you begin to revere it.  It gives shelter to beneficial insects, feeds the birds, offers support to weaker plants, thrives in the heat of summer.  I'm impressed and never even got around to eating it this year, which was, after all, the whole point of planting it.  Had I spent the summer tossing together quick sautés of the leaves like I usually do (olive oil and onion, a little lemon and chipotle chile powder), I might feel impelled to salute.

"Tall in the saddle" is the way you sit when you've done yourself proud. Online definitions vary, but they all hover in the vicinity of staunch, resolute, and heroic. 

I don't really think that amaranth is heroic, you know.  It's a plant, growing the way its genes have told it to.  But some plants need care and fussing and nurturing before they'll reward you with a bloom or a fruit; some cheerfully do what you ask and no more.  Some, though, astonish you by doing more than you ever expected when you planted them, thinking one-dimensionally about summer greens.  From seeds as tiny as grains of sand they become worlds unto themselves, worlds of shelter and nourishment and strength, useful to the lives that depend on them even when they're ready to hand the baton to next summer's seeds, to fade back into the soil.

They do themselves proud.

Warm Welcomes

or A Foot in Two Worlds

Just having the curtains open is a pleasure.  All summer we do our best to block out the sun, and now to welcome it with open arms, to let it stream unhindered through the kitchen window, is sheer joy.

Out on the patio this morning, the sun's warmth felt good again:  good early on, over a cup of tea, while it took away the dawn chill; good later, over the crossword puzzle and decaf, and later still over a notepad and pencil, when those golden rays dispensed sleepy contentment with a generous hand.  And oh, what that sunlight did for the colors in the garden—instead of being washed out in a harsh overhead glare they were backlit and glowing with warmth, filled to the saturation point with light.  They aren't showing fall colors but summer's colors refreshed.

They're a reminder that this is still just September.  Morning may have leaped into autumn wholeheartedly, but afternoon is still clinging hard to summer.  Highs are in the mid-80's F, close to breaking records yet again this year.  For now, at any rate, we still have a foot in both worlds. 

It's time to replant the microgarden.  More than time, really—two or three weeks later than I'd have liked.  Some of the summer veggies are just picking up steam, though, having waited until the worst of the heat passed to start setting on.  Now they're in a race with frost, trying to ripen in a part-sun garden in ever-shrinking hours of sunlight.  The tomatillos and summer squash may yet make it.  Meanwhile the marigolds are blooming their hearts out, and the amaranth seeds are feeding the goldfinches while its stems and leaves provide a windbreak on the little garden's north side.

Even with the things that will remain in the microgarden, plenty of others are ready to be ousted and replaced by chard, arugula, radishes and carrots.  The soil is still warm enough that the seeds should sprout quickly.  Managing new seedlings' space and light requirements will be tricky in that 2' by 4' space with the summer plants so tall around them, but it ought to be do-able.  For a while the garden will just have a foot in two worlds.

I never find seed planting as compelling in fall as it is in spring.  In spring you're thrilled when the seeds come in the mail, aware of their potential and eager to see them grow, impatient with those last few frosts.  Planting seeds is an Essence of Spring Experience like no other.  The hope outweighs every other consideration.

In fall I'm more aware of lugging soil around and of the mess of emptying out the microgarden and refilling it.  Those things are fine—they're part of the overall pleasure of gardening—but they're not the same as that rush of hope in spring, and they don't quite radiate the golden glow of autumn like, say, pumpkins and apples and turning leaves do.  Composted cotton burrs and cow manure—I dunno, there's something kind of mundane about them.  When I think of what makes up the glow of autumn, and what goes into an Essence of Autumn Experience, composted cotton burrs and cow manure just aren't it.  They're a necessary first step, however, making more glowing, harvest-y parts possible.  I will be grateful for them in December when I pull up a handful of carrots and can relive a little of fall's golden warmth.

This is the one season I can wax endlessly rhapsodic about.  Spring is delightful when it behaves, summer is lovely but has to be coped with, winter—I'll just growl now and get that out of the way.  But fall...it's the light.  It's that beautiful, golden sunlight.  I could spend hours just soaking up the rich warmth of that light. In a sense being aware of the mundane, earthy stuff like (composted)  manure is a good counterweight for autumn's heady enjoyment.  It anchors you occasionally in practical, everyday reality instead of letting you stay immersed in a world of shining, living colors.  Sometimes you want to bask in wonder at the beauty around you, but sometimes you need to get things done.

It doesn't hurt to have a foot in both worlds.

Clinging

or Tenacity

"Tendril" is such a lovely word, with all the swirling delicacy of a sumptuous Art Nouveau design.  Depending on which dictionary you check, its source might be the Latin word tener, meaning soft, tender, and yielding.  Or it might come from tendere, to stretch or extend, or maybe from tenēre, to hold.

Quite possibly in a stranglehold.

I goofed up this year.  When it came time to plant summer squash and cucumbers in the microgarden—the 2' x 4' raised bed where I grow vegetables—I reversed their planting positions.  I should have sown the squash in the roomy center divider where it could bush out, and the cukes next to the trellis where they could climb.  Instead the squash are now glowing with health in front of a trellis they have no interest in, and the cukes, eager to cling to a trellis, are having to make do with whatever they can find—a marigold leaflet, a scallion.  Fortunately the amaranth has come to the rescue yet again, sturdy enough to sustain another species without losing vigor itself.

The greatest challenge facing the cukes where they are—the biggest reason they have to climb—is to reach sunlight.  I usually wait to plant curcubits until after the 4th of July to starve out the squash bugs, so when the cukes were still seedlings, the other, older plants in the microgarden were already fully grown and casting shade.  Tendril by tendril, inch by inch, the cucumbers have been struggling to make their way through the established plants and into the sunshine. 

Their progress has been impressive:  steady, relentless.  Spindly, leggy growth is not in these cucumbers' destiny; they will not settle for anemic pallor.  "Sunshine or bust" is their motto.

Knowing the strides they've made, I look at their tendrils now, and I don't see delicate curls.  I see the botanical equivalent of pitons, driven into rock, anchoring mountain climbers who move one foothold, one handhold at a time in their dangerous contest with gravity.  I can understand why clinging has such a bad name—just ask the scallion, squeezed in two, how it feels about those tendrils.  But the flip side of clinginess is tenacity, the ability to hold tight and not give up.

To keep pulling yourself toward life, one stubborn inch at a time.

Table Manners

or On/Off

Being human has so many lovely perks:  opposable thumbs, brains that can (sometimes) solve complex problems, the capacity to create and enjoy art.  Even better, even more exciting and convenient, we don't have to stand on our food and eat it out from under us.  I'd never really fully appreciated that last perk until this week, when I watched a juvenile angle-wing katydid going through contortions while it ate.  The leaf it was standing on kept getting smaller and smaller as the katydid devoured more and more of it.  About halfway through it either had to stop eating or fall off.  Without even the tiniest pause, it moved on to another floor-table-casserole (or "leaf") and started over again.  I have been fondly patting the kitchen chairs in passing ever since.

Theoretically this katydid should be hanging out in a tree somewhere.  Instead it's settled into the amaranth patch in the microgarden for the last few days.  The amaranth is just a small patch, about two feet long by six inches wide, but intensively planted, with plenty of leaves for a hungry young katydid to stand and/or dine on.

And dine it does, with the relentless precision of a machine, its mandibles perforating a leaf and meshing together, drawing food up and in, up and in, without pause, without a change in rhythm.  It works its way from one side of a leaf to the other and then, like a typewriter carriage, swings back to the starting point.*  During a windstorm the other evening I watched it sheltering on the middle tier of leaves, clinging with its feet to the leaf below it and with its mandibles to the one above.  While the wind blew the katydid was anchored in two directions; when the wind paused it would take a bite.

To eat the shelter from over your head while you still need it—that's some hunger at work.  Watching the katydid this week, I've been aware of its instinct as an implacable, almost mechanistic force.  When that insect is ready to eat, nothing slows it down; it's on automatic pilot.  The sense of robotic drive is all the more striking as the only other thing I have seen this living creature do is sit.  Admittedly, it has a splendid physique, and when it sits it looks like the kind of intricate jade carving that ought to grace an emperor's palace, but still, all it does is sit.  It's as if the katydid is on a toggle switch:  when the switch is on it eats, when the switch flips off it comes to a dead halt.  There's no middle ground, no competing instinct to moderate the hunger, no secondary activity to occupy it.

Other insects, just as driven, still seem to acquire character as a species.  No one can tell me praying mantises aren't hungry, yet they're also curious and engaged.  The baby ones that used to live in the chard in the microgarden would pounce on me when I watered and then be startled at what they'd caught and run away.  No matter how driven ants may be, they still manage to find time to be irritable.  Waterbugs are gregarious—really surprisingly friendly (such a pity they're vermin); bumblebees can be flat-out hedonistic when they think no one is looking.  Character comes from movement, but stasis?  What does stasis produce?

What does a katydid do but alternately eat and look like a jade carving?  To have no one be "home" in a creature of that size—it's unnerving.

Maybe still waters run deep?

_________________
* Youngsters, ask your parents to tell you about typewriters.**
** Or better yet, just don't worry about it.


A postscript:  Look what the katydid accomplished today while I was gone!

All grown up

It isn't half-bad at camouflage...

Flavoring the Feast

or A Lot of a Good Thing

Long-distance drives—you either love 'em or hate 'em.  I've always loved them.  The trips I would make from the Finger Lakes area of New York back to my parents' home in Denver are some of my favorite experiences of all time.  I'd load Luther T. Dog into the car with his treats, toys, pillow, leash, water dish, and plenty of et cetera, pack a picnic hamper and suitcase, and be off, driving the "blue highways," the back roads, for 1,800 (mostly) wonderful miles.*

Generally, I really enjoyed quietness in the car—no music or news, just the slow pace of miles and scenery and thoughts unfolding.  It was kind of a Zen thing.  Besides, Luther was the perfect traveling companion.  He was easily entertained by cows, which, across the rural midwest at any rate, made him pretty darn easy to entertain.  Since I was easily entertained by dogs who were entertained by cows, we were both happy for mile after mile after mile
after mile
after mile.

But as Steinbeck says in Travels with Charley,you don't take a trip, the trip takes you.  Sometimes the joy of a trip is over when you're still miles from home; the last 500 miles of a return trip especially can be pretty dreary.  For those occasions I'd bring a book on tape from the library and parcel it out in small doses to spice things up a bit, hoping to time it right so that I wouldn't run out of book before I ran out of road (while also trying to finish it before the due date).  The timing didn't always work.  I might be too stingy on the trip and find myself back at home, hurriedly listening to the end of a mystery so I could find out who dunnit before the library charged me a fine; I'm still a little fuzzy about the whole Orient Express thing.

All to say, Albuquerque ought to be safe from frost at this point, barring an act of God or some other adventure.  (Don't worry; we'll get to the logical connection in a minute.)  The mezzo-piano days of spring are over—even though the temperature is comfortable, the sun is strong enough midday that it actually kind of hurts.  The cool weather plants in the microgarden, which have been providing me with small harvests of pepper cress, arugula, and the occasional radish for a couple of weeks now, are about to rebel and bolt altogether, and (logical connection alert) suddenly I am harvesting in earnest. 

I've been comfortably, deliciously parceling out the harvest of greens—tossing them in a pasta salad, say, to stretch them out; adding flavor and freshness to other dishes so as not to use up the microgarden's limited wealth too soon.  Those days are over.  It's "use it or lose it" at this point.  So today I enjoyed a very large salad, full of the mustardy heat of pepper cress, the strong, peppery flavor of arugula, the cucumbery freshness of salad burnet, a handful of (gorgeous, gorgeous!) radishes and their equally flavorful leaves, some spring onions and garlic chives... All with the nice, strong herbal vinaigrette I had on hand.  It was a salad you noticed.  Whether you wanted to or not.  I will be eating another very large and flavorful salad again tomorrow.**

Note to self:  Some day, try parceling things out more generously to begin with...

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* Especially at Christmas, whenever I was westward bound, the skies were invariably cloudy until the Iowa/Nebraska border, and from then on they were deeply, vividly, gloriously blue—my skies, Western skies.  Yes!

** For some reason, I've never been able to grow actual lettuce out here.  Mostly I don't mind, since my philosophy is that if we really liked lettuce, salad dressing would not be a billion dollar industry.  But sometimes, a little bit of plain old lettuce to toss into the mix would be OK.

The Rhythms of Care

or Food and Drink

Work, and of the best sort. 

Yesterday:  a few minutes watering seedlings in the micro-garden; a trip to the hardware store for concrete blocks, rebar, and bamboo poles; an afternoon spent chatting with the neighbors and turning my purchases into a stand for the rain barrel, stakes for the Lady Banks rose (trust me, she would eat a fancy trellis for lunch), and supports for the "Coronation Gold" yarrow, which otherwise will give way to the first windstorm (and every windstorm thereafter).  —An afternoon to water all the beds, as the 0.11 inches of moisture we've received so far this year can't kick-start spring in a young garden; a few more minutes to empty the pots of perennials that didn't survive our once-in-fifty-years cold spell.

Today:  more of the same only better, in 55°F morning temperatures, in a sheltered, walled garden that warms to tank-top comfort levels.  The tasks:  cleaning and filling the bird and bug baths (setting some dried navy beans to soak); moving the "volunteer" feverfew seedlings to containers, where their blossoms will attract beneficial insects for weeks in mid-summer (taking a few moments' rest in the Adirondack chair); watering the seedlings in the micro-garden again (ducking inside for a glass of water); dividing the "Moonshine" yarrow and moving the divisions to a sunnier bed, out of the growing desert olive trees' shade (lying down for an hour's bedrest); moving the Keller's yarrow from the sand cherries' shade to the sunny, more-or-less native bed (putting the beans on to cook); working coffee grounds and tea leaves into our alkaline, "decomposed granite" soil (harvesting tarragon and garlic chives).  Resting, before the white bean salad with Shannon's citrus-tarragon vinaigrette goes on the table.

This weekend, I've been thinking about the rhythms of care—the seasonal care we give to the garden, the daily care; the sometimes competing, sometimes complementary care we give to ourselves; and the sometimes out-of-the-blue priority we give to a work ethic that may or may not be helpful.  It's been disconcerting to remember the extent to which need (the yarrows, in too much shade; a thirsty human) can end up competing with function (the garden could use some filler here; I still have this one task left to finish...).  How do we balance them—work and care? the drive to accomplish something right away and the natural rhythms of growth, of need?  Somehow or other we do, and things either work out or they don't.  For the most part, only small things hinge on our decisions—one human, one garden, a handful of plants, perhaps a few bees; things that matter in a small sphere, that may accumulate to have a wider effect, but that don't (with an ironic bow in the direction of chaos theory) affect the world at large.

From time to time, however, something mammoth interrupts the easy seasonal rhythm of care, reminds us of the world beyond our garden walls, shouts that other gardens need tending, that other humans need the food and drink of compassion.  While our kindred in Japan have a strong and resilient system to cope with natural disasters, the recent tsunami reminds us all how fragile our security really is, how great a leveler nature can be.  I haven't researched the organizations that exist internationally to contribute toward disaster relief, but in the USA, InterAction.org is a starting-point directory of NGOs; other longstanding charitable organizations are accepting contributions as well, of course.

Sometimes care extends beyond our garden walls, and giving becomes our work—work of the very best sort.

In Praise of Helpers (Stylish Blogger Award Meme)

or Heavy Lifting

I've given up trying to find the source of the quote that changed my life this week.  I read it in a gardening book a few years ago and am hazy now on the exact wording, but the gist of its wisdom was, "Whenever you're about to begin a huge garden task, stop first to contemplate why the universe made teenage boys."

Now, I'm not so self-absorbed as to think that teenage boys exist solely to do my heavy lifting, but the approach does have its merits, common sense being foremost among them.  There are people with energy to burn; then there are the rest of us.  I was thinking about that while looking at the micro-garden this past week—the 2' x  4' divided, raised bed where I grow vegetables.  It's a wonderfully low-effort way to garden except at this time of year, when the soil needs replenishing.  Lugging around heavy objects like, say, two-cubic-foot bags of soil, makes my CFS flare up.  Even though my muscles can handle the effort, my energy levels can't.  Lifting a couple of bags of soil onto a cart at the garden center, into the trunk of my car, and out again means a full day of bedrest afterward.

Fortunately, as I was trying to decide which day of my life to devote exclusively to a bag or two of dirt, that quote about teenage boys came to mind, and its brilliance lit the way before me to one of my favorite local garden centers.  If I had been in doubt before, I would have remembered then why it was a favorite place.  Before I had spent 30 seconds looking thoughtfully at the mountains of dirt, a pleasant and helpful young man came to my aid.  Without any nudging, he offered to load the bags onto the wagon, then pulled it over to the cash register himself, waited while I paid, towed the wagon to my car, and cheerfully loaded everything into the trunk.  He even gave me a friendly wave as I drove off.   When I reached home, I still had energy to unload the car, mix the soils, and fill the garden.  It is planted and ready to go, eight square feet of hope in seed form.

So to those of you who may be pleasant and helpful young men, or who may have been so at one time, or who are just pleasant and helpful people in general, my hat is off to you.  You give an amazing gift that makes an immediate difference in someone's life—and when you do so while making cheerful small talk, throwing in the occasional one-liner, and acting as if there's nothing in the world that you'd rather be doing, you make the gift a thing of beauty as well—a real grace.  Thank you. 

And bless you.

________________________________

I've been thinking of helpers even more this week because Diana at Elephant's Eye nominated me for a "Stylish Blogger" award.  I've long admired Diana for the way she routinely, habitually supports other bloggers—she sees blogging (so far as I can tell) as both an individual and a community endeavor. She offers informative glimpses of life in South Africa, especially of the wildlife, as well as of her lovely garden, but at the same time (and often intermixed with Jurg's magnificent photos), she situates her work in the larger community.

Any meme has its rules, of course; in this case to link to other bloggers and to give some information about myself.  Shall we start with the most pleasant option first?   I've recently joined Blotanical and come across some really lovely blogs there.

One of my favorites is Carol Duke Photography.  I love the way Carol shows a detailed section of an image first, focusing your attention on the lights, colors, and abstract forms that exist in the natural world before "distracting" you with the actual subject of the photo.  She has some more recent entries, of course, but this link is the one that captured me first.  (Carol writes another wonderful, naturalist blog, too, Flower Hill Farm.)

As a former music historian, I very much enjoy Landscape Lover's writings.  It's likely that the same people were commissioning both the landscapes she studies and the music that I did; there's something pleasantly familiar in the overlap.  I've also enjoyed her recent exposés of gardens in Marrakech.

Fuzzy Foliage is a blog entirely about African violets and other gesneriads.  I'm a generalist, myself (which, oddly enough, is why I went into music history), and so am awe-inspired by anyone with a singular, whole-hearted passion, and when the writer is not only impassioned but fun and free of snobbery, her enthusiasm speaks volumes.

Getting Dirty writes well of wind and rain in Tennessee, and, more recently, of seedlings responding to peer pressure.

On the Lettuce Edge recently posted about a lovely Jewish blessing for first occasions.

Green  Apples Garden made an emphatic plea to Mother Nature to let spring in the door, which was just as emphatically rejected.

Outside Blotanical, a blog I'm fond of is Saltaire Daily Photo.  Jenny's love for her town of Saltaire, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the north of England, is apparent in every post.

Suz at A Garden Wench combines lovely images in words and photographs.  No one will be more surprised than she to receive this mention—I just discovered her recently and haven't yet been able to come up with anything more profound to say than, "Aahhh," which I have done only in the privacy of my own home.

I hesitate in a way to mention anyone in the "Troupers" section of my own blog list—they are all people making lives for themselves despite debilitating illness, and they are likely to be overwhelmed by outside attention.  They rely on their blogs for contact with the outside world and for support and understanding and community, but they don't necessarily seek a wide readership.  Even so, I honor Dominique at 4 Walls and a View, because of her constant efforts to raise awareness of CFS/ME in the wider community.  Despite some horrific setbacks of her own, she recently launched invisibleawareness.org, an effort to bring the lives of those with CFS/ME to the attention of a wider world.

And finally, a blogger I'm much indebted to is Michelloui of The American Resident.  At one point she remarked that blogging was the only field of endeavor she could think of where being good to others was rewarded, where one's success depended on one's own generosity.  It was that remark that convinced me to start blogging myself, because the blogging community sounded like a place where I wanted to belong.

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Oh, dear.  The facts about myself.  I suppose I find this awkward because my blog has mostly comprised "set pieces"—a series of essays in which I might reveal something of myself, but where, for the most part, the "fourth wall" of theater has stood firm.  To go informal all of a sudden is a change that's kind of startling—not unpleasant, just disconcerting.  With that bit of squirming out of the way...

1)  The latest anyone on either side of my family came to the United States (or the colonies, as they were then) was ~1730.  Since then, if I have my facts right, no one has stayed in the same town for two generations running; they have ranged from Vermont to California; from Florida to Washington.  I have a bit of a problem with wanderlust.

2)  If the opportunity for space exploration were available, I would take it.  In a heartbeat.

3)  In addition to being a music historian, at one point (like half the population, apparently), I was a professional radio announcer.  My favorite work of all time, except for the hours, hands down.

4)  I grew up in a family that named its wire-hair terrier/dachshund mutt "Phydeaux."  That should tell you a lot about my parents (in a good way).

5)  Leaving musicology and in essence throwing away a Ph.D. because of my health was one of the hardest and best things I've ever done.  Lesson learned: you never owe a job or a career your health.

6)  My favorite charity is Heifer International.  I value independence and self-determination, and I think Heifer gives those things both to individuals and communities—and I think it gives women, especially, opportunities they might not otherwise have had.  (Locally, I prefer literacy-oriented organizations like Albuquerque Reads—New Mexico has a terrible track record for education.)

7) Writing this list has taken me longer than the rest of the post altogether...

Delusions of Grandeur

or In Which We Refuse to Believe That Less Is More

Small dogs have their own burdens to bear.  It can't be easy to have the instincts of a guardian, a large and noble beast, a lion-hearted predator, and then to have the body of, essentially, prey.  One of my neighbors has a toy poodle—a little dust mop of a dog who barks maniacally every time you walk past.  She sounds like she means business until the moment you turn and look at her, at which point you can see her doing some quick math problems in her little head, calculating relative sizes, force vectors, speeds, distances, and levels of irritation.  After a rather painful moment of "ah," she turns tail and runs around the corner, from which point of safety she can resume barking.  But she knows, and you know, and she knows you know, that from then on it's all show, pure bravado with no substance behind it.

When I'm working in the garden, the poodle seems more curious than territorial.  Our houses are separated by a five-foot high concrete wall, which she obviously can't see over, but she can hear me moving around.  She comes over to the wall, puts her nose to the half-inch wide gap between two of the blocks, and sniffs large, purposeful sniffs.  The gap works like an echo-chamber—it magnifies the noise and makes her sound more like a Rottweiler than like a six-pound bundle of fluff and nerves.  It is a sound that does her heart justice; she must find it incredibly satisfying.

I've been taking advantage of mild weather this weekend to wander around the garden and make plans for winter cleanup and spring planting.  In particular I was pondering the microgarden, which is a blank slate at this point.  Normally it would have some cold-weather greens overwintering in it, along with maybe a last carrot or two that I'm saving to brighten a dreary day, and some perennials like chives and bunching onions.  The aphids ran so far amok last fall, though, that I ended up emptying the bed completely and now have the pleasure of refilling the whole thing at once.  I'm contemplating soil mixtures, compost, pest control, organic fertilizers, and other things of that ilk.  Oh, and seeds.

Lots of seeds.

Keep in mind that the microgarden is a two foot by four foot raised bed, divided into about 30 growing cells of different sizes.  It is not a large space; its growing potential may be impressive for its size, but it is hardly what we would call unlimited.  And into these eight square feet, according to my current seed list, I am planning to put twelve varieties of greens; two kinds each of carrots,  radishes, and onions; peppers, squash, garlic, cucumbers, Chinese long beans, tomatillos, basil, marigolds...

I was sitting on the blue bench in the garden being serenaded by the ferocious sniffing of poodles while I looked over the seed list, when suddenly the absurdity of it hit me and I burst out laughing.  (Maniacal barking from across the wall.)  Apparently miniature dogs aren't the only ones with delusions of grandeur.  Are three varieties of chard and four of amaranth really necessary to my health and happiness?  Chinese long beans may be a good idea for a small space in principle, but is a ten-foot tall vine (starting from three feet off the ground) really going to be all that easy to harvest?  Will all of these tall plants really be able to grow in such a small area without shading each other?  Do I really expect this to be the year that squash vine borers and cucumber beetles leave my squash and cucumbers alone? 

Well, really, the answer to all of those questions is, "No."  But what does reality have to do with gardening?  Okay, with results, sure, maybe a lot, but with the hopes and dreams of seed buying?  With winter plans? With the visions of bounty that tide us through the colder months, of vine leaves spilling prolifically over the sides of the garden, of the earthy sweetness of baby carrots, of the scent of basil as you accidentally brush against a leaf, of the gleam of marigolds against the greenery?  Reality has just enough to do with those visions to keep me dreaming big dreams—Rottweiler dreams, wolf dreams.

But it's still just a miniature poodle garden.

Meddlers

or Hastening the Inevitable, Part II

In my last post I wrote about letting go, especially of the care and upkeep of the micro-garden.  To let go was a relief, a pleasure, a grace—and not just any old grace at that, but a lovely, lovely one.  By relinquishing the remaining plants in the micro-garden to their fates, I was simply yielding to the inevitable; rather than trying to elbow autumn out of the way, I was going to curtsy politely to it, extend an ushering hand, and say graciously, "After you."  Death would come decorously to the micro-garden, and all would be peaceful and sweet, perhaps even a little soulful, as I practiced the virtue of non-attachment and allowed nature to pursue its course unimpeded.

But when I wrote of hastening the inevitable, that did not mean that I wanted any help.

Now that all of the flat-blossomed flowers elsewhere in the garden—the yarrow, feverfew, and marguerite daisies so beloved by beneficial insects—have more or less stopped blooming, and the bugbath isn't filled so assiduously, and the pest-eaters have grown sleepy and slow, aphids have moved in to the micro-garden in droves.  Ironically, the plants they are attacking are the perennial bunching onions, which I planted in part to deter pestilential insects, the entire allium family supposedly being anathema to all that goes on more than two legs.  Ha.  The onions are covered.

I know these aphids of old, and nasty little blighters they are.  A few winters ago they obliterated every "Powis Castle" artemisia in the neighborhood.  (Which ought to be a lesson to landscapers not to plant the front and side yards of an entire neighborhood with the same five species, thus creating easily destructible monocultures, but probably won't be.)  They are impervious to frost; the sharp spray of water from a hose that is supposed to wash them away and kill them only allows them to take a little exercise while incidentally making a royal mess of the kitchen window; insecticidal soap just gives them a fresh, clean scent.  Where are all of those praying mantises that were peeking in my windows a few short weeks ago?  Where are the lady beetles, the lacewings, the hoverflies?

Gosh darn it, I like the onions.  I was planning on continuing to  harvest them enthusiastically through at least November.  Aphids, why can't you just munch on the sweet potato vine?  I'm done with that.  Or the amaranth?  Help yourselves—there's plenty for all and sundry.  The basil? marigolds?  Go for it.  But why the onions, you perverse little pests?

Grrrr.

(Do people who have let go usually growl this much?)

Hastening the Inevitable

"Blackie" Sweet Potato Vine

or Letting Things Go

When I lived in the northeastern US, I actually found the early weeks of fall to be a little bit stressful, ironically because they were so beautiful—I was keenly aware of a pressure to enjoy the moment.  Every time I walked past a maple tree, I felt like I ought to be having an intense aesthetic experience:  marveling at every nuance of color on every leaf, soaking up the glory of the entire tree, shuffling my feet joyfully through the fallen foliage, inhaling its musty, damp fragrance and saying "Aahhh" with deeply felt satisfaction.  A lot of fuss is made of leaf-peeping season in that part of the country; interactive websites even guide peepers to areas of peak color.*  If you happen to drive past a breath-taking scene while distracted by work or your grocery shopping or—heaven forbid—the road conditions, you feel like you're letting the side down.

It doesn't help to know that the steely jaws of The Unicloud (as my older nephew refers to it—the vast, gray layer of altostratus that settles in in November and doesn't leave until—well, that doesn't leave)—that steely jaws, I say, are about to clamp down on the horizon any day, and that you won't be seeing much color again until the trillium bloom in spring.  You feel like you'd better get a lot of appreciating done before it's too late.

So I was always relieved when the leaves would get just past peak color.  I no longer felt like I should be having a transcendent, life-changing experience every time I saw a tree but could go back to enjoying things in the regular way.  You could let expectation go, and allow autumn to run its course (as if it wouldn't have in any case) while you rode its rhythms comfortably.

This past week has been a more than ordinarily intense CFS week.  I caught a minor cold, which in turn caused a serious flare-up.  I've had to let a number of things go, and one of them has been the care and upkeep of the micro-garden.  That little 2' x 4' garden has given me sautéeing greens, scallions, and herbs—an average of two cups a day—for several months now, in exchange for a few minutes a day of watering, dead-heading, pest-chasing, and the like.  We're closing in hard on frost, so the season will be ending soon anyway; I've just ended up hastening the process a little bit.

Purple basil in bloom at long last

Now the "Blackie" sweet potato vine, which would normally be, um, blackish, is drying up enough to enjoy its own private little autumn.  I'm no longer dead-heading the marigolds, and perhaps they'll have a chance to set seed before frost.  The basil has finally been allowed to flower, and it is blooming happily away.  The whole micro-garden, small as it is, has an unkempt, "don't you dare photograph me like this," going-downhill-fast messiness to it.  It's not particularly attractive, but frankly, it's kind of a relief.  While many of the things CFS forces me to let go of frustrate me or grieve me, it is nice to look forward to a few months of not watering vegetables.

One of my friends in Vermont at some point every autumn declares momentously, "I'm not dead-heading my container annuals any more."  She always sounds a little defiant about it, a little defensive about letting flowers that are still going strong run to seed; but she always sounds a little gleeful, too, about taking the plunge into...inaction.

Often, having to let things go is a burden.

But sometimes it's a lovely, lovely grace.


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* Thanks to P.H. for bringing this one to my attention!

The Main Thing

or Going to Seed

When I was growing up, my Mom had a huge vegetable garden—the kind that fed our family of five through even the winter months with all the zucchini and green beans and dill pickles and zucchini (and more zucchini) she had preserved.  I loved helping Mom in the spring—counting down the days until the last frost, marking out the rows, laying out the yardstick to plant the seeds the proper distance apart.  I loved the shape and feel of the seeds—the smooth, shiny beans, the faded green of peas, the gritty nothingness of carrots.  I loved misting the newly sown earth with the sprinkler "just until it puddled."  And I especially loved running in from outside shouting, "Mommy, Mommy, the beans [peas/carrots/whatever] are up!"  (N.B.: But I must confess to never being that excited about zucchini.)  (And, as long as we're confessing things, I was never all that excited to help with weeding, watering, or harvesting as the summer wore on.)

I would love to have that sort of garden again, but with CFS, it's just not realistic.  The rototilling, spading, hoeing, weeding, watering, and so on are all labor-intensive, but the real problem is that so much of the work in a vegetable garden needs to be done now.  While I often have energy to do some physical labor, I just can't count on it to show up on any given day.

Burgundy Amaranth Seedlings

The thing is, I'm not always sure whether I like vegetable gardening because I actually want fresh vegetables, or whether I just enjoy watching seeds sprout.  When I reread my garden journals for the last several years, the heftiest entries always come right after planting time, and they almost all say, "The [x] is up!!!" with multiple exclamation points and a lot of excited babbling but no further information.  As the plants actually grow, the entries start to peter out; and I have no (no—I defy you to count them, because there aren't any) entries about harvesting.

The sprouting of a seed has never lost its magic for me— the sense of excitement that "Oh, my gosh, it worked again;"  the awe that something as minuscule as a carrot seed can one day produce an actual carrot, with a root and leaves and everything.  (Yes, I know that it's really just genetic programming in action, but the transformation is no less astonishing for that.)   Those of us with chronic illnesses are often looking for a little magic in our lives, a mental buoyancy to offset the physical lead weights, and for me watching seeds come up is one thing that provides that lift.

Dad's GMMCS's Conquer Again

Enter one of my favorite adaptations: the micro-garden.  Horticultural therapist Hank Bruce and his wife Tomi Jill Folk at Hunger Grow Away introduced me to this idea from CelluGro.  It's a 2' x 4' garden, divided into about 30 individual cells, which is designed for micro-intensive growing methods.  My Dad, using what we in the family refer to as his "Gloriously Magnificent and Marvelously Creative Smarts" or GMMCS's (though I believe he eventually resorted to using tools and lumber as well), built a beautiful, sturdy base for it, so that it stands at waist height.  Using only light hand tools and spending ten minutes a day (if that), I am able to plant and harvest for at least three seasons a year.  The micro-garden doesn't produce a huge amount of food for me (though Hank and Tomi's gardens are incredibly productive)—I get probably two generous or three side-dish servings of vegetables a week.  But it gives me lots and lots of opportunities to watch seeds sprout, and apparently that's the main thing.

The main thing.   I've had to make many adaptations to living with CFS over the years, and I'm just now beginning to learn that the ones that work, that satisfy me as deeply as the original, are the ones where I've figured out the main thing;  where I've pinpointed that little kernel at the heart of something that makes my heart sing, and found a way to nourish it and make it grow. Finding that kernel is another facet of the need to prioritize activities based on your deepest values, which I've come to see as one of the blessings of chronic illness.

The Micro-Garden

I do miss many of the other aspects of vegetable gardening.  I've always enjoyed turning the earth, and the sight of turning forks at garden centers is still a happy-making (if pointless) thing, but the aim of doing so has always really been to see seeds sprout.   (And boy, do I feel like a fool now that I know how little work I can do to enjoy that particular pleasure.)  The other things are comparatively minor losses; they may cost me a pang, but they don't impoverish me.   The essence is still mine to enjoy—the glory of seeing a forest of seedlings, knowing that hope has been borne out and that the magic did, in fact, work again.

Because that's the main thing.

Mi jardín es su jardín

or
Share and Share Alike

I expected gardening to be about plants; I didn’t expect it to be quite so much about morality.  Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice describes morality as the struggle to balance the needs of the self against the needs of others.  A variant on the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself, it brings the occasional (frequent?) tension between the two into the foreground in a way that I find rather a relief.

I had originally planned my garden as something approaching a potager, with native fruiting bushes and Mediterranean herbs in a semi-formal design, and vegetables grown in containers.  I live in a new, urban infill development which, when I moved in, was still surrounded by vacant, weed-infested land.  I was the first of my neighbors to plant anything, and that first summer, every leaf-roller, aphid, potato leaf-hopper, flea beetle, and cabbage moth in the neighborhood descended gleefully on my fledgling garden.  My infant trees were leafless by July, every tomato had withered with curly top virus, and the vegetable greens were all eaten away to the midrib.  Only the native plants and herbs survived.  (You can pretty well bet that any plant native to New Mexico does not need a lot of coddling.)

I read more widely about organic forms of pest control and, at my sister’s recommendation, came across Sally Jean Cunningham’s Great Garden Companions.  Cunningham suggests creating a welcoming environment for garden beneficials by including habitat plants, introducing water at ground and (human) waist height, and interspersing nectar-rich flowering plants among your edibles.  This attracts beneficial insects (and other wildlife like toads and birds), which will then keep the pests down to manageable proportions.

Since then, I've tried to apply Cunningham's principles, which are partly about attracting, but essentially about sharing.  The bird and bugbaths are always filled.  The portion of my garden given to flowers and habitat plants has grown, and the part devoted to edibles has shrunk.  I grow vegetables primarily in a 2’ x 4’ “micro-garden” (the main planting area is about 15' x 15'), and while I still have fruit bushes and herbs, the rest of the garden is “beneficial” planting.  The air hums with honeybees and bumblebees.  Mr. Jackson overwinters in my potted mint.  Finches maintain a running commentary from the tree branches.  And I have seen hoverflies, orb weavers, lace wings, praying mantises, lady beetles, and parasitic wasps enjoying the flowers, the water, and the aphids.  The pests are minor irritations rather than plagues (though the leaf hoppers still get to my tomatoes every year, confound them!).

In “sacrificing” growing space to foster an ecosystem, the ecosystem has given back to me.  In giving more of my garden over to nurturing the urban wildlife, the part I have reserved for myself has flourished.  My harvests have increased (and the headaches have decreased) as I have learned to balance my own needs against the needs of the creatures in my environment—even the pests among them.

Is this morality?  Enlightened self-interest?  Good karma?

Or is it just the way things are supposed to work?