Kinship

or Window Dressing

Western sand cherry (Prunus besseyi)

I.

Simon was not happy, and as the boxes, furniture, and odd lots gradually disappeared into the back of the moving van, his unhappiness grew.  Change can be a worrisome thing at the best of times.  When you're blind, and elderly, and the change is not one of your choosing, and you've been shunted aside into the back yard for the duration, out of harm's way but also away from the reassuring presence of your family, worry can explode into panic.  Simon responded in the only way he could, really.  He barked.  And barked, and barked—piercing cries of desperation.  His miniature poodle soprano would have done even a wolf proud as he gave voice to the bone-deep fear of his species, the fear of abandonment and aloneness.  Poodle, pointer, or pit bull—all of those shapes and sizes are just different ways of housing the need to belong.

(The last I saw of Simon, he was sitting in the cab of the van in the arms of one of my former neighbors, eagerly sniffing the air through the open window as they all drove out of view.)

Rio Grande cottonwood (Populus wislizeni)

II.
For me, at least, blogging is basically a way of dressing up the word "Wow" for company.  Whether a tiny event in the garden or a magnificent scene in the wild, something awe-inspiring or beautiful or intriguing or comical, that moment of Wow is what prompts me to pick up camera, paper and pencil, and to look for ways to share the essence of that moment with you all.  I may have published 161 posts so far, but at heart they're almost all the same—I've just written the same post in 161 different ways.

Gaura lindheimeri

III.
It's been a while since I've waxed rhapsodic about stems.  As winter moseys along, though, and the flowers stay away, stems and branches and trunks grab your attention—and then you remember just how fascinating they are.

French marigold (Tagetes patula)

I was looking up some information on stems the other day, as one does, and was astonished to find out how alike their innards are, no matter what their surface differences, at least across large classes of plants.  The striping along a sand cherry branch, the rugged crags of an old cottonwood, the lithe wands of gaura, the nubs on marigold stems in their tidy rows, and the Kool-aid purple of rue in winter—all that variety is just so much window dressing for one essential process:  moving nutrients around.  The outer portions of the stem or trunk protect the interior, vascular tissue—the xylem, which carries water and minerals upward from the soil, and the phloem, which carries carbohydrates downward from the leaves.  The outsides of plants may have scads of different strategies to cope with their environment, to prevent dessication and protect from disease, but at heart they're all remarkably akin.  The same processes are at work in the 80-foot tree as in the tender annual.

Rue (Ruta graveolens)

All to say—wow.
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Thanks, everyone, for the kind and supportive comments and e-mails over the last couple of weeks!

Echoes

or Alternate Realities

The story of Echo has always struck me as a sad one.  She made her mistakes, and plenty of them:  she distracted Juno while Jupiter amused himself elsewhere and then got found out; she fell for Narcissus because of his looks, despite his reputation for being conceited and heartless; then, instead of going for a brisk walk and getting over him, she pined away with unrequited love.  Really, she seems not to have done much but make mistakes.

What a price to pay, though, to be cursed by Juno only to repeat what others say.  Echo lost her own voice and the power of originality; she turned into a shadow of a person.  She may have learned to be resourceful, finding ways to lure Narcissus to her with his own words, and kind, giving him himself in his self-absorbed grief.  And yet she faded away to nothing, to an aura of sorrow and regret, and the endless awareness of what once-was/might-have-been.

I've been thinking about echoes lately in the garden, looking at seed pods and dried leaves and stems.  The marigolds have turned into scarecrow versions of their glowing, summer selves, and the sense of once-was resonates from every papery husk and bract.

And yet, they haven't faded away to nothing, not by a long shot.  Those husks have the power to call out in their own voices, a different power than they had when they were green.

I have a sudden craving for tamales.

The petals sing their own tune in the mild winter sun.

Each one has its own inimitable shape.

I tend to think of plants' flowering form as their "real" one.  I'll wonder what a seedling will become and forget that it already is a marigold, just not one in bloom; I'll look at a faded blossom and think, "That used to be a marigold," forgetting the seeds that lie within, turning the blossom into dozens of marigolds, even if they're not marigolds in flower.  Marigolds in seed don't resound with once-was or might-have-been, but with what-will-be (Lord willin' and the crick don't rise).  They have the power of originality like nothing else.

In these enlightened times we're less likely to think of echoes as the voice of a hubristic nymph who irritated the wrong people, than as sound waves reflecting off a hard surface—nothing faded about them, just the original sounds heard another way.  A marigold's genetic identity reflects differently off the warmth of summer than it does off the hard surface of winter.

And it's hard to find anything sad about it.

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.

That Color Is So U!

or On Second Thought, It Isn't U at All

When I met one of my dearest friends of all time at a summer science program many years ago, she presented me with this card:

Now, I don't remember feeling strongly about orange one way or the other at the time, but apparently, to some 16-year-olds, the fact of orange can be way beyond the pale (so to speak).  In a life where not much of consequence has happened—or perhaps where you don't yet have enough context to embrace the events of consequence—orange can seem important, and if you don't like it, you might feel compelled to take steps against it.

I haven't questioned this particular friend lately about the role of orangeness in her life (note to self:   call WB), but I'd be willing to bet that her attitude these days is more live-and-let-live.   She always did have a good head on her shoulders as well as a boundless capacity to see the humor in things, and if she does still have a problem with orangehood in general, she probably expresses it with her tongue even more firmly in cheek now than she did then.   Any confusion of taste and principle will be tempered with a strong dose of irony and a twinkle.

I've been thinking more since my last post about snobbery, reverse snobbery, social class, the teaching of Classical music history, and marigolds.   All this was prompted by a garden essay I read not too long ago that made a snarky comment on growers of orange marigolds.  The comment (as I remembered it) radiated class consciousness in ways that surprised me from this author, who has always struck me as being a pretty independent thinker.  So I returned to her work this week—an essay called "Blues," by Eleanor Perényi, anthologized in Green Thoughts:   A Writer in the Garden—and was pleased to discover that she had been rolling her eyes at others who considered orange marigolds to be vulgar, or, as she put it, "non-U."  I hadn't come across the "U/non-U" distinction before, but it resonated loudly; even though the parameters may have changed since the 1950's when the terms were coined, we still have plenty of ways of distinguishing between upper class (U) and middle class (non-U) values today.

Perényi was writing in the 1970's, so it's possible that orange marigolds have become U again in the last 40 years and I missed it; but trust me, if they have, something else has taken their place as being too, too tacky.   I think the real question, however, is not so much "Are they U?" or the reverse-snob version, "Aren't they wonderfully non-U?"   Instead, the real question is, "Are they you?"   Us and Them almost always have some hint of class about them, but You and Not You?   I think that's a gap that can be bridged.

This brings us back to the teaching of music history.   (Really.)   What an education in any of the arts does best, I think, is to teach people how to disagree.   So few objective standards exist that we are always coming up against the "barrier" of taste.   Crusading to have the works we don't like eliminated (The Society for the Prevention of Bruckner Symphonies, perhaps) isn't really an option (in a free society, at least); whitewashing all differences in a way that pretends to be respectful ("Everyone's entitled to their taste") but that really refuses to engage other opinions, doesn't satisfy.   The civilized arts—among which are music and pleasure gardening—are in part about civilized behavior, including the ability to explore taste and distaste with those who disagree.

So I won't reverse-snob our orange marigolds today.   Instead I'll point out what I love about them:   the delicately etched curves of the petals, like the whorls inside a seashell;

their luxuriant, flamenco skirt ruffles;

the way they stand their ground in the brightest sunshine instead of fading meekly before it, and sing out with full voice from shade; the vibrancy of a color as pure and unshadowed as stained glass, but with the softness of skin;

the scrollwork libraries of the buds, where the petals are not interleaved but rolled; the way they unfurl individually, so that each petal looks almost like a rosebud.

Those are some of the reasons that orange marigolds are me.

Are they also you?

I Got No Class

or  Us and Them

Until the last few years, I spent my professional life in the academic side of the arts, where the difference between "high" and "low" art is traditionally quite important for reasons that have a great deal to do with status and power and very little to do with honesty or generosity.   As a music historian at a well-endowed private liberal arts college in New England (which in American parlance shouts "Snobbery!" from the rooftops, even though the reality was much more down to earth), I often felt as if what I was primarily doing was teaching the music of previous oppressor classes to the future oppressor class in the hopes that at least they would be able to oppress people more tastefully.   (No one wants to be oppressed by someone who says "Mose-art"; it's almost as bad as being oppressed by someone who says "nucular"...)

Every field, perhaps every human endeavor, has its own set of signs that divide the in-crowd from the outsiders, those in the know from the Philistines.   In music the signs that you're an outsider might include tapping your feet to a symphony, enjoying Pachelbel's Canon, or calling a piano piece a "song."   These actions do no harm to anyone, but they distinguish between Us and Them, always elevating Us and diminishing Them.

It's a lot like high school.

What we call Classical music has always been the realm of the ruling classes, and, no matter what its genuine beauties and virtues, it retains that taint today.   Gardening, like Classical music, has its roots (ahaha) in the world of the European aristocracy.   Few are the gardening books that do not refer at least once to Sissinghurst and Villandry, possibly Chatsworth and Versailles, with a tip of the (top) hat somewhere along the line to Capability Brown, 18th-century landscape architect to the British gentry.   Most capital-G Gardeners, somewhere in their heart of hearts, have indelibly stamped as a Platonic ideal toward which they strive, The British Garden à la Capability Brown.   (A tip of my own hat, if I had one, to novelist Terry Pratchett for inventing Bloody Stupid Johnson, Brown's incompetent alter ego.)   Lower-case gardeners have their own snobberies, and the distinctions grow ever finer—those who preach The Organic Way vs. those who swear by Roundup; those who grow only native plants vs. those who must have the latest cultivars; those who adore hothouse annuals vs. those who decry them; those who lawn vs. those who ground-cover; those who ground-cover vs. those who gravel; those who like garden gnomes and those who Do Not.

It's not about gardening;  it's about Us and Them, even if we have to go out of our way to create a Them.   Gardening is (yet another) place where we stake our claim for self-hood; it is all too often a tool that allows us to elevate ourselves by diminishing others (who are, for the record, doing us no harm).

I sometimes wish that Edvard Munch, in addition to The Scream, had given us a painting called The Sneer.

A friend who had been employed for years in a more than ordinarily cutthroat music department once asked the dean of his institution why it was so vicious and judgmental.   The dean replied, "Because the stakes are so low."

Because the stakes are so low.   Yes.   I do believe that in some aspects of gardening the stakes are quite large.   Some methods foster biodiversity while others destroy it;  some build the soil while others strip it; some hoard water while others waste it.   But when it comes to the placement (or not) of garden gnomes, I hope we can all agree that the long-term consequences are few.   I recently read a garden essay—by an author whose work I enjoy—that sneered at people who grow orange marigolds.   Let's just pause for a moment to let that sink in and think about the stakes here...

Full disclosure:   I grow orange marigolds.  I love orange marigolds.   Apparently, people like me are a type—and rather a vulgar, déclassé type at that.   I'm not actually offended at the discovery, and please don't feel the need to reassure me that I'm still an OK Person.   The comment actually made me laugh out loud.   It also made me think about the degree to which our snobberies extend, and I'm afraid it set the reverse snob in me into high gear.   So the next couple of blog posts will celebrate the vulgar plants, the gauche plants—the ones that laugh a little too loudly, that wear a little too much makeup, that talk with a little too much twang, that belch a little too often in public.   (Well, not that.   That would be rude.)   And why not?

The stakes, after all, are so low.