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Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
I’m a gardener on vacation – which is a special opportunity to reconnect with dirt, buds and beauty. And weeds. I used my push-pull loop hoe along the driveway bed (80 feet) to clear several years’ of embedded weeds. This is an awesome hoe that makes weeding, if not fun, at least productive.
This year’s hydrangeas look so, so blue. Roses in the Betty Garden spill profusely over the stone wall. Family and friends gathered for our almost annual July 3rd party, celebrating summer and fireworks on Humarock Beach. Scituate police enforced a bonfire ban this year but mobs of people and fireworks attended the traditional fest nevertheless.
Our house is literally abuzz outside with painting preparation. We recently reshingled and re-roofed, the next step will conclude a major exterior renovation long in the works. The carpenter who was prepping the trim discovered (how fitting) carpenter ants on the back wing of the house. Bummer. We’re waiting for the exterminator.
End of vacation – tomorrow we’ll see Cirque du Soleil (“Totem”) perform at Boston Marine Terminal.
Posted in Inspiration, Mind, Summer | 
Tags: astilbe, bee balm, Betty Garden, crocosmia, daphne, daylilies, echinacea, evening primrose, exterminator, gardening, gayfeather, hoe, honeysuckle, Humarock Beach, humming birds, hydrangea, liatris spicata, oenothera, perennials, summer, summer blooms, sundrop | 
10 Comments »
Garden Mind
Not this blue, really?
I got the White Flower Farm Spring 2012 catalog this week. It’s a page turner as usual, with saturated floral images of garden gems in perfect flower – where the reds are redder, the greens greener and the true blues truer than life. One day, there might be a garden catalog with wilted, spent flowers going to seed. Unlikely.
My garden overwinters – stark and dreary, especially without frost or snow cover. I hope it gets cold enough to kill the bad bugs; I hope there is enough snow cover, eventually, to supplement the good stuff (my brother told me snow is the poor man’s fertilizer). But, I digress. What is really at work is stillness. No growth, just the remnants of the garden being earth bound — skeletal, essential, and creating reserves for the proper blooming time.
What I have is garden mind.
Our garden (aka, “R” Garden) sits, while last year’s beauty decomposes into next year’s growth. I see the garden’s shape from our upstairs window – the straight and curvy lines, the beds, the flow from one section to another joined by lawn, paths, steps, and bridges. I like this flow and work to refine it in my mind: firm up that edge with a low border, trim that shrub to be a better neighbor, hack that pachysandra, reset those stones, et cetera. In a process of refinement, endless tweaking shapes the garden and morphs its profile. Its essential personality, established long ago, matures incrementally, bringing charm, whimsy and nature into harmony improved by age.
Of course it’s a living thing and changes occur, apparently spontaneously, as well. Like the clumping bamboo that finally, finally decided to become the screen I imagined ten years ago. Who knew it would take this long? I suppose that’s where annuals come in. They provide the instant gratification that delights the eye and other senses. Not much mystery but adornment galore and great expectations easily met. We enjoy the splash, the visual spice, and the abundance of blooms overlaying the perennial foundation.
The garden mind dwells on ideas and suffers no toil. No: weeding, spraying, mowing, aching backs or biting no-see-ums. It sees golden possibilities; it harbors hopes and plans — flights of fancy that could occupy the whole of next season. It’s a great place to visit.
Posted in Art, Inspiration, Mind | Tags: bamboo, blue flowers, Chris Waddell, design, garden, garden catalogs, Garden Mind, gardener, gardening, going with the flow, granddaughter, lawn and garden, Maisy, nitrogen, outdoor space, pachysandra, perennials, Reflection, soil, weekend gardener, whimsy, White Flower Farm, winter days | 5 Comments »
What Is Your Garden Worth?
Away from my garden, retreating in Martha’s Vineyard, MA, I came upon this thought.
A gardener uses all his senses — sight, smell, sound, touch, taste — and works within all dimensions — length, width, height/depth, density, time. Not to mention energy and soul. These variables intersect (interact) in observable and intangible ways to impose order on chaos, form on nature, compromise over competition, justice over power, knowledge over ignorance, passion over apathy, enrichment over paucity, artfulness over randomness, delight over despondency. Both solace and community draw gardeners to others’ gardens and welcome visitors to their own. Commoners and commodores exchange successes and failures; all are equal in the garden.
Gardening and the Economy
So what of “agriculture”? It is not a topic for aesthetic gardeners but for economists. It extracts value from the earth akin to mining, drilling, fishing and forestry. We mortgage our fields against their calculated yield. Gardening, on the other hand, has no measurable value. Agronomy supports our priceless folly.
Shall we leave the economy behind? The ideal of self-sufficiency promises an escape from market tyranny but we are so dependent on our interconnected systems that only delusions or extreme dedication — emphasis on cult-like extremism — could possibly break the grip we’re in. At best, we can disengage at the margins. Very few can afford the luxury of being truly “off the grid.” This is not pessimism but realism. Face it: we want the things we want. The real challenge is properly accounting for them. The market lobs unwanted costs into the future for some other accountant to deal with.
Cost/Benefit Accounting
Recognizing true costs is a starting point. Now, let’s measure value. One way economists measure it is by the cost/benefit ratio (smaller numerator or larger denominator is better). The cost/benefit of agriculture is labor plus materials over market value of the harvest. That leads us to calculate the cost/benefit for gardening as the labor and materials divided by an unfathomable benefit — for there is no market value of a garden, especially where there is no harvest. Now the problem is conventional economics.
This is not a unique dilemma. For example, we have no market value for life itself and we cringe when actuaries propose one. We have no market value either for dancing, blowing bubbles, reading to a child, laughing or mourning.
Toward a New Equation
Assuming there are two roles engaged in the valuation: gardener and observer; we can determine the value of a garden, and gardening, thus.
Assign values to these inputs:
- cost1: the materials the gardener purchases
- cost2: labor the gardener purchases and/or begrudges (annoyance costs)
- benefit1: how much it makes observer want to be in it, in Attraction Units (Au)
- benefit2: how much it makes gardener want to do it, in Au
You might assume the value is higher for the observer/visitor because his is all Attraction Units and no costs (other than opportunity costs). Forget this math — the value of benefit2 can far exceed total costs and the gardener is also an observer of her own garden (benefit1). So, the most valuable context is being both an observer and a gardener and the proper math is: (cost1 + cost2) – (benefit1 + benefit2 )/(benefit1 + benefit2). This can be reduced to cost per Au, which in the ideal, approaches zero. Or something like that… (Deej: how do I keep the numerator from going negative?)
I could muddy the waters with daffodils (tulips, roses, peas, etc.) grown for sale. Back to the cash crop equation. And what of an arboretum vs. a nursery. How much is a 300 year old conifer worth — the value of its lumber? Some things the market cannot know. We must choose how we value things.
I am sitting in the sunny front room of our retreat house. The circling shadow of a bird in flight crosses the table in front of me. My garden grows without me.
Posted in Mind | Tags: agriculture, gardener, gardener traits, gardening, lawn and garden, measurable value, Reflection | 5 Comments »
Herbs – the spice of life
One outcome of our scant daylight is we don’t grow food, or anything else that requires full sun. Which is OK by me because my short stint as a food grower was neither a personal or agricultural success.
Consumers are people, too
I support the concept of growing your own nutrition, but I do not support the worry: fungus, beetles, blight, cut worms, watering, fertilizing, weeding, thinning, fencing and harvesting gallons of one thing (I hope you like squash, dear). And then, it starts again next year. From scratch.
Do I lack intestinal fortitude? No, I just can’t tolerate the suspense of bringing in a crop. I gladly shop for local produce. Just leave me to my perennials.
Best of both worlds
I designed my garden for other senses – mind, eye, nose
My one exception: herbs and annuals in pots. I hate buying fresh mint at the supermarket. Ditto parsley, sage rosemary and thyme, invariably expensive or trucked from Mexico. In pots, these herbs unfailingly just grow, and without fuss — my kind of crop! They satisfy my gardening principles while providing a culinary and aesthetic je ne sais quoi.
pots-with-chair
potted-herbs-annuals
pots-with-chair2
pots-sweetpotatoBesides the flavor-your-food value of herbs, groupings of pots in different shapes and sizes partition and highlight an area, add graceful greenery / vivid accents, and blend practical herbs with vibrant annuals (my fave – nasturtium with lobelia). Pots of varying sizes, habitats and materials punctuate my external rooms.
I have a few herbal and non-herbal relics that winter over — bits of this and that: liatris spicata, lamium “White Nancy”, dicentra, ferns. Even my potted oregano returns each year and mint, running freely in the perennial beds, is rampant. While they do not survive Zone 6A winter, I’ve harvested parsley in late December and rosemary in January. First frost does in the basil – it’s known as a tender perennial.
Terracotta and Not
I use both clay pots and plastic pots. Classic terracotta (literally baked earth, unglazed clay) is porous, warm and weathered. Saucers under the clay pots extend the watering effect. Plastic scores lower for aesthetics but meets the low maintenance requirement because it conserves moisture much better than terracotta. That means less stress on the plants and less work for me.
I’ve taken to the heavily glazed, gigantic earthenware pots from Vietnam. They conserve water, do not crack like terracotta and make a bold statement that anchors a grouping of smaller pots. Filled with soil, they stay put!
Global watering
For pots that need chronic watering, I discovered a remedy that works pretty well — the glass watering globes that you fill with water and stick into the potted soil.
Food for Thought
While my aesthetic vision continues to conjure up garden designs, I find joy in snipping fresh rosemary, basil, and perennial mint into my cuisine, or pinching a spicy nasturtium flower to decorate dinner. It’s another way I delight my soul.
Posted in Design, Mind | Tags: basil, dappled shade, design, earthenware, gardening, Herbs, joy, lamium, lobelia, low maintenance, nasturtium, oregano, outdoor space, outdoor spaces, parsley, perennials, sage, spicata, terracotta, thyme, watering | 9 Comments »
Dirt – A Love Story
It’s everywhere! We scrub it off our hands, our shoes, our personae. We think: clean = good, dirt = bad. Even gardeners succumb to dirt-riddance — we clean our gardens in the spring! But I’m telling you — dirt is your friend, not your enemy.
Get Smart – Eat Dirt!
Dirt harbors essential micro-organisms (like bacteria and fungi). “Yikes!“, you shriek, “That’s a good thing?“. Not just good, essential.
Soil scientists say each gram of soil (less than a teaspoonful) contains over 1,000,000,000 microbes (1 billion!), hosting over 10,000 different species. Here’s what some of these buggers do:
- grow our crops,
- convert wastes into compost,
- deliver vitamins to plants (in the “rhizosphere“),
- kill insects,
- consume toxic waste (like oil spills), and
- create soil in the first place
When soil is first made, for example after a volcano, some nutrients are missing, including nitrogen and carbon. Therefore, the first organisms to colonize the soil are generally nitrogen fixers and photosynthesizers that fix carbon. [DLC-ME]
Soil bacteria researchers, Dorothy Matthews and Susan Jenks, with dirt martinis
Furthermore, a study conducted by researchers Dorothy Matthews and Susan Jenks at The Sage Colleges (Troy, NY) suggests that soil-borne germs play a role in reducing anxiety and enhancing learning. The study attracted lots of coverage, like “Can Bacteria Make You Smarter?” (Science Daily) and on Radio Netherlands “The Dirt Show“. Here the two researchers pose with dirt martinis (yuk!).
Anyway, get smart — eat dirt!
Dirt – Accidentally in Love
I began my wholesome relationship with dirt by accident, often the case with true love. I had planned a border along the front driveway and set to work removing a strip of sod about 2 feet wide and 80 feet long. I had loam delivered to create the bed where the sod once was. For expediency, I dumped the torn up sod in a low spot in the backyard; it formed a chunky mound on which I later dumped fall leaves and some additional loam on top to hold it all in place.
I finished the driveway border project, planting daylilies, astilbe and daffodils topped with a layer of bark mulch. Over the next couple of years I expanded the experimental mound in the backyard, adding a curved path with pea stone gravel, throwing in Bleeding Hearts, Oriental lilies, astilbe, a leftover Alberta Spruce, a red twig dogwood, Japanese dwarf spirea, ferns (etc.). What I found was — it didn’t matter what I planted there. Everything flourished. I had accidentally created a rich, organic home for my woodland plants! Dirt won me over and I’m accidentally in love!
I’ve since enlarged the accidental garden with yard clippings, chopped oak leaves, more loam, and barn “soil” from a nearby stable. In the expanded section, I added shrub roses, Columbine, an ornamental Japanese maple, American ginger, epimedium, sweet pepperbush (Clethra) and a stone wall. We’re happy together.
The Joy of Dirt
Back to the driveway border. It perennially struggles — its loamy bed dries out in summer because it doesn’t have enough organic material to store water for long. The day lilies come up OK, but they haven’t prospered; ditto the daffodils. Some day, I will re-visit this project and give it the tender lovin’ dirt it needs.
I’ve started another mound in the front yard: lawn clippings, chopped leaves, compost from the Marshfield transfer station (aka, the dump), and a decorative covering of bark mulch. It’s January and the mound is slumbering beneath a foot of snow, while microorganisms and worms are busily feeding and creating new dirt. Oh, joy!
Now it’s your turn — Share the dirt!
Posted in Health, Inspiration, Mind, Soil | Tags: astilbe, Bacteria, Bleeding Heart, carbon, Clethra, Columbine, compost, dogwood, Dorothy Matthews, dwarf maple, epimedium, garden, garden projects, gardener, gardening, ginger, joy, kitchen waste, manure, Marshfield, micro organisms, microbes, mound, nitrogen, nitrogen fixers, organic matter, pepperbush, Sage Colleges, sod, soil bacteria, soil scientists, spirea, Susan Jenks, toxic waste | 4 Comments »
Hyperfocusing, or My Aching Back
Gardening "In the Zone". Hyperfocus is great for accomplishing tasks while displacing the cares of the world. I end up with pride of accomplishment and a self-induced worry-free reverie. But when the sun sets and I exit "the zone" I suddenly notice my aching back. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Health, Mind | Tags: ADHD, art, garden projects, gardening, going with the flow, household harmony, hydrate, hyperactivity, hyperfocus, landscape designer, reverie, weekend gardener | 1 Comment »