GroHappy

A turtle in need . . .snap!

Last Sunday I turned out of my driveway and headed for Ann’s Place for some early morning penance in the form of weeding. While the lawn is beginning to come in nicely albeit slowly, the weed population continues to grow quickly and invasively like all weeds do. As I reached the bottom of the hill and made a left turn, I noticed out of the corner of my eye an orb-like shape on the road that was light on one side with markings and dark on the other. Like a bowl with a lid.

It didn’t register with me immediately but a few hundred yards down the road I thought it could perhaps be a turtle that was upside down in its shell. I kept driving for another 30 seconds or so before my conscious got the better of me and I turned around. Pulling up on the side of the street opposite the object, I realized that my initial hunch was correct. It was a turtle; a big one about a foot long and eight inches wide. Probably a snapper.

It has somehow been flipped over on its back and was just inside the white line marking the edge of the road. Perhaps it had tried to climb or down the embankment that was next to it. It lay helpless with a pool of urine draining away from it. I walked across the street to see how it was doing.

It was still alive.

I took it across the street and placed it gently on its bottom shell. After a few moments it looked and stared at me but was unwilling to extend either its head or legs outside its protective shell that rested on some brown and gray leaf mold. I waited for a few minutes to see if it would come out of its shell but it would not budge. It was time for me to leave and I hoped the turtle would soon saunter away.

While I was weeding, I though about the turtle and all the other creatures we inadvertently come across every day. I put a deer fence around the back yard area of Ann’s Place to ensure that the deer would not decimate the fledgling trees and shrubs as they had in the prior year. But it would not stop the bunnies, frogs, possums and other local residents from enjoying the sanctuary that we have created.

As I headed home I hoped that the turtle had recovered from its topsy-turvy experience. I slowly pulled my car back into the space it had stopped at a few hours ago. No sign of the turtle. A good thing.

The Day of the Dandelion

With more rain in the last two weeks than we had received in the prior three months, the weeds have decided to make a mad dash to maturity. Small and stunted garlic mustards shot up overnight. Dandelions that had been hugging the soil decide to flower and then seed in a matter of days. And don’t even get me started on the thousands of maple trees that are now growing on my lawn.

So this year, weeding has taken on more urgency as I hope to curtail next year’s crop by removing this year’s crop of flowers and seeds. For me it seems that the dominant weeds rotate over the years. In the beginning, the focus was on poison ivy where some vines were like adjunct limbs on my neighboring ashes and maples. But after cutting and pulling and spraying, I was able to rid most of the property of this undesirable ivy.

Next on the list was garlic mustard. On Long Island where I used to live, I never saw garlic mustard and when I encountered it here I thought it quite pretty, particularly in the first year where its large heart-shaped leaves provided a nice ground cover in my more barren areas. Not realizing it was a biennial, I did not know that its year-two form of a spike with small white flowers would multiply ad infinitum. So I have spent the last decade coming to an acceptable coexistence with this European native.

The same has been true of plantain, chickweed, dock, and other opportunistic refugees that have invaded my space. And the dandelion has maintained a balance not requiring me to care too much about its place in my gardens. Until now.

For the first 10 years of so, dandelions were the food stuffs of our rabbit collection so when food was collected, a bit of simple weeding and feeding worked hand in hand. After our rabbits died, the dandelion population held constant appearing to know that if they popped up, they would be dug up and fed to the bunnies.

This year, however, they have emerged from the lawn and gardens with unrestrained vigor and brazenness. They are in the blueberry and strawberry patches. They cover the lawn. They grow in cracks in the stone walls, They grow in the gravel parking space. In short, they are everywhere.

Now when you weed these bad boys, you have to focus on the flowers that have been pollinated and about to or have already gone to seed.  Each flower can have nearly 200 seeds so you can see what you are up against. So over the course of a week, I am scurrying like a bee from one about-to-disperse-seeds dandelion to another. I sometimes think that they are conspiring against me practicing floral camouflage. As I sweep through a patch of flowers I could swear that some decide to seed and scatter the minute I am no longer facing them. Are they somehow communicating with each other?

It may not be so far-fetched as an article in the May 2012 issue of Scientific American suggests. Plants apparently send biochemical markers out when threatened. Could plants that are being pulled out by their roots be sending smelling screams to their peers? I don’t know but I’m just going to keep pulling.

Eating on the wild side

As rains and warming temperatures bring new growth to wanted plants, our unwanted plants “weeds” seem to always outpace those more desirable cultivars. But one must remember that a weed is just a plant that you don’t want in a particular place. So with that in mind I thought about changing a few heads at my recent horticultural therapy class at Ann’s Place about the “weeds” that might be all too common to their yards and gardens. And even quite yummy.

With all the talk of eating veg raised nearby I thought the most local way that you could eat would be from your own back yard. Time to forage. This was an easy class to prep for as my yard is replete with weeds as I use no herbicides or fertilizers on my lawn or ground-cover areas. So when I went out for a quick search for eatable plants. They were easy to find. I found burdock, chives, clover, dandelion, garlic mustard, mints, plantain, Queen Anne's lace, sheep sorrel, sweet woodruff, violets, wild garlic, wild onion and wild thyme.

At this time of year the dominant weeds are garlic mustard and dandelion, though red and white clovers are beginning to make a good push through the Earth to cover the bald spots on my lawn. And I have to admit that I picked some sweet woodruff a week ago, dried it and then mixed it with strawberries to make May wine to serve to my students.

As I laid out my different samples I was a bit shocked on the diversity of plants I had. It was a mix of sweet and tangy greens and different herbs that could dress up any salad we made or freshen up a dish with a unfamiliar flavor. After taking my clients out for a walk, they came back ready to dig in somewhat amazed at what you could do with the different plants.

“This first one, burdock, is a delicacy in Asia. The tap root is cooked. But the small leaves can be used in a salad while the larger ones sautéed,” I said. “Historically this has been used as a diuretic as well as a remedy for skin problems.”

I offered clients a taste and the group was very divided with half deciding to take a chance while the other half demurring politely. Perhaps I should not have told them first that poison hemlock (used to kill Socrates) looks just like Queen Anne’s lace though it is easy to tell them apart (QAL has hairy stems, hemlock does not; the root of QAL smells like a carrot; the disturbed leaves of hemlock smell as would a rodent.) But I did need to warn them about foraging in the wild as there are a variety of very poisonous plants out in the yard, as well described in Amy Steward’s excellent book Wicked Plants.

“If you are not very, very sure of what you are ingesting, don’t take a chance. Also don’t harvest food from areas that have been sprayed; on the other hand if the areas had been sprayed, the weeds would likely be dead.”

That said, all were very interested in at least the smells of the different plants: no harm in smelling. I was able to clip a mint from our property that my mother-in-law had smuggled in from Guatemala many years ago. It has a very strong minty scent with a bright purple stalk. “It is really best used for chicken soup,” said my wife Juana who attended the session along with my granddaughter Charlotte. Each client took a sample to start at home.

“Sorrell is a great addition to salads if you want a bit of a kick,” I said. “Another name for it is lemon leaf because of the flavor and it is a favorite with kids.” And then almost on cue Charlotte reached over to stuff one in her mouth. She chomped on it with a big smile.

After I finished with the plants I got out the May wine, a traditional German drink to celebrate May Day as well as the coming of Spring. As I opened the carafe I let each client smell the mixing of the herbs, fruits and wine. “This is amazing,” said one. All were smiling in anticipation of that first sip.

“Now be careful when you drink this as it does have a reputation as an aphrodisiac,” I said. They all smiled at me and took their first sip. No one was displeased.

Forgotten pleasures

Though I spend much of my time with my head in the weeds and hands in the soil, there are many other passive outdoor pleasures that have been forgotten. Early last week we had blistering heat in the Northeast with temperatures in the 80s and a constant dry wind. This weather called me to hang out our laundry, which we often start to do later in the year. This was not the first time this year we hung our cloths outside as mid-March was toasty. But today seemed different with the emerging leaves on the trees more pronounced than a month ago. Spring, and my garments, was in the air.

As I took the laundry outside the winds were whipping about making it more difficult to attach them to the line. A wet shirt slapped me as I stretched its bottom hem along the line while straightening its arms. The damp smell of the detergent was a reminder of my task as I wheeled the line toward the fence and crabapple tree. My jeans were a wet ball that had to be shaken out so they would hang flattened against the wind. Socks were put on a basket to stay in the sun.

The heat on my back contrasted with the coolness being blown toward me from the cloths. I needed only two clothesline spreaders so the laundry wouldn’t drop and touch the grass and emerging lilies. As I stood back and looked at the line, I wondered how many of my neighbors put their clothes out to dry. When I was a child, someone was always in trouble at my house or others when an errant kickball or whiffle ball caused a run into a set of drying garments. The clothesline was always out of bounds.

An elderly neighbor once told my wife that he loved the fact that she hung our laundry out. Particularly the sheets. “It reminds me of my mother when she used to put the laundry out to dry.”  I have the same memory.

Funky smells

With a second try at a class on sachets, I got a much better turnout. Before we started to make our sachets, we went for a walk in the daffodil garden, where nearly 4,000 daffodils are planted. As we walked into the area a few clients commented on the sweet smell as we walked up the stairs to the trail. “Around the walkway we planted fragrant daffodils so you would have both sight and smell stimulated as you started to explore the area.”

The group of us just stood in the garden, quiet, appreciating the day that nature had given us. After a few minutes we made our way to the art room and started to make spring sachets. My clients had 15 different herbs, flowers and spices as well as a dozen different fragrant and essential oils to choose from. “When you do aromatherapy you always use essential oils, which come directly from the plant. Fragrant oils are chemically distilled and much less expensive. For instance, this rose oil I have costs only $5 as a fragrant oil; its essential counterpart is priced at over $200.”

Everyone was a bit shocked at the price difference but understood the reasons why after I explained how oils are distilled from the plant. As I had them smell some of the different oils I asked if any had strong feelings about scents. One client spoke of cinnamon breads her father used to make around Easter and that cinnamon always triggered that memory. But along with the pleasant comes the unpleasant. Skunk was a universal bad smell for the clients. They all knew and remembered the pungent and fetid aroma of skunks as well as dead animals on the side of the road.

The first part of the therapy was to decorate the sachet bag. One client was a little recalcitrant. “I’m not an artist. This won’t be good.” I assured her that whatever she drew would be fine and that it should be something that will make her happy. She shrugged and drew a delicate little flower.

The next stage, mixing the herbs and oils, was a little more complex as a few complained that I gave them too many choices. I told them to pick their favorite smell and build their sachet around that. Lavender was a favorite with over half my clients, but a few went a tad overboard in their use of oils.

“This is a really funky smell,” said one. “Is this right?” I put my nose into her mixture of five different herbs and was hit with a very sultry scent dominated by lavender with a hint of lemon. “How much oil did you put in your mix?” I asked.

“Oh about 3 or 4 or 5 drops. . .maybe 6,” she replied. I smiled.

“Ladies, one of the things you need to be careful about is your use of the oils. They are very powerful. Put one or two drops in. Mix everything up and then stick your nose into the mix. Then decide if you need more or have enough. If you do that, you will get a good idea of how your mix smells. All of the scents are powerful and you should add small, incremental amounts.

“As for you,” I said to my lavender client, “ Just leave your sachet out for a while rather than put it in a plastic bag. The lavender scent will dissipate and get to an intensity that you are comfortable with. As it fades, other scents will reveal themselves.”

She thanked me and took another whiff. “Perhaps I’ll just add another drop of two,” she mused acting like a cat enveloped in catnip. Others, even after my suggestion, leaned heavy on the oil dropper overwhelming their sachet with their scent of choice. Yet when everyone was done and passed around their crafts, all loved the smells created by their classmates.

The next day, I met the woman who had squirted lots of lavender into her sachet. “I just wanted to let you know that the sachet made my room smell wonderful.  Everything smelled like lavender and it was very relaxing,” she said with a big smile on her face. “It was fantastic.”

A re-bolting situation

Today it is normal. It was in the mid-30s when I woke up and is supposed to reach the 50s later this afternoon. Tomorrow it will snow or rain. Typical for late March. And all my lettuce is bolting.

I thought that I was poised for a good spring harvest of greens. I was feeding my granddaughter Charlotte samples from my garden in early March. I had successfully transplanted everything that survived our very mild winter to my cold frame, fed them with compost and watched them grow.

But before the Ides of March, Nature decided to throw a few curve balls in the guise of not just warm but unbelievably hot weather. Days in the 60s, 70s and even a few in the 80s. Nights in the 50s. This isn't March. This is May or June. And that is exactly what my greens thought. They were growing fast and large, requiring water as the soil was beginning to dry out. Now who in the Northeast waters their garden in March? Well this year it was me.

I had perfect greens for a week. Fast growing and delicious. But soon that was over.

Beyond getting big, my winter greens developed summer-like flowers and blooms. I have never had VIT (Valerianella locusta)  flower and Miner’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) doesn’t flower until mid June. The Asian greens, usually succulent and slightly sweet in early Spring, are bitter and leather-like. I usually eat all of it well before that is possible. Not this year. I am already weeding for chickweed and I have seen a slug or two saunter toward a leaf or two of some seedlings I have planted. This season it seems as I can’t trust anything. And now it looks like snow.

Celebrating the sun

To say that it has been unusual winter in the Northeast is an understatement and the first day of Spring was no different with temperatures in the mid 70s in Fairfield County and every chlorophyll-filled entity thinking it was May. In celebration of the season, we went for a nature walk at Ann’s Place and built sundials from trees and branches that were downed last year during our hurricane and Snotober.

The grounds were accommodating in beginning to show off their potential. A few of the 4,000 daffodils planted in the back started to unveil themselves though most were just awakening. The muscari was emerging along the path, its bunches of tiny grape-like purple blooms poking their spears though the soil appearing among the greening fescue grass.

As we walked the grounds everyone was amazed by how all the buds were swollen and ready to burst. “Here are a couple of things you want to avoid,” I pointed out. I then cut a sprout of Japanese barberry from a plant that had lodged itself in the rocks showing the class the tail tell orange innards as well as the spiky stems. “If you have this in your yard, you want to get rid of it. It may be pretty but it will take over,” I said and then pointed to the wetland area beyond the fence. It was filled with barberry, which was letting little else survive. Some skunk cabbages were making an attempt to show and flower, but they were hard to see under the blanket of greening barberry.

“Here is something else you want to avoid,” as I pointed to an attractive green floret. I attempted to pull it off but snapped off the stem. “This is not what you want to do when you try to get rid of garlic mustard. Pretty soon we will have to start weeding in earnest.”

As we walked around the garden, the sun started poking through the clouds. It was a good time to bring the group back to the front where I had set up an example of what we would be building that afternoon: a sundial.

“This is what all of you will be making today, a sundial. My wife, who is vastly more talented than me, made this one and it is accurate to our longitude and latitude.”

As some of my clients looked at me strangely (a familiar look) I explained. “It is guaranteed that nearly any sundial you purchase will be wrong as it need to be timed, so to speak, to the latitude and longitude where the sundial will reside. For people in the New York City area . . .” I then went on to describe the mathematics of sundials and how they work.  While the class was interested and attentive in how sundials worked it was clear they wanted to start building their own sundials.

Unlike other exercises we have had, building a sundial is much less free form as there are two important things you must consider. The first is transferring hour lines to the correct position on the dial face. The other is to position the gnomon, which casts the shadow on the dial, in the center of the dial so it lays directly above the line for high noon.

In keeping with the horticultural therapy theme, I cut the dials from a locust and black birch trees that fell on my property during the year. The gnomons were cut from Japanese red maple, sugar maple, black birch, and oak. I cut the disks as uniform as I could and then used my table saw to cut each gnomon so that it would lay on the dial at an angle of 41 degrees, which is the latitude of the NYC area. Given these materials, a series of instructions and templates, the group set off to work.

The usual casual chatter was deferred for quiet determination as each client focused on drawing their lines on the slab of their choice accurately. “Remember nothing is wrong until you commit a permanent marker to the wood and even then we can probably sand most anything off.”

Unlike other sessions, this one was filled with purpose and concentration. One of the clients became frustrated early as she was having a hard time working through the transfers of the sundial hour lines to her dial. “Nothing is wrong with what you are doing,” I assured her. “Just determine which direction you want your sundial to point toward and put down the template like this.” I demonstrated how to transfer the information and she became much calmer. A slight smile emerged.

“The fun part of this is how you personalize the sundial and what type of designs you want to consider. Those should be done free hand without transfer paper.”

As the session went on, everyone became more at ease with the task at hand and started to create different and unique designs (which I could not record as the battery on my camera died.) The chatter started slowly and then people were talking and sharing ideas as has been typical. When they were finished, each had a sundial that would tell time in their back yard. All were very happy with their accomplishment.

“I never would have thought about doing something like this,” said one. “But it turned out better than I ever could have imagined.”

When the clients finished their pieces, I sprayed them a few times with a quick drying lacquer to hold up against the elements. “You should consider putting a coat or two of spar varnish on these if you want them to last outside,” I suggested.

I then told them how to set their sundials at night, gave them a instruction sheet to help them remember and then sent them on their way. As I was cleaning up I noticed that the sun was still visible in the sky and my wife’s sundial had been left out still telling time.

Pounding life into flowers

Smash. Thump. Thwack.

“I can’t believe how beautiful this looks!”

“This doesn’t look like yours.”

“It’s better to do it on the floor.”

Perhaps I should back up a bit.

The last horticultural therapy session that I held at Ann’s Place focused on flower pounding. Whereas a 60’s love child who grooved around Flower Power focused around expressing their hidden emotions via hallucinogenics, flower pounding is about expressing the color and pattern of the flower of choice.  Most of the people who came to my session did not know what to expect and mused about the strange request on the sign-up sheet—“Bring a rubber mallet if you have one.”

The first client came armed with her mallet proud that she was able to purchase it for $2 at a local thrift shop. “It was a great bargain,” she crowed while swinging it in hand like Thor. As others started to file in they too were puzzled about what we would do but interested as nearly a dozen pansies and three large cineraria were stationed around the table.

“It’s great that so many of you have brought mallets,” I said. “It will make the project so much easier. What we will be doing today is creating art out of flowers through smashing them with a hammer.”

As many looked at me with a skeptical glare, I passed around some samples of prior “art” to show them the patterns that they could expect to get from the flowers. Some were shocked at the result and as the rest examined the pictures I described how to pound flowers.

“Everyone gets two pieces of paper to use to create their impressions. It is pretty simple. First you place the flower face down on your paper keeping in mind you want to spread the petals   Next you cover it with a paper towel and then pound away a few times.”

I put my pansy down on the watercolor paper, cut off the back stem so that it would smooch down well, covered it and pounded away. Nuts.

When I pulled away the paper towel, I discovered that the image was muddy and incomplete. Not at all like other pansy prints I had created. What could be wrong?

As I sheepishly revealed my image to the class, I thought that the problem may be with the table. It was a wobbly plastic affair that flexed and moved as I walloped the flower. I tried another on the corner of the table, which had better support.

Success!

I told the class to try to find a more solid part of the table to hit but a few students decided to literally hit the floor to get better results. And they did.

Some clients were tentative at first but everyone soon got into the spirit and were populating their paper with different shapes and blooms. Soon everyone was flailing away swinging their hammers with abandon like John Henry.

“Can we pound the leaves?,” asked one client.

“The viola leaves don’t transfer well but I don’t know about the cineraria leaves,” I replied.

That motivated a one client to remove a leaf and give it a good smack. The result was stunning.

Even the efforts that were incomplete had a beauty to them with the opportunity to augment nature by using Sharpies and colored pencils.

One client’s first attempts produced an image that was not pleasing to her. “This doesn’t look right,” she said. "Don’t worry about the first image, it’s the composite of all your attempts that will define your art. Try another flower on top and create an image of a bouquet.”

Another client was becoming in the words of a friend, “the teacher’s pet.” She started on the floor and composed a beautiful mosaic of flowers making some appear to pop out of the page. Her poundings were magnificent.

Soon everyone had a portrait that they were proud of. I even got Wilda to come down and smack a single flower transferring the image perfectly onto the paper. She added a Sharpie stem to her pounding, looking quite pleased with herself. She was not alone. Though we only had two different types of flowers and just a couple of colors, everyone created unique images that they were pleased with. When I told everyone to take a pansy plant home with them it was an extra bonus that few had expected. A few were looking forward to taking flowers from home and continuing their pounding. I just hope that they will leave a few flowers for the nose, the eyes and the bees.

Charlotte salads

We are in the midst of near record heat, which is making all of us want to shed our down vests like a snake sheds its skin. Charlotte, my granddaughter, has spring fever as bad as any of us and doesn’t want to stay inside but rather wobble outdoors and experience nature. For her, that still means putting nearly everything in her mouth ranging from small rocks (to perfect her speech like Demosthenes) to large sticks (to clean her teeth after a meal of grass.) But I figured it was time to get her up in the garden to show her what we could eat from the outdoors this time of year.

The lack of snow and cold permitted many of my greens to winter-over nicely. The Swiss chard was coming back as well as the spinach I planted last September. Amazingly some of the slow-bolt leaf lettuce is growing along with the pak choy. The best crops are the heart-shaped miner’s lettuce and mache (Vit). They are a tasty snack and very sweet this time of year. We have a surfeit of crunchy little leaves; ideal for a small, fairly toothless mouth. My raised beds are the perfect height for her to grab and play with the soil. She plays, moving her hands across the black warming soil in a circular motion. After a bit,  she wants a little snack so I feed her leaf after leaf that she sucks down using her little pink tongue.

The garden is a new experience for her and she can’t decide how to react. What should she put in her mouth versus what should she just grab? Sometimes I think it is too much for her to handle. I often think about what she will remember of her crazy grandpa and his obsession with gardening. Is he just too weird or wonderful? Perhaps someday I will find out. Regardless spring is coming and I will just keep feeding Charlotte from the garden letting her well within reach of the lettuce but blocking out sight of the foxglove that has established itself. You can never be too careful with those you love.

Vacation from gardening, sort of

When it is February in Connecticut, there are few gardening tasks at hand as the soil is cold and the only thing that warms the soul is the prospect of new growth pushing through the ground in the next month or so. In the next week I will be starting flats of early greens and other vegetables. Flowers and warm-weather vegetables a few weeks later. As my horticultural activities are in stasis, I thought it was a good time to head down south where I can get a jump on a farmer’s tan and enjoy the already green landscape.

If we were having a spring-like winter up north, the south was experiencing a summer-like winter with temperatures in the mid-80s. The grass was a lush green, trees in full bloom and sun lovers in all manners of undress. The wind off the ocean felt warm with the slightest smell of seaweed.

So like a long dormant perennial I soaked up the sun. I was a plant, not a gardener. This would not last as eventually the siren song of working in a garden would prove to be too enticing.

One morning at my friend Brian’s house in the Florida Key’s, he mentioned that he needed some help cleaning out and cutting down vegetation around his fish pond, which had been depleted of fish by a resident frog and crab.  This sounded like a nice way to spend the morning so naturally I volunteered. At first I thought just a few small trees and bushes would need to be removed. When my friend got out the chain saw I realized that the job would become much larger.

When you live in the north you don’t realize that potentially invasive nature of a Southern garden. Like the ruins of Tikal or Chichén-Itzá if you stop cutting down foliage, it will quickly overrun your space. That is kind of what happened in my friend’s fish pond. He planted a couple of papyrus plants in his pond and within a few years, it had spread and taken over. An agave plant that was taken from a tiny houseplant was now the size of a small elephant with porcupine sharp spikes. Trees that started as sticks a few years back, shot up 10 feet high with tuffs of leaves on their tops shading everything below. And finally a neighbor's tree with spiked bark hung over the fence completing the darkening of this area.

It started simply enough with a few small trees being removed with little problem. It didn’t appear to be too hot and the prospect to work outside was appealing to me with my exposed snow-colored legs reflecting the sun like the White Sands in New Mexico. Soon I was up on a ladder cutting down limbs with a chain saw with sawdust falling in my eyes and beginning to coat my increasingly sweaty shirt. Within an hour my skin was covered with creamy, yellow dust that I hoped that I was not allergic to as it became pasty on my epidermis. You never know in the topics.

With each toppled branch came the opportunity to cut another. And another, And another. Little thorns were sticking in my arm like severed stingers from a swarm of angry bumblebees. Razor-like leaves etched fine lines in my legs and arms: the work of Nature’s tattooist.   I was a stinky, sweaty, bloody mess. It was great! Soon we had cleared out enough brush to fill half of Brian’s back patio area and opened the pond to sun it hadn’t seen in years. Brian was happy with the results and said that he could easily muck out the pond, evicting it of its unwelcome tenants.

Fine by me. I was happy to finish a morning’s gardening. Time for a shower and beer.