GroHappy

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.

When 1 is better than 13

One of the more gratifying aspects of volunteer work is the response you receive from your clients. I was especially looking forward to a recent horticultural session at Ann’s Place as we had nearly filled up the class with 13 pre-registrants. This class focused on creating sachets and mulling spice packets. So I got to the facility early to ensure everything was in place. Chairs for everyone plus a few possible drop ins, everything laid out on the table for sachet making, pens to decorate the sachets, a coffee urn cleaned out to make mulled cider, an ironing board and iron to seal the tea bags that would be used for the mulling spices, etc.

With 20 minutes to spare everything was ready for the crowd.

And with 10 minutes to spare everything was ready for the crowd.

And with no minutes to spare my first client shows up. And that was it.

After we made some small talk, she looked rather embarrassed saying, “I was really looking forward to this. Perhaps I should call my husband.” I told her no that we would have a session between the two of us. She didn’t want to put me to any trouble, but I said that since we were both here we should just go on. She turned up a little smile and we started.

While my last session focused on Tussie-Mussies and the language of flowers, this one dealt with more of the smells and tastes that can be derived through the mixing of herbs and flowers. “What is your favorite smell?” I asked.

She replied, “Lavender. It reminds me when I was young,” I added that my mother’s favorite was lilac because her mother had lilac bushes in her yard as a child. She smiled and agreed that it was a wonderful smell. I told her that one of my favorite smells was that of pickles (which are predominated with dill, bay leaves and vinegar as the dominant  flavorings) as it reminded me of when I used to eat lunch outside with my father during the summer.

“So one of the things we need to consider when making a sachet is how and where it will be used. For example, if you wanted to create a sachet that would be used in the kitchen or bathroom, it would probably have very different scents than one for a drawer where you kept your fine scarfs.” My client looked at me and said she had never thought of it that way and started taking notes.

“One of the things you need to consider is how to combine different scents.” I had collected 12 different botanicals and 7 different oils that could be used in a sachet. “But you have to be careful how you combine them, because certain things sit better together.”

“There are four category of scents: sweet, sour, vegetable, and animal.” I then described each one and told her that she needed to choose what she wanted to be her fundamental scent and then surround it with related scents.

“Well I think I will pick nutmeg,” she said after sniffing many of the different spices and herbs available. To unlock more of the nutmeg's scent, she started to grind it with a pestle. “Oh my,” she said after a few grinds released the essence of the nutmeg. She then looked over other scents. She took a bit of cinnamon, some chamomile and another spice or two.

As she mixed them she was amazed at the complexity and complementary nature of the smells as they combined in her bowl. And with each turn of the spoon and new scent came a different story and memory of her past. As the scents were being liberated, old and pleasant memories were being unlocked. But now we needed to come to a decision of what type of essential oil to add to the mix. “How about peppermint?,” I suggested. “It is very complementary to what you have put together and it will bind well with the oak moss we need to use as a fixative. We will  place it in a separate bowl so you can smell it as well as your mixture together.”

She agreed. After mixing the oak moss and pepermint, she held her emulsion along with her mix up to her nose. “This is incredible. It’s nothing like I thought it would be. Thank you.” I smiled telling her that I didn’t want to give canned recipes to clients but rather let them explore and discover how smells could be blended.

As we finished making the kitchen sachet we then moved on to mulling spices, which are different parts of cinnamon, clove, allspice, orange rind and lemon rind. We sipped some mulled cider I had made up and I asked her to reflect on the flavors she sensed and to consider which ones she enjoyed more than others.I showed her the mix and then I gave her four tea bags to be filled with spices and suggested that she experiment with different proportions to decide what type of mix she would ultimately enjoy more than others.

More stories and memories emerged while she blended the different spices. We were chatting about her experiences as well as mine. Before you knew it, it was time to clean up and she was looking forward to experience her mixings later in the week. As I was picking up I realized that I didn’t miss the dozen potential clients who didn’t show up.  And in fact more than a little part of me was happy they did not.

The sweet smell of students

 

A new semester recently started at Green Chimneys and with that a new group of students. Coming back after a month’s absence (a two week vacation and two hurricanes) its time to get into the fall chores and get to learn about a new group of students. This fall’s group will be bittersweet, like the season, as I will only be working with them through Thanksgiving. After that I will be taking a break until the spring and then hopefully back with the kids.

But until then there is lots to do in the garden. Today should be spent taking down the tomato plants, which have given up the ghost to leaf spot and weather conditions that vacillated between desert and flood. One of my new charges, Ben, was happy to have gotten the job and wanted to be a good worker.

“I will be a good worker for you, Mr. Keller. That way I can earn my money.”

So we started slow, cutting the stalks off the diseased plants. I showed Ben two different examples of tomatoes: one that had a healthy vine and the other with one that was diseased. At first he couldn’t articulate the differences but a bit of prodding got him on the right track.

My next student, Bill, was more observant but he told me he had never eaten a tomato before. “Bill you must have eaten tomatoes before in some form. Do you like Italian food?”

“I love spaghetti,” he replied. “Well tomatoes are often used in the sauce,” I said. I then picked up a basil leaf that we plant in between the tomato plants and rubbed the basil under his nose. “Do you know this smell?”

“I think so but I don’t know from where,” he said. “How about pizza?” I then told him to rub the basil under his nose and eat a cherry tomato at the same time. He looked at me strangely but then ate the fruit. He started to smile and agreed that it tasted like pizza and the tomatoes were really good. (I felt as if I was having a “Green Eggs and Ham,” moment with him.") I told Bill that he could eat as many of the cherry tomatoes that he wanted to. With that incentive he started to prune with greater urgency, taking a tomato every time he cut off a stalk and placed it into a garbage bag (we throw out all diseased plants rather than put them into the compost heap.)

My next student was off at a special meeting so I walked back to the garden. When I got there a pack of pre-schoolers were walking around with their teachers looking at the garden. I asked them if they would like to do something special and they all said yes.

I walked them around one of the corners of the herb garden by our large patch of wooly thyme. I then told them to take both of their hands, rub the thyme and then smell their fingers. They first couldn’t get enough of rubbing as the soft, wool-like plant tickled their fingers. Then they smelled their fingers and started to giggle.

Next to the wooly thyme is our mint patch so I broke off a stem and gave a leaf to each child and told them to smell it. “It smells like gum,” said one. “Yeah, can we eat it?” asked another.

I told them that they could and then I broke off a small branch and started to tickle each of their noses. “Tickle my nose again!” insisted a small, bespeckled girl.  I have never had such a receptive audience. I then showed them sunflowers, one that was pollinated and the other that was not, and explained how seeds were make. I cut open each flower showing them the difference between the two.

“You see each of these holes? Each used to hold a seed as was a little bed. Each seed could grow into a plant that was this tall, “ I said pointing as some of our sunflowers that were 10 feet high. The children were amazed that such a tiny seed could grow into a much larger plant. I gave each child a seed and told them to put it into the ground next spring. Each held out a tiny hand wanting a seed. I placed one in each hand and hoped that it was not the only seed that would bear fruit in the future.

Autumnal plums

This season is bittersweet as the harvest and display of flowers is great while their remaining time with us is short. Tomato plants full of reddening fruit are but a few weeks from being pulled. The sunflowers brightening my driveway are having their last smiles. A few rose bushes have started their second flowering and the buds on my Montauk daises have started to bloom.

When I visit my mother on Long Island at this time of year, I often take her to the  beach as the weather is in the Goldilocks zone (not too cold, not too hot, just right.) Sitting with her on a bench talking and staring out at Long Island Sound reminds me of the trips we would take many decades ago with my brothers and sisters when we walked the beach looking for horseshoe crab molts and shells.

After a lifetime of collecting such detritus, I have moved on to scavenge other things. And at this time of year it is beach plums. In mid to late September beach-plum season is in full swing on Long Island so I try to time my visits to my mother to take full advantage of the bounty. Last year the harvest was poor, no doubt due to the cool rainy weather. I was afraid that this year’s heat and lack of rain would serve up more of the same but I was pleasantly surprised that there was a good amount of fruit on the bushes. When I viewed them in mid August, bundles of tiny fruit hung from the branches promising a future sweet harvest.

When I visited the beach last week with my mother the bushes were distressed as it had rained less than an inch since I last saw them. Many bushes were sporting raisin-like bunches of plums on branches devoid of leaves. Mostly pit, these little blue orbs acted as sad decorations portending the beginning of fall and perhaps the death of the plant.

I was, however, able to find a few bushes that for some reason were flush with green leaves and fat blue plums. I greedily harvested a bowl of them for my wife and I to consume over the next week.

Beach plums are a bit of an acquired taste as they are the size of a gooseberry, taste like a plum mixed with a blueberry and have a large pit very similar to that of a cherry. One year we made beach plum jam, which was delicious but time consuming because of the pitting process. So this year they have become our fruit when we feel like a light snack. As you expel pit after pit from your mouth, you often wonder if it is worth the effort as the pit sometimes appears bigger than the fruit you are able to suck off. The berries have a short life as they ripen quickly once picked. Some fruits are still a bit too sour as my color blindness doesn’t let me discern a ripe from an unripe plum. Others are past their prime as a bite into them will give you a squirt of sour or in some cases fermented juice. The fermented ones are the most interesting as you get little jolts of alcohol that reminded me of some home-made wine my father used to get from a friend.

An annoyance of fruits

I was not a good blogger in August opting to rest and harvest my labors rather than write about them. For every post I did not write, I harvested a huge crop of something. First it was zucchinis, which grow in quick succession. My wife hated them as I pulled at least two a day for weeks on end from the garden. Even trying to keep them small was a challenge as in a blink they doubled in size. Happily for my wife, squash vine borers had earlier infected my plants bringing a dramatic and quick demise to their production.

But as the zucchinis died away, a surprise crop took their place: lemon cucumbers. This opportunistic plant, which I wrote about before, crawled up my fence and traveled at least 25 feet spreading its large leaves and tendrils. At first the fruits were a curiosity as everyone believed that they were a type of squash. But upon cutting them open, they were a tasty and flavorful cucumber. Unfortunately, like zucchini, they proliferated with one plant outputting two to four fruits a day. I picked as much as I could but my wife and family soon tired of sliced cucumbers, cucumbers in yogurt sauce, cucumbers in oil and vinegar, cucumber tomato salad, sliced cucumbers as an appetizer. As I would come in from the garden hands full of my latest bounty my wife and daughter would give me a look of distain asking, “Is that all you have?”

Tomatoes were only beginning to ripen in August and I have to admit I harvested and ate many of the smaller red cherry and yellow pear tomatoes that had started to come in. So tomatoes were spotty in the early part of the month. The larger ones were taking their time to ripen as the weighed down vines struggled to hold them up to the sun. Every day I looked and while they were getting fatter and fatter, my tomatoes were still a pale shade of green.  By late August a few had started to ripen; some were hidden below the dark green canopy of tomato leaves while others were bright reddish beacons on top. Today we are pulling three to six fat tomatoes from the vines every day.

Tomatoes do not have the same intolerance half-life as my other vegetables as they are universally loved and can be morphed into many different dishes from salads, to sauce, to chirmol (a Guatemalan version of salsa), to just simple slices that can be placed on bread. So for now our abundance has not become an annoyance. My daughter Sarah is more than happy to take a pint bucket of small tomatoes to work for lunch. My wife Juana slices them to add to pizza as well barbeque them for chirmol. We are having tomatoes on everything with nearly every meal.

For my family there is a balance in this abundance, which should continue for the next three weeks or so. Then the fruits will go away (I didn’t plant any fall squashes this year) and the kale, bok choy, radishes, arugula, winter lettuce and Swiss chard will be ready for harvest. I hope they can cope.

Changes in attitude and spider homes

I was looking forward to picking up Cheryl a few days ago to work in the Children’s Garden at Green Chimneys. There was much to do as the broccoli had started to bolt and the spinach was perfect for harvest. When I picked her up, however, something wasn’t right. Cheryl was looking at one of the classroom computers intently and when told that it was time for her job replied, “I don’t want to go! I hate being in the garden.” Oh boy.

Upon walking with Cheryl to the garden I asked her how her week had gone and how she feels. “It has been horrible and things suck,” was the reply she made as she choked back a few tears. “Is there anything you want to do in the garden?,” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Would you like to sit down and talk or walk?”

“No.”

A similar problem occurred with Cheryl a month ago and I decided to take her back to class rather than risk her having a breakdown in the garden. Unfortunately that decision may not have been the best as her return turned into a power struggle, which just made her more upset and agitated. I decided to take a different tack.

“Today Cheryl we will be harvesting spinach and broccoli. Would you like to see the peas we planted last month before we begin?”

“No.”

So we walked to the barn to get kneeling pads and pruning shears. With few words exchanged we sat down in front of the broccoli bed and I showed her how to harvest it using pruners. Cheryl nodded in understanding and worked quietly with a far away look on her face as she cut the heads and placed them in a bin. I didn’t try any conversation as I worked next to her weeding an adjacent patch. She remained emotionless as she worked though it appears that she was beginning to relax. Within five minutes her attitude started to change visibly. Her facial expressions softened and she noticed a butterfly that floated nearby.

In another five minutes she became more animated and content; by the end of the harvest, she was smiling and working intently. “I’m done,” she said with pride in her voice.

“No you aren’t,” I replied. “You missed one.”

In the middle of the broccoli patch was a tiny, uncut floret. I snipped it with my shears and gave it to her. "This is your reward. Try it.”

As she bit into it her eyes went wide and she said,” That’s awesome! It’s so delicious!” Cheryl had never had fresh broccoli before.

I smiled and asked her to pick up our harvest so we could weigh it in. As we walked toward where the scale was hanging I reflected upon how just being in the garden had changed Cheryl’s view. She went from a near meltdown to being extremely happy.

As we weighed the broccoli I grabbed a group of heads and stuck them in her face. The fresh smell of the cut heads was powerful and slightly sweet. Cheryl loved the smell and was amazed. “I never smelled anything like that,” she said.

“So what does it smell like?” I asked.

She thought about it for a while and replied that she didn’t know.

“It smells like broccoli, you silly goose,” I said. She laughed and smiled.

She had better attention and focus as we cut the spinach. She ate a leaf and was also amazed by the freshness and the taste. But mostly she was shocked by their size.” These are humungous,” she said. We then had a contest as to whom could find the most humungous spinach leaf. She won but not before she accidently ripped a large leaf. Cheryl wanted to try to fix it using scotch tape but I told her that most people would not like it as part of their dinner. “They could always take it off. It would look pretty.”

As we were finishing I noticed that there was a lone head of romaine lettuce that hadn’t been cut from the last time we were in the garden due to the fact that a large brown spider had taken up residence inside. “Do you think the spider is still there,” asked Cheryl remembering why we had left it. I pulled up a bunch of leaves and couldn’t see anything so we clipped it and added it to our pile. For the morning, we had harvested nearly 10 pounds of food.

As it turned out I had not been that good an inspector and as I was carrying the tote filled with produce, I noticed that our brown spider was climbing out of the cut lettuce carrying a large fluffy white ball. “What’s that?” asked Cheryl.

“That is the spider’s egg nest. She is getting ready to have babies.”

Because the spider was a mother, Cheryl was not as fast to ask me to kill it as is often the case when we come across spiders. So I placed the spider on a fence post and continued on our way.

“Cheryl, have you ever read the story ‘Charlotte’s Web’?”

“Yes it is one of my favorites.”

“Mine too,” I replied as we spent the remainder of our time talking about spiders, rats, barns and humongous spinach leaves. 

New children, old pleasures

I have always thought it is better to be lucky than good and that has certainly been the case since our return to the North as we were met by the warmest mid-March weather that I can remember in a long time. By early last week, the cold was but a memory with only a few rapidly decaying piles of dirty icy snow remaining in the back of parking lots. At home, everything had melted and we were starting to clean up the garden.

More importantly it was time to return to Green Chimneys to pick up where I left off with my kids. Like my yard, the Children’s Garden had thawed and beginning to push out growth. This year we had build many more hoop houses than in years past resulting in an early jump for planting. Last year at this time the ground was frozen and not ready to be worked; this year because of the protective nature  of the hoop houses, many of the rows were ready for sowing.

While I was gone, Tracy and Allie had harvested all the carrots from one of the raised beds. The turnip greens I had planted in the fall were recovering in another row and will be ready for harvest in the next month. A row of spinach that we had planted as a lark last September wintered over nicely with tiny rosettes 4-inches in diameter. It was exceptionally sweet.

On my first day back I was greeted with 70 degree weather as well as a new group of students. All of the children were excited to be back in the garden. I tasked my first charge, Linda, to clean up our herb garden and dress it up with Sweet Peat. I gave Linda a pair of garden pruners and we started to remove old stalks of mint.

I asked her if she remembered what herb was here before. She didn’t.

“Rub your hands on the stalks and see if you can remember,” I said. She removed her gloves and rubbed the stalks against her two hands and moved them to her nose. At first she looked puzzled but then she smiled and said, “It’s mint, isn’t it?”

I had her do the same to the herbs that we were not cutting including some creeping thyme, oregano and lavender. The freshness of the herbs seemed to refresh her as she tired. When she started to become either bored or had difficulty with the task, we would take a quick aromatherapy break and I would ask her what each herb reminded her of.  Lavender reminded her of perfume. Most children identify oregano as the pizza herb.

I had my next set of children work in our Row for the Hungry, which had produced over 100 pounds of food for a local food pantry in 2009. To start the season, we needed to add compost. Our pile of compost was over six foot high and much of it was still frozen. I instructed Ben to work around the edges rather than dig into the middle. He would not listen and kept striking the side of the pile ineffectually. He started to become frustrated.

“Ben, if you go with your shovel around the sides and top it will be much easier,” I said. “Let me show you.”

I took the shovel and started to scrape off the warm compost from the top and the sides of the pile. Ben looked on and asked how did I know that the top would be melted.

“Ben, this pile was rock solid only a few weeks ago but since then the sun has been warming it up so parts have started to melt. It takes a long time, however, for the sun and warmth to reach the middle of the pile, which is why it is still too hard to shovel. By removing the top and sides of the pile, we are helping the sun melt the pile faster.”

Ben seemed to understand and he filled up the wheelbarrow many times using the technique I showed him. He was happy to be working up a sweat and getting the bed ready for planting.

I took my next charge, Eric, to the cold frame near the greenhouse to collect the lettuce. Our cold frames are both thrifty and clever. We use rotting bales of hay to build a space next to one of our greenhouses and place old storm windows on top to capture the sun during the day and discarded horse blankets in the evening to hold the heat. These structures are actually warm frames as the rotting hay creates heat via an exothermic reaction. When I arrived at Green Chimneys in the morning it was 37 degrees yet the warm frame was emitting billows of steam. We use them to harden off the seedlings that had been started in prior weeks before placing them into the garden.

As we were removing the storm windows, I had Eric place his hand within the first layer of hay. “That’s really hot,” he said. I then explained to him that the decaying hay was generating heat, which in turn kept our seedlings warm. He thought it was cool that old hay would heat our plants.

In looking over our stock, we had a good selection of vegetables to choose from: broccoli, lettuce, arugula, cauliflower and spinach. I grabbed a flat and a half of romaine lettuce, placed the cell packs in the wagon and started with Eric back to the garden.

Though the wagon was weighted down, Eric kept digging in to pull it. On a few occasions he wanted to have me pull it but I told him I would help him, but not do his job for him. He understood and we shared the task.

Eric and Fred, my next student, would spend the rest of their time planting lettuce. It takes a bit of dexterity to separate the seedlings from the cell pack but after a few simple demonstrations, each was able to remove the root balls intact. Both students were amazed to see how the intertwined roots held the soil in the rectangular shape of each cell.  Thin white roots contrasting against the dark soil created an interesting pattern that was unique to each seedling. On the rare occasions when the soil fell apart, each thought that they had ruined or killed the plant.  I assured each that the plant was fine and if we tenderly placed it into the hole we had dug, it would grow well.

When working with children who are planting seedlings, I have found that the best way to work is as a team switching jobs with the student and letting the student take the lead in determining how we should plant the seedlings. Both Eric and Fred, however, liked to remove the seedlings from the cell pack and plant them leaving me to dig the holes.

The children are beginning to get used to working in the garden in all seasons. All were hoping for a veggie snack, but there was little to be had. The sorrel was just beginning to come up and we had very small rosettes of spinach and leaves of romaine lettuce. I gave each child a bit of lettuce and spinach telling them to be a bit patient as food would be forthcoming in the next month or so. They nodded with approval.

Spring peeks

While it is snowing today and recoating the ground with a clean white blanket, earlier this week we were treated to one of the typical albeit unpredictable thaws that often occurs in late January or early February. A southern storm moved up the coast doubling the temperature to a balmy 55 degrees and dumped three inches of rain to transform our dirty icy plot into a soaked muddy mass. When the rain ended and the ground drained I surveyed my property to collect broken twigs and sticks and to see how things were fairing. What surprised me were the number of plants that were greening up and growing.

I hadn’t been into the cold frame or hoop houses since mid December as the relentless cold and snow have given me little reason to peek inside. But instead of stalactites of icy hanging off the panes, there was a thick cloud of moisture and heavy drops of water. Upon opening the frame a wave of hot air and a strangely sweet scent embraced me slightly fogging up my glasses and obscuring the condition of my greens. It was better than I imagined.

The kyona mizuna and endive looked as if they had had it for the season. The leaves were dry and crinkly. The romaine, red- and oak-leaf and Winter Destiny lettuces, however, were holding their own with fresh tasty leaves. The Swiss Chard was a mess with running rotting leaves through a few fresh ones were emerging from the centers. I cleaned out the plot of the decay and replaced the panes so that the lettuces (perhaps) would begin to increase in size.

The parsley, which had been buried in snow, was remerging with a few fresh leaves hanging over its raised bed. As I bit into one, I was reminded of summer pesto sauces and late afternoons on the patio with a summer beer in hand. That was far from me now though an 82 degree temperature reading in my greenhouse almost made me want to grab a beer and  chair so I could sit amongst my potting tools and supplies contemplating the day.

As I walked by some of our overgrown butterfly bushes I noticed that some of the branches were sporting fresh green leaves. These leaves were more than outnumbered by their shriveled counterparts but they were alive and growing well. I couldn’t figure out how such a tender bush could still have intact leaves given the fact that we had over a week of sub-10 degree temperature weather earlier this month.

A normal sprouting of snowdrops in an adjacent flower bed was more acceptable to the senses though surprising. The ground is still very frozen for most of my property but perhaps the bulbs’ proximity to a concrete foundation provided them with enough warming to coax growth.

The three hellebores in a different garden were all healthy with large buds looking as if they would soon burst into flower. Today’s snow will slow that down but I’m looking forward to the blooms of this “Christmas rose”  in the next month or so. Next to one of these plants was a wild strawberry that my wife planted last year. It looked fine as if it was getting ready to put out buds for spring berries. Our large bed of strawberries are resting beneath a bed of hay though a few fresh and green stragglers were poking their heads out, apparently seeking the sun. The many foxgloves that self seeded themselves were greening up though some of the larger plants’ outer leaf margins were burned. The smaller, ones, however, looked ready to start sending a flowing spike up toward the sun.

The last little surprise was the emergence of a few iris spikes in the back yard. Something that I have never seen before.

So with the warmth came little bits of spring though now they are all buried under four inches of snow.

We need another warming trend, but I don’t think one is coming any time soon.

Spiders and rats and moths, oh my!

 

If a Northerner, you must appreciate the brisk restorative nature of a crisp 20 degree winter morning as well as the comforting feeling of rolling out of your bed in the summer to a delightful 75 degree day with birds chirping in the background from an open window. OK, perhaps I am rationalizing, but regardless it is a good idea to get children out in the garden during all the seasons so they can see and feel how nature changes and how the environment is not as they imagine it should be.

In the past few months we have had a great success in the garden at Green Chimneys being able to harvest food until mid-December. Since then between the occasional snow and the constant cold, our harvest has been more mental than physical. But with the prospect of a warming weekend, we decided last Thursday to clean the snow off the hoop houses. We had to do this before and it was a big hit with the kids as they lifted hunks of snow, made snow angels and had a good time in addition to working hard.

My first charge, David, had done this before and he was up to go outside rather than to seed yet another flat. Thursday was an ideal winter day. It was sunny and windless with a temperature a little under 30 degrees. We attempted to open the padlock to the garden, but as it was frozen we had to enter through the handicap entrance that was recently built on the side of the garden.

The garden seemed quiet and lifeless as everything was covered with an undulating layer of smooth white snow that was marred only by the few animals that had scurried around the landscape leaving undistinguished footprints. Dried heads of dill as well as a few sunflowers were the only reminders of past crops.

When we opened up the shed, a white moth fluttered out not realizing that its prior home was a much better place to be. We retrieved a set of shovels and started to clear the snow off the hoops. The snow that had rested on the top of the hoops had started to melt from the heat and came off in icy clumps. But soon we were able to get all the snow off and wanted to see how well the lettuce and mustard greens were doing. Upon pulling off the tarp we were greeted by a rat.

It was as surprised as we were. The hoop house is not a bad place if you are a rat. This one contains  left over greens, drips of water from the melting snow and a warmer dwelling than one would have under or in a log.

It scampered around looking for a place to hide, only finding hard ground or soft snow to tunnel through. It was scared.

“Let’s kill it!,” yelled David.

“With what?” I said, remembering the episode at my house when my wife said that if I had a gun I would have been able to shoot the rat that had taken up residence under our bed while we were on vacation.  “We have shovels,” replied David.

“Let’s just let it alone because we could hurt it rather than kill it, which would be cruel,” I replied. I have never been a big hunter and the idea of flailing around in the snow with a shovel and a rat had all the makings of a comic disaster. We put back the fabric and started to clean off other hoops.

My next child, Charles, was interested in seeing how well the carrots were doing. As it was later in the day and the raised beds were warming, the greens were beginning to re-hydrate though the ground was still like a rock. In pulling off the Agribon fabric draped over the plastic hoops, I noticed a brown spider that was clinging to the underside of the cloth.

I thought it was dead but after a few minutes it started to twitch and move around. I felt bad that I woke it up as it will need to find another place to settle in for the winter.

As I was looking at the spider, Charles was trying to dig out a carrot. The ground was still very frozen even though the carrot tops and surrounding weeds were hydrating and greening up. They looked very alive and tempting. The carrots currently in the garden, if you can remove them, are very sweet. Storing them in the frozen soil causes their starch to be converted to sugar, thus making them increasingly sweeter as the season stretches on.

Charles knew this and was becoming very frustrated at not being able to get a carrot. I told Charles that he needed to be patient, but with any hope evaporating for success he soon was on the verge of tears. I needed to think of something fast.

“Charles, let’s look for a carrot at the edge of the garden. If the carrot is close enough to the boards, perhaps the sun has had the opportunity to melt some of the soil that is holding it into place.”

We were able to find such a carrot quickly and I was able to insert a trowel between the boards and the carrot. I wiggled it around a bit and then gave the carrot a tug. No good. I then pushed the trowel through the soil on the other side of the carrot and was able to loosen it enough so that Charles could pull it out.

“I got a carrot!” Charles was beside himself as his emotions altered from agony to ecstasy.  He said that he was going to bring the carrot home so that his mother could make a healthy soup for the family. Even though he was tempted, he didn’t try to eat it. 

There are still plenty of carrots in the garden that we can harvest once the weather breaks. I just hope the rat (and it’s buddies) doesn’t get to them first.