GroHappy

Fungus among us

While July was hot and dry, June was not and set the seeds (or spores) of one of our current activities at Green Chimneys: trimming diseased branches and leaves off the tomato plants. Tomatoes are one of the favored fruits of summer as there is nothing quite so tasty as a fresh tomato that has ripened on the vine. Unfortunately, for the last three years we have had a constant battle with Septoria leaf spot and every year I have endeavored with my charges to control the problem.

A few weeks ago I told a group of young boys that we would be cutting the leaves off the tomato plants. Initially they seemed uninterested until I asked them if they liked salsa.

“Yeah! That’s one of the best things about the summer garden. Will we be getting salsa soon?” said Bob.

“Well I hope so,” I replied. “But only if all of these green tomatoes are able to turn red. And they won’t turn red unless the tomato plant that is holding them lives for at least a month more.”

I then showed them a diseased leaf. It was brown on the edges and had little dots all over.

“This leaf is infected with a fungus that will kill the tomato plant unless we stop it. Look at some of the wilted leafs at the bottom of that tomato plant,” I said pointed downward.

They all looked and saw a bunch of desiccated brown leafs hanging off the metal cage. There were also small shriveled branches hanging off the bottom of the plant.

“Does that look healthy?” I asked. They all shook their heads no.

So I told them that we needed to cut off all the sickly looking branches as well as collect the dead leaves on the ground and instead of putting them into the compost heap, we needed to throw them out. When I asked them why did we need to do that Bill spoke up,” Because if you put them in with the compost you will just be planting them again next year.” Smart kid.

I gave each of them a set of pruners and they quickly set off to do the work. I said that our goal was to finish a single row of tomatoes and they set off quickly to do their job. Unlike other weeding exercises, this time the boys worked quickly and carefully. Perhaps the prospect of not getting salsa was motivating them to work hard; perhaps my promise of carrots and early tomatoes if they did a good job was a more immediate incentive.

In their enthusiasm a few healthy branches were cut, but as they were not bearing any fruit, I told them that it didn’t really matter that they were cut. After each plant was tended to, I wiped down each of their tools with alcohol to remove any spores that lingered on the blades. After 30 minutes of work, the row was nearly done.

“Gentlemen you have done a great job and probably saved this row so we will be able to make salsa in a month or so. Give yourselves a pat on the back,” I said. “Look at the difference.”  For the few plants that had not been trimmed, the dead, shrunken leafs were a bleak counterpart to the thinned out albeit airy bottoms of the plants that had been cut. The boys seemed pleased.

“OK now it is time to shop. Carrots first or tomatoes?” The boys had big smiles on their faces and decided to go for the tomatoes first.  

Starting from scratch

There was nothing but barberry as far as the eye could see. Dead trees, thick vines, large boulders were scattered around an inhospitable landscape. This is what I have to work with to create a therapeutic space.

It should be fun.

(I have to admit I’m a bit behind on my writing. Unlike the photo below, the ground is now covered with a over a foot of snow with the promise of another foot on its way.)

In a prior life I often looked at such circumstances as problems to be dealt with; now I see them as opportunities to exploit.

 

 

With the start of a new year comes a great opportunity to practice horticultural therapy with a new group of clients at Ann’s Place, a cancer support group in Danbury, CT, that will be opening its permanent headquarters sometime in the Spring. I have been talking with Wilda Hayes, the executive director, on and off for the past year but it wasn’t until this past summer where we got started in earnest. Wilda is a kindred spirit who understands the healing powers that working with plants can afford. One of the challenges, however, was finding an exterior space to work with clients. She didn’t see much hope.

“What about the property in the back?” I asked.

Wilda somewhat dismissed it while adding that there wasn’t much we could do as the landscaping/mitigation plan had already been approved by the town. Being naive about such things I asked her if we could arrange a visit with Dan Baroody, the official who dealt with mitigation issues for Danbury. I would propose to him a vastly different and expanded mitigation plan. And it worked. He liked the idea. Now I just had to design it.

The prior mitigation plan removed around 1,500 square feet of barberry and had 60 plants (five different cultivars) tightly planted. My revised plan removed over 7,500 square feet of barberry and has nearly 140 plants (26 different cultivars) planted in both tight and spaced out configurations. In removing all the barberry, we discovered abandoned stone walls, one of which I rebuilt, and very interesting spaces that we could use for therapy. 

We spent much of October and November removing all of the invasive species as well as dead trees. After a rough grading and the construction of nearly 300 feet of nature trails, we started to plant.

I was torn between all the different trees and shrubs to consider. On the one hand I wanted to have a wide array of native species. On the other I didn’t want to serve up too much deer salad. So I stayed (mostly) with cultivars and species that are theoretically distasteful to deer. They include black chokeberry, red osier dogwood, winterberry, spiraea and American cranberry. I broke this rule in selecting some mountain laurel as well as low- and high-bush blueberries though I am hoping that their position will minimize predation. After two days of digging and planting we were mostly done.

In the Spring, we will seed the area directly in front of Ann’s Place with a no-mow native fescue grass seed and the remaining areas adjacent to the wetlands with a New England conservation/wildlife seed mix that contains many native grasses and flowers that used to be all too common in this area.

Another area was planted with daffodil bulbs: about 3500. Because the ground was so full of ledge rock, I roughed up the soil a bit, put the bulb down on its stem and then put 6 inches of topsoil over them all. If the bulbs hit any rocks with their roots, they will just push themselves up a bit through the loosened top soil over time. At least that’s the theory. This will become the basis of a memorial garden that we are building.

We have lots of plans for other spaces, but we ran out of time in early December when an early hard frost made the ground like concrete stopping any further work. We will continue in the spring.

The idea of virgin territory is just that, an idea. So much of the Northeast has been altered and invaded since settled over 300 years ago that whenever a new space is examined it must be done through the lens of transformation and mitigation. I’m hoping that the spaces the we are creating at Ann’s Place not only restore native plants to an old home but also happiness for a troubled client base.

I’ll keep you posted.

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.

Chilling greens

As I mentioned in a prior post, there still are tasty treats to pull from the garden if you can look beyond the surface. The same turned out to be true yesterday at Green Chimneys, which got whacked with snow as I did. Upon walking up to the garden with a student, I could see that we had a mixed bag going: some hoop houses collapsed entirely, some partially, and some held up well under the snow.

While the prior week in the garden had been sunny, warm and unseasonable, this one was sunny, cold and unseasonable. Almost the same. One of the challenges in working with children outside this time of year is to ensure that they are warm enough to do their jobs. I always bring with me a spare hat and pair of gloves in case they don’t, which is more often than not. When I picked up Charles (not his real name) and we headed out to the garden he asked why we were going out; after all everything had to be dead because of the snow.

“Why do you think that Charles?,” I asked. He replied that it was the winter and everything had to be dead, especially under the snow. I told him that he should hold his view on that until we finished our job this morning.

One of the most damaged hoop houses was the one we built for the local food pantry. We had run out of PVC piping so we fabricated one out of heavy-duty wire mesh during the fall. It had worked well so far even in high winds but 5 inches of snow and then a cold rain put too much weight upon it. It collapsed in the middle. I handed a shovel and a pair of gloves to Charles and told him that we had to shovel out the snow. “I don’t know how to shovel snow,” said Charles.

“We need to be gentle, “ I said. “Take your shovel and turn it on its side to that it is like a knife. Gently cut the snow and then turn your shovel so that you can pick up the chunk of snow that separates out. But you have to be careful so that we don't rip the cloth that is covering the plants. Watch me.”

I then demonstrated how to remove the snow. It took Charles a while to get a handle on it but he was taking his time and care so that he would not rip the cloth. As the snow was in packed chunks we created a game to see who could cut the largest piece. Charles won.

We soon removed all the snow and then pulled back the Agribon and wire to reveal our lettuce. It was still in great shape. “How is that possible?,” said Charles.

“It is possible Charles because we have put a blanket over the lettuce to keep it warm, just like the coat you are wearing is keeping you warm. How do you think you would feel now if you didn’t have a coat on?”

“Cold,” he said. “Right, so we need to put the blanket back on the lettuce to let it warm up,” I said. It was fairly early in the morning and the lettuce looked a bit desiccated so I didn’t want to harvest it until mid-day. We replace the Agribon.

“Charles, let’s clean off all the other hoop houses of snow and see if we can get even bigger chunks.” Charles loved that idea and we spent the rest of our time pulling snow off the hoops and comparing the size of snow chunks each of us were harvesting.

After we got a hoop cleared off, both Charles and I looked into the tunnels to see how our vegetables were doing. We had good luck as the oakleaf lettuce, kyona mizuna and turnip greens, spinach, Swiss Chard, cauliflower, and carrots were thriving in their little hoop homes. Even though it was only 35 degrees, Charles didn’t complain about the cold and we were out for nearly an hour working and having a great time.

By mid-day it was time to harvest as much as we could. The temperatures were supposed to hit 10 degrees during the night and I thought that the lettuce and a few other crops may not be able to handle such a drop. David (not his real name) was shocked but pleased that we would be harvesting greens for the pantry. He has great garden skills so he would be very helpful in cutting the lettuce low, thus giving it a chance to possibly grow back by late winter. Like Charles, David was shocked that there was still lettuce in the garden; unlike before when the lettuce was a bit flat, it was now fully hydrated and ready to be cut. David and I worked side by side chatting a bit but focusing on getting as much lettuce up as we could. He used the pruners expertly much like some of the  other children I recently worked with.

Unexpectedly David screamed, “Look, I found a worm!” I didn’t believe him but David proved me wrong as he lifted up a big fat earthworm that was on the surface of the earth. He soon found two more. It was hard to believe that worms would be up and about at this time of year but then I reconsidered the micro-climate we had created and the fact that the soil was warm under my fingers. Within 30 minutes we were able to harvest over 3 pounds of lettuce.

Since David had done such a good job I told him he could have a carrot. So he poked his head under the Agribon and searched for his “perfect” carrot; he was successful as he pulled out a fairly large one. “You know David, if you leave the carrots in the ground over the winter their starch turns to sugar and they get very sweet just like candy.” His eyes opened and he asked me if we could leave a few carrots in the ground so he could have one in the spring. I told him sure.

I had planned to finish the harvest with my last student of the day but he was unavailable as he had an off-campus activity. So it became my job to get kale for Tracy who wanted to make kale chips for the students. If I had any time left, I could also harvest the kyona mizuna.

As I pulled the Agribon off the hoops, I could feel a wave of heat emerge from the ground. I had to bend down and stretch across the bed as I didn’t want to expose more of the bed to the elements than I had to. It was an interesting contrast between my warm head and hands and my cold backside and feet, which were in the snow. Cutting the tender kale stems, I felt as I was in a different place as the smell of harvest pored over me.

I needed to work quickly as a chill hit: clouds were forming and the sun was setting. The mizuna was beginning to desiccate (a function of the cold) so l needed to finish. Within an hour I had harvested 4 pounds of kale and 3 pounds of mizuna.

Before I locked up the garden I inspected all the hoops. Some clips were missing, which I replaced, and a few pieces of duct tape patched up the odd hole or two. I’m hoping there will be more to harvest in the coming weeks, but I was happy to spend one more day in the garden with my students before retreating into the greenhouse as will be all too common in the months ahead.

Twisted carrots and late harvests

This past Thursday was one of those typical unusual days in December where the weather turned unseasonably warm and sunny and thoughts gravitated toward lush garden growth. As I drove to school in the morning, however, I realized that this fantasy was false and would be but a final tease before more seasonal and inclement weather hit.  I had planned a variety of indoor exercises for my students that day, which I scrapped and looked to finish up any jobs that needed doing outside given the fact that the temperature would hit 65 degrees in a few hours.

I hadn’t checked our row for the hungry recently and once I did was surprised at how large the carrots had gotten as well as the turnip greens. So that was a good place to start. My first child, Elmer (not his real name) was shocked but happy that we were going outside. Most of the recent horticultural therapy classes are inside the greenhouse as children are making gifts (scented soap) for the holidays.

“So how are you Mr. Keller? Are you feeling OK?”

This was strange. “Sure Elmer, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

“I would like to get a picture of us before you leave.”

Did Elmer know something that I didn’t? “I’m not going anywhere Elmer. I’m here as long as you are.”

“You aren’t leaving with the other interns?”

“No I’m not an intern. I’m a volunteer.” Elmer brightened up and asked, “Well could we then still take pictures and start a picture book? That way I could show my father and friends at school what I do in the garden.”

“Not a problem Elmer, I’ll get you a book where we can mount the pictures.”

Elmer beamed at me and we got to work.

We missed a few radishes from the last harvest and pulled some huge French Breakfast ones; a total of 1 pound. That was fast and simple. Now for the carrots.

The carrots had been a bit of an experiment. We planted the seeds in a 4-by-3-foot plot at the end of August and thinned them out in mid October. Because of the season, there was little weeding to do so we ignored them as they grew under the Reemay.

But we had a big success with them. I showed Elmer how to pull carrots, first by grabbing the carrot on the stalk near the root, shaking it a bit and giving it a persistent pull. Elmer started to pull carrots quietly until he came across a mat of twisted carrots.

“Mr. Keller, these carrots are weird. Why are they like this?”

As he handed them over to me I realized that two different things were happening. “Elmer, part of this mass is due to the fact that we didn’t thin out some of the baby carrots last month. If you look closely, you will see that this isn’t one carrot but three different ones that are intertwined with each other.”

He looked at them and said, “That is cool. But what about that twisted one?”  I told him, like another student a few months back that distortions happen all the time in carrots and other vegetables though you never see such things in stores. He nodded and continued working on the harvest pulling a range of carrots ranging from misshapen tiny roots to huge singular orange cones. After we washed them we weighted them in at 5.5 pounds.

My next student helped to finish the job as we were cutting turnip greens. Brad (not his real name) was thoughtful in cutting off the leaves. But he had something on his mind.

“Would you mind if I got another job for the winter? Would you get mad at me?”

“Why do you want another job Brad? Don’t you like the garden?”

“Well yes, but there won’t be anything to do soon and it will be a waste of time for me. I think I could be of better use working at the Country Store.”

“Brad, there are lots of things that we need to do in the winter. We have to put the tools away and clean them for storage. We will still have some crops to harvest, though not as often. We need to order seeds for next year’s crop. We will need to start seeds and transplant them in January and February and start to plant our garden in March. So you see there is a lot to do.”

Brad paused for a moment. “Well I see that but I think it would be more interesting to do other things in the winter. What do you think about that?'

I was quiet but firm in response. “Brad, this is a job. A job is a responsibility and sometimes you have to do things that you might not want to do. You can quit anytime you want and apply for another job. But if you quit another student will take your place and you will be unable to come back.”

“You mean I couldn’t work with you in the garden this spring?”

“That’s right.”

He thought about his options quietly for a few moments and then said, “I think I’ll stay here. When can we plan next year’s garden?”

“We can work on it next week unless the lettuce or chard needs to be cut,” I said as we went back to clearing the greens.

It took a few more minutes to finish the harvest. The three pounds of greens we cut filled a 20 gallon tub. We covered the row back up with the Reemay and went to put our greens in the refrigerator. I noticed that a nice sized carrot was missed on the prior harvest. I pulled it up, wiped off the soil and offered it to Brad. He grabbed it, happy for a reward and the sweet taste of a fall harvest.

Unexpected consequences

There are days when you work with children in the garden that the garden presents itself with few good projects. Harvesting is over, weeds are in abeyance, planting is not an issue, clean up is finished for now. That’s when you need to be innovative in horticultural therapy and come up with projects that will both teach and excite. I came to such a place a few weeks back when the weather was temperate and the sun was shining.

As the weather was nice I thought it would be a good opportunity to take my charges out for a walk of the grounds and go on a scavenger hunt. I have done this in the past and it has been a big success. In this exercise, I give each child a clipboard with a piece of paper having the heading, “Finding Flora: Things in the Garden,” and the letters of the alphabet split into two columns; 26 possibilities in total.

I tell children that Flora is the goddess of flowers according to Roman mythology. And while she is more appropriately associated with spring, we can search around the garden for her influence. The goal is to find something, preferably a plant, for all letters A to Z.

I like to do this with the students as it hits all the different types of goals we have in horticultural therapy.  It is good exercise as we spend an hour walking around the campus and bending over to examine different aspects of nature; it also helps them manage small motor skills through writing on a clipboard. It facilitates social interaction as conversation flows freely and I find that with these types of exercises children can let down their guard and confide in you. It helps them emotionally as a walk in the garden often has a calming effect. And finally it forces them to use their mind: Once you find ‘grass’ for the letter G, finding ‘garlic’ or ‘goat’ doesn’t count; you also have to spell and examine nature with an open mind.

Because the community of children I work with is very diverse, I expect to get a range of responses. But in this case, I was thrown for a loop as my kids reacted in a very different way than I would have anticipated.

I didn’t expect much enthusiasm from my first child of the day. Adam (not his real name) is a quiet and reserved child with an inherent sadness about him. So as I put clipboard in hand and we started to find and account for different types of plants, he responded as I expected.

Within a few minutes, however, he asked if we could during our travels go to the wildlife area of Green Chimneys to see the birds of prey including owls, turkey vultures, bald eagles and a condor.

“Not a problem Adam. If fact I thought that we would need to go there to fill out our list.”

Adam immediately brightened up and became very focused on the task at hand and combed the garden and surrounding areas for different plants to fill in his sheet. At the end of the hour he got 24 out of the 26 letters, missing only Z and Q. I took him back to his class a happy child.

The next child, Ben (not his real name) is very bright and always enthusiastic about working in the garden regardless of task. He looks for praise constantly and will work hard to obtain it. I figured with him that this would be a great treat. But when I told him what we were doing, he gave me a hard look.

“Why am I doing this? This sounds stupid. This is not a job.”

I was taken back as this type of rebuke was not something I expected, particularly from Ben. “Ben this is a job. It’s an exercise that will help you better understand what is in the garden.”

“No it’s not. It’s not a job. You are making me do this because I suck,” he said becoming increasingly agitated.

“No, no that is not it at all. Think of this as training,” I said. “When you have a real job there are days that you have to go for training to learn a new skill or refresh an old one. You should think of this in the same way as it will help you remember and identify all the different plants we have in the garden and organize them in your mind.”

Ben thought for a moment and then said, “Well I understand but still don’t think it is a real job. I guess I will try.”

“Good Ben and next week we will be harvesting some of the Swiss chard and lettuce in the garden.”

He then brightened up a bit and in 30 minutes got 18 out of the 26 possible words.

My next child, Charles (not his real name) never got into the exercise. Like Ben he didn’t think it was a real job and was sullen our entire time together not paying attention or even trying. He only got 9 out of 26, though he could spell asparagus and strawberry correctly. In fact, after our exercise he complained to teachers and others about how I wasn’t doing a good job. It took me a couple of weeks of closely working with him to get his trust back.

The day’s experience puzzled me as I couldn’t figure out these kids. A prior batch in the spring had loved the exercise. This day I was successful with one child but others saw the task as a punishment (rather than a reward) or at least a change of venue. Perhaps it was the change of venue that was the issue; children in this facility don’t like to be surprised with an altered routine. When they go to work with me, it is typical to dig in the garden and pull weeds or transplant lettuce seedlings. It is not normal to hold a pen and pad and think about plants. Perhaps they associated it more with schoolwork, which they want to get away from when they are in the garden. I’m not sure but when I try this again, perhaps I will need to give the kids a heads up or think of some type of reward to properly motivate them.

I’ll have to take these things into account as I plan winter activities, which tend to be inside and are much less physical.

It takes a family

Every time I tempt my family into the garden, I am often accused of inflicting horticultural therapy upon them. They may be right. My wife needs little prompting, as she better appreciates the diversity of plants than I and finds great solace in nature’s grasp. My daughters are a different story as when I have called for their help, the help tends to require lots of muscles and effort. So they are naturally suspicious.

I tried a different tack recently with my daughter Sarah as we started in the vegetable garden harvesting basil. It was a quiet time for us early in the morning as we sat and pulled leaves while talking. She told me about how her week went and I listened suggesting to her that she smell her hands every so often to imbibe the basil’s scent. She did and made a pleasing sound and continued with her work. After a bit she said, “Papa, is this horticultural therapy?” I smiled and asked her, “What do you think?” She gave me one of her typical incredulous raised-eyebrow looks.

As we were finishing I told her that we would use a dehydrator to preserve the basil for the winter. I gave her a jar of basil I had already dehydrated. She wondered how we could do this and I showed her how to build a simple dehydrator from a few pieces of wood and a plate of glass. Once the dehydrator was in place and functioning, she was amazed how hot it got under the glass. We put the basil in and then attacked some peas that had been left over from the summer. We pulled the remaining dry peas out of their pods to use as seed for next year’s garden. Then we started the hard work: rebuilding stone walls and borders.

A byproduct of installing a new septic system in the area where I live is that you get rocks. Lots of rocks. To many, the quaint stone walls that are scattered throughout New England represent an era of quiet industry and beauty. To those who cleared the land and built these walls, however, it was merely the most efficient way to remove the plow-busting granite, slate and ledge that is all too common in our properties.

So we had a big pile of rocks to choose from that was added to the big pile of rocks we moved when we had to dismantle the walls before the project was started. And now it was time to rebuild.

Appropriately we were doing this chore on Labor Day, which was when we were all at home with a day off. But the sky was clear and the landscapers at home resting, leaving us the opportunity to take our turn to move rocks and earth.  With a bulldozer, the workers had moved some large boulders throughout the property to create a rough outline of where the beds and new gardens should be. The placement was not perfect but with steel poles, shovels and lots of pushing from me, my son-in-law (Alan) and Sarah, we were able to get the larger rocks in place.

The effort involved in moving the largest of rocks the smallest of distances creates a concentration between us that can’t be underestimated. As a group we try to move in unison, much like the arm of a backhoe albeit with much less strength. Our levers are manipulated by slight signals between us so that the small boulder moves in the right direction.

After the largest of rocks are in place we then start building the walls and borders. We are not building classic New England stone walls but rather  squat versions that will create a space for different beds in the front yard. My wife and Sarah take charge of building the walls; Alan and I are the laborers who bring the stones to them. Our task is minimal compared to the early settlers in this part of the country, yet we still strain to move the largest of rocks.

As we move the stones to my wife and daughter, we attempt to bring the largest ones first to create a good base and then progressively smaller stones that will cap the top. We dig through the different piles trying to imagine where the stones will go and where they have been. Some came from the very wall that is being rebuilt; others have been unearthed from a blanket of loam and hardpan where they have been undisturbed for ages. This is their first exposure to light in centuries, perhaps thousands of years. Other rocks were smashed into their current forms by hydraulic hammers that shattered tongues of ledge that protruded into an areas where a storage tank needed to be placed. These are new rocks with rough and sometimes sharp edges that have not had the opportunity to be smoothed by the weathering process.

“Bring us some smaller rocks,” said my wife Juana. “And some flat ones would be good if you can get them.”  And with those commands we try to find the best match. But there are no bad matches. Even though building these walls and borders is like a jigsaw puzzle, many of the pieces are interchangeable. There is no right or wrong way to assemble the wall; it just shouldn’t collapse. That is really the only criterion we adhere to. So with this idea in mind, we place rocks in a circle or line until we are finished (or run out of rocks.) None of our creations are perfect, but it doesn’t matter. We have spent the day working together and now can sit back and enjoy the fruit of our effort. Even if it is just a pile of stones.

Off to the beach

A recent cartoon in the New Yorker reminded me that the beach is usually not for gardening. You are surrounded by nature, but your reactions are muted by a type of voyeurism that says look but don’t touch.  You are surprised by the lush inhabitants that flourish, grow and display themselves unambiguously for all to see.  But if you are smart, you merely acknowledge the sublime beauty of what the beach has to offer.  By the way, this includes plants and people.

Plants at the beach are amazing as you believe that they have no right to be alive. They are bombarded by salty water, hit by wind and grow in sand with few nutrients. Regardless there are endless varieties, some of which like beach plums, grow mainly on the beach.

Tomorrow I am headed off to Fire Island for a few days to stay with my sister-in-law and rejoin my wife, who has been there since Monday.

My sister-in-law shares a lovely cottage on the bay side of Fire Island. It is custom at the cottage to sit by the sea wall, drink in hand watching the sun set. Not a bad way to start an evening. Over the past few years she and her cottage mates have started to garden and I have become one of their advisors as well as contributors. Anyone can bring a six-pack for a weekend but you really can curry favor with the inhabitants if you deliver a hibiscus, variegated hosta or butterfly bush to the house. Given my current travails in the garden, I’m bringing seven small hostas to plant in the shady spaces around the cottage.

Although I’m hoping they will have a drink at the ready for me before I must pick up a shovel.

Smelling the roses, remembering mother

My mother’s garden continues to please her and amaze her friends. As I wrote before, my mother has become much more comfortable in her garden and is looking after it with the attention and pride of a mother who just gave birth to a cute child. The last time I checked in on my mother, her sister (my aunt) was visiting from Florida and it was time to trim the roses. A few months ago my mother didn’t even know she had a rose bush, but it was there, hidden in the back yard.

After we had rehabilitated the two front beds in the house mid-spring, we went to the back and saw an out-of-control bittersweet. As I started to pull it out I realized that there was a rose bush as well as a Japanese maple covered by the choking leafs.

“Mom, did you know you have a rose bush in the back?” 

“What rose bush?”

After I pointed it out, she had no idea how the rose got there. But I had an idea.

When we were young, my father installed a split-rail fence around the property and planted a rose bush between each set of posts. In the early years, they bloomed expansively covering the top rails. They were planted in colored sequence—yellow, red, white, pink—up the side street and around the front. My mother used to go out to smell the roses and look with wistful pleasure at her flowering property line. But years of children trampling over and lawn mowers not respecting them led to their slow and steady demise so that decades later there would be but a few survivors. (These survivors were a blessing for me as I used to clip their flowers and bring a bouquet to my future mother-in-law while I was courting my wife.)

My father eventually took down the fence and I believe he took the single remaining rose and planted it in the back yard without telling anyone. Over a decade later, my mother and I found it and a self-seeded Japanese maple.

I first cut down the bittersweet as best I could and then dug out the maple. My mother decided to plant it near the corner of the house. We then dug in lots of manure and compost.

That was a few months ago and since then the roses have been plentiful and the bush has tripled in size. My mother and her sister loved going out and looking at the new gardens. But it was time to dead head the rose bush.

I gave my mother my pruners and even in her weak, arthritic hands they worked well. For me this was pretty amazing as a few years ago, my mother would not take care of a plastic plant and now she was enthusiastically and carefully trimming off dead branches and buds of a rose bush that was first planted on our property over 40 years ago. She started on one side and then moved over to another. We talked about the house’s old rose bushes and those at her mother’s house. She used her cane to gather the cuttings in one pile so it would be easy for me to rake everything up and cart it away. As there we a few spent buds she couldn’t reach I took the trimmers from her. She directed me on what to cut and where. “You missed that one in the back. . .Not so much from the front. . .Don’t forget that one.”

After we were finished we all sat down and I asked her and my aunt about their mother and if she was a big gardener. “Oh yes,” said my aunt. “Mother had a wonderful garden.”

“We used to make dolls out of hollyhocks,” added my mother.

With that stimulus, my mother and aunt started to talk about their mother’s garden. There was a line of lilies along the side of their house along with white, purple, yellow and pale violet irises. My aunt’s favorite flower was the peony and she loved the scents in the garden.

In the back of the house there was a rock garden with big Japanese poppies where she and my mother spent lots of time as children playing dress up with their mother’s old clothing. They argued over who was the princess most of the time and the different colors and types of flowers that were around the rock garden and how they would roll down the hill at their Uncle Bill’s house. They started to laugh and exchange silly stories about when they were both girls. I just sat back and watched how having just a little garden has changed my mother. She now likes to go outside to water and deadhead her flowers. It makes her feel good, especially when the neighbors notice and complement her on how nice everything looks. And for me it’s the best as I can sit back and listen to stories about her youth and my grandmother than I would never have gotten to hear otherwise.

Weeding out horticultural jargon

One of the challenges of any discipline is to decipher the jargon that is used by its practitioners. Horticultural therapy (HT) is no different than any other profession and has its own set of words and phrases that mean little to those that are untutored. There are phrases, in fact, that are not agreed upon by those in the field. For instance, when I was undergoing my training at the New York Botanical Garden, there was an active disagreement between the different teachers as to the differences between goals and objectives, two fundamental parts of any HT treatment, and which of the two could be measured.

In the HT community goals are considered broad, long-term views of something to be achieved through a variety of tasks. A typical goal for a person might be to increase use and strength of the right hand. An objective is a precise task or activity that occurs over a short period of time. The corollary objective might be to use a set of pruners with the right hand to deadhead lilies for 10 minutes.

Everyone agrees on this simple view but more than a pair of my teachers disagreed on whether goals could be measured or not: some said yes, others, not so much. While it seems like a silly point and distinction, unless everyone agrees on the same ideas and views then communication becomes more difficult and the practice of HT becomes unnecessarily complex and confusing.

In an attempt to make things easier I have taken the four treatment areas of HT (cognitive, social, physical and emotional) and have changed the language for two (physical and cognitive) in an attempt to make them more accessible. Nearly all entries of my blog will deal with at least one of these issues.

 Emotional gardening deals with our feelings and how gardening should make us feel better. Being in the garden should always be a joyful experience regardless of what you are doing. There are no specific tasks associated with the potential for joy and happiness as they can come from a simple walk or planning a complex garden. There is also an inherent calm and serenity from people interacting with plants that often occurs whenever they share the same space.

Hands-on gardening (physical) is how that act of gardening tasks different physical parts and aspects of the human body. The range of hands-on activities is huge ranging from the delicate sewing of tiny seeds like carrots to double-digging a garden plot. While there may be certain people who consider gardening “wimpy,”  it is perhaps one of the best overall workouts that you can get and can be done by any person of any age in any condition.

Social gardening uses the concepts of gardening and nature as a catalyst that facilitates interaction with people. The activity of gardening is a natural ice breaker and can get even the most recalcitrant people to strike up conversation. Unlike many games, sports and other group activities, there is little competition between those who garden (though I’ve seen some nasty battles over who has the best roses) and tends not to be threatening to individuals. This lack of threat creates the potential to break down lots of barriers.

Thinking gardening (cognitive) makes people use their brain. How many seeds will you need to plant a 12-foot row if every seed needs to be placed 1 inch apart? How should you design your garden? When should you start your lettuce so you get a crop in mid-September? The garden is full of decisions that must be made every day from the simple maintenance of watering a hanging plant to dealing with an infestation of white fly. There are tons of activities that tap into both the logical and creative aspects of the mind.

Whenever we practice horticultural therapy we try to stimulate multiple senses (touch, taste, hearing, smell, sight) and areas (emotional, hands-on, social, thinking). The garden’s broad pallet of plants, bugs, weeds, soil, etc. makes that pursuit fairly easy and satisfying.