GroHappy

Capitol arboretums and botanic gardens

While most of the tourists in Washington D.C. go to places like the Air & Space or Holocaust Museums, we spent much of our spare time last weekend at the National Arboretum and Botanic Garden. As the weather was hot and thick with humidity, the opportunity to spend some reflective time walking among tropical trees, Asian gardens and rare plants was a welcome diversion.

We first visited the National Arboretum whose plantings were more temperate in nature. In walking through the grounds I realized how many of the plants we have in our garden that are not native to the Americas but rather to Asia. Hostas, rhododendrons, azaleas, rhubarb, Japanese maples, white birch and others are far more common in my yard than my native plantings such as witch hazel, American holly, mountain laurel and day lilies.

As an Arboretum it seemed less developed than others I had been to. Perhaps that is due to the research charter of the facility. There were a variety of different planting areas and exhibits such as bonsai and the Grove of State Trees. But much of it seemed left to nature’s whim as if the intense planning and control of a Federal Government had no place here. Ironically a plaza with the columns of the old Capitol building was surrounding by fields of clover and high grass appearing as would a skinny Stonehenge without apparent purpose or focus.

This like other museums we visited had an energy conservation theme as it showed how different plants could be used to generate power. The castor bean has great promise though the Arboretum didn’t at all inform the reader of its deadly properties, In fact many of the Arboretum’s plants identified by Amy Stewart’s excellent book, “Wicked Plants,” as potentially lethal are not looked in that light in the least.

The Botanic (rather than the botanical) garden was much more organized in keeping with its adjacent location to the U.S. Capitol Building. But like the U.S. Government, a labyrinth of paths and rooms led to a wide variety of unrelated ecosystems and vegetation and confusion.  Unlike government entities, however, getting lost and disoriented was half the fun as we traversed from a tropical jungle to a dry desert to a temperate children’s garden.

As we entered the garden we were greeted by a fruiting cacao tree, which had been pollinated by garden workers rather than by the more natural method of tiny flies native to the Andes and Central America. My wife Juana (pictured above with my brother Craig) looked at the pods of pre-chocolate in a greedy way wishing she could grab one and release its gooey innards. She was similarly tempted when she saw a flowering banana tree as well as papaya. All of her tropical buttons were triggered reminding me of stories of her youth when she and her sisters would take the flower of a banana tree and use it for play. I had no such youthful memories on Long Island, where the most exotic plant to me was a skunk cabbage.

The garden also had a variety of carnivorous plants very much like the ones I propagate. They are all considered endangered because of the loss of wetlands areas and I wish I had a bog where I could begin to repopulate these hungry and (to some) malevolent plants. The garden had a particularly magnificent specimen  of a Nepenthes ventricosa pitcher plant that I wanted to take home. Alas I kept my hands in my pockets and slinked on by.

One of the problems I always have in these types of gardens is the struggle to follow the rules: don’t touch, don’t take. Like a greedy slug or groundhog I want to devour and take samples so I can grow copies of these wonderful plants in my garden. My wife often needs to slap my hand or tug at me when the temptation is too strong.

One exhibit where this was not a problem was the Plants in Culture exhibit where we were all encouraged to smell the spices and flowers. In fact, many of the flowers being exhibited were rendered in stainless steel and aluminum rather than composed of chlorophyll and leafy or woody material. Poppies, sunflowers, bird’s of paradise and other flowers were built to last through many seasons and the potential abuse of visitors.

Upon walking out to the Mall from the Botanic Garden, it occurred to me how sterile our Nation’s main plaza is. Trees and grass. The American standard. It is a pity that the Mall could not better reflect the diversity that we saw last weekend. Perhaps when the Mall is finally restored such a vision will be realized. I doubt it.

Shoveling snow, sowing seeds

 

After being away for five weeks it was good to come home though as we approached the less temperate North, it was with a bit of trepidation. We got lucky, however, as the warm weather seemed to follow us home and when we arrived a few days ago the temperatures were in the high 50s with much of the snow melted. Except at our home.

As we live on the top of a ridge, on a northern-facing slope, the warming rays of the sun were turning a blind eye to our snow timidly bouncing off rather than being absorbed. On Tuesday there was still a foot of snow in our backyard while in town there was barely a pile of snow to be found.

But the warm weather has held and with a strong rainstorm expected this weekend, the snow should be a faded memory. My kids had done a good job shoveling off the greenhouse and the cold frames so that the snow would not collapse them but there was lots of snow surrounding them. With a warm sun beating down, I took out the ice chipper and shovel and dug out the paths in the greenhouse so it would be less dangerous to walk and work around the garden. After removing much of the piled-on snow, I carefully pulled away the white blanket of icy snow from our herb garden with the hope that some of the perennials would reemerge within the month so we could put some of our McCormick spices into storage. 

Still most of my vegetable garden is under snow, while the cold frame and hoop houses are toasty. As I lifted one of the cold-frame panels, a waft of warm, moist air greeted me as well as the smell of rotting vegetation.

The Swiss Chard, Romaine and Mizuna greens had been wiped out by the cold. I pulled their shriveled and rotting leaf remnants from the garden and placed them into the compost heap. The soil, warm to the touch, gave them up easily and weeds were starting to sprout. I then took my trowel and placed it into the soil; it went down over six inches. All was not lost in the garden. The Winter Destiny lettuce was perky with a small head that is about 3 inches in diameter.  I broke off a small leaf and enjoyed its sweet taste and crisp texture.  I am hoping that with the warmth and spring light its growth will accelerate and be ready for harvest in the next month.

It is a bit early but having nothing to lose save a few seeds I decided to sow a few early spring crops. After working some compost into the area I intended to plant, I put in a few rows of radishes, lettuce and spinach. With any kind of luck I should see some sprouts in a week or so. That would not be the case for the garlic and strawberries, which still sat under a foot of snow.

The rest of the yard was still recovering and I found a bunch of snowdrops that had sprouted since we left. It was one of the few signs that the weather had turned.

Fresh fruit and old memories

We are readying to leave the Keys and slowly make our way back North. One of the things we will most miss is the access to fresh vegetables and fruit that we have had over the past month. While farms are few in the Keys, we discovered a recently opened produce stand in Islamorada that has wonderfully fresh fruit. Unlike the fruit we get in the North, the mangos and papayas were soft and smelled ready to eat, the tomatoes were firm and flavorful, the strawberries are fresh from the farm.

As we were selecting our food for the next few days, a small woman who was the mother of the owner looked shyly at my wife as though she recognized her and asked, “De donde es usted (Where are you from)?” My wife replied, “Yo soy de Guatemala (I am from Guatemala).” A slight smile crossed her face and she started to tell my wife of her life.

She was born in a small village in Guerrero, Mexico, where there were no public schools. She lamented her lack of an education. She married her husband in 1975 and they came to the United States around 1990 when her little girl was two. This little girl was now a young woman who was helping her brother and mother run the stand.

I looked carefully at this elderly woman. She was short with a tanned square face with glasses to match and pulled-back black hair tinged with grey streaks. Her stubby hands and fingers were powerful as were her forearms. “Tengo fresa, aqui (I have strawberries here), she said climbing into her truck pulling an entire flat of fruit out with the ease of lifting a single piece of paper. I took the flat from her and placed them on an adjacent table. The berries were perfect.

“Son de hoy temprano (They are from today, early),” she said. “Se las doy por $4.50. “Me hijo las vende por $5 la caja grande.  Aqui abajo hay un viejo que las vende por $10 por la caja chiquita. Se las estoy dando a buen precio, (I will give them to you for $4.50. My son sells them for $5 for the large box. An old man down the street sells a small box for $10.)” My wife being the consummate bargain seeker said she would take two boxes.

Every time she spoke she pressed her throat through an old grey turtleneck shirt and out croaked a deep raspy sound that was more mechanical than human in nature. She told my wife that when she came to the United States she could only get a job picking lemons as she had no education. She later added that because of all the dust and chemicals in the lemon tree fields, she had this as she pressed her hand into the base of her throat.

She reminded me of the Faustian bargain we have all made in the growing and harvesting of our food. It is on the backs of such people, old before their time, that we can have the flawless peppers, berries and other vegetation that sits in our refrigerators or in a fruit bowel in the kitchen.

It reminded me of a summer when I worked in a commercial nursery making soil, filling and moving pots, planting seedlings. We worked 10 to 11 hours a day, 6 days a week. There were no toilet facilities and when the sprayers came by we were told to stay in the fields. I worked for a summer, she for a lifetime.

Because we were the first customers during the day, we got a $1 a pound off for everything we bought. Mangos, papayas, bananas, strawberries, peppers, cucumbers and a tomato. As they had not set up the register for the day, the young girl was trying to add up everything on a piece of paper. She was having a hard time with simple multiplication so I volunteered to do the math: .44 pounds of tomatoes at $1.50 a pound: 75 cents (I always round up); 1.7 pounds of bananas at 70 cents a pound: $1.25.

My wife smiled and told the woman that my father had been a math teacher. Her new friend smiled and replied, “Es muy bueno que el es educado, (It is very good that he is educated.”) as she emptied the strawberries into a bag and packed the remainder of our purchase.

Sunsets and moonrises

Though too few in number, we have experienced some spectacular sunsets. A few days ago, one particular sunset displayed for us constant changes in color and luminance. Every moment a new set of colors and shades emerged. Pinks, blues, reds, oranges. In the front of the horizon, behind us, on the side. It was one of the most colorful sunsets I have ever seen as the sky exploded with different shades rotating as would a celestial kaleidoscope.

To get a good sunset, the sky needs to have interesting shapes and a reasonable amount of water vapor or other gases. We had it that evening. As Jim Carrey said in The Mask to Cameron Diaz while sitting in Landfill Park, “It’s really beautiful right around sunset. The methane emissions really pick up the colors. All those pinks and greens.”

Ironically upwind from us the Everglades is a major source of methane, as is any wetland that has a large amount of organic matter. It would be interesting to see if the northerly winds we have been getting are bringing us the natural pollution we need to have such great sunsets.

Regardless of the scientific reasons, sunsets are something we as a culture have rallied around. In southern Florida, the sunset at Key West is very popular, particularly in Mallory Square where a street (or square) fair is held every evening as the sun goes down. We are watching all the sunsets diligently but have yet to see the famous green flash.

I actually think our view is a little nicer as at Mallory Square the sun sinks into the water whereas at our little complex we have tiny jetties, islands, palm trees, etc. to give the last rays of light a bit more texture and interest. It is also much easier to saunter down 100 yards from our cottage with a beer and peanuts in hand than to drive the 80-plus miles to the end of the Keys.

Moonrises don’t get the same kind of attention that sunsets receive, which is unfair. A good moonrise is much more infrequent that a good sunset. The sun sets every day; a full moon rises only a few days each month giving the sun a 10 to 1 advantage in frequency. This lack of frequency is compounded by weather: You need a really clear sky to get a good moonrise.

My wife and I decided to take a chance one evening and sat at a local bar waiting for the moon to emerge from the water like a giant orb being born. Just when we were about to give up hope, a dull orange semicircle began to emerge from the sea quickly growing in size and brightness. My wife said it changed color from a very pale pink through orange and then to the full spectrum of white but much of that was lost on me in my color blind state. Regardless its change in color and size seemed remarkable as it undulated between small and large to my eye. Apparently this is an optical illusion that reaches its height during the solstice moon.

We scrambled down to the edge of the water to better see the moon emerging from and reflecting upon the water. The sun just went down and the moon replaced it as nature's nightlight. It may have not been as colorful as the sunset we recently experienced, but it was remarkable none the less. Anyway we needed that nightlight as we were bicycling back to our cottage and didn’t bring a flashlight. It was dark, but it didn’t matter as lovely Luna lit our way home.

Chilled expectations

It is the end of perhaps the most harsh February that I have had the displeasure to experience in recent memory. The worst was the winter of 1996 where nearly 120 inches of snow dropped in the Danbury, CT, region. But this winter is right up there with relentless blizzards coming one after another. Now that shouldn’t mean much for me as I am supposedly staying warm in the Florida Keys to swaying palm trees and vacationers lubricated with beer and pina coladas.

That has been far from the truth as we came to the tropics but the tropics never came to us. The excessively bizarre weather from the Northeast has migrated with us dropping average temperatures: the typical lows of the mid 60s are higher then the typical highs that we have had during our month down here.

And with the lovely 20-knot-plus Northern winds pushing up the whitecaps on Florida Bay, it has not been the weather to snorkel, swim, kayak, fish or do anything on the water save look for the occasional lovely sunset, which we have had all too few because of overcast skies. As is obvious, our expectations have been chilled by the weather. We are content to be in a nicer climate but strangely are only slightly warmer than we would be in the North.

Back home, I would be tending the stove throwing on another log between treks outside to shovel snow off the driveway and my greenhouse. The house would be toasty warm with my wife telling me to damp down the stove. I would be baking bread and cooking a vat of chili. In our cottage here, however, the portable heaters strain to keep our dwelling warm as the fast and relentless winds suck the heat out through all of the drafty jalacy windows that comprise the majority of area on three of the four cinderblock walls. My wife spends evenings bundled up in a cocoon of Polartec blankets while wearing most of the winter cloths she brought. None of the bathing suits, sleeveless shirts or other warm-weather fare have seen the light as they are sequestered at the bottom of a dresser drawer.

And as I mentioned in the last post, there isn’t much diversity in the plants. They are green. They are big. They tend to grow fast. Because of the cold, most of the flowers have fallen off. I hate to say it but they are kind of boring.

We will be heading for home in the next week. I only hope we can bring some of the warmth with us so the snow will melt and the plants can grow. The North may be cold in the winter but at least you can count on it.

A (relatively) cold winter to bicycle and bird watch

We fled the North nearly three weeks ago to embrace the warmth of the South, in particular the Florida Keys, but like many snowbirds have discovered that we need to crowd together to stay warm rather than luxuriate alone in a humid, warm climate. Don’t get me wrong, mid-60 degree temperatures (during the day) beats the sub-freezing temperatures back at home and the feet of snow that have been dumped over the last few weeks.

My shoveling children show me no sympathy as I complain that I need to wear a sweatshirt while in my shorts during the last few weeks in the Keys. And while it has warmed up over the weekend to the high 70s, I’m keeping a sweatshirt nearby just in case.

Regardless, this respite from the Northern cold has had a therapeutic effect upon me and has had me itching to start my flats of greens when we get back mid-March.  I brought down a handful of gardening magazines and made some last minute orders from Johnny’s and Territorial. I will have the full complement of seeds needed to start up early greens in my beds, which are still pretty frozen according to my kids. I can only hope that the recent spate of 40 degree days has warmed the earth a bit so when I return the soil will accept a seed easily with a simple finger push rather than a hammer and chisel.

But now that environment seems distant as I bicycle every day and watch over the myriad birds that are in the area. Red-winged blackbirds, pelicans, blue and white herons, ibis, egrets, osprey are but a few of the wonderful fowl that we get to see every day. While all the plants are green, to color blind me they have little difference though my wife begs to differ. Bromeliads, mother-in-law’s tongue, palm and coconut trees, etc. It all seems too much the same. To me the Northern garden has much more diversity and interest than what I am finding in the Keys. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that the Keys get less than 20 inches of rain a year and have a thin layer of sandy soil sitting on an old coral reef. We of New England get north of 50 inches of rain a year and often have plentiful amounts of compost and topsoil. This contrast tells me why the North in certain ways has much more gardening potential than in the Keys. (When it is warm, of course.)

There are some plants attempting to flower out. A few hibiscus are making a show with orange and red flowers getting ready for pollination. A few weeks ago, most of the leaves of this shrub were shriveled and few buds were left because of the cold snap. Now many of the plants have swollen buds ready to bloom.

Bees are starting to make their rounds near these shrubs and a few smaller trees with yellow flowers (that I could not identify). We went to a local nautical flea market over the weekend and between countless sellers of rods, reels and chum containers found a local apiary that sells the most delicious honey. Bees-n-the-Keys sells the the honeys of Southern Florida including Black Mangrove, Key Lime, Tupelo, Jamaica Dogwood, Florida Holly, Sea Grape and Mango. We went for the Key Lime.

And of course there are the wonderful sunsets. Our cottage is on the bay side of the Keys and we get to congregate with others who share the grounds with us most evenings in a salutation to the sun. Every night it is different and the sun sets a minute or two later each day leading us to the end of our vacation and the beginning of our spring garden back up North.

Southern comfort

Now that we have been in Florida for a week, my wife and I have thoroughly thawed out and started to brown up. In driving from the Northern portion of the state to the Florida Keys, the changes in vegetation were much more subtle than what we experienced on the earlier parts of our drive (unless you want to consider a bleak snowy Connecticut equivalent to a bleak snowy North Carolina.)

The early portion of our drive took us through central Florida and miles of citrus groves where trees were lined up like good soldiers in rows as far as the eye could see. There were, however, a few errant trees spread like weeds along the highway that had planted themselves. The soil had the consistency of beach sand and a dirty grey color.

When you grow your little garden, it is easy to forget the scale and organization of commercial agriculture. Halfway through our drive we passed the factory for  Florida’s Natural orange juice. The air was heavy with the sweet scent of oranges, a much nicer smell than what you get when passing though the more northern sections of New Jersey.

The citrus groves eventually gave way to fields of sugar cane south of Lake Okeechobee, where vast areas of the Everglades had been drained revealing a thick, dark nitrogen-rich soil. Open air trucks with sides of steel lattice filled with oranges and grapefruits gave way to the same filled with green stalks of sugar cane. It appears to be harvest season in central Florida for this sweet grass and fruit with countless trucks filled to the brim making turns onto side roads leading to a distant processing plant. Like its orange counterpart, the air in sugar cane country is sweet like cotton candy.

Getting closer to our destination, we pass through Homestead to see this spring’s pepper and tomato plants starting their growth as well as older ones the were killed by the recent cold. Like the North, Florida has seen more than its fare share of extreme weather, which has killed off both plants and animals. My friend Brian needed to bury four iguanas that were stricken by the cold.

But the concept of cold is relative. In the Keys anything below 60 degrees is cold; we Northerners rejoice in such weather donning shorts that display our pasty legs. There are coconut trees, palms, bougainvillea in bloom and lots of plants that I am at a loss to identify. Pelicans fly overhead and perch nearby. My friend Brian has bromeliads that measure four feet high by six feet across. I have a little one at home that fits into a four inch pot that struggles to grow. It’s time to learn about these beauties.

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.

Getting that good old-fashioned karma

Even though I read every guide book I can lay my hands on, when ever I travel I always discover a surprise. On this trip, my surprise is the result of a conversation with my good friend M.R. Rangaswami, who has one foot in the high-tech world and the other in a green one. As he knew I was going to Kauai, he told me that I shouldn’t miss going to the temple that is being carved in India and hand-built in Kauai for a Hindu monastery. I’m always a sucker for a good suggestion and as it worked out we would be going to the monastery on the last day of our trip.

As Kauai is a very multicultural place, there were lots of hints of what was to come. Near the pool at our condo, one of the residents had decorated a statue with flowers and fruits every morning. Perhaps that is why we never had any rain except during the evening.

As we spent our days driving, hiking and swimming around Kauai, it was impossible to not sense that we were in a place very special with limitless amounts of different plants. You can’t swing a dead rooster (the standard bird) and not hit a new plant that you had never seen before. Butterfly bushes looked dowdy and dull when placed next to the more exotic bird-of-paradise. Plumeria and hibiscus rained flowers on our rental every night; after a while I began to tire of these flowers as they required a good brushing off every morning before we set out.

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None of this prepared us for our journey up to the monastery, which is perched on the foot of an extinct volcano next to the Wailua River. The monastery rests on 458 acres where the Iraivan Temple is being built with a hoped for completion in 2012. Progress is a function of money and time as everything is being carved by hand in India and shipped for fitting and assembly in Kauai.

As we entered the grounds of the monastery we could feel how the environment calmed us down. A traditional gardener would call the grounds a bit weedy and unkempt, but to me there was a strong sense of unity and calm as everything came together in a complex but beautiful mosaic. It challenged the view of what a traditional garden should be like as it mixed simple plants like coleus with elephant ears and pineapple.  Just being in the garden in this environment was a healing experience that stimulated all my senses yet brought an inner peace to my psyche.

Upon introducing himself, our guide on the tour told us about how this area was special and holy to Hindus as it was selected by the monastery's founder, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (Gurudeva, 1927-2001), who had the vision and drive to raise the money to buy the land and build the temple. As he guided us through the grounds it was easy to lose yourself among all the tropical plants and the serenity that radiated from the garden. I have been in many gardens throughout my life but there have been few that have been as calming as those on these grounds.

To practice horticultural therapy at this site all you need to do is to be part of the garden; we feed the plants CO2 by breathing in and out in a simple pattern and they pay us back with scented oxygen and serenity. Over two dozen monks have a wonderful and tranquil place to live and meditate. Their being and peacefulness permeates the plants and all the surroundings. We are enveloped by the land, the water and the plants. We don’t want to leave.

This tour was the perfect end to our trip. It’s now time to go home to our garden.

Flora from Kauai

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One of the things that is great about going to a place like Kauai is that there is never an absence of life. You can’t swing a dead chicken or rooster (the Island’s birds) without hitting some fantastic looking flower or plant. Every breadth that you inhale is full of life-affirming scents and mysteries. Even though you are not physically gardening, plants consume your every view and spirit. Here are a couple of the hundreds of pictures we took.