Journal
Welcome! I’ve spent years crawling around in gardens looking at the world. Here are my seasonal musings on working outdoors with plants. May you find some resonance.
The Stampede of August
August is a stampede. A riot. A flood. A stolen car out for a joyride. The subtlty of May has become drenched in sun and dirt and a riot of color and life everywhere you look. It happened so fast. The season was humming along steadily and suddenly became a runaway train. So many flowers in bloom, ready to pick. So many towering plants in the gardens to trim. And the weeds never stopped coming. Ironically, this is the moment many of us gardeners dreamt of in mid-winter, while pouring over seed catalogs. But when it comes, it has a way of trampling you flat and dulling the senses. I am covered in dirt at day's end. My wrist watch is grimy and my farmers tan baked in. The schedule is well worn; sleep, rise, work, repeat. Same hours everyday. Lately in south facing sun, relentless in it's afternoon heat. I start to feel like linen that has been worn too long. Rumply and dusty and I long to put on a sweater. Right about now I start dreaming of sparkly snow. And fresh courderoy to ski on in February. I feel like linen that has been worn too long. Rumply and dusty and I long to put on a sweater. The Presence wants to escape this discomfort. But doing so will forsake the beauty. How often do we wish in mid-winter for the glow of an August afternoon, the symphony of crickets offering perfect peace. It's madness. I wash the dirt off and take a rest day. I am yanked back to the fleetingness by the individuals and the moments. The goldenrods glowing and offering nutrient rich pollen to many foraging insects, the spires of liatris a shade of purple that's almost electric. The cheerful and charming heliopsis. And the dahlias! Well, they are an absolute wonderland. So many forms and colors. The blaze of strawflowers and drooping heads of panicum offering a promise of autumn. The rows of flowers towering over my head, sweet cosmos and Rudbeckia trilobum. I weave and bend to get through. The crickets in late afternoon as I rush to get everything done in the shortening days. In a few months the ground these ephemeral wonders occupy will be bare. The tall rows will be gone. I will have my snow. I try to savor this richness right alongside the sore wrists and dusty shirts. This storm of plant life, crescendoing in August. Soon to become the bittersweetness of fall.
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Plant Stories - Bells of Ireland
I grew some decent Bells of Ireland this year. Which isn’t an easy thing to do, as it turns out. They have always fascinated me, they’re unlike anything else. The flowers are the tiny white inside of papery bells arranged in clusters around the stem. The plant is in the mint family and native to western Asia. I’ve always thought the scent is reminiscent of Irish Spring Soap. Or green apples. I’ve been growing things from seed for a long time. About 25 years. But this is the first time I’ve ever grown some nice looking Bells of Ireland. I’ve tried before, but they were scrawny or too few in number to use. So this winter I did some research. I discovered they are in fact finicky and tricky. And slow. I froze the seed to break the seed coat. I tried the wet paper towel on a heat mat trick to break dormancy, transplanting individual sprouts into a flat. Although after germinating they don’t like the heat. 50-60 degree growing temperature is best during all stages of growth. I had to find a zone in my house that was just right. They also don’t like being root bound, so it’s a gamble as to when to trick them into growing in late winter in order to plant out in spring. If it gets too hot and too late, they will grow teeny flowers on short stems. I bought a lot of seeds. I had some setbacks and some success and kept sowing successions of them. I got about 35 plants. I planted them out early. Earlier than intuition tells you. It’s been a cool summer. That’s been helpful. I cut the first flowers in mid-July. I marveled and was filled with a satisfaction that was so complete it surprised me. The sight of the plants growing sizable, usable stems seemed to deliver me to an unexpected place that felt like a form of arrival. Of sorts. Like something hard won. Not just in terms of the tricky plants, but that was part of it. Like a quality of being was tied up in it. Then I remembered Susan Bill. I met Susan Bill in the summer of 2000 on Lopez Island, Washington. She was a flower farmer somewhere in her 50’s. Or maybe late 40’s. I was only 23 at the time and everyone I met that was older than me was a real adult, age was irrelavant, and I was an intern, just out of college. I was working for the Lopez Community Land Trust on a 6 month stay on the island. My project was a recipe book featuring local growers and their favorite seasonal recipes containing local foods. I ventured out to Susan Bill’s place one day for an interview and found her in the middle of a harvest day, a whole team of helpers milling around, with her at the center trying to coral the effort. I finally flagged her down, asking for a few minutes for my project. She was sweeping in her mannerisms, weathered by the sun, and wore a big sun hat. She was direct, funny and extremely succinct. I liked her immediately. She had a way of making you feel like if she was giving you a few minutes of her time, you better listen up. When I asked her about her favorite recipes she didn’t hesitate. She went right to apples. Being in Washington state, it was a bit of a given for most people. While she talked she interrupted herself multiple times to shout instructions to her crew. Having grown up on Lopez island, and growing a lot of apples herself, apples reminded her of her parents. Specifically, Apple Brown Betty. She told me that her mother, Sally Bill, always said the only reason that her father, Sandy Bill, married her was for her Apple Brown Betty. A weird dessert that’s basically apples, butter, bread crumbs and sugar. Susan’s family loved it though. I pulled out my camera and asked to take her picture. She hesitated at this, but looked at the huge bunch of Bells of Ireland in her arms, clutched them a little tighter, and looked out into the field. I snapped her photo. That was it. I never saw her again, we never became friends. I left the island a couple of months later and have never been back. When I look at the photo now I can't be certain that she's actually holding Bells of Ireland at all. It's too blury to tell. I think maybe the flower is bupleureum. Because I know more plants now, and I doubt my memory. In my mind though, it has always been the bells. She and the Bells of Ireland are inextricably linked. Her character and that flower. That is what it became for me. It was just a small moment when I was a young woman. A short conversation for my internship project. I never made the recipe. It wasn’t until I had my Bells of Ireland in my bucket that I felt the connection. To that moment. To the impact her presence had on me right then. This dignified woman in her 40’s or 50’s. Her grace, style, commanding and warm spirit to my young mind, still taking everything in. How we carry tiny moments with us throughout our lives, sometimes unknowingly, that run scripts in the background, telling us who to become, what to strive for, what to value. Just a blip really. And 25 years later, I feel like some small part of me has been reaching for the character of Susan Bill. To be in my 40’s and be weathered and warm, to be holding a beautiful armful of Bells of Ireland, those strange flowers that smell like Irish Spring soap, as I told my story to a young stranger.
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I started in July
It’s July. The lilacs have faded. One of the first phenological things I learned when I moved up north 25 years ago is that the lilacs bloom at the end of June. Which is around the same time as my birthday. I would remember their bloom time every year, anticipate their arrival and watch them fade as the young fresh summer turned sultry. I had young kids and fancied myself a savvy and accomplished gardener as I had turned my fork in the soil and grown some nice looking vegetables a couple of years in a row. (Actually I think it was beginners luck.) I thought naively that knowledge with a smattering of experience basically equaled expertise. I had learned a thing or two about cover cropping a ¼ acre vegetable patch, a few things about root cellar storage, and I could remember the bloom time of lilacs. My truck farming career was short. I began working with a landscaper in July of 2009. I was 32. I worked on the garden maintenance side of things. The plant crew. The owner was a guy named Ron. He built new gardens, ran the hardscaping ‘crew’. It was really just him and one other guy. He was nearing retirement, after a 30 year career building masterful landscapes all over the county. He was tough but gracious, serious and kind enough but also quietly scrutinizing with a frayed graying beard and wiry red, almost orange hair that he pulled into a thin, ponytail at the base of his neck. He never packed a lunch, hardly took any breaks but drank coffee as he worked all day. It was said he would visit a new site in the pouring rain just to watch how the water flowed across the ground. So he could see the low spots or the washout risks. He built his landscapes by hand with local rock. Boulders weighing a few tons were moved by hand with carts and levers and straps and finesse. He would call in a guy with a grappling hook on a truck from time to time. And then stand there and make him adjust a 10,000 pound rock a quarter inch at a time until it was just right. There was a mediaeval propensity to his approach to the work. And it showed. It was human paced, in tune with the earth. He and his rock setting guy would talk about how after awhile the rocks would start talking to you. They would start to sort themselves into the puzzle. If you listened well enough. He told me that it was better to be thorough than fast. Paths, patios, ponds, stream beds and terraced gardens flowed across the properties. Like water flowing downhill. His clients never knew what they were going to get or how long it was going to take (or how much it would cost) but they trusted him when he promised them it would be beautiful. He never disappointed. The landscapes he and his crew built remain incredible feats works of art, quietly tucked away gardens in pockets of the county that are stunning to visit. When he retired, four years after I came to work for him, I started taking care of the gardens he built. Season after season I would sweep the paths and patios. Brush off the rock walls. My mind would wander as I worked while my eyes traced the lines, memorizing the curvatures. I weeded and watered, trimmed then cut back in fall. I watched the sun move across the gardens from spring to late fall. I heard the birds arrive and notice when all went finally silent at summer’s end. I trimmed overhanging branches, raked leaves, reset rocks that tumbled out of place, replanted bare spots, cut water sprouts, allowed native plants from the adjacent woods to wander in. I watched. I did. I observed. I practiced. I worked 5 days a week for 6 months straight. I never took time off or a vacation during the work season. I just worked. Like Ron did. The way I see it now that I’m older is that it’s not an ego thing, or an identity you wear on your sleeve, or a pile of things you know that elevates you. It’s just an evolution of skillsets and refinement. Of remaining curious and humble enough to know what you don’t know. I keep trying things. Keep watching the gardens change over time. Keep in time with it. Always wanting to imrove my care. Continually tuning in. To never want to arrive. Learning anything new takes time but learning about the plants and the seasons and the ways of the earth and putting it all together takes a lifetime. And it starts with observing, and doing. A lot of doing. A lot of practice. I hope I never get there. I’ll never get tired of sweeping paths, of mundane garden tasks. They continue to inform and inspire. In the words of Thich Nhat Hahn, “Washing a dish, planting a seed, cutting the grass, are as beautiful, as timeless as writing a poem”
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Getting into the Swing in May
The roadside edges are filled with serviceberry, chokecherry and pin cherry blossoms. They thrive on the forest edges and openings where there is some open sun. Their delicate, dusty white flowers go straight to the place in the heart that remembers heart things. Loves unrequited, crumbling marriages, the heart can find solace in these early blooming shrubs. The canopy is still thin with lime green quarter size leaves and the understory is alive with ephemerals: bloodroot, Carolina spring beauty, Dutch man’s breeches. Along the wet places, streams and run off and damp meadows, the marsh marigolds’ bright yellow flowers are the first real bright color in the woods The tulip harvest is in full swing and the house is filling up with flowers once again: flowering branches, daffodils, vases of tulip seconds. Rounds of bouquets hit the grocery store. I always hope that having flowers in the house inspires other people like it does me. I gaze at them on the table and marvel at the natural world, at flowering plants and how much diversity exists in the plant kingdom. The older I get, the more content I grow at being with plants. Just being in their presence. In the landscaped gardens we’re getting into the swing. Soft earth, the weeds are easy, everything still feels manageable. A lovely time of spring before the bugs. We finish our spring cleanups and turn to our season’s projects; new gardens take shape and come to life. The winter of planning becomes three dimensional. We get loads of new plants for the nursery and high school and college graduations punctuate the end of May. Another reminder that we are getting a little older with each passing year. We acknowledge this fact more gently these days, as the mind slows down instead of speeds up at the frenetic pace that can accompany seasonal work, we try to find the ease in the labor, as we settle into the season ahead.
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April in the gardens
Real spring is iconic but this time is more subtle. Just textures and a pause.
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