A prime motivation for gardeners is a love of plants. But many of us also relish playing our part as curator of our piece of ground and, ultimately, sharing our garden space with others.
This summer, my husband, Jerry, and I are hosting families of Eastern phoebes and barn swallows.
The Eastern phoebe pair arrived first. We weren't thrilled with their nest location choice—just above a casement window rendering the crank-out option useless—but we so admired their industriousness that we gave them carte-blanche.
Over many days, the phoebes made countless flights and painstakingly brought bits of detritus from the surrounding woods and fields. Their finished nest is a masterpiece. It cantilevers out several inches from the house and is covered with beautiful layers of soft moss.
The barn swallows followed shortly thereafter and chose an apt location...above the door of the pole barn. They were equally industrious in building their cantilevered affair but the outcome was vastly different in style and mood (think New York loft compared to the phoebe's thatched cottage). This nest is made with globs of mud.
Both species have been amazing to watch. The barn swallows are excellent fliers—agile and quick and speedy, too, in their zealous quest to capture bugs. The phoebes are darling. When they land on favorite spots like the trellis or the roof, their tails bob up and down. It seems as if they're thoughtfully considering their next move.
Nestlings are now visible in both nests and we feel so proud.
The fields around our place are dazzling now...bright with wildflowers of all colors and shapes. I simply can't help myself and must pick flowers to bring inside.
Today my jelly jar is filled with ox-eye daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum), orange hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum), common buttercup (Ranunculus acris), red clover (Trifolium pratense), purple vetch (Vicia americana) and blue flag (Iris versicolor).
My desk is a mess. Clippings from newspapers and magazines are scattered amongst piles of gardening catalogs, scribbled sticky notes and myriad ideas for new projects. Let me share some of the highlights.
~ Name your garden. A piece in a recent Horticulture magazine by Carol Michel reminded me of the importance of names. Names of distinguished gardens such as Munstead Wood, Hidcote Manor and Longwood Gardens come to mind as well as a fanciful name like Filoli. Michel wrote: "I encourage you to name your gardens, no matter how humble you think they are. The naming provides a sense of uniqueness and personality. It helps define what is special, even if only in the eyes of you, the gardener who tends it."
~ Compost. If you don't compost, please start today. It is the ultimate in smart, simple sustainability. A compost pile doesn't have to be anything fancy–literally, just a pile of compost.
~ How to figure cubic yards for mulch and compost. Even though math was my worst subject in school, I do know garden math and can help with two basic formulas. A crucial consideration is to use the same unit of measure, i.e., don't mix inches, feet and yards in the same equation. For simplicity, I always use feet.
Measure the length and width of the area to be covered. Know the depth of the material you want to use and convert to feet. For example:
3 inches of mulch is .25 feet (3 inches ?ɬ? 12 inches/foot = .25 feet) 4 inches of mulch is .33 feet (4 inches ?ɬ? 12 inches/foot = .33 feet) 6 inches of mulch is .50 feet (6 inches ?ɬ? 12 inches/foot = .50 feet)
Formula #1. Length (in feet) x Width (in feet) x Height (in feet) = Cubic Feet
To convert cubic feet to cubic yards, divide cubic feet by 27. There are 27 cubic feet (3x3x3) in a cubic yard.
Formula #2. Cubic Feet ?ɬ? 27 = Cubic Yards
~ Invest in good hoses and watering wands. How many inexpensive ones have you bought over the years? Save money and avoid the recurring annoyance of kinked hoses and leaky wands.
~ GIY: Grow It Yourself.Last year I coined "GIY" and predicted a ground-swelling increase in fruit and vegetable gardening. GIY combined compelling notions of saving money in tough economic times, an increased awareness on quality of food and the big picture of knowing where your food comes from.
To assist those newcomers, I wrote a six-part series covering the basic topics. 1. What to grow 2. Gardening planning & design 3. Bed preparation and planting 4. Maintenance 5. Harvesting 6. Protection and clean-up
An ancillary effect I didn't predict was that an entirely new group of gardeners was hooked and is back, this year, digging in the soil. As either refresher or primer, please visit the FIY: Grow It Yourself category on this blog.
This also appeared in the Askov American, Askov, Minnesota.
On June 6, 2009, I posted an entry called Market Basket. I introduced my new basket and explained its interesting history.
"It was woven by the BIA Basket Weaving Group, founded by Baba Atule Ibrahim from Ghana in western Africa. Baba Atule is a Master Basket Weaver who learned his craft from his parents and grandparents, who began to weave baskets to supplement their farming incomes. He has now taught this valuable skill to more than 600 people in the region and their baskets are marketed world-wide."
There was an uncanny resemblance between my basket and a wonderful garden lounge chair I noticed in the New York Times Style Magazine, Design Spring 2009. I wrote: "The shape was sensational with a theatrical swirl at the top of the back and matching swirls for the armrests and seat."
Upon investigation, that Shadowy chair was designed by Moroso, an Italian furniture company, whose designer borrowed patterns from the BIA weavers. Moroso also hired "expert African craftsmen using colored plastic threads."
Here's evidence that Moroso and BIA are still producing fabulous products this year.
House & Home, March 2010. The same Shadowy chair is done up in hot colors of red, orange and yellow.
Garden Design, April 2010. On page 29 under the Style banner, Moroso's new chair, called the Bayekou chair, is featured in bright green and yellow. For this garden chair, designers put the now-familiar and distinct weaving patterns on a lounge chair that resembles a hammock on a rocking chair frame.
A couple of Sundays ago while catching up on my reading, I was paging through The New York Times Style Magazine, Design Spring 2009, when a very cool garden chair caught my eye. It was a Shadowy Armchair designed for an Italian furniture company with the fat price tag of $2,722. The shape was sensational with a theatrical swirl at the top of the back and matching swirls for the armrests and seat.
But what I noticed more than anything was the woven pattern which resembled, uncannily, a woven basket I had bought recently.
A food coop frequented for outstanding organic produce, dairy products and Brown Sugar Cookies also displays atop their refrigeration units a selection of gorgeous woven baskets. For several months I mooned over those baskets. Finally, one day, I spied a perfect basket–the right size with a good leather handle and in favorite colors reminiscent of the sea: blue, purple and teal.
My market basket has quite a back story. It was woven by the BIA Basket Weaving Group, founded by Baba Atule Ibrahim from Ghana in western Africa. Baba Atule is a Master Basket Weaver who learned his craft from his parents and grandparents, who began to weave baskets to supplement their farming incomes. He has now taught this valuable skill to more than 600 people in the region and their baskets are marketed world-wide.
Why did the $2,722 Shadowy Armchair, designed by Tord Boontje for the Moroso company look familiar to me? Because Boontje recognized the artistic genius of the BIA basket weavers and borrowed their patterns. Further, Moroso manufactured its chairs and hired "expert African craftsmen using colored plastic threads."
Ever heard of Fibonacci numbers? Me either until I read an entry by Dr. David Zlesak in a recent edition of the online Yard and Garden News published by the University of Minnesota Extension.
Then I had to read more.
Fibonacci numbers are a series of numbers, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on, discovered by Leonardo di Fibonacci, an Italian mathematician in the 13th century. Zlesak wrote, "The sequence is generated by starting with 1 and adding 1 to make 2; 2 is added to the last number (1) to make 3; 3 is added to the last number (2) to make 5, etc."
This series of numbers has distinctive characteristics. Using any two adjacent numbers, the division of the larger number by the smaller number always equals 1.62; and the division of the smaller number by the larger number always equals .618.
Further, these ratios create pleasing forms that designers and artists have long applied. A rectangle with sides of Fibonacci numbers of 8" and 13" makes an appealing shape. If a square is removed from that rectangle, another Fibonacci rectangle is created. And if another square is removed from the reduced rectangle, another Fibonacci rectangle is created, and so on.
Further, if a spiral shape is drawn using the intersecting lines of the rectangles, another pleasing shape is created, called the Fibonacci spiral.
By the hundreds, hummingbirds are whizzing around gardens in our area in an apparent, frenzied search for nectar.
Hummingbirds are among my favorite birds. Perhaps their iridescent feathers are reminiscent of the sparkly, expensive gems I love. Since I usually root for the underdog, maybe their diminutive size engenders tender feelings.
Or perhaps the notion is firmly entrenched from summers spent at my grandparent's lake cabin. The big, pine dining table my grandfather built sat at precisely window height and overlooked the lake. Just outside that window, he hung a hummingbird feeder which became a prime source of entertainment at meals.
Suddenly, someone would whisper, "Hummingbird!" All conversation would immediately cease and, very slowly, in unison, we'd all turn our heads to look at the feeder.
To this day, there is something magical and wonderful about hummingbirds.
Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers – a living prismatic gem.... it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to mock all description. ~William Henry Hudson, Green Mansions
I have confessed to being passionate about plants. Another obsession is food. What could be better than the combination? I eat plants.
How cool, then, that two days after my visit to Edge of the Earth Farm (when I viewed the final steps in their sugarbush process) , I sat down to one of my favorite breakfasts. Before me was a glass of orange juice (plant), mug of coffee (plant), sliced banana (plant), two hot-off-the-iron waffles (batter a mixture of flour (plant), sugar (plant) and buttermilk, butter and eggs (animals which eat plants)) and a pitcher of warm maple syrup (plant).
My syrup was perhaps from a maple tree that I watched being tapped on that sunny day in mid March. Perhaps, when I was in the sugar shack at the farm on that cold, rainy day, my syrup was in the cauldron being evaporated. I do know I was there when my maple syrup was processed for the final time and ladled into the pint jar.
It's nice to know where your food comes from.
** If the Michael Pollan reference is too obscure, let me explain. Pollan has a wonderful, examining mind and is one of my favorite authors. I was first captivated by his plant-related books, Second Nature and The Botany of Desire. His most recent books, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, have changed the way the U.S. thinks about food.
Among other discoveries, Pollan first brought to light the industrial growing of corn and the ubiquitous use of corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup in processed foods. In his intelligent, clear manner, he states, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
One of my favorite bands is an old one…which shows not only my age but my preference in music. It's the Byrds.
The Byrds, America's first major rock band, formed in the mid 1960s and combined the best of the new British rock sound with our own folk music. Among the band's members were Roger McGuinn from the Chad Mitchell Trio, Gene Clark from the New Cristy Minstrels and David Crosby, who later became part of another legendary band, Crosby, Stills & Nash.
The Byrds had a distinct style with innovative, 12-string guitar work by McGuinn, beautiful harmonies and some really great lyrics. Their first hit song, Mr. Tambourine Man, was written by Bob Dylan, but my favorite is Turn Turn Turn with lyrics by Pete Seeger.
To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn. And a time for every purpose, under heaven.
A time to be born, a time to die. A time to plant, a time to reap. A time to kill, a time to heal. A time to laugh, a time to weep.
To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn. And a time for every purpose, under heaven.
A time to gain, a time to lose. A time to rend, a time to sew. A time to love, a time to hate. A time for peace, I swear its not too late. --Pete Seeger
My husband adores Ralph Waldo Emerson and often, while reading, he'll quote some passage he thinks is pithy. As much as I've tried, I don't understand and just don'tget Emerson. He's too ethereal…there's no substance for me to really grab onto.
My transcendentalist of choice is Henry David Thoreau. I get Walden and have many favorite quotes by Thoreau.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify. Simplify.
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit and resign yourself to the influences of each.
But, there is one Emerson quote about flowers that I, first of all, do understand and, second of all, do concur with.
Flowers…are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every now and then–every 10 years or so–my tall, rubber Wellington boots wear out. Last week a slit appeared by the big toe of the right boot and my foot got soaked. Bummer! The hole could have been patched but the soles had very little tread left and a buckle had broken. Time to buy a new pair.
I wear my boots almost every day of the year for dog walks, gardening work and general outdoor chores and, in the past, I've tried many kinds including several versions of ankle-high L.L. Bean boots and a couple types of low Muck boots. But I prefer a tall boot. Who likes cold ankles from low boots or wet heels and dirty toes from open backs? I'm sure my tall boots look goofy with shorts in the summer, but who cares? I'd rather be comfortable.
So I'll buy my third pair of Wellingtons, made by Hunter Boot Ltd., formerly Hunter Rubber Company, in Dumfries, Scotland. They are made by official appointment to Her Majesty The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. (La-di-da.) The boots are somewhat spendy but the quality is excellent and they are so long-wearing that they are worth it.
My previous two pairs were the traditional green color but when researching my new boots, I discovered other colors. Yellow. Too bright. Black looked like firefighters' boots. Aubergine was a nice shade of soft purple…I wanted aubergine! But colors were limited in my size and instead I chose chocolate which, as it turns out, isn't dark like a candy bar but rather is a nice, muted color.
I wore my new boots yesterday and love the firmness of the fresh rubber and the snug fit. Ah, they feel great!
My husband and I had the turf area of our landscape hydroseeded earlier this year. We've watered, cut and taken as much care as we could but, still, we needed to weed. Since I'm not one to lay down lots of chemicals, I went shopping for a good weeding tool.
I found one called the Farmer's Weeder at Smith & Hawken. It is basically a heavy-duty knife made of thick stainless steel. The blade is about 7" long and 2" wide that is tapered on either side to serrated edges. It can easily dig through thick roots and hard, clay soil. Plus, clean-up is a breeze. I just wipe the steel blade clean.
Claude Monet is, arguably, the most renown and beloved artist of the Impressionist movement. Over his long and productive life he painted landscapes of Paris and the coasts of Normandy and southern France, in addition to people, houses and flowers.
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. --Claude Monet
Monet often painted the same scene repeatedly. He was fascinated by light and intrigued by how it changes at different times of day and consequently how it affected water, shadows and colors.
Monet painted a series of haystacks in the 1880s and 1890s (one with the ethereal title of Haystacks, Pink and Blue Impressions) and, as was his style, depicted his subject under differing light situations with changing colors and shadows. I'm reminded of the paintings as I travel the rural roads of Sandstone.
The fields in our area have recently been cut and the round bales are scattered about on the newly mown areas. Take time on a warm summer evening to slow down and, with windows wide open, behold the round bales throwing long shadows in the fading, golden light.
On June 6, 2009, I posted an entry called Market Basket. I introduced my new basket and explained its interesting history. 
