Fire and Snow, or Impossible Beauty

Pastorius Park

Post 13

Mid-storm in the garden

Post 13 was going to be about bringing in the pots. But it seems the unexpected can happen with # 13.  So,  cold, wet winter snow overtook dry, crisp, and still-blooming autumn. Snow and fire. We never get snow before late November, early December, never that is, till now. So, any pots should have been in long before their usual date. Who knew?

First came the storm, darkening the day with clouds, brightening it with snow, but snow illuminated by bursts of color.

Morning on the road

Then the aftermath, a bright, cool sunny day with the ground and sky both blue and white, and the mid-horizon blazing with turning leaves. 

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It would have been easy to have gotten upset, pouting over early cold. But it is hard to pout when surrounded by beauty.

Pastorius Park, -- Run Lassie Run

And oh, what beauty.

What unusual, surprising, impossible beauty

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We were lucky to get just enough snow for beauty, not enough for damage. It was a good balance of opposites, for which I am thankful.

Furture like a Tree

Post 12


Cultivating The Cosmic Tree Hildegard of Bingen



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"AS AN OLD MAN was planting a tree, three young men came along and began to make sport of him, saying: "It shows your foolishness to be planting a tree at your age. The tree cannot bear fruit for many years, while you must very soon die. What is the use of your wasting your time in providing pleasure to others to share long after you are dead?" The old man stopped in his labor and replied: Others before me provided for my happiness, and it is my duty to provide for those who shall come after me. As for life, who is sure of it for a day? " Aesop's Fables Copyright 1881 Translator: unknown

Laurel Ridge Foundation, Conn.

Since moving to our property my husband and I have planted 8 small trees: 2 Cherries on the hellstrip, a Crepe Myrtle and Pee-Gee Hydrangea (more a big shrub I'm pruning into a tree,) in front, a Southern Magnolia and a Smokebush( also pruned into a tree,) on the side and 2 Japanese Maples, one on the side and one in back. Because we are on a budget, all these trees have been bought small, one of the maples is only a foot high. These trees will be at their best long after we have sold the house.

But the best trees on the property are the two native Dogwoods that were there when we moved in.  In Dogwood season parts of Northwest Philly transform into a continuous Dogwood forest as property lines fade beneath an aboveground sea of pink and white.

Many people I know are uncomfortable with institutional religion. But if asked, they will mention that they know there is "something" there, something they can feel that runs through all creation. They are mistrustful of closed mindsets, power structures and claims to authority by, well, people who do not seem to make the best case for such authority. Many try out Eastern paths to enlightenment or turn to ecology, gardening, wilderness, food, art or intellectual and political inquiry and action as nurturing and sustaining goods.  Which they are in perspective. But beyond them is a common longing for something hinted at, something like the force that through the green fuse drives the flower (apologies Dylan Thomas.)  For that, I think of an unusual woman in a world where woman were close to nonentities, a Medieval nun, author, composer, healer , and, oh yeah, mystic: Hildegard of Bingen and a word she coined --Viriditas

" Viriditas-- Greeness, derived from the Latin...One of the key terms in Hildegard's writings and her view of the world. It signifies the life-force, freshness of life, constant vitality, or fecundity, and is also a metaphor for virtuous living and a spiritual existence." from The World of Hildegard of Bingen: her life, times, and visions By Heinrich Schipperges, John Cumming

No dry authoritarian, closed-system here. Hildegard is writing about the Life behind life.



Monhegan Island



The Deep Life which we instinctively feel is home.

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It is not odd that almost every spiritual path features a tree: the Tree of Life, the Bohdi Tree, Yggdrasil, and more. There is something about a tree, its age, its size, its open-armed call and embrace, its greeness, its beauty, its fruitfulness, that makes us feel a sense of a Tree behind the tree: The Tree, Viriditas.

Tree Of Jesse, Chagall



"What is the use of living if not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?"- Winston Churchill

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How-to Tree: Mid-Late Fall, up through Thanksgiving, is the best time to plant a tree.

A good link on tree planting is here.  A list of recommended trees for our area  is posted by Fairmont Park. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has a lot of information on trees here.

Look around. What do you see that is thriving and looks good to you? Ask around to find out what it is. Young trees are not that expensive, especially if bought on sale. And they are a fine shout-out for the future, our sense of the life that is both within us and beyond us.

Monhegan Island

Tweedia or Baby, It's Cold Outside

Pastorius Park

Post 11

There is that nip in the air. It's getting cold, and it is only going to get colder. We need stuff to keep us warm, to warm up our cockles and numb fingers. We need thick, strong stuff like cosy Polartec, down or tweed, maybe an old plaid Harris Tweed,  in landscape-like colors so worn the fabric has mellowed to the touch. I love the one at right, a fall view with a bit of sky in it.

A bit of sky...a few autumns ago I grew a Tweedia. The vine was a slow starter, did not even bloom till late August but then...what a September through November. People on the street stopped in their tracks because Tweedia is not one of those almost blues of the garden.  It is not the blue lavender of hardy Geraniums, mountain Bluet or Baptisia, fetching and periwinkle as those flowers are. Tweedia is different.

Tweedia is true, crisp, autumn sky, knock-your-eyes-out blue (though older petals can turn a cobalt violet that only highlights the turquoise center burr.) Plus, its petals are fleshy, squishy thick. It is a fairy tale flower tough enough for the real world. People would ask what it was. I would tell them only to see their eyes grow even more incredulous. How could something so beautiful be so unknown? Its bloomed, soldiering on as its world grew colder and colder. It kept my heart warm that autumn. Even after a hard frost put an end to it, its extaordinary beauty kept an inner bit of my heart warm through a long winter.

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It is implausible impossibles like this that sometimes get us through the rough bits. Call it finding your inner strength, turning to God, seeing through illusion, shifting frames or wrapping yourself up in that indestructible, warm tweed. All withstanding, when you face the cold that should not be, and face it with goodwill, sincerity and humility, it can be a blessing what answers back from within you.

Tweedia is a fairy tale flower in the real world.  
But, like a blessing, it may not make everything alright. Suffering remains suffering, and suffering does real damage in the real world. In the real world, we need more than just our own blessings. We also need each others', real world blessings as well, especially: compassion, forgiveness, merciful justice and moral action.

It is getting colder. Soon it will be Halloween. So Happy Halloween, All Saints and All Souls. May our youngest adorables dress up as goblins and prowl the twilight for candy, laughing at darkness, death and fear. And may we remember all who have loved us and gently made a way for us, all the real fairy-tale flowers in our lives, whose love, like a good stong tweed blanket, has been woven to keep us warm through the night.

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How-to Tweedia: Tweedia caeruleum (sometimes called Oxypetalum caeruleum,) is a short vine from southern Brazil that we can grow as an annual.  It is not usually sold potted up so you have to start it from seed, which can be purchased from SummerHill Seeds. The seeds need warmth, between 70 and 80 degrees to germinate, so think of using a heating pad under the tray. Since Tweedia is a milkweed you need hardly cover the seeds, which should germinate in a few weeks. When you plant it out make sure to put it in a hot, dryish spot; it hates wet. Place it where it is easy to see. The flowers, are small, though, as Spencer Tracy might say, choice.

And, in case you think my trope of Tweedia/Tweed outlandish, take thought of this. Tweedia was introduced to the West by James Tweedie, a Scot, who was head gardener at Edinburgh Botanical Garden till he chucked it all and bolted to Buenos Aires, where he kept a small store and went off on plant-hunting expeditions. It was during one of these that he discovered Tweedia and, though he never darkened Scotland's mire again, he did send some seeds back home.

Now, what do you think an old-fashioned, Brit head gardener would tend to wear? Look and you will see an answer.  And tell me what that jacket is made of? Polyester? Egads, no.

And as for a wonderful wool blanket to pass on to later generations, look here at: Swans Island Blankets

Hostas and the Funkia of Scenic Decay

Post 10


It is easy, but unproductive, to imagine the garden as an idyllic Eden beyond time's throes.  There is no garden without time. Gardens are made of time

How I wish I had taken pictures a few winters ago when a heavy frost hit the uncut-back garden. A pale hosta, which had remained in leaf, wilted overnight, its fronds decayed into ghost leaves. The limp leaves, which fell away from their roots to splay out in a circle, had gone greyish white.  Unhappy at the time, I'd gathered them up and hung them from the bishop's hooks behind the Buddha. For a day or two they dangled there, tokens of decay, translucent, beautiful and properly sad.

In my carpool this week, I told a colleague how I like to let some plants visibly decay, while removing others--it all depending on how attractive the decay is. Since she is a new gardener, she asked me when to cut back her plants, most especially her hosta. It made me remember the ghost leaves, and note how a popular 19th century plant like hosta, once called funkia, remains perpetually in style. Every year there are new varieties while the old ones remain ubiquitous. Everyone, it seems, has some funk.
  


What other factors, I wondered, can make for good garden funk, a bit of scenic decay?

A surge of fresh roses blooming beneath a turning tree.

A scattering of fallen rose petals on a stone staircase.

                                 

"You love the roses - so do I.  I wish the sky would rain down roses, as they rain from off the shaken bush.  Why will it not? Then all the valley would be pink and white And soft to tread on.  They would fall as light as feathers, smelling sweet; and it would belike sleeping and like waking, all at once!"  -  George Eliot, Roses 

The froth of spent flowerheads nuzzled by a strand of Kiss-Me-Over-The-Garden-Gate

Fading flower of Oak Hydrangea against turning leaves and an Autumn Joy sedum blooming in a cute thrift-store vase .



Or how about the sight of zinnias with new blooms, mature blooms, and old blooms all in one gaze?





Pastorius Park

 In our culture such a huge amount of resources: time, money and effort, is spent erasing time. And to what end? To deny that in the long run there is only one end for mortal creatures?  One cosmetic company is now developing a pill to keep your hair from turning grey. Only drawback--you have to take it for at least 10 years before your hair starts turning, and then, for how many years after? What's next, some soil additive to keep tree leaves from turning color and falling in autumn? To erase time erases life, erases change, erases us.
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Pastorius Park

My perennial question behind this blog -- how does gardening change the gardener? --has perhaps one answer. Gardening embeds us in time. Most of our common culture does the opposite--it disembodies us into spectators while erasing time. By gardening we partner and co-operate with time.


Hence we learn through our bodies' labors that sometimes it is better and more graceful to accede to time's reality. To trust to something beyond our self-gratifying egos.  And so to let the leaves, all the leaves, fall where they may.

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How-to Hosta:  Hostas are originally native to China.  From there they were brought to Japan and Korea, and then, from there, in the mid-19th-century, to the Western world. Older versions make great groundcovers for shade and semi-shade. They come in all sizes, from smaller than an unabridged dictionary to bigger than a multi-cushioned sofa, but most end up at about 3 X 3. They also come in all shades and varigations of green, white, chartreuse and a waxy blue-green.  Some of the newer varities can take sun: most others will get leaf burn. They love our local clayey soil, sending down deep roots to deal with dryish shade. To make more plants just divide in spring or fall; small plants will fill in quickly. Be sure to keep watered for a few weeks after transplanting. Hosta are tough, adapatable, low care plants. So --  Enjoy your funk ( just, as they say, don' impose it on others.)