My No-Dig Garden

Maybe if I had hours to use up, and no books to read, gardens to tend, class work to do (or mindless crime dramas to watch) I would think about double-digging. But time is just too precious for that sort of thing … in my humble opinion. I take the lazy woman’s approach. I define the edges of a bed and lay down cardboard, and on top of that straw. And I wait. The worms take it from there, savoring the rotting lawn and tolerating the cardboard. Or maybe savoring that too—what do I know about the tastes of worms? In a month or three (depending on the season) the bed is diggable.

But I am wondering whether the worms will find my garden in this recently-acquired property.

Why worry, you might ask?

Last week a paving contractor widened my driveway, removing in the process about 8 inches of topsoil. “I can take this away for you,” he offered. “No way!” I replied. So he piled it up and I transported it around a corner and planted viburnums, and coneflowers, and roses. It should have been good topsoil, and it was, sort of. But something was missing. 

There were no worms. There were no clumps (technically, peds) held together by worm poop and fungi (technically, glomalin). There was no visible life at all. It fell apart like sand. Easy to dig, yes … in fact troublingly so. This is what happens when you spread pesticides to kill grubs, pre-emergent herbicides to kill crabgrass seedlings, and broadleaf killers to kill dandelions, as the previous owner did. Ok so the lawn is enviable. But the robins that flocked to the bare soil came up distressingly empty-beaked.

I am inoculating all of my planting holes with compost. If I cared about the fate of my lawn, which will suffer from withdrawal now that its steady supply of drugs is about to run out, I would have someone come aerate it. Then I would replace the little lifeless soil plugs left lying about like crumbling turds with compost filled with springtails and beetles, protozoa and nematodes. And earthworms. But (being predisposed to the lazy woman’s approach) I am instead placing my trust in migration. Earthworms migrate slowly—about 15 to 20 feet a year—so this will take time.
I will just have to make, and inoculate, lots and lots of planting holes. That I have time for!

Dracunculus vulgaris, or, Antics of a Dragon

The Dragon, May 25

You smell it before you see it. “Sex and Death” is what my friend April has taken to calling the short-lived Dragon Arum (Dracunculus vulgaris). Its cadaverous odor saturates the air within a 50-yard radius of the potent-looking ruffled spathe, which suggests that the flies that find it so exciting don’t have to have a particularly keen sense of smell to find it. Unsheathed and coated with a glistening lubricant the fetid purple spike must compete with roadkill and refuse cans for the attentions of its pollinators. And although they flock to the party, the flies, according to a pair of Australian researchers, are extraneous to the action. It’s the clumsy carrion beetle that gets the job done. Losing its grip on the enticing decoy (rotten meat being a slime of a different nature) and tumbling into the bulbous chamber below, the hapless beetle desperately and futilely climbs up and slips back down. Meanwhile the Dragon, in regal control of the situation, literally heats up. Soon the hostage finds himself, conveniently for the plant’s purposes, covered with pollen. Only then does the spike provide the beetle with the necessary traction to scramble out.

Sex and Death might have led to life, but for the lack of a second Dragon in the gardens at Morven. The pollen must move from one flower to another in order for fruit, and its ant-dispersed seeds, to form. The beetle willingly (we presume) moves on to visit another captivating spathe…suggesting that carrion beetles do not have a particularly keen sense of memory. Or maybe we just don’t understand the bliss that comes from rolling around in a putrid well. Regardless it is quite clear who is orchestrating the action. Like a gambling addict, the beetle proffers his services for the benefit of a body larger than he. Like a casino, the Dragon uses and then ejects the unsatisfied and (we presume) depleted beetle.

The Dragon, Spent, June 1

 But cheers to the beetle that continues to embrace the perfume of the dead, for naïveté serves body and mind better than suspicion. More often than not. 

On knowing nature by name

“Is that a lilac?” the thirty-something man asked.

“No, but it’s lilac colored, so you’re halfway right,” I replied. Kindly, I think. Masking my incredulity, I hoped.

“It’s an iris.”

How can you reach adulthood not knowing an iris from a lilac? It’s like not knowing an apple from a peach, a dragonfly from a cockroach, asphalt from concrete. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t recognize the scent of a lilac, or the shape of an oak leaf. Did the thirty-something go home to mow his “turf,” trim his “foundation plantings,” and barbeque steaks in the protective shelter of his “shade trees?” Is it all about expediency, rather than the intricate web of life and the function of every living thing?

Some of us grow up knowing the names of nature. We either absorb them (cardinal, ant, iris) or seek them out when they amaze or annoy us (egret, box elder bug). We gain an intimacy with them and by extension with all living things. The damage done to the oysters and pelicans that live on the Gulf Coast by corporate misdeeds … just for an example … becomes personal. I hope that the lilac iris was beautiful enough to shake that man into my world, our world, where nature is not just a set for one’s activities. Rather, it’s the foundation of his being, our being alive. Maybe he went home and said to his wife, “We should plant some iris flowers. They’re lilac colored, and very beautiful.” Or maybe the name of the flower, in this case (how lucky for him) both the botanical and common name, traveled through his accountant’s brain without leaving a trace, either of recognition or of memory.

“Is that a geranium?” he later asked. No, it’s a rhododendron.

A beautiful native shrub, I might have added, with cousins in the Himalayas and the mountains of Taiwan. A genus of a thousand species, including the beautiful flame azaleas, and a few species with pale-colored sweetly scented flowers pollinated by moths that inhabit the night.

It is disturbing, and rather ominous, to think that this man and others like him wander through life oblivious to the beauty and impacts of the non-human components. But perhaps I should be more magnanimous. Maybe he has recently awoken from a twenty-year coma. Or maybe he just moved to Pennsylvania. From Mars.

Overwintered spinach!

I’ve been waiting all winter for this. Finally, a garden salad!

Young spinach leaves and sweet onion, a clementine and a quarter chicken breast, braised, sprinkled with fresh lemon, tossed with Annie’s Goddess dressing, and topped with ground pepper. What could be better?

It exceeded my expectations!

Lately I’ve been too busy to enjoy food. It’s spring, for one thing. And I’m moving next week, for another. Fuel, I think, I need fuel to keep this machine running. I throw together a pita pizza or a tired salad made from supermarket romaine, or I grab a package of Wegman’s sushi.  As I eat, hastily, my mind is elsewhere. I am envisioning the “living tennis garden” that will span the centuries (and attract big donors) for a historic garden client, or mentally sorting through the rolls of speaker wire and boxes of dried up crayola markers that I’ve dragged through the decades. Nervous energy requires ice cream, and gardening burns calories, so I indulge as I collapse on my easy chair at night to watch a mindless hospital show rerun or predictable crime drama. Ice cream is a “no-fail” satisfier. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had REAL greens, and ice cream after a fresh salad would taste oh so much better.

But my spinach will not be rushed. It puts on another set of leaves. So painstakingly slowly the leaves grow! I’m moving, I growl. Can’t you just speed it up a little I ask (nicely) as I cut a couple of the little leaves to add to my supermarket romaine? It crinkles its veins.

Yesterday morning I assessed, and determined that my little row of overwintered spinach would be sufficient for one salad. And I have to say it was one stupendous salad. The best, and probably the last from this particular plot of ground. I stole four seedlings of Loma lettuce from my buyers garden (already I think of myself as the caretaker for their plants), which had sprung from the seeds I scattered last fall, and potted them. I had no choice really. By the time I pack up my speaker wire and leave my scented Daphne and viridiflora tulips behind, Loma will still be mercilessly unyielding. And that is just not acceptable. 

Dutchman's breeches, here and gone

Dicentra cucullaria (Dutchman’s breeches), more than any other flower, speaks to me about time. Sometime in early April it appears on the rugged rocky slopes that rim the Delaware River on the Pennsylvania side. It flags me from an elevated ledge, or an almost vertical incline covered with a scant inch or two of mossy soil, and I think of years past. A dozen years ago it was a symbol for the exhilaration of being set free from my job in a tax office. Decades before that it was a curious tooth-like childhood curiosity. The first warm day of spring I begin skimming the hills in anticipation. When will it appear? How long will it stay? A burst of unseasonal hotness might cause it to disappear just a week or two after blooming, beneath fiddleheads and grasses and jewelweed seedlings. Or it might cling to the hills for three whole weeks. The queen bumblebee emerges from her hole in the ground and finds the odd-shaped flowers just right for her long tongue. After she pollinates, the flowers become seeds with tasty appendages that ants find so irresistible that they carry them away to their nests, leaving trails of the fertile seeds strewn on the forest floor.

I’ve thought about transplanting a clump of Dutchman’s breeches into my garden, but fear that it would spoil the fun. Such a delicate thing should grow in great wild expanses where it can present an ephemeral banquet to queen bees, and to those of us who care enough to notice.  Its time to shine, between snow cover and leaf emergence, is fleeting—it flaunts its breeches, than vanishes for another year until April comes again. Another year of driving to New Jersey. Another year of planting zinnias and tomatoes, and watching grandchildren grow taller. Another year of resolving to focus on what’s important in this life that passes so astonishingly quickly.
Another increasingly abbreviated year.

Pruning Roses

Although I prune roses every year, and have for decades, I really don’t know what I’m doing. Yes, I know about outward facing buds, crossing branches, and twiggy growth, but when confronted with an actual rose, those directives feel very abstract. And somewhat useless. So before I make the first cut I think about two things. First, there was the year I didn’t get to the shrub roses at the Glasbern Inn soon enough to suit the owner. He took a chain saw and sheared them at a height of about 18 inches, and you guessed it—they bloomed beautifully that year. The second example came in an article I read a year or two ago, written by a British rose grower (who must have been an excellent gardener because he lived in England). In the article were photos of pruned and unpruned roses side by side. There was absolutely no difference between the two!

Armed with the knowledge that pruning roses is not a matter of life or death I put on my rose-colored glasses and make up my own rules. My rule with the vigorous ‘New Dawn’ rose wired to this historic brick wall is, if a lateral branch sticks out too far I cut it back. Horizontals I don’t touch unless they’re sprawling in the wrong direction. As for the dozens of shrub roses at the Glasbern, no one rule applies. Some are in locations that have become shaded over time, so I allow them to reach (through weeping hemlocks or up against stone walls) for the sun. To do otherwise would be cruel. I groom most of my shrub roses (‘Carefree Delight’, a couple of Easy Elegance roses, and a mix of Meidilands) fairly lightly, pruning off last year’s hips and cutting long canes back to two to three feet. I leave the cascading roses that drape down from a height of 15-20 feet toward the Glasbern parking lot below completely alone. For one thing, I would need a crane (and some really tough gloves) to prune them safely, and for another, I want them to eventually coat the entire bank with luxurious pink blooms. At that point I may rethink my non-strategy.

Without fail, all of the roses reward my fumbling attempts at grooming them with an exuberant show. This, by the way, was the perfect week to prune roses.

Or not.

Spring Garden

I only went out to cut some forsythia.

But the sweet little white crocuses that opened up this morning were such a welcome sight that I had to photograph them. And then there I was on my knees worshipping the spinach as it peeped out from under its bed of straw and admiring the strappy foliage of Tulipa clusiana that was curling around under the hydrangea … which called to me as I passed and insisted that I cut off the scruffy remains of last year’s flowers. 

Garlic greens were poking through the soil (yes!) and Jackmanii clematis was tangled all through my sweet Carol Mackie, a situation I could not just pass by without correcting. Gray-white Nepeta foliage demanded to be set free of last year’s brittle remains, and that old spiraea stump yielded (finally) to my not-so-gentle pushing and broke off at its rotten base. It takes, you might or might not be interested to know, three years for a decades-old Spiraea x vanhouttei to mostly disappear after it’s cut off at ground level. Viburnum setigerum berries are still hanging juicily aside pregnant leaf buds, fermenting. Maybe the birds that have eschewed them all winter will now begin to find them fascinating.

Piles of snow still rest in shady corners, and the soil is too cold to sprout much besides bittercress, onion grass, and last year’s larkspur seedlings. It is not spring yet.

But the sun is shining and the view, though short in stature, is tall in promise.

The itch tickles.