Rock Art

“Make art,” I told the eight student interns from Isles of Trenton. The instruction was greeted with quizzical looks all around. 

The Problem was the pile of large rocks that had been dumped onto a concrete pad 12 years ago during the digging of wells for a geothermal heating system, with no thought about how they might, or might not, be used in the future. Dried leaves collected in the cracks and, over the years, turned to compost. Poison ivy and enchanter’s nightshade (a plant that is not at all as pretty as its name) had taken hold in the crevices until the rocks were completely concealed during the summer months. With roots securely anchored by the weight of the unruly pile, the interlopers were resistant to my frequent attempts at manual control.

I envisioned something neat. Maintainable.

Intentional.

Morven is, after all, a historic property. Visitors visit. Students of history roam about. Watercolor artists sit in front of easels and paint beautiful scenes.  

The opportunity for making art out of rocks and brawn arose in the last day of the tenth year of a collaboration between Morven, a museum and garden in prosperous Princeton, and YouthBuild, an organization that helps young men and women from the ‘hood rise above the expectations the world holds for them. The cultural divide cannot be overstated.

What happened next was pure magic. When asked to explain the remarkable construction that emerged after an hour of creative play, one of the artists remarked, “You can’t really explain it. That’s what makes it art.”

Isles YouthBuild Institute 2012

Even more thrilling than the individual components of the piece—the blocky frames, the found images that had been created by centuries of deposition of weathered rock and detritus, the round rocks dramatically perched—was the collective realization that “Art” is not out of reach. It can be grabbed at will. We need only give ourselves permission to “make art,” and magic happens.

Morven staff members wandered back in ones and twos to view the wonder. Visitors admired it. The creators posed beside their construction for photos, and added their signatures on a piece of slate with liquid chalk. The pride was communal, and it was individual. “IYI 2012” (Isles YouthBuild Institute 2012), reads the top line on the rock sign.

The group had completed many fine tasks during their five weeks on the job. They had edged and mulched garden beds, planted trees and flowers, pruned overgrown hedges, and reworked a hazardous stone walkway. As they showed off these accomplishments there was obvious pride of craftsmanship. None of these, however, came close to establishing the level of cross-cultural bonding created by the rock art.   

Make Art Not War (or something like that ...)

The question raised by this experience is this: If it is so maddeningly simple to bridge a cultural divide by making collective art, how can we bring more creative play into our frenetic days? 

We must give ourselves permission to play, to discover, to create. The creative spirit speaks a universal language, which in turn creates a universal bond. It cannot be expressed in words.

“That’s what makes it art.”  

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.

A Tree Falls in Peru

Why might you cut a tree down in a landscape where trees are as scarce as trillium in a deer-infested forest? This is what I asked Joachina and Fermina when they took a rare break from whirling around the 25-30 foot tree, which had been chopped from the base of El Misti mountain in southern Peru, and dragged and set into the center of a playing field, only to be ceremoniously axed once again. “It’s tradition,” they replied. Then they returned to the business of swirling their beautiful costumes while skillfully balancing the traditional hats perched precariously atop their heads.

 

Being a skeptical American I thought, there must be more to it than that. And no doubt there is, but either the origins have been lost in Incan history or they are a deeply held secret. At the end of each Carnivale (of which there are many in Peru) the native people don their fine costumes, each representative of a particular region. The drag a tree to the scene, decorate its branches with small gifts and balloons, and dance from afternoon until the job is done. Each dancer takes an occasional ceremonial whack at the trunk until at some point late in the evening—these things can’t be rushed—the tree falls and releases the gifts from its branches. The winning whacker gets the tree.

The ceremony (well, party—the dance requires tall stacks of cases of beer) I witnessed was on the outskirts of Arequipa, a dirt-brown city of about a million people that sits 7800 feet above sea level on the desert coast of Peru. Joachina and Fermina had moved to Arequipa from a much smaller, much higher (12,500 feet), and much greener city, Puno, which is on the shore of Lake Titicaca. Thus they wore the handsome skirts and hats from that region. Could it be that the tradition made its way from the rainier, more mountainous regions to the dry areas closer to the coast? Although that particular mystery will remain unsolved, I came away with other insights. 

Among them:

Tradition and ceremony offer great rewards.

The carbon value of a single tree was vastly outweighed by the joy it brought to the Carnivale participants.  

In our culture, we just don’t dance enough.  

Vintage Garden Tools

I have a thing for old tools.

Tin secateurs, curved sickles, and bent-wire cultivators are among my favorite finds. My very first acquisition was a pair of elegant secateurs, which I discovered in an antique store in Milford, New Jersey. The owner obviously did not appreciate their magnificence … “You can have it for a buck,” he said, somewhat dismissively. I paid quickly before he could notice the obvious beauty of the sleek lines, and the ingenious curved tin spring that held the blades open. At home, I scrubbed the handles with steel wool, oiled and sharpened the blades, and then found a spot on my kitchen wall.

And so I was hooked. I began checking local antique shops, looking for dusty bins and boxes in back rooms that held unappreciated treasures: spades with carved wood handles, two-handed scythes, dandelion pullers with bent shafts. In Ely, England I found a graceful swan-necked hand hoe of fearsome heft and useful length and snuggled it inside sweaters in my suitcase, hoping that it did not arouse Custom officers’ suspicions. A curved sickle was my next find. I’ve never actually used a sickle, though it was the one tool the Communist party chose to represent agriculture and linked with the hammer, icon of industry, on a field of blood to create the Soviet flag. This makes me think that I should sharpen it, and discover its usefulness.

Someday I will have enough worthy tool treasures (to be worthy they must be graceful in design and efficient in use) to create a wall of garden tools, all shined up and sharpened. They remind me of human ingenuity, of the importance of craft, of the traditions of farming … at least that’s how I justify my old-tool mania.

The simple truth is, I just like to look at them.

First Hard Frost of the Season

I was going to write about the garlic I planted this week. But I woke up to a frosty world and couldn’t resist stepping outside in my nightclothes and garden clogs (fortunately my neighbors are not early risers) and recording the event. November 7th is a little late for the first hard frost of the season in Emmaus. I expect I will have a week, maybe two, or arugula left. I will so miss my arugula.

 

A fallen leaf is icily glued to silver sage.

I think I will try letting this parsley self-sow next year. I'll report back.

Soon I will pile a layer of straw on my spinach seedlings. It is so worth the time it takes to plant spinach in September. The best spring spinach comes from a September planting! Do you see the rose thorns? They kept my neighbor's cat (whom I consider an ally--she's an excellent mouser) from digging up my seeds.

Cilantro, so tender and full of grace. She leans into the dance.

Just look at the little icy rods. Isn't water beautiful?
Garlic is in the ground; spinach has firmly rooted. My 30-year old grapefruit seedling that has never flowered is indoors. Beauty and Hope, the gardener's driving forces, are alive in all seasons.

Change is in the Air

I know they’re plotting. Plotting and scheming about how they’ll get the upper hand. I could just hear them in the garden today.

“Oh Persicaria,” asks Wood sorrel, “do you think I have time to set another round of seed?”

“Go for it!” replies Persicaria. “The Homo scapians aren’t watching now that it’s October.”

“That’s Hom escapians, I think,” Wood sorrel corrects.

“I’ve been sneaking seedheads in everywhere I can find an opening,” volunteers Foxtail. “All summer she’s been yanking out my babies and tossing ‘em in that big pile over there, but lately I’ve been getting a free pass! Oh, and it’s Home-too-lateagins, least that’s what I’m hearin.”

“You all are such losers,” pipes up Grandpa Ott. “She’s been after me like white on rice for months. Just three weeks ago she was in here searching out every last little seedling. Soon as she turns her back I say ‘Hit it guys!’ Look at us rippin—we’re up on top of the forsythia and reachin for the roof. No way she’s gonna git us off the branches before we finish makin seed. We’re wrapped around those branches so tight she’s bound to miss at least a thousand seeds! And isn’t it Oh-no-its-fateagains?”

Suddenly there’s a thump.

“Whazzat?” Foxtail, who was hit right in the seed head with a big black walnut, yells.

Everyone looks up. The oak and the walnut trees whisper calmly, so quietly no one can hear. No need for them to get excited. For the past 50 years they’ve been feeling the change in the air. Their plan is set. You can hear it in the breeze. “Shady days, shady days, shady days.” When the Too-little-too-late-agains have done and said all that they can say or do, nuts will sprout; trees will grow wherever their roots can find a spot of soil. Forests will happen and every critter and bug that climbs around in them and eats their leaves will prosper. Weedy little plants will weaken and disappear.

And no one will be there to care.

note: This is what happens when a gardener reads too much environmental literature.