Chasing Rabbits

I entered the hoophouse the other day to inspect the heirloom tomatoes. Sue (a 12-year-old Chesapeake Bay retriever) joined me and immediately began nosing around the edges. Though she’s getting a little too slow to chase down a groundhog, her taste for wild game is as strong as ever. She snorted and, in quick succession, lapped up five single-sized portions of tender baby bunny flesh and soft baby bunny bones—her version of chocolate truffles. One, two, three, four, five bunnies gone in as many seconds. 

Cottontails love sudangrass. Sue loves cottontails.

Hard-hearted gardener that I am, my first thought was: Maybe now my pole beans will make it to climbing size.

Carrot tops=bunny lunch.

I occasionally find soft nests of grass and fur here and there in the garden. Usually they are empty. Most often they are hidden in carrot beds (which I always plant too thickly). One day I marvel at the soft ferny carrot tops standing straight and tall; the next I notice a carefully concealed gap somewhere in the center of the bed. There is something comical, and not very bright, about a mother rabbit hiding her newborns in a bed of carrots. Despite the picture we all have of Bugs Bunny chomping on carrots, the roots are not what the rabbit is after. The tall green forest of tops is a perfect hideout—or so mama thinks. It takes a week for the babies to open their eyes, and another for them to hop out and develop a taste for carrot greens and bean seedlings. If a dog or raccoon doesn’t sniff them out in that time, I will.

But if you give birth to 20 or more young in a single year, maybe you’re not all that concerned about the well-being of every last one. Mama cottontail visits her newborns a couple of times a day for a quick nursing session, each one getting a few minutes of her time. Other than that, the defenseless balls of flesh and fur are on their own. Best not to get too attached when the odds of your babies hopping out on their own are slim … and made slimmer by ill-considered nesting choices. 

In my attempts to catch the groundhog that eats every winter squash leaf that manages to shoulder aside its floating cover, I have caught several rabbits. On one occasion, Sue tormented a trapped bunny so persistently that I (uncharacteristically) took pity on it. I carried it off, opened the Havahart, and watch the cottony tail bounce into the brush. Was this the mother of Sue’s delectable meal? Did she come back? I can imagine her rabbit mind thinking, “Oops, lost another litter … guess I’d better go urinate on a buck.”

I’ve never observed the cottontail mating behavior, which mostly happens at night. Bob (my own mate) talks of the time he watched dozens of rabbits cavorting on the Cedar Crest College lawn. It must have been a sight! Besides the mutual urination ritual, the process involves male competition, male-female “boxing,” and leaping up and down. The male fights the female in order to impress her. When she is suitably awed, she will allow copulation, which takes only seconds. A month later, four or five (or six or seven) babies are placed in their cozy fur-lined bed.

A climbing bean, thwarted again.

I invite Sue into the garden frequently. I’ll go check the beans, I tell her. You check the carrots.

Eat More (free) Kale

Versatile kale. Emblematic kale.

Puzzling kale. 

Beedy's Camden kale in the heat of summer

In my home garden, my four plants of ‘Beedy’s Camden’ are thriving. I put the vitamin-rich green on pizza, and in stir-fries. I invite friends to cut the big wavy leaves.

At the inn where I grow vegetables, the flea beetles uglified what the cabbageworms missed. I pulled it out by the roots and replaced it with a bed of beautiful buckwheat. In a couple of weeks I will gamble on lettuce. 

What is it with kale?

At Morven, in Princeton, the virgin kitchen garden sports beautiful ‘Red Russian.’ It is too beautiful to uproot, even though everyone knows kale is a cool weather vegetable … and it has been anything BUT cool. And I need the space for summer squash.

What is it with kale?

Now that “kale chips” comes up number 2 on a Google search for kale (and they get 5 STARS from foodnetwork.com) “Eat More Kale” t-shirts are losing a little of their counterculture authenticity. (“Eat Kale Not Cow” tees sport the trigger word “Woodstock” and sell for $23; “Kale is the New Beef” can be had at a bargain price of $19.95) One kale-lover’s blog states, “In the past week there has been an exciting accumulation of kale sightings.”

What does that mean?

Beedy's Camden for the taking

Why kale? 

Go to eatmorekale.com and you can read about the “eat more kale philosophy.” Go to the “Eat More Kale Princeton” facebook page to read about a month-long celebration of kale.

Why not beet greens (which, I’ve read, are less dominant in a smoothie)? Broccoli? Bok choy? Is it too late for “Eat Bok Not Beef” t-shirts? Or is bok choy too mild, too appealing? Kale is “of the earth,” strong in taste and real in texture. It is not my mother’s frozen peas.

Those who live by the “eat more kale philosophy” gained great publicity when their slogan was attacked by the “Eat Mor Chikin” folks (“Eat More” being Chick-fil-A’s intellectual property, according to their lawyers). Chick-fil-A should have known better. The cease-and-desist order gave “Eat More Kale” t-shirt designer Bo Muller-Moore the opportunity to say, “I am one man with one squeegee and that's how I like it.” People (not chickens) flocked to his side – no surprise.

So here, in my humble opinion, is what it is about kale:

1. There are not many people who really like it. That’s not to say kale isn’t very very tasty sautéed with garlic and olive oil. But what isn’t?

2. Therefore supermarkets do not devote a lot of space to it, and the dinosaur kale they do carry tends to be limp and not worth buying. Curly kale is perkier on the shelf but, as all kale (with garlic and olive oil) lovers know, it is more bitter and less tender. It gives kale a bad name.

3. It’s safe to say that kale is a gardener’s vegetable. It grows in the spring, persists through the fall, and sometimes, if the flea beetles and cabbageworms don’t get to it, endures the heat of summer. I offer everyone who comes to my house a bag of kale … and my four plants of Beedy’s Camden (named for Beedy Parker of Camden, Maine) still carry more green than I can spend. 

And so, 

4. “Eat More Kale” isn’t about kale. It’s about the “kale lifestyle”—fighting the good fight with muddy knees and dirty fingernails, being one with the flea beetles and cabbageworms. Sending friends home with bags of zucchini and kale whether they want them or not. It’s a revolution that refuses to be pigeonholed. It has beta-carotene on its side, and vitamin K, and calcium! It conjures mental aromas of thick soups with white beans and carrots, and plenty of garlic. Bo Muller-Moore fueled the fire with his squeegeed shirts and his dreams of changing Manhattan into Vermont (and making a little money in the process). Chick-fil-A played right into the plot.

And now, with kale chips “processed at low temperatures to maintain the living enzymes and nutritional values”—and sold for upwards of $2.50 an ounce—it is actually possible that people will eat more kale. In the words of Don McLean, “the more you pay the more it’s worth.” So much for the revolution.

Forest Art

Whimsy is not my style. But, after visiting Bruce Munro's light installation at Longwood Gardens, I’m thinking more and more about garden art. You know, everyday stuff cleverly remade into objects of beauty. 

I can do that.

My relationship with art began in the 5^th grade, when I learned that I could draw people. I drew pictures of little girls with big eyes. 

 

The bond took a turn toward weird when I entered art school at 18, and learned that my ideas about art were hopelessly outdated. Chasing “meaningful” concepts, I got lost in mental mazes. Secretly, I still liked things that hung on walls, although peer pressure had some influence (big-eyed girls were now sources of extreme embarrassment, for instance). 

But over the years, framed art has lost much of its allure. First I stopped making it. Then the pieces that held me in their power became increasingly rare.  

And yet, in my heart, art remained a valued friend. I saw pattern in the land, rhythm in the garden.

I discovered Andy Goldsworthy—arrangements of leaves and patterns of sticks that last for days or minutes. Moments of wonder that bring together the earth and sky. 

I began to appreciate the artist as medium, offering up powerful new ways of seeing what is before our eyes.

Lately … and fortunately, landscape art has gone beyond gnomes on rocks, and beyond Christo’s wrapped coast installations. The measure of its success is its power to hold one transfixed before a scene.

A suspended ball makes the reflection as real as the object itself. 

Jenkins Arboretum, 2011

A field of lights twinkles and sways like sunlit grasses in the wind.

Longwood Gardens, 2012

Bent spokes on a fence compel you to pause and see what lies beyond.

Chanticleer, 2010

Flower-lights meander dreamily through a field. 

Longwood Gardens, 2012

Magical birches underscore the hugeness of a forest of oaks.

Jenkins Arboretum, 2011

There are framed prints, photos, and drawings on my walls. Most carry valued associations.

But experiences of open-air art now hold greater power. Who knows … maybe, in time, I’ll appreciate whimsy.

Syrphid flies on Sweet Alyssum

Where's Waldo?

I’ve been spending a little quality time with ‘Blushing Princess’ and ‘Silver Stream’ recently. Just to see for myself. Does Sweet Alyssum (Lobularia maritima) really attract more syrphid flies than other flowers, as researchers have written?

You’ve seen them, those miniature yellow jacket lookalikes that are always hovering about your flowers. Some call them sweat bees, but the fact is, there is an actual bee (family Halictidae) that claims that name. Hoverfly is a more apt nickname for the tiny fly (family Syrphidae). Beating its wings at a furious pace it hangs in the air above favored flowers and, alighting on a blossom, sucks nectar, tail bobbing slowly up and down. The hover fly is not interested in your sweat.

All that hovering about serves the female well when it comes to providing for her unborn offspring. She scouts the landscape for plants that host promising colonies of aphids, and deposits her eggs, one by one, nearby. And this is the good part: a single syrphid fly larva will eat hundreds of aphids.

And yet, as intimate as I am with aphids (we have similar tastes in lettuce) I have never seen a syrphid fly larva. At about 1 cm long they’re certainly visible. And they are undoubtedly populous, judging by the number of adults hovering around. So I have to conclude that I am not terribly observant. This is a good reminder that, no matter how much we might think we know and how observant we think we are, most of the action goes on unseen, under our noses. 

One thing I know is true: the answer is yes. A few syrphid flies visit catmint in passing, and one or two seek out arugula flowers. Coreopsis holds minor appeal and spiraea is fairly popular. But the winner, hands down, is Lobularia maritima ‘Silver Stream.’ 

Go syrphid fly larvae, Go!

Foxglove

Digitalis purpurea. My new love. Finger flower, Fairy bell, Fox glove. The fanciful labels given to this stately beauty evoke whimsical images, but she is rather too dignified for silly nicknames. My garden is rich with white and purple spires. A bumblebee vanishes into one spotted hood-shaped bloom and wiggles out, butt first, only to make its joyous way into another.

Foxglove performs brilliantly for those who are sensitive to the cycles of the natural world, and also for those who are oblivious to nature’s ways. The clearing outside my mother’s home in the Adirondacks was lush with hay-scented fern and foxglove every July. Scoffing at the herds of deer that lounged on the thin grasses, the acid soils that limited gardening possibilities, and the 280 inches of annual snowfall, the steadfast pair created a spontaneous scene that any gardener would be proud to replicate. The chemicals in foxglove’s leaves can kill, as deer evidently know. Deadman’s bells, some call the charming hoods. My mother sensibly chose to grow a mini crop of kohlrabi in a planter high upon her deck railing rather than fight the wild world for the sake of a tomato or rose. Meanwhile in her clearing, foxglove faithfully returned year after year in the brief moment that is summer in the north country, unbidden and underappreciated. 

Seldom seen in manicured yards of turf and mulch, foxglove does not take kindly to landscape crews that descend en masse to perform “spring cleanup” in late winter. She also does not tolerate Mr. Neat (who lives in every neighborhood). Clipping the stalks of finished flowers before they have the opportunity to fulfill their function is a sure way to banish the beautiful foxglove. But the gardener—or slacker—who allows the tiny seeds to scatter themselves at will on bare ground, and then waits for the seedlings to show themselves before putting down a reasonable layer of mulch (or not) will be rewarded handsomely the following year as rhythmic spires elevate the merely pleasant to the dazzling. A small indulgence for such a big return.

She is so easy to love.

Control of Nature

Merveille des quatre saisons: as beautiful as its name

Merveille des quatre saisons, Cimarron, Parris Island Cos. The names of heirloom lettuces read like poetry. Handsome heads of blush-tinted leaves and spears of speckled greens have been bred over the years by gardeners seduced by the tender blanched leaves that arise from the heart of a plant. Forellenschluss, Rouge d’Hiver, Lollo Rossa. One grower might be captivated by crinkles, another by the mysteries of deep dark red. In the end, which is never the end, we have hundreds, no thousands, of named varieties created by gardeners who allowed single selected plants to produce tall clusters of short-lived flowers and then saved the seed. We believe we are the only animal capable of such manipulations, and possibly this is true. Controlled breeding is still being practiced by individuals who are swept away by a passion to create something new, different, and beautiful.  Frank Morton of Philomath, Oregon, breeder of Flashy Butter Oak and Hyper Red Rumple Waved lettuces is one such pioneer. Morton sells his own creations and those of gardeners past in his Wild Garden Seed catalog.

More often in today’s world, however, plant breeding is the purview of University agricultural research departments, which tend to concentrate more on corky root and downy mildew resistance than texture and taste. Lettuce DNA has been analyzed, and molecular markers identified. Breeders introduce genes of wild lettuce plants into cultivated varieties in order to help California growers produce thousands of acres of greens that withstand the indignities of thousands of miles of travel.

It is amazing to think that these two extremes, one prompted by passion and wonder, the other by dollars and cents, can coexist in the same region, and even in the same person. It is no stretch of the imagination to speculate that a researcher who spends her days implanting wild, blight-resistant genes into tomatoes might go home to her garden and choose the healthiest producer of the tastiest Black Krim tomatoes and save its seed. Placing one foot in front of the other has brought our culture to this place where we believe, on some theoretical level, that it is possible to triumph over “imperfections” caused by a plant’s own physiology or the wants and needs of other species; where we believe it is possible to have control over diseases in tomatoes and over the bolting of lettuce.  

The desire for control is universal; it is understandable. It is what sets the human animal apart from, as far as we know, all others. We seek order, fitting the world in all its complexity into a system of our own invention and engaging in a never-ending task of naming nature. "Humans seldom value what they cannot name," said biologist Elaine Brooks. But what value is there in knowing names if we forget how to converse with the other-than-human world?  

The conversation in the garden shifts, continuously. It is the whispers that help to keep the dialogue respectful, and mostly non-violent. A few grasshoppers have hatched in the greenhouse this spring. They appear to be third instar, just ½ inch long, and not overly populous. Birds swoop in through the open sides on warm days. I watch and wait. Guarding against last year’s infestation may be a wasted expense of energy this year. With trepidation I remove the hooped cover that protects a row of Toscano kale. Now almost a foot tall, it is too robust for rabbits. Will it be there tomorrow? I kick dirt into a groundhog hole. Is it abandoned or will the homeowner indignantly dig it out again? Is the garter snake that lives in the greenhouse making the holes of golfball-size diameter I find here and there? These are the simple questions that keep me coming back day after day for answers, which will prompt more questions.

There’s no denying that I seek answers so that I might have some measure of control. Respectful control, conversational control, but control nonetheless. Those who decry the control of nature might see nature as some great unspoiled “Other.” Rather, nature is the row of beans that will not prosper unless the lambs’ quarters and dandelions are weeded out. It is the soil ecosystem beneath the turf. It is the turf. Successful manipulation of natural systems requires respect for the diverse forces at work for and against one’s efforts. And in fact, those who participate in the control of nature on a human scale may be better equipped to understand how much control is too much.

A good conversation includes pauses for reflection so that latent ideas might rise to the surface. It takes many seasons to breed a lettuce worthy of the name “Marvel of Four Seasons." Between times of growth are periods of dormancy. The embryo becomes quiescent, tranquilly at rest, until conditions are once again right for germination. The gentle conversation of breeding may last a lifetime.  

Becoming attuned to seasonal growth patterns and the whole other-than-human farm community is an exercise in humility. It is a lesson in perspective. We might use this tender type of manipulation as an internal compass pointing to circumstances where control may be necessary and good for us, as one animal species living together with countless others. Mostly though, hope lies in remembering that, in conversation, it is best to do more listening than talking.

Groundhog Wars

This one looks active!

I don’t remember the exact date a groundhog first clawed its way into the greenhouse last year, but it feels like it was about now. Every day I walk the bank below, sniffing for a “musky odor.” Last fall I patched every hole in the greenhouses with plastic sheeting reinforced with a high-strength cord grid. I replaced the ends and the bottom four feet with the same material. Take that! I told the groundhogs, who were asleep by then.

I am practicing thinking like a groundhog. When a past gardener tried to tame the bank below the greenhouses by terracing it with rocks and planting raspberries, he created groundhog heaven—a loose, diggable slope with brushy cover. So last fall, I dug up all of the raspberries and planted them in neat rows on flat ground. I smoothed the pitted bank and seeded it with perennial lawn grasses. (And take that!) Now, five months later, the slumbering marmots have emerged. As I walk and sniff they are copulating in burrows beneath my feet.

Yum! Solomon's Seal! Um... maybe not.

Summer dens can drop to four feet underground or deeper, which explains why, when we stuffed newspapers soaked with kerosene into the holes last summer and fired them up, the groundhogs were able to hunker down and survive. I admit to having felt remorse as I imagined the smoke-filled lungs of defenseless babies, but this was balanced by rage at the stripped edamame plants. When the smoke permeating the dens had no effect, all that was left was the rage.   

I devised a trap. It was a modified, heartless, Havahart. I set the box trap at the opening of a groundhog hole and created a chicken wire enclosure that left the groundhog with only two options: going back down or getting caught. Four groundhogs were ensnared in a month. I gave them to Jeremy, the farm manager, with instructions: Drive them at least 10 miles away and release, or kill them. A card-carrying member of the NRA, he took option number two.

Besides the four animals disposed of by Jeremy, two died at my hands last summer. One small groundhog was lured by a trail of apples into a trap I had set, and baked in the sun before the day ended. I feel badly about that. Another escaped a snare trap and wobbled in front of me, dragging his lame back legs behind. He stopped and looked up at me. Never having killed anything larger than a mouse before I picked up a large rock and hurled it at his head with killing force.   

Still, they kept coming. The den of a groundhog is like a vacant house in the city; as soon as word gets out that it is abandoned, a homeless creature will move in and take advantage of the protected quarters. It is understandable that my well-situated slope with easy access to raspberries and pumpkins was in demand as an upgrade.

I am ready with my traps and my apples. I have heard that mothballs, and rags soaked with ammonia will send the varmints to another nesting site. I have heard that Double Bubble gum will cause their digestive systems irreparable harm. I am willing to try any and all of these methods. I am, evidently, a killer.

The need to defeat this antagonist is primal. It is visceral. It is personal. The majority of people in our society never have the opportunity to assess their options for removing a living, breathing, waddling impediment to their aspirations, to fail repeatedly, to feel the frustrations and the vitriol. Whether it is right or wrong to kill an animal is for many a black-and-white issue. The goal of Animal Rights has become a campaign in the arena of political theater, with those in favor lining up against a mixed bag of disparate groups—hunters, the livestock industry, the powerful NRA lobby, land developers, and others who have interests, personal or economic, that are being obstructed by other-than-human beings.

The most popular solution to a persistent groundhog problem is to stop growing vegetables. If we remove ourselves from the fray we can champion animal rights with blood-free hands and express horror at acts of violence committed by others of lesser morals. When local farmer and writer Tim Stark published an article about heartlessly drowning a Havahart-trapped groundhog, readers came down hard. “There are layers of hell reserved for people who are cruel to animals,” wrote one reader. Tim responded eloquently, “Would it soften your opinion of me if I were to tell you that I have a reputation for wrestling thirty-five-pound snapping turtles off to the side of a busy highway, holding up traffic in both directions, horns wailing in front and behind as I carry the plated creature, incensed, neck stretching to bite me, into the woods where he can amble away to safety?”

As Tim saves the snapper, I spare the tiny animals that live in the soil. I cover-crop my garden plot to provide them with winter nourishment, and dig beds with a fork to avoid pulverizing them with a rototiller. Meanwhile, I speed from place to place with splatted bugs on my windshield, contribute more than my share of CO₂ to the air, and lather my hands with antibacterial soap. Some acts of inadvertent violence might be considered justifiable and necessary for our species to compete; many are not. It is a paradox of modern living that what feels wrong—killing a waddling (and sort of cute) creature—may well be right, and what feels right is often wrong. 

There are plans for a fence. When this happens I will be ready with hardware cloth, which I will insert 8 inches deep along the perimeter to prevent groundhogs from digging and entering. When my fence is secure, uneasy thoughts of murderous acts will retreat into comfortable dormancy.

Like a groundhog in winter.