Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought.
~ Sophie Scholl
This time of year I can’t seem to form any other thoughts beyond appreciation for the beauty on each stem and the fragrance that wafts from heliotrope and roses through an open window. I might just fall head-long into the dark center of a flower like Alice into the rabbit hole and not find my way back.
I let her garden go.
let it go, let it go How can I watch the hummingbird Hover to sip With its beak’s tip The purple bee balm — whirring as we heard It years ago?
The weeds rise rank and thick
let it go, let it go Where annuals grew and burdock grows, Where standing she At once could see The peony, the lily, and the rose Rise over brick
She’d laid in patterns. Moss
let it go, let it go Turns the bricks green, softening them By the gray rocks Where hollyhocks That lofted while she lived, stem by tall stem, Blossom with loss. ~ Donald Hall from “Her Garden” about Jane Kenyon
Some gray mornings
heavy with clouds
and tear-streaked windows
I pause melancholy
at the passage of time.
Whether to grieve over
another hour passed
another breath exhaled
another broken heart beat
Or to climb my way
out of deepless dolor
and start the work of
planting the next garden
It takes sweat
and dirty hands
and yes,
tears from heaven
to make it flourish
but even so
just maybe
my memories
so carefully planted
might blossom fully
in the soil of loss.
As a child, my father helped me dig a square of dense red clay, mark off rows where zinnias would grow, and radishes and tender spinach leaves. He’d stand with me each night as daylight drained away to talk about our crops leaning on his hoe as I would practice leaning so on mine.
Years later now in my big garden plot, the soggy remnant stems of plants flopped over several months ago, the ground is cold, the berries gone, the stakes like hungry sentries stand guarding empty graves. And still I hear his voice asking what I think would best be planted once the weather warms. ~Margaret Mullins “Lonely Harvest”
Our garden is now in full harvest mode. I have just finished picking the bush beans and spent several evenings sitting and snapping them, preparing them for blanching and freezing, with visions of green bean casserole during the winter months dancing in my head.
Bean snapping is one of those uniquely front porch American Gothic kind of activities. Old black and white Saturday matinee movies would somehow work in a bean snapping scene with an old maid aunt sitting on her ranch house porch. She’d be rocking back and forth in her rocking chair, her apron wrinkled and well-worn, her graying hair in a bun at the nape of her neck and wearily pushing back tendrils of hair from her face. As the sole guardian, she’d be counseling some lonely orphaned niece or nephew about life’s rough roads and why their dog or pony had just died and then pausing for a moment holding a bean in her hand, she’d talk about how to cope when things are tough. She was the rock for this child’s life. Then she’d rather gruffly shove a bowl of unsnapped beans in the child’s lap, and tell them to get back to work–life goes on–start snapping. Then she’d look at that precious child out of the corner of her eye, betraying the love and compassion that dwells in her heart but was not in her nature to speak of. If only that grieving child understood they sat upon a rock of strength and hope.
Just as I sat with my mother snapping beans some 40+ years ago and talked about some difficult things that were unique to the 60′s, I sat snapping beans this week together with my family, talking about hopes and disappointments and fears and listened to our children grumble that I was making them do something so utterly trivial when from their perspective, there are far more important things to be doing. My response is a loving and gruff “keep snapping”. Of course we really don’t have to snap the beans, as they could be frozen whole, but they pack tighter snapped, and it is simply tradition to do so. We enjoy that crisp satisfying crack of a perfectly bisected bean broken by hand–no need for knife to cut off the top and tail. We prepare for a coming winter by putting away the vegetables we have sowed and weeded and watered and cared for, because life will go on and eating the harvest of our own soil and toil is sweet. We must do this. Indeed it is all we can do when the world is tumbling down around us.
Truthfully, there are times when I would prefer to be more rubbery like a bean that doesn’t snap automatically under pressure and is more resilient.
There is an old Shaker Hymn that I learned long ago and sing to myself when I need to be reminded where I must end up when I’m at the breaking point.
I will bow and be simple,
I will bow and be free,
I will bow and be humble,
Yea, bow like the willow tree.
I will bow, this is the token,
I will wear the easy yoke,
I will bow and will be broken,
Yea, I'll fall upon the rock.
As people of resilient faith we seek to wear the yoke we’ve been given to pull, bow in humility under its burden and know the freedom that comes with service to others. Even in the midst of the most horrific brokenness, we fall upon the rock bearing us up with love and compassion.
It is there under us and we’ve done nothing whatsoever to earn it.
Time for us to get back to work and start snapping–life does go on.
Grandma grew flowers–lots of them. Her garden stretched along both sides of the sidewalk to her old two story farm house, in window boxes and beds around the perimeter, in little islands scattered about the yard anchored by a tree, or a piece of driftwood, a gold fish pond or a large rock. Wisteria hung like a thick curtain of purple braids from the roof of her chicken coop, and her greenhouse, far bigger than her home, smelled moist and mossy with hanging fuschia baskets. For her it was full time joy disguised as a job: she sold seedlings, and ready-to-display baskets, and fresh flower arrangements. She often said she was sure heaven would be full of flowers needing tending, and she was just practicing for the day when she could make herself useful as a gardener for God.
Visiting Grandma was often an overnight stay, and summer evenings in her yard were heavy with wafting flower perfume. She would also allow entry into her “fuschia house” to walk among hundreds of delicate dangling multi-colored blossoms. There was overwhelming temptation to audibly pop the bulbous unopened blossoms but she had a “no touch, just look” policy, reminding her grandchildren that each plant knew the precise instant when a flower should open, and it should not happen a moment sooner or nature’s rhythm would be disturbed.
One of her favorite rhythmic flowers –indeed it was so hardy and vigorous it really could be considered a weed–was the evening primrose. It was one of a few night blooming plants meant to attract pollinating moths. Its tall stems were adorned by lance shaped leaves, with multiple buds and blooms per stem. Each evening, and it was possible to set one’s watch by its punctual cycles, only one green wrapped bud per stem would open, revealing a bright yellow blossom with four delicate veined petals, a rosette of stamens and a cross-shaped stigma in the center, rising far above the blossom. The yellow was so vivid and lively, it seemed almost like a drop of sun had been left on earth to light the night. By morning, the bloom would begin to wither and wilt under the real sunlight, somehow overcome with the brightness, and would blush a pinkish orange as it folded upon itself, ready to die and drop from the plant in only a day or two, leaving a bulging seed pod behind.
I would settle down on the damp lawn at twilight, usually right before dusk fell, to watch the choreography of opening of blossoms on stem after stem of evening primrose. Whatever the trigger was for the process of unfolding, there would be a sudden loosening of the protective green calyces, in an almost audible pop. Then over the course of about a minute, the overlapping yellow petals would unfurl, slowly, gently, purposefully, revealing their pollen treasure trove inside. It was like watching time lapse cinematography, only this was an accelerated, real time flourish of beauty, happening right before my eyes. I always felt privileged to witness each unveiling as Grandma liked to remind me that few flowers actually allowed us to behold their birthing process. The evening primrose was not at all shy about sharing itself and it would enhance the show with a sweet lingering fragrance.
Grandma knew how much I enjoyed the evening primrose display, so she saved seeds from the seed pods for me, and helped me plant them at our house during one of her spring time visits. I remember scattering the seeds with her in a specially chosen spot, in anticipation of the “drops of sun” that would grace our yard come summertime. However, Grandma was more tired than usual on this particular visit, taking naps and not as eager to go for walks or eat the special meals cooked in honor of her visit. Her usually resonant laughing brown eyes appeared dull, almost muddy.
The day she was to return home she came into the kitchen at breakfast time, wearily setting down her packed bags. She gave me a hug and I looked at her, suddenly understanding what I had feared to believe. Something was dreadfully wrong. Grandma’s eyes were turning yellow.
Instead of returning home that day, she went to the hospital. Within a day, she had surgery and within two days, was told she had terminal pancreatic cancer. She did not last long, her skin becoming more jaundiced by the day, her eyes more icteric and far away. She soon left her earthly gardens to cultivate those in heaven.
I’ve kept hanging fuschia baskets on my porch and evening primrose has been in my garden ever since. Grandma is inside each bloom as it opens on its own schedule, according to its own rhythm, unfolding precipitously in the evening. She wafts across the yard in its perfume. Her spirit is a drop of sun coming to rest, luminous, for a brief stay upon the earth, only to die before we’re ready to let it go. But as the wilted bloom lets go, the seeds have already begun to form.
Surely Grandma is still growing flowers, lots of them. They blossom under her loving care, each bud opening on schedule, not a moment sooner than it should.
photo by Troy Mullens from blog ICU Nature
Evening Primrose by John Clare
When once the sun sinks in the west,
And dewdrops pearl the evening’s breast;
Almost as pale as moonbeams are,
Or its companionable star,
The evening primrose opes anew
Its delicate blossoms to the dew;
And, hermit-like, shunning the light,
Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,
Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,
Knows not the beauty it possesses;
Thus it blooms on while night is by;
When day looks out with open eye,
Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,
It faints and withers and is gone.
a cross section of 30 months of composted manurea plethora of red wigglers
A sunny spring day lured us outside for yard and garden prep for the anticipated grass and weed explosion in a few short weeks. We’ve been carefully composting horse manure for over two years behind the barn, and it was time to dig in to the 10 foot tall pile to spread it on our garden plots. As Dan pushed the tractor’s front loader into the pile, steam rose from its compost innards. As the rich soil was scooped, thousands of newly exposed red wiggler worms immediately dove for cover. Within seconds, thousands of naked little creatures had, well, …wormed their way back into the security of warm dirt, rudely interrupted from their routine. I can’t say I blamed them.
Hundreds of thousands of wigglers ended up being forced to adapt to new quarters today, leaving the security of the manure mountain behind. As I smoothed the topping of compost over the garden plot, the worms–gracious creatures that they are–tolerated being rolled and raked and lifted and turned over, waving their little bodies expectantly in the cool air before slipping back down into the dark. There they will begin their work of digesting and aerating the tired soil of the garden, reproducing in their unique hermaphroditic way, leaving voluminous castings behind to further feed the seedlings to be planted.
Worms are unjustly denigrated by humans primarily because we don’t like to be surprised by them. We don’t like to see one in our food, especially only part of one, and are particularly distressed to see them after we’ve digested our food. Once we get past that bit of squeamishness, we can greatly appreciate their role as the ultimate recyclers, leaving the earth a lot better off once they are finished with their work. We humans actually suffer by comparison, so to be called “a worm” is really not as bad as it sounds at first. The worm may not think so.
I hope to prove a worthy innkeeper for these new tenants. May they live long and prosper. May worms be forgiving for the continual disruption of their routine. May I smile the next time someone calls me a worm.
Recent rains have melted the potato vines flat to the ground, nearly indistinguishable from the dirt where they lie strung out and dead spider-like. It is time to dig before there is no trace left of where the potato harvest can be found. Weeds still thrive in the cooler autumn weather, green and strong, but the potato vines had given up several weeks ago, dying back as summer waned.
Armed with basket and pitchfork, I go to work, sinking the tines into the soil to loosen it, then lifting up gently to see what I might find underneath. From a waterfall of dirt tumbles smooth egg-size ovals of red and yellow and white. I pan the dirt with my fingers, sifting through the clumps to discover nuggets to brush off and set aside in the basket to take to storage in the root cellar.
Within each unearthed hill of potatoes rests the old mother “seed” potato, so fertile and firm, eagerly sprouting when planted only 4 months ago. I stumble upon her, noticing her vigorous nurture of multiple offspring, sometimes as many as twenty coming from one original planting. Occasionally I find her shrunken to only a dry floppy skin, her flesh spent and dispersed. More often she is still recognizable, though spongy and softened, wrinkled and withered by her immense effort to propagate. Most poignant are the hills where there is nothing left but residual gooeyness in the center. It adheres sticky to my palms as I unexpectedly grasp her glutinous remains, and it gums up deep under my fingernails.
The seed gives all of herself. As she must.
The new potatoes are spread on the drying shelves, color coded into gold, red and white, waiting in the dark root cellar to become a feast of dreams born of sun, rain and soil. I return to the kitchen to wash their dirt off my hands, scrubbing to remove what still clings to my skin. Even so, my fingernails stay hopelessly stained and brown, and I don’t mind.
Within my hands I will carry the memory of the mothers.
Van Gogh Painting, Oil on Canvas on Panel Nuenen: August, 1885 Kröller-Müller Museum Otterlo, The Netherlands, Europe F: 97, JH: 876
Vegetable gardening is not for the faint of heart. In the few short weeks of the growing season, there is all manner of botanical birth, growth, reproduction, withering and death in such ultra-compressed fashion, it can leave even the veteran gardener gasping for air. I consider myself somewhat bold and fearless in my every day roles, as any good physician (or mother) must be, but when it comes to the facts of life as played out in the garden, I turn all mushy.
This week there was no question what needed to be accomplished. The sun was shining for the first time in months, the seeds planted a few weeks ago were finally beginning to show themselves above ground, but they were literally drowning in a sea of weeds. The joy of germination was turning into the heartbreak of overabundant indiscriminate growth. It was time for action.
I awoke early, emotionally preparing myself. I pulled on my jeans and hooded sweatshirt, stepped into rubber boots, armed my pockets with trowel and garden hook, and adopted a confident stance as I stared at the expanse of green sprouts before me.
“Gonna kill me some weeds,” I muttered menacingly from under my straw hat, looking like Wyatt Earp at high noon, rolling up my sleeves, and hitching up my pants like a sharp shooter.
I first went to the defense of the carrot row. Tiny carrot seedlings are some of the most vulnerable in the garden. They start as two little grass-like shoots, very weed-like in their beginnings. In a few days, the next shoot is the identity give-away: a feathery leaf looking very much like carrot green tops. True effective weeding really can’t start until the carrots can be distinguished from weeds, even the look alike frilly weeds that pretend they are carrots so they will be left alone. Very clever camouflage, but not to my sharp eye.
The real carrots are tender little plants, barely clutching the ground with one little root string as compared to the deep hold that weeds have in the soil. This work requires down on your hands and knees finger weeding, the dirt-under-the-nails sort-through-each-little-green-shoot-to-find-the-right-one-to-pull technique. Even so, despite my best intentions, the “real” plants still get pulled accidentally: my father called that “thinning”, another cruel and painful aspect of gardening when perfectly good plants are pulled out to make more space for the near neighbors. It still seems all too arbitrary and somewhat capricious.
All this weed-o-cide makes me think about a book I read in the early seventies, “The Secret Life of Plants” by Tompkins and Bird which gave me a new understanding of the challenges of being a plant. I almost can hear the high pitched little shrieks some scientists have recorded as plants are plucked, cut or mowed down. Then there is the very real question of what is a weed and how it has become victim to our human prejudice about what is worthwhile to grow and what is not. Maybe since the dawn of times we humans have watched the slugs, the squirrels, the birds, the deer and the rabbits decide what is tastier, and frankly my dear, it isn’t the weeds.
But who am I to say that a beet plant is more worthy to exist than quack grass? What animosity and enormous resource is expended to rid the world of the lovely dandelion’s perfect sphere of seeds about to blow with the wind, or the waxy buttercup meant to tickle a child’s chin into a yellow reflection.
But I’m only the gardener with a job to do. It’s dirty work, but someone has to do it.
By the end of the morning as the sun beats down directly overhead, neat little rows of honest to goodness domesticated plants become obvious and the garden pathways are littered with weed carcasses as well as a few thinned radishes, beets and carrots. High noon indeed. I gaze at my spent weapons–dirty hands and fingertips that are barely recognizable–and sigh deeply. Until the next skirmish to keep the weedy invaders from infiltrating, I can rest easier knowing my little plants have less chance of being overwhelmed by the encroaching wilderness of weeds and varmints.
So I lay down my arms, clean the dirt from under my fingernails, and sit down to listen to the symphony sounds of plants happily growing…
Our spring in the northwest has been chilly, extraordinarily wet, and gray. Yesterday was our first day so far this year when our thermometers actually climbed over 70 degrees F. The farmers in our part of the county were working practically around the clock chopping grass in fields that have been too muddy for machinery to safely navigate, trying to get silage in the silos before the next round of field work is demanded by the calendar. Huge tractors pulling all manner of equipment were rolling up and down our rural road all day, and heavy trucks carrying loads of grass silage roared by late into the night. And so the maxim: make hay when the sun shines (or silage when the ground dries enough).
This has not been good gardening weather for anyone. Truly avid gardeners have been struggling with seed rotting in the ground before it can germinate and seedlings actually coming out of the ground being flooded by heavy rains. Here on our farm, we’re late getting started, as usual, with too many other things happening in our work and home life to even think about getting the garden in–until yesterday. Starting a garden the first week in June is not something I recommend to anyone. It is like bushwhacking to make a bed suitable for the seeds.
Many weeds are not discouraged by cool rainy weather. Quack grass and dandelions are positively encouraged. They have been growing very well and going to seed themselves, thank you very much. That meant a garden plot that was a veritable forest to contend with before the soil could be prepared for seeding. My husband and strong middle son set to work on the jungle on hands and knees, digging into the turf of weeds, loosening the grip the weeds had, pulling them out, shaking off the clinging clumps of dirt from the roots and turning over fresh soil to dry in the sun. Even so, it was cold and wet to touch, hardly hospitable for seeds, but more delay is no longer an option. I followed behind him, trenching out a row for the seeds and dropping them one by one into the too cold dirt with a little wish and a prayer that there was still enough time left in the growing season to actually bear a harvest.
I admit there are times my life feels like that neglected garden plot. If not kept tended, if not exposed to enough warmth and light, if not fertilized with the steaming loam from the compost pile, if not kept clear of the unwanted weeds that take hold and grow no matter what the weather conditions, there can be no harvest of value whatsoever. I will accomplish nothing than sow more weeds that eventually must be contended with by the next generation. I leave behind a life unrecognizable as a source of nurture and overrun by weed creep.
Each year I’m determined to do better but I know I’m running out of time and gardening seasons. It isn’t just the resultant sore back and dirty fingernails that serve as reminders of the hard work of tending one’s life like one’s soil. It is that burst of sweetness that comes from eating the first fresh peas, the sharp tang of a radish straight from the ground, the bowl of greens unsullied by chemicals. It is the satisfaction of knowing that this we accomplished with our own hands.
Van Gogh Painting, Oil on Canvas on Panel Nuenen: August, 1885 Kröller-Müller Museum Otterlo, The Netherlands, Europe F: 97, JH: 876
Preparing the feast
Begins months in advance,
The seed catalogs perused,
Order forms sent,
Rattling envelopes arrive in the mail
With ounces of dormant potential within.
The soil is carefully prepared
Once it warms, and clings together just so when picked up,
Dug and turned over and raked and smoothed,
Measured, traced and rowed with pie crust perfection
Ready for seeds patted lovingly in place.
Potatoes halved, quartered, eyes up to the sky
Nestled gently in the valleys and mounded into hills
The greenhouse seedlings hardened then set out in the big world
To fare on their own or die trying.
The brown garden bed undulates, pregnant, expectantly germinating.
Green shoots arrive shortly before the weeds
Or maybe simultaneously in a race to the finish
To see which wins the battle of the plot.
Every root for itself competing for light,
For space, for moisture, for an uncertain future.
Thinning and weeding becomes ruthless, with healthy plants
Plucked and discarded, becoming compost to the survivors.
Sun, then showers, cloudy days, then sun again,
Forcing blossoms, enticing honeybees, spreading pollen
Deep and wide.
In the heart of summer, there is flourish in the fruiting
Of every plant, an overwhelming plenty for canning and freezing,
Drying, storing and preserving, later opening summer in gratitude
For a cold winter’s day meal.
Others are waiting, in the chilling ground, for later harvest.
Preparing for the feast means the carrots must be released
From their fast root hold, withered green tops tossed aside
Beets bulging leave soil for pot, coloring water burgundy
Brussel sprouts line stalks like chubby soldiers in formation
Squash is cut open, spilling its seedy stringy inner guts.
Onion layers peel like paper to reach into the flavorful heart
Kale leaves with ruffly edges, multicolored and stiff
Then digging for potatoes, searching the ground for dying vines
Spading cautious, wary of slicing or spearing spuds asleep
Eyes closed tight for winter.
Once a nest of potatoes is found, then reach in deep
With hands only, panning the dirt for the red, white and gold
Nuggets that materialize like magic out of rivers of brown dust
Running through the fingers, finding large, small and in between
Then placed lovingly in the garden basket
Next to go from soil to sink to pot to plate with
Steaming perfection, a feast of dreams realized
From last winter’s catalogs, after some sun, some rain,
A little muscle and plenty of heart to work the dirt that clings
Unforgotten, brown, and stubborn, under every fingernail.
