Category Archives: Garden

Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home

A Healthy Garden

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79  bar steady 29.84  2mph E dew-point 57  Summer, sunny and warm

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

The garden.  When I refer to the garden in these posts, it is a term of compression.  It would be more accurate to refer to the landscaping, the woods, the perennial gardens in back and those in front and, finally, the vegetable garden in raised beds.  I give a lot of thought and care each year to the plants in all of these places.

While I try to do things in an aesthetically pleasing manner, my various efforts never achieve the shine of the  gardens in the newspapers.  I’m not a perfectionist, so the weeds here and there, the plants that have overgrown their neighbors do not bother me.  There is time to get to them and I if I don’t get it this year, then next year.

I do care, a lot, about the health of the individual plants.  In my gardening world a diseased or dwindling plant gets a lot more concern than the niceties of the border.  As a result, our garden tends toward the lush, the verdant, but not always the well-conceived, artful display of blooming varieties carefully placed for height, leaf texture and color.  I’m impressed with folks who can achieve that and on some days I wish I were one of them.  But I’m not.

Gardens and landscapes and woods work on many different levels.  In my case the chance to think about the plants, to place them and nourish them, to reconfigure the whole when shade has outstripped light or the soil needs amendment satisfies me.

When Kate’s 60th birthday was on the horizon and she warmed to the idea of a purple garden, I had a great time assembling various purple flowering plants, amending the soil in each one of our beds and replanting everything, established plants and the new ones.  It tickles me now that the purple garden is in its fourth year and that it comes into its own in August, the month of her birthday.

Not sure what I’m trying to say here.  I’ve just been outside pruning, spreading some mulch on areas I missed the last time around and I feel a little sheepish about the unplanned, somewhat haphazard look of things.  On the other hand, by my own standards, the garden looks fine.  One of those endless loop deals where the stuff you do is fine with you as long as you don’t compare it to anybody else’s.  Yes, I know.  Comparing is foolish and mentally harmful.  Yet it creeps in from time to time anyhow.

Family, Friends, Garden, Weather +Climate

Vegetables Amidst the Flowers

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70  bar steady 29.82  6mph SE dew-point 54  Summer, cool and sunny

Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

The storm has passed and the air shines, cleared of dust.  Clarity is a July morning after a rain.

The lilies open more and more with each passing day.  The squash and cucumbers we planted in the perennial beds beside the patio have begun their long and winding way.  Yellow squash blossoms promised fruit to come.

In several places now we have combined perennial flowers with vegetables.  In one raised bed Asiatic lilies have risen and now bloom amongst heirloom tomato plants with sturdy branches, heirloom beans and a few leaves of lettuce not yet picked.  The beets and the carrots have a Stargazer lily and a daisy in bed with them while the green peppers grow amidst bearded iris, Asiatic lilies and Russian sage.  The garlic grow only with their own kind, likewise the onions though the corn has bush beans in between the rows.

This mixture appeals to me because it defies expectation.  It is wonderful to see plants with such different missions growing alongside each other.  Is it optimal for either?  Maybe not, but who cares.

Kate sewed yesterday.  She has made Gabe two small suits, same pattern with different cloth.   He will be quite the little gentleman in them.  She’s happy to be back at the sewing, creating.  It’s important to her sense of self.

Groceries this AM, then more UU history.  Later on a party at the Stricklands for Kate and Clair.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Writing

The Fireworks I Like Best

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79  bar steady 29.90 1mph NW dew-point 53  Summer, warm and sunny

First Quarter of the Thunder Moon

Research this morning on UU history in the Twin Cities.  The liberal religious tradition, as represented by the Unitarians and the Universalists, came here, at least it appears at this point in my reading, with Yankee businesspeople.  Lumber and land were the initial draw.  The Unitarians were an educated group who believed in education.  The Universalists were lumber folk initially.

Both groups had the stamp of privilege, what one author calls Old Stock American, early residents of the colonies whose culture bore, for the most part, the stamp of Great Britain.  One article on the Bisbee/Tuttle controversy referred to Minneapolis as a Universalist town.

I enjoy this kind of research, just as I enjoy the art history research.  As I have collected data over the years, each new accrual both gains from and adds to the context, the rich web of history, philosophy, literature, paintings, sculpture, theatre and political analysis that remains from years of study.  This gathering of threads together is one of the chief benefits of aging.

The garden has finally gotten its heat and the vegetables have jumped up in response.  The squash have spread, the beans have climbed, beets have pushed above the surface and the corn has begun to reach for the sky.  The firecracker lilies and other Asian lilies have also opened and the first hemerocallis, too.  Soon the liguria and the clematis.  This is the true independence day celebration, the kind of fireworks I like best.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel

The Crescent Moon’s Gentle Spell

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61  bar steep rise 29.87  0mph WNW dew-point 52  Summer night, pleasant

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

I dug up a couple of garlic to see if descaping had any affect.  It has.  Bulbs have begun to form.  I hope if I leave them in a bit longer, I’ll get fully developed bulbs.  This is important because I can then plant the cloves from the best bulbs in the fall and harvest more garlic next year.

The crescent moon casts a gentle spell over human kind.  It ends up on flags, in religious symbols and in children’s books.  The Thunder Moon crescent is in the west, just below the tree line, but visible through some our poplars.  Hidden, it takes on even more allure.

Back in the 80’s I used to practice a form of contemplative prayer; it carried me into many strange places.  One of them was sitting on the cusp of a crescent moon with Jesus on one side and Moses and Abraham on the other.   We spoke, but I don’t recall the conversation.  The crescent moon made that possible because it has that curve.  Could not sit on a quarter or whole moon.  A gibbous moon does not seem right either.

Garden, Great Work, Holidays, Politics

Bozo the Clown and Jesse Helms Die

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77  bar falls 30.01 1mph SW  dew-point 50  Summer, pleasant

Waxing Crescent of the Thunder Moon

Sometimes coincidence says things that would have not occurred to me:

Larry Harmon, longtime Bozo the Clown, dead at 83.

Former Sen. Jesse Helms dies at age 86.

Mulch goes down today.  Old leaves and grass clippings from last year stored in plastic bags.  Straw baled on a farm.  Organic matter that will blend into the soil, enrich it and give it better composition.  Before it does that, it will suppress weeds and keep the soil beneath it cooler, helping plants fight the extremes of summer heat.  An all purpose good deal, mulch.

A columnist referred to the 4th as the happiest of holidays.  It has sparklers, band music, cookouts, fireworks and family gatherings.  As for me, a solid northern European intellectually, I find it a sober holiday.  Our government, at its least competent level in decades, has not made tiny, forgivable, do over mistakes; no, they have blundered on the world stage as well as the domestic.  They have tanked the economy, made citizens suspicious of Washington, politicized the judiciary and made WC Fields and Mark Twain look like optimistic boosters.  On the foreign affairs we have reversed and three upped Teddy Roosevelt.  Now we speak loudly and shoulder nuclear RPG’s.

In light of this July 4th is, for me, a time to redouble my own efforts to bring down these clowns (apologies to Larry Harmon, mentioned earlier) and to change policy at the national, state and local levels.  My own focus now is the natural world, the world that can go along on its own without human interference, if it does not have human interference, that is.  In times past issues of war and peace, civil rights and economic justice were stage front in my political world.  They remain critically important, but I choose to pass that torch to another generation of activists.

On a lighter note I look forward to charcoaled hamburgers, potato salad, corn on the cob and cold watermelon when Kate comes home.  We also have a cache of sparklers to set out in the yard and light.  Star spangledness will live on in our Andover backyard.

Garden, GeekWorld, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

Will I Build A Computer?

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76  bar rises 29.76 6mph NW dew-point 51  Summer, pleasant and warm

New Moon (Thunder Moon)

A new head has been found for the red car.  Hopefully it will get placed on its automotive neck tomorrow and we will go back to two vehicles.  This is important with the rise of gas prices since our Tundra has a V-8 (may be an antique walking) whereas the Celica averaged 30-31 mph on the Alabama trip.  Co-ordination is not such a big deal for us, though that can matter.

The computer has shut down on its own, without warning, twice already today. I bought the tools to crack the case, get inside and clean out the cooling fan, but I’ve hesitated due to a hyperactive June.  Now available time and increased urgency have moved closer to taking the step.  In the back of my mind, the fantasy part, I see myself building a computer from parts.  The tools I bought would serve that purpose as well.

Ate lunch with Stefan at the Modern Cafe.  I had a lamburger and Stefan had a smorbord, pickled herring and beets.  Both were tasty.  We discussed his poetry and he feels I’m helping, so I’ll keep at it.

He wants to start a support group for children of successful parents.   My hunch is it would be big hit.

On the way home from the Modern (it’s in NE Minneapolis) I drove north of Anoka (really, west) to Anoka Feed and Seed where I picked up four bales of bedding straw.  I’ll use it to mulch the garden over the next few days.

Now, a nap.

Art and Culture, Garden

Descaping the Garlic

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76 bar steady 30.05  0mph NW  dew-point 46  Summer, hot

Waning Crescent of the Flower Moon

The heirloom tomatoes we have growing, started from seed inside, required more support.  They have sent out thick branches from the central stalk, already within a tomato cage.  As fruit develops on them, they will sag and break or their fruit will dangle on the soil, going rotten before we can pick them.  At the same time, a few daisies had decided on a straggly path toward the grass, so I put support around them, too.

The garlic. Sigh.  I harvested four garlic plants yesterday.  They had not grown into large, juicy bulbs as I had imagined, but instead looked like large green onions, very large.  I read the culture instructions again.  I had forgotten to cut back the scapes, a curly stalk that shoots up from the center of the main stalk.  It carries the flower.  Allowing it to get much more than 10″ long discourages bulb production.  Makes sense.  If I’m gonna propogate by seed, why bother storing energy below the soil.

In a belated attempt to make up for lost ground I descaped all the garlic and will let the remaining plants sit in the soil a while longer, though I suspect my fantasy of large garlic bulbs grown in my own garden will have to wait until next summer.   All of gardening is a constant experiment, learning this from the plant, then that from the soil, again the message of the sun, then the gentle language of rain.  Like intimate relationships gardening requires close listening and a willingness to admit when you have erred.

My first visit to the MIA since May comes today when I go in for a refresher on the Africa galleries.  We have this one last check-out tour to give.  After it, we will be able to give tours of Africa only if requested.  I’m looking forward to getting back to the museum after a good time away.  No tours for me until September and I’m glad, still I miss the constant interaction with the art and the folks around the museum.

Family, Garden, Writing

Garlic Harvest

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77 bar steady 29.93 5mph N dew-point 49  Summer, hot and sunny

                      Waning Crescent of the Flower Moon

Wrote this AM.  Appended chapter 3 of Superior Wolf to its page on this website.  Next week I’ll take down chapter 1 and put chapter 4 and so it will go until I have written myself to the end.  We’ll see where it goes.

Moved mulch, created by renting the super chipper from Home Depot and grinding up branches, tree trunks and chunks of shrubs.  The mulch goes on the perennial bed first, keeping the weeds down as we move into high summer and also cooling the soil just a bit.  This involves a wheel-barrow, a pitchfork and a lot of moving from one place to another.

After a nap I unburdened the kitchen table of a couple of months of magazines, catalogues and desparate fund-raising pleas.  This involved a paper-sack, a lot of sorting and moving from one place to another.

Now I’m gonna cook supper, red beans and rice with some prime rib left overs thrown to make it interesting.  The now standard fare of lettuce, onions and cilantro from our gardens inside and out will join store purchased tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers for a colorful salad.  Later in the season we will have all of these ingredients. 

I also learned from a piece of paper recovered from the literary overburden of the table that I can  harvest the garlic now.  Somehow garlic has become my favorite crop.  Don’t know why.

Garden, Politics, Travel

Where to Buy Japanese Gardening Tools? Home Depot!

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69  bar falls 29.56  5mph WNW dew-point 53   Summer, pleasant with fluffy cumulus gathering

Last Quarter Flower Moon

When in Hawai’i I noticed the Filipino gardeners at the Hyatt had small, sickle like tools.  One of them had a serrated edge down and a cutting edge up.  The other had a slightly curved blade and a very sharp edge facing down.  They used them to easily uproot weeds, edge grass and other plants.  I asked the guy where I could buy them, “Home Depot.”  Of course, where else?

In fact, Home Depot did not have them, but Ace Hardware did.  It was your next guess was it not?  The ones I found were $8 and had a bamboo shaft.  When I packed them in my checked luggage, I felt like I might get stopped at security.  First, box cutters.  Now, Japanese gardening tools.

Yesterday I discovered the the second of these tools was a whiz at cutting back perennials whose leaves had died back.  By putting the blade just into the soil and cutting back toward myself, the leaves came off with ease, leaving the bulbs in mother earth where they belong.  Today I finished the daffodils.  I have a lot of daffodils so their leaft behinds are voluminous.   Into the red plastic tub and then out to the discard pile.  The plastic tubs are also great gardening tools.  Cheap and capacious, they are also light and indestructible.

Read an interesting article about Singapore in the Smithsonian magazine.  It says Singapore has become fun city.  Well, not quite.  But, compared to the authors first visit 37 years ago during r&r from Vietnam War coverage it was “Laissez bon temps roulez.” Bars in entertainment zones can stay open until dawn.  Theatre has begun to pop up and traveling musicians now include Singapore on their itinerary.

When I visited in 2004, one of the things that amazed me was seeing women, unescorted, walking the streets well after midnight.  My hunch is that relaxation of the puritan, or rather, Confucian value system may endanger that.

This “Asian values” idea, promoted by Singaporean political leaders, and rooted in Confucianism veers away from Master K’ung-fu-tzi in one very salient area.  In the Confucian world there was a distinct hierarchy of professions.  The emperor and courtiers, mandarins and nobles were at the top.  Then came landowners, farmers, woodcutters and fisherfolk.  After these, artisans.  At the very bottom, consigned to almost a pariah role, were merchants.  Merchants, Confucius believed, created nothing, adding nothing to the culture, rather they made money moving around the goods and food-stuffs created by the labor of others.

Singapore, much of Southeast Asia and certainly Taiwan, Japan and China are, in that wise, far removed from the core values of Confucius.

Off for a nap.  More gardening tomorrow morning.

Family, Garden, Great Wheel

Cool House Plants

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69  bar rises 29.73  0mph NNW dew-point 57  A summer night

                   Last Quarter of the Flower Moon

This time period, after the iris bloom and the lilacs have died back, we have annuals like petunias, begonias, geraniums and vinca plus the odd Siberian Iris and peony, not many late June perennials in our garden. We await now the Asiatic lilies.  My favorite among our flowers many of the lilies in our garden came from lily fanciers who live in the upper midwest.   Purchased at a lily growers special season sale at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, they come in beautiful colors and many, like the Star Gazer, have scents that beguile.  A bit later the hemerocallis, day lilies, will begin to bloom. They will take us into September along with the Liguria, the bug bane and the bush Clematis.

It is a clear night.  Stars light the sky, ancient messengers of events and objects of long past. They are deep history, a counterpoint to the now.  Insects chirp.  The occasional owl hoots.  Maybe the sound of some small animal scurrying through the grass in search of food.  A bats quick, furtive flight crosses the moon’s half lit face.

These nights offer a softness and elegance found only in the natural world.  There is no need for fancy dress, cocktails or dance music.  All you have to do is walk outside and share the company.  Your clothing or lack of it will not matter. Some of the party may find you irrestible, of course.  Yes, unwanted attention sometimes mars a quiet night.  It does show, though, that you have a niche. You are the canape.

Kate and I spoke to Mary on Skype today.   Arranging a physical connection with Singapore has its modest challenges.  She called us, for example, at 11:00 PM today, though it was 10:00 AM here.  Today has long since turned into tomorrow there.  She’s off this week finishing the revisions to her dissertation.  Then it heads out to her supervisor for one last check, then onto external readers.  More revisions likely.  Finally, the oral defense sometime from now.  Later, awarding of the doctorate.  Pretty cool.

She may visit the temperate latitudes building at the Botanical Gardens as a treat for finishing.  That’s where they have trees and plants adapted to cold weather, a mirror to our conservatories with their palms and philodendrons and other tropical vegetation.  A strange notion from the perspective of Minnesota.