A Time to Sow

Pink & Black Ornamental Garden Box

Dear Reader:

There I was yesterday, crouched down next to the garden boxes, dropping miniscule seeds into warm compost, patting a covering of compost over the “babies,” and dreaming of how the boxes will look when the seedlings emerge and begin to grow.

Moth & Chive in the “sunny” perennial bed

Giant bumblebees buzzed around and into the self-propagated purple and pink columbine. Moths and monarch butterflies visited the puffy heads of chives. Birds called. My fingernails turned black, and I didn’t care. I just kept dreaming of the months to come when I could sit and watch the plants grow.

Heirloom tomatoes in straw bale

The day before, after a $100 trip through the greenhouses at Snell’s Family Farm, I had all the starter plants on my list, plus more.

First, the tomatoes. I went with three Early Girl tomatoes, one brandywine called “Mortgage Lifter,” and two green-striped German heirloom tomatoes to go in the straw bales.

Digging out spaces in the bales was tough work. My father was visiting and helped with this chore while Mom watered and carted the extra straw to the compost pile for recycling. The bales were moist and beginning to break down inside nicely, creating some heat that I hope will make for happy tomato plants. After digging into the bales, I put in a couple handfuls of compost, stuck the plant in, and filled in with more compost. Following directions from my straw-bale gardening booklet, I then pressed on a layer of potting soil along the tops of each bale and planted spinach to grow in the shade beneath the toms.

Straw Bale with Front Garden Boxes

On the ends, a circle of pumpkin seeds will hopefully produce a few orange globes come fall. To go along with the “fall harvest” theme of my bales, I took a chance and planted a few corns seeds and some beans on the ground beside the bales. This is now a Three Sisters garden: corn, beans, squash. I’m not expecting much in the way of corn, but the stalks will look festive with the bales and the pumpkins if it all works out.

Inside the Garden Box

As for the boxes, I squished as many varieties into them as I could, intermixing veggies and flowers for visual appeal and maybe to also attract beneficial insects like bees. Already the hummingbird zipped down for a look-see yesterday.

Here is a list of what I planted this weekend:

Herb Box–basil, camomile, calendula, dill, rosemary, fennel, sage, pole beans.
Pink & Black Box–red cabbage, chocolate mint, geranium, Japanese shiso, cucumber, sweet potato vine, petunias.

Salvia & Red Cabbage

Diamond Design Box–salvia, red cabbages, cucumber (and I think something else but I can’t quite remember so it will be a mystery until something comes up between the cabbages.)

Sungold cherry tomato in a pot.

Root crop Box–small onions, carrots, parsnips, radishes, eggplant, geranium.

Peas & Pepper Box–peas, chili peppers, zucchini, summer squash.

Four Greens Boxes–Green leaf, arugula, romaine, greens mix, spinach, a leftover red cabbage, a cherry tomato, a zucchini, a few small onion is a square, and green beans and leftover cukes.

Phew! I spent the better part of two days planting and then sat outside to drink a glass of tea and enjoy the view. I took a shower and went to bed.

After midnight, around 1 a.m., the light show started…a tremendous thunderstorm that ripped through the sky for four hours, dropping torrential rains and some hail. All I could think was, “What about my itty-bitty seeds? What about my tomato plants?”

Luckily, the plants seem fine this morning. Now I have to chose: dig up the soil and replant the seeds or wait for ten or twelve days to see what, if anything, emerges from the compost. I think I’ll wait.

The weather forecast is calling for more t-storms, and I have to go to work at the library today—unlike this luna moth who has been literally hanging around all over my house for a week.

Luna Moth

What is she doing, I wonder? Resting? Waiting to take the next stage in her journey? Maybe that is the lesson for today. It’s all about timing. Rest when you need to. Look forward to the next stage in your journey. Soar when the time is right.

If there ever was a time to sow the seeds of change, it is now. What kind of future do you envision for yourself, your community, the world? What can you plant now for a better tomorrow…in your garden or Outside the Box?

Eggsellent Spring Supper

Spring Herbs

Dear Reader:

It may be hard to believe, but the garden, thanks to perennial herbs, produced ingredients for a wonderful, fresh-tasting spring supper before I even sent in my order to Johnny’s Seeds yesterday.

Perennial herbs are a gift of spring. Nestled up beside the first little feather fronds of yarrow and the recently divided rudbekia are the healthy clumps of reliable chives. The first grayish-purple flower heads poke up through the succulent spikes, and a few snips of the cooking shears yield a small handful of spicy, slightly oniony flavor.

Chives

Another unassuming, grassy-looking clump perfumes my fingers with the slight scent of liquorice when I roll a blade between thumb and finger. This is French tarragon–useful in soups, sprinkled on roasting chicken or vegetables with olive oil, or stuffed into a bottle of vinegar where it will impart its Mediterranean essence to that humblest of condiments.

French Tarragon

A short walk down to the perennial bed beneath the beech trees, my tiny but refuses-to-die thyme plant has put out new green leaves. I snip a few sprigs, roll a leaf between my fingers to inhale the woody aroma. Thyme is good, of course, in chicken soups and other stews. It is also remarkably yummy with eggs…and this is what I’m intending for this night’s supper.

Fresh Thyme

Bouquet in hand, I stroll to the house. From my ‘fridge comes a carton of locally-raised eggs; delicate shells in various hues indicate a mixed flock. The chickens that produced these eggs get plenty of protein from insects and plenty of fresh air and grass to scratch in. Their beaks haven’t been clipped. They have room to move. The yokes inside the eggs are golden-orange and plump, healthy, reassuring.

If only I’d thought ahead and purchased some local chevre, I think as I whisk a couple of eggs in a bowl and pour them into a buttered skillet on the stove. Instead I make do with some sharp cheddar and feta from the Limerick Market. I vow to try making my own mozzarella soon.

Sprinkling on the chopped herbs, I flip over one side of the set egg mixture. I pop a slice of my homemade bread into the toaster, tuck a handful of organic spring mix (Note to self: next year, use cold frames and start greens early!) onto a large plate, and slide the omelet next to the greens. A little butter on the toast and bon appetit!

Simple Dinner

If I’d started an asparagus bed, could I have added that to my meal, I wonder? Is Maine asparagus ready this early? Another note to self: create asparagus bed this year.

As for greens, I could have harvested all the dandelion any girl could want…wild food is even better than perennial food. (See “Not Your Grandmother’s Dandelion Greens.”) I have the store-bought greens, though, and the dandelions aren’t going anywhere.

Dandelions

Now, imagine some homemade hard apple cider to go along with this meal. Or some home-fries from local or backyard potatoes instead of the toast. Rhubarb pie for dessert. I wanted a quick meal, but the possibility for something more substantial is all right there–inspired by the fresh flavors of perennial spring greens. If you have even a small area in which to plant, these hardy and versatile herbs would serve you well.

Ephemeral Spring

Crabapple Blossoms

Dear Reader:

So we’ve had one of those kind of springs. An overcast, rainy, drizzly, foggy, chilly, turn-on-the-furnace, will-the-sun-ever-come-out, I’m-gonna-stick-my-head-in-an-oven-if-it-doesn’t-clear-up-soon spring. Despite the lack of sunlight, I fell in love with Spring this year. The beauty overwhelmed me.

The budding leaves on the trees glowed neon green. Every window in my house framed dazzling squares of bright, yellowy-green glaze, and every trip into town offered views of wide, verdant expanses from the ridges overlooking lush valleys of oak and maple and birch and beech trees budding out after a long, snowy winter.

My Reiki instructor reminded me that green is the color of the heart chakra, the energy center that corresponds with compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness, faith, receptivity, and acceptance. Either all that green was feeding my heart chakra, or my heart chakra was so energized I was drawn to all that green, or perhaps the energy and the color and the season were all just aligned for me this year so that despite the rain and gloom I was able to feel hope and love and faith for a brighter future.

Later in the season, the light color will deepen into emerald and forest and moss, but this early spring . . . well, it was all golden-green, the color Robert Frost wrote about in his short poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Award-winning poet, Dana Gioia, wrote an excellent essay about Frost’s 1923 poem. In the essay,“On Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Gioia contrasts this type of short poem with more the formalized forms of sonnets and epigrams. He talks about the construction of the poem, simplicity of the words Frost chose to use, and the movement from nature themes to philosophical observation about the passage of time.

Exuberant Rhubarb

This poem could be depressing, like the rainy weather, a note on the ephemeral qualities of youth giving way to duller attributes. Okay, true, but here’s the thing about life–it goes in cycles. Yes, this rainy yet somehow bright green spring will yield to summer and heat and dust and shady spots beneath the mature leaves of the trees. And, yes, the leaves will dry up and fall in autumn, and the branches will seem bare and dead through another long winter, but then . . . Spring, once again!

Lamium Maculatum

Nowhere is this more apparent than in my perennial flower beds. Year after year, these plants die back in the fall and then come back to life once again in the spring, bursting out of the cold wet ground and spreading themselves up and out to catch the fall of rain and (theoretically this year) the rays of sunlight.

Most of these plants are divisions from friends’ and my mother’s flower beds, and because I’ve never been too interested in the science of horticulture (I’m more interested in having pretty gardens) I rarely even bother to find out the names of the plants. A quick search this morning for “purple flowers ground covers” brought up pictures that seemed to match my bunchy cluster of purple flowers with heart-shaped leaves that grows on the north-east side of my front steps. If I’m right, this is Lamium maculatum, a ground-cover than does well in partial shade. It has come back bigger and better than ever each year. I highly recommend this hardy perennial if you are more of a putterer and less of a horticulturalist in the garden.

Another Lamium

This is another Lamium, with the more characteristic dark-rimmed silvery foliage and pink flowers. I love the way it looks against the rock, so delicate and pretty.

Trillium erectum

Meanwhile, out in Nature’s garden, otherwise known as “the woods” or “the side of the road,” this red Trillium briefly blazed like the red star she is. My friend Sandi (check out her Waughtercolors artwork on deviantART) and I noticed these beautiful ephemerals while on an early-morning bike ride one cloudy-but-not-quite-rainy spring day. Spring ephemerals are woodland plants that bloom and go to seed very quickly. Like Frost’s spring gold, they quickly fade to something less spectacular, but while they are here, oh boy! Beautiful. And maybe all the more appreciated because of their ephemeral quality?

Like youth and poetry. For me, a poem is an ephemeral thing, capturing a brief moment in time, a fleeting feeling, an impression.

When I was newly graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington, I got it into my head to write a sonnet sequence. I was inspired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.
I was young. I was in love, newly married. I wanted to chronicle that time in my life. So I wrote 48 poems. Three are lost. I think I sent them to a magazine and when they were returned in my SASE, I failed to put them back in the pile. I didn’t know back then that my urge to create poetry would fade, like the browning blossoms I wrote about that spring in 1992. Lately, though, that poetic part of me has regenerated, perhaps part of a creative cycle like Gaia’s seasons?

Anyway, most of the sonnets are horrible (I keep them for sentimental reasons), but I’ll share one not so horrible one that seems appropriate to the season. Enjoy this brief season, Dear Reader. Summer is right around the corner.

A FEW BLOOMS BROWNING

I

I used to climb into the apple trees,
their white-pink blossoms browning in the heat
of waning spring, and dangling dusty feet
and toes in childish peace among the leaves,
I began to dream of love. The breeze
that swayed the branch was new and sweet
with whispers I would blow to meet
the wind. How easily it was to please
the innocence of me until I sighed
another moment at the solitary sound
a songbird made upon an upper bough.
Weighted with the song, I sat and cried
because that sad and sudden beauty tore
from me the child that I had been before.

Rock On!

I (heart) rocks!

Dear Reader:

Last week, just before the black-flies made their Spring 2010 debut, I managed to treat my perennial beds to an application of compost/manure from bags I purchased at my local, trusty Plummer’s Hardware store here in town (where I always find whatever I’m looking for–from mop buckets to paint chips to bird seed to fishing line. I swear, everyone needs a Plummer’s Hardware in his/her life. If you persist in going to those big, boxy hardware stores you are missing out!)

This year, Plummer’s has a wide variety of manure, humus, and compost from which to chose as they recently added Coast of Maine products to their selection. Square-foot gardening recommends using a smorgasbord of composts in order to assure adequate nutrients, so I was pleased to see this addition to the stash in front of the store. I hauled ten bags of these amendments home in the back of my husband’s big, red truck and announced to him that, yes, okay, sometimes the behemoth earns its keep. Most days, I curse its very existence as I find it extremely difficult to park in the tiny spaces of school and office-building parking lots, not to mention the small lot beside the Clipper Merchant Tea House where I love to go for a nice pot of Earl Grey and the soup of the day.

Anyway, I digress. Along with the organic compost, I also turned a bunch of old, spent beech leaves into the seven-year-old beds. Some beech leaves hang on tenaciously all winter and only drop to the ground when the new buds emerge in the spring. I don’t know why this is, but it means that I have to rake not only in the fall, but also in the spring when the stiff breeze picks up these lingering bits of cellulose and swirls them onto the lawn and into the emerging greenery in my gardens. Usually I rake them out, dig in the compost, and then sprinkle wood chips on top for a mulch. I was talking about this to a fellow gardener who informed me that if I simply turned the leaves into the soil, the worms would transform them into rich castings, helping to build up the nutrients in the garden over the summer while I lounged around sipping iced tea this July.

Well, I added that bit about the iced-tea, but you get the point. The worms do the bulk of the work later if I do a little front-loaded work now. Good deal!

While thus engaged in spreading and digging, I realized that my formerly-brilliant idea to edge perennial beds with rocks was not so brilliant after all. After seven years or so, the rocks were mostly covered with soil and grass and left a narrow strip of bare dirt between the garden edge and the cement walkway that had been poured a few years after I’d established the flower beds. Looking down, I figured that if I dug the rocks out of the garden, I could gain a nice five or six inch wide strip of soil in which to plant things like chamomile, oregano, catmint, parsley, and maybe even some lavender. (Click on the green lettering to get more info).

The herbs will make a nice, fragrant edge against the cement. The cement will warm the soil, creating a micro-climate perfect for the heat-loving herbs–and maybe a few tomatoes as well. I may even plant some tomatoes in big pots and install them on the walkway. Try something new every year. That’s my motto . . . one of them, anyway.

One of the most fun aspects of gardening is the opportunity for experimentation and change. When you use your imagination and creativity to solve problems and engage your brain in a “use-what-you-have” type of game, the possibilities are endless. As I dug up the edging rocks and threw them into the wheelbarrow, I pondered what to do with them. In the olden days, farmers dug boulders and rocks from the soil and used then to create beautiful and practical walls. Some are still standing two hundred years later. In my neck of the woods, tumbled rock walls run all through the mixed pine and hardwood woods, testament that this land was once cleared and used for pasture.

Mini-wall between the beeches

We have one of these tumbled-down walls edging our property near the road. In some places, the rocks have disappeared altogether. In others, soil and humus have filled in the spaces between the old boulders, and a few hardy rosa rugosas manage to bloom there every June for a week or so.

In the picture above, you can see where I’ve filled in the space between two of the larger boulders with some of my smaller, garden-variety rocks, creating a sculpture of sorts. Eventually, I will haul in some soil and compost and put a shade garden in front of it. Maybe someday I’ll tackle that entire wall, scrape away the soil, and replace the tumbled rocks, but for now I simply enjoy it the way Europeans enjoy their ancient ruins–as a connection and reminder of a past faded into history.

Rocks as mulch

In this sandy, shady spot, I’ve used small rocks as a mulch. This area near my shade garden was mostly gravel from the driveway anyway, so I decided to fill it in with the rocks rather than try to rake the gravel away from perennials every year. Any rocks I found near the bleeding hearts, the hostas, the iris, the astilbe in this shady garden spot went to this section, creating a type of “rock pond” rather than the “rock stream” you sometimes see in home and garden magazines. A little hens-n-chicks succulent plant manages to survive in there, but it hasn’t grown or spread. I may need to clear a little space around it and give it a shot of compost-water this summer.

retaining wall

As you can see from this picture, I’ve used rocks to create a retaining wall in order to extend the edge of my front garden bed out past the end of my cape-style house. This allowed me to build up the soil and plant a lilac shrub at the corner, adding a kind of old, farmhouse touch to a newly-built structure. I under-planted the lilac with chives, rock geranium, and a few other perennials, and it is now one of my favorite sections of the garden. I do have to pull up the encroaching grass every year as well as manually pick out the ubiquitous dead beech leaves, but a fresh layer of rocks dug from the edging this year will help prevent the grass from poking through next spring.

These are just a few of the possible uses for rockscaping in the garden. A fabulous book I have in my gardening library called GARDENING MADE EASY by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall is an excellent resource for all things “garden.” In this book, Fearnley-Whittenstall included an entire chapter devoted to growing alpines, and I hope to use some of her ideas this summer in these stony areas in my garden.

So, already I’m committed to an herb border and an alpine rock garden as well as continuing with my square-foot gardening boxes. What new projects do you have planned for this summer? Stop by and share your enthusiasm and ideas . . . Outside the Box.

In The Pink

Bee Balm for the Soul

Dear Reader:

Now that July is winding down, the weather is finally warming up, and the perennials in my flower beds are in their “pink” stage. I haven’t exactly planned my flower gardens all that well. I’ve taken whatever divisions friends and relatives have offered me and have planted them all willy-nilly along with those I’ve purchased at garden-club sales and greenhouses. Consequently, I have distinct stages in my floral coloration–purple early on with iris, lilac (though it didn’t bloom this year), purply-pink wild geranium, and violets. Then there is the white stage–mulva and this really weird plant with sharp, bent leaves and clusters of white blossoms that open during the day and shut at night, and another pretty little delicate white flower with the faintest pink tinge at the center. These I picked up at a garden club sale at the Unitarian Church in Bangor, Maine five summers ago.

Asia Lillies

Now is the time for pink. I did have earlier pink, of course. My bleeding-heart plant below the beech trees is a prolific and long bloomer, and the wild rose transplanted a couple years ago after the plow dug it up from its bed at the foot of the driveway splashed a bit of color in the midst of all that white at the end of June.

Now, it is all about pink, however. Salmon-colored Asian lilies. Bright pink and magenta bee balm. Large-petaled echinacea luring in the butterflies. I miss my butterfly bushes, killed by the heavy ice this winter or by my over-jealous pruning. (I will never prune anything ever again. The butterfly bushes were doing great without my meddling.)

There are a few rogue lilies blazing orange here and there, and I’m thinking a few more in yellows and reds might perk up this late-July season when the black-eyed susans and sunflowers haven’t popped open yet and the sedums are still light green on their waxy stalks. On the other hand, I’m halfway considering turning the flower beds into veggie plots next year–not because I dislike the flowers but because these beds sit on prime garden real estate in my somewhat shady lot. They get 6-8 hours of sun a day (eight on the southern side of my front steps, five or six on the north) and are convenient to the door and walkway. In permaculture terms, this is known as Zone One. I believe the heat-loving tomatoes and peppers would thrive in the sunny, southern bed.

I have interplanted The Three Sisters amongst the flowers this year–corn and vining beans and squash. The beans are overtaking the corn, will probably pull them right over! The temps have been so cool that even in the garden boxes the squashes and cukes are just now beginning to sprawl. I doubt the pumpkins and winter squash will have time enough to ripen, but I have high hopes for the yellow summer squash and pickling cucumbers.

Peas and Cilantro

The transplanted lettuces put on a burst of leafy speed, as did the cilantro and one lone basil grown from seed. The peppers, despite my dire predictions, have rallied and are throwing out new leaves. I have small tomatoes on all seven plants, and I picked ripe shell peas a couple days ago! The green beans are finally in blossom (better late than never!), and the carrots and parsnips look healthy. I can’t wait until fall when I can pull up one of the orange or creamy-white roots for closer inspection!

What with the rain and cool temperatures, this gardening season has been a trial of patience and peristence. I’m hard pressed to decide whether to blame my newbie farmgirl ways or the weather for the small harvest. I will definitely try the square-foot gardening again next year, but I think I’ll make each twelve-inches tall and will add more compost and manure than Mel Bartholomew suggested. A few extra boxes around the shady, back side of the house will be perfect for lettuces and maybe peas. I’ll try corn and pumpkin again next to the front steps as I love the idea of dried-in-place cornstalks and grown-in-place orange pumkins for “instant” fall decorating.

Fall. Not sure I’m ready to think about that yet. Instead, I’m going to pull the few weeds growing in my perennial beds, water the cucumber plants, watch the bees gathering nectar from the fuzzy bee-balms and prickly knoblike centers of the echinacea flowers. I’m going to smell fresh-cut grass and listen to the insects buzzing in the hazy, late-afternoon heat. I’m going to hobble up to the pick-your-own blueberry farm and gather some berries for jam. There’s a refrigerator crisper drawer full of small, fat cukes bought at the farmstand waiting to be transformed into pickles, and I’m still itching to try my hand at sewing a cotton wrap skirt before summer’s end. I’m in the midst of researching online sources for information about a misinterpreted and misunderstood plant and hope to share my findings here next week.

So much to do in August!

What projects have you planned for the last month of summer? How are your gardens doing now that Mother Nature has finally turned up Her thermostat? Drop me a note. I’ll be digging around–in the dirt and online–Outside the Box.