Garden Dividends





Have you done your taxes yet? April 15^th is just a week away. Most of the people
I know use an accountant or a website like Turbo Tax for this tedious job, but I do
my own and actually got them mailed in March this year.

Way back in  1974 I got a job at  H and R Block. Whenever I  had free time
between customers, I spent it composing poems for a new garden club program
I was putting together. The poem below  already had a melody. 

Sing a song of Swiss chard, pocket full of peas.

Four and twenty vegetables, grow them with ease.

When I plant the garden, I fertilize it well,

Lots of rotted cow manure, and never mind the smell.

When I see the lettuce dancing down the rows,

I forget the sticky sweat that trickles down my nose.

Hubby’s at the office, making lots of money.

I prefer the garden where all is nice and sunny.

I’ve produce by the bushel, and I can just relax

Cuz all my garden dividends the government can’t tax!

Much has changed since 1974, but the greedy government has yet to tax our garden produce.  No tax men come snooping around counting those sweet peas, and delicious tomatoes, the  fresh broccoli and melt-in-your-mouth onions  you harvest each summer from your back yard garden. 

So, yes, this column is going to seriously encourage you to start a vegetable garden this spring, even if it’s just a  decorative row of lettuces in a window box, or a couple of tomato plants in a bucket on the back porch. How about a single zucchini  plant tucked beneath the lilacs by the back door?  Just one plant will produce zucchinis all summer long which can be served up in a dozen different ways.

If you have a full-time job I’m sure you’re shaking your head, but let me just point out some of the advantages of growing your own vegetables.  Obviously they taste better.  Store-bought vegetable are not bred to be tasty, they’re bred to tolerate the agonies of being shipped from the farm thru the various steps involved to finally  reach the supermarket. If you’ve ever wondered why home-grown tomatoes taste so flavorful compared to the store-bought ones, it’s because the varieties we raise are bred for taste and wouldn’t survive all that traveling. 

Lettuce is one of the easiest and most rewarding vegetables to grow.  It matures quickly and causes few problems unless you count the slugs who love lettuce. However,  slimy slugs also like beer, so if they become a problem, just leave a saucer of Budweiser (any brand will do) set level with the soil in the lettuce row. By morning there will be lots of dead drunk slugs in the saucer.

Buttercrunch is my favorite lettuce, but I also buy a seed packet of mixed varieties so I get some smooth, some ruffled, some  red and some green.  Burpee has some nice collections this year, even one called “Heatwave Blend” that should appeal to the global warming environmentalists.  

Another reason to have a vegetable garden is to educate your children or grandchildren about the excitement of watching plants grow, to see a bean seed push up from the soil and turn into a leafy vine that spirals up a pole and eventually drips with clusters of string beans.  Think of the magic a child can produce by pulling up a carrot from the earth or digging down to find  a new potato.

A vegetable garden can also help solve America’s obesity problems.  Kids aren’t crazy about vegetables, but there’s a world of difference between  fresh string beans picked from the garden just before supper and the tired ones bought at the supermarket  And how can a 6 or 7 year-old resist eating those sweet peas he helped Mom plant?

Not only are items like carrots and broccoli and tomatoes more tasty, they provide kids with an alternative to watching TV or playing video games. 

The government is making a lot of new rules to try and limit all those sugary drinks and junk foods that kids eat,  but  I think obesity is primarily caused by lack of exercise.  Instead of being a couch potato glued to the tube, when kids are asked to help keep the vegetable garden up to snuff, they get plenty of exercise --   spreading manure, rototilling, raking, planting, weeding, mulching, thinning, harvesting. 

I happen to love doing all of the above, but I realize there are many people who find such jobs anything but enjoyable. Nowadays almost every town has a summer farm market piled high with home-grown and freshly harvested vegetables., and it’s a fun way to spend a Saturday morning.

Do Plants Have Feelings?



I always like to include a photo or two with my blog posts,  but I couldn’t find a single one that would be appropriate for today’s column.  Since daughter Bridget is a professional artist, I decided to include the painting above which always makes me smile. I hope it makes you smile, too.  

Back in 2008 I wrote a column about how the Swiss had amended their constitution to protect the dignity of plants.  A panel of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists and theologians added a new rule to the law known as the Gene Technology Act, establishing exactly how to prevent humans from humiliating the country’s flora.

Switzerland’s new  rule stated that vegetation has an inherent value and it is immoral to arbitrarily harm it.  Geneticists must consider whether they are disturbing the vital functions or lifestyle of the plants they are tinkering with.

For instance, one scientist, Dr. Keller, who wanted to do a field trial on wheat bred to resist a fungus, had to first explain to the government ethicists why the trial “wouldn’t disturb the wheat” and convince them that "it would not in any way mortify the wheat to be protected from the fungus.”

As long as a plant’s independence, its reproductive and adaptive abilities were insured, however, the rule stated that its dignity would be safeguarded, so Dr. Keller finally got  permission to plant the wheat.  Unfortunately a group opposed to genetic modification of crops invaded the test field and scythed down all the wheat.  How’s that for protecting the dignity of plants?

Since I considered the Swiss rule totally extreme, I went on the Internet yesterday to see if it was still in force.  When I Googled the Gene Technology Act  I found that Australia, France, Tasmania and many other countries have added the Act to their constitution.  There were way too many websites listed for me to read them all, so I never found out  which countries included a rule similar to Switzerland’s. 

Nowadays genetically modified organisms, GMOs,  have been scientifically proven to be environmentally safe, and are promising better, more abundant and cheaper foods, especially in poor countries.  The Swiss rule forces scientists who want to experiment in improve crops to go through just too many hoops to prove their efforts  won’t be breaking the law. 

If plants really have feelings, could you ever lop off the head of a blooming zinnia, or shred a cabbage for coleslaw?  Does it really destroy the dignity of seedless grapes to render them sterile? I'd love to eat a peach that no longer had fuzz, or a watermelon that didn't have seeds. 

There are still many people who are totally against GMO. I’m not one of them. As you readers know, however, I often treat my plants anthropomorphically.  I love talking to them, and like the idea that they have feelings.  I suspect that  corn stalks  who have experienced GMO are happily celebrating the fact that scientists are working to eliminate that ugly corn borer from invading their ears.

I once read  about an experiment performed by the Reverend Franklin Loehr,  a scientist and theologian, who planted flower seeds in two different beds. He gave each bed identical amounts of soil, sunshine and water.  He prayed over one of the beds every day, but left the other bed to the devil.  The church going flowers grew to gigantic proportions while the heretics barely bloomed. 

Now isn’t that what a green thumb is all about?  A love of growing things that communicates itself to the plants being cared for? I hope you fellow  gardeners will enjoy planting your flowers and vegetables this spring and speak kindly to each seedling as you nestle it into the soil.

California Gardens



I know I promised to write about the  gardens my girls and I saw on our week’s vacation in California, but I had no idea what a challenge it would be.  I suspected that Lotusland, 40 acres of rare palm trees, cacti,  euphorbia and other unpronounceable plants, would be difficult to describe, so I was eager to visit the small Buddhist garden in Encinitas first.

By the time we reached this incredibly peaceful place of meditation I was so stressed by driving on a 5 lane highway in bumper to bumper traffic that I fell in love with it. The gnarled, twisted trunks of ancient palm trees vanished among the flowering shrubs at either side of the walkway, all perfectly placed to offer a gentle shadow to the tiny cyclamen blooms that peeked out from the greenery of moss and ivy, or warm sunlight to the  sparkling orange petals of a Bird of Paradise blossom.

Only bird song and the gentle murmur of water disturbed the silence, though many visitors strolled the paths. A tiny stream tumbled over rocks to a pool where golden and white koi swished the water into ripples as they swirled back and forth. Small side paths led up from the dappled shade into sudden brilliant sun and the breath-taking blue of the Pacific ocean far below.

 I took a dozen photos, many included below, before I realized what made this garden so appealing – the smallness of its plantings.  There were no overwhelming masses of bloom, just beautifully placed single flowers set among the moss and ivy, no vast stretches of landscape, merely  a single clump of perfectly place blossoms set among the soft restful greenery of ferns.  Here and there one could find a comfortable bench beside the path offering rest and meditation. 

I assumed I’d find the names of the various plants we saw in the provided brochures, but I was wrong.  They were all about religion  and the “Self-Realization Fellowship.”  

Lotusland is in Santa Barbara so it took us four hours to get there from La Joya, and two hours to cover the vast acres of gardens as our tour guide (required) stopped frequently to tell wonderful stories about their creator, Madame Ganna Walska.  This amazing lady acquired the estate in 1947 and spent close to 50 years planning and designing the gardens and acquiring the vast number of plants and husbands (she had six) during her lifetime. 

I was correct in thinking that Lotusland would be  impossible to describe, and far too enormous to depict in either words or pictures. Since our very knowledgeable guide spoke too fast for this deaf old lady to understand her tales, and the book the girls bought for me was only filled with unpronounceable Latin names and technical information about plant origins,  I’m afraid I missed a lot.

But just walking along the paths was mind-boggling. The trees soared overhead, easily reaching 50 or more feet high, lotus  blossoms were as wide across as dinner plates, an arbor in the citrus garden dripped well over a hundred brilliant yellow lemons above our heads. There were pools shaded by giant palms and ferns, paths lined with rare cacti in every shape and size. 

There’s really no way to describe it all, so if you’re ever in California, you should make reservations in advance and go to Lotusland.  Here are a few pictures.  

           The  palms in this photo are Encephalarios woodi.   They are extinct in the wild.    Madame Walska paid $2500.00 each for these two treasures.  

Somehow we managed to see one more garden, quite near La Joya, which was a total contrast to Lotusland.  It contained many of the same plants, but as single specimens, which made them seem very special instead of being in a group of a 100 which was almost overpowering.  I took just two photos in this botanical garden, the lady at the top of this column, and the strange looking tree below.    Do you know what kind of  tree this is?

                           




                              It's a Fig Tree 

Who's Talking? Just Listen!



This new computer is still giving me grief, but it has one program that is really great.  It’s called Mail Chimp and wheneever I post a new column it let’s me  write a single email to all my readers, then set a date and time for mailing it.  So here I am in California playing tennis with my three daughters, and you’re getting this column. 

It’s just a poem I probably composed thirty years ago, but vegetables don’t change much.  Enjoy.  Hopefully when I get back home I’ll be able to write a column about the fabulous gardens we saw in California.

The vegetables were arguing

Which one of them was best,

Which had the most achievements,

Which was the tastiest.

The beautiful asparagus

Spoke up the first pf all –

“I maybe past my prime, my dears,

But no one grows so tall.”

“Aw, Shucks,” the corn grinned down at her,

“I guess I shouldn’t boast,

But my old stalk can stretch beyond

The highest garden post.”

A ripe tomato shyly spoke,

“I’m fancy and high-bred,

I love the heat, it makes me sweet.”

She blushed a rosy red.

The Swiss chard leaves began to curl

And yodel at the sky.

“Our stems get cut right at the butt,

Yet still we multiply.”

“We’re very fresh and tender, too,”

 the baby onions cried.

“I think you’re fresh and impudent,”

Miss Broccoli replied.

“Such bickering!” Aunt Lettuce sniffed. 

“I think my head will split.

We’ll never figure out who’s best

Til we calm down a bit.”

The mealy-mouthed potato moaned,

“I’ve got the scabs this year. 

I’ve had no starch since early March.”

She shed a milky tear.

“Oh wipe your eyes,” an old beet said,

“At least you’re not too plump.

If I continue gaining weight

They’ll throw me on the dump.”

The cucumber let out a burp,

“My indigestion’s bad.

I guess it must have been that dose

Of garden lime I had.”

“Pipe down!” the red hot radish yelled,

“Pipe down, you silly clods!”

And each young pea laughed out with glee

And nearly split their pods.

  

The carrot plants got all choked up.

It really was absurd.

Their heads were buried in the dirt

So none of them were heard.

Poor Mr. Celery tried to speak,

His skin a sickly white.

His voice was just a whisper ‘cause

His collar was too tight.

Then Grandpa Cauliflower coughed

And shook his snow white head.

“I think we’ve bickered long enough,

Let’s get to work,” he said.

The vegetables all dug right in,

Their argument forgot.

And each long row began to grow

To fill the garden plot.   

Mouse Problems and Puzzles



We’ve had mice problems since our very first day on Locust Hill.  And not only mice but
 rats.  Since our little farmhouse hadn't been lived in for six years, I suppose it made an inviting home.  Eventually we got rid of the rats, but we still get plenty of mice, especially in the winter.

  Sad to say, my cat at age 18, died and hopefully went to a land of heavenly catnips in the sky.  Not that she’d been solving my mouse problems all these years.  She much preferred being outside catching moles, and once even a chipmunk.

Mice love Locust Hill. In winter they take over the dozens of bird houses on the place. Three or four set up housekeeping in these safe little boxes.  When I go out with a stick to clean the nests in early spring, they have a total panic attack at my invasion, scrambling around and finally leaping down to the ground. I went out several weeks ago and managed to get a few pictures of these little guys.

Catching mice in a simple snap trap never appealed to me. It  not only looks painful, it IS painful if it snaps shut when you’re trying to set it. I use what I call a “Hav-a-Heart trap, a metal box that sweeps curious mice into a holding area until I release them.  

I have two of these benevolent traps.  The Mouse Master, made by Whitmire Micro-Gen, doesn’t compare to the Ketch-All made by Kness Mfg.Co. On winter mornings it almost always contains at least one prisoner which I can easily release from the trap far from Locust Hill. Both traps can catch more than one mouse, but the Mouse Master never manages it, while the Ketch-All often has two little guys nervously peering up at me.  I suspect that the first caught mouse probably squeaks pitifully to his friends, who come to help and are swept in to join him.

I must admit that coping with these captured mice when you’ve hardly swallowed your first cup of coffee, is not the greatest way to start the day. Having that appealing little face with its round frightened eyes peering out at you is hard. Most captives are so scared they don’t even eat the cheese I’ve used as bait.  

Last month I had such a strange mouse experience that it inspired me to write  today’s column.  That morning both my traps were empty, but every time I went into the kitchen I heard little scratchy sounds. I peered in cupboards, inside the waste basket, just about everywhere until I suddenly saw a whiskered wiggling nose.

Guess where this mouse was hiding. In the toaster!  I could just make out his little pink nose  poking out from a hole no bigger around than my index finger.  I’ve circled it in red

Not wanting to turn the poor creature into toast, I pulled the plug, then tipped the toaster upside down and shook it.  Nothing happened.  I examined every possible place where he could be hiding with no luck.  When I set the toaster back up I could still hear him inside. 

I’m happy to report that that clever rodent must have escaped the toaster because there were no more little scratchy noises, much less a yowl of pain when I finally decided to make some toast. The mystery of how he got in or got out, however, will remain a mystery.  Hopefully he is now in one of my birdhouses, curled up in a nice  cozy nest.

How’s that for a mouse tale?  I couldn’t resist writing about my mouse experiences, especially when I had all these photos to use.  If you like the idea of using a benevolent trap like those I've mentioned, they're easy to find on the Internet.  . 

How's your Latin?



My mother became a sort of hermit in her old age, rattling around all alone in her house in West Hartford.  When she broke her hip at age 92, however,  she reluctantly agreed to hire some help.  The agency sent an attractive young girl whose name was Virus. If germs didn't immediately come to mind, wouldn't that name be as pretty as Vera or Violet?

Isn’t Vermin as appealing as Vernon, unless of course you automatically conjure up visions of rats and cockroaches?  Words like syphilis or rebella could make pretty names if you didn’t have previous notions of their meanings.  Why isn’t rancid as nice a name as David?  Is Claudia any prettier than phobia? The names for plants can cause these same sorts of problems.  Take the name streptocarpus.  You might think that attractive houseplant could give you strep throat if you weren’t familiar with the pottted plant

above, whose common name is Cape primrose.

 . Isn’t the name Doll’s Eyes, a baneberry's seeds pictured below,  a more fun name than Actaea Alba? I rarely use Latin names for the plants I write about.  To me a name like Prunella  vulgaris doesn’t bring to mind the little purple flower we know as selfheal, It sounds like it might be the name of one of Hank’s old girlfriends.  Of course it helps if you know that the Latin word vulgaris means common in English

When translated, all those Latin names help to identify plants, but another even more important reason to know them is because they are universal, unlike the common names which vary from place to place. 
 

You may call the wildflower above with a little yellow bloom and spotted leaves a dogtooth violet.  Other folks call it the adder’s tongue.  I like to call it the trout lily because it is a lily, not a violet, and has those speckled leaves that look similar to a trout. We should all call it Erythronium americanum and there’d be no confusion at all.

What a mouthful! I much prefer the imaginative common names, but maybe I’d feel differently if I hadn’t had such a bad start with Latin. I spent my first two weeks at boarding school in the infirmary with bronchitis and when I finally got to my first Latin class I found I’d been placed in second year Latin my mistake. The teacher was convinced I was just panicked at missing the first weeks of class, and as a consequence I was four weeks behind when I got to the right class. By then I loathed Latin. 

The first botanical name I ever succeeded in remembering was Dentaria.  Its common name is toothwort and its white blooms resemble teeth.  There are two species of this wildflower, D. multifida  which translates as "many times parted," referring to the leaves,  and D. maxima which means "largest." It could really help to know Latin.

I've never managed to keep Chimaphila umbellata and Chimaphila maculata straight, two little evergreen wildflowers of the same genus. The common name for C. maculata is pipsissewa or spotted wintergreen, a summer blooming wildflower with a variegated leaf.  It turns out that maculata means spotted. C. umbellata has no white in its leaves.  It looks like a miniature pachysandra. Its flowers are umbels. I confess I had to look that word up – “a flat-topped flower cluster in which the individual flower stalks arise from aabout the same point.”  Chimaphila combines the Greek word cheima, meaning "winter," and the Latin word phila meaning “having a preference for growing.”

This column has suddenly turned into a lot of work.  I’m afraid I’m too old to start studying Latin. I’ll leave all those botanical names to the botanists, and spend my time enjoying the flowers, whatever their names.

More Difficult Rams

D

 

 

Today marks the beginning of my 31^st year of writing Weeds and Wisdom. I thought just offering you a picture of my wonderful new zebra to finish off 2012 would help me over my feeling of burn-out, but it wasn’t enough of a rest, Writing garden columns takes a bit of research, especially when the world is blanketed in snow,  so because animal tales are easy I’ve chosen to write a little more about the rams on Locust Hill which requires only a good memory.

 

Last June I told you a bit about Rammit, the first father of our flock, Beaver, our lethargic second ram, and Zinnia, a newborn male whose mother had died.  I never finished his crazy story, so here it is.

 

After Zinnia’s mother’s death we were down to just  three ewes, so instead of turning two of  his daughters into lamb chops, we let them join the flock.  Of course this meant that come fall, incest would run rampant, but we didn’t think that would be a problem.

 

Apparently Zinnia disapproved, however. He became very cranky, backing off  and lowering his head threateningly at anyone’s approach.  We learned to treat him carefully, but that winter we’d planned a family vacation. We hired a young neighbor, Tinker, to feed dogs, cats, sheep and chickens while we were gone, and also asked our good friend Henny if she’d water the houseplants and collect the eggs. 

Each morning Henny would stop on her way to work and search out the eggs laid by our roaming chickens. One day she spotted several eggs in the sheep manger, innocently opened the inner door and  collected them.

The next thing she knew she was laid out in the muck with a tongue-panting Zinnia leering down at her.  She escaped with no serious damage, unless you consider going on to the office with runs in your stockings, manure on your skirt and egg on your face damaging.

  Henny never thought to close the door as she fled so Zinnia, his appetite whetted by his first victim, waited outside for his second.  That afternoon Tinker raced into the yard on his motorcycle and suddenly was racing around on foot, chased by the snorting Zinnia.

Tinker’s reaction was not fright but fury!  As soon as he got over his surprise, he jumped back onto his  motorcycle and gunned it straight  at his opponent. The chase was reversed (as the muddy tire tracks in the lawn showed for weeks afterward), and Tinker pursued Zinnia until the ram was as harmless and worn out as an old wool sweater.

Since there are no photos of  that catastrophe, here’s  one of nice gentle sheep eating their dinner.

 

Once we’d learned about Zinnia’s behavior we  decided we should probably sell him, but before we found a buyer, he followed in his mother’s hoof prints.  We acquired more rams in future years, but I will save their stories for the next time I need a break from gardening columns