In The Land of Wind

Sunshine today after a shock of bad weather.

Driving to work this morning I marveled at the flooded nurseries and farms. Ice ponds covered the landscape, sealing crops of blueberries and rows of evergreens in several feet of dark blue ice.

The paradoxical thing about an early thaw is how emotionally tumultuous it is. One minute it's the picture-perfect Christmas/Holiday winter wonderland, tickling our senses, fulfilling our need for a dose of seasonal sentiment, and the next minute we are hoping the roof holds through the night.

In the last three days we have gone from snow globe perfection to flooding, freezing rain and 50 mph winds. In the country where I live there is open land, quite a lot of it, and little to mitigate those very strong gales. On my property we have been planting trees for 11 years. Not a single growing season has passed without adding trees to the landscape, and I intend to keep this up indefinitely.

Trees make the best sort of wind-breaks imaginable. Frequently you see rows of trees planted in farmer's fields in a straight line. In fact this is quite the opposite of how it should be laid out for the technique to be of value. Planted this way in single file, side by side, trees actually increase wind severity (picture an arrow hitting a brick wall and then moving up, over, and then slamming down directly on the other side of the wall, ouch).

When trees are planted in an alternate zig-zag fashion the gust of wind will shatter, thus weakening the force (picture the same arrow splitting apart into multiple, smaller arrows when it hits the wind break).

On a farmer's field, incorrect planting of windrows is detrimental to the soil, exacerbating soil erosion. On the home front it is darned irritating, not to mention destructive to anything in the garden that is fussy, tender, delicate, weak stemmed or top heavy.

Despite the inconveniences of strong winds we'd be lost without this force of nature. Plants depend on wind for seed dispersal and insects take advantage of gentle breezes to increase their distance, allowing them to visit more flowers, thus increasing genetic diversity. In the big scheme of things on planet earth, wind has a big hand in shaping all creation.

Hindu mythology describes a triad of gods - creation (Brahma), destruction (Shiva) and preservation (Vishnu). In order for the universe to work, all three of these deities must remain mutually inclusive.

In short - and the myriad Hindu gods are not easy to summarize - the eternal cycle of creation/destruction is kept in check by a very good governor who flies through the clouds on a giant eagle named Garuda. Incidentally, Garuda is thought to have taken nectar from the gods and given it humans!

Gardeners, are you paying attention?

Wind is a magnificent thing.

Gifts for Gardeners - No Fake Moss, Please!

Christmas admittedly is not the most exciting time for the gardener in the family.  We're difficult to shop for.  If we could have a day or two to get outside and do some digging, that would be a perfect gift, but pleasant weather conditions are not currently available from Amazon.com, alas.

Gardening became big business in the 80's, purportedly due to Baby Boomers' sudden need to carve out their own private pleasure gardens with their new-found wealth.  By the 1990's Smith & Hawken was a bona fide retail giant - their marketing plan was simple genius: sell Old English gardening mythology to a sentimentally starved but financially bloated demographic.  What garden is finished without faux stone orbs covered in faux moss? Perfect for the new gardener who hasn't the patience to wait for moss to actually, well, grow.

About ten years ago I did receive authentic green Wellington boots for Christmas.  I was ecstatic, believing that my new footwear would be the best, most durable mud boots I'd ever own.  Who could possibly make a better garden boot than the English!

My Wellies lasted about a season and half, only because I refused to admit that they were leaky by the end of season one.  So much for the English and their famous Wellies.  Perhaps they were only meant to look handsome on a Lady pretending to garden while on holiday at her country estate.  One can picture her smartly dressed in hounds tooth, strolling briskly along the gravel paths while delivering orders to her head gardener,  "Jimmy, be a good fellow and fix that yew, won't you?  It's drooping."  

When my friends find out I am a passionate gardener they give me nick-knacks.  So-called "garden art" is plentiful at summer-time craft shows, and that is unfortunate for gardeners with well-intentioned friends who frequent them.

As gardeners age we prefer a decent cookbook or an excellent bottle of port, but less and less do we desire garden goods on Christmas morning.  Unless the giver is a true gardener himself or herself, he or she will not fully appreciate the depth at which the receiver will cherish a fine plank of rot-resistant cedar wood or a big, handsome stone.  Neither of these gifts are conveniently wrap-able but never mind, just lead the gardener into the garage and rejoice in their enthusiasm.

Early (Early) Winter

Snow and ice has been piling since late November. The forecast has been for below average temperatures and above average precipitation. Both have panned out. I've noticed that meteorologists are remarkably accurate in the high-tech age, although they have a tendency to sensationalize every drop of rain and snowflake as if it's the end of all creation. Weather forecasters have become shameless drama queens for the sake of scoring a few rating points.

Winter, for the record, does not officially begin until the end of this week.

The first really big dump was surprise if only for its intensity. Wet and heavy, virtually everything left standing in the garden was crushed, including the tallest and toughest of the ornamental grasses. Flattened like wet paper, the long shoots and blades now lie limply in ruins upon the earth. Most years I am able to enjoy the shuddering dry canes and seedy plumes lingering into well into March.

Winter interest, that's what we gardeners call it, or leaving a few things to look at for when the gloom seems eternal. Some gardeners subscribe to the scorched earth approach - picking out every remaining stalk and seed head still remaining by late autumn- No Plant Left Behind, if you will - for the sake of efficiency.

Others, myself included, like to see powdery caps of snow atop the Echinacea on a winter's morning, or flitting goldfinches devouring the remnants of Rudbeckia seeds. We find the blank winter garden sterile and sad, nothing to contemplate except frozen, lonely soil.

The mantra for some is to "clean" the garden of pests and diseases by not allowing them to overwinter on decaying plant matter. In the home vegetable garden this makes some sense (crop rotation and soil amendments should always be primary) but in the flower garden, bah.

I've never on my property detected an overabundance of plant disease. I don't trouble myself with a few spots of powdery mildew, anyway, so perhaps I am simply more tolerant than some. One gardener's "problem" is another gardener's shrug of the shoulders.

This morning I took another look around. Some of the miscanthus looks as if it's been hit by a meteorite but in other places things are not so bad after all. Sunflower stalks are indestructible as always, and there are plenty of milkweed hanging around, their silvery-gray pods still stuffed with gossamer. The new waterfalls in my ponds make spectacular ice formations. It's not so bad after all.

With nature one must learn to put things in perspective or find a different past-time.

Do Plants Communicate?

During harvest time I was interviewed by a local writer on the subject of garden vegetable oddities. He shared with me that a citizen gardener whom had grown a Mickey Mouse-eared tomato had gotten him on the phone, and how terribly excited the caller was, believing in miracles. A tomato that looks exactly like Mickey Mouse!

The journalist emailed me the pictures taken by the breathless gardener of his curiosity. I replied that I thought the tomato resembled the shape of a simple molecule more than Disney's famed cartoon character: the fruit was composed of three, smooth, conjoined orbs; lacking eyes, a pointed nose, and whiskers, which I do believe are essential features on Mickey's head. Call me picky.

In my opinion I was being prompted to exclaim this tomato phenomenon as, well, phenomenal, but my pulse remained steady. I explained to the journalist that plants do all kinds of crazy stuff, especially in their tendency to mimic the sexual organs of humans (don't tell me you've never seen a phallic gourd). A three-pronged tomato was, to me, not as amusing or unusual as the yams I had judged at the county fair this summer, resembling bug-eyed chihuahuas or angry old men.

Scientists have known for years that our human brains require recognizable data in order to cognate, and so what we at first do not recognize as "normal" we match with what we already know, the same way we see whales and horses in cloud formations. Or, for some, the Virgin Mary on a french fry.

It's unquestionably fun to look for patterns in nature. The more patterns we learn to recognize the deeper our scientific appreciation and understanding of the natural world. Teaching children how to identify trees by their leaf shapes, for example, is something most of us can relate to. And what a pleasure it is when the child sees the face of a fox in a blob of mildew on the freshly picked leaf!

A grown-up gardener should pause to remind herself that in the age of industrial macro-farms we rarely have an opportunity to glimpse nature's creative whimsy because we no longer get our hands dirty. When all of our edible plants come from a grocery store; hybridized, cultivated and preselected for absolute uniformity, it should not be surprising that when a gardener really sees nature unfiltered, she will be taken aback. It is when a gardener expects to pull a few bizarre-looking carrots from the soil that she has re-established an honest dialogue with nature.

There is much exploration to be done on exactly how plants do communicate, - with one another, even with us if at all possible. But it is the quiet mysteries of plants I hold in the highest regard. Knowing that my tomatoes are not scheming to intentionally look like a billion-dollar trademark by way of Mickey Mouse, or trying to bring forth religious miracles, or even attempting to appeal to my narcissism in any way whatsoever is profoundly satisfying.

Writer Mark Germer stated it well:

"Recent work on information processing (even kin recognition) in plants suggests that there may be more going on there than we now understand; as for birds and mammals, it has long been appreciated that they are perfectly capable of deception and subversion. For my part, I don't find these things odd or disturbing, as it's the continuity of all life that intrigues me most. Humans are not alone in their baseness -- though a few may be alone in their desire to rise above it."