Hornbeam Smackdown

     The charming American Hornbeam (Carpinus caroliana) is not often found in home gardens. Perhaps it grows too slowly for those who want a towering tree in sixty seconds or less. I immediately feel kinship with a gardener who has one--in my mind it implies upstanding character. This native species has survived the onslaught of lumber barons and exotic pestilence where other key species such as Elm, Chestnut and Ash have met their Waterloo. Maybe it is no coincidence that American Hornbeam is also commonly known as Musclewood.

     Recently I was given one as a gift--I assumed a seedling in a small pot. Then a truck arrived at my home hauling a 2.5 caliper (ten foot) specimen with a three hundred pound root ball. 
     The driver offered to help me situate the tree using his hand cart but I warned him it was too risky. During the rainy season the soil on my property holds enough water to power the Hoover Dam for a week and I knew we'd end only up perishing in the mire. He wished me the best.
      I pulled on my high boots and hiked into the marshy field to scout the perfect location. Successful tree planting requires a bright ability to visualize things in twenty years. For example a row of young spruce trees planted directly beneath utility lines will one day make a nice pile of wood chips.
     American Hornbeam is a beautiful small tree, maturing to about twenty-five feet in height. Its satiny-sinewy bark is grey-blue and rock hard; the glossy leavens are deep green, ovate-oblong, sharply serrate. In fall the foliage becomes scarlet-orange. A tree this lovely requires a place in the landscape where it will not be ruined by crappy real estate.
     As I puttered along in my John Deere, transporting the tree at the slowest possible speed, I felt like 73 year-old Alvin Straight who in 1994 drove his sit-down mower from Iowa to Wisconsin. Every waterlogged gorge and grassy hump threatened to demolish me.
     Now, I've been planting trees of all sizes for a long time yet I persist in misjudging the depth of a hole. Yes I do love to dig holes the same way I like to bite my nails and brush my teeth--with far more zeal than is necessary. There I was on a cold November afternoon with bloody fingertips, self-inflicted gum recession, and a too-deep hole filled with a 300 pound tree.  
     My dad offered the worst possible solution: hitch a bungee cord from the back of the John Deere to the root ball and pull it out. I fumed that we did not have time to review Sir Isaac Newton's universal law of gravitation proving that heavy stuff gets heavier when it goes into a hole.  

     I opted instead for 4x4's. Using our bodies for counterweight I managed to jack the tree high enough to make a clay mound beneath the rootball, gradually raising the tree to a proper height. 
     To ensure good drainage in a wet area I elevated the root flare a few inches above the soil level and mulched with six bags of organic soil and two bags of shredded cedar. The stakes will be removed in one year after reaction wood has formed and the root plate is well anchored. Lastly I protected the trunk from girdling rodents by wrapping it with chicken wire.  
     Before heading in from the cold I took a final moment to appreciate my new American Hornbeam, a glorious addition to the landscape. I can hardly wait for spring when I can scout for Lo moth caterpillars, one of this tree's unique guests. Lo moth caterpillars are covered in clusters of bright green spines that sting like hell. If I am lucky enough to find one I will have a strong urge to touch it. Heck, it can't be more painful than having no fingernails.

Gardeners, Travelers, Friends

       "Gardening is a long road, with many detours and way stations, and here we all are at one point or another. It's not a question of superior or inferior taste, merely a question of which detour we are on at the moment. Getting there (as they say) is not important -- the wandering about in the wilderness or in the olive groves or in the bayous is the whole point."  Henry Mitchell
 

     Five years ago I met a tiny woman with bobbed, ivory hair named Alice Wilkes.  She struck me as once-famous 1920's flapper girl who had traded table top dancing for gardening because at the age of eighty-three it made good sense to keep nearer to the ground. 

      Alice showed up at my workplace brimming with questions. Apparently her raspberries had gone bad over the years as raspberries always do and she was looking for a better variety.  I recommended some reliable mail order companies that sell virus-free bramble stock.

     Alice and I hit it off quite well. The ladies at my office remarked that I had made a new friend and sure enough, she called me two weeks later. "I do wish you'd come for a visit and see my garden," she said.  

     When I arrived Alice seemed reluctant to invite me in through the front door, ordering me to meet her outside at the rear of the house.  On the way I passed a detached old garage filled with everything but an automobile -- shovels, trowels, hoes, rakes, forks, towers of clay pots, bags of manure and fertilizer.  It was so crammed with garden apparel that there was scarcely enough room to stand, but looking at Alice's diminutive body I believed she could crawl unscathed through loops of barbed wire to find a good spade if she needed one.

     Her garden wandered along a narrow strip of side-yard, each off-kilter bed growing into the next as if the plants had burst through uneven walls and she had set forth, ant-like, to contain the green spill within a new border of smooth beach stones.  

     "It's really just a lot of plants I like."  Alice said it so plainly that any scoundrel would take her at face value, but I knew better.  She was a true connoisseur.

     She pointed out her recent acquisitions and we both agreed that creeping miniature sedum 'Angelina' was a stand-out, although she remorsefully added that hers was subject to a bit too much afternoon shade and was therefore spindly.  

     The real jewel, however, was soon revealed:  a common Mediterranean fig (Ficus carica) that had wondrously survived three consecutive Michigan winters.

     "Any fruit?"  I asked, greatly impressed.

     Alice shook her head.  "The dog-gone things never get big enough to ripen before the snow hits.  Maybe this year I'll hit the jackpot."

     For a while we simply sat on the cool earth, noting our shared affection for rampant clover in turfgrass, praising the weather and hinting at politics (we agreed).  I learned that her husband had recently died and that her son had been killed in the Vietnam war but she said it all with a slight shrug, not indifferently but without complaint.

      Before we parted, Alice shared some of her Cranesbill and loaned me her paperback edition of Henry Mitchell's book One Man's Garden.  "He's marvelous," she promised, adding, "If you don't care for him I just might not be able to be your friend."

     Oh, Alice, I thought, I love it when you talk like that.

     The next time we met, just before August's conclusion, I gave her a dense clump of Helianthus maximiliani, which I instantly regretted. Where on earth would she put this rocketing prairie giant in her small suburban garden?  I warned her that if she showed it too much affection she might be sorry.

     I spent the cold months reading One Man's Garden, relieved that Alice and I would remain friends after all.  That was five years ago, a blink of an eye.  We visited only once this summer, regretfully too near the end of things, but her late-season raspberries were refusing to quit and we stood on the driveway, happily eating them together.

     Alice said nothing that humid afternoon of the plastic tube tucked beneath her nose, nor did I ask. I gave her a new copy of Doug Tallamy's revelatory book Bringing Nature Home, promising her she'd adore it as much as I do.  We observed the gently swaying curly locks of her Corkscrew Willow and then she said it was time for her to go to dinner with her daughter -- they were having burritos.  Glancing at her, tinier than ever, I wondered where all those beans could possibly fit.

     Alice phoned my office the next week but missed me.  She had a question about figs -- would they ripen indoors if they were still green?  I returned the call but received her answering machine.  "I'll be here on Wednesday," I said, "I look forward to talking with you then."

     I did not hear from Alice again.  A co-worker broke the news as she handed me Alice's obituary.  I placed it on my desk next to the yellow notepad where I had written a reminder.  My handwriting seemed urgent.  "Call Alice," it said.  

     When I thought of Alice's garden without Alice there to tend it, it was too awful to consider.  The best I could do to ease my sadness was to revisit the words of Henry Mitchell, a man who wisely understood that in our deepest hearts, gardeners become the luckiest of traveling companions when we cherish our journey together, even if we only cross paths every once in a while.

   

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Heckled

   













     I was recently heckled at a ladies' gardening club. 
   "What about the weeds?" An old woman narrowed her eyes in contempt, as if I had spoken unholy words.
    "I'm sorry?" I asked.
     "What about the weeds I said!"
     "What would you like to know about them?"
     "You used the word "natural."  A natural garden will just fill up with weeds."
     I rewound my thoughts.  "Yes, good point, a weed management program is necessary to maintain any sort of garden.  I am speaking today on garden design that is not formal.  "Natural" does not mean you allow the weeds to take over."
     She said no more but her expression did not convey satisfaction.  Perhaps she was just displeased with the lunch options.
     I concluded my lecture without further complaints, although another woman left early (not before noisily bundling some brownish cookies into a paper napkin) and there was a couple in the back row who chatted furiously throughout, their heads bobbing like a pair of tweedling sparrows.
     Public speaking is not without entanglements.  Many people I know are terrified of facing a group and opening their mouth at the same time, insisting that they'd rather take a sharp stick in the eye, but giving a horticulture presentation is one of my favorite things to do.  The process combines some of my best creative skills:  writing, photography, verbalizing ideas, and sarcasm.  
     Crafting an engaging garden lecture is no different from telling a good story, as long as the story is told by someone who is recommending horse shit, not selling it.  
     Over time, gardeners naturally become good skeptics.  They've heard a zillion claims and tried as many gimmicks.  Say "Meadow in a Can" to a room full of knowing gardeners and you are guaranteed to get a laugh. 
     I once attended a garden convention where a man was marketing a "microbial caffeinated soil enhancer." 
     "Why caffeine?" I asked.
     "Because it wakes up the beneficial bacteria and gets them off to a fast start."
     There was some horseshit I wasn't buying.




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September Swarm

Photo by Shane VanOosterhout

   On September eleven my honeybees swarmed.  I got the news from my father who casually mentioned something about seeing a "bee house in the trees."  Vaguely worded, but I know how to decipher.

     "Which trees?"  I asked, a sick feeling in my gut.

     "The pines."

     "Which pines?  We have lots of them."

     "By the chicken pen."

      I walked outside to discover a few thousand bees settling on a pine bough eight feet off the ground.  I felt dishonored -- they could have at least waited until next spring to pioneer.  After all, I had given them a deluxe home, hand built from cedar, covered by a pitched copper roof. 
     People say honeybees swarm when their hive is crowded. My hive was half full.  As I lamented the hubris of my bees I recited from memory an old nursery rhyme: 

A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly.

*A swarm of bees in September

Will be dead by December.

*Last two lines author's addition

    I photographed the swarm, then consulted my library of beekeeping materials.  Could I intervene and save these feckless bees from their suicide mission? 
     Fortunately, swarms typically linger in one spot for several days while scout bees check out the real estate. The next morning the swarm remained intact, swaying gently like an enormous flower bud on the end of its stem.  
     I severed the pine branch and dumped the cluster of bees into a tall plastic container.  After knocking off the last bees I laid the branch across the top of the container and closed the lid, leaving a half inch space for the bees to come and go while collecting pollen and nectar. They buzzed in baritone.  Some of the guard bees flew in defensive loops around my head and chest as if to say, "I have my eyes on you, fella."
     For seventy-five dollars I purchased a nucleus box made from pine, and two pounds of fresh pollen cake. (If you are wondering, yes I sampled the sticky amber-colored pollen cake -- it tastes subtly of flowers). The bars in the nucleus were treated with pure lemongrass oil, an odor honeybees find irresistible, as do I. 

Photo by Shane VanOosterhout

      When I transferred the bees from the plastic container into the nuc I was amazed to discover a yellow crescent of honeycomb hanging from the branch. Nearly a foot in length and four inches at its peak it had been fabricated in only five days.  In the warmth of my hand, liquid honey made almost entirely of fresh pine sap and emergency sugar pooled on my fingers, which ended up in my mouth.  Pine flavored honey is an unexpected delight.
      Happily, the original colony seemed to recover nicely from its sudden population decline.  A new queen successfully established -- although I have not yet seen her -- thus keeping the hive from falling into chaos.  Guard bees are actively kicking out the lazy male drones and ruthlessly fighting off mercenary fall yellow jackets that occasionally invade the hive to steal precious honey.
     The nuc is also doing well.  Even after several frosts there is an ample supply of pollen on my property due to my expert gardening and cultivation practices.  A wealth of golden rod, asters and native perennial sunflowers provide the foraging bees enough pollen to take to the nuc, their hind legs stuffed with bright yellow balls of powder, the magical stuff of life.
    

        

The Wonders of Beekeeping

Photograph by Shane VanOosterhout 2011

     I was jittery when I began keeping honey bees this spring.  Although I had done my research on the subject over the winter, there is only so much a book can reveal before I have questions that are best answered through hands-on experience, or by more experienced bee keepers who are available on line.
     You Tube is useful for visual demonstrations of just about anything.  The trick is surfing through the crappy videos (most of them) to find a handful of jewels.  It's advisable to find excellent websites and then follow their suggested links as opposed to sifting through another appalling example of what not to do as a beekeeper.  
     On the other hand, perhaps it's not all bad to watch strangers screw up so that you don't have to.  Personally I find it hard to watch a guy inhale from a tobacco pipe and then exhale smoke directly on the swarm.  Nicotine is toxic to bees.  How many dimwits will watch that video and think it's a genius idea?
      When my package of bees was sent from Texas, it was delivered to a tiny town in Marine, Minnesota.  I live in Marne, Michigan.  Totally different zip codes.   After some anxious confusion and haggling, the bees were returned to sender.  The following week I received a new package of bees.  Fully suited, hooded and gloved with kid leather gauntlets, I nervously pried open the screened box and dumped the confused swarm into their new home -- a handsome cedar top-bar hive with a peaked copper roof.  The bees were agitated but immediately settled down just inside the entrance.  I left them alone for a couple of days, checking regularly from a few yards distance.
     It dawned on me that I had forgotten to note the placing of the queen's cage.  Ideally her cage should be placed at the top of the hive where the swarm will keep her warm while the workers free her.  Queen cages arrive with an impregnated queen trapped inside a tiny wooden container that is sealed with a hard candy plug.  It takes at least two days for the workers to eat through the candy and free their new queen. 
     After one week I opened the hive for the first time.  The swarm reacted defensively and many bees landed on my suit and hood.  I was breaking and entering.  Already they had begun construction on a tiny piece of wax comb about the size of a quarter.   I found the queen's cage lying on the floor of the hive, covered with a protective cluster of workers.  
     After gently shooing away the worker bees I was able to pick up the cage and look inside.  There was the frustrated queen, still trapped.  I placed her at the top of the hive where the workers could more easily attend to freeing her.  Still an awkward novice, I crushed about a half dozen bees in the process.  
     I returned to the hive five days later to find the queen still in her cage.  I took a small twig, poked out the remaining twenty-five percent of the candy plug, and set the queen free.  For a minute she lumbered slowly across the floor of the hive, unattended to.  Then, beautifully, some of her workers began to emerge from the swarm at the top of the hive as if they were fashioning themselves into a living rope, an amazing lifeline to sweep the queen from the floor and pull her up into the heart of the suspended cluster, where she has been happily laying brood ever since.