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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