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.

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.