Hot on the Trail: a Mystery Plant

The date: Friday, May 20, 2011. The place: my front yard. The problem: an unidentified plant in the flower bed.

“What is that?” asked a friend of mine, pointing at a green plant about two feet tall.

“Darned if I know,” I said.

“I think it might be a volunteer.”

Oops.

Cue the Law and Order SVU sound effects, and perhaps a siren in the distance. We may have an invader!

Here’s the problem. I planted a bunch of seeds last fall in a nice, orderly fashion, but nothing has come up exactly where I planted it. Wind and rain moved things around. In addition, before I started gardening a year and a half ago, I was lucky to be able to identify a rose. I just never learned the names of plants. Now, strange things are coming up in the front beds, and I don’t know what they are.

In my attempt to be a good detective, I’ve let several strangers grow and even bloom, making it easier for me to identify them. Over the weekend, after my friend asked his innocent question, I grabbed one of a gardener’s best tools for the job: Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region by Region by Sally and Andy Wasowski. Thanks to their photos and plant descriptions, I now know that I have Brown-Eyed Susans and Indian Blanket flourishing in the front yard.

My mystery plant, however, is nowhere to be found in the Wasowski book.

Adding to the mystery, the beds contain plants that the seller of the house grew, but which a crew of landscapers had pulled out. I thought I was starting from scratch, but some of these little fellas are stubborn. Since I admire persistence, I am unwilling to pull a plant just because I may not have put it there. I figure that if something can survive my lack of skill and experience, it has earned a place in my garden.

This morning I decided to be brave and taken inventory of the front beds. Not only do I have three or four mystery plants to identify, but I have a vine-y plant crawling around that looks suspiciously like cucumber. I have NO idea how that got there! It looks sort of pretty, though, so I’ll leave it there, but not eat any fruit (too close to the house and possible chemical contamination).

Sometimes I wish I had a greater sense for pristine, orderly gardening, but how else would I get to put on my detective’s hat? Where would the fun be in having everything grow the way it was supposed to? Excuse me, I have to go crack the case. Never mind that my friend has suggested the plant’s name–that’s not dramatic enough for me. Cue the music. Detective hot on the trail of a suspect.

Taking In The Beauty

The salvia is in full bloom with dramatic, deep purple blooms. These are offset by the coneflower blossoms, a vivid pink, and the orange-yellow milkweed that is now producing seed. I don’t recall last year’s milkweed doing that, but perhaps the Monarch caterpillars did their munching. It was about this time last year that I ran to the nursery with a “milkweed emergency,” because they’d eaten every darn leaf. This year I am better prepared, having added several new plants throughout the backyard.

More Milkweed for Next Year!

There is less for me to do right now. I still find it difficult to adjust to the ebb and flow of work in the garden. There’s always something to do, don’t get me wrong. The wildflowers in the front yard are beautiful but uneven–one bed is filled with plants, while the matching bed on the other side struggles. Herbs are begging to be replanted, and I’m pulling up crops that are complete. Plus, given the dry spring we’ve had, everyone is thirsty these days.  I ponder future projects while the vegetables truck along on their own with little help from me. Mostly I wander the garden or look out my window and marvel at all the pretty blooms and the bees that zip happily around them. It is a time to take in the beauty.

In my previous life in the corporate world, I was used to a different kind of structure. Each day offered a certain sameness. I checked e-mails, responded to meeting requests, and worked on contracts. I kept reports on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. I started each day at the same time and ended it at the same time, day in, day out, for years.

Coneflower and Salvia

The garden has required that I change my way of thinking, and sometimes I resist those changes more than others. Earlier in the spring, when I was installing new beds, planting, fertilizing, and mulching, I felt so busy I couldn’t breathe. When that work ended, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I would get up in the morning feeling like I had forgotten something.

The Bible says there is a time for every purpose under heaven. We are allowed to rest. We are allowed to ebb and flow with the seasons. I do fine when there’s work to do, less fine when it comes time for me to slow down and relax. I spend more time harvesting food these days than tending to the soil. That will change, and soon, but this act of receiving, of enjoying the literal fruits of my labors, still feels odd. It is time to take in the beauty. Can I take in a little more than I could yesterday? Can I stop and see, really see, all of God’s whimsy and creative flourish?

Brown-Eyed Susans in the front yard.

Drought and Flood

As I write this, the Mississippi River rages, swollen from heavy rains, its deluge headed south to New Orleans after cresting in Memphis. Tough decisions have been made along the way, as levees near Cairo, Illinois, were blown to protect the town, while flooding farmland and rendering it unusable for months.

Meanwhile, here in Texas, we can’t get a drop of rain. The lawn is parched, and while most of my native plants are growing happily–they are made for drought tolerance–even a few of them are starting to complain. Recent mulch helps them hold in moisture, but sooner or later, for God’s sakes, it has to rain. Farmers who normally let their cattle graze have to give them feed, because there’s nothing to graze on.

In the vegetable garden, my drip irrigation system keeps everything going, though without the rainwater that the plants love so much. If you looked in my back yard, with its beds heavy with produce, with plants entwining themselves to one another, you wouldn’t know that Houston is experiencing severe drought.

Since starting the garden less than a year and a half ago, we’ve had a number of weather adventures, including serious and harsh freezes in the winter, as well as the current dry spell. While I remind myself that “this too shall pass,” I’m also reminded of the great sage Rosanne Rosanna-Danna, who said, “it’s always something.” Summer arrived a few days ago, replacing pleasant, spring temperatures with that oppressive, step-into-the-oven feel.

I have farming in my DNA, which I suspect draws me, in part, to working with the land. By the time I was a small child my grandparents had left the farm, and I grew up in various small towns in the Midwest. Still, I grew up watching the corn grow and caring about whether there would be a good crop.

I remember in 1980, when I lived facing a cornfield, and watched a storm wreak havoc, blowing stalks over and damaging what could have been a great harvest. The lesson stayed with me: you can work hard and do everything right, but some things are out of your control, and just when you think you’ve got it made, life will shock you out of your smugness. We are smaller and more vulnerable than we want to admit.

In my modest little garden, the vegetables I grow do not determine my income for the year. Some plants grow well, while others do not, but no one will go hungry if the whole darn thing fails. While my water bill is higher than I would like, I at least have the ability to keep the plants from drying out. I do not presume to know or fully appreciate the current farmers’ dilemmas, but whenever I am outside working in the garden, I think of them and hope that soon, this too will pass.

Gardens Italian Style

The more I garden, the more I love to visit other gardens when I’m out of town. We spent the past several days in Italy, basing in Sorrento for most of the trip. From there we explored the Isle of Capri, the island of Ischia, and Revello.

The whole area along the Amalfi Coast is filled with flowers, though the big attraction are the citrus trees. Lemons can reach the size of cantaloupe in this region. I also found a surprising number of succulent plants, especially on Capri.

Even some restaurants have beautiful gardens!

Revello isn’t far from Sorrento as the crow flies, but it takes two buses and about two hours to get to it. The tour books don’t happen to mention that though all the little towns along the way are close to each other, getting from here to there is a challenge…though worth it.

Our first stop was the Villa Rufalo, which we found immediately upon getting into town.  The 13th century building boasts a lovely floral garden, including the lovely wisteria shown here.

Next, we found Villa Cimbrone, which dates back a few centuries further, and which boasts an extensive English garden.

All in all, a great trip, though I’m thrilled to come home to my own little backyard paradise! I came home to an abundance of produce, including my first cucumbers and tomatoes of the year. The wildflowers are exquisite as well.

More of Villa Cimbrone

Gardens at Villa Cimbron

An Unexpected Treat

In the process of creating the yard, I have located and planted several Texas natives with the hope of encouraging birds, bees and butterflies. For a garden to be interesting to me, I want plenty of variety and color, but also the energy and movement of little critters.

I do not mow in the back yard. For one thing, most of it is filled with garden beds, but I also wanted to see what grows if left alone. By letting the plants and/or weeds grow a bit, I can try to identify them and see what I want to keep.

Here is my favorite surprise thus far: Widow’s Tears. These tender blooms come out in the morning and then close up in the afternoon heat. They are coexisting with my grapevines and are a delight to behold.

Widows Tears: A Texas Native Springing Up on Its Own

Of course, being the practical person that I am, I also love harvesting the vegetables. The photographs below look like lunch to me!

Potatoes, Fresh From the Ground!

First Beets, Plus Onions

New Room to Grow

Pomegranate Blossom

In April, the hard work of February and March starts to pay off in the garden. After planting, fertilizing, and mulching, my biggest challenge now is to ensure that plants are staked and trellised where necessary. Everything is growing, blooming, and generally showing off, so my main job is to stay out of the way. I’m still harvesting lettuce and spinach, both so tasty that I’m eating my greens without dressing. I grab leeks and onions when I need them, and I may have beets as early as next week. Strawberries come in dribbles so far, but new fruit emerges, and I think I’ll get a decent harvest. Herbs are growing so quickly that I’m scrambling to figure out where and how to replant them so they can grow to their full potential.

In the meantime, though, I’m focusing on dead things.

Not everything survived the Great Houston Freeze of 2011. I felt luckier than most, especially since I was out of town during the freeze and not home to cover my plants. Some have come back, but a few didn’t. Those that did come back needed me to cut down the dead branches and twigs, which left me with a stack of wood to chip for mulch. I took care of that this morning, so now my mulch piles can decompose in time for me to put them back into the garden come summer.

This is the life of the garden: ongoing life, death, and regeneration. While I allow myself time to observe and enjoy the vivid show that nature puts on this time of year, I must also tend to the death and decay that is part of it. In doing so, nothing is wasted as that which is dead feeds that which is alive. It’s a magnificent, pure, intelligent system.

Away from the garden, I pondered what to do with a stack of old journals. As a writer, I’m reluctant to destroy any writing that I have done, but maybe “journal” is too lofty a word for what I do. These are my Morning Pages that I learned years ago from Julia Cameron and The Artist’s Way. This is where I put my petty gripes and annoyances as much as anything. They exist so I can get the nonsense out of my head and clear my way to create. These are the weeds in my inner garden that, left to their own devices, can take over the plants (books and stories) that I desire to cultivate. Cameron herself remarked that when she dies, hold off on the cremation. Burn the Morning Pages first!

Maybe it was cutting down the Mexican Fire Bush that gave me the idea. Each year I cut it down to nothing, and by summertime it will stand a good six feet tall with gorgeous fire-red blossoms. What would happen if I did the same with my pages?

I pulled the journals out and removed all the pages, then ran them through the shredder. Next step: the compost pile. Shredded paper works well in compost as long as it’s not glossy, and it helps keep the compost from smelling. I couldn’t put it all in at once, so most of the bag now sits in the garage waiting for its turn in the bin. Eventually all those gripy, bitchy words will be transmuted into something positive and life-giving.

Just as I feel better after I cut away dead branches, I felt better letting go of years of words. Now my garden, both outer and inner, can bloom anew.

Baby Tomatoes

No Cure for the Gardening Addiction

It all started with an empty back yard and a vague longing to grow a few things. I didn’t know what that meant. “Start small,” advised a friend of many years, himself a Master Gardener whose corner lot is covered head to toe, front to back with good things to eat. I thought that was sound advice, but I quickly discovered that the “hit” of gardening leads to a desire for more. More plants, more beds, more varieties. Before I knew it, I was setting up new beds in the front yard for native plants, as I gradually move the lawn grass from main attraction to condiment.

The insanity hasn’t stopped there. Increasingly, I am committing more and more of my grocery budget to farmers’ market items as I “just say no” to grocery store eggs and meats. Henry likes the egg guy at the farmers’ markets, because he giggles when he talks about his chickens. I eagerly await each newsletter from the Swede Farm Dairy so I can hear how the goats are doing. Last winter we visited the Carl Sandburg House in North Carolina, and a highlight of the visit was to go into the fields to visit the goats, all descendents of Mrs. Sandburg’s award-winners. They love people and snuggle at any opportunity.

I will leave the goats and chickens to the care of others–I haven’t gone that far with my addiction. I’m also a bit squeamish still about adding worms to my compost, though I’m now educating myself and heading in that direction. Bees? Maybe. I’m scared of being stung. I think I’m more scared, though, that our bees are disappearing at an alarming rate. The more I garden, the more concerned I become about all the critters, and I don’t fear them like I used to.

Lately, though, the garden has led me to other, ahem, “seedy” places. The other day I headed over to Wabash Antiques & Feed to get some mulch. I had produced enough of my own for the back yard, but needed help for the front. They were getting a new shipment in, so I hung around and chatted up the employees, who were all as distressed as I am about the lack of rain. I felt like a real farmer, in the feed store talking about my crops. Sheesh. What have I become?

We recently drove out to La Grange (yes, the town of Chicken Ranch and ZZ Top fame – ah how how how) for a “think tank” on expanding the local food movement. Our rock stars now are the small farmers who are committed to healing the land while making a living, and I craned my neck looking for those I had heard of but not yet met. We heard from a lot of farmers that day about the joys, trials, and tribulations of running small farms.

That day I also met Pamela Walker, author of Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas. In her wonderful, photo-filled book, she profiles several independent Texas farmers who work with produce, livestock, and/or dairy. We learn about their lives, their families, and their varied reasons for doing what they do. Pam, formerly of Rice University, describes herself as a “failed short story writer.” I don’t know about the failed part, but she brings these farmers alive with her wonderful work. She’s way ahead of me on the gardening front–she and her husband bought a small farm near Schulenberg several years ago because she needed more room to support her gardening habit.

Now I’m on to herb gardening and have discovered the goddess-like vision of Rosemary Gladstar. I’ve made my first face cream from herbs and natural products and am about to try my hand at shampoo and conditioner. Through Rosemary, I then discovered “My Herb Mentor,” a veritable herb library and comprehensive internet resource.

When will it end? Where will it lead? What a crazy, fun, tiring, and fascinating journey. But I swear, I can quit any time I want to.