Garden Notes

The hawthorn under my window, my window top right.
 Anna's Hummingbird and Bewick's Wren perform from the top,
while the yellow Wilson Warblers and the electric
Western Tanagers hunt insects just below.

The first entry was written in the garden nearly three years ago, after a heart episode that required the emergency room, and now my partner has had his own heart episode with the emergency room and a week of hospitalization. He has come home with experimental medications and every expectation of getting back to a normal life.

Work -- writing -- was impossible for the week. When not at the hospital I was in the yard acting out my anxieties in war with the weeds.  Most of these blue flowers, scilla, are weeds.  Some are forget-me-nots which are probably weeds, too, but they are fragile and shallow-rooting, while the scilla pushes its bulbs down to a foot or more, beyond reach of normal digging tools, where it multiplies in private.

The waves of blue in the shade are quite lovely at first and have a delicate scent, but as soon as the blue begins to fade we pull and dig as much as we can. We do no damage. There will be many more next year.  This feathery plant, stinkweed, is also a weed.  It is an imperialist, growing like a miniature banyan tree, fortunately shallow-rooted. It has pretty pink flowers, and when pulled, gives off a strong nutty odor.  I'm not sure why I remove it, other than to reduce the clutter.  It aggresses in tandem with bindweed, which has a web of long white worm-like roots that tunnel through the whole yard. Removing it is something  like the technique for stripping veins.  Google identifies another plant as stinkweed, but that is what it is called in this neighborhood.   

Weeds aside, we are also rich in poppies.  The giant poppies have at least 20 large buds. The area where most of the Greek poppies grew last year -- and where I put many many seeds -- has exactly two plants, while the majority of the diaspora has migrated down by the street into the province of the Shirley poppies.

There is more of the diaspora on the next block, and we have found a colony on the road in the park. The poppies lay claim to their own provinces. The tangerine California poppies have taken over the south side of the house, while the pale lemon Icelandic poppies are all over the back yard and in the interstices between the paving stones under the arbor.

It has been very cool this spring, and the roses are slow, but the Abraham Darbys have a fine supply of buds.  Just Joey nearly died last year but there are two strong buds that will open in another couple of weeks.  The rugosas have been magnificent.  The pale yellow down by the street that I threatened two years ago for non-performance has at least 30 fluffy blooms, and the magenta beside it has more.

Thomas Merton wrote: "The times are normal and good and permissive of joy."

 

Poppies

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Five Greek poppies, three varieties

This blog began two years ago today.  At the time, I had no conscious intention as to where it was going, but I would have been quite certain that I couldn't have found 121 topics to write about.  I began the first in a garden, and I returned to the garden a year ago.  This year it is less a garden than a war zone.  I was unable to keep up with it for the most important two months of the growing season, what with Byzantine conferences in Australia and at Dumbarton Oaks, a new grandson, and two cataract operations, and now it is daily hand-to-hand combat.  It is profoundly disturbing to be aware that all the time I am weeding, the weeds are growing just beyond my reach.

It is quite obvious why God put humans into his garden, when you see what happens to a garden without them, and a garden is a poor place on which to base one's theology, if you consider the preponderance of strangling plants. That must be where the idea of the snake came from, though the person who made up the story knew little about gardening or snakes, either.  The best thing you can say about garden theology is that much of the real work is done on one's knees, and I am always fascinated with how respectful passers-by are of me when I am down there in the dirt communing with the weeds. And the tiny yellow-bellied spiders. And the beetles.  There was a magnificent beetle this afternoon in many-sectioned silvered armor.

This spring and early summer were unusually chill and wet, superior for the strangling plants, but very poor for almost everything else, and especially too cool for sitting under the grape arbor.  Most of the small cherry crop spoiled on the tree before it ripened. Nine-tenths of the iris failed to bloom at all. Several dozen large buds on the Abraham Darby roses aborted. The Pat Austin produced of two roses, neither of which could hold her head up. On the other hand, I thought the Tradescants had been ruined by black spot  but they have pulled themselves back splendidly.  The rugosas have been great -- especially the pale yellow that was up for eviction for non-production, and the weebly white rose that has looked like fainting for four years abruptly threw out half a dozen blooms before settling in to produce three new canes.

And the poppies! The poppies have been spectacular.  Glimpsing the small patches of poppies is like hearing laughter.  They have gone about their business, unaffected by the chill and the damp.  There are new ones this year -- large dreamy things like girls in floaty dresses -- mixed in with the cornflowers, each in a different shade of red, pink, orange, yellow.

 

But the faith and the love and the

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The giant poppies, both up by the house and down at the sidewalk, have been stupendous.  After several years of three or four begrudged blooms, they have erupted into dozens.

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We have identified three varieties of poppies resulting in the seeds brought back from Greece over the years, and here I have learned a profound lesson.  I had noticed in Greece that poppies tended to grow in land that had been turned over and I have been careful to dig up their patches every fall.  The poppies grew up full of tall grass and weeds, so I carefully over several days weeded between their slender stems and untangled their necks from the tall grass.  Weedless, the poppies lay down on the ground and declined to stand.  I carefully staked each one.  Staked poppies look like prisoners in the stocks.  

Then the Eureka! moment.  Greek poppies often grow in grain -- which of course needs the land turned over -- or tall grass.  As you can see in the picture below, the buds hang completely down (unlike the buds of the giant poppies above) and hook if they can onto whatever is nearby.  Thus they have the support of the grain or grass that is also growing up.  When they are ready to bloom, the heads have got up to the surface of the field, nicely propped, and then the hook straightens out for the full bloom.  Poppies need their weeds.  I will know this next year.  As with tomatoes and children, you cannot get lovely results by insisting on your own way.

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The color of the poppies changes as they age, or even as they move against the light.  We have little space in the yard, really, and I cannot help comparing my small patches with the fields  I saw last 16 April near Midea.

Some poppies photograph with more success than others.  We also have the lemon Icelandic poppies that appear individually in odd places, such as beside the posts of the arbor:

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or the so-called California poppies (not really poppies) that bunch in corners like piles of tangerines. 

The best picture, I think, is this that shows the extraordinary beauty, magnificent with spots like the great cats, of poppies that have been surprised by time.

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. . . there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:Wait  

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So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy . . .

From T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets:East Coker