Gardening Book of Yore



My father-in-law's house is full of old things passed down from generation to generation -the kind of things city people can't save easily because of lack of space. The most numerable and important are the books. My wife brought Henderson's Handbook of Plants and General Horticulture to my attention. The title page states that Peter Henderson is also the author of " 'Gardening For Profit,' 'Practical Floriculture,' 'Gardening For Pleasure,' Etc, Etc." and, of course, joint author of "How the Farm Pays." The edition you see here is the second, published in 1890, and the first -1881.

 Very nice illustrations, if a bit stylized.

A time when agricultural production was taken most seriously: "that it is discreditable to themselves and their country to be outdone, even in Peas"! I cannot say that New York is  any longer known for its stock of pea seed. I have since discovered, in my own seed search this season, that Peter Henderson was a seedsman, himself.

One hundred twenty years ago, most in this country still lived on or near the farm, yet there were books not unlike those today. Popular then -the garden calendar. What's old is new again, and like many things of old, there is much humor to be found:


"Plants In Rooms—Are They Injurious To Health? The question whether plants may be safely grown in living rooms is now settled by scientific men who show that, whatever deleterious gases may be given out by plants at night, they are so minute in quantity that no injury is overdone by their presence in the rooms and by being inhaled. Though we were glad to see the question disposed of by such authority, experience had already shown that no bad effects ever resulted from living in apartments where plants were grown. Our green-houses are one mass of foliage, and I much doubt if any healthier class of men can be found than those engaged in the care of plants. But timid persons may say that the deleterious gases are given out only at night, while our green-house operators are only employed in daylight. This is only true in part. Our watchmen and men engaged in attending to fires at night make the warm green-houses their sitting-room and their sleeping-room, and I have yet to hear of the first instance where the slightest injury resulted from this practice. Many of our medical practitioners run in old ruts. Some Solomon among them probably gave out this dogma a century ago; it was made the convenient scapegoat of some other cause of sickness, and the rank and file have followed in his train. A belief in this error often consigns to the cellar, or to the cold winds of winter, the treasured floral pets of a household."


Seeduction


I received my first seed catalog. Like clockwork. I looked through it, glancingly, overwhelmed. Already? I am not ready to think about choosing what to put in the little beach farm. Every new offering seems to be sweeter, milder, faster growing, longer fruiting, more resistant, the new standard. Ack! As if growing new vegetables wasn't enough, we must also pursue new varieties of the same old vegetables. Which, of course, we want to do, especially to replace those that didn't perform. But wait, weren't those varieties described as solid performers, good for the beginner, reliable, easy to grow, disease resistant, standard in home gardens, widely adaptable, heat-resistant and cold-tolerant? Sometimes it is hard to see these descriptions for what they are -marketing.



Bella Rosa, two seasons back.


First things first, then. What seeds do I already have? Ahh. Look at that, a whole pile of packs.

I have Kitchen Garden Seeds (Scheepers), but they do not date their packs. Yes, yes, I could've dated them, but didn't, and now I will try to germinate them. I've a bunch from past years: Black Russian, Orange Pixie, Sungold Cherry, Bella Rosa, Milano Plum -all tomatoes, then Sugar Ann Snap Peas and Salad Bush cukes. 

Black Russian, two seasons back

I've a ton of Page Organic Seed (The Page Seed Co., based in Greene, NY) packs I got for next to nothing (maybe nothing?) at J&L last fall. If it's hard to think of vegetable seeds in autumn, it surely is worth doing so if your nursery has a supply they really want to get rid of. No one wants to store seeds nor sell last year's lots. I have new packs of Brandywine, San Marzano, Roma Bean, Wax Bean, Kentucky Pole Bean, Swiss Chard, Wisconsin cukes, Bloomsdale spinach, Cherry Belle radishes and Acorn squash. On top of these, a bunch of open packs from different sources and of questionable viability.

So, what will I order new? White or yellow cukes, Pak Choi, leek, turnip, white radish, carrot, poblano and red sweet pepper. Something else? Probably, but our 122 square feet is hardly enough room for a fraction of these. I wonder if we will find a way to expand? 


2008 pea seedlings near the cold frame.




The other day it snowed, but the new trees would have none of it, they acted as if it were raining.


The cat would also have none of it, couldn't even look.


Cura


It is after six, and the heat is finally on enough to kill the chill of my fingers and nose. The afternoon chill cramps blog writing, cramps sitting still, cramps thinking. I forget this -I want to forget this, until it happens the first time in winter, and that is now. It is winter in NYC. I returned just 36 hours ago, and I've already slipped and fallen on the ice. Oh, it's been a long time since I've done that, but I have a tender foot and knee to show for it.

Prospect Lake, morning.

I have been reading Robert Pogue Harrison's Gardens. Any one who considers themselves a gardener of anything -life, love, plants, soil, should consider picking up his book of essays.  He examines our relationship to the garden in order to see ourselves, and does this through the lens of literature, poetry, and gardens. His epilogue, appendices, and notes are delightfully (how often can you say that?) rich with additional insight.

I would love to quote his essays here, daily, but I've felt that way a few times, and would rather absorb those ideas into my thinking than present them ad pedem litterae. My particular favorite essays are The Vocation of Care, Eve, The Human Gardener, Men Not Destroyers, and The Paradox of Age. 

A tunnel with morning light.

Imagine that Eden is the curse, that God forces Adam to stay in the Eden that he secretly hates -but of course God knows this. Eve engineers an escape from Eden, and through it, man and woman are doubly cursed by God, and are now Godless, but are able to mature, to discover responsibility, to find care as a way of being, to fulfill themselves, instead of being passive receptors of the abundance of Eden. 

Imagine marriage within Eden, careless. Husbandry (I tried to deal with this ten years ago) is both to wife and world. Gardening is care, but not for the work at all, but for the love of that which we garden. Which need not be a garden, although the garden is possibly the most visible expression of it that we have, outside of love for another human being.

I'll always remember the older man, smiling broadly, while polishing the stainless steel escalator, at the Mitaka subway station near Musashino, Japan. That is an attitude of care. It builds a better world. I think we, as a society, have forgotten care as a way of being, see it as an expense, payable by exploitation of people. No matter how much care is present, it is not always seen -care is not always cared for. And we become less human for it.

Trash pail frozen into the lake ice.


Beads


New Year’s eve brought us a weather phenomenon. Ice pellets, sure, but these were round beads, fell hard like a heavy rain, then bouncing, rolling, collecting in piles at the base of roof junctions, and in tea cups.









Snark


Snow Ark


Snowmobiling is big, 2-stroke engines, motor oil-gasoline combustion, bvvvvewewewewew, cough exhaust. Leaving no softly laid snow untouched, it brings contrast to the landscape where before were subtle tones, shadow and refraction.

The motorized love the wetland portion of Rex’s dominion. They jump in just to the south of the drainage, next to the mat of sumac, in an ess curve, south across the tall ochre grass, then west to follow the utility lines. 


Driving down straight two laners, I’ve been outpaced at 60 miles per hour. Speeding along paved highways is never enough. The other day, on the evening news, was a picture of a snowmobile half submerged into one of the lakes. The ice has not been strong because of snow, an excellent insulator, yet the cold air convinced that it should have been.



Snowmobiling is undoubtedly fun, mad fun. Because it is cold, because we tend to be indoors, because I arrive too late in summer to see the obvious damage, I reserve my scorn for that other 2-stroke nightmare, the personal water craft, err, Jet Ski.


 Rime feathers on my personal snow craft, the van, floated down from trees from last year's rime event.

How Fast The Rain


Has come. I will head home soon, locked up, ice-bound, until the roads do clear. I am working on a post about our trip to New Ulm, where I saw no gnomes and donned no lederhosen. I am going to make an attempt to work on the post in Word, then cut and paste into the blog so that I do not have to be online to write. Wish me luck, and little in the way of ice.


Mackenthuns



Yesterday evening, we stopped into Mackenthun's (Mak-en-toons), Minneapolis area's best local food offering. What do they have to offer? One word -meat.

We bought blueberry summer sausage, garlic summer sausage (to add to the the venison summer sausage we already have from the local hunters), cranberry turkey wild rice bratwurst (the best brats I ever had were this summer's blueberry wild rice brats from the same), German sausage, and Mackenthun's original brats.

We are freezing these to bring back to NYC with us. 

Tonight I am making a duck we picked up from the same. It's my first duck and have little idea what to do with it. 

Rime



This morning, around 9:30 am, the view from the second story, looking northeast, up-slope.

Last night, after an evening of pizza with my brother-in-law in Minneapolis, we noticed fog under highway lamps racing across the landscape, south to north. The temperatures were well below freezing,  the wind southerly, and the result a rime. Feathery crystals were deposited on the van this morning.



The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moonshine."

`God save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus! - 
Why look'st thou so?' -"With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross."

-excerpt of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel T. Coleridge

Snowed


Well didn't you get some snow. One of the pleasures of being in Minnesota during this time of year is knowing how well snowed we are, here, while the concrete is still quite dry in NYC. Please, clear us a parking spot by the first of January!

New post at Letters.

Ice Henge






The roof slopes less dramatically than they do in other, more robustly precipitative, climates. Aesthetics over practical pursuits, conjoined with coarse asphalt shingles and steady heat loss conspire to ice damming at the eaves. The re-frozen waters, maybe 4 inches tall, hold back the unfrozen; water then climbing back up the pitch to find its way down. I believe this is the first time that I have seen icicles hanging from the vents in the soffit, although I am sure those more familiar with wintry climates could tell me how common it is. 

Home repair mishuginas will tell you that water backing up and behind the wall is winter's most fretted scenario, outside of oops, heater down and all my pipes froze to bursting! There is no perfect roofing solution, although those severely pitched, A-frame homes you see in mountain chalet-town do a wonderful job if you can take the prospect of arriving to an isosceles triangle every night. 

Today it is 19 degrees F, but I add to this that it feels positively warm the last few days. Yesterday, while cleaning the roof of snow (well, my brother-in-law, really, as I am constitutionally incapable of scaling pitched icy roofs), I was only in light wool sweater and jeans. Warm at 19 degrees and I wonder why it is I shiver so much in New York at 37 F!

We're looking at an unusual warming trend in a few days time. It is supposed to rain. I've never seen it rain here during my winter stays. Betsy is concerned, yet I am ignorantly hopeful that it will rain long enough to loosen the grip of those ice dams. Neither of us is positive about the wet everything that will flash freeze that night when it drops from 35 degrees F to five in a matter of hours.

But enough of the weather, although often enough it seems that is all that is going on here.


Eve



We arrived to a good dousing of snow. This, early morning, before sunrise, out bath window.

The view to the southeast, around 9 am, sun low, and diffuse behind low clouds.

Even the sun and the clouds hunker down in winter.

Flora and fauna, inanimate.

Thankful to arrive, we did well, despite the possibilities, a bit of black ice in Indiana. The tree, tall (11 feet), decorated, strong scented. There is no seed in the bird feeder, testament to the weather, Rex's age. The roof has been shoveled off, thanks to an eager brother in law. Spared. I've no winter boots! But must take photos, out there, the darkness merges with the light, a convergence of high contrast and low.  

Okay, off to make Christmas Eve dinner. Not what you would expect -enchiladas, completely random.


Ham


Talking with my grandmother this morning, Betsy and I learned how much she enjoys a good ham. I looked at Betsy with a smile, maybe because her Dad also enjoys a good ham. The question bubbled to the surface, is this a German thing? In Minnesota, ham is a well-respected meal and common at this time of the year. If you go to the liquor store (err, wine shoppe), there are plastic flags mounted on the shelves that state how well this or that wine tastes alongside ham.  It reads, "Good With Ham."

I've been busy carving a western red cedar plank into a sign for the head of my father-in-law's driveway. Finished this evening, a bit late, and rushed to run several errands for our trip. I was surprised and happy to see our Polish market still open after six on a Sunday. I was now looking for ham, thinking how well it may go with our road trip. Like many Polish markets, they have an extensive selection of slicing hams. The other day I bought two kinds, one spiced on the exterior and stuffed through its center with chopped garlic, and the other in the vein of speck -smokey, translucent, thinly sliced, inexpensive, only 8.99 a pound.  Today, they were out of the garlic ham, but I picked up some of the smokey, speckish ham, a cured pork loin, sliced, and another, peppered ham, sliced. I'll bake some bread. We'll have sandwiches by the road.

Tomorrow I pack my computer and the gig is up. Where we stay there is no internet, but at the coffee shop. If I get a post or two in, they will be at Letters, my blog away from home. 

Merry Christmas.


Grandma



This morning we are up early to visit my paternal Grandmother, Anna. At 96, she has her wits and most of her mobility, but lives in a nursing home where most have neither. I think, for her, it is akin to being in the low academic track while having the brains for honors. The wheel-chair bound, the gaping mouths, the stupor, she (and I) can hardly take. There is something disturbing in the collection of the frail into one life compartment. It is difficult to walk through that front door -there is just too much.

I credit my grandmother with my introduction to the cultivation of flowers. She was always in the garden, on her knees in her border beds, and I think she was the only person I knew as a child who did such things, who commanded the plants that, under every other circumstance, simply ran free. Her garden was my first.

Roses are her favorite, and had I ample warning of the sale of her house, I would have rescued more of her roses, most 40 or 50 years old, from the garden. Instead I hastily yanked just one, on a cold day in November. From her garden I also received my Eupatorium and iris, but little else.

I am sure that Anna would have difficulty gardening now, thanks to arthritis and some difficulty bending, certainly kneeling. Yet I often wish that the facility could have extensive gardens for her to appreciate. She always had cut flowers in the house, from the garden. Today we will buy her some flowers, for the vase in her room.

Grandma's Tea.