Saying Goodbye to My Journal

I filled out the last pages of my garden journal last weekend. I felt the end with a sense of mixed pride and panic. This was a free-form flow of the crazy mess that lives inside my head. The journal was heavy stock paper, the pens I used were colorful and bright. The handwriting I chose was wildly out of control or tightly purposeful. And the thoughts that arrived on the page varied from shopping lists to trite poems, or quiet observations of rain fall, bird chatter and the breezes I felt while sitting in my purple chair.

In this book, I've recorded my growth from a wannabe gardener to the genuine thing. In this book, I left remnants of half thoughts that I might flesh out into to posts in my Putter blog. In this book, I compensated for my lack of drawing skills with flowering handwriting flourishes, alternating with pink and green and purple pens. In this book, I wrote down page numbers, like bread crumbs, to find my way back to books or catalogs or journals that I've read. And now it's done.

So I've bought a new journal and this morning, I baptized it with a few entries, but it isn't quite my friend yet. The paper isn't as thick and my heavy ink pens bleed through. It's a moleskin—what the cool kids use—and it's the right size for tucking into my purse or tool bag and it's got a nice band and some page marking ribbons.

And it's got some stickers. Not free form. A little more organized. I don't know. I hope it works. The Putterer

The Plot is Doing Its Own Thing

From my plot, The Wonderful, Happy #24

Now here's a little secret about gardening that nobody knows. It's not that much work!

Everybody thinks that there is a lot of labor involved in having a garden. Well, guess what! Not so much.

Plot # 24 at the Fenton Street Community garden is doing all the work. I show up occasionally in the morning when temperatures are expected to climb and I give it some water. That's it all it ever asks of me.

Well, okay. One day, after the June 29 derecho storm, I had to help the tomato plants find the vertical path again. They were tilting dangerously over and shading my neighbor's plot. So I pounded extra stakes into the ground and jerry-rigged them with twine until the plants were approximately back in place. And I thinned out the yellow leaves at the bottom of the plants, but my Better Boy, my Mortgage Lifters and my Romas were all standing tall again. The okra, meanwhile, were so strong, that not even a 60 mile per hour wind gust could budge those babies. They are producing so quickly that sometimes I think they grow a fruit while I'm standing there.

The soil in the plot is rich and well-dug. Last fall, I grew clover for a few weeks and then double dug trenches from the front of the plot to the back. I layered compost over it and then this spring I turned still more compost into the soil. So now when I accidentally step on the soil, my foot sinks an inch. Last summer,  after I first got the plot, putting a stake in the soil was nearly impossible, the ground was so compacted. This year, it yields to just a few simple strokes of my hammer.

And the rain we've had! Almost every three days, either a gentle downpour, like the one we had this morning, or a monsoon, like we had the other night. So that the ground is always moist around the roots of my plants. We've had rainfall all through June and now into July consistently. At the expense, of course, of the Midwest, which is disastrously dry this summer.  We'll take it here, though.

Now on to planning my fall garden. It's time to put in more seeds. What's next? The Putterer

Kathy Jentz, Publishing Gardener, Plot 16

Kathy Jentz, Plot 16, Fenton Street Garden. Kathy’s work is featured in numerous area publications including the Washington Examiner newspaper, Pathways Magazine, and Washington Women magazine. In addition, she appears on regular gardening guest spots on Channel 9, Channel
4, and WAMU radio.

I've known Kathy for quite awhile. She is my gardening guru, living the enviable life of producing both a magazine and several gardens. Kathy is editor and publisher of Washington Gardener magazine and a life-long gardener. She says that growing plants should be stress-free and enjoyable. Her philosophy is "inspiration over perspiration."

When we were assigned plots in the garden, I was delighted to learn that Kathy would be gardening just down the row from me in her Plot 16. She's always got a good tip handy; knows most everything there is to know and if she doesn't, she'll figure it out for you. Having Kathy around the Community Garden has also proved useful because she's a natural-born leader. When there's a project at hand, she's got the chops for it. With a quick command, we're all happily lined up and executing the orders. And as a result, we've got two gorgeous communal herb and wild flower patches growing in what once a messy mix of angry, ugly weeds. Without further ado, here's Kathy: 

Kathy lays in the brick path for our herb and wildflower corne

As a gardener, what do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Mid-December thru February - HATE HATE HATE the Mid-Atlantic Winter!

Other than the state of Maryland, where would you most like to live?

New Orleans

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Time enough to read everything in my stacks, cool drink in hand, surrounded by my cats and bunches of cut flowers

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

Procrastinating


Who are your favorite environmental or botanical heroes?

Ben Franklin, he is not thought that way, but if you really read his stuff, he was a great protector of the Earth


Who are your favorite gardeners in history?

The originals: Adam and Eve


Who are your favorite heroes or heroines of fiction?

Indiana Jones

Your favorite painter?

Dali

Your favorite musician?

Prince

Your favorite tool?

Cobrahead


The quality you most admire in a gardener?

Patience

Your favorite virtue?

Calm

Your favorite occupation?

I'm not sure if this means job or way to spend my time?


Who would you have liked to be?

is this a historic or fictional or not specific person but a job category?

Your most marked characteristic?

Bossiness

What do you most value in your garden?

Anything that takes care of itself and thrives


What is your principle gardening defect?

Hate the thought of weeding - but once I get going, it is not too bad

What is your dream of happiness?

See: What is your idea of earthly happiness?

A Proust Questionnaire for Gardeners

Proust Questionnaire: A Peachy-Keen Idea

Today, I am inaugurating my new summer project on Garden Putter. I am seeking out anyone who loves to play in the dirt and grow things to answer my "Proust Questionnaire for Gardeners."

Vanity Fair has a decided edge on the Putterer in this tradition. Its famous last-page interview of luminaries has been long-celebrated, and I admit to shameless borrowing.

But then again, it's really Marcel Proust we should all thank for this.

And speaking of shamelessness, and for those reading this who are unfamiliar with the tradition, I lifted this directly from this Proust Questionnaire site:

The young Marcel Proust was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he was simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. At the birthday party of Antoinette Felix-Faure, the 13-year-old Marcel was asked to answer fifteen questions in the birthday book. Seven years after the first questionnaire, Proust was asked, at another social event, to fill out another; the questions are much the same, but the answers somewhat different, indicative of his traits at 20.

Proust Interviews of random individuals are now being captured and preserved for posterity at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. Mine is a less ambitious project. On a good day, the Putterer's readership is somewhere around 17 page views—a circulation limited to friends and family, so for anyone feeling shy, no worries, few will ever find you here. Send me your answers in a comment below. Or contact me via email: beth.pylieberman@verizon.net. The Putterer
 


Proust Questionnaire for Gardeners

As a gardener, what do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Other than the state of Maryland, where would you most like to live?

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

Who are your favorite environmental or botanical heroes?

Who are your favorite gardeners in history?

Who are your favorite heroes or heroines of fiction?

Your favorite painter?

Your favorite musician?

Your favorite tool?

The quality you most admire in a gardener?

Your favorite virtue?

Your favorite occupation?

Who would you have liked to be?

Your most marked characteristic?

What do you most value in your garden?

What is your principle gardening defect?

What is your dream of happiness?

Why We Garden

Yesterday at the Community Garden, we gathered for a little Memorial Day picnic and group gardening session. I offered a door prize, a copy of the new Smithsonian gardening book and we drew names from a hat. Each person had to write down why the loved to garden. The results?

A Poem of our Collective Thoughts on Gardening

I like to eat fresh things.
I like to eat and experiment.
It's like having little babies. And it's so delicious eating my own grown-from-seed crop. I learn so much, too.
It brings peace, allows me to help create.
I garden in the backyard, and so far my vegetables and herbs are doing great. I garden because I love vegetables and it gives me great pleasure to reap and cook my vegetables and they taste so much better.
I like to garden because I love watching things grow. it's amazing to see a seed or a small plant grow up to be something so large and edible.
I love to garden because it gives me peace of mind, it teaches me about life, and it gives me food (for mind, body, and soul).
Veggies are delicious, and home grown is a lot better than store bought.
I like to garden for tomatoes.
I like to garden as redemption.
Because it brings the Earth's energy into my life.
I like to garden for the connection to the elements of Earth and Beyond!

Below, an assemblage of portraits of my fellow gardeners. They all glow with health and from hard work. Just like Mama said, "You gotta eat your vegetables!" The Putterer

 

A Memorial Day Recommitment

"I was lucky," my friend told me.

Three words. "I was lucky." My mind is on replay this weekend. I keep returning to a moment and hearing the story all over again. I repeat it to my friends. Each time I retell it, the story becomes a little more breathtaking.

I was over at the gym on Friday waiting for our instructor to arrive. My long-time yoga neighbor and I were lying next to each other on our mats. She's quick to laugh, so I say silly things to amuse her. We always giggle during a balance exercise and throw each other into a tumble.

So I was just on talk vomit, releasing whatever random thoughts were in my brain and this time it was cookies. The delicious cookies that my friend Tamara makes, a delicate near cloud-like confection of chocolate chips and oatmeal. They are manna from heaven and I had made a special request for them the night before. So trying to limit my sugar intake before bed that night, I was hoping only to have one. But then this new mantra that I've been practicing of respecting my impulses took hold and I grabbed two more and ate them with pleasure. The morning after, I told my Yoga friend, the scale registered almost five extra pounds. We were giggling then. I wasn't serious at all. Cookies. Weight gain. Just word vomit. To make my giggly friend giggle.

"Beth," she said, "when I eat cookies, I just eat as many as I want."

I don't know when the story turned, but it fell like a quiet thunder from her lips. Because, she said then, during the communist time "we ate nothing."

Washington, D.C., is a melting pot of nationalities. You almost forget how far people have traveled to be your neighbor. And when you ask sometimes the countries are so exotic, Togo, the Philippines, Malaysia, that you can't even imagine visiting.

Remind me, I said to my friend, where are you from? I heard it before she said it.

Cambodia.

Your family?

All dead, she said.

The Khmer Rouge. My lovely friend. Always smiling. Always kind.

And then, with her hand over her face, she told me her story about living three-and-a-half years, beginning when she was 17, in a labor camp. Hard labor, she said. "It was our job to clear the land mines from the fields to grow rice."

But the rice, she said, was exported to China. And she got no food.

Oh, the killings, she said quietly. "I was lucky."

She was lucky because she lived. She was lucky because she managed to navigate a harrowing journey out of the camps as a refugee. She was lucky when she escaped the rapes and the murders in the refugee camps. And she was lucky she said that she wasn't pushed off a mountain when she arrived in Thailand. She was lucky she had a brother in the United States, who had left Cambodia before the ascent of the Khmer Rouge. And she was lucky because she managed to get a letter posted. And she was lucky because he found her. And on September 17, 1980, she was lucky because she came to the United States.

My beautiful friend. She works for the United States government now. After we work out, we laugh together in the locker room. I was always tease her because she takes too long in the shower. We get dressed again for the afternoon meetings. She puts on an elegant dress and heels, she paints her lips. I don't know what her profession is, but she commands a quiet authority, when she leaves the locker room. I always wish her a pleasant day.

The roads we've traveled brought us together. I don't know how she does it. But to her, she simply was lucky. And now she's quick to laugh at whatever silliness that I can concoct.

But the next time, I eat a cookie, I'm going to eating it slowly, and joyfully, and revel in my great good fortune. And for Memorial Day this weekend, I honor my friend, and all those in this world who suffer so unfairly at the hands of evil. The Putterer

Weary Warrior

My goodness but the garden did its job this weekend. It took me into its embrace and nurtured me, gave me a place to recover and rest. And then once it had accomplished restoration, it demanded a kind of industry that energized me and gave me such sweet satisfaction.

I've been thinking about sustainability. Ever since my daughter Claire took the bold, brave move to visit a completely self-sustaining farm in Ecuador. She spent an entire week off the grid at a place called Sacred Suenos near Vilcabamba in southern Ecuador. I've been thinking about how I have slowly been evolving a garden that once only grew pretty flowers along pathways of stone and grass to something that is sustaining life and repurposing itself in its compost and in the food it grows. And as I've evolved from a rather uneducated gardener to one that sees the garden as a metaphor for all things, I've also somehow managed to turn a rather dispassionate young girl, who sometimes stopped to admire it, into a young woman, who cares enough about gardens that she spent a week working hard on a real one that tries vigorously to be a fully sustainable farming venture. Last night, she told me that she thinks that whereever she goes, she'll try to grow something in a garden.

Well, I guess my garden has done its job there too. For me, I arrived home Friday completely wiped out. This project was for all practical purposes nearly impossible to do. Had I tried to do it all by myself, I would have failed. Fortunately, I was able to multiply forces by engaging my colleagues to pitch in just small amounts, in a many-hands make less work fashion. Still, I woke early each day, worked through lunches, stayed late in the evenings and even worked through on a Saturday. So that by the time, I signed off at about 7 p.m. last Friday, I had clocked innumerable hours.

Saturday morning, I woke at 4:30 as if I was still on deadline. My body wanted to sleep, but my mind tracked only to this rigorous schedule. So I got up intent on reading all that I had missed in the past four weeks. By 8:30, I was coffee'd up and so Kate and I went off to Behnkes. There, I wandered around studying the plants, thinking of places in my garden where I might add this, or transplant that. But the thought of raising a shovel or turning any dirt was so beyond anything I could possibly do. When I got home, I took a book and some tea down to the garden. And there I rested, reading and listening to the catbirds call each other. I drifted off to sleep in my purple chair. The cool breeze sometimes pushing a lock of hair across my forehead. And there I rested for a couple of hours, until I realized that what I needed to do was to go to bed. And so off to bed, in the middle of the afternoon. And through the night and into the morning, I slept and recovered.

Well, Sunday morning, the catbirds called me into action. I felt so good. The morning was fresh. The garden was glorious. I took my bike to the farmer's market for the first time. All those times we've traveled Piney Branch Road by car, I never realized how steep those hills were. Pumping harder, accessing core strength, even screaming out with joy as I pushed myself up the hills. Heads turned inside passing cars to check out the crazed woman. Sailing back down on the other side, wind in my hair. Oh joy, I live a charmed life. All day, I worked in my garden, mowing grass, feeding compost, pulling weeds and singing the songs that pumped through my iPod into my ears. And when it was all done. I took a look at what I had created and I felt so happy. What joy! The Putterer

A Month Ahead and A Month Behind

Azaleas are peaked or past peak.

Roses are busting out.

I was just going through last year's photos of the garden and it looks like we are almost a month ahead in terms of bloom times. In fact, my garden seems like it's in a big hurry, and every flower and every plant is vying for attention. The azaleas bursted open as if they were trying to beat out the daffodils. The roses woke up so early, I thought they might ask for a cup of coffee. The dogwoods flowered so fast, I almost missed them. And the May-blooming irises and peonies are warming up in the batter's box for their turn at the April plate.

We're finally going to get some rain today and it couldn't come at a better time because while the garden is out ahead, the Putterer is way behind at work. So today, I'm going to be head down at home on the keyboard. Though, really that doesn't bother me. It's a pleasant task, I'm writing little blurbs on the cool things to see at each of the museums. I might even run downtown and take in a museum, or two, to complete the task.

A bus man's holiday.

Meanwhile, I couldn't be more pleased with the garden this year. I'm right on schedule, having put down mulch for the first time in half a dozen years on some of the beds and staunched a few weeds. I got grassseed down just before the early spring showers arrived, so the blades are robust and thick. I grew red lettuce, kale and chard from seed, so the vegetable patch is ready to deliver. I worked and worked

Dogwoods are showering their petals.

Swiss chard is ready for picking

the soil over at the community garden. I grew a cover crop of clover, then turned it over in trenches, row by row, mixing in compost so that my beds are thick and spongy, and teaming with earthworms. Over there, I've got sugar snap peas and greens growing in one bed and the others are ready to plant just as soon as the nights can be counted on to stay warm. I've got tomatoes, melons, cukes, swiss chard, basil, eggplant, peppers, onions and parsley starts all thriving under my lights and waiting to go out to be hardened off and planted.

Today, the temperature shouldn't  rise above 55, so I've got my fireplace humming with a toasty blaze. Delicious coffee in hand. Snoozy pup snuggling beside me. It's going to be a wonderful day today.

An early spring for an at-the-ready gardener. Not a bad thing at all. The Putterer

Got Crafty Today

Made a succulent mini-garden today.

My neighbor put this pitcher and bowl out on the curb last fall marked free, so I took it home. Last weekend I drilled drainage holes in the bottom of both the bowl and pitcher and today I made an arrangement of succulents and stones. I can't get out to water all my potted plants every day in the heat of the summer, so I'm potting ups some sturdy fellas, who don't need so much water. The Putterer

Sunny Saturday!

It couldn't be more beautiful out this morning. The sun is so bright, it was piercing my eyes as I fumbled to make the coffee. I had to shade my eyes in the kitchen in order to see where to pour the water into the coffeemaker.

This morning, I'm off to Behnkes to pick up some fertilizers, non-chemical of course, to feed my soils to the letter of their needs. The soil tests came back this week and I am armed with the specific requirements to make my garden produce. I spent the whole week studying the reports and planning what fertilizers I'll use and how to make them work for me. I'll be planting four new rose bushes, a hydrangea and a native kalmia all along the fence. Last weekend, I had the boys help me dig out the holes. The soil was tough and difficult. So, I'll also amend with compost. The kalmia needs a particularly acidic soil and a place on a shady slope. Its root ball needs to be planted a bit above the ground, so I've selected the perfect home for it just beside the gate. The roses that I picked out thrive in sun, but tolerate shade. They are perfect for the range of shade and sun that play along the fence throughout the day. I'll start off the morning by putting the dry roots into buckets of water and leaving them to soak all of today and tonight and I'll plant them tomorrow for Easter Sunday. Over at the Community Garden, the water is turned on and so I can commence to begin. The soil there was higher in pH, than I expected, a 7.3, which is at the highest range for vegetables. Word up is that our compost was heated improperly, elevating the pH. I'm going to add Espoma sulfer in to help acidify.  The soil test recommended that I add straight up nitrogen in the form of urea or bone meal to start the season. I've evidently added too much compost because my potassium, magnesium and calcium levels were in the excessive range, while my phosphorus was at optimum levels and my organic matter was admirable, at 12 percent. It's going to be a perfect day. The Putterer

Boys in the Hood

My helpers

I was so lucky today to have some help. I won't embarrass them by naming names, but there are two guys in my neighborhood, who are the best of friends. They are together all the time and today, they dug holes for me. The Putterer

The Last Days of the Month

A turtle stepping stone stands watch over my greens.

March is over. We're in the final stretch. We closed the magazine. People aren't in the office. It's a time for resting, recovering, readying. I've been living my life on the last days of the month for so long, I don't know any other schedule. My months are always a frantic climb to get it all done, to finish, to sign off, to let it go, to come to a rest and a recover. Even my daughters complied with this schedule. Both of them arrived in this world just days after deadline. Once a friend said to me, "you have no idea what it's like to live without a deadline." The statement stopped me cold. He was right.

I think I'd fall apart. How would you organize your life if you had longer than four weeks of five days, excepting holidays, to finish? The thought is you'd take deeper breaths? Slow down? Me? No way. I might at first, fail completely to get anything done? Would the laundry pile up? The leftovers rot? The weeds and the grass take over? Maybe like in college, after an all-nighter, I'd finally sleep deeply? (Those days are gone forever, I suspect.)

So I took the day off today. I know I'm messing with fire, because that's one day less for the next cycle, but I'm going to pretend for a moment that I have all the time in the world. (Except, in a minute Jim's going to make me drive him to the subway, and Caley will need a walk, and I really need to make those doctor's appointments for Claire, and we're having Friday night here tonight and we're out of wine and limes and cointreau, and I want to go for a run, and mow the lawn, and turn the compost, and go to the community garden to water my greens, and oh what else can I do to turn my day off into a day on?)

It's on that dash, remember the famous line that Jesse Jackson read at Jackie Robinson's funeral, that we live our lives. From the day of the birth to the day of death. The dash on the tombstone is were life lives. Not, the dash from the beginning of the month to the end. Nor, the dash from the start of the growing season to first frost. Nor is it the dash from the chime of the radio in the morning to the droop of the eyelid at night.

I realized, though, this winter as I ordered foundation plants to decorate my new fence in the backyard garden that I might be closing in on the final frontiers of my garden. That after I put in these final pieces, I might be finished. All that would remain is moving plants from here to there, and maintenance. Does that mark an end date or the deadline of my garden. One of my friends asked me what would be next?

What do you do next? When gray sparkles in your hair and the kids are living away more often than home? When you mark a significant anniversary in your career, the kind they give you a cheesy pin for?

What's cool about that dash between birth and death is that it's longer than you think. It's got some time built into it for thinking about possibilities and opportunities. The maybes are kind of exciting. Garden metaphors abound. The tiny green elbow of a future plant poking up through the soil on a crispy, cool spring morning.

But I don't have too much time today to think about that, because really, no matter what you do, there's always a deadline. The Putterer

A White Picket Fence

A white picket fence makes a plot a home

 

 

Plot 24 is ready for summer. It has a design. It has good soil, amended with about two inches of compost. It is enhanced with stepping stones and a path for accessibility. And it has curb appeal, boasting a proper front entrance and even a white picket fence.

The master gardener who tills the soil in the plot directly across from me was kind about my aesthetics. He calls his a "production plot" and indeed, his is producing. So much so that he had to give up some of his plants to me. I was the lucky recipient of some red leaf lettuce, three brussels sprouts, two each of tat soi, pak choi and an Italian green called minutina. I also dropped in a few sugarsnap pea seeds and some arugula. And at the front fence, three lovely dahlias went into the ground.

And of course, I'll need a new sign—for display of my address and calling card and a whirligig to keep the bird's away they say, but actually, it's really just a pretty flush of spinning colors. The Putterer

Poking Around to Find Where It All Began

I think what I love most about gardening, besides the act of gardening, is the idea of gardening. And today, I was wondering where that might have first emerged.

Reading, of course. Especially the books I read as a kid. There is something magically transportive in reading about gardens and especially those that make them, travel to them, write about them, or observe them.

My mother was much into reading and had a particular penchant for the 19th century novelist. We were all about Heidi, Little Women, Joe's Boys and Frances Hodgson Burnett. Mom would point out a title and I would dutifully read. I had a spot for literature up in a tree in the backyard. I would climb up about 20 feet from the ground and there was a perfect place where the branches grew into a Danish-designed lounge perfectly proportioned to my ten-year-old self.

"But she was inside the wonderful garden and she could come through the door under the ivy any time, and she felt as if she had found a world all her own."

I wish I could muster the intense focus that I had for reading back then, when I had no responsibility and time stretched endlessly into long, hot afternoons. There was no care in the world. I could be pestered about helping with the housework, but it wasn't my real concern.

Today, when I read, it's always in haste. Hurriedly, I scan headlines, poke around at links, and flip pages from the back of the book to the front. (I've always read the last page first to make sure that I want to go there.) I don't retain too much either. My chemo-wrecked brain feels porous and ideas slip away before I can grasp at them and make them stick. 

But this morning, I'm feeling more retentive and that old feeling of escaping into another world is with me. It's because I am traipsing through a garden of words, some flowery and over grown, others sweet and sentimental, a few terse, but wizened. Here I sit before a fire, early on a Sunday morning. And I'm turning the pages of books, not clicking screens, and reading the words of old world writers, the literary gardeners and their gardens either real or imagined. Reading lazily, never thoroughly, but satisfyingly.

Here's one from Elizabeth Barrett Browning that silences the noise of Internet junk.

As I entered Mosses hushing
Stole all noises from my foot
And a green elastic cushion
Clasped within the Linden's root
Took me in a chair of silence, very rare and absolute.

And for my sleepless menopausal soul.

The Garden at Dawn—Yesterday morning I got up at three o'clock and stole through the echoing passages and strange dark rooms, undid with trembling hands the bolts of the door to the verandah, and passed out into a wonderful, unknown world. . . It was quite light, yet a bright moon hung in the cloudless grey-blue sky; the flowers were all awake, saturating the air with scent; and a nightingale sat on a hornbeam quite close to me, in loud raptures at the coming of the sun. Elizabeth von Arnim, 1899

I have no idea what a nightingale looks like. I'm sure if I've seen one, it passed me by in a hurry. But every book one ever read, surely has a passage about nightingales. I am resisting now the urge to flit away and Google the nightingale and satisfy my need to know. I stay here instead ignorant, but focusing on the words. Is it bird or flower? And the magical nightingale takes on a dream state image, a white feathered ethereal, golden-beaked beauty. Who needs reality when just the word nightingale says it all.

Alice B. Toklas says she had to grow vegetables for Gertrude Stein, but of course she did it all for herself.

The first gathering of the garden in May of salads, radishes and herbs made me feel like a mother about her baby—how could anything so beautiful be mine. And this emotion of wonder filled me for each vegetable as it was gathered every year. There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown.

I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow, for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. Dorothy Wordsworth

Verily laughed! I'm going to use that in a sentence today. How do you do that? Oh you boorish child, I verily laugh at you. I verily hope you laugh at me. But isn't Dorothy enjoying her daffodils ever so much more than her stuffy poet of a brother, wandering lonely as a cloud?

What a wealth to country children are the dandelions with their hollow stalks, linked into chains day after day, with untiring eagerness, and with the white downy balls, 'The schoolboy's clock in every town,' which come as the flowers fall away, and which sometimes whiten the meadow by their profusion, till a strong gust arises, and scatters them far and wide! Away they float, each white plume bearing onwards the seed at its base, so beautifully balanced, that its motion is most graceful, and its destined place in the soil most surely reached. Anne Pratt

The wonderful evocative meadow. That word. It conjures up so many memories. The fields behind my grandfather's barn. The rolling grasslands that we hiked with the girls on our vacations in the national parks. Even the sports fields where the girls played softball. And dandelions. I had forgotten the game of braiding them together. And the joy of blowing them into each others' faces, not worrying that the seed would land and fill the grass with still more. Who cared if a dandelion grew in the yard?

She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said. . . . She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so thick in some places where the green points were pushing their way through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to grow. Frances Hodgson Burnett

Poking around in the Secret Garden, that's surely where it all began. The Putterer

Special thanks to Deborah Kellaway's compilation, The Virago Book of Women Gardeners, 1996, Virago Press.

Double, Double, Soil and Trowel

The Plot at Fenton Street

I've just ordered a soil testing kit. This gardening habit of mine is getting serious. I'm now a confirmed soil freak. Last fall, before closing up my community garden plot at Fenton Street, I grew a cover crop of clover and then just as the clover started to cover the plot, I carefully dug it up in troughs, row by row, from the front to the back, and turned the clover upside down into the hole. Then over the top of that, I layered bags and bags of organic leaf gro. To great satisfaction. The smell of all that composted material left me woozy.

Now upstairs in Claire's abandoned bedroom, I've built a shelf and light system and my three-week-old seedlings are throwing off a delightful aroma that makes me yearn for summer sun and soil. I got it bad this gardening bug.

So the soil bags should arrive within a few days and I've been up early watching how-to videos from the University of Maryland.  I'm going to soil test both my home garden and my plot at Fenton Street and I'm feeling as if my dirt is going to pass the test with flying colors. I'll have a complete understanding of my nutrients—sulfur (S), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), and boron (B), and textural analysis (e.g. silty clay loam), percentage of organic matter, and cation exchange capacity (whatever that is??!!!). I'll be silly with scientific analysis. And with that knowledge, I'll bring out my kale, my Swiss chard, my onions, my lettuce and my basil and I'll plant them knowing that the nutrients that they need to grow strong and vigorous will be easily available to them. It's going to be a beautiful gardening year this year. The scent is in the air. The Putterer

A Gardener Tries to Control Time

Growing basil in the cold.

A chill is in the air.

I feel like this is a momentous occasion. It's Saturday, the end of a furiously fast week. It's the first of the season's freezes, at the end of a hectic two-garden summer. It's almost the end of a milestone year that included two graduations and a hell-bent for leather pace at the office. I feel like I'm riding a deranged steed, bareback, yet still holding on.

But yes it's Saturday and just above freezing outside in the garden. And I've started a little experiment to see if I can keep some green growing over the winter. Last Saturday, I bought two basil starters and slipped them into a fresh serving of potting soil and placed a bell jar over them to grow in a sunny spot on my deck. Last night, the first light freeze of the season brought white frost to the grass. Not a hard freeze at all. The Swiss chard is still holding its own and so are the impatiens. The last rose of summer may be singing its swan song, but this morning, I went out and snapped a picture of my basil inside its cozy terrarium. Well sure enough, it's as if I've stopped time and it's the First of May all over again.

Now, would that I could stop time so easily. If I could. Here's what I'd do. This week, I would have stopped the clock on Thursday at about noon. That's when my sweet girl Claire was walking home from her school in Ecuador and a man grabbed her from behind and a women covered her mouth and robbed her of her back pack. Could I have that moment back please, so I could fix it and make it go away?

On Tuesday, I would have stopped the clock at about 12:30 at the gym. That's when the exhilaration in my dance class was at its peak and the beat of the music and the sweet synchronicity of ladies in lockstep brought joy to my heart. Could I have that moment back please, just to savor it and make it last a little bit longer?

At work, on any given day, I wished that I could have stopped the clock just to get ahead on my load. Seemed every time, I finished something, the next thing was at my throat. With a new boss in town, the demand is going to be not only exciting and fun, but aggressively intense. Could I have a little more time please to get it all done?

And now it's Saturday, a beautiful chill morning, sunny outside, my fireplace is roaring, the coffee tastes good. Can I stop the clock right now? The Putterer

Chilly Tonight and the Lemon Is In for the Winter. Should I Pick It?

My Meyers lemon tree is "in" for the winter.

And so ends the 2011 gardening season. This evening, after working all afternoon at the office—and not in either of my gardens, I quickly hauled in all my plants. The temps are supposed to be in the 20s in some parts of the area and I don't want to take any chances. Our family room looks like a tropical forest. The blueberry bush is poking up over Patsy's head. There's a strawberry plant peeking out from behind Jim and I'm snuggled up between the fig and lemon trees. I pulled the geraniums in too, because I just love the idea of overwintering them again this year, just like Grandma used to.

The question is this. When do you pick the lemon? I read that lemons don't ripen after they are picked and my prize is almost totally yellow. But on the other side of my superstar, there is a tiny patch that is still green. (Its brothers on the other branch are still limey green and likely won't ripen indoors.) So I'm waiting for just the moment. But, when the time finally arrives, what will I do with it? What worthy endeavor will I find for my single lemon? An oven roasted fish dish? Or perhaps, a twist for a late afternoon iced tea. Does a lemon harvested in one's own garden taste any less bitter, slightly more nuanced? The temptation to pluck it has been quite overwhelming these past few weeks. And any time I happen by my lemon tree, my internal iTunes always plays: "lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon, is impossible to eat."

This lovely lemon tree has been giving us such a treat all year. Early this spring, even before it warmed up enough for it to go outside, it was already in bloom. And the scent of its sweet blooms kept our room so fresh. Now we close out the season with that bloom's progeny very soon at the ready.

Now when should I pluck it? The Putterer 

Keeping It In Landscape Mode

I prefer a landscape mode.

I prefer a landscape view on my iPad. I like a magazine layout. I don't want to turn it vertically and see it elongated. Maybe it's because I'm short and I like the ceiling, glass or otherwise, close to my head. Or maybe because my peripheral vision is good and I can see things clearly from my far left to my far right. I said left first, didn't I? I'm not a lefty, I prefer my right hand. But lately my right hand aches, so sometimes I use my left hand, but that's awkward. Don't you hate how everything is political?

I like symbolism and schmaltzy stuff. Cheap birdhouses and silly phrases scratched into garden rocks. I like to buy cheap things, but I prefer to live high end with quality. Still, I can't get past the idea that I can only shop at Sears. Sometimes when I'm at Nordstroms, I feel like I'm crashing a party. I like good design. I think of my Mac as a work of art. But I also like my old white sofa because it's got some stains on it, coffee, pet, dust. It feels good to sit here, because I can't really ruin it since it's already ruined. But it feels good, old, antique, high quality.

I feel fortunate. Like I won the lottery. But then I worry. I  might lose it all in a hurry. One bad decision. One misspoken word.

I feel like I'm stupid smart. I miss things. I don't read things closely. I hurry too much. I have so many opportunities. I can't do it all unless I hurry. But if I slow down, I won't finish. But then, when I think about it, I know a lot. I've read a lot. I'm open to lots of ideas. I'm out there. Bat shit crazy, really. I have a tree instead of a God. But then maybe God resides in the tree. Sometimes when I hug my tree, I feel it pulsing beneath my fingers as if God were giving my a warm hello. That's when I'm slowing down. When my tree and I rest and breath deeply and hear the soft, gentle flow of the water in the stream and quiet still air moves rhythmically from my extreme left to my extreme right. I am religious about my tree. And sometimes, I hear the hymns of my church. I loved church because I loved the music, but now, I don't want to church because it's just another demand to hurry off to.

I'm full of joy. I'm breathing deeply. But I wake up early. My heart aches. Anxiety. My dog is worrying about another storm. I comfort her. I wonder if I really do have intuitive pulses when I wake as if I'm intercepting some strange code that connects through some long severed umbilical cord. My mother to me to my daughters. Do I actually feel someone else's anxiety or is it mine alone?

I am old, but I stay young. My belly is round. My hips thick. My ankles swell (when I fly far). But I can run, I can push up and pull up many times. I can dance at a dizzying pace. I love to be kinetic. Because when I hurry, I get it all done and then I can do more. But then on my sofa, by my tree, I am bat shit crazy, quiet and happy and taking it all in from my far left to my far right and if the sky is falling, it won't hurt too much because it doesn't have too far to fall in my horizontal landscape.  The Putterer

Yelping about Food and Gardens

Garden bounty

We were up in Clarksburg on Saturday, dropping the dog off to be groomed and so with two hours to kill, we thought wouldn't it be nice to go out for breakfast. Both of us were thinking about coffee, eggs and bacon, so I downloaded on my new iPhone the Yelp app and asked it where we should go. Nothing nearby looked promising, but a Bob Evans.

Now Yelp is asking for a review and like all social networks, I already have four new "friends" on Yelp, who include a work colleague, a cousin, an old friend from high school and a gardener. If I write my first Yelp review, these four individuals presumably will see it and I'm a little concerned that my reputation will be tainted for the very reason that of all the great places to eat around the DC area, I will be noted for having eaten first at Bobs.

But never mind that. Here is my review. A bright, cheery facade falsely promising the healthy and hearty. Modest attempt to look clean, resulting sadly in a soggy seat with drizzled drops left behind on my chair from the wipe rag, which was surely soaked in dirty dish water. After swapping out chairs, a friendly waitress came by and gave us a book-length menu filled with every combination of breakfast fare. We read it and couldn't find what we wanted. Two eggs scrambled, toast (Jim), grits (me), bacon and coffee. Waitress pointed out classic breakfast, which we happily agreed to. Out in the parking lot, I watched two couples get out of their car. The girls were beautiful, the boys not so much. The boys had cigarettes, the girls waited with them until they finished smoking. One of the girls continuously tugged self-consciously at her shirt, pulling at it to make sure it was covering her tummy. I sipped my coffee and the blue mug felt warm and comforting in my hands and I closed my eyes and enjoyed the calm of just sitting and waiting to being served. I measured breath going in through my nose and out my parted lips, calling up my yoga instructor's mantra and thinking only if only, I could ever learn to relax and just be in the moment. The food arrived. The eggs were that flat yellow cafeteria material, rubber and tasteless. My biscuits, which came as an un-asked-for side, where oddly white. No integrity. Nothing held them together and they crumbled when you buttered them. The grits, also ghostly white, were soupy and of course, tasteless. I peppered them. Didn't help. I salted them. Not good either. Jim tried dunking the bacon in. But the bacon was rough. It was hard to bite into and when it finally chewed up, little bits of it parked into the crevices between my teeth. I looked around the room, remembering now why I never go to these places and felt sorry for all the people who do. We paid our $20 and tipped the nice waitress.

And like all things in my life, connected and interconnected, the New York Times on Sunday was spot on with their article by Mark Bitman, "Is Junk Food Really Cheaper," which argued that the real cost of preparing good wholesome foot at home, was merely the time and energy it took to do it. Lost to our culture is the desire to make and serve food. And so off people go to Bob Evans to eat ghastly food. Eating and growing and preparing food is a huge part of my life, now. I do it because I enjoy it. And the results are so rich and tasty. That poor girl in the parking lot, pretty but very overweight, her gross boyfriend, baggy pants and shaggy face, sucking on his cigarette. I know, I'm a snob. I'm sorry for judging. I'm sorry, really I am. But oh, if she was my adopted daughter, I think I could help her.

Most weekend, Jim makes me my breakfast. It's his favorite food to cook. That man can scramble an egg that tastes like manna from heaven. The toast is served perfectly hot, dripping with butter. The bacon is salty and a perfect combination of crispy and chewy. He always finds a fruit to decorate my plate, some berries, a melon, a pear. I eat it happy.  Dear Bob Evans, the only thing I can say for you is that I liked your coffee. But I won't be back for any more visits. The Putterer

Making a Plot a Home

This is the entrance to my community garden.

And this is what it looked like in early spring.

Two gardens this summer kept The Putterer in fit gardening form. The community garden on Fenton Street is my new favorite pastime. I got a 10 foot by 20 foot plot in full sun but built on top of an abandoned lot with plenty of nasty stuff in the soil. The county did an awesome job of plowing, prepping and soil testing, but the first year was touch and go. Though after a buying into a share of compost, I did harvest a huge bunch of tomatoes, plenty of basil, some squash and eggplant and pile of pole beans.

Last weekend, I pulled all the tomato plants out. And this weekend, I'm planting a cover crop of clover to help nourish the soil this fall and winter. I'll turn that back into the soil (my back is aching already in anticipation) and next summer, I'll dump a pile more compost in and then, oh what magic will grow there, I can't wait.

But I think the best part of the community garden this summer had to have been my plot neighbors. I got so lucky because I'm just across the path from Gordon Clark, our resident master gardener and just up the way from Kathy Jentz, editor of Washington Gardener. I have new friends Anne McDermott and Pamela Trochesset and Colette Rausch and Natasha Hurwitz. The Putterer