Laying In My Books For the Winter And Thoughts on Emily Dickinson

I just went crazy with one-click shopping on Amazon. I don't know how I'll manage to read all those books that I just bought. But sitting here on my comfy, white sofa this morning, my ankles feel chilly even as the furnace is trying to warm the room and I am thinking about reading my way through the cold winter months. I am wishing that I could burrow in and just absorb print material through the pores of my skin. Because I just simply don't have all the time that I need to keep up with all the reading that I should be doing, let alone the reading that I just want to do.

The books I bought are all old titles: Michael Pollen's Second Nature; Margery Fish's We Made a Garden; Eleanor Perenyi's Green Thoughts; Emily Herring Wilson's biography of Elizabeth Lawrence and finally, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

There's something seductive about an old book. I buy them from the used section of Amazon and when they come, many of them are hand wrapped. Sometimes, the book seller will write a little note card and drop it into the package. "Enjoy!" The pages might smell a little musty, or there's an inscription on the title page.

In my Emily Dickinson book that I ordered last winter, it says: "June, This is one of your Christmas books. Merry Christmas and many, many more. With much love, Mom, 1981."  I  wonder why June would give away such a lovely gift from her mother. (Note to June's Mother: Don't worry Mom, maybe June will have second thoughts and come looking for it. I'll keep it safe.)

I just randomly opened to this offering from Emily, perhaps she hints at what befell the book's previous owners.

Forget! The lady with the Amulet

Forget she wore it at her Heart

Because she breathed against

Was Treason twixt?

Deny! Did Rose her Bee--

For Privilege of Play

Or Wile of Butterfly

Or Opportunity--Her Lord Away?

The lady with the Amulet--will fade--

The Bee--in Mausoleum laid--

Discard his Bride--

But longer than the little Rill--

That cooled the Forehead of the Hill--

While Other--went to Sea to fill--

And Other--went to turn the Mill--

I'll do thy Will--

I think Emily Dickinson must have been bored with her life. I picture her stowed away in her bedroom, scrawling love sick, coded poems on thick pieces of paper before squirreling them away. Her only outings  to her garden. Likely, she didn't work too hard there either. Her privileged family would have afforded a caretaker to do all the backbreaking work keeping all things there lovely. So poor Emily had nothing to do but  sit quietly observing the interplay of the interloopers, "The Bird did prance--the Bee did play--" And writing and reading was her only outlet.

She, of course, didn't have the distractions of my life. A job, a social life, a dog, children, husband, the laundry. Would she have fussed about meals and menus? Would she have thought at all about fitness and health? She wouldn't be thinking how she might fit in a run before having to head off to have her hair trimmed. Or counted off the precious hours of the weekend before Monday's rapid-fire pace loomed once again.

See, she had to have been bored. This I will never be. (Nor will I ever write poetry). And as I said, likely I won't even find the time to read all those books. But for the moment, I do enjoy the fantasy of it all. Me. A musty book. Languidly lying about. The Putterer

I Compost, Therefore I Am

You cannot know the true joy of life until you've turned over leaf litter and sniffed deeply the sweet, raw odor of a compost pile in heat. By all other accomplishments available to you on this earth, and this includes even the engineering of a concrete and steel pylon six-lane bridge, you will not know success until you have made your own compost.
I am at this time gathering my leaves and mowing them into bits and putting them in the large compost bins that Montgomery County graciously gives to me free of charge. (Look at this picture that Patsy took about a month ago of my deck overlooking the forest behind my house. See all of the leaves that are available to me for my compost.) I can turn mountains of leaves into small bags of leaf bits in just a few hours. Even without any other green matter, the brown leaves are already toasty warm in their bins. A good compost recipe requires layers of green grass commingled with brown leaf matter. I also collect my kitchen waste and I bury it into the leaf bins. And no, I don't have rats or mice invading the pile. I do have in the summertime, tons and tons of earthworms, living in my bin, and helping to make rich, fertile material for my garden.

In the springtime, my multiple bins of leaves are all reduced enough in mass that I can turn all of them into one. And then finally, I distribute the rich material into my flower beds.

Last year in early spring, I used the partially composted leaves as the bottom layer of my lasagna garden, which I built up with sticks and newspaper and compost and garden soil, and which grew so delightfully warm that I was able to grow lettuce on top of it very early in the season.

At this time of year, beware my proselytizing. I am a fanatic about composting. And I am on a quest to convert as many of you as possible. But be not afraid, you too can compost. And if  I see you raking your leaves into the street for the county to sweep away into those foul-smelling vacuum trucks, I might judge you for your wastefulness. The Putterer

The Naked Garden

There was an original garden once where Adam met Eve and they hit it off big time. From my limited Bible knowledge, neither of them was properly clothed at the time, nor did they realize in their joyous celebration that they were sinners. Until they ate that bad apple and then all hell broke loose and the two naked lovers grabbed some fig leaves and covered themselves.

My garden is shedding all of its summer robes and vestments and revealing its bare naked bones and this is the time that I start re-imagining its structure. The slope at the back is revealed again. The paths are clearly delineated. I can see the places where I made errors and the places where it all came together. I've got a grand plan (that would need heavy investing) to fence out a corner and create a better vegetable garden with a wall so high that any deer trying to leap in would smash his sweet Bambi face and go elsewhere.

Nakedness is on my mind for other reasons too. I'm thinking of the  Puritanical brethren and Bible-thumping conservatives out there beyond my secular bubble. I'm talking about those wing nuts that I keep encountering on my Facebook page. (Recently, I was unfriended for being too liberal and another effectively called me a communist. Sheesh! Here's a song for you, my sweeties.)

So I'm wondering if the sign posted recently in our gym locker room has anything to do with this bitter zeal and hostility that seems to be trending in our great divided nation. The sign declared new locker room etiquette rules.

And incredibly, item "number 4" chastized all of us for being naked in the locker room! According to the new rules, we must cover ourselves while walking to the showers and getting dressed. Now, for those of you who workout in the gyms across the land, you all know that there is usually a place for the modest to go behind a curtain. But for the great vast numbers of us, the locker room tradition is to bare all. In our gym, we have a rockin', good time talking up our lives and laughing together as we cleanup, dry off and primp ourselves back to business casual.

The amusing notion of getting dressed while hiding behind a towel makes for a contortionist's nightmare. I mean if God meant for us to be clothed all the time, wouldn't She have given us a third arm with which to hold the towel up?

I don't know. I'm feeling so edgy these days with all the intemperate outbursts and hate mongering and unabashed name calling, I feel like doing something in my garden in protest, something terribly anti-establishment, like ripping off my clothes Adam and Eve-like and dancing to Lily Allen's FU song.

Glad to get that off my naked chest. The Putterer

The Leaves Are Coming Down

 "A sudden splendor from behind

Flushed all the leaves with rich golden-green"

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It's a beautiful chill October morning, notable for the anniversary of the birth of my first child, who turns 21 today. All around the house and all along the pathways in the garden are the leaves that I'm going to have to rake up soon. These are the worker bees of the plant world. They really get little respect given that they take the energy from sunlight and manufacture the sugars and starches that feed the plant all year long. But in the fall, when their verdant prospects are dimming they flash in glorious golds, reds, yellows and blazing oranges in a kind of botanical smack down on their dainty flower counterparts.

When they are all finally off the trees, usually in the week just after Thanksgiving, I like to run the mower over them just enough so that when they go into the composters, they'll more quickly break down into the wonderful black gold that I'll use in the spring. It's a little hard now however not to feel intimidated by this seasonal task, given the volume of leaves that fall on my garden every year. And the chill in the air makes it more likely that the hard freeze will come sooner than last year. (It was quite late--after Thanksgiving, as I recall.)

In fact the rushed holiday season begins today with my daughter's birthday. From this point on, we head pell mell into the triumvirate of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. These are the domestic goddess's glory days, when home and hearth must be tended with a fury. The cooking, the shopping, the entertaining, the parties. It's breathtaking really, and the forever quest of making our lives seem flawlessly Hallmark rests on my shoulders alone.

Tonight, I'll pull my witch costume from the closet. (And by the way, I AM a witch, in the sexy and giving ways of the earth goddess). Next come the tricker treaters, and for them, I decorate the door and put out a tasty display of chocolate offerings. Some friends have invited us to go leaf peeping and so we'll wake early tomorrow to head off for a hike. But I'm leaving out the crazy Rally on the Mall today. (I have to hurry and get dressed now and walk the dog).

And at work, the little goGuide has to go to press. But the leaves are piling up on the walkways and can I possibly get to them before Thanksgiving, when I must insist on making all the food from scratch, the pie crusts Julia Child style, the turkey brined overnight? The table must be set with the antique china, which all has to be washed of the dust it gathered over the year. And yes, I'd better press the linen table cloths. What's that a stain? Quick let's throw them all in the wash and freshen them up. And the table centerpiece, I hate to buy someone else's work. Shouldn't I arrange the flowers?

Next comes the gift getting and giving. A wisp of Hanukkah to celebrate Jim's heritage. We light the candles and give the girls a symbolic gift. And sometimes a dreidel and chocolates come out. I love to wrap the presents with playful decorations. And we have to get those for the cousins early in the mail. The card? Should I write one of those dopey letters again? My family just hates them and we always argue over them. But our friends and family seem to enjoy them. Maybe I can do a few leaves, too.

Now the tree must be hauled out of the attic. (Years ago, I gave up the fresh tree thing. It just is so messy to clean up, when a few fresh boughs on the hearth will give off the same eau de pine.) The kids in the neighborhood would love it if I also took out the silly little Christmas land city/town/village that I sometimes put on display in the living room, but oh, that is just so over the top. I will skip that once again this year. Oh, I'm exhausted already thinking of it all. But give it up? Never. And I have to do the leaves, too.  The Putterer

Fifty Petals on My Dahlia

I had Patsy shoot this picture for me this afternoon. I'm too tired for much blogging, but just wanted to get it in the record. Goodnight. The Putterer

Ten Things I Learned From My 2010 Garden

Sometimes gardening just has to wait. And so too the garden blog. It's kind of amusing how a place created for solace and peacefulness can swiftly become yet another chore. Over the closing weeks of this year's intolerably hot summer, the garden was left to its own devices. Weeds and mosquitoes and excessive heat made the garden a hostile place and the gardener's gloves dried stiff hanging in the closet. But now, the garden beckons. And as I planned my day this morning, I began to think of the successes of my 2010 garden. So herewith, my list of ten things I learned this year.

1. I Can Proudly Say I Am No Longer a Death-To-Roses Gardener Finally, I met with success this year growing two rose varieties, Rosa Grussan Aachen and Rosa Marmalade Skies. Both of these came from Wayside and both require less sunlight. Wayside even said they would grow in the shade, yeah right. I planted the Grussan Aachen at the front fence and she buds with a beautiful pink blush that opens to white. Marmalades Skies is a light orange, and I planted her on a pathway to the lower deck. Both of them came bare root and kept me guessing through most of the spring after I planted them and they sat stick-like in the dirt looking more dead than alive. Then slowly a few nodules of green began to poke from the sticks and my heart soared when I realized I hadn't killed yet another rose. RIP my rose called Eleanor and my rose called Passionate Kisses, both of which sat in my front yard dirt and tried mightily to flower, but toppled and succumbed to diseases and pests.

2. Deer Like Cucumbers and So Do I One cucumber plant is just not enough for all the fans of cucumbers in my garden. That stupid deer came nibbling and severed the tops of my cucumber plant and I didn't think I'd get any cukes this year, but turns out the plant practiced a kind of subterfuge and grew its fruits on tendrils that hid from view under other plants. I must have harvested at least a dozen delicious cukes this year. So next year, I think I'll plant more so that there'll be enough for both me and the deer. (That fuckin' deer. I'm still not over his visit when he took out all my day lilies.)

3. It's Okay to Hire Help Patrician gardeners of yore with their acres of glorious gardens with pathways and gates and hidden nooks, all had help. I have labored solo in my garden and dug, tugged and hoisted until my back aches and my fingertips throbbed. But this year, I looked out at my garden in August and saw how the wild space next door was slowly invading. The poke weed, the wisteria, the porcelainberry, the poison ivy was creeping into my garden. The porcelainberry had grown like a blanket overtop of my bushes and so finally, I admitted, I couldn't possibly clean it all out myself. So I went over to Maryland's Casa program and hired two workers one Saturday. Edi and Mauricio worked that day like whirling dervishes, pulling, cutting, tugging and eventually gathering up some thirty lawn bags of detritus. I bought them lunch and paid them each $10 an hour. I gave them gloves and tools and made sure they had plenty of water, and I worked alongside of them all day long, so that at the end of the day my back ached and my fingertips throbbed, but without them, I could never have accomplished so much.

4. You Can Never Have Too Many Books This year Smithsonian magazine shut down its library. The books were sent away to other libraries or tossed, depending on their age or if the other libraries already had copies. When the staff was invited to pick through, I found on a dusty shelf a wealth of field guides and gorgeous old research relics on plants, trees and botany. I took armloads of them. I've already amassed quite a library of gardening books and now my books are piling up in stacks around the rooms. I risk being called a hoarder. But I think that no matter how much one googles or bings or yahoos, nothing surpasses the organization of a book with its contents page and its illustrations and its photographs and its index and its bibliography and its footnotes. I came away with books like the 2001 America's Famous and Historic Trees by Jeffrey G. Meyer and the 30-year-old encylopedic Flowering Plants of the World. One Saturday morning when it was too hot to be in the garden, I sat on my comfy white sofa flipping the pages of one of DK's huge tomes called simply, Plant by Janet Marinelli (2005), and its rich large-format photographs made me a happy plant lover.

5. Lasagna Gardens Work I made a pile of sticks and compost in early spring and planted lettuce on top. The composting action brought warmth from below and made a wonderful hotbed and my lettuce grew up thick and delicious, when ambient temperatures were still too cool for planting. When it got warmer, I planted my egg plant and my cucumber plant there and I am still harvesting eggplant and I found one more cuke a few weeks ago. From the compost, a volunteer tomato plant from last year's garden reached maturity late in the season is also still delivering.

6. Tomatoes Will Grow On the Deck If you water them everyday, that is. And since I have a rain barrel right there on my deck now, I can easily slip outside every morning in my heels and give everybody on the deck a nice drink before I head off to work. We had two bush tomatoes, Carmello and Celebrity, growing and delivering on the deck, as well as a fig tree, and a strawberry plant and a big pot of sage, rosemary, oregano, parsley  and chives. When I was cooking, I could dash out to gather a handful of herbs and be back before the garlic burned in the pan.

7. Potatoes Will Grow in a Sack An experiment to grow potatoes was mostly a success. Though a failure in that the potatoes were so delicious, we wanted more. The plants gave up enough to serve twice at table a hearty feast of roasted yellow fins. I set out these fabric sacks in a sunny spot in early spring. Two sacks were planted with five starter potatoes each. At first I filled the sacks with rich potting soil and then much to my dismay, I read you had to grow potatoes in bad soil. so I dumped the sacks out and started over again with some dusty, clay-filled, rocky aggregate that I acquired from my neighbor's yard after she dug up a corner of her property.

8. You Can Never Grow Enough Basil I had basil on the deck and in the garden and still it wasn't enough. One pesto meal and it's all over. Basil needs to be planted at every nook and cranny next year. Enough said.

9. A Single Yellow Squash Plant Will Feed A Family of Four For Most of the Summer At one point, Patsy looked up from her dinner plate, which had on it my frequent side dish of pan-roasted yellow squash in garlic and said, "Mom, I've eaten enough." The deer don't eat the squash and they grow so fast, it's a wonder you don't actually see them enlarging before your very eyes. Squash went into everything this year from sweet breads to ratatouille.

10. Sage Tea and Other Herbal Infusions will Soothe the Soul Everybody is making fun of me at work these days when I bring along my mystery drink of the day. My oat straw, my nettle, my red clover herbal infusions are poured over ice and sipped all the day long. Go ahead and laugh my friends, but I'm convinced I'm healthier, happier and even wiser, drinking all the micro-nutrients that my plant buddies offer. An old saying, "Where sage doth grow well and vigorous, therein rules a strong woman." Strong, maybe, but when I learned of the benefits of a tea made with two leaves of sage set steeping for five minutes, I surely felt I'd met with sage advice. The Putterer

The Putterer Sputters and the Garden Grows Wild

I've selected this tender photograph to head up the post because I'm afraid to even enter the garden today, let alone take any pictures. I know it will be a wild place given over to spiders and their webs, mosquitoes and their stings, and rampant weeds and their climbing vines. This has been a rough summer for the kind of gardener, who hopes to keep nature tidy. But for nature, it has been a rambunctious and wild ride.

The image was taken a few weeks ago, when I was home from work recovering from surgery. Patsy was babysitting the neighbors' children and we took her charges to Brookside Garden to see its most excellent butterfly exhibit, "Wings of Fancy." The monarch alighted on little Maya's hand and her brother Johannes reached out to share in the experience. It was enough sentiment to make you want to weep. And Patsy, the photographer, caught the decisive moment.

Meanwhile, as the Putterer sputtered, the garden was left to its own devices. I clipped around the edges and Jim helped with some of the heavy, heavy stuff. But the mosquitoes took over, and though the spiders tried mightily to eat them all, they constructed their webs across all my paths. Then the sun beat down in one of the worst heat waves ever and the hydrangea that I transplanted from sunny spot to shady side last spring still took a hit as the soil cemented itself around its weary roots. The single squash plant took over the vegetable bed, it's prickly stems grew wickedly sharp. The cukes tried to fruit even as the deer nibbled its leaves to a quick. The eggplant delivered, but then toppled. The peppers gave up. The tomatoes did fine, but the squirrels and the raccoons stole the fruit. And then the rains came. A deluge, that bent the flowers over and dropped dried branches from the trees. I've seen evidence that locusts are on their way.

Today, strong and recovered, the Putterer will don long pants and sleeves, pepper herself with DEET, sharpen her clippers, and after asking Mother Earth's permission, she will advance into the wild place and make tidy the garden. The Putterer