Winter Melancholy

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighboured by fruit of baser quality;
And so the Prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness--which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest at night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.

Henry V Act 1. Scene 1. Line 61, when Ely refers to young King Henry's surprising abilities despite his wayward youth.

I woke up this morning to more snow on the ground and King Henry on the brain. Thursday, we endured the three-hour play after working all day; both of us exhausted, but bravely and studiously negotiating the difficult language of a Shakespearian play.

It was a bravo performance by the handsome actor Michael Hayden, who is playing both roles of King Henry and Richard II in repertory at Sidney Harman Hall. Earlier this winter, we watched the painful demise of the arrogant, but piteous Richard II, also a three-hour intellectual workout. (Jim is certain to be constructing now a mighty and rightful protest for when it comes time to anti up for next year's season tickets.)

We have now witnessed the powerful drama of the St. Crispin's Day Speech and felt the seductive surge of fierce loyalty to king and country.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Now emboldened, we band of brothers (sisters, too!) will follow our leader against all odds to win the day. The endless winter of 2010, though, plays dreary and weary in the headlines as my poor president battles his arch-enemies and can't help but come up short against their intemperate assault. (Shame on them. Let him do the work the voters put him in office to do.) Does the failed state that followed fast on the heals of Henry's glorious assault on Agincourt lie lurking?

"Tis, an unweeded garden."

And so to sunny spring and summer, I turn my thoughts. It is time now for tiny buds on the forsythia, shy flashes of muted purples and pinks from the Lenton rose, and breathtaking blooms of the early crocuses.

The three mara des bois strawberry plants that I ordered from White Flower Farm are going to go in my mother's clay pocket jar up on the deck. These produce a sweet and tasty tiny berry that only a gardener can know because they are so tender that they rarely endure the rough passage to market. And when the gutters came crashing down last week under the weight of heavy snow and ice, I determined to make an opportunity. When we rebuild we'll redirect our roof top water into a rain barrel, which I hope to install on the deck. From out my kitchen door, then, where the sun is so intense in the afternoons, I am going to create a kitchen garden with herbs, tomatoes and potted fruit trees. I'll replant my banana tree (which I hope survived with its roots wrapped warmly in the garage). A a fig tree and a lemon tree are on order. And the strawberry plants will join them. The problem of water reaching the upper deck and my lack of time in the morning to repeatedly carry jugs out to the plants is solved by the easy access to the rain barrel (which I might just simply fill with water to store it there too, if the runoff doesn't adequately meet the need).

But now sad and terrible news comes of the devastating earthquake in Chile and the tsunami headed for Hawaii. I think we need "a little touch of Harry in the night" to comfort us and prepare us now for this next battle. The Putterer

February Fun with the F-Word

Alliteration is one of my favorite stylistic devices and today, my brain is off into a fabulous forage for F-words. February Fourteenth is for Fornication?

Indeed, the day otherwise named for a saint has a rather unsaintly history. It is actually the anniversary of a pagan fertility festival. A pre-Christian lottery system paired a randy boy with a lusty girl for a day of unfettered sex that honored Juno, the goddess of marriage. Ah, but don't you worry, my scandalized friends, more than likely, the pair would hit it off that day and settle down to make a permanent home and hearth. But in my garden on this February day, all signs of frivolity and fertility is frosty frozen. Out there, whatever drives the plants to send their roots deep into the soil and their stems and petals skyward is defunct, buried beneath glaciers of ice and snow.

It was in February a few years past when the raccoons could be seen high in the trees humping and howling. I remember the look on one of their faces, when he caught me watching. His hostile expression seemed to be saying, "A little privacy, please."

February is for (insert your favorite F-word here). It is in February when the gold crown night herons return with their mates to their perches in the trees down in Sligo Creek Park. And I know for a fact that deep in the back reaches of Southern Maryland, down at Nanjemoy Creek, the moaning and groaning of lovesick great blue herons fills the ancient rookery. There, some 2,000 birds descend annually into a marshy oak and pine grove to strut and preen in their ritual mating dance. A rookery is nature's way of facilitating fecundity.

February is also the month in which I intend to force forsythias. I want to clip an armful and bring them inside to make a lusty array of yellow buds that indoors, comes early (forgive me, with Fs on the brain, I can't help myself).

But instead, all last week as the snow fell and we all descended into a strange, drugged stupor, as our world slowly sank beneath the weight of slush and ice, all of nature seemed to lose any interest in fertility and fecundity. I'd have to wear a pair of hip waders to get even close to the forsythia bush and the raccoons are appallingly quiet. The squirrels aren't even acting squirrelly. Only the sparrows and finches are active. And that's because they are furiously fighting to feast at the feeders.

Inside, a pink Valentine amaryllis reminds me that amor will somehow survive. So maybe when the sun comes out today and warms the deviant black ice on the pavement and starts the icicles to dripping, nature will once again return to doing what would make Saint Valentine blush, or as Herrick once said:

Oft I have heard both
Youths and Virgins say
Birds chase their mates,
and couple to this day;
But by their flight I never
can devine
When I shall couple with
My Valentine.
--Robert Herrick, 1648

Snow Drops in the Garden

Some gardens this time of year might have a few snow drops in bloom--little white bells that hug the chill ground and poke through the snow. I saw some just last week blooming around the base of the trees in the Enid Haupt Garden behind the Smithsonian Castle. And there are also old fashioned snowberries, the little white bobs that cling to the shrubs in our grandmother's gardens. And everyone is familiar with the snowballs that grow on the branches of the hydrangea bush, or the carpets of snow-in-summer, that dependable ground cover that blankets the Earth with its tiny star-shaped white clusters.

But the snow that is in my garden today is not of the horticultural sort. The two-foot drifts aren't even record-breaking, oddly enough. (This is only the fourth largest snow in our area.) But the cold, white stuff that began coming down on Friday and continued falling through Saturday night, is some of the most beautiful snow that I've ever seen. Never mind that it shut down our power. Never mind that we are horribly inconvenienced. Never mind that we might rather have been occupied this weekend with the routine errands and chores that bring us back around to Monday, and work and school.

The snow in my garden drapes itself over my favorite old chair. It weighs down the branches of the witch hazel, forcing it nearly to the breaking point. Aunt Rhody is bearing up under its weight, but just barely. And so far all of the majestic trees that grow in the forest down in the ravine are standing powerfully anchored against the bitter cold winds that blew in with the blizzard.

We are hunkered down at a neighbor's home, living commune-style with at least four other families. Others come and go, stopping by for a little warmth and some cheer. We're sharing our food, caring for each other's children and digging each other's cars from the drifts. Multitudes of charging phones and computers and other electronics are plugged into every outlet. I'm puttering here in the basement, even as I can hear footsteps above, the door opening and closing, voices chattering, the game box exploding, the babies fussing. But all the chaos and closeness makes for a kind of reassuring spirit of warmth and friendship.

And now word is that another snow storm is pending for Tuesday. And the power company isn't making any promises about when power will be restored--perhaps, they say, Thursday or Friday. The Putterer

Snowing Again

It snowed today. More snow than anyone had predicted. We're up to six inches on the back deck and it's still coming down. And no plow came to dig us out, so all plans canceled.

Weather be damned, however, I was bent on my plan today to order my plants for next year's garden.

And though I've been making lists and then paring them, studying varieties, researching histories and trying to figure what I can afford and what I have room for, I had somehow hoped I might tame my overzealous temperament when it came to picking and choosing what I would buy. Not so. I went crazy like never before. Once again, I'll be overwhelmed when the plants arrive come April.

The list as follows: Mara des Bois Strawberries; patio tomato plants; collections of potatoes; herbs and heirloom tomatoes; Italian purple garlic; dusky eggplant, a lettuce mix; goldbar squash and marketmore 76 cucumber. For the deck, I bought two more fruit trees: a citrus lemon 'meyer improved' and a ficus negronne (fig). The Putterer

Rosemary is for Remembrance and A Good Gardener Should Always Remember to Do No Harm

The scent of rosemary was all about me yesterday when I came in from the garden. I have a nice size bush of rosemary in my front bed; and its trunk is a gnarly, tough woody fiber.

I thought I might trim it a little because there was a good bit of dead wood massed underneath its greenery. But since I didn't have the right tool for the task, I ended up wrestling with it, hacking at it with my Felcos. Now, I'm feeling kind of bad about the whole thing, because I left a rather inelegant slash at its base.

With some of the cut sprigs, I fashioned an amulet and hung it on a shepherd's hook, where it is presently lording over the back garden with a rather mystical touch of elegance. Rosemary is a symbol of devotion and fidelity and good luck in the new year.

Then, just in case I did more damage to my rosemary bush than I intended, I was over at Behnkes and I saw a pot of the herb and tossed it into my basket of purchases. It will reside with my winter indoor plants and get transplanted later this spring. Right now, though, I put it on Patsy's desk because she's studying for her finals and rosemary is supposed to help improve memory. "Here's rosemary for remembrance," I told her. Patsy was delighted by the gift and tells me that it's working.

I have a new companion in my garden library. It's a book by Ellen Dugan, who is not only a master gardener, but also a witch. (A good witch, not a bad witch.) Dugan's Garden Witch's Herbal has me convinced that I too might be harboring an inner witchyness. Of course everything I ever knew about witches could fit into a 30-minute episode of one of Daren and Samatha Stephens' bewitching escapades. But Dugan's green magick (which she mysteriously spells with a K and doesn't say why) is alluring. There is a certain affinity between paganism and that earthy spirituality that we gardeners encounter every time we enter into the green, glorious realms that we create. A witch, Dugan says, carries information between the natural world and the human world, making a bridge between the two to bring "hope, peace, healing and positive energy to each world." And so, too, does the gardener.

In my garden, I'm learning the earth-centered lessons taught to me by the plants and the herbs and the trees. And mother rosemary now bearing her wicked gash (which will now be open to all the harsh elements of the late winter) has reminded me that a good practitioner, first does no harm. Having committed the crime, however I will now borrow from Dugan's teachings and conjure up a spell to heal my dear old plant, which Dugan tells me is associated in the witches' world with love and health. So an old English verse now becomes my incantation:

Rosemary is for remembrance
Between us daie and nighte,
Wishing that I may alwaies have
You present in my sight.

Snow Days and An Anniversary

Happy First Birthday Garden Putter. Birthdays and anniversaries are an easy thing. They come once a year, whether you want them to or not. But the anniversary of a project such as a blog and the commitment to maintain it, write in it and supply it with pictures and updates, that's rather an accomplishment.

So, I'll take a few bows.

Today, the Putterer was circumspect; having participated in a robust Friday night bacchanal, she was feeling a need for a little quiet.

It was rather balmy compared to the bitter cold of the past few weeks. The snow almost melted today, but the ground remained frozen solid. I went out to get some fresh air and clean up after the messy birds who seem to throw six sunflower seeds on the ground for everyone they eat from the feeder. But the futility of trying to accomplish much in the way of gardening in a cold barren landscape eventually got the better of me and so I settled into my chair to just sit. It felt good. The Putterer

Tree Hugger

That thou, light winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
John Keats

I read recently that if you wrapped your arms around a tree and embraced it, you should not be surprised at all to sense within the mighty trunk a kind of pulsing, not unlike that of a heartbeat. It is in fact the life blood of the tree--its sap--rushing heartily within the towering structure, and circulating from branch to branch, and from leaf to leaf.

The term, "tree hugger," so often a pejorative, gives me pause, for otherwise, I might run out this very afternoon to see if I could in fact detect the "heartbeat" of my favorite tree.

Trees made an impression this past week. I was off from work and so had just a bit more space within my harried brain for pondering other matters. And so with the bitter cold of winter and no garden to tend to, I went for a walk in my park, Sligo Creek. Just as Emerson predicted, a "woodland walk" did prove to be a salve to my "worst wounds."

Quickly shedding office angst, the naturalist in me leaped to attention when for the first time in all the years that I have walked this same path, I suddenly noticed a separate grove of unique trees within the greater woods. In the absence of leaves in the forest canopy, their distinct smooth-skinned, gray-white bark stood out vividly in the sunlight and I saw them as if they had just sprung newly from the ground. It was an army of American Beech trees. They marched down the ridge from the apartment buildings above the stream and advanced across the creek bed before ascending the opposite ridge. (The one above, I snapped with my cell phone camera. Its branches seem to be lovingly embracing the tree alongside it, a tree hugger tree?)

Now, I must confess that when it comes to trees I am as ignorant as they come. A tree is a tree is a tree. And I have looked at them all my life without seeing any distinction. But a new friend, Donald Culross Peattie (1898-1964), a naturalist and a botanist, who studied French poetry before training his attentions on American plant life, is my mentor.

A 2007 reissue of his 1948 field guide, A Natural History of North American Trees, is quickly looking careworn and well-used in my possession. Like any of my compulsions, I've made trees a hot topic around the Lieberman household, and having found an online guide to the trees of Sligo Creek Park, I've attached a mass of stickies to the pages of the Peattie guide to cross reference what is available locally with what is available within the book's pages.

The Beech Tree, which Peattie says is "all that we want a tree to be," has a vast range across North America, from Nova Scotia in the north, to Florida and Texas in the south, and west as far as Oklahoma. "The elegant clear gray of the bark extends from the trunk to the main mighty boughs, then to the hundreds of branches, and out to the thousands of branchlets. So that when the tree stands naked in winter it seems to shine through the forest almost white in contrast."

And that was what caught my attention on my winter woodland walk.

I am educating myself now on the trees and from my garden chair, I newly recognize in my view a magnificent American Beech tree in the grove behind my neighbors' houses. Almost luminescent, it stands in stark contrast to the more slender tulip poplars, and the towering oaks and the diminutive holly and pines in our neighborhood forest.

And that is the very tree that I wish to hug. Sadly, those neighbors are not my "bestest" of friends so I'm quite certain that if they caught me in flagrante dilecto with their tree they might call the police. So instead to pay homage to my new friend, I might sneak down there and slip it a small gift. I'll lay at its base a bundle of rosemary, perhaps. And then I'll give it a quick hug. The Putterer