An Early Autumn Thud

Life can stop mid-flight.

I hear it in the middle of my fall garden chores. Thud. I swerve off course in the direction of the sound and find a goldfinch below a window. Lifeless. I hold him in my gloved hand and admire his fall conversion: his bright yellow feathers have turned a subtle olive green. This will help him blend in this winter, but nothing can help him navigate all these windows.

I’d better return him to the place he landed and check back later. He might recover. You never know. One spring a robin hit a garage window and when I came back it was gone. Was it stunned and able to resume flight? Or did a neighborhood cat find it before it could resume its route? I still feel guilty about our outdoor cat, Van Gogh, menacing the bird population for a decade.

So much of human behavior imperils birds, mine included.

Because we wanted a house with lots of light and wanted to feel connected to the outdoors, we found a house with 40 windows. The birds find it too, and when they hit the windows in mid-flight we cringe. I’ve tried all kinds of window decoys, but nothing works 100 percent of the time. I should have considered the birds’ needs in my home search.

Our house was built in 1864, when Abraham Lincoln was president. I wonder how many birds have hit these windows since Lincoln was in office.

After one of the many heavy rains last summer, I came upon a flock of goldfinches bathing in a large puddle. A single goldfinch is a wonder – the flock (called a “charm”) was dazzling as the birds darted and flitted everywhere.

I remember the words of a childhood bully – Karen Johnson – who called me “birdbrain.” The more I learn about the intelligence of birds, the more I realize that this was a compliment. Thank you, Karen Johnson, wherever you are.

A poem comes to mind: it was about a deer at the edge of a road – a swerve, a collision. The last line of the poem, “I thought hard for us all – my only swerving – ” 

Life can stop with a thud.

I check back and the goldfinch is being ferried by Charon over the River Styx to the bird underworld. I bury him under the Joe Pye Weed swaying in the autumn light. “My only swerving.”

Traveling through the Dark
by William E. Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; 
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, 
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—, 
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Dislodged

As I trim the ragged hellebores and search for the barrenwort (Epimedium), I find something I didn't expect. Something uninvited. A memory.

I try and make sense of the image: My father has my mother pinned to the floor; his hands around her throat. My mother gasps for air and struggles to break his grip. I run to my father and try and pull him off her, yelling, “No, Dad!”

Ah, there are the two barrenworts I planted last fall. They made it through the winter. I gave them plenty of cover, a thick blanket of straw, but worried they wouldn’t survive.

The image returns: My dad falls back on his haunches and buries his face in his hands. He sobs. My mother gulps a breath, scrambles to her feet and runs.

My conscious mind takes over and tries to make sense of this senseless image. Where does it come from? Why is it visiting me today? I call my mother and share these images with her, and she recounts the incident. All her details match mine. Then she says, “Thank you for saving my life.”

In the card catalogue of my mind, I must have filed that memory away for 56 years. Did the flow I feel in the garden today dislodge that memory?

When I wrote advertising copy for a living, I entered a state of creative flow. But it wasn’t automatic. It happened only after I crammed my subconscious with client research, sat in on focus groups, interviewed customers and stormed my little brains out. When I finally sat down to write, I could inhabit the world the client wanted to create for the customer. I would become untethered from time and lose myself.

I first experienced flow in art classes in college in the printmaking studio. The smell of India ink, the feel of wet paper, the image emerging as paper and plate rolled off the press. I wanted to live in that state of flow forever. Later, I knew how lucky I was to have a creative profession that conferred that state of flow.

Now I’m in the flow in the garden, where mind and body are one. I see, touch, and often taste many things. It’s the opposite of the way I lived as a child: on autopilot. I had little awareness of my surroundings or myself. I tried to rescue my mother and my younger siblings from my father’s drunken rages. The futility of it all overwhelmed me. I was no match for the disease that claimed him.

Maybe being a caregiver again has awakened this memory? I know I’m no match for dementia either.

The subconscious works in astonishing ways: it records, dislodges, re-orders, and bears witness. It flows through me. And like the air after a good thunderstorm – it also calms my trauma.

I sink my hands into the soil, draw in the smell of earth and turn my face to the sun. Blue sky greets me, and nothing can disturb me.

 Learn how gardening heals trauma:
https://tinyurl.com/5n967wjc

https://tinyurl.com/2wp5ph7f

Left Behind

Not riches, not fame (well, maybe infamy from his homemade moonshine and bootlegging days), not acres of farmland, no gilded possessions . . .

 No, what my ancestors left behind was a garden.

This winter I have been visiting my grandmother’s garden, on the great plains of Minnesota, in my mind. I nap in her ancient asparagus patch, pick apples from one of her many trees, gorge on raspberries, climb her mulberry tree. Hers was a garden that had to feed eight people–her days decreed by what was ripe and needed to be harvested and canned. Her rhythms were those of soil, sun and rain. Her focus: peas and beans and all manner of growing things, children included.

Her garden fed me. She usually ended a visit by handing me a jar of dill or watermelon pickles, or a bottle of her homemade dandelion or rhubarb wine. On forty-degree-below-zero days (yes, you read that right: -40 degrees), I’ve known the thrill of biting into her crunchy dill pickles. A miracle in a jar.

She and my grandfather created the next generation of gardeners. All six of her children are gardeners and many of her grandchildren, too. Generous with her knowledge, she shared what she knew with anyone.

What she left behind tells you everything about my grandmother. 

When she and my grandfather died and the house and land were sold, the new owner leveled most of that garden. After I got over the shock of its destruction, I wondered: does it matter if we create a garden that is destined to be destroyed?

I like to think a raspberry shoot or two found a way to survive, but …

I know this: she left behind generations of gardeners and I’m still trying to perfect her watermelon pickles.

 Learn the many benefits of gardening.

https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/dig-into-the-benefits-of-gardening

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/gardening-may-bring-a-harvest-of-health-benefits

Typos & Working the Soil

Writer’s nightmare: a typo. After countless proofreading it still happens. I find it hard to proof my own writing. Somehow, I manage to see what I want to see (in writing and in life) and miss my errors.

Twenty years ago, when I took the UConn Master Gardener class, I reviewed the section on “How to Grow Rhubarb” and it said: “Plant early in the spring as soon as the soul can be worked.” Hmm, that’s a good one, but maybe it isn’t a typo? Maybe this was a master gardener class and a spiritual lesson as well?

My friend Adrian, who missed her calling as a proofreader, can spot a typo anywhere. Years ago, we went to an art opening and as she read the prominently displayed artist’s statement, she motioned me over and whispered: “Read sentence one in paragraph three.” It read, “I have displayed my work at many pubic galleries.” What a difference one little dropped consonant can make, eh? “Should we mention something to the artist?” I asked her. “No, don’t say a word.”

I’ve never been to a pubic gallery, but, I want to remain open to new experiences in and out of the garden.

Today the garden is shrouded in haze from the Quebec wildfires. But as soon as the air clears, I’ll follow the advice to “work the soul.”

Most days I do just that.

Companion Plantings

Some people are pathologically opposed to gardening alone. For them, it’s a group activity. Others are solitary planters and weeders. But we are never alone in the garden.

We are always being watched: A robin waits for a worm as I turn the soil. He probably figures, why should I do all the work when I can get this little old lady to do the heavy lifting and unearth a worm? A gregarious catbird comes within a few feet of where I’m weeding but decides he or she would prefer a dip in the nearby birdbath.

For 12 years I gardened with our beloved cat Van Gogh – a stray who survived on his unparalleled hunting ability. He was a paradox: a lethal hunter by day and a love bucket by night when we brought him in. He mainly supervised my garden chores. He would find me in the garden and plop at my feet and oversee whatever I was doing – with one eye open. When I would ascend a ladder to hack back the hydrangea that was smothering the house, he would come up the ladder too. We were inseparable.

I miss him, but I’m aware that without him the backyard is teeming with birds. I notice a pair of catbirds and their offspring. That’s something I would never have seen when Van Gogh prowled his domain. The word is out in the bird world that Van Gogh is no more. Two Carolina wren families have stuffed their swaying nurseries full of sticks – those little birds with such large songs sing above our patio daily. Take a listen.

https://shriekoftheweek.substack.com/p/shriek-of-the-week-wren-a5d

And it’s not just the birds that are back.

There are more chipmunks in the stone wall and more rabbits in the garden. Our neighbor to the north was overrun with chipmunks one year and asked if I could send “Killer” (aka Van Gogh) over. He kept the chipmunks in check. Right now, there’s a chipmunk orgy going on in the stone walls and in the neighborhood.

It’s a mixed bag, but it’s a brave new world in our backyard – one that birds rule. I’m blessed to have plenty of companions.

Read “Why Birds and their songs are good for our mental health.”

https://tinyurl.com/4t88644n

Think Like a Pollinator

We have a lot to learn about what pollinators like and need. We’ve been guessing, and like that Norwegian uncle who turned out to hate lutefisk, we shouldn’t assume that pollinators like what we like.

You may think that a new petunia will draw in bees or hummingbirds, but there’s a good chance that nectar – essential for pollinators – is no longer in this new petunia. While the petunia may be a commercial success because it was bred to draw you in, it does not draw in pollinators. Some of the newer pansies have no nectar either.

Pollinators such as bees (and let’s not forget ants, birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps and small mammals) need a smorgasbord of colors and scents and petal shapes that open from early spring through fall.

In short, they need the right match. Imagine your garden as a match.com for pollinators.

Native plants attract pollinators and serve as hosts for the larvae of pollinators. Think milkweed for monarchs. Natives also need less water, but they take time to grow. Be patient, fellow gardener.

 Native plant materials specialist Stephanie Frischie at the Xerces Society says, “Bees are not generalists, they are much more narrow-minded.”

Pollinators need nectar from spring to fall. Consider spring bulbs like crocus and perennials like hellebores to late fall-blooming vegetables, asters, and monkshood. I mix annuals with perennials: lantanas, zinnias, cosmos, bee balm, catmint, salvias, butterfly weed, and milkweeds are just a few in my garden. Most pollinators prefer sun, but some will venture into shady areas and visit my lamium. And let’s not forget native wildflowers, flowering trees and shrubs.

Shun pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. They can kill pollinators.

Make the stop worthwhile for pollinators. I plant clumps rather than having one plant here and one plant there. This shortens a pollinator’s trek from plant to plant. And in between planting clumps, I leave space where pollinators can live and create more pollinators. They need water – I have multiple birdbaths – and some leaf litter or garden waste for nesting materials. Many bees burrow underground and need bare ground or areas that are free of mulch.  Don’t over-mulch every square inch of your garden. (Revisit an older essay “Mulch Madness”).

If you create an abundant stop, pollinators will stay. Heck, they may forage forever.

As you head to your local nursery or garden center, shun those big puffy flowers, and choose natives. Stop and think: do I have the plants with the nectar a pollinator needs from spring to late fall?

If we gardeners demand this, growers will catch on.

As a dear email correspondent wrote, “The pollinators need all the help we can give them.”

 More about pollinators and the plants they love:

https://xerces.org/sites/default/files/2018-05/17-051_03_XercesSoc_PollinatorPlants_Northeast-Region_web-3page.pdf

 https://www.pollinator.org/programs

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230222-the-beautiful-flowers-that-bees-cant-use

Déjà Vu

Now is the time to dream big. And pulmonarias, primulas and toad lilies invade my winter dreams. As I finish my catalog order, my husband has a request, “Don’t forget to plant that purple flower that our neighbor’s cat is crazy about.” Details were never his strength, but understatement is. A recent diagnosis explains his memory challenges. I add ‘Six Hills Giant’ nepeta (a.k.a. catnip) to my order.

I have memory challenges of my own; I feel like I had this dream before. I could have sworn I ordered the same plants years ago and planted them among the hellebores. I fill in the garden order form with this pesky feeling that I’ve done this all before.

Then I remember. I did do all this before. All these plants did well in the shade garden for a few seasons, but then one spring they disappeared. What happened to them? Too wet? Should I be concerned about my memory? Or should I just go with this new feeling: I can’t wait to see the beautiful fuzzy gray leaves of the pulmonaria ‘Twinkle Toes’ when it arrives at my door. I get to fall in love all over again.

Is the beauty of a plant any less if we no longer remember its name? Last summer my husband asked, “What’s that big lime-green plant growing on the patio?” My answer: “I have no idea.” Thank God for apps that identify plants – I use them more than ever. I take a photo and drag it into Pl@nt.Net and violà – it’s Japanese spikenard – ‘Aralia Sun King.’

These plant apps help me identify diseases, too.

As I pass the witch hazel in bloom with my husband in hand, he wonders what is this bush in bloom. To live with someone who is losing his memory is a “Perpetual Spring.”

And gardens are a place for many things: to dream, to grieve, to remember, to take in the aroma of the earth; to feel the sun on your face when memories and words no longer arrive with Spring.

 In Perpetual Spring by Amy Gerstler

Gardens are also good places
to sulk. You pass beds of
spiky voodoo lilies   
and trip over the roots   
of a sweet gum tree,   
in search of medieval   
plants whose leaves,   
when they drop off   
turn into birds
if they fall on land,
and colored carp if they   
plop into water. 

Suddenly the archetypal   
human desire for peace   
with every other species   
wells up in you. The lion   
and the lamb cuddling up.
The snake and the snail, kissing.
Even the prick of the thistle,   
queen of the weeds, revives   
your secret belief
in perpetual spring,
your faith that for every hurt   
there is a leaf to cure it.

 Amy Gerstler, “In Perpetual Spring” from Bitter Angel (New York: North Point Press, 1990). Copyright © 1990 by Amy Gerstler.

Reformed Raker

All I see are leaves: they hug the hellebores, they swirl at the back door, they’re mounded around the new patch of Agastache. This winter’s “snow drought” in the Northeast has brought revelations. The leaf litter reminds me of my former bad habit and my new status. I proudly proclaim that I am a reformed raker.

There is so much life in January under the leaf cover: insects, amphibians, mammals – you name it.

I’ll admit that raking and leaf blowing was a hard habit to break. Here in New England,  autumn is accompanied by the incessant noise of leaf blowers. Doesn’t anyone own a rake anymore? Trucks and their crews daily cart off loads of leaves to landfills. I have no excuse except that the peer pressure is intense. A nearby neighbor blew leaves for eight hours last November. There wasn’t a leaf in sight in her yard and nowhere for a single critter to take cover.

The maples create such a heavy carpet of leaves on top of the perennial beds that I did a light rake. But then I left the leaves and invited in earthworms, spiders, salamanders, frogs – any critter that wanted to slumber undercover. I feel smug feeding the soil and sparing our clogged landfills.

I can see the larger mammals in the back yard – the fox crossing through the leaves – but there’s a lot of life I don’t see. Chipmunks hibernate in the stone walls in dens lined with leaves, milkweed, and dried seed heads. Amphibians burrow under leaf litter to maintain their moisture levels. Frogs dig under the leaves in the muddy areas, while turtles need the ground cover, too. I take comfort knowing they all slumber beneath me.

And below the soil’s surface, small insects live under a blanket of leaves in cocoons. Come spring they’ll emerge as adults.

What’s more, I’m always working to find more space in our backyard to compost leaves, but space is tight in this New England mill town. And I have found that these Connecticut Nutmeggers frown on composting your leaves on their property.

It took time, but I finally get it. This is what mother nature intended. And I intend to work with her and not against her.

Anyone want to buy a used Ryobi leaf blower?

Garden Small Talk: Even Kings Do It

I reconnected with a long-ago friend who confessed that she talks to herself while gardening. She doesn’t do this anywhere else – only in the garden. I’ve seen photos of her garden, and her plants must find her as insightful and interesting as I do. She has a lot to say, and both she and her plants are thriving.

 England’s new King Charles III, way back when he was Prince Charles, shared his gardening habits in an interview: “I just come and talk to the plants, really. Very important to talk to them; they respond.”

If it’s good enough for King Charles III, why not give it a go, or have a go, as the Brits say. You both might benefit. It’s free and it hurts no one. And you can’t say that about many things these days.

Once considered loony, science backs his royal habit. Don’t believe me? Would the Royal Horticultural Society lie? In a small study, they found that the vibration of the human voice turns on two genetic growth boosters, while the carbon dioxide from the human voice speeds photosynthesis.

The theory that plants benefit from the human voice began in 1848 when Gustav Fechner published Nanna (Soul-Life of Plants). But cull cyberspace and you’ll find a researcher and skeptic at Penn State. This scientist doubts that the human voice could produce enough carbon dioxide to stimulate growth.

You would have to talk a lot, which I’m fully capable of doing. He also found that while it’s true that vibrations of the human voice are like wind, and plants in windy climates produce a substance that does make them shorter and sturdier, you would have to be a long-winded talker. Literally. We’re talking all day and full of hot air. (I’ve asked my husband to withhold comment on my abilities in this last sentence.)

We are different in the garden. Calmer. Nature allows us to be our better selves. I sing in the garden. I also sing in the shower, but I really belt out those old Lutheran hymns in the garden. My Lutheran friends have advised me that you don’t belt out hymns, you belt out barroom songs. Okay, but I do fill my lungs, tip my head back and sing loudly. My theory: there is nothing to distract me. No electronic devices, no husband in need of finding a lost item; my mind is free to remember and sing:

            I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear… 

The only distractions in the garden are the ones I create. I do interrupt myself. I once heard my husband describe how easy it is to distract me: “Just dangle a piece of string in front of her.”

Bottom line: I don’t know if plants benefit from my speaking to them. I know I do. I know they are listening.

Learn about a small research study from the Royal Horticultural Society. 

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/info/should-you-talk-to-your-plants.htm 

https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/probing-question-does-talking-plants-help-them-grow/

How to Talk to a Plant: What Every Sedum Longs to Hear

“Darling, Sedum Autumn Joy,” you are a bit leggier this year than last, but no less lovely.”

Never chastise your sedums if they don’t have the shape you desire. Take full responsibility for not pinching them back earlier in the spring. After all, this is a cooperative arrangement. You pinch; they grow thicker and bushier.

On to a conversation with your Agastache. It’s such a flexible plant that you can pronounce its name any way you want. Here’s one variation. And another. That tall, withered plant before you is your Agastache “Tutti Frutti,” about to bite the dust despite its drought-tolerant abilities. Address it thus:

 “Thank you for your short (one season) and somewhat beautiful life. Farewell, I must move on to Agastache “blue fortune.” It will withstand our New England winters better. No hard feelings, love.” Onward to my roses.

 “Dear geriatric rose ‘New Dawn,’ what is it you crave?” A breakfast of Espoma Rose-Tone 4-3-2? Coming right up.”

 See, there’s nothing to it. Don’t be shy. If Joe Pye weed swaying in the autumn breeze inspires you to sing, go for it. You sing off-key? Who cares? The singing will do you both good.

 How do you talk to a plant? Lovingly. Tenderly. The same way you talk to family members, friends and strangers at the airport. We’re all in this together – every living thing.

Your Iris Moment: The Garden in Uncertain Times

Gardens in war offer sustenance and solidarity. Defiance and subversion. While gardens and fields in Ukraine become bombsites and graveyards and farmers cannot plant or live, we garden through pandemic and war to replenish body and soul.

 A famous story of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s gardens in England shows Leonard's defiance. As WWII drew near, Virginia called for him to come inside to listen to "the lunatic" Hitler on the radio. Leonard shouted back:

“I shan’t come. I am planting iris, and they will be flowering long after he is dead.”

Gardeners today refer to this as an “Iris moment.”

Food supplies felt the pressure of WWI and WWII. “War gardens,” as they were called in WWI, and “victory gardens” in WWII were supposed to take the strain off the dwindling food supply and boost morale. It was a way for the collective community to work together for the common good for “community and country.” Everyone had more than skin in the game – they had zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, corn, peas, green beans, raspberries, blueberries and anything they could grow.

Backyards, churchyards, parks and playgrounds in the United States – and around the world – were full of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Their bounty supplemented rationing stamps or cards. These gardens became a source of pride and a way for anyone to contribute to the war effort. And gardeners got creative. One couple in England turned a bombsite into a garden.

Gardeners swapped seeds and news about their loved ones’ whereabouts and well-being.

Posters promoting the Victory Garden were everywhere. In the U.S., a public service advertising campaign created by the National War Garden Commission encouraged everyone to do their part. Posters, magazine ads and newsreels touted the success of these local “victory gardens” with humor and pride. One poster showed a young boy with a hoe chasing fruits and vegetables over a hill. The headline: War Gardens Over the Hill – The Seeds of Victory Insure the Fruits of Peace.

This public service campaign also offered educational booklets and seeds. In today’s cluttered cyber market, with a clickbait rate of 10-15% considered successful, this public service campaign was record-breaking. Half of all households in America had a victory garden. And by the time the war ended in 1945, Americans had grown about eight million tons of food. That’s a lot of food.

 My mother, born in 1936 in a small farming community in Minnesota, remembers collecting milkweed pods for the war effort – the silk was used in parachutes. And when she went to the movies, a newsreel promoted victory gardens.

 And the war effort did something else.

It brought together diverse groups: government agencies, businesses, schools, churches. Corporate America played their part, too. Those victory gardens were underwritten by American companies that offered seeds with the purchase of their products. Sure, corporations got tax breaks and earned profits from their efforts, but their contribution added to the collective solidarity of a nation. My mother remembers the feeling that “everyone wanted to do their part and we were all in this together.”

 For some, gardening is a subversive act: a way to thwart your dependence on large corporate farming. The idea being that every tomato you grow makes you less dependent on “big Agra,” as a fellow gardener told me. A close neighbor raises chickens in the center of town. Are they subversive chickens?

Ukraine, breadbasket of Europe, supplies wheat, corn and sunflowers. As fields lie fallow, who will pick up the slack?

My ancestors, who fled present-day Ukraine, cultivated the winter wheat that fed Russia. But when Russia revoked their promises, they were forced to leave because of “The Seeds of a Broken Promise.” My ancestors had their “Iris moment.” What will be our collective “iris moment”?

The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine, and Ukrainian soldiers are being offered sunflower seeds so that when they die, sunflowers will sprout where they fall. Ukrainians know how to create solidarity and defiance in the darkness.

 I intend to plant a lot of sunflowers. Let’s call it my “sunflower moment.”

 Learn more about WWII Victory Gardens at the National Museum of American History https://gardens.si.edu/gardens/victory-garden/

The Seeds of a Broken Promise

The seeds my Mennonite ancestors brought from Russia changed America.

Maybe my ancestor’s seeds will join the corn seeds from the Cherokee nation, or seeds rescued from the Syrian civil war? They’re all stored at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. There’s room for 4.5 million seeds. Maybe they have room for my ancestor’s seeds?

Long before my ancestors knew the word biodiversity, they grew crops that were diverse. Their seeds offer more productive crop varieties—and they’re essential to farmers who must grow more on a warming planet.

My ancestors were asked to grow more under difficult conditions. First in Russia, and then in the United States.

When they left Russia for the Great Plains, they carried an insurance policy. In trunks, sewn into the hems of their clothing, and stuffed in their pockets—seeds.

The wheat seeds my Russian ancestors brought with them changed the Midwest. They perfected and cultivated a variety of spring and winter wheat in Russia that grew well on the Great Plains. It grew so well that it turned Kansas into the world’s leading wheat producer.

 But it started with a broken promise.

 Around 1762, my ancestors living in Germany accepted an invitation from Catherine the Great of Russia. They were asked to teach farming practices and turn poor land into crops to feed her growing masses. In exchange she promised these persecuted and pacifist German Mennonites religious freedom and exemption from military service. The Falk family made the long trek from Germany down to the Dnieper River, not far from the Black Sea in Russia. Disappointment followed. After draining the swamps and perfecting a new variety of wheat that brought record harvests, all promises were revoked.

Not ones to waste time over broken promises, they sent scouts to America to find a new home. And in the 1870s, America sent fliers to Russia to lure these famed farmers to new Midwestern territories. It was a two-way, transcontinental public relations campaign funded by the largest landholders, the railroads. My ancestors-built trunks for their belongs and they left Russia. But only after loading up with seeds of all kinds: mulberry, Russian olive, vegetables and herbs, watermelon, dill, summer savory, sorrel and wheat.

They arrived in planting season ready to plant. After the locals gawked at these “Rooshians,” they gawked at the waves of wheat that covered Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Minnesota, where my ancestors ultimately settled. These “Rooshians” had turned the Great Plains into the breadbasket. The granary of the world.

Wherever the Russian Mennonites went, they worked and worshiped hard. They were highly literate, peaceful and frugal, and they were known to break into song freely. One local reporter observed, “One of the pleasing features of the Russian presence in our town, is their singing. All have good voices. And none have any hesitancy in displaying their vocal accomplishments.”

And they stayed through droughts, depression, and swarms of grasshoppers.

I was swapping family stories with my uncle, and he told me he rescued a small seed packet from my grandparent’s belongings after they died. He believes this packet came from his Russian grandparents. Written on the outside are three German words: von Kleine Weiss – “from small white.” Are these seeds from a small white melon? Small  

My recent family research has introduced me to ancestors I’ve wondered about. Farther north, my Norwegian ancestors were busy too. I have yet to discover what they were doing. Raping and pillaging has been suggested. I’m still working on that branch of the family.

Lately I’ve been conferring with these Russian and Norwegian ancestors I never knew. If my uncle sends those small white seeds to the seed vault, my two-family trees will unite. I wonder what those “little white ones” will become? Juicy little white melons? Maybe the next generation will know, but I can’t stop thinking about them and salvaging seeds of my own.

Hard pressed by the pandemic, pestilence, rising temperatures and sea levels, stronger storms, wars, and world’s largest number of people on the move, what we leave behind and what we save matters.

There are so many seeds to save, and no time to waste.

Learn more about the Svalbard Seed Vault buried deep in Norway’s permafrost.

Trailblazers in Trousers

I was still cutting roses shortly before Thanksgiving because November’s higher-than-average temperatures gave us a longer-than-usual growing season. When cooler temperatures finally arrived, a discerning neighbor commented, “You have pants on for the first time since last spring!”

I have the freedom to garden clad as I like—and I like to wear shorts or a skirt. Hard as it is for my granddaughters to believe, there was a time when a woman could be arrested for wearing pants.

In 1938, a kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles arrived in court to testify in a burglary case and ended up in jail. All for wearing slacks. Before Helen Hulick could give her testimony, the judge ordered her to go home and come back to his court “properly attired.” As in a dress. Hulick had other ideas. She returned to court in slacks. The judge warned her that she could be jailed if she did not comply. She returned to court again attired in slacks, but with an accessory—her attorney.

Back at my grandparent’s home in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, women were going about their business raising food and children. Mountain Lake was a tight-knit community formed when Mennonites emigrated from Russia. In their new home, these Mennonites clung to each other and their religious customs. The older women still wore bonnets. Women were not allowed to drink, smoke, dance, go to movies or wear their hair short. And no slacks, for sure.

My grandmother, Hilda Falk, was an outsider. She arrived in Mountain Lake during the Depression with a nursing diploma signed by William and Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. She worked at Mountain Lake’s first hospital, and she wasn’t one to let customs hamper her knowledge and common sense. She wore slacks. But to wear them, she had to make them. That’s how uncommon they were.

But there’s more.

My grandmother made slacks for other women too. A nearby neighbor, Linda Shriock, gardened on the busy main street in her dress, and the prairie breezes lifted that dress most days. The locals gossiped and laughed at Linda’s lifted dress. My grandmother had other ideas. She sized up her neighbor and sewed her a pair of slacks.

My mother still remembers Linda Shriock’s defiant words, “Mrs. Falk made me slacks and I intend to wear them.” And she did. Gardening in slacks until the end of her days.

Here’s to the Helen Hulicks, Hilda Falks and Linda Shrioks. They prevailed. They were the pioneers of pants: trailblazers in trousers.

Learn more about Helen Hulick’s day in court and her trailblazing career in education.

He Chose Us: Part Two

What do you call an eccentric, fiery orange cat with a chink in one ear? Van Gogh. What else? On his first trip to the vet, as she examined him, she turned to us and said, “Wow, he’s purring.” The vet, who also turned out to be Dutch, thought he was remarkably large, and said that while all cats have different personalities, he was “a great cat.”

And he lived up to that every day.

He mastered our patterns in no time—meeting us at the driveway when we returned from our daily swims, joining us for drinks on the patio at 5:00 p.m. While the vet suggested he remain an indoor cat, he had other ideas. Since we coexisted with bobcat, fox and coyote, we decided to bring him in at night. Every night, he came when called. A devoted homebody, he kept time better than we did. Inside he was just as discerning; even though we often could not remember which cupboard held the tuna, he knew. He would sit next to the correct cupboard to remind us. And wait.

His demands were few—please don’t disrupt my nap and bath times. When workmen arrived, he would slip a paw under a lower kitchen cupboard, pull it open and dive to the deepest, darkest corner out of reach. “Hey what was that?” the workmen would ask as the cupboard door slammed shut. If he saw us wheel out our suitcase before a trip, or his cat carrier before a vet visit, he would dive into the cupboard quicker than we could grab him. On those occasions, we’d lash the cupboard shut with rubber bands around the doorknobs. Luckily, he didn’t hold a grudge, and was quick to forgive.

He hunted everything. The birds bothered me the most. I decided to put a collar with a bell on him to at least give the birds a warning, but he always returned home with no collar. We should have named him Houdini. After three collars, I gave up. The garden was littered with collars.

Van Gogh’s methods and manner of stalking his prey were both distressing and astounding. He would corner full-grown rabbits on the patio, patrol the stone wall for chipmunks from above so they couldn’t see him, and spring into the air when anything flew by. He was so diligent at keeping the chipmunk population in the neighborhood under control that one spring, following a chipmunk orgy, a neighbor asked; “Could you please send Killer over?”

Every morning when I would let him out, he would head up the back steps above the stone wall and survey his vast territory. One morning I saw him hauling his 16 pounds up an eight-foot trellis after a newly fledged robin. I intervened. If a hummingbird visited the bee balm, he’d leap into the air and attempt a takedown. Once, he followed me inside to the basement and pounced on a cricket. By the way, crickets are crunchy.

The week before he became ill, a friend warned me that his personality would change. But it never did. Right up to the end he lifted his head for one last chin rub. We dutifully complied. After all, he chose us, and we will always be grateful.

He Chose Us: Part One

Word must have spread fast.

That explains the queue of catbirds at the birdbath, and the cheeky chipmunks darting in and out of the stone wall and sunning on the top stone with abandon.

Van Gogh, our beloved cat, is dead.

For a decade, he was my constant garden companion, supervising every move. Then he’d head indoors to oversee the domestic chores. The ground still bears the impressions of his favorite napping spots: among the catmint, under the yew hedge, his favorite sunny corner on the patio. Whenever I see the catmint fluttering, I still expect to see him emerge.

He could find an afternoon shaft of light and enjoy its warmth while multitasking. He’d nap and supervise my planting with one eye open. Such were his talents.

We didn’t go looking for a cat.

But 10 Januarys ago, we saw a large orange-and-white cat eating a cardinal beneath our bird feeder. Then we saw him again. And again. We called our nearest neighbor to find out if they had seen him. “We don’t see him. We don’t want to see him. We already have two cats.” As I topped off the bird feeder daily, he was waiting. It was a brutal winter. I went online to learn how to build an outdoor shelter, we put out cans of tuna during the day, talked to him, tried to get close. Every night he disappeared. But he came back every day.

Over the next weeks, we could see that this cat was clearly starving, but too afraid to let us get close. We put his food in the backyard, and we backed off several feet. Every day we backed off less. After many days my husband stayed right by his food bowl and he ate with him standing there. My husband wondered what would happen if he tried to pet him? Would he run? Attack? He was shocked when he just purred. After that, when he would see my husband at his computer through the office window, he’d jump up on the windowsill and demand that he come out and play. He was better at getting affection than most people I know. I decided to let him in the house. He clawed wildly at the door to get back out.

But he came back in. Eventually. We now owned a cat.

Feeding the Soul Through Smell

If I had two loaves of bread,
I would sell one and buy hyacinths,
for they would feed my soul.
(Mohammed)

The hyacinths are in bloom. My neighbor, Diane, whose intelligence is matched by her honesty, admired them, and so I offered to cut some for her to take home. “No thanks. They smell better outside than inside,” she said.

Fragrance outdoors can be overpowering indoors. Illustration: one winter I decided to fill a large bowl with paperwhite narcissus bulbs and force them to bloom. When I shared this with my non-gardening friends, they accused me of being violent. “How the heck is that violent,” I asked. “You’re forcing them,” they said. We’ll have a lesson on forcing bulbs another time.

Where was I?

Back to that bowl of narcissus on the table. Next to the couch. One night I went to bed at my usual time and my husband stayed up until his usual time. After midnight, he woke me and said, “I smell burnt rubber in the living room, and it’s making me sick.” I followed him downstairs, and began checking outlets, extension cords, smoke alarms, and recently burned candles. My nose led me to the source: the paperwhite narcissus, now in full bloom. I asked him to stick his nose in the blossoms and inhale. He made a retching sound as he grabbed his sides.

I gently moved the retching husband aside, grabbed the bowl and placed the narcissus outside. The husband went back to reruns of Gunsmoke – I went back to bed.

Every new scent creates a deep-rooted connection with the present or resurrects a memory. Scent: a portal to the past. Buried deep in our subconscious, scent converts present to past – and returns lost loves.

Almonds & Gasoline
My grandmother kept a bottle of Jergens lotion under her kitchen sink, and every night after washing the supper dishes, she would apply Jergens to her hands and arms. That distinct almond scent brings her back. To conjure up my grandfather, I head to the nearest gas station. He dispensed gas and stories for 60 years on the corner of Highway 60 in Mountain Lake, Minnesota. Everything he touched smelled like gasoline.

Because I didn’t drive much last year, I went to the gas station one day just to evoke him. As soon as I began pumping gas and the fumes hit me, there was “mein Grossvater.” His subversive smile. I could even hear him ready with a story in his English merged with his mother tongue – Plattdeutsch – the low German his grandparents brought over from their Mennonite village in Russia.

Spring scents open that portal to the past. I enter. Each new scent summons a memory. Now is the time to feed my soul. Now is the time for sensing over doing. To take in the scent of self, of others, of life.

Recent rains have distilled the lilacs to an intensity that returns my long-departed grandmother to my side on one of our prairie walks. Lilacs transport my husband back to his childhood, too. He recants getting off the bus and smelling something that brought a rush of happiness. Lilacs.

They’re the best antidepressant I know.

Untethered - Part 2

I feel the earth’s rhythm.

Born in the hum of the growing season in a small farming community in Minnesota, the time to plant, grow and harvest seeped into my soul. My ancestors worked and lived off the land for centuries. And even though I toiled in a different line of work, those rhythms ground me.

My brain still registers the earthy smell of newly tilled soil ready for seed and rain. I can still hear the corn grow on hot humid days. Harvest time quickens my pulse as I recall the race against the dying light and the weather. And then there was the autumn drone of John Deere combines working the fields all night. I fell asleep to those sounds – a lullaby to the harvest.

Nature restores my circadian rhythm, battered by too much stimulation and light. She’s the ultimate authority on time.

For years I became disconnected from time in my creative work. I also became untethered from time in grief. There’s no timetable for grief – it takes whatever time it needs. It forces its way into every waking and sleeping moment. You’re not in control. Past and future become muddled. You spend the present in the past to see and laugh with the departed. The future? You can’t evoke a future without them. You’re in no man’s land – severed from the roots that held you. But tend you must.

I’ve been sleeping more, my internal clock confounded by these pandemic rhythms.

They slumber too, those 60 bulbs I planted last October. But they know when it’s time to force their way up through the sodden earth and the leaf litter.

They know the right time.

Season's End

I was on the hunt for a hydrangea, “Vienna,” but fate steered me to “Endless Summer,” though I knew this would be his last summer.

I had already dug up some lady’s mantle from my garden. The nursery had some dark begonias for contrast with the lime green flowers of the lady’s mantle. I snagged a few bags of mulch and set off to meet the man and his inner-city garden for the first time.

He had started his garden over 20 years ago, the first time he lived in this same apartment. The mulberry tree he planted was loaded with fruit and it was covered with starlings tanking up. It was a rare sight in the heart of the city; this fruit tree surrounded by blacktop on three sides. The tree was so close to his apartment that he could reach out and pick the mulberries. He had never expected the tree to survive when he and a friend planted it 20 years before. Then he moved west, but now he was back. In that same apartment, but with a diagnosis that gave him a year to live. If he was lucky. He wasn’t complaining—he was focused on his garden.

He had already planted a hydrangea and some lilies, both flanked by bishop’s weed. In the center, a busy bird bath. His small garden sits below his balcony at the edge of a large parking lot. He and his dog like to sit and watch the birds and his neighbors come and go. “I enjoy the view,” he told me.

I looked around for a hose. “How do you water your garden?” I asked. “I get a bucket from the kitchen sink, carry it through my dining room, and pour it from the balcony.” I guess this was working, since everything seemed to be surviving, but barely. Rain had been scarce, and his friends were trying to figure out how to keep the garden watered since he now needed a walker. One friend was devising a way to run a hose from the kitchen through the living room and hang it over the balcony.

I recounted this to a neighbor, and she wondered about all that effort for someone who would not be able to live to enjoy their garden. But she’s not a gardener. Gardeners don’t take this view. We plant for today. Sure, we hope to have a garden tomorrow, but we know the earth is always better off with a garden.

In my own garden I was struggling to keep new trees watered. It had been one of the hottest, driest summers on record—a severe drought. The weight of an early spring snowstorm had felled two large trees in our front yard, and I was watering the replacements every few days. The soil was like powder. They’re slow-growing trees. It will take years for them to produce shade. But planting anything is an act of faith; I have faith that these trees will offer shade for those who come after me. They’re going need shade.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” (Greek proverb)

Enjoy the shade.

Moving On

It has been the most prized and well-used present that my husband ever gave me. He knows I love beautiful, practical things. Things that last.

 But he had one question, “What color should it be?”

“Red,” I answered, as I recited the poem, The Red Wheelbarrow.

“so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.”

 —   William Carlos Williams

That was 25 years ago. And so much has depended on that hardworking wheelbarrow. Grandchildren were ferried around the yard, plants run up the back slope to their new planting grounds, loads of rocks and weeds added and subtracted, along with mulch, manure and an occasional snoozing cat.

But it’s time to let go of that red wheelbarrow.

For months I asked: When will it be time to retire it? And the answer came: When you spend more time patching and repairing the wheelbarrow than using it.

Time to move on. It’s been a long and happy collaboration – my wheelbarrow and me. I still have many collaborators in the garden: weather, plants, soil, worms, insects, fungus and hummingbirds. And there’s that dozing cat supervising it all. But I’m trying to let go of the old and embrace the new.

The new wheelbarrow will take some getting used to. It’s not as nimble as the old one. Instead of one small wheel in the front, it has two large wheels centered over a rustproof aluminum body. I can no longer squeeze into the tight spaces in my tightly packed perennial garden and dump mulch like I used to. But those two large wheels give it greater stability. On the steep slopes in our backyard, I can park it sideways with a full load of mulch and not worry that it will tip over. It’s also “flat tire-free.” The old wheelbarrow tipped over on uneven ground. Flat tires were common. The rusted metal bottom had so many holes in it that mulch fell through, leaving a fine trail of mulch wherever I went. It was ideal only for sifting mulch.

And you know those old rusted wheelbarrows that become planters? That won’t be happening here. But maybe I should keep an open mind? Maybe the poet intended a sequel about how much depends on an old, rusted, red wheelbarrow, loaded with flowers?

I’m on my second wheelbarrow and my second husband. That’s it for both.

An Unexpected Sound

Grasses sway, the catbird calls, and the quiet invites me into my dark backyard garden. That’s when I hear it.

The chainsaw.

A neighbor is using it to cut back tall grasses. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard heavy-duty power tools in that garden. My friend Patti told me that she and her husband found a Sawzall ideal for cutting an old shrub out of the ground. What could have taken hours of digging and pulling was dispensed with in a matter of minutes. They only had one question: “Why didn’t we think of this sooner?”

Tough gardens call for tough tools.

Twenty years ago, I planted several large grasses on a slope. As the grasses aged, they developed “male pattern baldness” – no grass in the center, surrounded by a ring of shaggy grass. My husband doesn’t appreciate this description, but you get the picture. I decided to dig those grasses out, armed with a strong back, an axe and a pickaxe. My husband watched me from his office window and wagered on the grass winning the daylong battle. He never made that mistake again. At midday, if someone had offered me explosives, I would have used them. The root system was about five feet underground. Plant a grass and it’s a commitment for life.

But with declining memories and defibrillators, maybe power tools aren’t such a good idea. I’m still haunted by the sight of my 80-something neighbor on her roof cleaning her gutters with a leaf blower. The whole neighborhood was alarmed. We ran to the bottom of the ladder and begged her to come down.

Age and wisdom go hand in hand, not power tools in hand.

And that brings me to the ladder rule: No husbands over the age of 75 are allowed on ladders. Period. No exceptions. I found one there a week ago daydreaming. Daydreaming and ladders don’t mix. Mix yourself a drink and call it a day.

And don’t even think of a power tool on a ladder.

I love the spirit of doing things for yourself. But when the spirit is willing and the body isn’t, just forget about it. You’re scaring the neighbors, and your wife.