Garden Reading Installment #3

Untamed garden

 "Read-a-little, garden-a-little, read-a-little, garden-a-little, weed, weed, weed...."  reminds me of that song  from The Music Man. Moving on. Yesterday's installment from Katherine Swift's The Morville Year was about those plants that move or seem to spring up out of nowhere. I've got a whole garden that seems to be that way.

Once upon a time I too set out to tame Nature by planting a garden and she just laughed at me and my hubris. But mankind continues to try to tame her with its borders and formal garden lay-outs. Granted I never started out that way. As a novice gardener I chose the things that looked pretty to me and planted them where ever I thought they would look best. Little did I know about the plants I chose or whether or not they would flourish in the spots I had planted them. The tag said full sun, but in reality it needed partial sun, or part-sun really meant full shade. You  get the picture. Things died. I cried. I tried again.

A foxglove which has
self-seeded.

I got wiser. I borrowed books from the library and spent time learning about the growing conditions of plants. I amended my soil. I watched and timed the number of hours certain locations in the yard received sun light. I started over. I shuffled plants around and lo and behold things took. Things thrived. Things spread. Oh how things spread. Phlox took over. Spiderwort wove a web throughout the garden. Even the white campion sprinkled itself about. This summer I am challenged with trying to bring it all under some semblance of control. I will not say order for I know there will never be order. As a science teacher I know that there is no control in Nature, the name of the game is called ENTROPY.

One challenge about reading Swift's book is the difference in the language of plants. She sprinkles the Latin formal names throughout like everyone should know what she is writing about. Then there are the common names for plants, which is the whole reason scientists went to a formal method of naming species in the first place. I find that I have to keep my phone close by so that I can look up on Google images the plants which she is discussing. Often I am familiar with them and other times I am not. As a more seasoned gardener (I will not call myself a master gardener just yet. I need to get through a few more seasons for that.), I know better than to run out and try to acquire the lovely things she writes about. For one thing, I know that the climate of England and New England are not the same and some plants will simply not flourish here in my garden. I have learned my lesson there; plant what will work. That's why she has her lovely garden open to the public so that people like me can go visit and see those plants which we can not grow at home.

Garden Reading Installment #2

Garden walk in progress

 Reading can be like eating potato chips, you can't eat just one, but if you know better you occasionally will put down the bag and come back to it on another day; so too is Katherine Swift's The Morville Year which I've written about previously. It's a book to go to when you need just a quick fix of gardening wisdom. Today it was her column entitled "Not a Bed of Roses" where she describes what happens when she took a week off from the garden. She returned to plants in need of water, attacking plant blights and pests, and weeds. She quickly through herself back into the work and only came in when her husband called out to her at 11:30 pm.

The pile of  bark mulch waiting to be
spread.

I too took some time off from the garden this weekend. It is the curse of the gardener that you can't be in two places at one time. You are either indoors cleaning or outdoors gardening, you can't do both. The house was in need of some attention so I broke down and gave it some. Tonight after dinner I went out to finally plant the marigolds before they die in the garden center pots. The sprinklers got run as we've had a couple of sunny and warm days. I plucked a few weeds but there are plenty more awaiting my wrath. Then there's the bark mulch that still needs spreading, and the garden walkway which I am building is but a pile of bricks. Swift was my inspiration, like a little garden angel sitting on my shoulder and encouraging me to get out there and get to work. Pretty soon it will be summer vacation and I will be able to work out in the garden every day if I want and have time to get some of the indoor projects done as well.

A Honey of a Dream

Tea and Honey for a Sunday morning

The inspiration for this blog post comes from reading Jennifer Barclay's Falling in Honey: How a Tiny Greek Island Stole My Heart.  Barclay's memoir reads like a romance novel and at times I had to remind myself that it wasn't a novel. The foreshadowing turns out not to be a literary device, but I could see the plot twist coming from a mile away. Spoiler Alert: Barclay manages to start "living the dream" by moving to the tiny island of Tilos. Should you like to learn more, visit her blog http://octopus-in-my-ouzo.blogspot.com/.

As for me, I continue to dream of one day having my lake house. The lake house of my youth was my father's dream and although I would have loved to hold onto the place after his death, his dream house is not my dream house. Today that dream house belongs to someone else and I'm hoping all their dreams are coming true.

My current house is pleasantly located on a wooded lot bordering wetlands; not quite a lake but there is water views through the trees. At sometime in the past a stream and perhaps a small pond became home to a pair of beavers who built a dam and transformed the landscape. Beavers are a foundation species who transform the ecosystem. Once the dam is built and the water begins to back up, other species follow: fish, amphibians, birds, small and large mammals, along with a huge variety of plants. We have it all in the back yard: squirrels (red and gray), hawks, owls, songbirds, toads, frogs, salamanders, the occasional fox, fisher cat, mink, deer, bear, and the list goes on.

Beavers can be a nuisance with their building projects causing tree fall and flooding. Several years back I watched as the water rose up through the woods and approached the backyard. I even called in the town health department and conservation committee as I was in fear of the rising waters contaminating my well. Since beavers were nearly wiped out here in North America they became a protected species which have rebounded very well. I couldn't legally do anything about the beavers without getting approval from the correct authoritative bodies. Luckily I didn't have to do anything as the waters finally receded.

Now as it happens, beavers will eventually move on to greener pastures, or should I say bluer streams. We haven't seen any activity in a long time. With no one maintaining the dam and two years of drought the pond behind the house has gotten a good deal smaller and ecological succession is doing its work to transform the ecosystem. All that silt and nutrient rich matter trapped by the dam has now settled and the primary species of grass and wildflower are making their comeback. Very often a beaver pond will eventually become a beaver meadow.

My dream of a lake house still exists even if the views of water through the trees is dwindling. One day I will be sitting out on the porch, with the sound of water lapping on the shore and typing away on the keys telling the world how I'm "living the dream."

Reading in installments

Ranunculus

While in England on my April vacation, I had the opportunity to pop into some book shops for a browse. There was a charming one on the high street in Broadway where I purchased Katherine Swift's The Moreville Year  a collection of columns that she'd written for The Times. Swift takes her readers on a year long journey through her garden in Shropshire, describing all the work and enjoyment that goes with its creation and maintenance.

Anemone

One of the key things I wanted to do while in England, besides drink tea and eat scones, was to visit the gardens. My sister took me to visit several of the local National Trust Houses and Gardens in the Midlands area where she lives. One especially lovely property was Charlecote Park where they have their very own Garden Center. It was there that I spied a couple of the plant varieties that Swift featured in her writing. The ranunculus are not that popular in my area as we have much harsher winters here in New England for their liking. The anemones however can be found around here and I have since purchased some for my garden.

The best part of Swift's book is the fact that it is a collection of articles allowing for one to sit and read a bit at a time; a couple before bed or over a morning cup of coffee. Best yet is reading while sitting out on the patio over looking the kitchen garden with a glass of chilled wine after a long day of work (the paying job or the garden chores). I do so love to work in my garden, but I also love to read about other people's gardens and there are plenty of books in my collection and I'm so happy to add Katherine Swift's to the shelf.

Is your read the same as my read?

Recently my students asked to spend some time learning about neuroscience so we spent a couple of days looking at brain structure, how the sense of sight works, reaction time, and habits and learning. One of the videos that I showed them is from Vsauce, in it we are challenged by the thought question: do you see red the same way that I do? 

Now this whole concept of qualia struck me when I read the introduction to Wendy Lesser's book Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books. First of all, she is absolutely correct when she says that reading can be an addiction. I can't imagine a day going by without reading. In fact I learned the hard way what it would be like not to be able to read when you want to. Last spring when hospitalized with a tick-borne illness I felt too miserable and tired to read. I couldn't find the energy to focus, and that frustrated me. I wanted to read. I was desperate to read as there was absolutely nothing worth watching on television. Thankfully I had my iPhone with my cache of audio-books to listen to. I knew I was better when I could sit and focus again upon the written word. 

Second, she pointed out that for every reader of a book there is a unique experience. Each of us brings a unique perspective to the books that we read. Here's where that concept of qualia comes in. How can you and I share fully our experience of reading the same book? There will always be something missing in our ability to explain how we feel, or what we got out of the book. Same book but totally different. It's thought experiments such as this that blows my mind. So I have to ask you, is your red the same as mine? Is your read the same as mine? Think about it. 

More stories about marriage

Every once in a while it is enjoyable to sit down with a book that is rather old-fashioned and simple. I discovered the reprinting of D.E.Stevenson's Miss Buncle's Book last year at the book store. This title was originally published in 1934 and its sequel, Miss Buncle Married followed in 1936. Life was a lot different then for Miss Buncle and her creator Dorothy Emily Peploe (nee Stevenson). Like many women of her time she didn't have the opportunity for a university education as her father worried about educated women in the family. She started writing at a young age and in secret. Lucky for us that she found a publisher to take on her work and share it with the world.

Miss Buncle finding herself rather short of cash looks for a way to earn some and turns to writing a book. She, like many authors, writes what she knows and her novel about a small village full of interesting characters is born. The only problem is that she hasn't successfully hidden the true nature of her neighbors and when the book is published under the pseudonym of John Smith, everyone is up in arms. She lives in terror of the day when she should be found out. When that day does come, she is spirited away by her publisher, Mr.Abbott.

When next we encounter Miss Buncle, she is now Mrs. Abbott and she's on the hunt for a new home for the two of them. She chooses a run down home in the little village of Wandlebury, but she alone can see what it and the garden can become. Lo and behold she pulls off a miracle and husband and wife happily become part of the community. Of course plenty of shenanigans occur but I will not spoil it for you.

Near the very end I found this quote: "It's turned out all right after all, she said contentedly. "Things usually do, somehow. You worry and fuss and try to make things go the way you think they should, and then you find that the other way was best. I'm going to try not to worry about things anymore." (p. 323) What a great piece of advice! So much of my life I have spent an inordinate amount of energy and time on worrying about things when all along they seem to come out all right. I need to give up the worry and just enjoy the moment. The wasted energy prevents me from having enough for living life to the fullest. Mrs. Abbott who thought she wasn't very clever is the most clever of us all.