Garden Shots

 

English Peas

Green Tomatoes

Beans we thought were climbers but not!

  

Kale &
Rainbow Chard

We spent the day weeding and the next day 

it rained and the next day...weeds everywhere!

Tell About Night Flowers

We are big fans of the writer Eudora Welty.  We are even bigger fans of writers who have passions outside of the written word.  Welty was an avid gardener.  Recently, her family garden was restored.  The restoration and history of her garden were chronicled in the book, One Writer's Garden.  The book was a love letter to Welty and her mother, Chestina and to the garden they built at the family home in Jackson, Mississippi.

 

Tell About Night Flowers is a more cerebral book filled with letter written primarily to Diarmuid Russell, Welty's literary agent, and John Robinson, a high school friend and lifelong crush. The letters are written during one of the most productive decades of Welty's writing life, the 1940's.  While the letters are initially about gardening, they are really about so much more. These letters illuminate Welty's writing style, her attention to detail, and her love of language. 

Julie Eichelberger compiled the letters, pulling the title from a letter to Russell about a Calypso lily.  The calypso daylily is actually a pale yellow, night blooming lily with "the color of the new moon."  Welty writes:

"To see it actually open, the petals letting go, is wonderful, and its night fragrance comes to you all at once like a breath.  What make it open at night -- what does it open to? in the same progression as others close, moment by moment.  Tell about night flowers."

Are the letters about gardening or perhaps about the process of Welty's own writing?  We know Weltly as a writer, so there is a natural desire not only to read these letters but to read into these letters a key to the writer's artistic development.  Writers are masters at writing about one thing as a surrogate for another.

Drawing from a letter to John Robinson, 26 September 1943

While business between agent and writer come through in the letters, it is the profound love of planting that shines through.  Russel tells Welty that he sold a client's book for a huge sum to Hollywood, but his concern is for his irises.

"Perhaps they won't do anything unless you come up to say  a magic word over them."

Russell sets a scene of Welty chanting over his flowers and in her return letter she thanks him for the incantation that she is now trying in her garden.  She asks him come south in the spring and of the sale she writes:

"I hope you got a tremendous sum -- and that it goes down on next year's income." 

Later she extols a recent Christmas present of 100 pounds of commercial fertilizer.  There is something so wonderful about being overjoyed about fertilizer.  It is that joy in simplicity that makes Eudora Welty such an engaging writer.

Next to gardening, we love reading about gardening.  Actually, we might like reading about gardening more than actually gardening.  Tell About Night Flowers fulfills both needs.

Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life

Yes, we are having a bit of a garden obsession.  The last green thing we saw was moldy bread! So bear with us.

Today's garden fantasy belongs to the ever popular Beatrix Potter. Marta McDowell has assembled Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life, a collection of gardening photos, vintage pictures, writer's diary, watercolors, and botanical prints that would leave even those with black thumbs, delighted.

McDowell was not a childhood convert to Potter's work.  At her wedding shower, she received a Mrs. Tiggy-winkle cookie jar.  She thought the fashionable hedgehog was a porcupine.  She has no memory of who gave her the jar, nor of that husband! She came to Beatrix Potter after visiting Hill Top Farm, Potter's beloved home. She was smitten.

No wonder the tiny animals of the hedgerows became such beloved characters.  Could this be a descendant of Flopsy, Mopsy, or Cottontail?

It is bad enough that there is snow everywhere, but finding a garden that is beautiful in winter -- I am so jealous. 

I just keep going back and forth looking at the photographs.  McDowell offers a glimpse into Potter's very hands on gardening style as well as the vivid imagination that built Mr. McGregors's Garden.  The problem with the book is that I seem to concentrate on the pictures and often lose the narrative train of thought.  It is hard to overcome, the next picture is so inviting...

Virginia Woolf's Garden

 

Have we mentioned lately that there is snow and ice? What to do? Stay inside and read about gardens. Caroline Zoob lived in Monk's House, the former home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf.

 

An experienced embroider, Zoob, made maps of the garden.

 

Photographer Caroline Arber was a frequent visitor to Monk's House. These modern images mixed with archival prints makes this a must have for students of Woolf and gardens.

 

 

Not to mention it is great way to spend a snowy Saturday.

 

Weather Swing

Tuesday morning the wind chill was -20. Today it is 58. The weather needs psychiatric care, lithium or some such thing.

 

After setting up a perfectly reasonable cold house, the weather did it in. We were counting on cold weather, but not wildly frigid winds. Nor did we expect frozen pipes.

 

Better luck next time.

 

The good news, seed catalogues shipped much earlier this year.

 

The Waning Garden

Our waning garden has actually been better than our summer garden.  Much was lost during our Noah-like 40 days and nights of rain.

A late batch of Lemon Squash was a welcome site.

While there have been just a handful of blackberries, they have been the size of my thumb.

Walled Kitchen Gardens

I have been thinking of walled kitchen gardens recently after reading about the Barley Wood Walled Garden, home to the The Ethicurean, whose new cookbook is the best of the best this year.  Walled kitchen gardens run the gamut from the largess of the nobility, to the practicality of the Yankee farmer. 

 My favorite book on walled gardens is The Kitchen Garden of Heligan.  Almost lost, the gardens underwent a transformation and were completely restored. Tom Petherick supervised the reclaiming of the garden, televised by the BBC.  Since it's restoration it has been one of England's most popular garden destinations.

Typically a walled garden ranged from about and acre to 15 acres, but occasionally they were much more elaborate.  The walled garden at The Chateau de Villandry may not be as well known as Versailles, but the garden may be its rival.

From the extravagant to sublime.  Helen and Scott Nearing's Forest Farm  in Harborside, Maine was a labor of love for the two writers who nurtured the garden until their deaths.  Forest Farm has outlived the Nearings but their spirit lingers in this lovely walled garden.

The Walking Dead Wants You ...

...or Save Me First, I'm a Farmer.  This is what happens when you combine a Victory Garden with the Zombie Apocalypse.  You get the Zombie Apocalypse Farmers Corps.   Not to be confuse with "corpse."

Don't laugh, spoilers say this season The Walking Dead will feature raised beds and chickens.

When Kathy Voth and Leah Ashley Esser were looking for a way to make gardening fun, they thought of Zombie Victory Gardens.  We defeated Hitler, we can defeat the Governor!    Frankly, if we are depending on my garden this year to save us, we are royally screwed, but it's the thought that counts. 

So, if you think the zombies are coming, join the ZAF Corps. and "Quick!  Plant something."

Week End Espalier

This weekend's "big" project was moving and wiring up the espaliered apple tree.   Frankly, when it comes to fruit trees our thumb is closer to black than green, but we have high hopes for our espalier.  It has survived two years which is generally one year and eleven months longer than most of our fruit trees.  Do keep your fingers crossed.

A Fine Day for Vegetables

The owners of this lovely little house in Orlando, Florida, Jason and Jennifer Helvenston, are facing a fine of $500 a day.  Why one might ask?  What is their affront to the good people of Orlando?

They have planted vegetables in their front yard.  Yes, vegetables.  Evidently in Orlando, one is fined $500 a DAY for gardening.   I wonder if there is a fine for owning an AK-47?

Check out Mark Bittman's New York Times article.

One Writer's Garden

I am a huge fan of Eudora Welty. Miss Eudora lived her life like many Southern women I know. They have remained in the same house they grew up in a family house presided over by a strong Southern mother. Welty’s mother, Chestina was, by all accounts, that strong matriarchal character that ruled with an iron fist tucked politely in a velvet glove.

Over at Cookbook Of The Day, we wrote about Welty’s one “cookbook” a limited edition recipe for White Fruitcake. Like many Southern women, Chestina cook amazing meals but never used a recipe, telling her daughter, "Any cook worth her salt would know, given a list of ingredients, what to do with them." So Welty never became a cook. Luckily, she did better under her mother’s tutelage as a gardener.

Unlike cooking, gardening can always use a strong back and extra pair of hands. Welty’s love of nature grew in her mother’s garden and the natural world of the South became a common feature in Welty’s work. But few people realized how much of her love of Southern flora and fauna was quite literally rooted in her back yard. In her second- floor bedroom at 1119 Pinehurst Street, Welty looked out of her window and gazed into her mother’s garden, seeing it grow with her reputation as a writer.

The relatively small garden, measuring in at roughly three-quarters of an acre, it bordered the Tudor-style house on the north, south and east sides. Like the English styled house, the garden took on the air of a cottage garden with trellises, boarders, and hedges dividing the garden into different areas. The garden held over 30 varieties of camellias, Miss Eudora’s particular favorite. The earliest of the camellias planted around 1926.

Gardens, however small, need a committed and driving force. When Chestina died, that driving force was gone. Welty continued to maintain the garden, becoming the chief gardener and delegating her self-proclaimed “yard-boy” status to another gardener. But Welty grew older and her garden help moved on and her mother’s garden became a tangled mess.

In 1994, noted garden restorer, Susan Haltom, sat down with the aging Welty who lamented, “I can't bear to look out the window and see what has become of my mother's garden.” Haltom planned to "fix up" the garden as a favor for an aging and beloved writer, but soon the project took on a life of its own. Welty had already made arrangements to deed the house to the state to become a literary museum. Haltom saw the garden as a vital extension of that museum. A way to tell the story of the time: a rising middle class, conservation, technology, women’s clubs, garden clubs, and civic beautification were becoming prevalent and this garden was a reflection of those changing times. The restoration focused on the garden’s peak, a period from 1925 to 1945. Haltom’s discussions with Welty began to uncover old borders with stone rubble. Day lilies from the 1920’s began to emerge into the sunlight as well as some of Welty’s beloved camellias. A rose garden, a favorite of Chestina's, was quickly carved out. Welty, an avid photographer once climbed to the roof for aerial shots of the garden. Haltom researched every plant from that period, nixing newer varieties. After Welty died, her niece, Mary Alice White, found Chestina's 1930s gardening journal. Like the consummate gardener that she was, Chestina had drawn the garden layout complete with plant names and locations.

Photographer Langdon Clay documented Haltom’s work. Jane Roy Brown conducted additional historical research. This magnificent collaboration is documented in One Writer’s Garden. On a visit to Jackson, Mississippi, one can now wander through one writer’s garden, smelling the camellias as Eudora Welty did for over 50 years.

Spring? Has Sprung?

Sometimes we just close our eyes and take a deep breath and ask ourselves, "Has Spring really sprung?"



While the hillside is busting out blooms...




And the jonquils are opening...



We have known a fickle Mother Nature and are not too trusting of this largess...


And still, we are off to the garden to begin planting some seeds.

A "Wilder" Christmas Idea

At a loss for what to give the gardener in your life?

For those of you in the upper 1% may we suggest hiring a full-time gardener, or two, to keep your property in tip top shape. But do try to keep them in a legal age range as this band of gardeners seem a bit on the young side...



For the other 99% who need a great gardening idea for Christmas, might we suggest the recently launched Wilder Quarterly. Let's just say this is not your grandmother's gardening magazine. It is after all a quarterly, so it has that journal feel to it. The articles are really, really useful. Seriously, detailed instruction on how to build your own cold frame. A visit to the Vinegar Hill House for a lesson in fermentation. A visit to filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's secret garden.


There are mushrooms, bulb planting, soil additives and rather fun chicken coops.

Wilder Quarterly is definitely a keeper! And a giver. The biggest problem with Wilder Quarterly... the second you finish the first volume, you begin to linger longingly at the mailbox for the next installment. Be forewarned.

Root Vegetables

This happens every year. As soon as the garden starts to wane, I start thinking about the next garden. Last week I dug potatoes and onions and this week I was thumbing though a vintage copy of Alexander Dean’s Root and Stem Vegetables.

I just adore root vegetables. I have a green thumb when it comes to beets, turnips, carrots and onions.

My thumb is totally black when it comes to parsnips, one of my favorite vegetables. I am starting early, reading all the pertinit info so that perhaps next year, I will finally grow a parsnip or two. Till then, I’ll keep reading.

Marian Coffin

I spent part of the weekend roaming the garden. It is sad to see everything gone, so naturally, I begin to explore the next garden. I have a real fondness for landscape architects, especially the women who worked at the turn of the last century.

Marian Coffin was one of those women. She wrote:

"I secretly cherished the idea of being a great artist in the future, but that dream seemed in no way possible ... I did not seem to posses a talent for music, writing painting, or sculpture."

Undaunted in her quest for beauty, she signed up for a new course at MIT in called "Landscape Architecture." Marian Coffin had found her calling.

Entrance to the rose garden, The Oaks, Bridgeport, Connecticut

Nancy Fleming has written an excellent book on Marian Coffin entitled appropriately, Money, Manure, and Maintenance. According to Marian Coffin, these were the three ingredients in producing a lovely garden. I am usually in possession of one of those items.

Gates to the pool at Winterthur

Coffin developed a long working relationship with the duPont family, designing several projects, including the gardens at Winterthur.

Fort Ticonderoga, New York

Instead of lamenting the passing of the garden, I am going to read extensively about the women who "invented" landscape gardening. I have found access to manure, now I just need to find that money and all will be well.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Djuna

Actually, just the last two. This week my Rosmarinus officinalis 'Prostratus' or Prostrate Rosemary began to flower. It is just starting but I think it is lovely. And I love the idea of a plant being "prostrate." It sounds so unplantlike.

Djuna wandered outside to pose with the plant as she says she never gets to be in the blog. I told her I had antlers that were just her size and away she went!