Parrotia persica

Last weekend Sara and I were recalling our trip to England and the Cotswold. It is the kind of thing we have to do these days to keep ourselves sane. We remembered the gardens at Hidcote and Kiftsgate with delight. Sara recalled the excellent treacle tart she had at Painswick, a fascinating Roccoco garden, and I recalled it too for it was a source of disagreement between us as to how one should spend one’s time at a famous garden. We both agreed, however, that the tea and cakes we consumed in the 16^th century barn at Bourton Manor House were superb.

Remembering Bourton Manor House I recalled my first encounter with Parrotia persica. With this particular recollection there came as well a piercing pain that wove itself in and out of fond recollections

After our tea and cakes in the barn we made our way over to the 18^th century manor house to begin our exploration of the gardens. As we entered the room whose exquisite glass doors led out to the gardens I stopped, mesmerized by the sight of a tree I had never seen before. It was a large spreading Parrotia persica (Persian ironwood) that, according to the garden’s promotional material, framed the rear garden just as the glass doors framed the tree. The Parrotia has leaves that turn a vibrant shade of red, orange and gold in the fall. We were there in September.

I was smitten. I wanted one for my garden. When I returned home, I immediately called Randy, my contact at Faddegon’s, and told him I had to have a tree just like the one I had seen in England. He gently reminded me that, while my house and garden were big, they were nowhere near big enough to accommodate or “frame” this particularly magnificent plant. Luckily, there was a relatively new fastigiate version that would work in the location I had chosen for it.

My Parrotia persica flourished for a while and then died. I do not recall what caused its demise.What I did recall as Sara and I reminisced was a passion that most gardeners will recognize. I call this the “I must have that plant” emotion. Desire in its most intense form. Desire that has accompanied gardening for as long as we have a record. When I first began to study the history of gardens and gardening I learned about Queen Hatshepsut, who said “I must have that plant,” and in the 15^th century BCE had myrrh trees transported from the Land of Punt to Egypt. She got her plant. Perhaps we gardeners are a happy lot because we are always in love.

I have been blessed to have had for so many years a garden large enough to allow me to fulfill so many desires. Of course we gardeners fall in love with plants we can’t have. They require conditions we cannot give them. But to see, to want, to be able to have?

And then it hit me: I will never again have that experience. Soon, very soon, all too soon, I will not have a garden. At the end of September Sara and I are moving to a senior retirement community. It will be possible, if I wish, to have a small garden plot there, but I will no longer be able to indulge in my promiscuous passion for plants. Do I have any idea who I will be when I am no longer the designer, desirer, caretaker and companion of plants? No, I do not. Do I have any idea what I will write about when I can no longer tell funny stories and draw life lessons from weeding? Do I have any idea No, I do not. Do I have any idea of what I will do with my days when they are not organized around gardening? No, I do not.

Others have given up gardens and survived. My mother gave up her beloved garden in Franklin when she and my dad moved to Milwaukee to be closer to my brother. She never complained even though I know it broke her heart. She never made another garden.

Cleaning out my garage in preparation for the move, I discovered a box on the top shelf I had not looked at since I moved into Columbine Drive. The box originally held hosiery from a department store in Toronto. We left Canada in 1949. It was labelled, in my mother’s handwriting, “Flower seeds” and it held numerous envelopes addressed to my grandfather and filled with seeds. My grandfather must have given these seeds to my mother as he was leaving his garden in the hopes that she could and would plant them in hers. Had I found them sooner I would have tried to see if I could get some of my grandfather’s Gallardia to grow or perhaps his annual pink poppy on whose envelope he has written “very nice” and also “very scarce” or his holly hocks or hibiscus or nicotiana. Or perhaps some of the “lily seed for Mary.”

Of course we gardeners always hope we might be so lucky as to leave our gardens to someone who will preserve and maintain them. It rarely happens. The garden does not survive the gardener. Did I end up with the seeds from my grandfather’s garden because my mother hoped I would do what she did not do?

Though I did not know that I would be leaving my garden this year until the middle of June, the early season has been strange, and I read it now as a kind of bizarre foreshadowing of what was about to happen.

First, I have had to absorb the fact that the surgery I had last year, surgery that kept me out of the garden for last year’s season, has not in fact “fixed” me. I no longer can bend over, I am unsteady on my feet, I weed by scrunching along on my butt trying to remember to keep my bucket of tools coming with me and all too often discovering that I have left them far behind. Then I have to awkwardly and painfully get up and retrieve them. When passersby observe this process, I wish I had on a tee shirt that read, “I gave my back for my trees!”

Despite my diminishing capacity, I have, since April, been consumed by the need to redesign. The garden is almost thirty years old. I ought to be going out and reveling in the perfection of long-established gardens. But quite the opposite has occurred. I feel like I should be ripping up and starting over. At the same time I have spent considerable time designing and planting the wee garden outside our kitchen door. I moved the perennials to get the most possible beauty and interest out of their differences in foliage and habit and color. In May I went to Gade’s and bought annuals that played well with the perennials: Coleus, Nemesia, Scaevola, Strobilanthus. This tiny garden has given me enormous pleasure. I see it every time I leave and enter the house.

I think of my mother, whose last “garden” was a single geranium in a hanging pot. Will I want another garden? I do not know. Still I am keeping, despite the fact that we have already overbooked our tiny storage space, my most essential garden tools.

Frustrations

It’s time to talk about frustration.

On Friday, Kevin and I worked on the front gardens. At the end of the morning we went down to the back gardens to check on the work we had done three weeks ago and to map out our next Friday’s work.

Shock! The garden we had worked on so many weeks ago was a wilderness of weeds. Unsightly, overwhelming, even Kevin was taken aback.

“It was a good thing I listened to Sara and did not agree to put my garden on this year’s Bethlehem Garden Tour,” I said to Kevin. “If I had, the only salvation would have been to put up a sign saying this is what happens when an old gardener is left to maintain a garden her much younger self built.”

“That could have been quite educational,” Kevin replied in his always kind way.

Never mind, I thought. I will have all day Sunday to work on getting this sea of weeds under control. And I will have Monday morning as well. I had deliberately kept these times free of other invitations and obligations. So imagine my frustration when I learned that it would rain all day Sunday and most of Monday, wiping out entirely my opportunity to get on top of things. I must admit I burst into tears upon being told this fact.

The weather this spring has been incredibly frustrating. I can no longer dig because it will further damage my already much compromised back. This means that, unlike previous seasons, when I know rain is coming I am unable to take advantage of that knowledge to transplant. I have to wait for my Friday mornings with Kevin to do that work. On a recent Friday morning, we engaged in a major session of transplanting. We did not water the transplants because we expected rain in the afternoon. The rain never came and the next day the weather turned brutally hot, the kind of hot that withers transplants that have not been watered in and even those that have.

I needed to water. I am not allowed to carry buckets of water. Carrying buckets of water during previous droughts damaged my back and landed me in my current compromised state. I had to ask Sara to water. I had to ask Emma, the lovely young woman in my neighborhood who occasionally is free to help me, to water. I could not use her time as planned to tackle the weeds because the transplants were frying.

This year requires a considerable amount of transplanting. Last year I had to have my beautiful Heptacodium taken down -- it had a terrible case of canker and was half dead. In its place I planted a young Cornus mas. This tree has nothing like the leaf cover that the Heptacodium had. Not only are there far fewer leaves; the leaves are neither large or thick. Given this sparse covering, a beautiful shade garden has turned into a sun garden.

Meanwhile, in a different part of the garden a wee specimen cherry tree intended to remain wee has become quite large, turning a sun garden into a shade garden. Obviously, the sun plants should be transferred to the new sun garden, and the shade plants should be transferred to the new shade garden. Kevin and I have not attempted to address this issue, nor have we attempted to supply to the weedy garden the plants that would cover the ground there. There have other tasks that have required our attention.

One of these tasks has been trying to control the spreading strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) I put in to create a weed proof ground cover in the area underneath the crabapple. It has answered the call in spades. It has answered the call to the extent that it has become a thug, overwhelming anything near it. It has had to be controlled. Kevin and I have spent considerable time getting it out of its neighbors. We are currently in the process of deciding whether to remove it entirely or seek to set boundaries that we will need to regularly patrol

My situation with the spreading strawberry reminds me of a relationship gone bad. When I first met this plant, I was in love. Here was a plant guaranteed to spread, guaranteed to form an impenetrable weed proof mass, and guaranteed to be great for pollinators. One podcast I listened to told me that if I wanted to do just one thing to help restore the native habitat I should plant this strawberry. I thought I had found a winner. Now I must either break up completely or set rigorous boundaries that will need to be constantly policed.

Perhaps one of my greatest frustrations lies in the fact that with such a large garden to manage I do not have much time for anything else. I spent this past rainy Sunday just catching up on the mountain of paperwork that I have been unable to attend to because of my need to weed. I think of myself now as a professional weeder. It is the one garden chore I can still do without danger to my back, and so I do this work at home and in the gardens maintained by the Master Gardeners.

I know I need more help. Emma is a delight and I love teaching her about how to garden – for example, how to recognize the difference between the useful clumping strawberry and the problematic spreading strawberry – but Emma is busy starting her own life as a young entrepreneur and has only limited time available. I have a lead on a person who might be able to give me more time on a more consistent basis and I will definitely check in with her. But what I most need is a seasoned gardener to whom I can give instructions without the need to demonstrate and supervise. Until I find such a person I will probably remain frustrated.

Let me conclude, however, on a more positive note. Though I have made a couple of bad decisions this season, due to too much to think about and the need to work fast, I have not been disappointed in my capacity to continue to design my gardens. I do this, of course, by removals and additions. Two of the gardens in front of the house are close to reaching that state of fullness and stasis that is my goal. No bare ground can be seen; the plants have equal vigor so no one plant is taking over; and the colors, textures, and habits of the different plants work well together to provide a pleasing effect.

I pass by one of these gardens every day as I go in and out of the house. It calms me down.

Busy. And mad?

I’ve been busy, very busy, very very very busy.

I’ve been busy pruning. I know it sounds arrogant, but I am very grateful for my ability to prune. I consider it an art form, equivalent to sculpting. I can see the “angel” in the shrub just as Michaelangelo saw the angel in the marble, and I am capable of removing material until that angel is released. I look at my red-twigged dogwoods, Cornus alba, the Tartarian Asian dogwood, and I see such beauty in their color and shape, now cleaned of dead wood and reduced to a reasonable and regular size. However, it took over two hours to achieve this beauty, and that is about the amount of time I allow myself each day in the garden. Is this then the best use of my time?

Ahead of me and still to do are the native dogwoods, the Physocarpus shrubs, and the golden Cotinus which has suddenly turned huge and ugly and will require a major reduction. This year all the shrubs seem to have leapt out of control and all need major reductions and shaping. Is this just because I have so little time to attend to them, or has the garden reached a certain age which could be called the out-of-control age? Luckily, I hired Ben to trim the Harry Lauder “Walking Stick” (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’) because my skill was not up to the task of taking out a third of that shrub in a way that would not distort its amazing shape and habit.

I have been busy weeding. In my last letter I mentioned the despised bitter cress. It is still here and in abundance and requires removal before it goes to seed. While removing this weed in the garden underneath the bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), I discovered that the Cinquefoil, a form of Potentilla and so called because it has five leaves which distinguishes it from the alpine clumping three-leaved strawberry plant which I love, had taken over the area and to my eye had turned distinctly ugly. I began removing it. Am I mad? I have been trying to create green mulch, i.e. ground cover, in all my gardens. Here was a success but my designing eye could not abide it.

The spreading strawberry is also out of control. Last week Kevin and I spent a good part of our morning together getting the strawberry out of its neighbor, the Filipendula ulmaria ‘Aurea,’ a beautiful golden-foliaged ground cover that sets off the purple foliage of the dwarf Physocarpus behind it. We have severely reduced the strawberry’s territory and of course have committed ourselves to a regime of management. Do I really have the time and energy to devote to managing the spreading strawberry? It is also out of control in the front garden and will need management there. Am I mad? Should I not just leave and say I have been successful in creating a green mulch?

I can’t. In fact, it is my designing eye that is truly wearing me out. I can’t stop designing and re-designing my gardens. With a garden this old one would think I could just manage it by weeding and pruning. I, however, begin to manage any one of the numerous small gardens that make up my large garden and all I see is how it could be made better – by adding more plants, by moving plants around, and, yes, by buying new plants. I have made one trip to Gades and quickly spent my $100 gift certificate on two shrubs. The price of shrubs has skyrocketed this year for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, but I have committed to keeping myself on a tight leash as far as visiting nurseries. It is impossible for me to go to a nursery without buying plants. I simply cannot resist either the old and familiar or the new and special. And despite the fact that my garden is well-established it could always use more plants.

At Gades, I also bought some annuals, the tough kind like pansies and Coleus that can withstand the wild changes in temperature that we are experiencing this spring. I have a wee area outside the kitchen door that contains the Heuchera ‘Palace Purple,’ the bronze-leaved Carex and the flat green-leaved Carex, and some beautiful spring ephemerals. In this area I have planted 6 Coleus that play off the colors of the perennials. It is beautiful and pleases me every time I come in and out of the house. It is, however, not finished; it requires more plants and more re-arranging of plants already there in order for it to reach perfection. I am spending a great deal of time on this one little garden, a disproportionate amount of time considering the size of the garden I am responsible for. Is this also a form of madness – the devotion to getting one tiny area perfect while the rest of the garden drowns in weeds?

I am not completely mad, however. In anticipation of rain today, I wanted to transplant several plants to the patio garden to fill up various holes. I tried digging up one plant and quickly decided that I could not safely do that without injuring my back. I have outsourced several jobs this year – the pruning of the Harry Lauder, the edging of all my gardens, getting and placing stones and woodchips to cover paths. I rake almost entirely with the little hand rake sitting on the ground and getting in under the shrubs to clean out leaves that might keep the plant wet and thus susceptible to disease. I do not bend over. I do not carry water. If I need water, I move it on the dolly. In this respect I am being sane.

In other respects, however, I feel that I am busy being mad.

Wake up, Gardener

The garden season has started and I am out picking up the endless sticks that the multi-stemmed river birch (Betula nigra), aka the Tantrum Tree, throws down on the lawn. I think of it as protesting, “Get that miserable squirrel’s nest out of my branches! And while you are at it, tell the crows to find another bathroom. I am not a rest stop,” and down comes another stick. I see that my neighbor has had her river birch removed. Advantage Tree arrived with an enormous crane to lift the furious branches into a woodchipper which in turn spewed them into a truck soon full to overflowing. I drive over some of the chips on my way out of my neighborhood to run errands. Perhaps it had become too messy for her to tolerate.

I have also been weeding, weeding, weeding, every garden as I clean it up. This season has seen an explosion of nasties filling the garden beds before anything else has a chance to push up and cover. I have not witnessed such aggressiveness in previous seasons and can only wonder at the cause. In particular, I have an infestation of bitter cress (Cardamine hirsuta) that is already flowering and getting ready to go to seed. I recently gave a talk on “Waking Up the Garden,” and in it I emphasized the importance of getting on top of weeds early in the season. But I have never before had to spend so much of my precious getting-the-garden-up time on weeding. It feels like a new era.

In my talk I also stressed the importance of being physically ready for the physical work of gardening. Gardening requires intense movement and a lot of it – we stretch in under a shrub to reach that nasty weed. We reach up as far as we possibly can to prune that crossing branch. We dig down to move plants and edge beds. All too often we go from couch to edger and rake and do not prepare ourselves adequately through exercise for what could easily be seen as an Olympic sport. Think of the contests we could have!

Indeed, I have often thought that we should approach gardening as if it were a sport. Most serious athletes train all year, regardless of what season their sport is played in. Shouldn’t we gardeners do the same and spend those winter months stretching and strengthening? I know, it is a hard sell, but part of me is quite serious about this. At any rate I have been in training all year working on my stretches and strengthening my core. Given my back issues, I would not have been able to be out this spring waking up along with the garden had I not spent the winter in preparation.

It seems to me that the phrase, uttered so often – “wake up and smell the roses” – should be reversed: Smell the roses and wake up! I don’t do roses, but the smell of fresh wet earth wakes me up for sure. As a gardener in early spring, we are naturally inclined to follow Mary Oliver’s instructions for living: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” In other words, wake up! Just today I noticed the dark red chocolate-tinged mat that signals the beginning of the rise of Geranium maculatum ‘Espresso,’ covering a patch of front yard garden where just the day before there had been bare earth. I love the fully emerged ‘Espresso’ too, but it is not the same as the delicate and ephemeral first flush.

I am astonished by the rusty pink haze on the cherry tree, preamble to flowering but every bit as beautiful as the later white. And by the magnolia buds pushing at their pussy willow coverings, getting ready to pop out at any minute. Of course, I worry about these early flowers for a late frost will kill them and in this zone we are prone to late frosts. I made the mistake of planting the shrub, as it then was, in a south facing spot against a wall. These conditions create a heat microclimate that, alas, promotes early blooming. Currently I am well versed in the subject of microclimates within the garden, but of course it is way too late to change the location of this now sizeable tree.

Gardening engages our senses and sensory activation wakes us up and gets us to pay attention. Every gardener I know gushes over the first feel of wet earth between the fingers. Every gardener I know gushes over that first smell of wet earth. There is nothing quite like the delicacy of touching the newly unfolding leaves of the European ginger or taking in its rich green color. Perhaps we are moved to taste an early dandelion green and savor its freshness, even if it is a bit bitter. We listen for the sound of the geese flying high in the air and share in the excitement of their migration. We grumble and possibly curse the roar of the leaf blower, a major polluter of air and ear. We may even want to shout, “Get a rake!”

Out in the garden in early spring, jazzed up by all that is happening, it is almost impossible not to think of the famous line that begins the Dylan Thomas poem: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/Drives my green age.” I read no further for the poem turns rather grim, but Thomas’s opening words capture my sense of connection to my plants. Watching a clump of emerging Hostas, I am witness to the force that is pushing these hefty plants upward, breaking through the still cold earth, unstoppable. Feeling connected, I take heart that I too, in some fundamental way, cannot be stopped either.

March 2026

“I hate March,” says my friend Bob as we prune the redtwigged dogwoods at the Bethlehem Town Hall Garden in the snow. I know what he means, but I also know that March is the month when, whether we are ready or not, the gardening season starts. Snowdrops are up, daffodil shoots are poking through the ground, the hellebores are unfolding. It is time to prune and cut back and rake out where appropriate. It is time to start gardening, no matter what the weather.

When I lived in Philadelphia, March was my favorite month of the year. March ushered in a long, lovely, slowly evolving spring, with something wonderful and new happening every day. I could count on steadily rising temperatures, gentle breezes, and a lovely mix of rain and sun. Walking to work each morning, I watched, in succession, privet opening, forsythia starting to bloom, bulbs popping up, trees coming into leaf.

It was not the northeast where March demands that you pay attention to March, whether you like it or not, because it is so changeable and because so much is happening in the ground.

This March has been particularly wild, veering from the 70’s to the 30’s. I did not fall for the early tease but held my ground until the 20^th, the day of the vernal equinox, when Kevin and I celebrated the day by beginning our spring cleanup. We were graced by many things that day, including and most particularly the company of each other, but perhaps my other favorite blessing was the appearance high in the sky of geese heading north in V-shaped formation and talking, talking, talking. I have so often wondered why the geese choose to use up so much energy by vocalizing, and I am sure if I googled the question AI would be happy to give me answers. I prefer, however, my own fantasy that they are talking over the winter events, sizing up the success of their winter lodgings and food choices, and gossiping with each other about what lies ahead. Maybe one of them is even saying to another, “Molly looks kind of tired up there in the lead. I think I will go relieve her.”

Cleaning up the gardens we released crowds of snowdrops. A long time ago I planted a single clump of snowdrops. Now they are everywhere in the front garden, beautiful white congregations that were there all along under the snow. Chipmunk landscapers have done a good job of placement. The snowdrop, so delicate looking, is incredibly tough. It comes up under feet of snow and survives new snow if the old snow has melted and a new storm hits. It is a living metaphor for me of the beauty of strength and tenderness combined.

The hellebores are up as well and standing tall now that I have removed their old leaves. As Kevin and I worked to rake out the gardens where necessary while leaving the leaves as much as possible for the insects that may still be harboring there, I ranted on about the vernal equinox and how it has been ruined by so early an arrival of daylight savings time. I used to love the vernal equinox with its gentle rhythm of sunlight from 6 to 6. I loved the equinoctial evenings in particular for they promised the return of greater light without already giving it to us too soon. Kevin is grateful for the later light and so, I know, are many others, but it destroys my bio rhythms and for no good reason. The asserted reason for the change is energy savings, but I remember a study that disproved that claim. Since the change from early April to early March came in under George W. Bush who thought the most patriotic thing an American could do was shop, I suspect it has to do with promoting after work shopping trips.

I used to love to celebrate the start of gardening season with the vernal equinox and a gathering of fellow gardeners, one of whom was delegated the honor of throwing the first pitchfork. I am not inspired to do so under this new regime, but I do think the opening of gardening season should be celebrated and in the northeast the vernal equinox is the day to do it. After all, New York has its deer hunting season, Minnesota goes crazy when you can first fish for Walleyes, the opening of baseball season is an event of national importance. Shouldn’t we gardeners declare March 21 the opening of our gardening season? Shouldn’t we demand that this day be taken as seriously and greeted with as much fanfare as that which attends the opening of deer hunting season or Walleye season or baseball season? Shouldn’t there be a ritual throwing of the first pitchfork, accompanied by pancake breakfasts and parades? There are at least as many gardeners in the northeast as there are hunters in New York or fishers in Minnesota or perhaps even baseball fans in both these places.

Susan came on Saturday to rake the lawn and sweep the paths and just generally be her own helpful self. We worked on getting the leaves out of the dwarf blue spruce that sits next to the path leading to the front door. As we did so, we noticed that it had expanded to cover a good part of the path. Susan wondered if we should cut it back to release the path and so I told her about the path.

As a student of garden design, I learned how important exits and entrances to a garden are. People want to know where they are in space, and particularly if they are entering the private space of a garden from, say, the semi-public space of a driveway. I took this lesson to heart and planned a pathway for the front garden that would lead through it and to my front door. Because it was my desire that people slow down while viewing the garden, slowing down being part of the garden’s respite from the crazy pace of our daily lives, I curved the path in a couple of spots and placed specimen plants in the view lines of the curve. Intrigued by what they saw, people, I assumed, would stop and look as they made their way through the garden and to the front door.

No one ever takes my path to the front door. Perhaps there was some fatal flaw in the execution of my idea, but I told Susan there was no point in mutilating the spruce to open up the path. No one who visits my garden does anything other than walk up the driveway and come to the side door. Unless, of course, they cannot resist the intrigue of the brick path at the end of the driveway that leads off to one side and curves around the garage. What could possibly be around that corner? Let’s go see.

I didn’t plan this one but this one works. I’ll take it. And I’ll take March 20th or 21^st as the official start of the gardening season here at Columbine Drive. Unless, of course, there is a blizzard.

A Hopeful Sort of Folk

Yesterday was warmer. Yesterday it rained. Yesterday I glimpsed poking through the snow a leaf of the Japanese fountain grass I leave up for winter interest. I didn’t see winter interest; I saw spring. A jolt of joy pulsed through me. Soon, I thought, soon I will be reconnecting with my plant friends.

But honestly, the leaf was bedraggled and ratty-looking and the snow was still piled high over the lawn and garden. I had snowdrops last year in mid-February. Where are they now? When the snow finally melts will they be there already up? Or do they require light and heat in order to emerge. Perhaps I will find out soon. Perhaps not. It could snow again.

I had occasion to talk to another Master Gardener yesterday and we were both gushing. We both admitted to being ridiculous in our celebration, but this reminded me that gardeners are the most hopeful people I know. I am going to share a bit of something I wrote on this subject for an Irish magazine some years ago. Perhaps the Irish are a hopeful people too. Here is a bit of the text.

“Gardeners are the most hopeful people I know. No matter how bad the weather last year, no matter the unusually warm spring that teased out blossoms only to be killed by an ‘unprecedented’ late frost, no matter that summer brought flood or drought, no matter the winter ravages of bark-eating rabbits or root-gnawing voles, we approach each new season with hope, believing that this time spring will be perfect, summer will provide the ideal balance of sun and wet, and winter will lay a gentle layer of snow upon our ground, then do no more.

I have never seen a gardener quit gardening because she or he lost hope. When the temperature is below zero and the snow above eye level, we happily set out for a class on hot new perennials for ‘summer sizzle.’ Come spring, we frequent nurseries where we see, we want, we buy. We bring our treasure home and plant it, carefully, following all the instructions that we as gardeners know. It dies. We go back and get another just like the one we lost. We plant it. It dies. We go back and get yet another. But we never ever give up; no “three strikes and you’re out” for us.

We approach our plants with inexhaustible hopefulness. We have a viburnum that is rather scraggly; it has in fact been scraggly and piqued looking from the day we got it. We feed it, spray it, talk to it. We bemoan its lack of success and ask everyone who will listen what to do to make it grow, but we never remove it. And why? Because we know that this year it will finally respond to our love, take hold, and flourish. We have a hydrangea that has not flowered in five years, despite the nursery’s claim of ‘profuse’ and ‘exquisite’ late-summer blooms. Remove it? Try a different shrub? Never. Because this year it will finally flower. We know it.

Of course, we get discouraged. Have I not despaired over my lawn or lost heart when the deer ate to the ground yet another spray of gorgeous daylilies? Do I not hear, whenever I get together with gardening friends, the tales of pests and diseases, of winter damage and failure to thrive? But we always rally. Our hopefulness kicks in like my old two-cylinder motorcycle, the one that never failed to start. If it rains for days, we say, ‘This is good for the garden, we need water.’ If it fails to rain for days, we say, ‘This is good for the garden, we need sun, and besides it is easier to add water than to deal with too much rain. Aren’t we lucky that it isn’t raining!’

Henry Mitchell, who for two decades shared his thoughts on gardening with the readers of the Washington Post and who made his mark in garden writing by being a bit cranky, liked to observe, ‘The kind of innocence that is best lost quickly is the simple-minded belief that spring will be lovely. It will not. It will be dreadful.’ Nevertheless, despite Henry, we believe. And when the rain finally comes and the sun finally shines and the snow finally melts and we finally reconnect with all our beloveds and find them more or less intact we will invoke his ghost and shake our fist at him and say, ‘See were right to believe and hope.’

Still, I know Henry is more right than wrong. He points out: ‘It is not nice to garden anywhere. Everywhere there are violent winds, startling floods. There is no place, no garden, where these terrible things do not drive gardeners mad.’ Yes, this has been our experience, and yes, we have all been driven mad by the weather. But we never stop hoping. For this is what makes a gardener – not a green thumb, not a degree in horticulture, not even a love of plants, but rather an intransigent hopefulness that defies experience and reason. And that is sometimes rewarded.”

In certain Christian theologies, the greatest sin of all is acedia, or hopelessness. For, as I understand it, it is the ultimate rejection of God. One can deny God’s existence but the very energy required to deny can be seen as evidence of God’s presence. Hopeless is a form of indifference, a form of “who cares,” and as such makes God irrelevant. Hence its elevation to a major sin.

In the everyday world, we know that people who have given up hope do not thrive. And in the world of contemporary politics, there are many voices that say that hopelessness is unacceptable. Joyce Vance, author of the newsletter “Civil Discourse,” one of the best sources of information as to what is really going on in our country, has written a book called “Giving Up is Unforgiveable.” She sounds to me like a gardener.

I have always been struck by the relative mental healthiness of my gardening friends. I am always comforted and inspired when in their presence. And I think it is because we are a hopeful sort of folk.

Lineage

I can still hear my mother, striking her cane on the floor for emphasis, as she tells me about my father’s refusal to leave their apartment in their residence for seniors.

“He has the best pair of legs in Laurel Oaks,” she cries, “but will he use them? No!”

“But Mom,” I counter, “he’s scared he won’t know how to get back to the apartment if he leaves it. His short-term memory is gone.”

“Nonsense,” says my mother, “he’s just being lazy.”

At the time I accused my mother of lacking empathy. Now I realize she was choosing anger over tears as she faced the fact that life as she had known and loved it was over. Stuck in an apartment, essentially alone, with a man who used to be my dad, she chose to rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I first noticed signs of my father’s illness when we celebrated his 80^th birthday. I flew to Milwaukee where he and my mother had just moved to be near my brother and his family. As always, after dinner we gathered to play games and, as always, I expected my father to win. He always won, no matter what the game, no matter if he was playing it for the first time or the hundredth. He was that kind of smart.

But he didn’t win. Troubled, I asked my mother if there was something wrong. “Of course not,” she answered. Then she suggested that maybe I, who won, had just gotten smarter.

My father’s dementia progressed steadily, finally claiming his life at age 96. But it had claimed his heart and soul long before. Visiting, I would find the apartment littered with notes in my mother’s handwriting: “Ray, don’t answer the phone. Ray, your sandwich is in the refrigerator. Ray, Dan’s number is on the dining room table.” He had his own room and he would come out every so often, shake his fist at my mother, and retreat.

I live not far from where my father was born. I share his passion for the topography of upstate New York. The first road I ever knew by name and number was Rte. 20, which becomes Western Avenue in Albany and which I drive frequently. My grandfather, whom I visited just days before he died at 102, called Rte. 20 the Cherry Valley Turnpike and he loved to have my father, his son, drive him along this scenic road.

My father loved words. I grew up learning to work crossword puzzles and memorize poetry and create puns, pleasures even now. I have my father’s physique, right down to the lower front tooth that juts out a bit from its neighbors and the left eyebrow hair that sticks straight up and curls wildly. My eyes tear up when I walk in the morning of a chilly day, just as his did, and I am subject to bursitis, just as he was. Like my dad, I am short and stocky and I have his sense of humor. And his temper. I have shaken my fist at my mother far more often than I care to remember.

My father was the soul of kindness. Our small town abounded in stories of his helpfulness. Because he was a pharmacist, people were always asking him for medical advice. He tended to cats and dogs as well. One Christmas eve, he answered the distressed call of a neighbor, gave medicine to a sick dog, then endured a series of painful shots when the dog was found to have rabies.

Through his friend, Justin, who had an auto sales business, my father found a cheap but safe car for my friend Maryka, struggling to survive a dissolving marriage and short on resources. He found another for my friend Loyce, just out of a psychiatric hospital. He showed up at the police station when he learned that an African American student at our local college, caught up in a minor scrape, was about to be charged with a felony. My dad made sure the young man did not spend any time in jail or receive any kind of record. Then, he found him a summer job and later helped him get into law school.

As a teenager and young adult, hearing the phrase, “you must be Ray Fetterley’s daughter,” made my day. It could have meant I had his way with words, for, like him, I have been known to throw down a puzzle I can’t solve and exclaim, “It’s a misery to me.” Or it could have meant that, like him, I was quick to anger and quick to cool. Or perhaps that I shared his quizzical way of looking at the world. Or that I also was kind.

Now with every failure to recall a word or person, every odd thought, every misjudged curve, every inability to remember what I went to the dining room for, I shudder, fearing that, like my father, I too will ultimately lose my mind. Now, when I look in the mirror and see my father’s face staring out at me, I am scared that it means I too am headed for a future of dementia.

A picture of my mother, taken at 93 near the end of her life, sits on the desk in my study. She is standing outside on the porch of the apartment in Laurel Oaks. She is turned toward the camera and smiling. With one hand she draws down out of its hanging basket a long stem of plant, tipped with a red flower; in the other she holds the pair of tiny clippers I gave her one Christmas so that she could better tend her indoor plants. She is preparing to deadhead and freshen up her “garden” of potted geraniums, two hanging baskets purchased when I visited earlier that year. Her smile is triumphant. She is telling me, “Look, I am still gardening.”

I keep this photo on my desk because it offers me an alternate lineage. My mother was a gardener. Her father was a gardener. His mother was a gardener. I am a gardener. My father was not a gardener. Therefore, I am like my mother, who studied theology into her 90’s. I am not like my father, who in his 80’s began asking the same question several times a day.

There are questions I ask every day, but only once and they tend to be of a theological nature. But I still try to be kind and funny too. For despite my fears, I honor both lineages and if I am ultimately to lose that quizzical way of looking at the world so be it. At least I have had it.

Self-Compassion

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” We hear it all the time, we say it all the time. But do we ever stop to ask if the way we treat ourselves is the best model for the way to treat others.

I don’t know about you, but I can be pretty abusive to myself.

Non, je ne regrette rien.

To me, the song is absurd. I am tempted to say, Moi, je regrette tout.

When I am sabotaged by regret in the middle of the night, I wake up sweating and shaking, and begin to harangue myself.

The things I say to myself when in this mood I would never say to anyone else and I don’t say to anyone else. My tone is harsh, my language is harsh, my body is stiff with anger. In contrast, when helping a friend, my language is kind, support, loving and my body posture is non-threatening. I listen deeply and with respect and offer verbal responses only if I think they can help. Why can’t I do this for myself?

My therapist has strongly advised me to enroll in an on-line program in self-compassion. I have begun to take it. Ironically, the first lesson in self-compassion reverses the golden rule: Treat yourself as you would treat a friend.

Is it not true that most of us self-abusers would never talk to our friends or even strangers as we often talk to ourselves. We would never call others the names we call ourselves or load someone else down with the endless recriminations we hurl at ourselves.

I am just beginning the course but already it is a bit of sand in the mechanism of self-abuse. For it keeps posing the question: how can I truly be kind to others if I am not kind to myself?

The resistance to self-compassion in our culture is considerable. I have heard it from others and I have voiced it myself.

It is just a form of self-pity

It is the act of wimps, weaklings

It is selfish

It is self-indulgent

It undermines your motivation to fix things

Looking at these responses carefully, I think at root the resistance to self-compassion is toxic masculinity. It boils down to the typical advice we give to men: stop crying and toughen up. But as we all know it is far harder to practice peace than it is to practice war, and self-compassion is a form of peace-making. So far from being wimps and weaklings, those who practice it are stronger than those who resist it.

Let’s scrutinize the resistance.

Self-compassion is actually the opposite of self-pity. When we are in the throes of self-pity, the woe-is-me syndrome, we are focused entirely upon ourselves and upon ourselves as the center of everything. We assume we are alone in our misery and that we are special in the magnitude of our misery. It is in essence a huge ego trip. Moi, je regrette tout. Oh, give me a break.

At the heart of this ego trip is the assumption that we are somehow super-human. The self-abuser sets the bar for behavior far higher than is humanly possible and therefore treats the self as super-human which is perhaps the ultimate form of egotism. The fundamental basis of self-compassion, in contrast, is the recognition that we are all just human and that we will all make mistakes.

As for being selfish, nothing beats the self-centered obsession of the self-abuser. I would even go so far as to call this self-centered obsession a perfect form of self-indulgence. Besides, what do we truly have to give to others if we cannot give the same to ourselves?

Perhaps the most important fact of all here is that far from undermining one’s motivation to do better self-compassion actually makes it possible for us to atone by trying harder. If we know that we treat our mistakes harshly, we will be more afraid of failure and less likely to keep trying to do better. If we recognize we are simply human and treat ourselves with compassion, we are motivated to keep trying to do better. We are prepared to treat ourselves as a friend not an enemy.

In other words, self-compassion is precisely the opposite of each of the charges against it. And I would go so far as to argue that true self-compassion is the necessary basis for true compassion for others. So to take this train of thought to its logical conclusion, the resistance to self-compassion in our culture is actually a resistance to compassion for others and a form of self-indulgence. And one of the key features of toxic masculinity is a failure of compassion for others and a massive male egotism. We are seeing this play out in spades on the national level.

I plan to continue the course. Hopefully some of the teachings as to how to access self-compassion will remain with me and I will be able to draw on them when the next round of self-abuse starts up. But I am aware that it will be hard to accomplish. The head stuff is easy, showing you why it is of the utmost importance that I practice self-compassion. The heart stuff is harder, actually doing it.

So let’s give ourselves a hug. Sara is not a fan, is all for “real” hugs, and Susan agrees with her, but I am going to wrap myself in my own arms anyway.

Beauty in the Winter Garden

A gardening friend, knowing that Sara and I are trying to move, has suggested I contact a videographer and get a video made of my garden so that I can continue to enjoy it even after I have left it. This struck me as an interesting suggestion and I have been pursuing it.

The first videographer I contacted said, “Yes, of course, and do you think June or July would be the better time.” I responded, “I am thinking of now. It’s my winter garden I want to remember.” A few moments of silence ensued. Then my contact suggested that tromping around outside in winter was not her specialty and besides what could there possibly be to videograph.

My second contact said, “No problem. I will be away for a few months but back in plenty of time to catch the garden at its summer magnificence.” I demurred, indicating I was looking for someone right now to videotape my winter garden. This contact was interested but was, of course, departing. I am still looking for a videographer that grasps the incredible beauty of the winter garden.

Back when I had my garden design business, I would remind clients that we live in upstate New York where we have this season called “winter.” Too many of my customers were prepared to give up on winter in the garden entirely and simply wait for spring to come. I, however, can not be without my garden for four to five months of the year. I saw no reason for others to miss out on this season. And so I began a vigorous campaign to promote the beauty of the winter garden and to design gardens that delivered that beauty.

In my own garden the sources of winter interest are plentiful. I am particularly enamored of the beauty I get from bark, particularly from the bark of the paperbark maple (Acer griseum). But equally, though I hate to admit it, I get a thrill from the bark of the river birch (Betula nigra), a tree whose nickname is the “tantrum” tree, so given because of its habit of dropping branch upon branch upon branch onto the ground, forcing me to make my first task of spring be pick up sticks.

I also get beauty from the red stems of the red-twigged dogwood (Cornus sericea) and from the bright red berries of the winterberry shrubs (Ilex verticillata). These persist until a certain day in February when, finally achieving sweetness, the robins come and in one afternoon they clean the bushes entirely of berries. Talk about winter interest. It is hard to beat that scene.

Grasses can be a beautiful addition to the summer garden, but I have planted mine for the winter interest they provide. The Miscanthus are particularly gorgeous this time of year in their straw-colored garb. Though brought low by recent snowfall, they have returned to upright status and show off their fancy fronds, which bob and weave in the wind, adding yet another dimension to their winter value.

Where the Miscanthus is concerned, I am in conflict. They are now considered invasive in New York State and I should remove them. However, I feel like Hamlet on the subject of marriage. I say, “There shall be no more Miscanthus in my garden, but those that are already planted, save one, shall live.” For, indeed, I have identified at least one set of these grasses that I could remove. The Little Bluestems, however, I can enjoy without guilt. They are native and non-invasive, have great ornamental value and provide some ecological value in the form of cover and food as well.

I am equally guilty of retaining my “Annabelle” hydrangeas because of the beauty of their dried winter flower heads. I know they offer little ecological value because these flowers in summer are sterile so they don’t have the nectar and pollen that pollinators like bees and butterflies need. Outside my living room window in winter, however, they provide a constant source of winter interest.

The beauty I get from the structure of shrubs and trees, freed from the confusion of leaves, is sometime almost unbearable. I treasure the view from my bedroom window of my lilac shrubs. These shrubs, so prone to leaf blight in the summer, emerge as stellar silhouettes in the winter. I have also planted the twisty turny Harry Lauder “Walking Stick” (Corylus avellana) for its outline in winter and discovered the glory of my dwarf Japanese maple.

When I add to all these sources of pleasure the joy I receive outside my kitchen window from the Star magnolia (Magnolia stellata), I am almost sorry to see winter end. I did not know when I planted the twig I thought was a shrub that it would grow into a tree whose buds in winter look like pussy willows, soft and fuzzy and grayish-white. These buds cover the tree and last for months, offering a touch of tenderness in winter that I can see every time I walk or drive into the garage. Its branches extend across the back window, reminding me how often plants exceed our expectations, how often they give us more than we could have imagined possible.

I am a child of the north. I need my winters. Born in November in New York City, I was whisked north at two weeks of age to our new home in Toronto where my parents had moved in September. I spent those first key months of December and January in English Canada where it was the custom, as Penelope Lively reminds us in her wonderful book, Life in the Garden, to put “the baby in her pram out in the garden in midwinter because that was what the baby books said you should do.” I know my mother followed the book. I like to think I began life, out in the garden, with snow on my face. A child of the garden, a child of the north, blessed by the beauty of the garden in winter and experiencing it still.

Solstice 2025

It’s a day for me to be up well before sunrise, celebrating, embracing the dark, but sitting in a room where I can experience the coming of light. And then the coming of light, and the wonder of the knowledge that once again day will show up.

Light pollution reigns supreme in my immediate neighborhood where across the street my neighbor has loaded his front yard with harsh nighttime light, substantial enough to land a helicopter if necessary and making it impossible for me to get the full experience of darkness. I know, though, that my neighborhood is not unique. Across the country we have banished darkness, that velvety blanket punctuated by points of light and often a sliver of moon. I doubt this proliferation has anything to do with celebrating light, for it is difficult to celebrate light when we do not embrace darkness.

Before my friend Joan sold her camp on Lake Helderberg, on Solstice morning I would drive out to the country and park on the road there and walk in the darkness until the light rose, and then I would walk in the light. Now I experience a somewhat compromised beginning of the day for I am unable to walk even in my neighborhood due to back pain.

Though not deeply dark where I sit, it is nevertheless dark enough. As I scrunch down in the couch to get still more comfortable in my comfortable home while I await the return of light, I acknowledge that I do not live in the fear many associate with the dark, whether real or metaphoric. When I think of those places, near and far away, where terror is a daily reality, I give thanks for the gift I have of present exemption and I send what comfort I can to those who are afraid.

Before the advent of anti-depressants, I used to fear the dark. As the days shortened, November would see me sliding ever more deeply into depression until we reached the blessed month of December when I would know the Solstice was close at hand and could sense the depression receding. Many still suffer from what is now known as Seasonal Depression Disorder, and SAD it is that such be the case.

Daylight came slowly, first just a blush of pink contrails across the sky, then a steady increase in light until the contrails were no more, and then finally the sun coming up and over the trees. Yes, it is a miracle, a daily miracle, the sunrise. Each day the light returns, each day without fail, and each day from now until mid-June the light will return increasingly, and the plants that need the dark for respiration and repair in order to return in the spring will eat that light, and we will eat because they do.

I attended Quaker Meeting this past Solstice Sunday and was in Meeting when the astronomical event which is the technical winter solstice -- that moment when one of Earth’s poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun -- occurred. It happened at 10:03 and at that moment and for the rest of the hour that is what I celebrated.

I believe I am perhaps more pagan than Quaker because this day is my holiest of days. However, it is obvious that I am not alone in celebrating this deep seasonal rhythm because we know it is no accident that we celebrate Christmas on December 25. For what could be more amazing than darkness, unless it be light? What could be more wondrous than the certainty that the sun will rise and that on this day of greatest darkness there will still be light? What could better point to the Spirit that inhabits our universe than this miracle?

We humans have been celebrating this miracle for centuries, as witness winter solstice structures like Ireland’s Newgrange (c. 3200 BCE) and England’s Stonehenge (c. 3000 BCE). Sara and I were lucky enough to visit a similar Solstice-aligned stone structure when we travelled to Ireland one summer and signed up for Spirit Warrior’s tour of sacred sites on the Beara peninsula. Many of the sites we visited were designed to catch the first rays of the winter solstice sun through an aperture in the stones. Given that the sun rarely shines on an Irish morning in winter, Sara was led to quip, “I wonder how many years it took for those who built these structures to figure out if they got it right.” There is always room for humor even on the most sacred of days, for without a sense of humor we are not fully human.

At sunset, I watched as the light faded from the sky. I turned on no artificial light until that moment had passed. Once the sun was down, however, I turned on every light in our downstairs rooms. This ritual serves me as a way of honoring the fire that brought light to people at Solstice for centuries before electricity.

These days Sara and I sit before our gas-powered fire. Doing so we honor both the darkness and the light, and for both we give thanks for both are beautiful, both are necessary, both give comfort. Above all I give thanks for the certainty that while our little human lives may flourish or fade, the planets keep their course. We are the random, but blessed, recipients of their steadiness.

Origin Story

I took a writing workshop this weekend, online. It was not a workshop that should have been offered online. The experience, such as it was, was one to have had there. In this case, “there” is Kripalu, the yoga-centered retreat in the Berkshires.

I did not find the prompts productive of meaningful writing with one exception, the prompt: Write about something that could have happened but didn’t.

I wrote, “I could have died, but I didn’t. It was the first time I fought back death, but it would not be the last. It was, however, the only time I wasn’t fully there so the story comes from others. Nevertheless, the effect of the trauma must be registered somewhere in my mind and body.”

Though I am more interested these days in writing stories, this event is actually true, yet it has become a kind of story. Even though I cannot directly trace any consequences of that event in my mind and body, I have considered it an origin story ever since my mother told me about it. Everyone I have ever gotten to know well has a similar story that forms for them a certain origin. I tell this story as a way of sharing and eliciting.

I was a year and a half old, an age before conscious memory, but not an age before body memory. My mother noticed I was having trouble climbing the stairs. She picked me up and found I was burning with fever. Rushed to the hospital, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The doctor there told my mother to take me home as there was no hope of saving me. I would be dead in days.

I had caught the disease from the live-in “girl” my father had hired to assist my mother with household chores and two young children. Just moved to a new city, Toronto, with a husband away much of the time, and facing her first Canadian winter, my mother was happy to get help. Norma was a country girl happy to find a job in the city. She became my first caregiver. I lost her overnight.

“How could I not have had her tested,” cried my distraught father, whose family was riddled with TB. He had lost his older brother to the disease, and his older sister as well. His mother was infected to the point that my dad had bought his parents a home in the Adirondacks where she might recover.

“You saved her life,” my mother told me much later. By the time her disease was discovered, one entire lung was gone. Norma was sent to a sanitarium where she recovered after a relatively short time. She was distraught at the thought of having infected me.

No doubt I was also distraught, being sick to the point of death. But where, I wonder, does my body hold that memory and that stress? And where, I wonder, do I hold the grief of losing my primary caregiver overnight, one day there, the next day gone. No matter how sick I was, I must have somewhere registered such a loss, a cataclysm at any age.

My mother was determined I would not die, and so, I guess, was I. In order to survive, however, I had to be isolated. The only person allowed in my room was my mother, and she had to be masked. My father and my brother were allowed to wave at me from the stairs but not to come into or even near my room for fear of giving me some other illness that would kill me.

My mother got me up, bathed, and dressed in the morning, and then came back in the late afternoon to read to me and give me my supper. Without Norma to help, all the work of the house fell to my mother as well as the care of my brother and myself. And so I was alone in my room most of the day.

According to my mother, I appeared to be content, playing with my toys and looking at my picture books and removing my socks as fast as she put them on, no doubt an early manifestation of my desire to be “out.” My brother, who was diagnosed with a very light case of TB and who recovered quickly, compensated for his temporary isolation by creating an imaginary companion, George. My mother would hear him talking to George, and once when she served him liver and spinach for supper, he said to her, “We don’t like it, but we will eat it. But why do we have to liver and spinach on the same night?”

I was probably too young to develop an imaginary companion. But what, I wonder, did I do for all those hours alone in my room, month after month after month. For my illness was discovered in late July and I did not recover until the following spring. To this day, a darkness descends on me in mid-August, the time, according to my mother, when they almost lost me. And in the spring, I feel the return of life. Does the body really keep that kind of score? And what kind of score has my body and my mind kept from so much time in relative isolation? And at that age?

When my granddaughter was a year and a half old, I imagined the impact on her of sudden isolation from caregiver and companions. In my imagination, it was traumatic. But, of course, I was a very sick child and that makes a difference. Still, alone for so long, with only my mother as an occasional companion? I wonder.

And of course I wonder: Where was Norma, my caregiver, the one who loved me, when my mother discovered I was burning up with fever? Where was my father, the pharmacist, the deliverer of drugs, the teller of stories about his brother George and their horse Spike. Where was my mother? Why did it take so long for anybody to notice I was sick?

I grew up with guilty parents, so guilty that my mother never told me about my illness until I was in my late teens and starting to smoke. She thought I should know I had compromised lungs. This knowledge did not stop me from smoking, but it did start a story.

Repetition

Do you ever have certain lines of poetry or prose repeating themselves in your head or a saying that you can’t seem to stop recalling, hearing the words while you do the dishes or make the bed or chop the onions? Hearing them without necessarily knowing why? And even when you are supposed to be seriously concentrating on something else?

I can’t stop a particular passage from running through my head no matter if I am chopping onions or trying to read or talking to a neighbor.

It comes from the Hebrew text, Micah 6.8:

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God?

As I am no fan of Lords or Gods, I hear simply: what else is asked of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.

I first heard these words from my mother, who often quoted them because she heard them from her father who often quoted them. This is the same lineage that gave me the title of my newsletter, “Out in the Garden.”

Coming home from school, my mother would ask her mother where her father was. “Out in the garden, dear,” was my grandmother’s steady reply. You might gather from this detail that my mother loved her father but not so much her mother, and you would be correct in your assumption. I never really knew my grandfather as he died when I was 10. He lived in Chicago while we lived in Canada and we visited him only rarely. What I do remember is that he introduced my brother and me to Cheerios, the now promoted as heart-healthy cereal. Since at home we had only the choice of shredded wheat or porridge, we were smitten and returning home banged spoons on table until we too had Cheerios in our sunny Toronto breakfast room. To my mother, however, my grandfather was the standard by which everything else was judged. And in my mother’s eyes he did justice, loved mercy, and walked humbly.

I think of my mother perhaps most at this time of year because she loved the Christmas season, getting us to reuse gift wrappings and gift cards over and over so that with each new opening we shared the joy of Christmas past. “To Dan,” would be crossed out, and replaced with “To Mom”; “from Judy,” would be crossed out and replaced with “from Dan.” And the gift would be wrapped in paper salvaged from last year’s celebration by judicious clipping around scotch tape tears. Oh, yes, my mother would exclaim, that card was on the book Judy gave me last year. And as she enjoyed the wrapping paper from Christmas past, she would wonder, What might this gift be, and she would very carefully unwrap the gift so that the paper could be used again. She did justice to the season, loved the rituals, and remained humble in the midst of plenty.

Let’s parse the sentence running through my head. “Do justice.” Justice, then, is a matter of action and injustice is the result of inaction. I did not speak up when I knew something spoken was not true. I was afraid. I did not write my senator or join that march or call to protest an unethical act of a company selling a dangerous product. I was busy. I did not hear the injustice in a statement made about the reasonableness of not giving hormone treatment young people who see themselves as transgender. Doing justice takes courage and persistence and imagination because injustice can hide itself well, in a simple request or a modest statement. Can’t we just talk about something more pleasant? I don’t do politics. She’s my sister and I must support her.

But surely loving mercy leads to action as well and surely these are acts of justice? Yet when we think of the works of mercy --feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless – we think of love. If I make peanut butter sandwiches for the homeless, I do it because my heart goes out to someone who is hungry. If I see someone who is shivering and I give them my coat, I do it because I know what it feels like to be cold and I empathize. If I moisten my mother’s lips with water as she lies in a coma-like state, I do so because I know what it means to feel parched.

As for walking humbly, it governs the other two. How easy it is to feel proud of oneself for writing that letter or making that peanut butter sandwich or giving away the coat. Just think, I do justice and love mercy. Wow. I am pretty special. Humility is always in short supply, everywhere.

I don’t believe in a patriarchal God or even in a feminist revision of same. But I do believe in something bigger than myself, a force, a power, a presence that keeps me humble. And my garden always gives me the perspective that leads to the conviction of a “bigger other,” a phrase we used in the college I attended to try to keep ourselves humble as we “pushed back the frontiers of knowledge.”

I think my life is complex and then I examine closely the structure of a columbine. I think my life is long and then I consider my umbrella pine tree on this planet for millions of years. I think I have strength and force and then I observe my snowdrops in the spring pushing their way through frozen ground to bloom despite a covering of snow.

I guess if, as it seems, I am always to have words in my head repeating themselves, these commands are good words to have. They keep my mother close to me and through her I touch my Irish grandfather who came to this country at the age of 10 with nothing but a bible in his pocket, according to family lore. Hearing the phrase so constantly I may in fact be more likely to imitate that grandfather and to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly.

But perhaps I will soon get different words. Stay tuned.

Abscission

Abscission is late this year. Snow has already fallen and still the sweet gum holds onto its leaves. Just yesterday the paperbark maple dropped its leaves, creating a perfect circle of orange and gold at the base of the trunk. Late abscission means difficulty completing garden take-down which includes raking the lawn.

I am enamored of abscission, the chemical process that allows leaves to drop off trees in the fall, and not just because it allows me to complete the take-down. The process is so complete and clean. One moment the leaf is on the tree, the next moment it is on the ground, its fall triggered by plant hormones and air temperatures.

So many endings are messy, with bits and pieces left behind to fester, or brutal with pain oozing from wounds, or ended, then restarted, then ended again . . .

I think of my relation to smoking. Oh, yes, I ended many times but was always up for bumming a cigarette from a smoking friend or finding reasons why it was necessary to pick up the habit, just for this one week. Imagine if a leaf decided upon falling it wasn’t really ready and jumped back up onto the tree. We would call that unnatural, maybe even freakish. Once a leaf is done, it is done.

Strangely enough, however, I finally experienced abscission in relation to smoking. I had gone on a retreat with a friend to heal from a particularly difficult experience. No smoking allowed. OK, I thought, surely I can do without a cigarette for a weekend. I did manage to do without my smokes, but all weekend I anticipated getting home, sitting on my porch and having a cigarette.

I got home late Sunday night. I picked up my pack of cigarettes when a voice inside my head said, why don’t you wait until morning. Ok, I will wait until morning, I replied. I did, but with that first cup of coffee I picked up my pack again. Again the voice inside my head spoke, saying, why don’t you wait until you start working. Ok, I can wait, I said. I began work, checking the proofs of a book in the process of publication. I did not think to pick up a cigarette until I had some writing to do. I had been smoking while writing since college and had more than once found myself unable to write unless I smoked. A bit irritated by now by the voice that had kept me so long from my pleasure, I grabbed my pack and began pulling out a cigarette when the voice inside my head exploded: What are you doing? You are not a smoker!

I put down the pack and never smoked again. Abscission.

I was lucky enough to experience abscission in relation to my life as an academic as well. The first time I was unwilling to tell my students the year I graduated from high school I knew I was ready to quit. Then, grading my last set of papers from the last class I would teach but not tell my age to, I felt the paper-grading mechanism in me snap. I simply couldn’t grade another paper. I was done. Abscission.

I had a relationship once that I had to end long before it was over. I was still in love, but the beloved had taken a turn into a darkness that I knew I would not be able to survive or affect. It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made, and it cost me untold anguish to stick to my decision. Bits and pieces of that pain are still with me these many years later, remorse tangling with grief to make a stew of feeling that persists.

The beauty of abscission is multiple. It happens at the right time. It feels natural. The break is clean, no bits and pieces left behind, and it is permanent.

Now I am faced with the question: how will my relationship with my garden end? Will it be a form of abscission? Will I simply one day find myself unable to remove even one more weed? Will the pruning mechanism in me simply snap of fatigue? Or will it be brutal and messy, leaving me with a never-ending sense of loss?

Abscission, of course, prepares the tree for renewal, the return of leaves in the spring, new leaves, fresh green, a new beginning. Such was certainly my experience upon leaving the university as I rebirthed into new life as a gardener. Does such another transformation lie ahead of me? Or will I be torn from my garden wielding my weeder and begging, as I am today, for just one more season.

I have only a small list of to-do’s for next season. I am a little concerned, however, because one of my to-do’s reads: Create a new garden using the dwarf winterberry shrubs and the sweet fern. I am quite enamored of this possible new garden, unique in its composition and design. This does not bode well for abscission. Still, it could happen.

Dark

It’s happened again. Daylight savings is over and darkness descends now at 5, way too early for a psyche that delights in the days being light from 4 in the morning until 9 at night. I turn on house lights at 4:00 and lament the shortened days.

The hours for working on taking down the garden have shrunk. Too cold too late in the morning to ask helpers to start early; too cold too soon in the afternoon to ask helpers to stay late. Taking down the garden – a challenge. I’ve thought and said and written about the fact that gardens rarely survive the gardener and I have confronted the emotional challenge of this fact. What I am beginning to understand is that this gardener may not survive her garden.

As I watch it go down, I think of it coming up. I think of next spring and wonder how able I will be to do the work it takes to get the garden up. The spring process is far more labor intensive than the winter preparation, particularly since I have begun to leave the leaves in my gardens over winter.

I used to rake my gardens clean as part of the fall take-down. Obviously a clean-raked garden was more beautiful and more healthy than one with leaves allowed to remain– no place for those nasty root-eating voles to hide. But I raked in the fall primarily so that I would not have to do that work in the spring.

Recently, I have begun to leave the leaves. Layers of leaves temporize the soil, preventing frost heaves that lift plant roots out of the ground. They protect soil structure from the effects of heavy rain and melting snow, preventing erosion and creating a microhabitat that is good for microbes. They protect beneficial ground bees, allowing them to winter over and come forth the following spring. They add organic matter to the soil as they decompose.

I have found these reasons sufficiently compelling to change my aesthetic from appreciating a swept clean bed as a sign of beauty to appreciating the leaf-left bed as lovely. It intrigues me to consider how quickly and easily I have been able to make this change. It gives me hope that it will be possible to change on a large scale our understanding of the beautiful where nature is concerned, particularly in the case of the suburban lawn. Perhaps one day the native meadow will be the symbol of beauty and a front lawn will be considered unattractive.

Leaving the leaves, of course, means that I will need to remove them in the spring. They don’t get raked from every garden, but from some it is essential for proper plant growth and, yes, for beauty. This year, though deeply appreciative of one less task to manage this fall, I fear for my ability to do this extra work in the spring. Indeed, the gardener may not survive the garden.

The lawn of course must be raked, both fall and spring, and I am grateful to all who are helping me with this part of the fall cleanup for Sara says that raking because it involves twisting is out of bounds for me. Sitting in my rollator while dear friends twist and turn and gather up the leaves and stuff them into bags or gather them to the curb, we are blasted by the sound of the infamous leaf blower. I find it impossible not to start a rant when I hear that sound. The leaf blower is a useful tool for getting leaves away from plants that are too delicate to survive raking. That is it. Period. Case closed. The sight of a grown man pushing leaves with a leaf blower strikes me as both pathetic and criminal given the amount of pollution these blowers spew, a sure sign that our civilization is near its end. A California Air Resources Board study identifies one hour of leaf blower operation as the equivalent of driving a car for 15 hours. Moreover, the study also claims that a “significant portion of the fuel used is unburned and released as harmful pollutants, including carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and particulate matter, as well as contributing to smog-forming chemicals.” All this to save some guy from having to pick up a rake and work. I say, lets make America rake again!

Next spring with all its challenges is a long way off and between now and then lies winter and darkness. I think it is time I made friends with darkness. I am starting to collect a tool kit for doing so. Here are some of the items in it.

Sleep: I am still needing sleep for recovery. I need to reorient my psyche to seeing sleeping as a joyful necessity rather than as an unfortunate interruption to work. I need to tell myself it is ok to go to bed earlier than in summer and ok to stay in bed later. I need to give myself permission to nap during the day. I need to luxuriate in the drowse.

Sunbathing: At different parts of the day different parts of my home are flooded with sunlight. I plan to make the time to sit in a circle of sun each day and absorb.

Reading: I have in the past viewed reading as a treat I give myself during the interstices of projects, of work, something that is done late in the afternoon or in the evening. This winter I plan to allow myself to read in the morning and to relish the act.

Walking, movement: Though the days are short I need to be outside as much as possible. A morning’s walk in the day’s light will fuel me to survive the later earlier darkness. I am hopeful that I will at some point be able to do this. If I am unable to walk with any success I can at least do stretches inside.

The winter garden: I have worked hard to create a garden that is beautiful in winter. Bark, berries, structure, seed heads – all this and more delights my eye in winter, leading me to sometimes, rarely, wish that winter would last longer.

The days will get shorter, the darkness more pervasive. I will try to make my peace with short days and long nights. I do, after all, have a tool kit.

P.S. Below is a picture of the tree I see in my neighbor’s yard and want in my own. Technical difficulties kept me from being able to share it last time.

Oxydendrum arboreum

I did not expect to feel this way again. For years now I have been satisfied with the plants I have. I have added natives to try to rebuild in some slight way the desired ecosystem for my spot on the planet, but I have not lusted after Joe Pyeweed or Monarda punctata, a supposedly non-thuggish variety of bee balm, nor have I had to have asclepias tuberosa or incarnata, the butterfly and swamp milkweed.

After reading Doug Tallamy’s Natures Best Hope, I tried to find a place to plant a red oak. Here’s why, according to sources, including Tallamy, scoured by AI.

‘A single red oak tree can support over 4,000 different species of insects, while specific estimates suggest over 180 insects rely on the American red oak alone. This is more than any other native tree species in North America and includes a wide variety of caterpillars, which are a crucial food source for birds.’

I scoured my yard for a possible site. None emerged. I realized that I had just the right number of trees in just the right places. Short of taking a tree down or changing the configuration and design of my garden completely, I could not plant a red oak. I was satisfied.

Now the unthinkable has happened. I desire another tree. I feel that old surge of lust and I hear myself saying, I must have that tree.

The tree in question is in my neighbor’s yard. I see it several times a day. I want it more each time I see it. I know that lust is one of the seven deadlies, and I know it is not right to covet my neighbor’s tree. But I do.

Ironically, the tree in question is one I seriously considered planting when I still had space for trees. The Oxydendrum arboreum, commonly called sourwood or sorrel tree, is a deciduous understory tree that is native to the eastern United States.

According to the Missouri Botanical Garden, “It typically grows 20-25’ tall with a straight, slender trunk and narrow oblong crown. Gray bark on mature trees is fissured, ridged and scaly. Finely-toothed, glossy green leaves (to 5-8” long) are reminiscent of peach. Leaves produce consistently excellent fall color, typically turning crimson red. Waxy, lily-of-the-valley-like, white flowers bloom on slender, drooping, one-sided terminal panicles (4-8” long) in early summer. Flowers have a slight fragrance. Flower panicle stems remains in place as the flowers give way to 5-parted dry capsules that ripen to silver-gray in September. Capsules contrast well with the red fall color and provide continuing ornamental interest after leaf drop into winter. Flowers are quite attractive to bees. Sourwood honey is a highly prized local product.”

Well, no wonder I wanted it, especially when my landscape gurus told me it was very much underused in garden plantings and if I had one I would have something very special, something no one else had.

I began searching for samples of Oxydendrum. No nurseries stocked them and no one I knew had one. However, my desire was such that I searched far and wide. Sara and I spent a long afternoon at Landis Arboretum tagging along after their tree guru as he searched for a sample of the tree. When we finally found one, it was a miserable specimen, bent over and twisted, scrawny and scraggly.

We searched farther, spending most of our day at the Norfolk Botanical Garden riding in the rain in a jeep while the driver, an employee of the garden, searched for a specimen Oxydendrum. We found one and it looked just as bad as the one at Landis. This was our last attempt and with it we crossed Oxydendrum off the list of possibilities.

Now I see a perfect specimen of the tree in my neighbor’s yard and I realize what I should have realized before: there is a considerable difference between a tree grown in a nursery for planting in a suburban lawn and a tree that germinated in the “wild” and was simply allowed to grow as best it could. Clearly, it is now possible to get a beautiful little Oxdendrum tree from a nursery and so to enjoy its many wonderful qualities.

I could do this were I younger and had the room. I want to do this despite being older and having no room. The collision of these two incompatibles gets me thinking.

Why do I have to own this tree? Why does it need to be in my yard? Why is the lust I feel a lust for possession? Why does it take the form of “I must have that plant”? Why is it not enough simply to enjoy the tree as it sits in my neighbor’s yard?

There is a concept in landscape design called the borrowed view. It was introduced to England in the 18^th century by that wonderful designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. The “borrowed view” is a technique that incorporates distant scenery, like a mountain or a neighboring tree, into a garden to make it feel larger and more connected to its surroundings. I have this effect in my rear garden with both my neighbor to the side and my neighbor to the back. Mossy expanse and delightful fishpond extend my sense of my garden and create an unbroken web of connection.

I could adapt this concept to include my neighbor’s yard across the street from my front garden. Yes, I enjoy viewing the tree as I come and go but I can’t make it part of my garden, and even if I could it would not eliminate the lust for ownership. If it were mine, I could look at it all day every day from as many angles as possible, from up close and far away. I could observe its seasonal changes firsthand. I could watch it grow and change.

All that sounds very reasonable, but we are talking about lust here. And that lust tugs at deeper roots. I want to be the one who planted this unique specimen tree. I want the accolades that go with that achievement, the recognition of my talent for finding the unusual and for siting it correctly. Lust and pride are companion deadlies and lust in this case clearly touches on greed. I have more than enough amazing trees in my garden. Who am I that I still want more?

I may want more but I can’t have more. I can’t have an Oxydendrum arboreum in my garden. So what can I have? Certainly the borrowed view. More useful, however, is the energy that accompanies the desire for this tree. It is like the return of an old friend, and I must admit, it is a bit rejuvenating. It lets me know that, even now, if I had the space for this tree and if I knew of a plant sale that had such a tree on offer, I could easily get up at 6 in the morning to be that sale’s first customer.

The Lawn

I was thrilled to see an article titled “Move over, green lawns” topping the business page of a recent issue of my local newspaper. Yes, it was about a woman in Colorado but still it suggested that the case for replacing the plants we call “lawn” with native alternatives is gaining some traction. This case was made most powerfully by Doug Tallamy in his 2019 book, Nature’s Best Hope. In this book Tallamy argues that if we converted half of the millions of acres now devoted to non-native European turf grasses to more ecologically sound plantings we would have the largest national park in the U.S. He suggests we call it Homegrown National Park.

For several years now I have been presenting a talk through the Master Gardener program called “Honey, I shrunk the lawn.” My object in this presentation is to encourage people to reduce the amount of space they give over to lawn and to use the soil for some other more ecologically sound project.

The problem with lawns is clear. Lawns require water and water is a precious and ever scarcer resource. Lawn mowers spew carbon, as much some estimate as 11 cars, vastly exceeding any carbon removal the lawn might accomplish. More herbicides and pesticides are used on the suburban lawn than in all of agriculture, and much of these “cides” make their way into our water systems compromising their health. Add to this the fact that lawns are an ecological dead zone, providing no nourishment for any part of our ecosystem, and a monoculture, making them prone to pervasive disease and pests and you have the case against lawns.

Yet lawns are everywhere. Is this because we can’t imagine covering ground with anything else? Is this because we are afraid of being different? If everyone else in the neighborhood has a lawn, I should have one too? Is it because it seems so American, the ultimate symbol of the American dream being a house and lawn? Is it because we can easily hire out the care of our lawn to someone else? Managing a meadow would not only mark us as different and perhaps unAmerican; it would also take a lot of work. But is care what we are getting when we hire a lawn-care service?

Once, during a difficult time in my life, I contacted such a service. Mr. B. came highly recommended. He was an independent operator, not part of a TruGreen or Bloomin’ Green network. He assured me that he cared about lawns; he assured me that he “cut high, and on demand, only when the lawn needs it, Mrs. F.” Mr. B. had just been stiffed by a contractor who went bankrupt owing him a lot of money for lawns he had installed at the developer’s new homes. Other neighbors had hired him. I hired him. I never saw him again.

Instead, I watched as every Monday morning at 10 a.m. a surly unshaven youth, for whom the term “horticulture” no doubt conjured up a world far removed from grass and grow, showed up in a truck. He backed an enormous mower down a ramp, put on his ear protectors, revved the engine to roar and set off across my lawn. It mattered not how short the grass nor how wet the ground. “Mulching” formed no part of his vocabulary. He scalped, he bagged, and he took out anything in his way. After two months, I fired the service. I could see that over time this approach would kill my lawn.

The practices of the so-called lawn care companies in fact constitute the opposite of care. Instead, they create lawns that require more and more of the services these companies provide. It’s a vicious cycle and it goes something like this. The so-called lawn care companies mow every Monday whether the grass needs it or not. They start at 8 a.m. when the grass is wet, not dry. They mow low, scalping the lawn and leaving the plants to fry under the sun. This gives dandelions, crabgrass, and creeping Charlie the conditions they need to flourish. Responding to the homeowner’s frantic calls, the companies then apply herbicides to kill the weeds they have allowed to grow by cutting the grass so short. This compromises the soil which supports the grass and leads to further erosion of root strength. Fertilizer is then applied to save the weakened grass which provides a quick green flourish but does nothing to nurture the roots. The result of this so-called care is grass in trouble.

It is not that difficult to keep grass healthy. Here is the mantra: mow high, 4” or more; mow only when the grass needs it; mow only when grass is dry; mulch your clippings to return nutrients to the soil; water only when absolutely necessary and then early morning and long and deep.

This is obviously not a recipe the so-called lawn care companies follow. So what’s the solution? Clearly it is to shrink the amount of ground we give over to non-native European turf grasses to a size where the homeowner can manage it. Because what, after all, is the social, psychological, even spiritual cost of wanting something we aren’t willing to take the time and trouble to care for?

Since becoming unable to weed and mow my own lawn I have been blessed with Justin, who follows the mantra of good lawn care. Still I have far more lawn than I would like. Were I to start over I would have a meadow for my front yard and a hedgerow for much of my backyard. But I would still devote some space in the back to what we call lawn. Here’s why.

My grass, if properly cared for, comes back year after year. It gives me green, beautiful living green, for seven months of the year. My grass lets me walk on it, play croquet on it, lie down in it, run and jump on it, all without much complaining. It provides a perfect frame for my garden. It gives me a sense of space like no other ground cover. I even love the grasses that make up a lawn in our part of the world – the tall fescues and the fine-leaf fescues, the perennial ryes and the Kentucky blue grass. I love these grasses separately and I love them collectively.

Walt Whitman liked the grass of his time.

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,” says Walt as he leans and loafs at his ease observing a spear of summer grass.

So why shouldn’t I love the grass of my time? Why shouldn’t I praise it? Why shouldn’t a spear or more of grass be a place where one who prays earthward finds traces of stars?

The issue of course is, ironically, one of balance. Just devote half of any piece of earth you may have responsibility for to something more ecologically sound than lawn and we will have Homegrown National Park. Personally, I long for the day when it is as easy to hire someone to help you get a meadow started as it is now to get someone to mow your lawn. I long for the day when half of the current so-called lawn care services are devoted to planting meadows or vegetable gardens or native plant gardens, particularly in front lawns which are rarely used for any of the activities lawns are good for. I long for the day when planting a meadow is so common that it is not the stuff of headlines or lawsuits or anything but praise and pleasure. Hopefully that day will come sooner rather than later.

Out of Balance

I have always loved the equinoxes. As a creature of extremes, they remind me of the importance of balance. They give me a chance to celebrate it and the impetus to strive for it. Day and night, equal time; light and dark equal time.

But this year I find I can not celebrate balance.

The bad news massively outweighs the good; my garden is desperate for water, we have had no rain for weeks, only the sun beating down often brutally on parched ground; one hip is higher than the other, my gait is lopsided. One end of the seesaw reaches for the sky; the other rests firmly on the ground.

How can I celebrate balance when everything is out of joint, literally and figuratively?

Maybe “in balance” isn’t the only way to be, isn’t even the right way to be in a time of such imbalance.

Confucious says "Balance is the perfect state of still water. Let that be our model. It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface."

But is that my model? My passion for social justice is not at all the state of still water. It is fiery within and I hope burningly public, a churned and churning surface. Maybe being out of balance is exactly what we want when social justice is the subject or when the search for truth is our object.

I have discovered that being out of balance has its own rewards. Seeing askew reveals what straight on misses.

I spend far more time than ever before paying attention to my body. I have exercises to do three times a day; I am committed to intense muscle releasing work with a therapist twice a week; lengthy acupuncture treatments have become a pattern; I have a massage therapist. I am getting to know my body.

With the seesaw on the ground, I can rest. No need to wrestle with muscles to maintain balance while in the air. These post-surgery days I crave sleep and I honor that craving, sleeping far more hours than balance would require and far more than has ever been my habit.

As I lurch with my cane into drug store or Post Office, I discover enormous kindness as doors are held open and cars stop driving, all to facilitate my lurch. I have not yet been pushed aside to let a faster walker in sooner. The sheer delight I experience in having a friend with whom I am having coffee reach down and tie my shoe for me amazes me. As our government spews out more and more meanness for citizens to emulate, consistent kindness is inspiring and, dare I say, hopeful.

I have developed an informed empathy for others who are struggling with physical limitations. And empathy for myself has emerged as well. I experience deep gratitude for all that is still working well in my body and mind. Empathy and gratitude are gifts of the seesaw, perhaps of the part that is up in the air.

I have learned to relax. Tight muscles can be spoken to and encouraged to let go of the tension. Mindfulness works. Perhaps more importantly I have come to accept that the turning of the world does not depend on me. Born at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, I have always quipped I arrived just in time to get to work by 9.

I have done my work in the world because I have believed in its importance and my own. What some might call an outsized sense of both has powered me through years of activity. I am no longer active in the world as I have been: I can no longer manage my own garden; I can no longer work in the gardens at the Cooperative Extension or even in the native garden at the Bethlehem Town Hall which I helped design and plant; I am taking a break from my Quaker Meeting to try to reorient my connection there; I no longer seek new outlets for my writing. In the ways that have previously measured importance for me I am no longer important.

In the past, when afflicted by temporary periods of attack on my sense of importance, I have consoled myself with what I like to call fossil therapy.

I do not have a Ginkgo tree but I do have a Japanese umbrella-pine, a tree not actually a pine despite its name. Like the Ginkgo, the Japanese umbrella- pine is called a “living fossil” because traces of the plant can be found in the fossil record of the Triassic period some 250 million years ago.

Imagine! I have a plant in my garden that has been on this earth for some 250 million years. I have been around for some 86. Next to my Sciadopitys verticillata I am a mere dot on earth’s timeline. My tree suggests I not exaggerate my own importance. And so sometimes in the past when I have suffered a sense of unimportance I have conjured my umbrella pine and accepted my own relative insignificance. This has not cheered me up, but it has allowed me to go on.

But now I am taking a very different view of fossil therapy. I see it as a way of restoring a balance that works for me. It gives me the long view. I believe the umbrella pine will still be around even if humans are not. I believe, if our species survives, the seesaw will in the years ahead tip back toward decency.

At the same time, my tree gives me a new approach to the short view. No longer exaggerating my own sense of importance, I can adopt and adapt the words of Harry Bosch, one of my favorite television characters: everyone matters or no one matters; everything matters or nothing matters. My umbrella pine matters, even if the next owners cut it down. And it matters that I planted it and I matter even if I can plant no more. My tree allows me to reconstruct my sense of self to live as best I can in whatever days are left to my time on this earth.

And, blessed be, the equinox arrives regardless of our perturbations to give us a moment of balance whether or not we are in or out of balance ourselves.

Unable to be out in my garden in person this season and needing to re-orient myself, it occurred to me that I could visit my garden via photos. Below are some examples that leave me feeling I have actually been out in the garden.

Obviously a photo of the entrance to the garden. When I first moved to Columbine Drive I was lucky to find there a man who loved stone. He built me the path that leads to the front door, following my instructions on exactly where to place each stone. You will see that the path curves slightly twice. That is because I wanted people to slow down as they entered the garden and take time to look around them. We rush too much in every place, including the garden. A curve creates a bit of a pause; a straight path invites rush. I also made sure there were interesting views if one were to actually pause at the curve and look around. Unfortunately, very view people enter my garden this way. The car deposits them elsewhere.

This is one of my most favorite photos of the spring garden after the crabapple has bloomed and before the fallen petals turn brown and compost. I call it “hallowed ground.” I planted the crabapple, a mere sapling when I bought it, in a part of the garden that had previously been used for vegetables. The area was clear and sunny and perfect for a crab. I had seen this particular cultivar, ‘Profusion,’ at a garden I visited and in typical fashion I lusted after it. I was a ‘young’ gardener, easily charmed by a beautiful plant and totally innocent as to the issue of size at maturity. I never intended such a large tree for that spot; it is, of course, considerably bigger now. Ben, charmed by it even at maturity, placed the intricate circle of stones to accent the tree trunk.

And speaking of Ben, here he is building the new vegetable garden for Sara, creating a square event in a curving landscape. Sara has loved her vegetable garden for many years but the severe drought of this summer, with its consequent need for watering, has left her wondering if she can manage another season. Here she is, below, leaning on the railing of the vegetable garden with her good friend, John, examining the results of an earlier year’s success with the tomato plants John provided as seedlings.

And speaking of things getting bigger than what one expected, I offer the following photos as a caution. The first represents what I bought and planted in 2002: a magnolia presented by its nursery tag as a shrub of three to five feet, and three Korean boxwoods promised to fill at maturity the empty space in front of my garage. The second photo shows that same space today. I use these photos when I give lectures on garden design to encourage people not to rely on nursery tags but to check out in reputable sources the size at maturity of plants they purchase. As gardeners we work in four dimensions and the fourth dimension of time is the trickiest to negotiate. If I had checked Dirr’s Manual of Woody Plants, I would have discovered that in purchasing a Magnolia stellata ‘Centennial’ I had in fact bought a sizeable tree not a shrub. And had I checked the mature size of a Korean boxwood in a reputable source I would have discovered that in no way could my space accommodate three of these sizeable shrubs. I would have purchased one, sited it appropriately, and planted perennials to cover the ground while it grew. Who knew? Not me then.

I love whimsy in the garden. I have yardbirds made of parts of old tools. One reminds me of my daughter, Sonya; the other reminds me of my daughter, Emma. I have a gorgeous goose, the requisite number of flamingoes, a set of turtles, dancing frogs, a flying pig. But my favorite is still the “ornament” below. It reflects my love for cats and my love of wind, for the wheels of the bicycle rotate like mad whenever a breeze blows. I have placed my cycling cat where I can see the wheels move from patio and kitchen.

Speaking of cats, I should mention that we have a constant visitor to our garden in the form of a neighbor’s outdoor cat, Tango. Tango loves to hunt, but luckily for us he is woefully unsuccessful. However, he once got close to victory chasing a chipmunk on our patio as we were sitting there. The chipmunk jumped into a tree peony to escape leaving Tango figuratively scratching his head and asking, Where did it go? Our friend Stacie captured this image of a very resourceful chipmunk on a still gorgeous tree peony. It reminds me of just how much there is to see in the garden if you pay attention. I have a saying on my desk, given to my by another friend, which offers that attention is a form of prayer. I offer this image in praise of paying attention as Stacie did when she took this photo.

I love this particular poppy, even though I must say that poppies are one of the most difficult of plants to manage. They completely disappear during most of the summer season, and you think you have lost them, fragile creatures that they are, when suddenly in the fall their foliage reappears as a spectacular crown of leaves. Over the years I have planted many poppies and lost many poppies. At this point, I could not tell you which of the many orange poppies this one is. All I know is that, blessed be, I still have some in my garden to enjoy every spring.

More blessed still is to come upon a beauty you did not remember you had — in this case the rarest of rare for me, the delphinium. I have written an entire article on my love of delphiniums and the difficulty I have growing them. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled on this one in the little new garden Kevin and I created one day last summer in an area whose previous plantings had failed to please. With relative rapidity we gathered iris and lobelia and monarda punctata and an alium and some spirea and an echinacea and several veronicas and with equal rapidity made a small garden of them. It has become a favorite of mine this season. It is close to a tree I need to water frequently and it can also be seen from many parts of the garden. The moment this photo captures was particularly special as I had forgotten we had added a delphinium to the mix, ever hopeful of seeing a bloom.

The image below is one of my all time favorites. I use it for my screen saver photo. It brings together my love of paths, my love of cats, and my love of exploring. Our beloved cat Oscar, now no longer with us, starts down the garden path to see what might be beyond. I hope all of you may at some time have the same joyous experience I have so often had.

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Missing “Out”

I had no idea, when I agreed to be out of the garden for a season, how difficult my exile would prove. I have found no compensations. I have experienced only absence and missing.

Early on, I dutifully made a list of practices designed to pilot me through absence and missing. I jotted down the following:

Express gratitude for what I still can do

Learn to accept help gracefully

Focus on healing

Enjoy the beauty of the garden as an observer

These are all worthy aims, and I have made some progress in activating them. They keep me sane, but they do not compensate for what I am missing.

From my rollator I watch Laura work with her knife and Kevin work with his hori hori. My hand aches for the heft of my asparagus weeder, for the feel of wood upon palm, for the plunge of steel prongs into dirt.

I miss pulling out the weeds those steel prongs release and for the feel of my fingers in dirt. My nails are clean now, no need for the neat little nail brush, part of a high school graduation beauty kit gift from my mother’s best friend. My clothes are clean too, no need for the daily ritual of ripping them off and throwing them in the washer. I am clean too, no need for the post-gardening shower.

Brought up in a culture that did not allow girls to get dirty, I miss the defiance of wiping dirt encrusted hands on pants and shirt, a particularly pleasant event if the shirt happens to be the white V-necked one I got for winning a Toro lawnmower at the races one year. Sitting in my rollator I feel way too proper.

For so many reasons, I am happiest when my hands are in the dirt. I am tending to my plants, doing meaningful work, and defying patriarchal norms at the same time. But there is more. Gardeners have talked about dirt and happiness for years. Now science backs up intuition for there is a microbe in the soil that when inhaled or absorbed has the same effect on the brain as anti-depressants like Prozac. I miss my daily dose of mycobacterium vaccae.

I miss the early 6 a.m. morning, the coolness, the dew, the getting up early to beat the heat. I miss being one of the first ones out starting the new day. I miss the easy conversation with neighbors taking their early morning walk, sometimes with a dog. I miss the dogs. I miss the rhythm of a life organized around a daily activity, especially one that begins the day. I miss as well the sense of accomplishment that comes three or four hours later as I put away my tools and come in for breakfast.

Above all, I miss my plants. Until unable to provide daily care, I did not realize how much being up close and personal is not just a way of knowing what is happening to them. It is a form of friendship. I am not always weeding or pruning when I am out in the garden and down on the ground. I am often just sitting and enjoying the company of my plants. I talk to them. I tell them how marvelous they are, how beautiful, how much I appreciate their foliage and flower, how much we humans depend upon them for translating the energy of the sun into food that keeps us alive. Some plants I have not visited this season even from the safety of the rollator. I wonder if they miss me.

I thought that surely I could find compensation in simply observing the beauty of my plants, but I have found that for me beauty is a product of labor and suddenness. I miss the beauty I find in a well-weeded garden when I have done the weeding. I miss the beauty I discover in the sudden release of, say, a columbine from under a mountain of clear weed, thus exposing its delicacy of bloom and structure.

I miss the sense of purpose that daily garden work provides. I miss my fellow Master Gardeners and the even greater sense of purpose that comes from working in the demonstration gardens at the Cornell Co-operative Extension. I miss the social life that accompanies the work at the Cornell gardens.

I find myself waiting for next spring, when I believe I can be out in the garden again. But at my age and in this time of escalating tyranny wishing for time to pass quickly is a mistake. Every day that I live free and happy and relatively healthy is a gift to be cherished.

I return then to the one fact that gives me peace: staying out of the garden I protect my back and preserve the good work done by surgery and my own efforts at recovery. I keep myself from the danger of injuring my back by a sudden twist or turn to grab a tool or a weed. I protect myself from the unavoidable impulse to bend over the wrong way to grab a plant in the wrong place. I protect myself from the dangers of watering, either by buckets far exceeding my five-pound limit or by the hose. Of all the tools in the garden the hose is the most dangerous. It is designed to trip even the wariest gardener as she struggles to uncoil it; it is given to sudden bursts that can unsettle the unsteady; in the attempt to recoil it feet can be ensnared. Perhaps we gardeners do not talk enough about the fact that the garden is a dangerous place.

I channel my brother’s voice and achieve calm. I focus on the fact of having such wonderful help in Laura and Kevin and achieve joy. I seek purpose elsewhere and achieve meaning. But underneath it all, like a baroque basso continuo, from my rollator, from my rocker, outside the house and inside the house, I murmur to my plants, I’ll be back.

Restraint

We are sitting in the lawyer’s office, waiting for her to notarize Emma’s signature on my Power of Attorney. When the lawyer steps out of the office briefly, Emma points to my chest and mouths “blouse.” I look down to find the middle button on my EMS short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned. My view of myself as a dignified professional takes a blow and I think, “Dear god, I am becoming just like the old geezers I used to pity who forget to zip up their flies or button their shirts.” Exiting the building, I think, “I am going to need a lot of help if I am to have any chance of aging gracefully.”

When I think about where help will come from, to my own surprise, I think first of the values I have identified as core to my elder years. Primary among these values is that of Restraint.

My fundamental personality is anything but restrained. Hyperbole is my native tongue, mad passion my favorite activity. Besides “restraint” comes encumbered with so many negative images: dogs charging against their leash and foaming at the mouth; prisoners cuffed arms and legs to a chair; psychiatric patients in strait jackets. So why does it loom so large in my list of values? And why do I find it particularly important for aging? Why do I not want to be one of those who rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light?

Perhaps for starters because restraint conserves more energy than it takes. And at this age energy is a precious resource. I need to restrain myself from the hyperboles that leap to my lips as I stump around the house, cane in hand, back bent, leg in pain, butt muscles clenching. “Stove by a whale,” I say to those who ask, but my whale can neither be sailed away from nor harpooned. It can be cursed, however, just like Ahab curses his whale. Sometimes I let the hyperboles fly, but it just wastes energy that should go to recovery.

When I am in the lather of reproach of the universe and reproach of the self for reproaching the universe, I call upon another core value – compassion. This time, compassion for myself as I struggle to exercise restraint. And I call upon fortitude, a word I prefer to courage as I find it to include a wider range of attributes. “Fortitude,” in my understanding of it, encompasses the idea of muscling through. It encompasses the strength required to muscle through, as well as the resilience and the courage needed to keep on going.

I love the word “fortitude’; it sounds as solid and steady as the concept. When I am in a particularly bad way, I whisper the word to myself and it steadies me. When I do this, I am invoking the last of my four core values for aging – intelligence. I am not a fan of the word “wisdom,” for what actually constitutes wisdom? And who has wisdom truly? Certainly aging is no guarantee of wisdom, whatever it might mean, nor is any age or place or status or identity. But intelligence, which I understand as knowing what to do and how to be, is something we all have to different degrees and it can be activated at any time to create a better rather than a worse outcome. Practicing compassion for myself involves intelligence, because the default mode is self-abuse. Useless, stupid, unwarranted. Compassion for self and others is the smart choice. It is also the spiritually sound choice

And so is restraint, a cardinal virtue, according to St. Thomas of Acquinas..

“Restraint, as a spiritual virtue, involves the capacity to control one's impulses, desires, and actions, aligning them with ethical and moral principles. It's about exercising self-control, moderation, and wisdom in all aspects of life, reflecting a deep understanding of one's own limitations and the impact of one's choices on oneself and others. This virtue is often linked to humility, recognizing one's place in the larger order of things and the importance of acting with grace and consideration.”

Thanks to AI, I can retrieve this distillation of centuries of theological reflection on this virtue. It is a good definition but a bit abstract and impersonal. I am also no fan of moderation. Some things require excess.

So how do I understand restraint and why do I make it a core value?

Restraint, for me, is that moment of reflection, the pause before acting, recommended by many spiritual traditions, where I ask myself, Do I need that next cookie? Do I need to snap back when something said is hurtful to me? Do I need to be so defensive? Do I need to waste my precious energy hurling my cane through the air and raging at the universe?

Restraint is not a muzzle but rather a slight holding back while I invoke intelligence and consider the next step forward. It is the equivalent of taking a break from a good game to get a glass of cool water. It is a gift I give myself.

When I can.