December’s Dull Drums

Posted on 2020-12-07 by Hecate

December is upon us

Other months might spring up or creep up on you or unveil themselves.

December descends. Sometimes with a splat, sometimes with a thump. Sometimes with a whammy.

This time I’d call it a thump.

Leafless upright winterberry branch with bright red berries in foreground, with horizontal rails of fence just behind, some field and unfocused farm buildings in background, and a low rising moon just above some wooded hills, darkening blue sky above

Winterberries, winter-ready with winter moon

Face it: December in the northern hemisphere (yes, Virginia, there is a southern one, where the birds are now twittering and making nests and things are getting ready to grow grow grow) is about tailor-made to give you the doldrums. Starting with cutting back on your daylight.

I’m allowed to talk about daylight because gardeners need it, right? We aren’t getting much of what we need right now, and we’re headed for less for the next 14 days. How much less, I can’t tell you if I don’t know where you live, but you can look it up for yourself with your zipcode and this handy URL:

https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/

You’ll get the skinny on today, and if you scroll on down, you can get tables arranged by month, showing times of sunrise and sunset, length of daylight, and a bunch of other things you’d have to be an astro-geek to get into. I’m a bit of a geek, but it doesn’t extend to interest in plumbing the distinctions among twilights astronomical, nautical, and civil.

Sunrise and sunset are daunting enough. Where I sit, the sun checked in this morning at 7:05 a.m. and it will check out at 4:17 p.m. That gives me 9 hours, 11 minutes and a few seconds in change to enjoy daylight.

Do I enjoy those precious, vitamin D-drenched hours? Yes. Do I go out in them? It is 32°F outside. What do you think?

The sun also rises… later

Besides, I’m in here writing a blog post. I am geeky enough to inform you that I was enlightened and sobered by studying the sunrise/sunset tables for December and January. As you probably already know, daylight will continue to get skimpier until Dec. 21, by which time I will have 6 minutes and 18 seconds less of daylight to enjoy. Then, as you certainly already know, the days will get longer.

Before you jump up and down clapping, let me hasten to point to the snail’s pace at which they will lengthen: 3 seconds, 7 seconds, 12 seconds, 16 seconds, 20 seconds. You have to wait until Dec. 27 for even one cumulative minute to get added to your day, if you’re up in my latitude. And the weird thing is that the sun keeps coming up later in the mornings until January 7.

No doubt this is the reason why people invented big December holidays. If you’re going to be stuck in the dark while you’re wide awake, you may as well have latkes and/or eggnog to keep you company. And presents to wrap and/or open. Possibly the folks in the southwestern US and Mexico (and probably plenty of others) who keep up the holiday celebrations through January 6 caught on to the sunrise issue ahead of me.

Closeup of a pile of beautifully browned potato latkes on a white plate

Latkes: December’s first consolation
“Latke Time [345/366]” by timsackton is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

And by the way: Happy Chanukah, as of sundown on Dec. 10!

Snow happens

Snowy scene with a couple of small evergreens and some bare bushes in foreground with rail fence just behind them, and in background a snow-covered landscape with a more distant fence across it, and a line of woods in background obscured by falling snow, gray sky above

December, gardening’s end

But back to December’s thump. We got snow. Not a lot of it, and most of it melted by day two. But enough snow that it panicked me into the final clearing of junk in the garage so I could pull the car all the way in.

red SUV parked in a garage, in tight quarters; tools shown hanging on left and boxes and cabinets on right

Tight fit!

I’d say I showed maximum efficiency, but that would be a lie. Efficiency would mean everything went into neat arrays with careful forethought about what I might need to get at, in what order.

This operation, however, consisted merely of a frenzied stacking of lighter things on top of heavier things with some care to make sure they wouldn’t immediately topple off. (Not with invariable success.)

While doing that clearing, I also performed some Plant Triage. As in, uh-oh, I never got that one, this one, this bunch, into the ground and it’s too late now so…. A couple of plastic pots went outside again, their residents consigned to take their chances with the elements.

Why do I emphasize plastic? Try putting plants outside in earthenware pots all winter long and you’ll know the reason why. Hint: You’ll have lots of shards handy for putting in the bottom of next year’s pots to help drainage.

Some bulbs will come indoors and I’ll try forcing them. I’ll keep you posted on that ploy.

Are we there yet?

Panic and bulbs aside, I did feel a slight sense of relief that the snow signaled I was off the hook with gardening for the year. Sure, we had snow earlier this fall. In fact, we got some in late October, and we had a few hard hard frosts in September. But snow covering your car with about 2 inches of cold wet stuff (hence the panic) in early December has a kind of finality to it. As in, we’re out of portents and harbingers and into the real thing.

I’d done some of the late chores. I got the garlic planted in one of the raised beds just after Thanksgiving, and popped one section of the obstreperous sage plant and the more genteel marjoram into the other end of the bed. I laid salt-marsh hay atop the garlic and on top of the mud surrounding the bed. Done, I thought.

A raised bed filled with soil, shown lengthwise with a couple of stumps of transplanted herbs in the near end, and an area covered with straw at the other end, the entire bed surrounded by more straw

Garlic and herbs, believe it or not

Photo shows cover of book by Charlie Nardozzi, <em>Month-by-Month Gardening: New England</em>

10 pages of December to-do!

But now I have made the mistake of checking the December part of Charlie Nardozzi’s Month-by-Month Gardening: New England, one of the books I mentioned in my last post. I’m not off the hook, it seems. Nope, Charlie N is chock full of ideas to keep me busy this month: planning, planting, watering, fertilizing, yadda yadda yadda.

Fortunately, a lot of that is for indoors—but not all of it. Even peeking at the book’s December section reminds me that I could and therefore should still deal with some small things outside: weeds to pull while they’re weak, mulch to spread out from its dumped piles, protective stuff to spray on the boxwood and pieris evergreen leaves to prevent outdoor freezer burn. Hoses to bring into the garage (yikes! rearrangement of garage again!). Deck chairs, ditto (yikes, ditto).

Will I regret it if I don’t do all of those? Probably. But regret would wait till March or April. Will I actually do them? I promise to report back. (Don’t be surprised if the answer is no.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch house…

My fancy has turned indoors. Not to say that it has been unmitigated bliss in here. I have already killed the cyclamen. Pffft, it went, only a couple of weeks after I brought it home. It didn’t even stick around long enough to get its picture taken.

I brought in one woebegone basil plant and my perennial rosemary (the latter in its permanent pot). They, at least, seem thus far to be faring better than they were outside. That probably has less to do with my green thumb and more to do with the fact that it doesn’t snow inside.

But (sound of fanfare) I got my fancy schmancy Flamenco Queen amaryllis bulb planted. In the nick of time: it’s already sending up big fat shoots. Then there are the narcissus and grape hyacinth bulbs to try to make a go of indoors.

tall thin brown glazed pot atop a white plate, with top part of large amaryllis bulb showing, two green shoots already coming up; part of a potted rosemary plant in earthenware pot in background

Amaryllis: high hopes!

In fact, I have come to the realization that I need a big space for plants next to the sliding doors, just about the only spot in the house that gets reasonable amounts of light during the winter months. A shelf unit for plants! The month-by-month book suggests microgreens. And I could plant more herbs. Maybe even mount a gro-lite or two.

Making a tiny little paradise inside while winter rampages outside—who could fault such a notion?

And yet at the same time, even while my to-do list sprouts items like holiday cards and gift-dispatching, I cannot help but notice what else is going on outside. I grieve for the country as Covid-19 cases and deaths rise alarmingly, with even worse predicted before some sanity is restored in the nation’s government. California has gone into shutdown again. Others may have to follow suit. It’s going to be a long, hard winter for millions in this country and beyond.

In the midst of so much hardship and sorrow, planting stuff seems puny indeed. But I tell myself that green growth serves also to sustain hope. It’s a reminder that, when given the right elements, rebirth and renewal will come. I do wish there were a way to plant seeds of truth that could flourish into full growth by spring.

Now your turn:

Please post comments liberally below:

  1. When do you think is a good time to retire our Biden-Harris yard signs?
  2. Have you had much luck with indoor growing of herbs, or forced bulbs, or something else? Tell your tale! Share your secrets!
  3. Tell the truth: what have you been happy to have winter preempt you from doing in your outdoor garden?
  4. Feel free to share your latke recipes. Or eggnog. Or both.

If you’re commenting for the first time with a particular email address, your comment has to wait for my clearance (spam-thwarting at work there). If you’ve already had an approved comment using that address, your next one should go up automatically. If you’re concerned about privacy: you don’t need to include your surname, and I am the only one who sees your email address.

By the way, I heard back from many of you, dear readers, by both email and comments after the previous blog post, and the hori hori seems to have generated more enthusiasm than any other single thing I’ve blogged about yet. Was it my eloquence or that wicked shiny blade?

 

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That time of year: Again, but different

Posted on 2020-11-29 by Hecate

‘Tis the season

A single gift package, covered in striped red, cream, and green paper and decorated with two strings of small red beads and a wide semi-transparent cream ribbon tied at top in a large bow

The season for giving
“Gifts? Already?” by mysza831 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Thanksgiving is out of the way till next year, and now Chanukah (starts Dec. 10!) and Christmas (Dec. 25!) and Kwanzaa (starts Dec. 26!) are bearing down on us. It seems to be a Thing, this past week, for everyone from The New York Times to local stores’ e-letters to provide a list of gift suggestions for the holidays.

Why should I be any different?

Maybe this part is a little different: I’ll give you a statement of philosophy first. At a time when pandemic rages worse than ever, mad mindless shopping and more-more-more-ism seem even less healthy—now quite literally—than usual.

While I’m still dealing with the Thanksgiving leftovers, I’m reading about the worsening of hunger across the country. And as we creep into the season when many local businesses depend on a flurry of gift purchases to keep them afloat, physically venturing into local stores seems like a foray into Russian roulette.

So my suggestions are made with those issues in mind. I’d urge you to buy from local businesses (online and by phone whenever possible), and to keep in mind those who are strapped even trying to buy enough food.

I’m also keeping in mind that if you’re reading this blog, you’re a gardener, or you love gardens. And you may be thinking about gifts for gardeners, or want to drop hints to your family and friends about what they might find for you. That helps narrow down the field a bit.

Who’s on your list?

Let’s start with who will get your gift. How about giving twice by giving once?

For several years now, I’ve had an arrangement with several close friends with whom I used to exchange gifts. Instead of giving each other more Stuff (which we all have far too much of), we now give donations to charitable organizations in each others’ honor.

Most organizations to which you can donate online or by mail make that easy for you. Some mail a notice of the donation to the honoree; others provide you with a PDF’d certificate that you can print out and mail or just electronically forward to the one you’re honoring.

Food bank sorting area showing crates of canned food in foreground, being opened by 4 women, with a long table on the right side of frame, topped with more crates of canned goods in the background, and several large bags of onions or potatoes behind the women

They can always use more, and especially now
“CEC River CIty Food Bank Carry a Thankful Heart_AP_ 11.25.19-2” by Sacramento State is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

You could donate to any number of national and international organizations that address problems of hunger and poverty. But even in fairly prosperous communities, you might be surprised to learn how many people struggle to find enough to feed themselves and their families. So if you want to help locally, look for a local food bank and find out what they need.

Two sources you might consult:

Another route: you could check with local churches, synagogues, mosques, or temples to find out whether they run any programs to help the hungry. My bet is that most of them do.

Plenty of nonprofit organizations devote themselves to promoting and supporting gardening, whether for kids, for urban communities, for sustainability, for organic methods, or for other purposes. You could hunt for local ones yourself. For more far-flung groups, there’s a great starting list on the page that Gardener’s Supply Company provides on the gardening charities they support. It includes the rationale for their choices, and links to the organizations themselves.

You could also consider donating to an organization that supports horticultural therapy, described by a regional HT organization as the

process of using plants, directed by a horticultural therapist, through which people receive psychological, physical, social and/or educational benefits. Plants are used in hospitals, schools, correctional facilities, community gardens, senior centers, rehabilitation programs and other settings….

You could donate directly to the American Horticultural Therapy Association, or contact one of AHTA’s regional groups to see what you can contribute.

If you want to claim a charitable deduction for any donations to nonprofit organizations in any of these arenas, look for an organization’s designation in an IRS category governing such deductions. You can’t take those deductions as easily as in the past. If the deduction is a major consideration for you, check the IRS rules (good luck on that) or ask a tax-preparation expert.

Gifts for gardeners

But you want something you can wrap up pretty and tie with a bow? I won’t disappoint you, but I’ll keep the list short. Here are some things I think make delightful gifts for an avid gardener.

When it comes to tools, nothing, but nothing, beats a high-quality hori hori. That’s a Japanese gardening knife, and it is the single most useful tool in my batterie de jardin. I still have the one that I bought about seven years ago and have used day in, day out, throughout the gardening season. It’s in great shape, but after it went missing for a few terrible days, I figured I should have a backup, and ordered another one. Your local garden store may carry these, or in extremis you could go to amazon.com (which I’m purposely not linking to here) and do a search for the brand Nisaku.

Japanese-style hori (digging knife) with approx. 8-inch blade serrated on one side and showing graduated inch markings, plain wooden handle with two rivets, and leatherette sheath beside the knife, shown from above at slight angle; resting on a multicolored rag rug with bottom of paisley-patterned red boots in the background at top of photo

The new hori hori, just like the old hori hori, but sharper and shinier

Don’t get snookered by a cheap, shoddy imitation! And whatever you do, don’t buy any of those digging knives with plastic handles. I got one of those. It snapped off at the blade-to-handle join the first time I used it; then I read the various customer ratings and found that many others had had the same experience. You want a knife whose tang extends well inside the handle, riveted where you can see it.

If your gardener giftee already has wayyyyy too many tools, you could give the gift of seeds. We need new ones every year. This time of year you shouldn’t be giving actual seeds, of course; those should wait till spring.

But you can get a seed company gift certificate for your gardener friend or relative. Several companies specializing in organic and/or heirloom seeds offer gift certificates you can purchase online. I’m listing four of them, the first three of which allow you to order a printed catalog. (As we all know, gardeners who are snowed in during the winter spend many hours poring over seed catalogs and dreaming green dreams of the season to come.)

While we’re on the topic of gift certificates, don’t overlook your local garden center, which will offer a cornucopia of seeds, starts, and a zillion other goodies for the garden come spring. If you don’t already have a favorite, you can find one quickly through an online search for “garden center” and your zipcode. If that’s too much trouble, let me recommend Gardener’s Supply Company, which sells both online and through four employee-owned garden centers in northern New England (VT, NH, MA). Their gift certificates work for any of their retail centers or online.

Finally, just about any gardener welcomes the reminder that the year has its seasons and rhythms, and there’s no better time than winter for reading about what’s to come. Here are a couple of my favorite books in this vein—not new this year, but there’s always something new to find in them. You may also want a means for closer time tracking, which you’ll find after the books.

(Disclosure note here: these three items’ links are affiliate links to bookshop.org, which helps to support local bookshops nationwide. If you buy by using those links, a tiny bit of income comes my way to help support this website; a generous amount goes to local bookstores.)

Gifts from gardeners: Say it with flowers (DIY version)

Let’s say there are people on your list who aren’t gardeners.

Hard to imagine, I know, but it happens.

If you find yourself in that situation, you might want to try some do-it-yourself gifts that show off your gardening skills and enhance your cachet among friends and family. Maybe even cultivate in them a yearning to green their thumbs.

Time is getting short now, so it wouldn’t do to get too ambitious here. You might consider starting a pot or two of forced bulbs. You don’t have time for the many weeks of chilling that most bulbs require (to deceive them into thinking they’ve been through winter) before they come out of the cold for light and water (spring, the silly things think). I did that once with hyacinths, and let me tell you, the results, while flowery, in no way matched the inconvenience of their taking up valuable real estate in my fridge for 14 weeks. In pots.

No, you want to take the easy way. Get to your garden center (or phone them, get advice, and place an order for pickup) for bulbs of paperwhite narcissus or amaryllis, which don’t need chilling beforehand, and for the right size of pot and potting medium. Pick them up, and get to work. N-O-W. If you do it now, something might be happening in the pot to warrant gift status by your target date.

large amaryllis bulb beside tall brownish-red pot on a buff-colored linoleum floor with edge of oriental carpet in foreground; behind them, an unopened bag of Happy Frog potting soil

The DIY approach to amaryllis

Do you need instructions? Clemson University’s College of Agriculture etc. provides some wonderfully clear, straightforward instructions, for spring bulbs in general, and for amaryllis.

If your victim recipient is DIY-inclined, you could make up a kit for her or him or them, but be sure to include clear and complete instructions along with the kit, and be prepared for handholding. Do not do this to somebody you aren’t sure would be interested. Nothing is more off-putting to the confirmed brown thumb than a pot, a bunch of dirt, and something that threatens to die if not watered just right.

In any other year, I might recommend another DIY option for you: concocting some preserves or chutneys or pickles that you could put up in jars (using USDA-approved safe methods). This year, if you were disposed in that direction, you have probably already noticed the Great Canning Jar (and Lid) Shortage of 2020. So chances are you can’t can. I won’t distress you by suggesting that you do so. We’ll wait until next year’s harvests and jar output start rolling in.

You could, however, collect some lovely produce and locally made preserves from your local farm stores or grocery stores, and make up some nice little baskets (if you can find those) for gifts. Or your local store might make up the baskets for you. I know at least one of my local stores does this, and for very reasonable prices. So, ask!

That rounds out my suggestions, but I would love it, and I’ll bet other readers would too, if you added your own suggestions in a Comment below. Or in more than one comment: in order to thwart spammers, only one URL is allowed per comment. Thanking you kindly in advance.

Right on schedule: our camellia update from the palmetto state

Just as predicted, Hillary’s sasanqua camellia did its full frontal display for Thanksgiving. And just as promised, Hillary sent me some lovely photos. A strip of one adorns the top of this post. But I’ve added a photo of the whole glorious bush here so you can get a sense of its full glory.

Go, Charleston!

Sasanqua camellia in full bloom, dark green glossy leaves interspersed with bright pink blossoms, which nearly cover all the leaves towards the top of the bush; a few rocks bordering the edge of the bed at lower left, and some other greenery showing at the bottom right; strip of white garage door showing in background on right.

Thanksgiving sasanqua camellia: full bloom, right on schedule
Photo by Hillary, 26 November 2020

Now your turn:

Please post comments liberally below:

  1. What special gifts for gardeners would you suggest?
  2. Have you tried forcing bulbs indoors yourself? What bulbs did you use, and how did it work out? Any advice for others based on that experience?
  3. Are you doing any DIY gifts this year? What are they (if that’s not giving away your secrets)? Or, what is your all-time favorite DIY gift that you received?

If you’re commenting for the first time with a particular email address, your comment has to wait for my clearance (spam-thwarting at work there). If you’ve already had an approved comment using that address, your next one should go up automatically. (I am the only one who sees your email address.)

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A whole new world: Beyond the Thanksgiving myth

Posted on 2020-11-21 by Hecate

That meal again

Before you sit down at the groaning board to tuck into that Thanksgiving feast, pause a moment.

If you’re going traditional, here’s what is probably on your table:

strip of dinner table showing dishes of unfocused red food in foreground (possibly cranberries), green beans sharply focused behind them, and then, in succession and gradually losing focus, bread stuffing and a platter of turkey slices and pieces

Look familiar?
“Thanksgiving Spread” by CarbonNYC [in SF!] is licensed under CC BY 2.0

  • turkey
  • cranberry sauce
  • some kind of bread stuffing–cornbread, perhaps?
  • mashed potatoes
  • sweet potatoes
  • green beans
  • pumpkin or squash pie

We’ll set aside the creamed onions and the brussels sprouts, occasionally subjects of controversy. Besides, they don’t really belong there with the others. Because there is one big thing the others have in common with each other besides the table:

They are all native to the Americas, and the vegetable elements were all developed by the original inhabitants of our hemisphere. (Humor me on the cornbread stuffing. It tastes better, anyway. Or maybe you could have a corn pudding.)

Official tribal seal with Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe lettering in purple around outside circumference, 2 golden lines circling inside that, around a purple strip containing several names, and a circle in center with deer antlers, a wolf or coyote, a sea turtle atop waving blue lines in front of a sun with long rays, grasses, a plant and ceremonial object, against a white background

“Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Seal” by Native American Seals/Logos is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

I figured that for this week I should say something about Thanksgiving, since I’m sure that is much on most of our minds right now.

I considered a number of possible themes. Gratitude that those of us celebrating are still alive and mostly healthy, despite the losses to pandemic that probably every one of us has suffered by now in some way—loved ones, livelihoods, sense of safety, and, of course, the loss for most of the chance of sitting down with loved ones outside our households—and still mostly sane despite the insanity raging around us.

Or I could note that the holiday supposedly marks a celebration between peoples: the original inhabitants of what we now call Massachusetts, and the pale-faced interlopers who arrived and took it upon themselves to name it that, before they also took it upon themselves to claim most of the land and….

But I promised myself not to rant. That rules out a number of other themes that might pertain to this week.

Back to the garden…

So I will move sideways. This is, after all, a gardening blog, so I can always get into plants. Most of that first Thanksgiving feast, which was not called Thanksgiving until some time later, was plant-based, but let’s give the native wild turkey a nod. They may have shown up too.

Five wild turkeys in a line on grass at top of a rise, with trees and blue sky showing behind them

“Five Wild Turkeys” by Me in ME is licensed under CC BY 2.0

But actually, most of the meat probably was venison, from the five deer contributed by the native people, the Mashpee Wampanoag.

Even if the Pilgrims grew most of the vegetable matter served at that feast, a lot of it has to have originated from their new environment, thanks to knowledge imparted by their generous neighbors.

I suspected that, but when I went looking for information about the food and other useful plants we now take for granted that are native to the Americas, I was stunned to find how much the Native American peoples had made use of what they found growing when they first got here many thousands of years back.

Some plants they foraged for rather than domesticating. Others, they cultivated. Like me, you are probably most aware of the plants they cultivated, especially:

Corn. Photo showing top half of a partly-husked ear of corn, resting horizontally on a purple and white-striped cloth

Corn, or maize
“corn” by Muffet is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Two halves of cooked delicata squash lying on a wooden surface with tablespoon behind them.

Squash
“delicata squash” by Stacy Spensley is licensed under CC BY 2.0

closeup of fresh green beans, tossed randomly and filling entire frame

Beans
“green beans” by Chasqui (Luis Tamayo) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Dried beans randomly combined (red kidney beans, buff-and-brown pinto beans, small white beans, and one tiny black bean) with the mouth of a metal scoop digging into them, and a circular magnified section of beans showing in the center

… and more beans.
“Beans – Magnified” by Scott 97006 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Corn or maize began in what is now Mexico, where Native American agriculturalists selectively bred from a seed-bearing grass called teosinte.

The first peoples of the Americas were not just crackerjack farmers but also amazing plant breeders, and not just in Mexico. Maize proved a great staple for many of the Indigenous people living further north, since it stored well when dried. The peoples in different regions gradually adapted corn to their local growing conditions.

In what ended up as the northeastern part of the US, well before the English arrived the Native American peoples had developed varieties of maize that could mature in the short northern growing season, ripening in as little as 60 to 65 days from planting. They used a cultivation practice called “three sisters,” in which maize, squash, and beans planted together maximized harvests. The beans replenished nitrogen in the soil, and the squash vines spread out and suppressed most weeds.

Other contributions by the Americas to our food-plant pantheon include Chilis and Chocolate. These, as you may know, are two of the basic food groups. The others are Butter, Garlic, and Sugar, and aside from Garlic, I think the Native American foods are by far the healthiest.

Turkey leg in mole sauce with small seeds, with small scoop of rice and a couple of indistinct greens behind it, all on a blue and white patterned plate

“Turkey mole” by monoglot is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Well, they’re my basic food groups. I know the killjoys at the USDA have a different take.

If you want to celebrate those two C’s on Thanksgiving, let me recommend turkey mole (pronounced mo-lay), with a sauce that combines the two of them along with a bunch of other delectable ingredients.

Scene from Ecuadorian market, with two market women seated on ground, wearing white narrow-brimmed hats and red shawls, behind a mat displaying ten or more different types of potato; market-goers in background stand behind the woman, while another woman sits or kneels behind the two

“Ecuadorian Women Sitting Behind a Variety of Potatoes” by Global Crop Diversity Trust is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

This list already seems like a lot of contributions, but there truly is a mind-boggling variety and abundance of native plants discovered, developed, and used as food by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. I could mention potatoes, if only for the shock effect. According to the International Potato Center, as many as four thousand different potato varieties originated in the Americas, mostly in the Andes. These do not include the sweet potato, a different plant altogether, which also hails from the Americas.

The Americas have given us vegetables galore. In addition to those commonly on the Thanksgiving table, we have avocados (I know, technically a fruit), fiddleheads, peanuts (a legume, not a real nut), ramps, Jerusalem artichokes. In addition to corn and potatoes, North and South America have provided staples such as wild rice, amaranth (the leaves make nice greens as well), cassava, and quinoa. Numerous fruits hail from this hemisphere, including pawpaws, papayas, pineapples, and American persimmon, along with raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, ground cherries, elderberries, and salmonberries. And of course the tomato, technically an oversized berry. Then we have black walnuts, beechnuts, butternuts, sunflower seeds. Even vanilla!

Going geeky for a moment

This list is far from exhaustive. Native Americans knew everything on whole long list that grew in their environments, and sometimes introduced more from other Indigenous groups they interacted with. In 2010, the ethnobotanist Daniel E. Moerman published a compilation, Native American Food Plants: An Ethnobotanical Dictionary, in which the listing of plants runs for approximately 250 pages. (I would love to read it; unfortunately, the only copy for sale anywhere right now is a used one running $562, a fair bit more than the publisher’s $39.95 list price, and interlibrary loans these days are as slow as the Mayflower’s trip across the Atlantic.)

Prof. Moerman has also given us a second ethnobotanical dictionary, Native American Medicinal Plants, which catalogs some 3000 plants in whose medical uses Native American tribes developed expertise. That one is available in paperback, and if you are herbalistically inclined you might want to take a look. If you just want to check out a few native plants as food or medicine, you could resort to the the good professor’s searchable online database, Native American Ethnobotany: A Database of Foods, Drugs, Dyes and Fibers of Native American Peoples, Derived from Plants. You can search by common or botanical name of plants, or by just about any term you’re interested in.

Closeup of monarch butterfly perched atop yellow and orange flower cluster of asclepias plant, a few small leaves under the flowers

Asclepias, not just for butterflies any more!
“Monarch butterfly on butterfly weed” by Martin LaBar is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Somewhere among these or other sources I’ve been consulting, I’ve gained new respect for the native flowers I planted in my rudimentary pollinator garden. Turns out they’re good for a lot more than bringing in butterflies. Various parts of the echinacea (coneflower) can be used to relieve the pain of toothache, burns, or sore throat; to make a poultice to reduce swelling from mumps; to make an antidote to some poisons and venoms. Different species of asclepias (milkweed) not only nourish the monarch butterfly’s caterpillars, but also furnish everything from candy to cordage to snakebite remedies to relief from nasal congestion. Achillea (yarrow) can lower a fever, control a cold, or ease labor pains.

You get the idea. I am already hatching new plans about what should go into the pollinator garden next year.

Making up lost ground

All of this, and much, much more, the peoples of the Americas—many of them supposedly “primitive”—had figured out well before Columbus sailed the ocean blue or the Mayflower crew picked a landing spot. In the decades and centuries after Europeans rammed their way in, Indigenous civilizations were disrupted by a massive wave of death caused by imported diseases like smallpox, which in the century or so after the Spanish conquest may have killed off as many as 8 or 9 in 10 of the original population. In the US, with westward expansion, Indigenous peoples were repeatedly forced from their land, were subjected to forced marches, lost their traditional livelihoods, and even (by the early 20th century) often had their children wrested from them and sent off to boarding schools designed to teach traditional culture out of them. (This is a recitation of facts, not a rant.)

Not surprisingly, under such circumstances, much of the indigenous knowledge was lost or vitiated. But in recent decades, tribes and their allies have been gradually reconstructing their knowledge heritage, and some of that means reviving the old understandings of agriculture and native plants. The revival is taking different forms in different places, but tribes engaged in these efforts communicate on their work and sometimes collaborate; they find, preserve, and sometimes distribute heritage seeds, and educate the public on the agricultural wisdom and related cultural practices recovered. You can find many stories about how this work began, and possibly (once pandemic times have ended) visit some of the experiments. Here is a partial list, arranged by region:

  • New England:

Abenaki tribe, Vermont: Seeds of Renewal at Vermont Indigenous Heritage Center, and the Abenaki Heritage Garden; this latter link is to a PDF document designed for folding after printing.

  • Great Lakes Region:

Great Lakes Region IAC. Tribal agriculture in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. https://iacgreatlakes.com

White Earth Lands Recovery Project, Archive for seed sovereignty (https://welrp.wordpress.com/category/seed-sovereignty/)

  • New Mexico and Arizona:

Traditional Native American Farmers Association

New Mexico Acequia Association (promoting agriculture by protecting water)

Declaration of Seed Sovereignty (highlights threat to indigenous agriculture and crops from genetically modified organisms)

Native Seeds Search (finds, saves, and sells native varieties suited to Southwest climate; you can order seeds online or put in an order for the 2021 catalog)

  • If you know of any other such efforts in your region, please tell us about them in a comment, or shoot me an email.

Right now is the perfect time to dig into these and other materials, because November is Native American and Alaska Native Heritage Month. And on Turkey Day, before or after or instead of a football game, and after you’ve eaten all those good things that we’d never have known about if it weren’t for Native Americans, you could watch some of the short clips from PBS American Experience: Native Americans collection or check out some of the films at the Smithsonian Institution’s Native Cinema Showcase (films may be available for only a limited time after the official showing date, so don’t wait!).

For the longer term, if you’re the reading type, you may want to take a look at Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, which, by shifting perspective to that of the continent’s native peoples, offers your brain a revivifying workout. It did for me, anyway. There’s also a version of the book for young people, in case you’re starting your holiday gift shopping. (The links in this paragraph and one above are affiliate links for Bookshop.org; if you buy from them, you help support independent bookstores across the country. But full disclosure: your purchase would also provide a tiny bit of income to help support this blog.)

Tying up one little loose end

2 tractor plants (Giant leopard plant) in bloom in front of tree trunk; large medium-green leaves low to ground, with spires of yellow flower clusters rising well above the leaves

Giant leopard plants, locally known as “tractor plants,” in bloom in November
Photo by Hillary

Closeup of the bright yellow flower clusters, each small flower daisy-shaped with bright yellow petals and darker yellow centers, with a couple of tiny bees visiting a couple of flowers; backdrop of the bright green leaves

Giant leopard plant, known to the botanists’ world as Farfugium japonicum ‘Giganteum’
Photo by Hillary

Hillary’s garden in Charleston, SC is a gift that goes on giving. Next week we are promised a photo of the sasanqua camellia in full flaunt. In the meantime, she tells me she has found out what that “tractor plant” is called beyond the local area: Giant leopard plant. She sent photos of it coming into bloom.

According to the Missouri Botanical Garden, this is a native of Japan and/or East Asia. The leaves of the Giant variety can grow to 18 inches across–as big as a tractor seat, for sure.

The plant grows in USDA Zones 7 to 10, which means its territory can extend along the US’s east coast all the way from Florida up till you butt against PA and NJ’s southern borders, all across the southern parts of the US, and nearly all of west-coast areas except for where mountains mess up the fun.

Your turn!

I’d love to hear back from you. The easiest way is for you to post a comment below. If you haven’t posted before, there may be a brief delay because I have to approve new comments in order to avoid spamming. After your first comment, though, anything you post after giving the same email address should sail right through. (I am the only one who sees you email address.)

And please do consider subscribing to the “newsletter” (which at this point consists only of notifications when new blog posts go up).

Do you need a discussion question to get you going? Here are a few:

  1. What native foods, and what imports, will be on your Thanksgiving table?
  2. Do you think I should provide more of this sort of informational posting?
  3. How is biodiversity faring in the area where you live?

 

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November miscellany

Posted on 2020-11-16 by Hecate

It was a grab-bag week, so this is a grab-bag post.

Frost approacheth

Cold cold weather is rolling in and back, in and back, and I’ve been scrambling to get this ‘n’ that done as time and weather permitted. Now it’s urgent for me to figure out the priorities for any action that involves digging into the ground. I say priorities, because I’m afraid I’ve reached Triage Day. Today.

clusters of tiny, bright red crabapples encased in frost on their branch, with the tree's slender trunk and other branches with scattered crabapples in background

Winter warning!

Thus far, the frost has kept to the night hours—which, of course, are vastly extended as we head towards winter solstice. Sunrise came this morning at 6:44am; sunset will plop at 4:26pm. Last night wasn’t too terribly cold, but yesterday morning I woke up (early) to 23°. Tonight it’s supposed to get down to 28°, and the downward slide goes from there to 21° Tuesday night to—brace yourself—16° on Wednesday night. Oh, it will continue to bob up and down after that, but the writing is on the wall, the frost is on the pumpkin, the clock is ticking, and we know what’s next. Only a matter of time. (I’m talking about the garden, but if you want to read the presidential election results into that, be my guest.)

Progress of sorts and sifts

Some progress has been made in the past week. I have been schooled (finally) to give myself a pat on the back now and then for progress made before I start listing what I haven’t gotten done, so let me repeat that: progress has been made.

piles of soil next to corner of raised bed frame at lower right, with orange buckets in front of them at center and left, a bit of white clapboard wall to the left; lawns and shrubbery beds showing in background, with someone on bright yellow mower behind the screen of shrubs

We sift soil so slowly… (the last shirtsleeve weather day)

Some of it relatively minor, but time-consuming. The second raised bed still had to be lined with hardware cloth and filled with the soil dug out of that space, which stood in a couple of piles next to it. Turns out there were a lot of rocks in the piles, including some fairly big ones. So last Wednesday, I spent hours sifting through it; I was quite literally sifting for part of that time, while I muttered to myself about how I should have just spent the money to get an industrial-strength frame sifter instead of the weentsy ones that fit on top of a 5-gallon bucket. It didn’t all get done, but pat-on-back here, I did manage to complete a good-sized pile and I have three—welllll, two and a half—buckets of rocks to show for my efforts. That’s three buckets of rocks my carrots won’t have to contend with next year, should they grow that deep.

Man standing inside frame of raised bed, pounding in stakes; lawn, shrubs and trees in background

Lining up the raised-bed walls jussssst right

I got that much done before Carl and crew arrived to finish lining that bed, toss the soil back where it belonged, and chomp up the leaves with the mower, while I retreated to ponder all the other things I need to do before the ground freezes hard and snow falls (again, but with more serious intent), and then to decide which of those things wasn’t really needed, actually, when you think about it carefully enough.

Because there are orders of necessity.

The Augean garage

section of garage filled with jumble of multiple colors of buckets and garden equipment, flattened cardboard boxes, old burlap screens, bamboo stakes, and black garbage bins

Chaos, view #1

Top of that list, for sure, was getting the garage cleaned out and cleaned up so I can park inside before that aforementioned snow hits. My helpers had rid the garage of the legion of yard-waste bags that I’d filled some weeks ago, before I read about how you shouldn’t do that. Fait accompli, though, and where would I put it all anyway? So away those went. So fast I never got a picture.

That, alas, revealed the remaining mess in the garage. This included:

  • A good half-dozen 5-gallon buckets filled with soil and other stuff that I had set aside for reasons I no longer recall
  • The weentsy soil sifters, in two different gauges of mesh
  • A pair of bright yellow leaf pick-up clamshells
  • Assorted sizes and colors of tub-trugs, among them a small one half-full of compost, a medium one half-full of mulch, and a big one about a quarter-full of very wet, heavy peat moss (don’t ask)
  • A couple of empty 5-gallon buckets and a half-dozen lids

    closer-up view of section of garage, showing old burlap screen on stakes, half-bushel basket full of empty egg cartons, some flattened cardboard boxes, a plastic file tote filled with folders, a two-drawer file cabinet with both drawers open revealing many folders and topped with several bags of compost and soil, and other miscellaneous junk rimming the right side of photo

    Chaos, view #2

  • Two big boxes of old file folders (nope, don’t ask about that either)
  • Stack upon stack of broken-down cardboard boxes that I plan to use for weed-control next year
  • A couple rolls of landscaping cloth
  • Leftover hardware cloth—yards of it—plus the pig rings and the wire cutters
  • Numerous pine stakes in 6-foot, 4-foot, and 2-foot lengths
  • A rolled-up wind barrier made of stakes and burlap that never did much good but I haven’t gotten around to taking apart or throwing out
  • My old kitchen compost bucket, which waits for me to figure out whether I ever compost again
  • Miscellaneous tools large and small that had to be cleaned and put back in their places

You get the idea.

So I did the big cleanup on Saturday, with temperatures maybe hitting 40°, rushing through it to finish in time for a live storytelling event I had to perform for. (Really don’t ask.)

After three hours of Herculean heaving and hoisting, here is what the garage looks like now:

Same section of garage, showing items sorted out, all cardboard tied into orderly packs, buckets lined up, storage bins stacked neatly and trash bins ranged next to file cabinet; burlap screen rolled up and placed with tall stakes in far corner; flowerpots stacked in milk crates on a shelf above far window

Order, sorta

 view of most of garage showing items ranged neatly along sides and at far end, with a lot of clear floor space in foreground and about 2/3 of the way up the photo

And not a moment too soon, with those hard frosts hitting.

Company coming!

Unfortunately, I’m not the only one getting ready for winter. I’ve lived here long enough to know what happens when we start getting a series of hard frosts, and it’s spelled

m-i-c-e.

all-pink photo showing two candy mice on an underground of something shaggy-fluffy

“Sugar Mice” by osaka19 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Did you know mice can even more into your car in the winter, and chew the wiring into perilous state? I haven’t suffered that misfortune yet, even in the worst winter we’ve had in the past seven years, but this time as I was cleaning up the garage I uncovered way too much evidence of m-i-c-e or something else that poops the same way. Way, way, waaaay too much evidence.

Maybe voles rather than mice, a couple of people guessed. Whatever. Rodents! I’m going to have to deal with that.

But the mice for sure don’t content themselves with the garage, when there’s a nice warm cozy house adjoined, begging to be moved into. And yes, they have. But I was ready.

Five or six years ago, I used a kind of mouse motel, the kind where they check in and don’t check out, and you can just throw the whole thing away without seeing the fellow creature you have murdered. These worked great, for me if not for the mice.

But the company that made those was sold, and although the things were still marketed under the same name, they no longer functioned, except maybe great for the mice. I’m not the only one who noticed this; I saw many customer complaints posted on Amazon about the mice strolling in, eating the peanut butter bait, and strolling right back out. Like it was some kind of amusement park set up specially for them.

photo of a gameboard with the box top behind it, titled MouseTrap, and with a multicolored Rube Goldberg-type assemblage of plastic steps, gears, plunge pond and figurines set up on top of the board

The better mousetrap?
“mousetrap” by Genista is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

So I switched to a different type of trap. These had the virtue of working extremely well (a couple of times they almost trapped me while I was setting them up). I had about a dozen of the inexpensive, supposedly reusable, plastic killer-jaws mousetraps left over from last year, and last week I got a couple dozen more.

Why so many? I said supposedly reusable because, to re-use, you’d have to pry out a dead mouse, clean the contraption (I won’t ruin your day by specifying what has to be cleaned out of it), dry it off, and then re-set it. At around a buck a piece, I figure I’m not reusing the things. No way. Down the oubliette with trap and trappee, say I.

blank tombstone on a stone base, with green lawn behind

R.I.P., M. Mouse
“blank tombstone” by Jo Naylor is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Three mice have already bitten the dust this fall.

Unfortunately, when they work, these traps let you (me) see exactly what you (I) have done.

It’s not as though I haven’t tried less violent methods. Last year, I set up those ultrasonic or maybe it’s subsonic gizmos that plug into wall sockets and emit a noise that is supposed to annoy the mice back into the garage. I can tell you exactly how well those worked: the three mice I caught were trapped right under one of those suckers.

Okay, maybe it disoriented them so much that they all reeled into the traps snout-first with their noses pointed straight at the bait. Maybe. Probability: .001%.

This year I’m deploying a different prevention method, which I hope works. (We gardeners are nothing if not hopeful.) It’s not guaranteed, but many have testified that it works for them. I’m going to try peppermint power!

closeup of individually plastic-packaged bite-size peppermint candies, with varying widths of red stripes on white

Peppermint them!
“peppermint candies” by Don & Janet Beasley is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

No, not throwing peppermint candies at the mice, or fending them off with candy canes, although it may come to that.

Dropper-stopped bottle of peppermint oil behind a small stack of tiny plastic containers with cotton balls in top one, and a small stack of plastic lids next to those

Does this look like an experi-mint?

But first I’m trying peppermint oil. You can use a few drops of the oil in water with a little bit of organic liquid soap, and spray it wherever you think the mice may be tempted to enter. Supposed to be effective at repelling the little darlings for a few weeks. Mice are reputed to have an extremely acute sense of smell and to hate the scent of peppermint (do they have mouse focus groups to figure that out???), so even if you can’t smell the spray residue, they can. I suppose you only know it’s worn off when they start joining you in the living room to watch Queen’s Gambit on Netflix.

The other method is to pop a wick and a small bit of the oil into a small plastic container, slice a small slit into the lid, cover the container with the wick sticking out, and set the container/s wherever mice may run.

Lacking a ready supply of wicks, I’m resorting to a stopgap measure: putting a cotton ball inside each container, giving it 6-10 drops of the oil, cutting about a half-inch triangular hole in the lid, snapping the lid on and putting the container where I’ve had mice infesting in the past. Thus far this means the basement laundry room, where those three mice already fell to the jaws of death this fall, and the drawers storing kitchen wraps and oddments, which the mice seem to attack every year, even though there is nary a crumb of food to be found there.

inside back of kitchen drawer showing small plastic container with cotton ball, flanked by boxes of kitchen wraps

The best defense is a good offensive smell.

I suppose I should be more systematic about all this, and put peppermint containers all along the knee wall around the basement, at least where I can reach it. But that’s going to have to wait until I get through the next items on the priorities list.

And for my next act…

Foliage of siberian irises that have succumbed to frost: splayed out flat, and mostly brown with w few green leaves remaining

TBD=To Be Divided

And what are those, you may ask? Hmm. I could plan it. In fact, I do plan to dig up and divide at least the largest clump of Siberian iris that is making an unholy mess of itself all over the front walk right now.

And there are all those bearded iris corms and daffodil bulbs and grape hyacinth bulbs that got dug up during the summer, and I should put them in somewhere. Yeah, the big question is, WHERE?

Narrow cardboard box containing Siberian iris corms (far left), green flowerpot containing tiny grape hyacinth bulbs, and two small containiners with narcissus bulbs

TBP=To Be Planted

And then there’s the blushing turtlanium and the swamp rosemary, which ought to go in somewhere if I could only decide where…

Oh, and the last stonycrop plant that I didn’t get in during the summer but is still flourishing (or I hope so; at least, it was two days ago, before the twenties hit).

And, and, and…

Sasanqua camellia bush in bloom, obscuring most of a house behind it; bright pink blossoms all through glossy dark green foliage, and a scattering of bright pink petals on the grass in front of the flowerbed

Sasanqua camellia, and not even full bloom yet
November 15
photo by Hillary

By the way—not that I’m trying to distract you from my failings or anything—remember our visit to Hillary’s garden in Charleston, SC? She promised to provide an update when the sasanqua camellia really bloomed, and yesterday she sent me a photo. This, she tells me, is still short of full bloom, so we have another visual treat coming. Maybe even in time for next week’s post.

Will I have progress to report next week? We’re gardeners, aren’t we? Hope springs eternal. Stay tuned.

The best guarantee that I’ll get some of this stuff done is that it’s the only healthy distraction I can find to the travesty going on at the national level. I’m not going to go on the rant about that because it helps my blood pressure not a whit. I will only say that I devoutly hope that we can make a transition soon to a national leadership who take this galloping pandemic seriously, who will organize a response to save lives and sanity along with livelihoods, and safeguard the health and wellbeing of all the people working in medical care, now straining to cope with an inhuman burden of increasingly massive proportions.

Brace yourselves, Georgia. There are lots of postcards coming your way. You really may be deciding the fate of the nation, come January. By which point, things there may even be getting ready to bust into bloom.

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Reconstruction, garden variety

Posted on 2020-11-10 by Hecate

Here it is November, edging into the middle of the month, and for a brief and lovely week, the march of the seasons hit pause-and-rewind.

Old mercury thermometer outdoors on weathered wooden fence post, with green turf, walkway, and white-washed farm buildings showing in spaces between fence slats

“Old thermometer” by Stanley Mlha is licensed under CC BY 2.0

After a couple or maybe three hard frosts in mid-September (I may be in denial about the third, or I may be imagining things, both of which seem to be turning into a national sport), and another whack of unseasonably cold weather in October, topped off with snow the day before Halloween, Ma Nature has taken mercy on us here in WMass. Since last Thursday, or maybe it was Wednesday (see first sentence of this paragraph), we have been basking in days pinging up into the 70s by mid- to late afternoon.

Given that the sun now sets before 5 pm since we lost daylight saving time, the warmth is a welcome gift. I don’t even terribly mind (although I do mind some) that it still goes down into the high 30s some nights.

The warm spell put me back on the hook, though: things I had thought were past praying for, all of a sudden weren’t. Things I thought would just have to wait till spring, now became not only possible but even, perhaps, mandatory. After all, there were (and still are) piles of mulch and topsoil in the driveway, waiting for me to do something with them. They must be dealt with, or horrors will happen when my marvelous neighbor tries plowing the driveway when we get real snowfall.

Chard in pre-nightmare state.
“Swiss Chard” by dnfisher is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Therefore, it’s reconstruction time! That strip right behind the house, above the stone wall, has been taunting me since early spring. Do something, already! Only the peonies looked good there this year. Oh, and maybe the lettuce and the chard in very early summer, before the chard demonstrated what a nightmare it can turn into if you don’t pick it in time.

Sorry I didn’t take a picture at the time, but I didn’t know back in June that I was going to be doing a garden blog. Don’t worry; I’m bound to neglect it again at some point next year, so you’ll get another chance to see it.

Front page of website of Infinite Cedar showing several raised garden beds products set on green lawn and filled with soil

Infinite Cedar made the beds.
Aren’t they lovely?
My screenshot, www.infinitecedar.com website

But I didn’t do more with that strip because I knew I wanted to reconfigure everything: to put in raised beds, add a slightly meandering walkway, etc. etc. Way back in June or July, I bought a couple of 4X8-foot raised-bed kits made by Infinite Cedar (great quality, in case you’re looking for something like that), but they sat in their boxes in the garage while Anthony-the-amazing-helper and I struggled to get all the more distant permanent-perennial plantings wrestled into shape.

When it snowed on Oct. 30, I started wondering where I could stash those gigantic boxes for the winter, to make room to park the car in order to make room in the driveway for the plowing (and to avoid having to get snow off the car, sometimes a foot or more of it undercased by ice—note my play for your sympathy here). And I had a spot all figured out, but then we got this warm snap (good till tomorrow!), my conscience woke up, and I called my amazing handyman Carl with a cry for help—and good golly whiskers, did he deliver! Which meant that I had to deliver, too, to get ready for that help.

Small shoots of geranium leaves amidst leaf litter, as seen from above

Aw shucks, the blushing turtle is back!

On Friday I trotted out to various retail establishments to load up on additional supplies, especially meaning hardware cloth and things for assembling it. I’ll explain more on that shortly.

Out in the targeted area, I dug out the huge perennial sage and nearly as huge French tarragon plants and put them into pots to await resettlement.

And made an amazing discovery, under all that herby foliage: the blushing turtle geranium lives on! It too got dug up, and awaits a new home more removed from the rodent menace. By the time I’d done all that (digging, rooting around in garage for suitably large pots, putting more soil in pots, tucking in the transplantees, watering them…), the sun was dropping, splashing up lots of orange and purple (see the header photo), and it was time to pack it in.

For the last couple hours of daylight on Saturday, and the first hour of daylight Sunday morning, I set to work dismantling the old chicken-wire-fenced area that had discouraged the bunnies but never fazed parsley-crazed Tamerlane-the-woodchuck, even though we’d buried the chicken wire down about a foot when that fence went in.

Garden plot area, bordered on right by sonte wall; level area covered with leaf debris and mulch just to left of stone wall, and beyond that on left, several tarps held down by stones covering more of the ground; red tool bucket on bare soil in foreground

Part way into demolition

And I peeled away the three humungous tarps—one green, one blue, one brown—that had overlain the rest of the strip since Anthony had to pull out the obstreperous weeds for a second time, during the summer.

Sunday morning, while I was in a writing workshop on Zoom, Carl and a crew of two assistants showed up and set to work. By the time I had a little break in the workshop, I poked my head out and they had already finished ripping out the part of the fence that I hadn’t gotten to (full disclosure: a good half of it), and had created a beautifully leveled-off surface, approx. 20 feet by 12 feet. By the time my second break rolled around, they’d assembled the frames of the beds. And by the time the workshop was finished, the beds were in place and they’d nearly finished digging out the inside, to a depth of 10 inches.

cedar raised bed frame in position, with soil dug out to 10 inches below bottom of frame

In position…

This was soil that I’ve already dug up and turned umpteen times over the past six years, so the digging wasn’t for softening up compacted soil.

No, this time there is a Plan, hatched to foil Tamerlane and all his brethren and sistren should they hanker to snack on the garden goodies by burrowing from below. And to keep out anyone else who might try burrowing, say, Thumper-the-sidekick-bunny and his accomplices.

photo showing some hardware cloth, rolled up, with old chickenwire rolled up behind it

New hardware cloth; old chicken wire

This time, the Plan is to line the deep underneath of the bed with that aforementioned hardware cloth. Have you ever encountered that magical material? I don’t know why it’s called “cloth.” It’s anything but clothy; it consists of very tough, supposedly stainless steely wire, which comes in ¼” or ½” grids. Maybe it gets named cloth for its woven look.

In any case, Carl and his team had the unenviable challenge of turning lengths of 3- and 4-foot wide hardware cloth into linings to cover the bottom of the beds and to secure the sides of the rim of soil and lap up inside the wooden frames.

I’d envisioned that work of measuring and cutting and uniting the two different lengths all going on inside the beds, but that team knew better. For the first piece, they did the measuring and cutting and linking (with “hog rings,” a term I just recently discovered, and I sure hope nobody is putting those wicked clamps on real hogs) out on the lawn where they could move around. They measured before cutting and measured again after cutting, folded in the sides, then the ends, cut out sections where ends and sides would join up. They they picked up the neatly tailored piece, carried it over to the bed, and placed it in its home.

I’ll spare you the details that followed, the stomping to get the stiff cloth into exact position, the stapling of sides and ends, the filling in with the dug-out soil. You can get some idea from the pictures above. There’s more to do: the second liner still has to go in. But I know it’s going to be done right.

I’ll leave you with this little thought: you may have a plan or a policy, but for figuring out the best way of achieving it, there ain’t nothing like an expert.

Two adult ducks on lawn with 8 fuzzy brown, white, and yellow ducklings

“Ducklings in line” by jpockele is licensed under CC BY 2.0

So, dear readers, it was nice to hear, the day after all this got done, that the President-elect is not waiting for the final ducks to line up, and has already assembled an outstanding team of experts to advise on combating the coronavirus pandemic that threatens all of us in life and livelihood. May their advice prove as effective as the garden team’s approach did.

Oh, if your mind is still on that garden work, and you’re thinking, waitaminnit, what’s to stop Tamerlane from invading over the top? There’s a plan for that, too. But that can wait till spring. I will leave you in delicious suspense, and then you’ll get another blog post or two about that process.

Meanwhile, I’d love to hear from you. If you can’t come up with anything else, here are some questions to choose from:

  1. What are your most troublesome garden pests of the larger kind (let’s make mice the smallest size there), and how have you dealt with them?
  2. Are you doing things in the garden in November that you thought you’d be putting off till spring, or are you already on to the mulled cider? (Mulled champagne this week???)
  3. Did you get the spring bulbs in yet? If so, what are they? If not, maybe you should be out doing that, and then come back and leave a comment telling us what you planted.
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