Talking to Trees

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow...grow." -- Talmud

I found myself doing just that bright and early this morning as I made a post-rainstorm inspection of our yard and the many seedlings I"ve been planting this spring.

This is part of what I call Project Bee Here Now: Enhancing the bee-sustainability of our property by planting species favored by honeybees for nectar and pollen. Yes, this is a long-haul project. (As we noted ruefully today, with the economy the way it is we may as well invest in the maintenance and aesthetics of our home, because people aren't exactly burning asphalt to relocate to our little burg.)

For the last two months I've scoured online nursery catalogs, extension-office tree-sale lists and other sources for inexpensive bee-friendly trees and shrubs. And I've purchased some: red osier dogwood; redbuds; basswood; ninebark; sumac; elderberry; buttonbush; highbush cranberry; winterberry, aka Michigan holly. Most of them have gone around the periphery of our yard or our backyard pond.

It's been very rewarding to watch the very unimpressive bare twigs of these seedlings suddenly sprout little green leaflets. But the holly -- a deciduous species, fairly common here in wetland areas and  much beloved for its prolific orange-red berries in the wintertime -- has been a tough case.

I planted the hollies in a  humus-y raised semicircular bed at the margin of our woods -- a neglected spot in the yard that until recently had been home to a few half-dead rhododendrons and a burgeoning colony of poison ivy. Those are gone now, after much effort, replaced by the hollies, a pair of pieris shrubs and some wildflowers; and for the past month I've been silently willing the leaves of the wispy holly twigs to emerge.

"Come on...grow," I'd wish each morning, staring disappointedly at the bare seedlings. "All the other seedlings are growing -- even the buttonbushes I stuck right in the pondwater. You're slacking off here. Grow. Please."

Then last week, after being awakened in the wee hours by our bored dog more interested in an outdoor romp than a morning constitutional, I trudged to the forlorn holly bed, expecting to be disappointed again and wondering what I might plant there instead. I focused my sleep-bleary eyes at a holly twig.

A tiny green leaf was protruding from the end.

"Yes!"

In the days to follow, four of the six seedlings have shown signs of life; green buds or full-blown leaves. I thought the last two twigs looked somehow bumpier today, but that might just be wishful thinking.

Garden Porn Revisited

It's that time of year again...the time when I sort through multitudinous garden catalogs and buy seeds for the veggie and herb gardens. I call it garden porn. And if you're a gardener too, you know what I mean -- all those tantalizing photos of bodacious vegetables and flowers and shrubs and trees and...ahem...that kind of thing.

I am already hooked up with the bulk of my vegetable seeds, thanks to last year's leftovers and  FEDCO Seeds, a cooperative out of Maine. (For any interested readers -- they have a very short ordering deadline -- I believe March 15 -- so you'll have to get cracking if you want to buy seeds from them.)  Now it's fill-in-the-blank time.

It is always a stressful thing for me to balance my love of variety and novelty with the limitations of time, space and climate.

What I am trying to do this year, as I did last year, is think hard about what vegetables are really better left to our Amish neighbors to grow -- Amish neighbors with expertise, lots of sunny acreage and lots of free labor. It's ridiculous, for instance, to grow butternut and Delicata squash in my partially shaded little plot when Mrs. Mast down the road grows pounds and pounds of exhibition-size, high quality squash. On the other hand...you're not going to see the lovely patisson squash above on any Amish roadside stand anytime soon. Worth the risk for some rockin' steamed baby squash to gently spoon next to our pasta some summer evening out on the patio? Maybe.

So my garden is going to be something of a curiosity shop of heirloom tomatoes, technicolor leaf lettuces, and lots of green beans -- one of the few great successes of last year's poor growing season, which we froze and have been enjoying all winter long. I'm planting leaf celery, another success story -- dried, it's very good in winter soups and stews, especially on those days when you go to the crisper for celery and realize it's all gone. I'm upping the herb crops, since we couldn't keep ourselves in herbs last year. And, as we seriously attempt to help the honeybees and native bees around here, I'm growing more annual flowers, which I like to randomly add to the vegetable garden to attract all manner of pollinators. (And they look great.)

On the live plant front, I'm getting excited by a couple of native-plant sales coming up in the next few weeks. Our local extension office offers inexpensive trees, shrubs and native flowers on a pre-order basis; and in a couple of months a regional nature center will be hosting a native plant sale involving, I believe, plants that have been rescued from building projects; you bet I want some of those. 

Of course, part of this irrational exuberance is due to longer, brighter days and the promising drop of thawing snow slipping off the gazebo roof. Next week, for all I know, we'll have an eight-inch blizzard. But a girl can dream.

The Bee's Knees

Here I was, all ready to embark upon a thoughtful blog meditation expressing my misgivings over The Eucharist Diet ...oh, let's be honest; I was going to launch into some major upraised-eyebrow snark...but then the good angel who occasionally lights upon my shoulder whispered in my ear, "Just stop now."

I hate it when that happens. I heart my snark.

But anyway, I'm going to talk about bees instead.

Fellow Traveler, as I've mentioned in previous posts, has developed a fascination about beekeeping. I myself, gardener that I am, are fond of honeybees even though I've never really thought about raising them. And I keep running into articles like this one, about the hard times honeybees are facing these days;  how they need all the human friends they can get.

We are not at the hive-purchasing phase...we're not even at the hive-visiting phase, although we want to finagle ourselves into a tour or two this spring. For one thing, we're still at the baby stages of getting into our glass hobbies and gardening, let alone taking on a new endeavor. And I also have stepchildren to think of: "What the hell are you letting our mom do?..." But the more I think about it, the more I'm digging this idea as a long-term goal -- not a commercial enterprise, mind you, just a household hive out back. And even if we lose the magnificent obsession with beekeeping per se, I'd like to make our yard a more bee-friendly place, if not for bees of our own then for the honeybees I was so delighted to find in my garden this past summer, after so many summers of seeing hardly a one, and the native species of bee that are also losing ground to disease and habitat destruction. I see more flowers in our future.