Note the attractive compost bins I bought years ago; they now function as hardscape/historic artifacts in my "woodland garden." Now remember those 35 deciduous trees I told you about on my property? I’m thinking it would take at least 15 of these little structures to actually hold all their leaves. Then there’s the work involved in turning them every month or so, an effort certain to make my physical therapist a little richer. Taking care of a garden, especially a large one, is enough work without putting myself through the torture of turning compost contents, so no thanks. Likewise, you won’t see me watering the damn things, either.
So here’
s the answer. Can’t see anything? That’s the point. It’s just a large pile of leaves slowly compressing and composting. Every fall I fold over last year’s leaves into one pile and use the freed-up space for the current year’s batch. The smaller, older pile is then ready to be used as compost the following spring or fall.
Now like me, you’ve probably read 15-20 articles – seriously – listing the proper ingredients of compost. So I earnestly include grass clippings in the pile throughout the summer and whatever herbaceous discards my garden may produce, but considering the sheer volume of dead leaves, it doesn’t amount to much. You can bet I don’t schlep down into the woods to dump my kitchen scraps, which in the case of my "cooking" style amounts to nothing more than the occasional banana peel.
But in the end, the product of this humble pile looks like black gold to me and the plants seem happy to get it, so I’m at peace. And peace be with you, too.
Outside my door it feels like this. So for a change of weather I browse the gardening blogs of my Aussie friends and Victoria Val gives me the fix I need. Not only is she boating around in a T-shirt but she transports me to Waikiki. Let’s go there now.
No, blows weren’t actually struck but the police really were called and two years after the incident, it’s still a story worth telling.
It started with the decades-old tradition of my beloved Takoma Horticulture Club selling wholesale bulbs to its members and also at higher prices to the public as a fundraiser. In 2003 the bulb distribution center was my basement – a big mistake never to be repeated, lessons learned and all that. One afternoon in the middle of the long ordeal a member came to pick up the bulbs she’d ordered and asked to buy some of the extras we’d purchased for resale to the public. The trouble came when she insisted we sell her these extras – not even for her but for her neighbor – at the wholesale price. The member, whom I’d never seen before in my life (she’d maintained her membership for the sole purpose of getting cheap bulbs for herself and her friends and neighbors) refused to leave my house.
Okay, now what do you do? Some of you may have bended the rules and given the woman what she wanted – $10 savings on some damn bulbs. Call me an inflexible tight-ass, but I really hate giving in to bullies, so I stood my ground. A half hour passed like this, with the woman still in my house, refusing to leave until she got her way. Unbelievable.
So I called the local police and you can imagine the disbelief on their part when I told them what the confrontation was about, and with whom. The member, who listened passively while I described her to the police, even giving them her name and address, finally left just before the police arrived. And yes, the police looked amused and you can bet they had fun recounting the incident back at the station. I was just grateful they didn’t report it to the local newspapers for an amusing but thoroughly embarassing little story. I imagined a headline much like the one for this post.
The immediate follow-up was that I stopped sending this member her club newsletters and fortunately never saw or heard from her again. I once told the story to a friend of hers, who speculated that she’d been "off her meds." Sounds about right.
After one more year of selling bulbs, the club finally ended the tradition altogether when no one volunteered to be in charge. As much as I loved having extra money for the club to spend and donate, this huge operation had caused more arguments and tears and breakdowns over the years than it was worth. So these days we’re a poorer but happier bunch.
Boyobo
y, it’s great having a big chunk of time for reading – and enough great books to fill it. Which, thankfully, I did over the Thanksgiving holiday, so here’s the scoop.
First up is a really fun read about psychoanalysts by Irvin Yalom, who teaches psychiatry at Stanford and became an eminent writer in his field before turning to fiction. Here’s Irvin. If he doesn’t look the part of a shrink – or a Communist revolutionary – I don’t know what. His Lying on the Couch was a hit with my book group, including this member, and I’ll be reading more of him the next chance I get.
Next is a recent Oprah pick, so you may have already heard of it. It’s A Million Little Pieces by James F
rey, who’s more my type. Very Springsteenian, don’t ya think? This is Frey’s fascinating and gut-wrenching memoir of his three-month rehab at the Hazelton Institute. Unlike most rehab stories, this one totally rejects a Higher Power, AA, and its Twelve Steps, so it has the added appeal for me of being controversial. Soon to be released in movie form, it may even shake up the drug and alcohol recovery field, which is now totally wedded to AA as the only alternative to certain death.
And last and actually least is the book I expected to like the most – Ian McEwan’s much-praised Saturday. Heck, I’m a huge fan of 
McEwan and I even went to a local reading, so I was primed, probably too primed. To this humble reader, his account of a day in the life of a London neurosurgeon just prior to the invasion of Iraq would have made a better short story. I may be exaggerating but it seemed like it took 20 pages to get the guy out of bed, then another 30 to feed him breakfast. Sad to say, if you read the excerpt in The New Yorker, that’s probably enough.
SO, I’m back home now and life interferes with reading but I’m hoping to get to the fourth book I shlepped to Arizona – A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. I loved his High Fidelity and About a Boy, both made into pretty good movies, and hated his next effort, How to Be Good, so it could go either way. This is about four people who meet on the roof of a building from which they all intend to jump, which is a pretty intriguing premise. [Update: Since I drafted this post I started reading the book and realized immediately that it was too close to home. I know someone who actually jumped, so why I thought I'd enjoy the "intriguing premise" is beyond me.]
First, I go way back with Fine Gardening. When I first got into gardening in a big way I survived my first case of winter withdrawal by ordering all of its back issues and it actually helped. Overall, I’ve probably learned more about gardening from FG than any other single source. So my tiny criticisms are the suggestions of an old friend.
The current issue (labeled February 2006, though it arrived the first week of December) is one of the best. There’s a terrific article on what they call sedges and I call carex, a plant group I’ve come to appreciate more over the years and am happy to see promoted. But why the article barely mentions the fact that it’s EVERGREEN and the online version omits that fact altogether, is beyond me. People, that’s why it’s even more useful than hosta, another plant I love.
Next up, an excellent article on foundation plantings that really pushes the envelope that foundation plantings have been stuffed into for so long. This photo says it all – no more rows of yews.
And almost as if this issue were written as a teaching aid to my coachees, the article on pruning-as-thinning is fabulous, even including a cute illustration of someone who looks like me down on her knees near the center of a shrub. From there she can prune from the bottom up and from the inside out, just like I teach. Although again a there’s a curious omission – the article never mentions that thinning allows more air and light to reach the inside of the shrub, the primary benefits I tout for this kind of pruning.
Now to their round-up of Trends in Gardening. I’m happy to report that their various regional correspondents generally agree that naturalistic and eco-friendly is what’s happening. You see terms like "sustainable," "drought-tolerant" and "native" used repeatedly. And for the most part, they don’t make the now-common mistake of recommending strictly native plants as a panacea for all gardening problems but instead refer to plants that are either native or from a similar climate. There’s even the prediction that more plants from dry climates like South Africa and Chile will used in the surprisingly dry Northwest.
One brave designer in Rhode Island goes so far as to buck what’s considered politically correct and declare that he doesn’t agree with the natives-only requests he’s hearing from customers. His position is that "It’s not about where you’re from; it’s about how good a citizen you are. We’re a nation of immigrants, and we need to celebrate that. Our country and our gardens will be that much stronger for it." Wow, couldn’t have said it better myself.
Finally, it’s reported that in the Southeast, "hydrangeas and conifers are hot, hot, hot," to which I say yes, yes, yes. And from Texas we hear about "ample amounts of evergreens" and the importance of planting in masses. Amen.
I stole this photo from Le Jardin de Marandon, a French gardening blog I’ve been viewing more than reading, given the limits of my high school French. But this blog is photo-rich, the way I like ‘em, and worth a look in any language.
Then I discovered an easy way to get more out of this or any foreign-language site. While perusing the inner stats of this humble blog I discovered that someone had ordered up a French translation of it via Google. How cool is that??? A little research revealed that the almighty search engine helpfully provides translations for over 100 languages, including Gujarati, Twi, and Pig Latin. Not a terrific translation, mind you — it’s done by a computer, after all — but it’s good enough to get the drift, usually.
So I wish my French readers bon matin et bon jardinage. We gardeners have gone global all right, and there’s no turning back.
s the answer. Can’t see anything? That’s the point. It’s just a large pile of leaves slowly compressing and composting. Every fall I fold over last year’s leaves into one pile and use the freed-up space for the current year’s batch. The smaller, older pile is then ready to be used as compost the following spring or fall.
