People in Gardens

It's cold and snowy again. Saturday morning was minus 5 degrees, and when it warmed into the teens it started snowing and has kept snowing.

Snow has such a distorting effect on everything. The whole level of the yard is raised, leaving the house as a ship partly submerged and wallowing in the seas of winter. Features that orient the landscape like shrubs and plant stands and most of a garden bench are simply gone.

I continue to garden by tending my photographs. I have so many, and I like to look at others on blogs and Pinterest and in the magazines I have stacked by my reading chair. Let it snow.

It's interesting how garden photographs never have people in them.

I read an essay recently about how we like to see gardens in photographs: perfect, just right, a utopian vision of the ideal landscape. It's all a deeply human urge to recreate the original, the Garden of Eden.

And, like the original garden that man was banished from, there are no people in garden photographs.

It's as if humans, with their waste and manure and compost rows and working tools and piles of debris that need to be picked up, don't exist. The perfect garden shot has none of that. People are banished when we set out to capture the ideal garden and put it in a magazine spread.

Almost none of my own garden photographs have people in them.

Why do we do that? Humans give scale to the picture, and that's much needed when I want to see how big a tree is or how deep a border goes. For reference alone, people add dimension to a garden.

Humans in the frame also remind us that a garden is work. It is created, not sprung naturally from the benign hand of providence. Why do we cling to the vision of "nature" as a beautiful place uninhabited by humans? Is the Garden of Eden thing really that deeply, psychologically embedded in us?

People don't have to be working in a garden -- they can be strolling and enjoying it, and how natural would that be to see? But when we visit a public garden and take shots of the beautifully designed spaces, I crop out the people, or try to get a view with no one in it to start with.

I know that people in pictures will always draw the eye -- we are genetically programmed to notice people before surroundings, and the photographer wants to feature the plants instead. So humans in a garden shot are a distraction.

It's disorienting, though, when you look at as many gorgeous garden photos as I do, to see that the highest aspiration of the perfect garden is to be a space growing untouched by gardeners, unseen by visitors, and completely devoid of humans. Eden.

We are stardust

we are golden

and we've got to get ourselves 

back to the garden

 Joni Mitchell

Right Location

We have snow on the ground. Things that I know to be two feet high out in the yard are not visible. It's been single digits at night and in the 20s in the daytime. Very wintery. Let's look at plants I want to do something with this spring.

I planted a red buckeye, Aesculus pavia, in late summer of 2012, but I'm not sure it's in the right place. I keep planning to move it. This interesting tree requires a specific location for several reasons.

First, like most buckeyes, the big floppy leaves need some afternoon shade in summer and even then they brown and go limp.

Early spring foliage and flower in May

Second, it loses its leaves in mid September. It just does. All of them. It drops early, so you don't want to site this for fall interest. It should be put where you can enjoy the scarlet spikes of flowers in spring.

by September 24, red buckeye has dropped every leaf

Third, it doesn't respond well to dry periods. It needs to be watered when dry summer conditions hit, so it needs to be near the hose.

Fourth, the seeds and young twigs are poisonous to humans and to wildlife. In fact, Native Americans crushed up the seeds and twigs and put them in the water to stun fish for easy catching. Really.

I'm not very worried about poison seeds but if I had grandchildren toddling around my garden putting things in mouths, I might be.

So where did I plant Aesculus pavia? Is it in the right spot?

I first saw red buckeye on a garden tour in upstate NY, and it was in flower next to a big red barn. The scarlet flowers complemented the barn so beautifully.

May 12, 2012 on a garden tour in Amenia, NY

With no red barn nearby, I ended up putting my little sapling at the entrance to our gravel seating area, right near the red painted cellar door.  You work with what you have.

Still in its pot before planting

So is it in the right spot?

It is near the house where it gets deep morning shade but is then out in the afternoon sun the rest of the day. Not really ideal, although it's not in full sun all day.

It's convenient to the hose near the house. I do have to water it when we have dry periods. It gets stressed looking.

It is part of my allee along the walk that goes from the front to the back of the house. With bare branches in early autumn, this buckeye doesn't add anything when the whole allee is gorgeous in fall color. But the stewartia and other trees forming the allee do their part spectacularly, so I guess I can forgo fall foliage in this spot.

Part of my young allee - a stewartia and the little buckeye

It is, of course, too close to the house, the walkway, and other plants, just as everything in my garden is. Here is a mature one next to a college building so you can see the size.

mature Aesculus pavia at Smith College

I will have to limb up my tree as it gets bigger in order to be able to go down the walkway and get into the gravel seating area, or even if we want to be able to open the cellar doors.

I'll have to limb it up a lot.

But I think (I think) that will be okay. This tree has a shaggy aspect that might look good limbed up about 6 feet. The firecracker flowers -- its main attraction in spring -- are certainly going to be visible when you have to walk right under it. With it sited so close to the house, the flowers will be easy to see even from inside looking out the windows.

But then I think I should move it to get more afternoon shade. And to give it more space to be the natural size tree it wants to be. Maybe it shouldn't be part of a line of trees, particularly in fall.

I'm leaning toward leaving it and limbing it.

Or maybe I should move it.

Satan's Ridge

The local area where I ski: Sundown

I started skiing fifty years ago and although I am no athlete, it is a sport I have thoroughly enjoyed in six different decades of my life.

We have decent resorts within easy driving distance in Vermont and New Hampshire, and some of our best family memories were created on ski vacations there when the boys were little. We had to buckle their boots for them then, and lift them onto the seat of the chairlift.

Those mini skiers are now grown men who "skin" the Colorado backcountry (no lifts, you climb up with rough skins on the skis), or ski black diamonds in the Sierras in California.

They are both graceful, incredible athletes who are a joy to watch coming down the mountain.

My sons have outgrown Eastern ski conditions and hills -- too icy, too tame -- and they live in the west now, but I still live here and I still ski New England slopes.

The little skiers grew up and now ski out west

For an aging skier like me, it is a rare visit to Vermont at this point.

Satan's Ridge in the 1960s

But within 35 minutes, just up the road from my house, there is a local area that is a gem. Our little state is not known for mountains, but the hills in the northwest are actually quite steep. Not high, but rugged in places, and all you need for a small ski area is a pocket of steep terrain.

This gem is called Ski Sundown now, but when I began skiing in the 1960s it was called Satan's Ridge. The name was a natural -- it was built in Satan's Kingdom, a forested, undeveloped area where the river runs over rocks and churns up rapids.

I had leather boots then that took half an hour and strong fingers to lace up tight enough, and wooden skis. We skied in our jeans and got wet.  Downhill skiing was an endurance sport then, and if you came in with icicles on your eyelashes, you could prove you had a good time.

Now, all these years later, I have high tech equipment, ice shedding clothes, every convenience an expensive sport allows, and I will only ski when the snow has been groomed perfectly. And the weather has to be mild.

It's so easy for me now. I can get to the local area quickly, I can ski mid-morning in the middle of the week before the kids arrive and I even get a senior discount.

It's a small area, not much variety, but the slopes are challenging and I only stay a few hours at a time.

blurry shot of me skiing -- but it's proof!

I find lately that I am as interested in the greenery and plants on the slopes as I am in my next run. Ski areas are not kind to forest ecology. They rip up swaths of the mountain and lay it bare.

They do allow a way for people to get into the woods on a winter day though, and I like checking out the mountain laurels poking up through the snow or the stately presence of giant firs and ghostly birches around me.

I try to i.d. woody plants by their buds and I love the play of shadow and light on twiggy winter branches. I notice red berries deep in the woods.

On the mornings I ski there are no crowds, so the experience is a calm, quiet and sometimes reflective one, where I can stop and look about and enjoy nature.

Then I face downhill, push off and I am a teenager again, ripping down Satan's Ridge in Satan's Kingdom, forever young.

What Goes on in February

Snow. There's a lot.

Temperatures have been quite frigid, down to zero at night.

Taxes got done.

No deer tracks or vole tunnels in sight. No rabbit prints. It's too deep now for animal activity.

Solar panels are totally covered by all the snow on the roof, and it is not melting or sliding off. Kwh are zero even on a sunny day. Our neighbor's panels are completely clear.

Went downhill skiing for a couple hours yesterday morning. Great snow, no crowds midweek, and a senior discount on my ticket.

The "allee" that I wrote about on a recent post looks like this now.

My plan to go out and cut branches for forcing inside will have to wait. The snow is higher than my boots.

The witch hazels in the photo above continue to hold onto their leaves all winter. They are fully clothed in brown and if I brought branches in to force, I'd first have to strip all the leaves and that would probably take any little flowers with them.

I'd like to get some winter honeysuckle and forsythia branches but they are too far out in back and I would be lost under the snow until spring if I tried to get to them.

I can open the dining room window to cut off some Dawn viburnum branches though. As long as I am quick with the pruners and don't let too much heat out the open window. 

But the pruners are in my tool shed which I can't get to. Even if I could, I can't open the doors.

That's what's going on here. More snow coming in the forecast over the next days.

Trends I Don't Understand

Snowing today. 13 degrees out and blowing dry snow.

I am reduced to getting my garden fix by cruising Pinterest's photos of beautiful gardens. So much inspiration for what I could do! Oh my.

But there are repeated trends all over everyone's boards that mystify me when I try to imagine how they would work in my garden.

The most mystifying is the outdoor cushion.  Garden seating areas all have furniture with stuffed fabric cushions. And pillows.

Outdoors. In the elements. Wet, squishy, damp cushions.

Would you want to sit on these soggy seats?
The ones in shade by the house would take even longer to dry.

I have used cushions on my patio furniture outdoors -- special outdoor cushions made with Sunbrella fabric and stuffed with rain-shedding materials, and they were always wet. Dew soaks them overnight and they don't dry out for hours. Rain makes them soggy for days. Mildew changes their color.

The pictures don't seem to be in the desert, so it must rain sometimes or get dewy at night. Do people take these big seating cushions and pillows in every night? Are they hauling all that stuff inside every time it threatens rain? Where do they store them?

I don't always bring my garden pillows, seat cushions and quilts in at night . . .
. . . .  but when I do,
                              . . . they stay drier.

Dark cushions hide the mildew better.  Good choice.

Love this rustic look, but those are big cushions to haul in every dewy evening or rainy day.

Another trend on Pinterest that I don't understand is the room that opens wide to the garden, with French doors flung open and no screens. At my house it would take only a few seconds of wide open doors before there were flying torments in the house. Mosquitoes, gnats, no-see-ums and flies. Birds too, we've had them in the house.

We don't need no stinkin' screens (and we untie and bring in those chair cushions every night)

Come on in. All you flying insects.

Open the doors and let the bugs in.  In the bedroom! of all places. 

And how do sunken fire pits drain? This would simply be a pond in my garden, but you see these lovely rock dugouts everywhere on Pinterest.

Sigh. There are such stunning inspirations for gardens all over Pinterest.

But I can't figure out how stuffed fabric cushions left outside are not constantly wet, how open doors could possibly work without screens, or how you get the water out of a sunken fire pit after it rains.

Do I live in a really unusual climate?

(I know, I know. All these photos are staged. I know they are art compositions, not reality shots.  But still.)

Gardening in January

The great epic blizzard that was predicted for Tuesday was not so bad here. It snowed a lot, and we are buried, but it wasn't the worst storm ever. The sun is out now, but it's cold (zero degrees when I woke up today -- that's NO degrees Fahrenheit).

On this frigid day and on all the snowbound days of winter so far I have been having a ball gardening. I garden in winter and I enjoy it.

It's all virtual, though.

Planning for the next season, poring over catalogs (Forestfarm's catalog is a slender shadow of the former plant bible; Peg and Ray donated the nursery to a non-profit), organizing my photos from last season, and updating the inventory of plants that I maintain --- it all keeps me busy and in some ways is more rewarding than summer gardening since there are fewer bugs, no humidity, and I can mentally move any plant to any location I want.

I have so many random photos of what my garden looked like over the years that it is impossible to enjoy them. It's utter overload.  But by methodically going through an inventory of plants all winter long, I get to really look at each photo of each plant and see what it was about that plant in that spot at that time of year that I enjoyed. Or how I want to fix it.

The inventory I maintain has grown from a collection of plant tags in 2007, to a handwritten list on paper in 2008, to an unworkable spreadsheet in 2009, to an online photo journal in 2010.

The photo journal has worked the best and I have updated it each year since 2010.

Seeing a picture from years gone by tells me about the growth and habit and health of a particular plant, and by looking at wider photos of the whole garden I can see what needs fixing or what I want to duplicate.

A long list of entries documenting what is no longer in my garden (killed, lost, removed) is humbling.

In this meticulously documented timeline, it distresses me to see the early photos of my garden.

Jim got me a Nikon SLR camera last year and the entire look and feel of my journaled garden improved. The pictures I had taken before with my Lumix point and click show how big the plant was and an idea of where I had used it, but the color and sharpness were way off.  Odd pictures, and out of focus. Everything looked so yellow for some reason. Really yellow.

My online plant journal is definitely not a work of art, so I shouldn't expect great shots in beautiful color, nicely composed. It's an inventory, a record, a before and after document, and it is priceless to me for that purpose. It's not great garden photography and never will be.

 But I like my garden so much more when I see it in sharper focus and in nicer color.

Anyway, it's fun on a cold snowy day. Crop that photo, highlight that part of the shot. What's that? Did I really plant those two things together? When did that amsonia overtake the blueberries? Did the buckeye and the cherries bloom at the same time? Why yes they did, and not happily together. How did my pruning efforts improve that shrubby viburnum? When did the dahlias bloom and should I plant more?

Gardening in January is rewarding.

Very rewarding.

Irrestible Allurements . . .

Any plant that smells like anise is like catnip to me. I find anise an intoxicating scent.

So of course I had to have an Anise Tree. It's sometimes called Yellow Anisetree.

It is Illicium parviflorum, and the one I bought is called  'Florida Sunshine'.

"Illicium" means allurement in Latin -- it comes from the word for irresistible. Yes.

The foliage is supposed to smell like anise when crushed.

It is a bright chartreuse yellow leaved cultivar that remains evergreen, so it makes a lovely cheerful sight in the winter garden.

Debs Garden has a nice profile of this plant.

The problem is that it is not hardy here. It is a southern plant, really zone 7, and the only way it works for me is in a pot.

So I have it in a container, and it is on the porch, protected. That doesn't fulfill its purpose to brighten the winter garden with Florida sunshine just when I need it most.

But I could not resist the allure of anise scent.

The best I can do is put the pot out in summer under the maple tree in Meadow's Edge, where in summertime it can brighten the dark recesses of that garden.

In full sun (as long as it gets moisture) it will be yellower and fuller, and in shade looser and darker green. Since it will be in a container I can move it about and see what suits it best.

It can grow to 10 feet or more, it grows upright and conical with little pruning. It will form a suckering colony, but in a container that won't happen, and the size will be much less. But I am hoping I get a big, full, leafy plant.

Right now, as a nor'easter blizzard bears down on New England today, I could really use some Florida sunshine out there.

My little one, in a pot on the porch, will have to do.


Note
This is not star anise (Illicium verum), so the star shaped fruits are not for culinary use. And it is not the stinky-flowered Florida Anisetree (Illicium floridanum), which smells awful when blooming.

Trouble at the Top

Stewartia monadelpha flower in late June,
small and hard to see

In 2010 I planted a Stewartia monadelpha.

It's called tall stewartia, probably because this tree stays quite narrow (about 10 or 15 feet wide) as it grows in a pyramidal shape up to 25 feet high.

It's also called Orangebark because of its cinnamon colored trunk.

It is similar to the Stewartia that is more commonly planted -- the showy Japanese pseudocamellia tree that has a profusion of big white fried egg flowers, red fall color and mottled bark.

But S. monadelpha is quieter than its showy cousin. It is slender and delicate. The leaves are small and narrow, the subtle orange toned trunk is skinny, the flowers are tiny and few, although they look like the pseudocamellia flowers, just much smaller.

But in its quiet way it is a very elegant tree.

Only in fall does it abandon all refinement and dress up in brilliant scarlet and shout "fire in the yard" at the top of its lungs.

I mean, how red can a red tree get?

Even in its first season, in 2010, it was a skinny scarlet column of rich red.

When it is not on fire, it is the elegant narrow pyramidal shape of this unassuming tree that recommends it.

But in spring of 2011, after its first winter in my garden, the top half of this pretty tree did not leaf out. That gorgeous, slender shape was toast at the top.

So I had to cut it back. I used a side branch, taped to the stub of the dead leader, to try to re-establish a vertical top:

There it was in 2011, a stunted little shape of a tree.

In 2012 it worked hard at regrowing a leader, and some progress was made.

My efforts to recreate a leader after this tree was topped in 2011 started to pay off in 2013. The tree grew fuller, and added growth at the top, but no one branch was dominant.

By fall, just as it started to color up, I could see a lot of new growth at the top, and a nice dominant leader. This is one of those trees that needs a leader to grow best. It has to have one branch that grows above the rest and gives the tree shape and form.

Alas. This poor tree keeps losing its top. After a harsh winter in 2014 there were dead branches at the top again, and I had to cut them back. The newly grown slender leader was once again sacrificed.

5/21/14  that lovely slender top died back                                   5/30/14 after lopping off the top again

But going into its fifth year in my garden, it is now an established tree that can take some pruning setbacks.

By the time fall 2014 came around, you could see the top had resprouted, and if those top branches make it through this winter I will cut back the competition so one becomes the clear leader.

I am hoping we are finally done with all the trouble at the top of this little tree.