The Apple Tree Garden

Letting Go, Paring Down

2010-09-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Autumn always occurs in the context of a full year, new buds in spring, fruit ripening, branches lengthening, roots deepening. We know, without a doubt, that spring follows winter, that bare branches sprout leaves again. Faith? Hope? Or simply experience?

Those in their seventies, in the October of their lives, may see no May in their future. Those in the process of a divorce may see no new love in their future. Those who lose a child know that that child can never be replaced. What do we look forward to now?

For me, the answer is loving again, no matter what the object may be. Loving is, in many ways, a road to non-attachment, for the wider love spreads, the less one needs one specific object. It is, we come to find, a spring within us that is always available, always clear and flowing.

A spring, a new Spring to look forward to constantly.

Digging, Digging, Digging!

2009-09-22T07:00:00.001-07:00

One of the delights of fall is the clearing out of old roots and unwanted plants, the creation of space for new life. All winter and spring to get ready for warm weather and the end of transplanting.

Sheep sorrel one of the big problems here, an insidious invader that sends out thin, inconspicuous rhizomes ahead of the leaf clusters to colonize new areas inches away. At least quackgrass has thick white roots I can see! Salt, however, is more toxic to the sorrel and a good choice for killing it in the paths.

Planting comes only after clearing, no matter how impatient I am for my favorite flowers. Now, in September, I have a good six months or more to dig, again and again, until the invaders are gone.

The summer, in a way, begins now. Potential comes with creating a blank space upon which to write. With months to work, I can relax into emptiness.

Apples, Apples and More Apples!

2009-08-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year for gathering, cooking, saving up for winter. Unfortunately, it all takes time, and time is what seems to be in shortest supply, for me as well as many others. There's so much to do in the garden, too, that it seems a shame to cut that short.

But it seems somehow shameful to let all that food sit around rotting. I could throw them outside the fence for the deer to eat, or I could give some to friends. But somehow it seems right to just make one batch of applesauce, perhaps just a token gallon, just to have something of the garden in midwinter at the dinner table, something that, like magic appeared out of nowhere.

Have you ever read "The Man Who Was Magic" by Paul Gallico? It's been years since I last had a copy, but I do remember one thing that this man said, a true magician who came out of nowhere to a city of stage magicians, "Look around. The young horse was nothing six months ago, the corn was nothing. That they are here is the true magic, not mine." (Well, that's much paraphrased, but the sense is the same.)

The apples came out of nothingness, and they'll be gone in a few months. Magic, pure and simple. Magic.

Groundcovers and Meadows

2009-05-20T05:17:00.000-07:00

I was driving through the Yakima Canyon last week, watching this vast meadow unfold along the river, thinking about how scale affects our sense of "meadow." There, the groundcover is two to four feet high (sagebrush, deerbrush) and the clumps of Balsamroot may cover half an acre.

And, of course, I was thinking about how this would apply to the Apple Tree Garden, an area considerably smaller! The forget-me-nots in bloom now certainly make it seem like a meadow, a haze of blue covering most of the garden. And the primroses, with so many of them, did the same.

It seemed, in the Canyon, that the flowers were spaced an average of twice their height apart, some almost touching, some considerably farther. The height of the groundcover, the fairly uniform background of green, of course, would need to be proportionate to the area of the meadow. A 5' x 5' area, for instance, would need a very low plant, perhaps no more than 3" high.

And, of course, there need to be lots and lots of plants, not too many species in bloom at one time, but at least a hundred of each. That's what gives the impression of lushness and abundance.

And, as an older garden, that's what the Apple Tree Garden certainly has!

First Seeds

2009-03-03T07:57:00.000-08:00

I planted the first seeds of spring yesterday, calendulas and sweet alyssum and borage and cynoglossum. Didn't have any time to do the rest, more than twenty different varieties of hardy annuals, the ones that will come up on their own, if the rains hold. It takes time to do a good job, either putting them in one by one, or roughing up a patch of ground, sprinkling the seeds and then patting it down.

One of the clerks at the post office handed me my package from a seed company saying, "Here's a box of optimism!" What an excellent description of a spring order of seeds and supplies, of almost nothing, of a potential that will fill a huge area with green and flowers.

Dealing with potential, with the unseen in the tiniest of tangible packages - that's what we do as gardeners. That's what we do as humanity.

No Boundaries

2009-02-21T07:17:00.000-08:00

"The garden is a place for the gentle builder and humble artist to call their home, a place for them, and all those to visit thereafter, to find their way back to a unified world where there are no boundaries. No point where the garden ends and the mountain begins."

Marc Peter Keane
from "The Art of Setting Stones"
p. 42

Getting Back in the Garden

2009-02-02T09:20:00.000-08:00

Beginning of February, now, and I haven't done half of what I wanted to in the garden. Of course, there are excuses, a turned ankle, bronchitis, snow and busyness. There are always excuses. The only thing that matters, though, is getting back in the garden, even if only for a few moments.

A glass of wine, a cup of tea or coffee, and a slow stroll on the paths can be all it takes. Like most people, I have to work at clearing away thoughts of what I "should have done" and focus on the primroses with fat buds, and spiky bulb leaves that seem to ignore frost completely. The drink in my hand is a signal to look, not work. I don't have to decide what to do, just get an overview.

Usually, before I know it, I've found something I just can't resist doing, something I want to do, not something I ought to do. And I'm on my way, back into enthusiasm instead of a nagging sense of guilt. And, finally, I'm looking forward to spring.

A Gift of Insulation

2008-12-15T07:46:00.000-08:00

Otherwise known as snow, not the usual type of precipitation here in the Northwest! Water transformed into something hard, but not unyielding. Water as love in form. Love? Yes, water is often seen as the symbol/form of love in this world, dissolving impurities, flowing, clear and filled with light.

Is it surprising that its solidity can be just as miraculous as its liquid form? The fact that ice expands as it freezes is amazing in itself, unique among substances. And, of course, the intricate lacework of a snowflake is the essence of beauty flung carelessly in our path, at least that's how it seems.

But think of snow as a winter guardian, a protector against the winds that can chill the life out of us. If you're lost, dig yourself into the snow and no matter how cold the air, you'll be surrounded by air that stays around freezing. A gift? Yes, if you have to chose between that and zero degrees with extra wind chill.

And if it blankets your garden during a cold snap, your plants will be protected just as surely as if you'd spread an insulating layer of plastic. A valuable gift, truly!

The Basics - Joy

2008-11-15T06:19:00.000-08:00

Fall doesn't offer too many new things to talk about, so I'll ramble on a bit about an essential component of the garden - joy. One thing I learned as a science major in college was that the basic principles of the universe are simple. If you start fooling around with complicated formulas, you've probably lost the essence.

And the one of the fundamentals of life is this: Joy is an ever-present reality, surrounding us, available to us, no matter how difficult life seems. It's a bit like a power grid, just there, waiting to be drawn from. Humans are wired for transmitting joy, for passing it on to others, to the world as a whole, to nature itself.

So why is everything so lacking in joy? Well, think of a dark room. No one's turning on the lights. That's our job, that's our skill and our responsibility. That's who we are.

"A Transfusion of Autumn Light"

2008-10-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

Walking around this week, I've been thinking of what the poet May Sarton wrote in her "Journal of a Solitude:"

"I was stopped at the threshold of my study by a ray on a Korean chrysanthemum, lighting it up like a spotlight, deep red petals and Chinese yellow center, glowing....... Seeing it was like getting a transfusion of autumn light right to the vein."

We had such a fine October, with just enough rain to keep the hoses in the shed, that the colors of the leaves are unusually brilliant. Even the Big Leaf Maples that often turn dull yellow, hardly worth noticing, are huge gold flames against the firs. Even if fall can't match spring or summer flowers for intensity, it certainly spreads color with a larger brush.

It seems as though the world wants to fill us with gold and scarlet and orange, to warm us into hope and trust in spring before winter strips so much away from us (think of your garden with a new cloak of snow - beautiful but color-poor, almost black-and-white.) As flowers and summer slip away, it's sometimes easy to let our hearts slip into a gray lethargy as well. Walking around, filling our eyes and hearts with warmth can be the "transfusion of autumn light" we need.

Hopes for next year - Annuals

2008-10-30T06:28:00.000-07:00

As I said a few days ago, one of the joys of autumn is getting a head start on next summer. The beds I can free from quackgrass now can bloom in July, but if I can't dig and re-dig them until May, the flowers may be sparse.

So, what am I looking forward to? Hardy annuals, most of all. These are the plants that can be sown right in the ground from November through spring, though I have most success if I can spread them around before we get a dry spell in February or March, not being particularly faithful about watering.

Soft blue Nigella, Love in a Mist, and bright blue Nemophila, Baby Blue Eyes, (pictured above) are two of my favorites. Another blue is Cynoglossom, Chinese Forget-Me-Not. Then there are Cornflowers, Larkspurs, Black-Eyed Susans, Shirley Poppies, Godetia, Sweet Alyssum, Calendula and many others, enough to fill the garden with color all by themselves,

Stokes Seeds sells all of these in packets, quarter ounces and ounces or more for pennies, compared to the price of a potted plant, and even a packet will fill a whole bed with flowers. I hope, I really, really hope, I can get enough ground cleared to plant them all. Well, all right, to be practical, I'll aim for ten of them.

One of the problems with planting right in the soil early in the year is that you can't really select out the weeds that sprout among them, but I've worked out a way to deal with this. I spread a fairly thick layer of bagged steer manure (it's not as strong as it used to be) and use this as a seed bed. A half inch or so keeps most weeds down, if I've cleared the roots of grass and sheep sorrel out. The flowers themselves are usually thick enough to prevent weeds from sprouting once they get going.

If you could only see the garden I'm seeing in my mind. It's gorgeous......

Kaffir Lily - Schizostylis coccinea

2008-10-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

One of the unexpected pleasures of fall is the sight of a clump of Kaffir Lily blooming away in the rain and frost. Most lily relatives are out in spring and summer but this one makes its entrance late, possibly because of its origins in South Africa. Sometimes, and in some gardens, it starts in August, and it often makes headway into November.

There are some small plants of the brighter colors, a soft red and a bright coral, on the left side of the garden that should grow into substantial clumps in the next few years, and I put a fairly large clump of the soft pink variety outside the fence, on the far right, last year. That one got very little water (they'll grow with much or practically none) and so didn't bloom until mid-October but I'll bet it keeps going through December!

Grieving and Gardens

2008-10-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking lately how little we value grief as a skill. We push away our small sorrows, the job we lost, the plants that died, the house we moved away from, and then stagger under the large ones that can't be ignored.

Grief is the other side of the coin called love. Nothing tangible lasts forever, but our love continues far beyond the partings that come sooner or later. If we cannot handle this paradox with balance and skill, how can we love without fear, open to the flow of both love and loss?

In a garden, there is always something to love, the smoothness and delicate shading of a leaf, the subtlety of light and shadow on a rose, the new leaves pushing out of the earth, and, if I've learned anything, it's that loving more, allowing it to spread, is healing. It's almost like a stream that, having lost one place to fill, needs others.

Nature is easy to love. Children delight in everything around them without needing to be taught or guided. I remember my daughter at age five, fascinated with the frozen puddles, shouting "I love ice, I love ice, I love ice so much I want to marry it!" In many ways, I think, it gives us a solid, ever present, foundation for love, and for our grieving.

At nearly sixty, it seems to me that some of our least understood griefs are for what could have been, what should have been. When the marriage ends, don't we feel sorrow for what we dreamed it could be? When the plant dies, don't we feel regret for the blossoms we'll never see? Often tinged with guilt, these griefs often stand behind us, unacknowledged.

And yet, by grieving the small things, the possibilities, the ordinary losses, we find a certain competence in the process. We find the techniques that work for us, writing, walking, taking it a step at a time, and we learn that sorrow does move into something else and instead of constricting our ability to love, we find that it shapes it into something larger and more capable than before.

Apple Trees

2008-10-21T06:30:00.000-07:00

I'll be posting occasional plant profiles and it seems appropriate to begin with the beautiful trees that provide a focus for the garden's center. Without them, the lovely, ephemeral annuals and perennials would seem a bit lost, it seems to me. One of the best things about the Apple Tree Garden is it's strong walls (the log fence) and strong center (the apples.)

Fruit from wild trees, the ones we call "crabapples," is usually small and sour, but centuries (perhaps millennia) ago trees were selected for having larger, sweeter fruit, leading to the over 7,500 of apples known today. Tough, long-lived, providing food that stores well through winter, apples have been an important part of many cultures, mythically as well as physically.

But let's expand the picture a bit. The presence of each plant affects us on many levels, spiritually and emotionally as well as physically. (Flower essences, for instance, use this effect in healing.) Apples, in particular, have the talent of helping us feel at home on the earth, at peace with the imperfections and frustrations of living in a body.

So whenever you're feeling especially down on your own imperfections, visit the apples, have a bit of talk with them, perhaps (you don't have to hear messages to be in communion with them,) let them bring you peace.

Work Day

2008-10-14T18:31:00.001-07:00

One of the ways I stay ahead of the plants in our dialogue of creation and destruction is through the help of volunteers who come to the twice yearly Work Days at the Whidbey Institute. Here are some pictures that Mary Jakubiak, the resident caretaker here, took during the September 13, 2008 Work Day: http://picasaweb.google.com/maragrey1/WorkDay#
We had lovely weather and a super group of vounteers. And, yes, that's me playing the harp, one of my favorite ways to talk to the garden.

The Perfect Gardening Tool

2008-10-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

All gardeners have their prejudices and favorite tools and I have to admit that my perfect gardening tool is a serrated carving knife, costing somewhere between $0.50 and $2 at my local thrift store. Why?

1) It can go deep to cut the roots of dandelions and dock.
2) It can scrape the ground clean of tiny sprouts.
3) It's sharp enough to cut out the roots of buttercup runners.
4) It doubles as a planting tool for plants in 4" or smaller pots.
5) It cuts through swathes of old leaves in fall, saving my clippers.
6) It can even cut quarter inch roots and branches.
7) And (most important) it's cheap enough to replace when I lose one in the underbrush (a frequent and frustrating occurence.)

The possibilites of Autumn

2008-10-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

As a Pacific Northwest gardener, I always get excited when autumn finally gives us cool weather and frequent showers. Not because I particularly like getting cold and wet, but because I can start working on next year's garden. Months of slow, thoughtful, even mindful, garden-picture creation lie ahead. I can move almost any plant wherever I want, I can weed one corner without worrying about the other corners bursting into weeds at the same time, I can relax.

And, of course, there are the beautiful images I see in my mind of what each bed will look like next year. So what if the garden often fails to match my ideal? There's always another year, another chance to make it more beautiful, to plant the hardy annuals I never got around to sowing this year, or the bulbs that didn't get ordered.

That's one of the gifts of a garden - hope. We always get a second chance, and a third, and a fourth. Whatever our shortcomings, our inattention, our busyness and neglect, the garden's always willing to give us spring again, more possibilities, more growth, new life.

And autumn, with all it's deaths and shrinking back into the soil, is always in service of spring.