Columbine

COLUMBINE

Whomever lived here in this house before me, loved pale pink. And they have done a magnificent job of matching the pale pinks that come through in the Spring. The cherry. The azalea. The columbine. I have come to love them perhaps just through the appreciation for the skill of whomever chose this combination. My guess is that it was the 50’s so they are old varieties.

But the columbine. Re-seeding itself everywhere. Delicate and gently aggressive all at once. ‘

But the columbine. Is not the one the hummingbirds love. I have been wondering what they eat in Spring (drink??). I heard last week that they were migrating North. In New Jersey and making their way up to us. 

But what will they eat?

The columbine. The native columbine. The one I have never planted because the orangey-red and yellow color palate is hard to match with the pinks and brash daffodil yellows of Spring.

I bought one (#gotmineatbutterflyeffectfarm). Planted it in by the front door where it could grow in my woodruff and clash with my tulips and offset my budding amsonia. More Pollack than Monet at this point.

My four year old and I were messing around in the garden. Digging something. Talking about popsicles. And two hummingbirds arrived, from NJ, and wove in and out between us and were frantically bumping in to each other as we froze. Starstruck.

It’s the columbine.

I need five more. Or ten more. Or 1000s more. 

(it’s dark as write this from the front porch but I can hear the flurry of those hummingbird wings as we speak). - Westport MA, May 6th

History

Growing Tips

Red Maple

The Red Maple in my backyard is covered in pale-green lichens. Covered. Really covered. I wouldn't say the tree is doing particularly well - someone has done a poor job cutting limbs in the past, signs of rot, and breaking branches.

A swing hangs from one of the branches. It's sturdy. But I worry.

The birds use it all the time, of course.

It is a wetland edge, moisture-loving tree. A keystone specie for the region. We bought the house for this tree. It is regal, and massive, and peaceful and rotting.

If it goes, the backyard would be transformed. The light in to the house would be transformed. I imagine I would grieve for years, even as I appreciated the sunshine pouring through the western facing windows.

It is one of the first trees to 'bloom'. A critical source of nectar for pollinators.

Plant them. Plant one. Plant many. please....

Red Maple: Acer rubrum
Red Maple: Magical Properties
Red Maple: About
Red Maple: Planting
Red Maple: Cultivars

photo thank you to Brian Pfeiffer who is doing fascinating work and well worth a follow…

On Winter Jasmine

“I’ll tie the universe of stars to the net with green garden twine, which has that dusty, dry smell I love so much.”
— Jasmine, "Dust to Seed" by Marc Hamer

It would be this time of year, that they are blooming, in Ireland. It is such an inherently unruly shrub. There is no ‘training it’, taming it. It huddles and skulks, overflows and droops and just wants to be wilder than most will let it be. When you grab it, to tie it up against a barren, block wall - it does indeed struggle against you - like a wild and unruly galaxy would, I imagine. It IS a galaxy - of winter blossoms, slight fragrance. Its the harbinger of the harbingers. It’s one of the shots of sunshine yellow that nature, whomever she may be, gives us as we muddle and drag our way through the depths of winter darkness. Followed by gorse. Forsythia. Daffodils. Remember, she says, what sunshine looks like and feels like and smells like. Even that coconutty fragrance of the gorse - the smells of summer and sunscreen and the tropics. She knows…we struggle. With the cold and dark and sometimes forget - spring is almost here. Summer will come again. The light will come. 

photo credit to Bug Woman London

Figwort

Snow then rain, then snow. Then rain. And finally, snow again. Just as I was marking the days on my calendar when the ground might be workable again. Pliable enough for peas and spinach to get started. Next week isn’t looking as promising as I stare out the window at the swirling snow and the bright-red shock of Cardinals against the snow.

Nantucket, the natural Nantucket, wears its heart on its sleeves. It never pretends and there are few surprises. In fact an astounding rhythm - subtle, predictable - despite all the change happening within its confines. We have the longest winter and shortest Spring I have ever experienced. May is the month that most feels like winter. June is often unrelentingly un-summer like. July and August are grey and rainy approximately every five years. September is always brilliant.

And this is what one does in March on Nantucket - dream of other months and other places. Watch the winter winds swirl all things, not just snow. We watch the birds and the waves. The raindrops clinging to dead-stalks of plants as the stalks get whipped by the wind. We watch the lichen and the winter sun. We already looked for signs of Spring last month and thought we saw them. Only to remember, May is still months away.



My favorite battle to watch this winter was the battle between the raindrops clinging to the figwort and the wild winds we had for several days. Ferries were down, the island was quiet and the raindrops, against all odds, clung to the figwort until the very end when the sun came out.

An evolutionary survival mechanism perhaps? Drought-tolerance? The figwort has been a stoic survivor on the patch where I seeded the pollinator mix, of which it was only tiny percentage. It survived the horrible soil, the total lack of irrigation and even the chickens rooting through eating everything in sight. And it didn’t just survive - it thrived. It grew to a glorious 8’ tall.

Figwort has not been seen in the wild on Nantucket since the 1930s. This lone Figwort won’t count towards that since I sowed the seeds myself. I do wonder what caused it to disappear. It has survived in hostile conditions here in my garden from the chicken to the deer, the drought to the sandy subsoil I planted them on. What could have possibly killed them off?

I won’t pretend there were not several moments this week where I wish I was somewhere warm and wavy and sunny and sandy. I saw all those beautiful photos of beaches and waterfalls and jungle bungalows. 


The farthest I went this week was Center Street for a beautiful dinner. 

And what I DID get to do this week was enjoy #thelittlethings. The quiet things, the peaceful things, the still things. The way island life plays out when there is no one about. And though it wasn’t tropical it was stunningly and starkly beautiful. Like the epic standoff outside my window: The wind vs the Figwort. Those raindrops clung to the Figwort for days. Little disco balls of light and water, brightening up the glum and blustery winter landscape. It also got me thinking about Spring and about last Fall and thinking about how those raindrops are proof of at least one more reason to leave things up in the garden for winter: winter magic. The other reasons? For the birds and the bees - they are providing cover for the soil, cover for the birds, seeds for the birds, places for invertebrates to nest. So. Many. Good. Things.  



.

.

#designfornature #naturalgarden #gardenevolution #birdsandbees #pollinators #gardenlikeyoucare #resilience #goodsoil #plantnatives #nantucket #nantucketwinter

Reprieve from the rain

The green of the lichens popped against the dark deep brown of the wet bark today. 

Balmy, as I plucked the pignuts from their husks. 

 A faint murmur from the ocean.

Still there I said to her, she said to me. 

The rain began again so soft

but so loud I could hear from inside

over the sound of my dinner makings.  

February Musings

February on Nantucket. We have had frozen spray and slushy waves. A couple of dips into the colder temperatures but nothing that even came close to the arctic temperatures the rest of the country was experiencing. It is funny to me, when living on Nantucket, this idea of Groundhog’s Day and trying to figure how much longer we have of Winter. We all know, although sometimes refuse to acknowledge, that Spring on Nantucket will come sometime around the end of June, followed quickly by a brief but glorious Summer.

And that is exactly what we are seeing on Nantucket right now. Sometimes sunny but mostly grey days with stunning sunsets whose colors shatter the heavy greyness. The wind picks up and drops and picks up again right on schedule. We have gotten off lightly so far with the winter winds.

The buds on the white oaks are starting to show some shine and very early signs of bulging, getting ready to burst open sometime soonish although the brown leaves from last year haven’t even been completely dropped or blown off yet. As I observed the oak buds, it struck me, when the landscape is your work and the weather dictates your everything - from wellbeing to income - how much of your world is this constant combination of relishing the season of the moment and looking for signs of hope that the next season is clearly on its way.  

I haven’t pulled out the seed catalogs yet and plan to continue the hibernation for a week or two longer. I have given up starting seeds in my house as we really don’t have the space or the right light so inevitably, all my starts are leggy and weak and I usually have some sort of dampening off or wilting off or whatever it is that causes the seedlings to shrivel up and die. The only way to temper my excitement for a new vegetable season is to not read the catalogs. I will be looking forward to growing all the things I can direct sow as well as buying starts off others. My prize last year was the heirloom tomato Pineapple which I bought from Espresso to Go. 

To be honest, for the first time in my life I am getting excited about annual flower seeds. I have resisted them for SO long, associating them with extravagant window boxes and excessive demands for water and attention. My tune has changed however as they can actually be quite resilient and can add a pop of color as well as be valuable for the invertebrates and the birds. As my vegetable garden is also the main entrance to our house and seeing as the neighbors cut down all their trees and we are now very exposed, my plan is to sow a border of tall annuals all around the edges creating peace, privacy and food for pollinators.

Space for Owls

We planted Viburnum, three different kinds. We planted Winterberry and American Holly, an Oak and two Hornbeam.

We saved space for Cercis and Oakleafs.

Since we planted all these natives, there has been a Great Horned Owl and a Barred Owl in the yard. Hunting.

Falcons and Jays beware.


There is a big part of me that knows that it is impossible and unreasonable to think that by pulling out the scraggy yew shrubs and the lilac, replacing them with native shrubs and trees, we have some how laid out a welcome mat for Nature and all her activities.

This planting is just a small area, next to a driveway, in a suburb, 5 miles as the crow flies from the edge of the Bronx.

I am sure these owls were here before.


There is a bigger part of me that hopes that we did have something to do with it. That somehow, we have reversed the historical function of a garden from a space intended to keep nature out and instead, we have invited Nature back in.

In all her glory, her displays of life, death and struggle and then life again.

I hope we were a part of this, any little part.



#designfornature #plantnatives #newyork #owls #thehunt #nantucket #lesslawn

upload.jpg

photo credit goes to Hawthorne Valley Farm, @hawthornevalley

Fairy Fort Reverie

Today, I sat in the fairy fort that I have walked by almost every day, every week, for the last year.

Why did it take so long?

I heard the chatter of birds, the softness of pine needles. I imagined Ghost Pipe plants popping up either side of me. I thought about how magical that would be if it happened not just in the woods but also in a garden. I thought about how many gardeners would weed and whack them away before they could unfurl themselves into their intriguing, alien-like stalks.

How do we re-learn the magic of weeds? and of nature? and of the beauty of watching the spontaneous garden, the mitigated imposition of our own ideas and sense of tidiness, unfold and unfurl - explode into an unruly, wild, beautiful landscape.

How.