Wearing of the Green?

Kermit the Frog's initial lamentations eventually morph into an acceptance and celebration of the extraordinary in the seemingly mundane. He teaches us how to look, not simply see, just as we should learn how to listen and not merely hear.

So it is not without a bit of irony that on this day of celebration of all things chlorochrous (perhaps the same irony that green robbed from blue, the color traditionally associated with St. Patrick) that I look to other colors that begin to permeate the landscape--colors that not just punctuate the monotony of omnipresent green, but really highlight its variations in ways that we can more appreciate its distinctiveness and peculiarities.

An early morning walk in the garden revealed an astonishing juxtaposition of the amaranthine ajuga against a field of prasinous moss.

Last year's struggle with the placement of Citronelle Heuchera, if I may, ended with the right decision:  the perfect accompaniment to the grey-green blades of Indigo Bearded Iris.

My Sexless, er, I mean Sawtooth Aucuba japonica Serratifolia displays its own sense of humor: a playful protrusion of chartreuse leaf encased florets against its leathery gray leaves that will soon open to reveal Imperial (Tyrian) Purple.

The flaming reds of the Japanese maple leaf buds herald a new season, a true vanguard of the revolution,

and the color is reflected elsewhere in the garden, closer to the ground, in the guise of the Britt Marie Crawford Ligularia

and, nearby, the (albeit differently colored) candy-cane like spikes of a Diamond Tiara Hosta.

Not to be outdone, blue must, too, make an appearance: a forced appearance, if you ask me. The Heart-Leaf Brunnera, which usually does not sport flowers until it is 5 times the size it is now (at least 6 inches tall), was compelled to bring the sky down, treated as it were with week-long temperatures in the 70s. Who can lament a cerulean blue in the garden, even if it is premature?

The Desert of One's Own Emptiness

For the last three days I've battled my writing demons: those nasty little voices that demean one's abilities, disparage the sentences one has crafted after endless hours that veer between joy and mental exasperation, and question the very fiber of the life that one has come to cultivate.

Gardening is the one arena, the one vocation in my life (and gardening is a vocation) in which the demons remain well at bay, defeated as it were only because they have not found a conceptual hook on which to gain a foothold (even if the late winter fiery reds of Rudolph Waleuphrud Euphorbia evoke a demonic presence). I have ancestral callings as my foundation, and a first prize winning garden as my demon-proof structure.

Yet on these brisk late winter days, sandwiched between unseasonably warm ones that coax many a plant from their underground lairs, when gardening seems improbably suspended between a nearly forgotten past and an ostensibly distant future, one must face the demands of work that beckon.


Feeling defeated, I decided this morning to slay the demons, to go all Buffy on their asses; the run and workout were just what I needed. But then a curious thing happened while driving home from the gym.

I tuned in midway through an interview on NPR. There was some brief talk about classical music and then some childhood reminiscing about the time the interviewee asked Richard Burton, a fellow Welshman, for his autograph, at which point I began to listen with trance-like rapture since my father lives near one of Elizabeth Taylor's daughters, and Elizabeth Taylor was once married to Richard Burton.

And then the statement that hit me resonated from the radio:  "I wanted to escape from the desert of my own mental emptiness..." Scott Simon, incredulous, asked "to escape the desert of your own emptiness? Really?"

Being naive at these sorts of things, I didn't recognize the voice until Scott Simon thanked Sir Anthony for his time at the end of the interview.

Sir Anthony as in Sir Anthony Hopkins, the actor famous for, coincidentally, his Academy Award-winning portrayal of a demon of another sort--a cannibalistic serial killer, in addition to my favorite Hopkins' roles as the repressed butler, Mr. Stevens, in the cinematic rendition of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, or as Henry Wilcox in Howards End, as well as a vast list of other critically acclaimed performances.

The moment was not lost on me. We all have our demons, don't we? Even the famed and fortuned, the talented and celebrated: but we knew that, already, for celebrity deaths related to poisons of pleasure indicate lives gone awry, vanquished by formidable adversaries we might call demons.

But we slay our demons in so many ways. Sir Anthony, by the way, further escapes the desert of his emptiness by adding another credit to his astonishing career, for he has finally fulfilled a lifelong dream by composing his own classical music, a recording of which by the City of Birmingham Orchestra was recently released on CD and which has apparently catapulted to the top of the list in classical music sales.
 
Looking around this sunny, breezy, if chilly day (our last in the forecasted 7-day future, when daytime highs will spike into the low 70s), I see a desert of another sort: the late winter garden, slowly beginning to rejuvenate, more torpid than teeming.

Robert Frost told us so long ago that "nature's first green is gold," no doubt a reference to the iconic coloration of New England willow buds, mere gossamer threads that seem to belie the profound transformation that is about to occur in the landscape.

Having no room for willows, I recreate a golden landscape with Aucuba japonica Mr. Goldstrike crowning the Buddha, Aureomarginata Euonymous japonica (Golden Euonymous; above left), Citronelle Heuchera (above, foreground), and, lest we forget that heir of spring, the daffodil.

I'm fortunate for that coincidence, and for Sir Anthony's eloquent articulation of the content of his condition. For I went into the desert that is my late winter garden and saw those bright, cheery yellows and golds which exude such promise and hope.

Gold: the color that slays the mighty demons.

Other Peoples' Gardens: 2012 Philadelphia Flower Show

In base terms, saturation refers to "a state of maximum impregnation." 

Whenever I hear the term "saturation," I think of Marge Simpson's housewife crush on Chad Sexington, model for Burly Paper Towels. Marge writes to the Burly paper towel company to praise Chad and his ability to soak up the most extensive of messes--and then some. She is really quite smitten with this guy, so much so that Homer discovers his wife's crush and then pulls a nasty prank on her: he calls, pretending to be Chad Sexington, and arranged a dinner at the Simpson household.

Marge pulls out of all the stops (as the saying goes), even going so far as to rolling out a roll of Burly paper towels as if it were a red carpet. The doorbell rings, and she opens it to discover Barney, dressed as Chad Sexington.

Homer, though, must pay, and so takes his family out to dinner. Naturally, the show's focus veers back to Homer's blunders (indeed, that particular episode is called "The Blunder Years"). Homer is hypnotized by a magician, but the exercise quickly devolves as Homer is suddenly overpowered by a painful memory of a corpse he discovers as a 12 year old at the Old Quarry swimming hole.

The family goes back to the swimming hole to find the body, and when Chief Wiggum demonstrates his incompetence yet again (surprise), Marge has the idea of throwing in her mass stock of Burly paper towels into the swimming hole. Chad Sexington to the rescue; the towels soak up every drop of water!

Maximum impregnation indeed!

In color theory, saturation refers to maximum impregnation of another sort: the intensity of a color relative to itself (as opposed to intensity of a color relative to other colors, which is called chroma). This year's Philadelphia Flower Show, Hawai'i: Islands of Aloha, plays with saturation to evoke, like Todd Haynes' throwback to 1950s' technicolor film, Far From Heaven, certain moods.

Deep ocean blues

are juxtaposed to fiery lava reds and oranges

with luscious greens providing a backdrop

 

for vivacious tropical flowers.

 
The show is an exercise in saturation: maximum impregnation in so many ways.

None of that appealed to me. Indeed, I thought that some exhibits were banal (such that I didn't waste digital space on my camera, hence my use of an AP photo below).

And the entrance "orchid" wave was rather... well, let's just keep that razor sharp tongue safely ensconced.

Lest my reader think I am...ahem, rhymes with witch, I do wish to issue a few positive words.

What was more spectacular than all of the technicolor drama and cliche were the displays derivative from a conception of nothingness.

That tropical paradise so evident in the visions of the exhibit designers, we must recall, emerged from the unforgiving, destructive force of lava and the barren nothingness of post-apocalyptic cooling.

And so the displays that most arrested me were those born out of an alternative reality that the hordes certainly did not wish to see: the lava flows and the life that slowly springs from nothingness. The rest could be dismantled tomorrow and I wouldn't care, for it was too busy, too overdone, too much a montage of cliche: indeed, a barrenness that even color saturation could not fill.

Only in those spaces of nothingness, of spartan foliage and flora, could one appreciate a sense of place and commune with the theme.

The rest of the show needed a Chad Sexington and a few rolls of Burly paper towels to absorb the excess.

The First

Fans (er, addicts anyone?) of Downton Abbey will understand all too well the emphasis on firsts--but not just any firsts. Special firsts, as in the law or custom of primogeniture that permits the firstborn the right of complete inheritance to the exclusion of younger siblings. The French, it seems, were much more advanced than their English rivals across the Channel, for they practiced an absolute or lineal primogeniture whereby the eldest surviving child, no matter the gender, would inherit an estate. As we know with Lady Mary, being female in Britain negated the possibility of such inheritance--hence she was looked upon to wed her cousin just to keep her childhood home and money.  At least Matthew is a dashing blond. I could think of worst looking cousins with whom to produce an heir.

In this way, Vita Sackville-West lost inheritance of her family's famed estate, Knole, to her younger brother. But then we may never have gotten the splendid gardens of Sissinghurst. (I can't help but question myself: is that a gender-assaulting silver lining?)

In any case, even firsts are disaggregated, re-classified, so as to deny the privileges presumably accruing from being first.

March also falls into that class of demoted firsts. In ancient Roman times, Martius was the first month, the month of spring and the rebirth of the earth. Named after Mars, the Latin name for Ares, the Greek God of war, the month also harbored a more sinister meaning: spring weather was conducive to the launching of military campaigns, hence its nomenclature. One wonders if history might have turned out differently had the Romans launched offensives during the winter months, when invasions were not quite expected.

But as we know, March has lost its place of prime importance, for it is now the third month in the Roman-derived calendar. We owe that fall from grace to the improbably named second king of Rome (715-673 B.C.E.), Numa Pompilius, who added not one but two prefixes to the calendar: Ianuarius and Februarius. Pompous indeed, altering with social constructions of time!

Thus we might seek refuge in the Finnish, for its name for March, Maaliskuu, gets at the reality we customarily know in the pre-global warming, weather weirdness days: for Maaliskuu, derived from maallinen kuu meaning "earthy month," is named for that month during which the ground once again becomes visible as snow retreats.

Now, if I wasn't lazy or preoccupied with other obligations, I would have posted this yesterday, on 1 March.  Or, if I had a sense of irony, I would wait and post this tomorrow, the 3rd, as homage to all those firsts fallen from grace.

But as it is, possessed neither with humor nor irony, neither patience nor time, I post this today, a compromise position to make us more immediately aware of the importance of both days.

In honor of fallen firsts, I celebrate not the daffodils, the heir apparent of March, which now appear with dramatic frequency here in my fair (and in parts trashy) city of Wilmington, and which are nearing the bursting of buds in my garden,

but the flowers of Leatherleaf Mahonia, or Oregon Grape Holly, which actually are well past their prime, only the more protected strands of flowers deep into the foliage now in bloom, other strands situated at the exterior reaches of the plant having bloomed several weeks ago sans benefit of pollinators (hence we may not see the strands of berries that look like grapes later in the season to feed the birds),

and Petasites japonica, or Giant Butterbur, which proudly displays its muscular, artichoke-like flowers whether in snow or draped with frost, arriving like clockwork each late February and early March (once, of course, the snows first disappear so as to make way for their emergence).

Next year, these firsts may be displaced. I have no Snowdrops nor Crocuses, so by what only nature might know.

In the News: Nature Trumps the Human Artifice

A recent New York Times article in the "Streetscapes" series of the Real Estate section opens with dramatic lines:

"You want to make building conservators fuss and fume? One word, my friend: ivy. The argument is that as a climbing vine, it can wreak havoc on masonry walls, prying apart mortar and cracking bricks."

So when members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission went to slap violation notices on two 19th century rowhouses in Greenwich Village, it wasn't because the Commission was concerned with disintegrating mortar and cracking bricks. Rather, the ivy was not quite ivy. It was cheap, hobby-shop nastiness: fake ivy.

Tacky.

It seems the owners had drilled holes into the walls to secure hooks on which to hang the ivy. Given that the buildings are located in historic districts, the owners needed permits which they had (conveniently) forgotten--convenient for the neighborhood, that is. Can you imagine staring at that crap?!

Crap be damned. It turns out one of the owners spent "'tens of thousands of dollars'" on silk (not plastic) ivy, which appeared so real that it fooled the author of the Times' piece.

Tens of thousands of dollars on silk ivy?  To be placed outside, exposed to the damaging elements of sun, wind, and precipitation?

Only in New York, I mutter to myself, where one probably finds a higher concentration of "more money than brains" than anywhere else in the world.

Yet it gets better, for the story contains a measure of irony that titillates my sense of justice, er, I mean schadenfreude.

There has been a long running debate about the effects of ivy on buildings. Some decry its use, claiming its presumably destructive power (either making walls damp or sucking out moisture from mortar and turning it into dry dust); others celebrate its beauty. But a new Oxford University report on ivy adds to the celebration argument: extensive coverage of ivy on walls provides protection from the elements, which results in a microclimate that "moderates temperature change and the humidity fluctuation of a wall, with a corresponding decrease in freeze-thaw damage and the migration of salts within the masonry. Ivy was also found to reduce the attacks of airborne pollutants on surfaces."

Fascinating.

The owner of one of the Greenwich Village buildings argued that he had installed his silk ivy to conceal a "'beaten and bruised'" facade--perhaps damage inflicted by the real stuff in times past.

But shame, shame, said the Preservation Commission. Down the fake stuff must come.

What is a historic rowhouse owner to do (besides repair said beaten and bruised facade)?!

Plant real ivy.

Apparently the Landmarks Preservation Commission "does not regulate plants in any way."

In the News: The Low Line

Though we may be inclined to think of barriers or constraints as prohibitive since they limit potentiality, barriers or constraints may prove the spark that ignites an innovation.

I think of the De Lage Landen, or the Low Lands, those near-, at-, or below-sea level areas surrounding the Rhine, Schelte, and Meuse River deltas. The Dutch confronted their environmental limitations and constructed dikes, drained marshes and swamps, and reclaimed land (polder) from the sea. "God may have created the world," an old adage goes, "but the Dutch created Holland."

Or we might think of the proverbial bottom line. Considered a constraining factor--one wishes to see that bottom line not in the red but in the black, and yet there are always costs associated with the productive process, and limits on how much producers can charge for their goods--the bottom line has spurred many a business to innovate whether through technology (which has the negative effect of usually displacing workers), stabilizing operational costs (think of the assembly line as a mode of cost stabilization), or through a combination of other methods.

Or, think of low morale, which is the bane of an organization or community's existence. To remedy, we seek to stimulate a sense of belonging by doing unexpected things.

But gardening underground: well, now, that is a new kind of barrier, a new constraint that simply boggles the mind.

Until now.

If the West Side has its famed High Line, an urban garden scape situated on abandoned elevated rail lines from Gansevoort Street to West 34th, then the Lower East Side may eventually get The Low Line, a subterranean garden to occupy the derelict Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal under Delancey Street. The size of Grammercy Park, the Low Line (at 13 acres!) would offer green space to an underserved area of Manhattan, replete with fountains, pools of water, trees, bushes, flowers, and all things green.

Underground.

Right.

Only in New York, no?

It seems the the Low Line's founders, have developed technology that would use fiber optic cables to channel light from lamppost-like solar collectors positioned along Delancey Street underground to alight the sunless world beneath. The two founders have a video at this website that explains the technology and the vision.

Talk about overcoming barriers. Talk about ingenuity.

On Persistence

Have you ever encountered the persistent?

I mean, the really persistent?


Persistent as in asking multiple questions about the same thing, bombarding you like some aerial assault over the course of a day or a few days, with the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back that is your patience coming in the form of a most annoying question: "Are you sure?"

That question proves the last drop in the water torture that is persistent nagging. It compels you to dispose of niceties and diplomatic coverings and launch into an assault of your own that is a counterattack of pure, unadulterated, naked, vile truth; nay, it is the nuclear strike that annihilates the persistent.

The counterattack is not delivered in any gratuitously mean way, but as a litany of statements of fact that were otherwise couched in a language of gentility that the persistent clearly does not and cannot grasp. The truly persistent only think and speak in  languages and logics of excess and excuse, of fantasy and blindness. 

Thus, you begin, firmly and somewhat flatly, as if distancing yourself from your self: "Yes, I am sure. Let me tell you the real reasons why I am and why we are sure. First, your X was abysmal, not even competitive. I had to fight for recognition of something so base. Second, your Y was hardly appropriate. Third, your Z made us question..."
 
All the while your mouth emits a barrage of truths, you mind perhaps rhetorically frames the experience: "this is not me," "this is not my style," "I can't believe I am saying such things," but, ultimately, "you asked for it; you pushed me to to the brink." And then you realize: gosh, this feels so good.

You are not met with counter-resistance, because nothing can really survive your nuclear attack. You encounter an uncharacteristic silence or a meek, now seriously intoned, "I see. I thought that might be a problem."

Well, you just want to say but cannot because gentility once again possesses you, "you should have thought about that before you (a) applied, or (b) you began to assault me with your fantasies and your persistence. YOU made ME speak in terrible truths. YOU made ME be what I think to be rude in a way I am normally not.

Ah, yes, the joys of work this week. There were 4 such persistent encounters. Four.

But it did not stop there.

Gramsci has proven a most pathetic sight: my little garden buddy, surveying the bleak winter-scape, a garden helper without a garden.

We've not been treated to copious snow, or even lasting bits of snow this season, but subjected to a persistent brown (I am not complaining). Thankfully, we've had occasional rains to provide the moisture our hibernating flora needs, but those rains and those browns do not compensate for or assuage the pangs of gardening loss we feel in the way the presence and persistence of snow seems to do.

Snow buries the garden, removes it from our consciousness by covering it from our sight, forcing us to focus on other things. This season's temperance, unfortunately, urges forth the presence of spring flowers (the daffodils, Ornithogalum, Petasites) or the recently hibernated Toad Lilies, coaxes out a sexy green in slowly burgeoning buds: the gardening urge becomes more persistent, more, well, urgent. It is, after all, unfulfilled desire.

That desire is not, of course, helped by the arrival of garden porn: an orgiastic array of volcanic coloration, suggestive petal shots and the leave-nothing-to-the-imagination full frontals.

"Hi, sweety, wouldn't you just  like to run your fingers through my lace-like foliage?!"

or,

"Yeah? You like those stamens, don't you?"

I'm blushing with all of this beauty before me.

Even Gramsci is not immune. He desires, he wants, he needs to garden.

And so he does.

He fertilizes and waters in the only way Gramsci can.

Piles of displaced mulch and topsoil everywhere testify to his persistence.

Several Hellebores did not seem to make it, buried under Gramsci....er, remains, but this one (barely) did. And the odor surrounding it is, well, not pleasant.

This poor Big Blue Angel hosta had its roots exposed by a persistent Gramsci intent on watering it--a nakedness unbecoming (and improperly immodest) for an upstanding hosta.

Now: if only I can figure out a nuclear-type counteroffensive to ward off Gramsci fertilization.