Flamboyant Revolutionary Reinforcements

I’ve been slogging through mounds of paperwork and happened upon the oddest phrase in a rather revealing statement of purpose. Someone described himself as “flamboyantly heterosexual.” Flamboyantly heterosexual? Really?! I’ve heard of metrosexuals, and flamboyant homosexuals, but never flamboyant heterosexuals. What might that mean? Does he dress like a lumberjack, or a plumber with the omnipresent visual of…well, let’s say, the beginning of the torso’s division at the rear of the spine? Does he communicate in monosyllabic grunts? Bottle up his emotions? Crush beer cans with his bare hands when his favorite team scores a touchdown, or a homerun, or a hole in one?

Unless the author of the statement deliberately wished to convey the message that he is a walking stereotype (perhaps outdated ones at that!), wouldn’t “metrosexual” have proven a more apt descriptor?

I remained puzzled until I spent time in the garden yesterday (in our glorious 70 degree February day!).  And then I saw it: flamboyant heterosexuality at its best!

Kerria japonica began to leaf out yesterday (or, given the maturity of one leaf, the previous day).

Aerial reinforcements to advance the revolutionary cause have arrived!

I do masculinize Kerria, and I’m not sure why. Regardless, he, like Petasites, uses his masculinity (their flamboyant heterosexuality?) in the spring garden to tremendous, rousing effect! His lithe chartreuse stems, populated by red, bulging buds, seem otherworldly. One would think his gangly self could not endure; his lankiness, though, belies his brawniness. He is a star.

Perhaps, then, there is more than horticultural coincidence—perhaps there is deep significance—that Star of Bethlehem too emerges from the cold, soggy soil, sporting her slender spring green leaves with narrow white medians. Each compliments the other and reinforce their avant-gardism.

This is flamboyancy at its best!

The Revolution will be Televised

From a revolutionary perspective, 2011 has been extraordinary: first, Tunisia; then, Egypt. As I listen to media reports about protests in other Middle East countries, I sense the pregnant but as yet unspoken urgency to identify a third. Will it be Bahrain? Iran? Yemen?

Yet the revolutionary winds have blown far from the Middle East.

A revolution brews right here at 410. Yes, here in Wilmington, Delaware. I tremble.

Today, 16 February 2011—yes, 16 February!—I spotted the vanguard itself, rearing their heads ready for the battle to begin. At first these things seem sporadic, disconnected. But then they magnify and, over time, the assault begins.

To the north, I spied one little opening bud of the Climbing Hydrangea (quite prematurely, given the closed tight buds on the remainder of the plant). It is the vanguard of the vanguard, scouting out the terrain and the atmosphere.

In the south-central part of the garden, I spied this little patch of the new shoots of Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum)!

And across the walkway, to the south-west, there he was, safety in numbers: three artichoke-like flower buds of my beloved, hunky Petasites japonicus emerging from the soil. He returned to sweep me off my feet, my knight-in-leafy armor!

Soon, the revolution will occur. Winter will be ceremoniously deposed! Photos will be taken! The landscape will change!  

  

Can there be anything more delicious than spring green after months of winter white and moribund browns?

Vegetative vanguard, unite! 

A Future Foretold: Pastel Spring meets Winter Gloaming

For a brief moment, at 6:34 a.m., the sky foretold a coming future: a pastel spring juxtaposed to winter's gloaming.

The sky was dark--that blue black characteristic of early mornings. Yet a small patch of sky in the southwest exuded azure, while a few large puffy clouds--errant children racing back to their mother storm now off to sea-- reflected a soft pink.

Realizing my photos (even with the night setting on my camera) did not capture the intensity of the blues and blacks, or the preternatural softness yet simultaneous brilliance of the pink when set against the sky and shadowed trees, I ran outside again to capture the scene.

Yet the sky had changed.

And a small plane appeared above, its landing lights on as it approaches Philadelphia Airport.

And I realized that I was fortunate to take a break from life and see the ethereal.

Gardening: The Original Precarious Vocation

As always, I may tend to the hyperbolic (but what better way to attract attention or elicit thought).

The massive winter storm that has gripped 30 states and paralyzed major metropolitan areas clipped the very north of Delaware this morning, sparing us. True, we received a bit of ice yesterday and a bit of ice this morning, but warmer temperatures melted the ice and forced precipitation from the sky from solid to liquid. In fact, as of this moment (4:16 p.m.) the sun shines for broad spans of time before another wayward mass of clouds occludes the symbol of our hope that spring shall arrive, no matter what Punxsutawney Phil presumably communicates.

“Warmth” (we must encase it in quotation marks, for warmth is a relative term) is, when confronting the remnants of winter, an archaeologist. It removes, layer by layer, almost imperceptibly, methodically, slowly, the detritus of storms to reveal that which had been buried. (Unless the ardent, stressed out gardener, like me, prematurely erases winter and “rescues” bushes and plants from their snow white coffins, as I have done with the Nikko Blue Hydrangea and the Nandinas, the multiple Pieris bushes and the Brooms.)

And our archaeology is not always pretty. (Recall my lamentations after our 4 feet of snow last February.) I pity poor Rosemary, which now begins to peer out from her white encasement, and the Boxwoods, which show signs of "freezer burn." I can barely see the rest of the garden, covered as it remains by heaps of snow.

Of course, I hear the scorns of my dear readers:

"Real gardeners would have religiously wrapped the Boxwoods and the Rosemary in swaths of burlap, like some theological icon sheltered from the scourge of humanity, waiting for spring to reveal its radiant splendor to show us all how penitent we should be." 

"Real gardeners would have at least sprayed anti-transpirant spray like 'Wilt-Pruf' to protect the darlings of the structured garden." 

So, I admit, once again, and once again publicly, my failures as a gardener. Perhaps I unconsciously like the precariousness of it all.

Perhaps the precariousness of it all is the small gardener's answer to change. Gardeners blessed with large spaces in which to cultivate their art can always expand. The small garden gardener faces more severe restrictions. And the paramount restriction of space makes change more desired but change more painful--for every change must come with a corresponding loss (unless--GARDEN SNOB ALERT--the small space gardener cheats and only plants annuals...how pedestrian, how boring).

And so, we rely not on our own inner realists, but on nature. Nature may giveth, but nature taketh away.

Sure, she may rob us of our prized plants, and may consequently plunge us into despair. No matter how long I garden, no matter how many plants await me in the garden shops in the spring to purchase and fill those new, unexpected holes in the garden, I still experience the sadness engendered by loss, and still mourn the departed.

But those acts of thievery must always be reinterpreted as opportunities--opportunities for purchasing yourself "a little happy."

Education of the Garden

Grammatically, "education of the garden" seems to make no sense. Is an anonymous observer receiving an education of the garden (in which case the title should probably, and most appropriately in a grammatical sense read "education about the garden")? Is the garden being educated? If so, how? By what? By whom?

Given the closure of classes today because of the foot of wet, heavy snow that fell upon northern Delaware last night, I thought I would dispose of grammar and the spirit of education and use words improperly!

But, silliness aside, it is true: my garden--no matter how inanimate, no matter how incapable it is as a whole of "learning" in any active, substantive sense--received an education this morning. It earned, by virtue of its location, a doctorate as a matter of fact.

A Ph.D.

Yes: a Ph.D. as in "Pile it Higher and Deeper."


Look at all of this snow piled upon the improbably named sun-garden!

Look at the snow's effects in the shade garden: Viburnum, laden with snow and having dropped from its aerial perch by over 3 feet, now shelters the Buddha; the pendulous branches of Kerria japonica have an unexpected cousin in the neighboring Nikko Blue Hydrangea (both pictured at the top of this post, though seen in this wider shot); and the "sea anemone" that has become the Lady in Red Hydrangea (pictured below, in the foreground) appears less radiant, less spectacular than she did in the last snowfall as considerably more snow buried most of her medusa-like appendages (and let us not mention Nandina, behind her, reduced to a mound of snow).

The sight of the snow is delightful, magical, and even transformative. I think for most adults snow brings out the child in us, if but for a fleeting moment (though most adults I know will not admit this, preferring instead to complain and momentarily kvetch about inconveniences or sore backs from shoveling) before the realization that we need to reschedule meetings; possibly find daycare or take an unexpected "sick" day from work to watch the kids because no daycare was to be found; dig out the car and the driveway and the walkway and the garbage bins; and all other winter-esque chores associated with the falling of snow.

But for me, the moment of sophomoric giddiness dissipates when I realize that the snow is just too heavy to throw onto that patch far from the walkway where the herbaceous plants once proudly and dramatically stood, as opposed to on or near the rosemary or dwarf yew or Euphorbia which so graciously remain with us throughout the harsh winter months. Yes. That is the moment of truth, the inestimable moment in which a youthful fascination with winter immediately metamorphoses into a disgust or hatred. I think of the crushed Creeping Phlox or my beloved, but now crushed, Blue Star Lithodora (both of which remain with us, too, throughout the winter). I see the Lena Scotch Broom, burdened under mounds of heavy snow, and I try to rescue her delicate (but ever resilient) outstretched branches from the weight of matter by sliding my shovel under as many wispy branches as possible to shake the snow from its icy grips.

Yes, the snow plunges us into a veritable, cumbersome existential crisis--to bury alive or not to bury--that is pitted against another crisis--to walk sans encumbrance of ice or snow, or not to walk. We all know the answer. And for the tenacious gardener, there is always the city ordinance that demands property owners remove snow from passageways (and not throw it into city streets) under threat of monetary penalty for failure to do so.

And so there you have it, dear reader: the education of the garden. I piled it higher and deeper onto my beloveds, hoping they will forgive and reward me with blooms all season, from the earliest moments of March when Pieris graces us with its tendrils of miniature bell-shaped flowers to the last burning embers of sun in November just strong enough to sustain the hardy chrysanthemums before the death-knell of frost.

In the meantime, I'd better get back to the kind of work that demonstrates my own Ph.D., of whichever sort you interpret.

Sexlessness: Sawtooth Aucuba and My Lack of Babies

The Huffington Post featured an unusual article this morning on the sexless lives of the Japanese. Yes, sexless. Or virtually sexless. Or becoming sexless.

Concerned about its long declining birthrate, its aging population, and its subsequent population imbalance, the Japanese Government commissioned a study and found that a startling 36.1% of teenage boys (more than twice the 2008 figure of 17.5%) and 59% of teenage girls (up from 47%) had little to no interest in sex, and even, in some cases, despised fornication! (How could you despise fornication without having done it?!) Astonishing!

The cause or causes? It appears Japan's nearly 20 year long recession (and more pertinently, its "Lost Decade"--yes, they even named the period...that should give an indication of either how bad the situation has been or how deeply the Japanese have been psycho-sexually disturbed by their declining global potence or their rising impotence...sorry, I couldn't resist) has had its effect. Teenage boys and young men over 20 cited  the perceived financial burden of raising a family in "difficult" economic times. (Wow: isn't that what condoms are for? I think manga; Pachinko--those Tokyo Pachinko parlors were always full, no matter the time of day; and video games might deserve some of the blame.) Difficult economic times, we may deduce, have burdened the already married: 40.8% of married couples reported a lack of sex in the last month due to "work fatigue," a "reluctance to have sex after childbirth," and an attitude of "we can't be bothered."

Sex is so utterly political--and economic.


So what, pray tell, does sex have to do with the garden?

Well, dear reader, hold onto your hats.

An acquaintance and his partner recently adopted a baby girl, and while it is true that I am happy-to-my-core for them, my self-absorbed demon began to lament a lack of children in my own life. I've been thinking about this for several years, and Viet and I have occasionally discussed the issue. But now, my biological clock ticks more loudly than I could have imagined.

And as a diversion I look to Sawtooth Aucuba. Sexless? Babyless? No wonder, with a name like Sawtooth, who would want to have sex with it?! Can you imagine?! OUCH!

Once again, I think in tangents... Once again, I think dirty thoughts...

But, the truth is, my Sawtooth Aucuba is sans offspring. Read any gardening guide and it will tell you that Sawtooth Aucuba will "produce scarlet berries from fall to spring." A wondrous addition to my shade garden, with winter interest to boot!

Yet, I have no berries. Barren.

Of course, to produce babies (not adopting babies, mind you, but making them, which is, well, sexier than adoption, and though messy in its own right, making babies probably isn't as messy as adopting them...goodness, the paperwork!), we need a male and a female, and I confess that I do not know what I have. It's not as simple as looking under the hood, if you know what I mean. And flowers in the spring will not be of any assistance. Androecious plants produce (male) flowers (pollen but no seeds); and Gynoecious plants produce (female) flowers (seeds but no pollen). You'd think nature would have color coded these things by now...

But, my Sawtooth Aucuba is, technically, Aucuba japonica Serratifolia. Japonica, as in, "from Japan." As in, sexless. Now I understand.

Perhaps my lack of babies has little to do with me (though with my luck, I'd end up buying all female or all male plants, and still, no berries, though we might have quite the orgy!).

Perhaps it has everything to do with the Japanese.

** Written with the knowledge that I'll never be Secretary of State, and so can risk offending entire countries, even if the offense is unintentional.** 

Color in the Garden: Winter White

"From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens--

the garden outdoors,

the garden of pots and bowls in the house,

and the garden of the mind's eye."

               --Katharine S. White

Yet for many, the garden of the mind's eye is difficult to see. Clouds of white or layers of brown obscure the abundance that may be the garden. Greens have lost their vivacity; bare branches expose their angularities against gray winter skies. 

Two recent coatings of snow have created a new garden-scape. We delight in the suspended lines of white--misshapen, arched, crooked, gnarled, straight--above our heads, occupying the space once reserved for canopies of leaves, that create illustrious impermanent aerial gardens, suspended in time and space in those moments just after a snowfall but before the sunlight, even on a frigid January day, shines with laser-like focus and melts this wondrous sky-scape (or before the squirrels, as they currently do outside the window in my study, shake loose the snow as they frolic).

The Lady in Red Lacecap Hydrangea (pictured below) has become a sea anemone, its predaceous tendrils punctuating the sky not for fish and crustaceans but for bits of sunlight, as if to reassure itself that this time, too, will pass.

Moments like these, bathed in winter white, make one appreciate the browns of the winter garden. Browns like contrast. Multiple greens can withstand each other, even if they are of the same shade (which often they are not) precisely because a diversity of leaf shapes offers the interest and the oppositions that the eye and the mind desperately need to absorb and make sense of the garden. But brown in the late autumn and winter garden is so pestilent because of its omnipresence. We even lose the respect for that life-giving substance without which the garden would not exist: soil.

But dash a bit of winter white about, and brown rejuvenates. Cascades of Tall Purpletop Verbena with their seed pods capturing bundles of winter white evoke waterfalls; we see not stagnation but movement.

Rose Mallow's svelte legs assume a mauve hue 'gainst the winter scape; and we see spring embedded in that corner of the garden as the minty green leaves of the Wintergreen boxwood peer out from under the snow, childlike, as if it could not sleep with the knowledge that Santa Claus soon would visit.

And Burning Bush: it even glows in the winter (albeit with early morning assistance from the street light). But its delicate red berries and striated stems offer texture and unexpected pops of color.

Moments like these propagate appreciation not just for and of the garden itself, but for and of the personalities of individual plants--and especially of those who remain above ground throughout those trying months of frost and freezing temperatures.

Yet another reason to plant with winter in mind, and yet another reason to look with the mind's eye.