A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm!

Filled With The Intent

I just said goodbye to a few plants I've known and loved.

I'm a little sad, even if a couple of those plants were dwarf Alberta spruces and, having pulled them out of their cheerful green glazed pots without gardening gloves on (so macho of me!), they left little thorny spikes all over my hands.

(Who am I kidding?  I'm blinking back tears as I type.)

The spruces' spines seem to have more teeth than they really do.  They seem to embed themselves in the skin and they gnaw and they prick.  You feel itchy and even a little bloody.  But then you dust your hands off and they come out too, with docility.  It's a little like magic.

Dead plants: they make me feel like a failure.

I see the little plant corpses and feel I've failed them-- they trusted me blindly and I, in turn, did not repot them promptly; did not water them enough; gave them too little plant food.  Really, I forsook them.

I lost them.

Why is it that sometimes it takes small, nearly insignificant details to make us feel the hurt that bigger things do not seem to impact upon us?

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Curious about the title?  It comes from the poem "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop.  You should read it.

The Last, Loveliest Smile

Turning Leaves, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

It's been a strange October around these parts.

On the one hand, I nearly killed mosquito #8743 less than 24 hours ago. Unfortunately it escaped and probably fed on someone's blood. And then, it hopefully died without descendants.

On the other hand, it's been mercilessly cold these past days-- days that start hovering somewhere in the high 40s and get progressively colder and more somber.

October is strangely magical-- a time of leaves raining down from the sky and mingling with the last, lovely blooms of summer plants which are suddenly ill-equipped for life. There are orange orbs staring back and what seems like an endless proliferation of large spiders and, lately, all manner of orange lights twinkling from people's porches.

And the smell of rotting manure coats the mornings, whether from actual manure having been deposited or from the tender rot the earth places forth to protect itself.

It feels wintry, but it's just the beginning of autumn. And everyone feels a little doom-saying these days as well-- people pulling out their assets and cutting their losses and talking of folding. I don't think I've ever talked to as many pessimistic people in my life, and I am wondering when the shoe will drop for me; when I will finally be overtaken by extreme worry and panic and feel like my life and my future wealth, opulence, or just-getting-by-ness is directly compromised in some awful, final way.

I wonder if this is just a hibernation period, though; if like the fallen leaves that rot and protect their long-term assets, our markets will benefit from these temporary losses and come back into a spring of their own, fertilized and enlivened by the part of themselves that needed to be shed and die so we could all see the forest and the trees in the future.

In my to-do list now?

Buy manure.

(Do you need manure, too? Espoma has a really nice one. Enjoy)

And in Twenty Years, She'll Be Known as the "Plant Psychopath"

Lunch Al Fresco
Originally uploaded by Madame Meow

These are sawfly larvae. We came across them on a Sunday stroll at the Arboretum and I was so distracted by what they could be --moths? butterflies? disgusting things from outer space?-- that I didn't even bother to notice what kind of leaf they were supping on (for ID purposes).

I came to find out what kind of larvae these were by submitting this picture to a bug identification site called bugguide.net --a site I highly recommend if you need some sort of bug identified.

I'm not sure what I want to accomplish here. I had very definite plans to write about keeping an open mind about the natural world, and about how being green is not so much about the items that you can buy to make yourself greener, but to realize what the impact of your actions is on your immediate environment; for instance, there was a daddy with his little girl at the Arboretum as well, and her daddy was just letting her rip and destroy all the beautiful foliage.

There they were, surrounded by these lovely breezes under a pergola, and there went the little girl, first shaking a long limb of a wisteria and then randomly ripping the flowering heads off nearby plants. The dad just sat around pretending to care to listen to the answer of his "What are you doing, sweetie?" but largely ignoring the botanic carnage that lay all about him.

You may be shrugging and not interested in this story, except that if some three-year-old girl is not taught by her father that these plants and this Arboretum are things to be respected and treasured because they teach us about plants and our relationship with them and about the future; but instead does more damage to a bush than all the sawfly larvae money could never buy, then how is she expected to understand or care whether growing a Victory garden or installing solar panels in her house or how installing a compact fluorescent lightbulb will save her money and make her feel good inside and feel like she is part of the solution?

I don't know and I don't have a solution, myself. But if that little girl EVER gets within an inch of any of my plants, she'd better be wearing head-to-toe armor.

Lentil Be

I love lentils.
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I'm sure I can try to think of something more humble, demure, unassuming, and generally wallfloweresque in the kingdom of eating, but few things could really compete in any of those departments with the delightfully simple lentil.

And yet, lentils are protein and fiber powerhouses-- they can help sustain the traditional vegetarian diet in India, for instance.

And they don't take presoaking, like their diva cousins the beans do.  They just take some simmering for 20 minutes or so, and they are ready to fill your belly with creamy, nutty goodness.

They have their own taste, but they yield graciously to whatever spices you use.  They are at ease with just salt and pepper, but they can also tolerate spicy curries and sauces.

To see them in the supermarket is possibly an underwhelming an event as any you can witness: they hide (just in case you didn't know) in the dried grain or bulk sections.  Most people know only the "boring" brownish ones, although they come in a wide spectrum of colors --from inky black to delicate salmon pink.

They are cheap.

They are sometimes dirty, and sometimes chipped and unkempt.

But a dinner of lentils can cheer the body whole.

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I'm buying lentil seeds.

My two-week hiatus, despite my husband's best efforts with watering, has left my little container garden looking parched and sullen.  Somehow I feel like a guilty mother who let her child watch too much television or allowed him to drink too much soda.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy for pushing a little garden that doesn't stand a chance with the intense heat it gets.  But then I find a little place that sells lentil seeds and I just have to give it one more try.

And maybe the humble lentil will restore my faith in growing things.

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Blogging while sleepy again.  Ho-ly crap.

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Ignore my cheeztastic title pun.

From the Batty Old Lady Files

I have developed a kind of silly and pointless --but definitely OCD-- habit lately.

Whenever I see a Johnny Jump-Up or a pansy, I can't help myself: I shuffle through the plant, especially if it's particularly leggy, and take the seed pods (not just the ones on the beautiful picture, but the still-green ones that look about to burst as well).

I scout pretty front yards --featuring Violas, natch-- where the gardeners are not completely anal and haven't pulled up their happy little blooms yet*, and then go to town like a vole amongst the roses.

I am aware that the next logical step in this progression is that I'll acquire more cats, talk to myself, accumulate a fearsome collection of lace and start wearing baggy sundresses.  Since I already talk to myself out loud, perhaps I really shouldn't have disclosed my seed-stealing habits.  However,I just cannot help myself; even if I know I'm picking the seeds from hybrids and that possibly 90% of my collected seed is going to turn out crummy, there is still some source of odd, syrupy delight in sticking my hand in other people's Violas and dig for those little pregnant-bellied treasures.

I guess we all like the thrill of the chase.

And of course, if the seeds should sprout, you will get more seedling photography than you'll ever know what to do with it.

Oh man.  It's going to be AWESOME.

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*I realize that pansies and Johnny Jump-Ups fade in the summer heat and it's aesthetically pleasing to pull them up and replace them with a summer-hardy annual.  But only the truly cruel can look upon those happy little faces while they are still in the peak of their bloom and immediately think, "Compost pile!"

But that's just me. 

Spearmint Would Totally Be Don Corleone

Another short entry tonight; this one is to wonder at how cool it is that lavender, rosemary, mint, thyme, lemon balm, catnip, catmint, bee balm, basil, marjoram, oregano, savory and sage are all in the same plant family, the Lamiaceae.

I mean, what a family, right?

Even if you've never gardened or you're like my good friend who proclaims herself a hospice for plants (where plants go to die with dignity), you have heard of all or most of these plants.  For sure you've heard of mint; and you've waxed foofy about lavender.  Possibly you've ever eaten something with basil; certainly you've eaten something flavored with oregano (oregano is like the Alfred Molina of the kitchen, seamlessly blending into any kind of dish you can think of-- thank you, Monsieur Meow for the help with that analogy!).  And if you have a cat, chances are you've tried to get it high with catnip or catmint --and 2/3 of the time, it probably worked.

So yes.  If suddenly the mint family were to disappear from the planet I would be intensely sad.  Also, cooking would not be nearly as much of a pleasure or an olfactory parade; also, the pleasure of a summer walk infused by the scent of rosemary and lavender in the air would be gone forever.

What would happen to mint juleps?  The gum industry would all but collapse if spearmint and peppermint disappeared from their flavor palette, I would reckon.  And Italy would probably implode on account of the lack of basil.  France, too-- what would we put in bouquets garnis?  What would grow, fragrant and lovely in southern fields?

The native American rituals would be deprived of their smudge sticks and chicken would be a bland, greasy victual, overdependent on lemon and pepper to help it out.  And turkey would refuse to come to our tables at Thanksgiving, as a sign of protest.

And then, there are all the honey bees.

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Honey bees, both in kept colonies and wild,  love all these members of the Lamiaceae, quite a lot. 

And it seems that honey bees are disappearing, succumbing to something called Colony Collapse Disorder.  And that is not good for crops and it's not good for farmers who've come to depend on these bees to do the pollinating for them. 

If scientists can't figure out what is wrong with honey bees, you can imagine that I'm at a loss for words.  All I can say is that this sounds like a very dire and pressing issue that urges us as citizens of the world to appreciate creatures big and small, motile and sessile.

I encourage you to at least click through this stream of Flickr pictures of honey bees.  Look at the wonder and beauty that may be gone for good.

And consider adopting a member of the Lamiaceae, perhaps? 

Click here and here for more ways to help.

"U" is for Umbrellaless

Today I've had an all-out gardenfest, and it's been great.

I missed spring and my garden and the ability to just watch my own things grow.  I drove Monsieur Meow insane pointing out the wild wisterias abloom all across I-95 and the wildflowers on the side of the road in North and South Carolina and the dogwoods and the redbuds and all the fun things that were blooming earlier and earlier as we moved south.  And later as we moved back up north, I kept track of all the things that were blooming in the more southern latitudes but not yet up north.

Having grown up in a place where it's pretty much always some sort of spring/autumn combination, I realized that tropical plants scare me.  Apart from palms and a few bromeliad-looking things, I am psychologically unequipped to handle things like Angel's Trumpets and Bougainvillea.

Which is why I felt a little bit of relief realizing that Floridians like to plant less exotic things such as Impatiens and grass-- lots of it.

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So yes.  I know the weather here in DC has been really quite crappy; however, it's the perfect weather for playing with my own brand of tiny mudcakes and for transplanting and repotting plants.  So today I've transplanted some basil and catmint and planted Nasturtiums and trained peas and sweet peas and a Clematis and killed aphids and sowed a few seeds and cleaned up and oh!  The garden life is for me.

All this was done in the rain and umbrellaless, and honestly, there is no better feeling than to tend to your own little green babies under a spring rain.

Happy Earth Day tomorrow-- how are you planning on celebrating?

"A" is for April

How fortuitous!  Today is the first day of NaBloPoMo --whose theme is "Letters" this month.

And in a creamy delight of a coincidence, April starts with the letter "a".

I know-- I'm just bowling you over left and right with the quantum physics here. 

But it is the first day and I'm just dipping my toe in, and so, A=April.  Take it or leave it.

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Any thoughts I could ever have on April are woefully very northern hemisphere-centric-- specifically, very humid continental, United States version.

In other parts of the world, April is not necessarily associated with rain and gardening and rampant reproduction and mud and a completely psychotic weather that can charm the layers off you and then leave you ass-frozen and bereft of warmth on a day like last Saturday, which was predicted as, you know, "chilly" but which --while beautiful-- turned out to be like walking into a meat locker and staying there for days on end.

Yes, I do realize that Saturday was technically "March", but why rain on my parade?  What are you, April?

So anyway, yes: April showers do bring May flowers.

April rain: plants likey.

Plants happy: I happy.

And so, on to my current obsession: gardening.

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Some of my favorite memories are associated with gardening and plants of some sort or another.  I guess most people can lay claim to that and therefore I'm not covering any new ground here. 

For instance, you may remember the wild cherry tree that grew in your backyard when you were a kid.  You may remember collecting the millions of tiny black fruits that it gave freely;  and you may even remember the bugs that preyed upon the tree falling from the sky randomly on occasion and scaring the crap out of you. 

And you may even remember the other REALLY nasty bugs that also seemed to hang out by the tree and looked kind of similar but were actually scary-poisonous and which make you cringe just thinking about them.

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But only someone who's vastly OCD and a nerd to boot would go so far as to ascertain that the tree's proper name is Prunus serotina or black cherry.

Or that the bugs who preyed upon the poor trees were called Malacosoma disstria or forest tent caterpillars.

Or that the evil stinging bugs were called Megalopyge lanata and really look horribly scary in pictures.  And their cousins are even scarier.  Don't believe me?  Look at this little video on YouTube of Megalopyge opercularis:

The stuff of nightmares, right?

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Well anyway.... I'm still cringing here.

But I still love gardening and can only hope that my mind is fertile this April, like the best and most humusy dirt of all.

Randomata: The "Raising The Awareness Of Laurel" Edition

Oh man, where to start?

For starters, what's up with this weather?  Crabbily chilly in the morning, and then truly running hot and cold all day-- just enough mindfucking to have you wearing a heavy jacket with slippers and no socks, thus making it possible to sweat hot and cold at the same time, while your nose runs.

It's typical Pisces to do all this, and boy do I have an axe to grind with all you Pisceans out there-- my mindfucking soulmates that you are.

But I'll save that for another time, my dears.  There are far dorkier matters at hand for me to discuss.

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As if the weather weren't enough to get me off-kilter, I actually was rudely awakened by someone who really should hash out his huggy-time issues a little better than just barging into the room at three in the morning demanding to be all "Rain Man" on my friggin' head woke up in the middle of the night thinking that I really used to like this one song called "Midnight Confessions" by The Grass Roots, even though it made me kinda sad because you know, it's kind of a sad song.  Sample lyric:

In my midnight confession
When I say all the things that I want to
I love you

But a little gold ring you wear on your hand makes me understand
There's another before me, you'll never be mine
I'm wasting my time

And then I started thinking that this would be classic 1968, where this guy would think that he would still get some privacy while confessing all these sad thoughts at midnight, instead of writing a schlocky entry on his blog about how much he loves this girl who's off-limits and then BAM the whole world knows and so much for it being "Midnight" and "Confessions" and "saying all the things that I want to."

But then I thought two things:

1) There's a lot of people who are awake at midnight.

2) This was a certified gold record for the band, so chances are that whoever it was (the girl, I mean) probably knew.  Like, knew KNEW.

And then I thought one more thing:

3) You always kinda know KNOW, you know?

Oh yeah.  Click here so you can see some very young people singing this song (yikes!  60s!).   Ah, the magic of youth: everyone is good looking when they are young, aren't they?  The tasting-of-the-pudding moment is that Paul Newman moment, a.k.a. Will You Really Be Good-Looking When You're, Like, You Know, Eighty-Three?

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The other thing in my mind is this whole Bay Laurel imbroglio.

When we first moved here, there was some bush in our little front yard that was unidentified and I thought it was rather overbearing and.... okay, say it... yeah, I thought it was kind of ugly.  I know there is some sort of karmic law that says that one day I will regret thinking that, but there it is.

I guess part of the thing was that it was very shaggy and shapeless and in dire need of someone to either dig it up and throw it away or take some delightfully sharp shears to it and go crazy.

So as it happens, I did option B.

Most notably, like half an hour ago.

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As it turns, laurels are pretty much all-around kick-ass champion plants.

And my, are their leaves ever tasty in a marinara sauce.  I can attest to this, as I used a fresh leaf in mine yesterday and ooh!  Deliciousness, really.

And then there is the fact that they are plants from antiquity, and meant to signify strength and heroism and Apollo himself and excellence and all that is right and just and fair in the world.

And then there is the tiny part of me that thinks that, symbolically at least, I might have killed my chances of ever being a Poet Laureate  because every laurel bush and tree in the world has put out a laurel mafia hit out on me.  (let's not dwell on the fact that I'm not a published poet for the time being, ok?)

And they actually take very well to pruning and shaping, so I guess the fact that as of 4:22 pm this afternoon my laurel looks like a giant took an enormous bite out of its southern facet just means that I have a very creative approach toward, er, "topiary" making.

Right?

Maybe if I call it, "Fe Fi Fo Fum" and say it's art I'll feel less guilty.

Holy Is The Gardener Who Wrestles These

Aphids.  Are.  Gross.

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I was having a chat with The Deity Above (Or All-Around Or Wherever It Is That Deities Kinda Hang Out) earlier about aphids and specifically how gross and annoying and noxious they are.

Let me back up.

Yes, I talk to myself a lot.  Sometimes I even talk to myself in what I like to call the Musical Theater voice -- that deeply affected, shrill and overly proper voice that plagues musical theater's finest when they are about to launch into a very cheesy song, possibly about love. 

Anyway, since I come from a Judeo-Christian theology background, I prefer to think I'm talking to The Almighty, a.k.a. He Who Has Nothing Better To Do Than To Hang Back And Watch Me Cut Back The Pansies.

*takes a deep "explanation's over" breath*

Where was I?

Oh yes.  I was telling you that I think it is somewhat fair to come to the conclusion that it's okay to dislike intensely, nay HATE aphids.

And why is it okay to have such violent feelings toward the little twerps, you might ask?

Well, besides the obvious revulsion I've just experienced by having my hands coated with the nasty little sacs of fluid whilst pruning said pansies, there are very specific reasons for my dislike.   For starters, those who've never had the pleasure to lay their gaze upon one of these beasts, here's a mug shot for you:

LOOK AT THAT NASTY, CREEPY THING!

So that's number one, right?  Allow me to go on:

1. Look right and barf.

2. They are weird and freaky and TINY  (the biggest are about 1 cm long, but most hover around the 1/16 inch mark).  Tiny = millions in your garden at some point in time.

3. They OOZE something we'll call "honeydew", which is the only partially useful thing about them, at least for some type of ants who keep them around to "milk" them.  Yes.  Milk those nasty oozy fat aphids, opportunistic little ants.

4. They do this weird parthenogenetic thing where they can sort of make meiotic clones of themselves (<---gross oversimplification that may have elements of wrong in it).  This is why you have to go Rambo on their asses any time you discover them, repulsive little beasts that they are: just one can take over a garden.

5. THEY EAT ROSEBUDS AND PANSY BUDS AND TOMATO BUDS AND EVERYTHING BUDS AND DISFIGURE BLOOMS!  RAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

So since all they do is be tiny and eat all day and eat so much that they OOZE FOOD and they freakishly divide over and over again so as to fully take over your garden, I hereby declare aphids EVIL, gross pests that suck and ....

... well, maybe hate is too strong a word.  I mean, they can't help being weird little agents of destruction and which are really good for nothing except for providing some sort of weird ant supplement, you know?

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Ugh.  I hate it when I let my love-all-creatures self talk.

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I do hereby declare an aphid jihad in my garden.  And those little green infidels are going down.