The longest autumn

This autumn has been the best birthday present of my life. Walking home from the library in late September, I said to Jim, I think this is my favorite part of fall, the bright reds and oranges in the tree crowns above the dark green. He replied, you say that every year, as if you are just discovering it.

What I actually discovered lately, was that raspberry canes shouldn’t be cut down until early winter. Research conducted at Cornell University found that the dying canes continue to send carbohydrates to the crown and roots well into winter. I found it fascinating to learn that the canes were still nourishing the roots so late in the year. The raspberry leaves don’t lose their green color because they are still working.

My favorite part of autumn lingered for weeks this year. The ‘peak’ foliage, when most of the leaves have changed from green to red, yellow, and orange, happened near the end of October, two or three weeks later than usual.

The week before Thanksgiving there were still tenacious leaves scattered among the bare limbs: amber, wheat, butterscotch, bronze, cinnamon, and ginger. They remind me of making my famous Conference ginger snaps: ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves scattered on top of the flour.

Even today, the last of November, the tawny remnants of leaves are seen amidst the trees.

Pruning Christmas cacti

 Perhaps in response to the virus restrictions and more time at home, last summer I tackled my Christmas cactus collection. My mother gave me Christmas cactus clippings over the years: they are easy to grow: a single stem in potting soil will soon root, grow, and eventually bloom. I had one beautiful specimen that cascaded pink blossoms every December in a place of honor on our piano. But when we converted the front room to a library, with floor-to-ceiling shelving, the piano, which was hopelessly out of tune, was removed. I recognized that the cascade had become an awkward, overgrown tenant.

The library is five years old now, so it was high time to take all my cacti in hand. One by one I placed them on an overturned wire-mesh wastebasket on the kitchen island so I could objectively consider their cascading stems (cacti don’t have leaves). To produce a balanced and agreeable effect, I had to prune severely.

The cacti sat on our kitchen porch all summer, shaded from the hot summer sun. With winter approaching, I brought them into my office and David’s room, my adjunct conservatory.

The pruning had its effect: a flower on every last stem.

As For Years

The other day my youngest son, Sam, shared memories of working in the garden over his growing-up years. I really appreciated it. A lot of it has faded for me. (Note to the world: keep a journal. You will one day appreciate even a few sentences you write about your life today.)

Then I asked the other kids for memories. Matt sent a detailed email, including many things that I had forgotten. He said the rhubarb in the small triangular bed near the garage was the original plant. I’m not sure if it was the only one, but certainly we started with no more than three. Now we have 21. That’s not as impressive as it sounds. The western edge of our one-acre property is lined with trees and our large garden does not get a full day of sunshine: the western third of the garden is in shade by about 1 p.m. You can measure the length of sunshine by the size of the rhubarb plants. In the center of the garden the plants spread out five feet  wide. As the beds progress west, the plants shrink to 18 inches.

Last Friday I bought 10 bags of composted cow manure (low-odor) at Home Depot. Saturday I spent four hours, dunged each rhubarb plant, and then watered each thoroughly.

I have five friends who help me in the garden this year: Leroy (15), Ruby (13), Lucy (12), Twyla (10), and their mom, Sherie. This morning Ruby, Twyla, and Sherie came. The beets and carrot beds were overwhelmed with broadleaf weeds. I thought the seedlings had all died, but with very careful, gentle weeding we discovered four of each hidden under the weeds, each about an inch tall and incredibly delicate.

Jim had suggested, when I started this project, to have the girls plant flowers. Along with the manure, I bought a tray of marigolds and petunias. We dug trenches, mixed manure, peat moss, and topsoil to a uniform color and texture (I called it the cake mix), and planted each flower in the bed where we sowed sunflower seeds (only one seed sprouted).

 Last week, Twyla had harvested the rhubarb, as I directed, quite heavily. Today new, crinkly leaves are sprouting up from the heart of the plants. We covered the bare soil between plants with black landscape fabric or salt marsh hay, hoping to starve weeds out.

For years I’ve had a glorious fantasy of returning the garden to its 1993 elegance, with clean brick walkways and raised beds. I fretted that if I put the energy into it, it might not last and my efforts would be for naught. But last year I decided to “act upon this land as for years.”

When we moved to a little rented house in Columbus, Indiana, a week after R’el was born, I decided to create a little vegetable plot, mostly for tomatoes, which is what I knew how to grow. We didn’t know how long we would live there, but I went forward with my project, inspired by the counsel given in the LDS book of scriptures called the Doctrine and Covenants (section 51, verse 16):

...let them act upon this land as for years, and this shall turn unto them for their good.

We lived there for three growing seasons and I’ve never regretted the effort I took.

Now that I’ve started actually working on the garden intensively, I accept its potential loss with equanimity. Instead of resisting the project I am embracing it in all its complexity, creativity, experimentation, hard work, and the possibility of failure. I am acting upon it as for years, and it is turning unto me for my good.

Gardening after Dusk

It's after 8 p.m. when I go out, so I bring my high-powered headlamp, clippers, and trowel. I remove some more onion grass from among the sprouting irises, then move to the front stone wall and balustrade. I’ve always imagined David’s garden here. But why? To make something new and ambitious. With Jim’s help I realize that dream is self-destructive. It would require a backhoe, literally, to remove the quince roots and introduce gentler plants. I know, we tried several years ago. I hired two teen-aged boys and they dug at the roots for several hours. When their dad came to retrieve them, the hole was about two feet deep and they were standing on a thick snarl of roots. Their dad wisely pointed out, a backhoe would be needed.

This year, I will leave one quince bush, centered nicely in front of the stone wall. Our neighbor commented about it's lovely coral blossoms. I'll trim all the other starts down to the ground. Mulch and be at peace. Why does the simple way, the possible way, seem like defeat?

I’ll focus on this: David’s garden will become a reality this season.

Spring comes slowly to New England. It arrives here sooner than to central New Hampshire or Maine. But slower than to New Jersey, where I grew up. I like it that way. It gives me time to get used to it. It's nearly May, but still too early to plant tomatoes. I'm not behind yet. It’s not too late to prepare my raspberry beds. Plenty of time to improve a flower garden for our beloved son.

David's Perennial Garden

Our one-acre property has several gardens. The front lawn rolls down to the sidewalk from the 1895 Queen Anne. A stone banister leads away from the enclosed front porch towards the driveway; two azalea bushes stand as sentinels at the end of the walkway, glorious now with lavender blooms. With the cool spring weather this year, the early blossoms of azaleas, forsythias, daffodils and hyacinths are lingering.

Between the house and driveway is a large side garden of flowers and shrubs. Early in the spring of our first year, 1994, hundreds of crocuses bloomed, purple and white and yellow. One year I counted them: over 500 blossoms. In recent years, a lone crocus or two is all that appears. One fall some good friends and I planted several hundred bulbs: two plants emerged. Our local rodents, squirrels and chipmunks, had a feast that year.

The coach house stands behind the house. Beyond it is a vegetable garden with a storied past. Designed in the 1980s, its brick and stone walkways divide the ten raised vegetable beds. I had gardening dreams when we bought the house in 1993. But the reality of raising six children(ages 2 to 12 that first year) and running a busy household made large-garden management a low priority.

In 1995, we went on our famous Cross-Country trip: 48 states, three Canadian provinces, and a Mexican state. 15,900 miles. Six kids, a pop-up tent trailer, and me the sole adult for seven of the ten weeks of that summer. By fall, the garden had been taken over by weeds. We continued to garden, but year after year, uncultivated nature took over. After several years of neglect, there was a six-foot sapling with a two-inch diameter trunk in one of the beds and myriad weeds of all shapes and sizes.

All the kids had garden duty. Our David was a faithful, uncomplaining worker. He spent many hours trying to reclaim the brick pathways: their cracks were always filling with weeds.

Yesterday I planned to work in a garden. At 7 p.m., Jim told me to go, before it got dark. I donned my blue coveralls, found my gloves and trowel, and went to the side garden. I had been afraid that pulling weeds out near the sprouting irises would damage them, but it didn't.

As dusk settled, I didn’t want to stop. With the high-powered headlamp I recently bought, I could see in front of me nearly as well as in daylight. Around 9 p.m., I dumped the detritus onto our dead-weed pile, satisfied with the work of my hands.

When David died, nearly five years ago, I planned to create a memorial garden. I wanted it to be new, in front of the stone banister, and just for David. But this morning, as I surveyed the side garden, it felt right to dedicate it, which has been successful for many years, to him. There is space to plant new perennials.and everyone who visits our house will see it. I want David’s garden to bloom this summer.

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit. (If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.) - Cicero 

Gardening and Hand Bells

Two years ago

June 9, I drove David to Jamaica Plain campus of the Veterans Administration Healthcare System, about a 40-minute drive. I didn't know why we had to go into Boston; there’s a VA hospital 10 minutes away, in Bedford. But I braved Boston traffic, parked in the VA garage, and we waited patiently in a dark, drab corridor on the third floor of a large medical office building. When we finally went into the social worker, she also couldn’t understand why we were there; the excursion was a complete waste of time. At least the parking was free.

On June 11th, the blood tests showed that in just 3 days the percentage leukemic blasts in David’s bloodstream had risen from 79% to 89% and the white blood cell count had more than doubled, manifesting in his low energy level. We had a frank discussion with Dr. Fathi and a conversation with a hospital social worker about hospice.

I re-read Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, an articulate and thoughtful Boston-based surgeon who discusses how current American medicine fails to realistically deal with end-of-life issues. I went into this new phase with eyes wide open, or so I thought. How does one prepare for the unimaginable.

Early June 2017

I opened the online newsletter of TCF (The Compassionate Friends), the club no one wants to join. Unexpectedly, I read his name, “David Johnston”: the newsletter had a list of August death anniversaries. As evening fell, I sat at my desk, listening to hand bell Youtube videos, writing and weeping in the gentle glow of my laptop.

Two years ago I did no gardening: I was paranoid about microorganisms in the soil. Last year I didn't have the ambition. I'm glad I didn't: I'm often inconsistent with watering and with the drought, any new plants would have shriveled and died. As it was, I almost lost my perennial rhubarb from my neglect. When I finally looked at them in August, they were languishing and limp. This year, after debating all spring, I bought tomatoes and basil and petunias. But it was cold and rainy while we were in Charleston; they hardly grew. My rhubarb, however, is glorious. I bottled 7 pints of cranberry rhubarb jam.

Another glorious thing in my life right now is hand bells. I mentioned this in February: a new friend of mine owns his grandmother’s hand bell set. She, Margaret Shurcliff, brought English hand bells to America in 1902. At this point, our intrepid little hand bell choir is really just messing about. That's a quote from a favorite book of mine, The Wind in the Willows: Rat asserts to Mole, "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." I feel the same way about hand bells. The feeling of power, flicking my wrist and producing a huge ringing sound: there is nothing like it.

If you didn't watch it in February, check out Eui Gon Kim's solo. And Kevin Mazimas Ko, who plays six bells at once!

Eggplant and raspberries

I'm practicing my photo insertion skills. Here's a picture of my little raspberry patch:

Here's a dear little eggplant: :

And the fall colors of a blueberry bush: