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Voices of Spencer Creek
Gardener's Journal: Early Autumn
I elected to weed the upper garden, which is close to the fowl pens, and keep an eye on goose society for a bit.
By R.S. Bear
Posted on Sep 21, 2004 |
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| "Sunflower, Helianthus Annuus" from the Appendix of Handbook of Plant and Floral Ornament from Early Herbals by Richard G. Hatton, Dover Press, Toronto, New York, London |
August
As I rose this morning and carried a cup of English Breakfast to the east porch, I found the Garden Lady already there, with her stein of coffee (enough to kill a horse), admiring her surroundings wistfully.
"Fall is starting," she said.
This was a shock. The really hot weather has only just begun, and we've become full-time waterers. But I knew immediately what she meant. The air smelled differently, somehow, than the previous morning, and a golden glow on the wall behind us, the telltale September glow, which I associate with Canada geese going up the river to the great Klamath flyway, suffused the whole porch area with something like a palpable sadness. Where did the summer go, so soon, that we had waited so long to begin? And we have so little to show for our work, so far this year...
The brassicas went in too late to avoid the flea beetles, which are the current plague. We only did one small bed of peas, rather than the usual four in succession. The tomatoes have barely set fruit. We've just picked the first zucchini, and there's no crookneck squash yet. Granted, I did get a crop off the early sweet corn, but the late variety should have tasseled by now and hasn't even reached waist high yet. The second-year red onions were our only real show crop, making juicy bulbs six inches across. We took most of these to the Friends Meeting House, where there is a tradition of leaving surpluses for all comers on the back porch, but that looks like it will be our only contribution for the year. There were no plums, and few apples; the Asian pears are too young to count, so there's just the one crop on the lone Bartlett to represent the orchard.
One thing we have a lot of, this year, from our point of view, anyway -- is geese.
There are in the core flock two White Chinas, Abner and Amanda, and two beautiful grey Africans, Auntie One and Auntie Two. Last year there were about 140 goose eggs, with Amanda producing about as many as the other two together, albeit smaller ones, and of these we left two to be hatched,which produced a couple of fine looking White China goslings, both of whom, however, died not long after fledging, from causes unknown. This year, there were about 100 eggs, of which we left enough in the nest that seven hatched. These came in waves, so to speak. Auntie One took over the brooding early on, hissing if Amanda got anywhere near the nesting box, and hatched three goslings which she took to be her very own. She was willing for Auntie Two to babysit them, or proud papa Abner, but Amanda was not to come near. If she even tried to share in bathing and drinking at the common pools, Auntie One drove her off with hisses, snake-like threatening movements of her long neck, and beating of wings. It got so poor Amanda was getting dehydrated, and we had to spread the various pools and "white buckets" over a large enough area that Auntie One couldn't cover the entire territory, making it possible for poor Amanda to jump off the nest, run for a drink, and run back. For Amanda had chosen to take on the remaining eggs, and stayed with them day and night.
Eventually four new goslings appeared, which seemed to us smaller at birth than those Auntie One was rearing. Three of these were larger than the last, whom we called Junior. It was now Amanda's turn to go on the offensive. Keeping the new babies close to her, she interposed herself between them and Auntie One at every possible moment, occasionally rushing over to give Auntie One a smashing peck in the back, between the shoulder blades, whenever she seemed to threaten to come too close. I was impressed with Amanda's motherly courage, Auntie One having considerably more reach and strength, and about double Amanda's weight.
The children grew apace, but came a morning last week when I counted six at feeding time. Had Junior fallen down a missed post-hole somewhere, or had there been perhaps a fox raid? I searched, and before long came across his stiffening corpse -- neck broken -- he'd been severely pecked between the shoulder blades. Amanda?? Nahhh...
I elected to weed the upper garden, which is close to the fowl pens, and keep an eye on goose society for a bit. Amanda and her remaining three were cropping weeds and sipping water in one pool cluster, Auntie One and everyone else, including Abner, were doing the same in the other area. Then Amanda, going for some stray bits of cob, was momentarily distracted. Instantly Auntie One, who had apparently been single-mindedly on the lookout, dashed across the invisible line of motherly enmity, and gave a slamming peck to the smallest remaining gosling, right at the base of his neck.What we had here was Texas Cheerleader Mom syndrome! I must intervene.
Leaping over the fence of the duck pen (to the mild astonishment of the ducks), then over the goose fence, I chased Auntie One through the pool areas, overturning buckets, slipping in mud, rounding Auntie One in ever-tightening circles. We bowled over non-Auntie-One geese and goslings in all directions in our epic chase, which seemed to go on for a long, long time, though it was undoubtedly over in a couple of minutes. I held Auntie One's sleek, almost expressionless face close to mine, my fingers wrapped round her downy neck, and pronounced sentence: "Okay, you -- IN WITH THE DUCKS." And dropped her over the fence. The ducks scattered, goggle-eyed and squawking, then went about their business, which was mostly chasing flies.
At that moment I got the feeling one always gets when one is being watched from behind. I turned. Abner, Auntie Two, Amanda, and the six goslings stood together in an amicable group, regarding me with mild curiosity. And just beyond them, my two neighbors to the west, a retired janitor and his wife, leaned on the fence. They had apparently concluded that there was no need to go the horse races up the valley. The action was right here.
"Well, which one won?" he asked.
I was almost too winded to reply. Auntie One began treading up and down along the fence across from her three darlings and the rest of the flock, calling to them, and trying the wire at every possible point. The others, after getting over the discovery that the madman was not planning to kill them all, simply went back to grazing; broadleafs first, then grass.
Auntie Two was the perfect aunt, spelling Amanda as needed in raising the six goslings, who from that moment looked to Amanda for all orders. When they're old enough to defend themselves, the Cheerleader Mom will goback in with them...
The Goose Lady was away at a family reunion during all this. On her return from Wisconsin, she got my report on goose events of the preceding week, then went out to survey the crime scene. I made tea, and brought it out to the shady side of the "veranda." The Goose Lady returned, took two quiet sips, and said, "You know what? Every one of those babies is a White China!"
The three that Auntie One had fought so hard for, and been willing to kill for, were all Amanda's.
YOU may be interested knowing in what we do with a hundred goose eggs.
Last year, the Goose Lady kept them in the refrigerator for, oh, about six centuries. I asked about that.
"Well, we are going to blow them out and make Christmas decorations out of them and things like that...and sell them. I think I can get two bucks apiece for blown goose eggs."
We?
"Sure, it's easy; just punch a little bitty hole in each end with a little bitty nail and blow it out into a little bitty cup or something."
Me.
I tried the technique as described, and after about five minutes of blowing,had one egg in the cup and a severe headache. A hundred and thirty-nine more eggs waited quietly on the table. No wonder she'd saved me the job....I sat and thought for a bit, then went to the workshop for my high-speed mini-drill, and stopped by the sixteen-year-old's room.
"Got one of those bicycle pumps and a basketball needle?"
"Uh, yeah, but what do you want it for?"
"Trust me, you don't want to know."
I selected an egg, and, using a cone-shaped grinder bit, opened one end and soften the other (the skinny end). I punched the needle in ever so gently, then pushed down the plunger, slowly, so as to avert an explosion, while holding the needle-inserted egg in the other hand above the cup. The egg emptied itself in about three seconds. Visions of a cottage industry danced in my head. I made quick work of the pile of eggs, emptying the cup after each one into a mixing bowl (this is in case you find a bad egg), in which the eggs would be later blended and moved into freezer bags -- when thawed, the batches are good in baking recipes that call for eggs. But as far as cottage industry goes, well, she's never sold one yet. Can't bear to part with them. But after two years of this our Christmas tree looks splendid, and so do those of just about everyone we know....
September
There is in an obscure Emblem Book by one Henry Hawkins, dated 1633, a tribute to one of the garden's great flowers:
The honour of our Gardens, and the miracle of flowers at this day, is the Heliotropion or Flower of the Sun; be it for the height of its stem, approaching to the heavens some cubits high: or beautie of the flower, being as big as a man's head, with a faire ruff on the neck; or, for the number of the leaves, or yellow,vying with the marigold, or, which is more, for al the qualities, nature, and properties of the Flower, which is to wheel about with the Sun; there being no Needle, that more punctually regards the Poles, then doth this Flower the glorious Sun. In the spring, the Garden Lady set aside the packets of sunflower seeds that had accumulated, and announced that she would build Sunflower Houses.
"What are those?" asked I.
"They are sunflowers planted in a circle, so that children can play in the middle of them in high summer, and make believe that they are houses. It's an old tradition."
I went to my books to look this up. I didn't find any sunflower houses, but a favorite writer, the gentle Sharon Lovejoy, tells of Hollyhock Houses, which seems to be the same idea. She plants hollyhocks in a circle, and then when they are tall, ties them together to form the rafters of a kind of tipi.
The Garden Lady took her packets to the greenhouse, filled three flats of two-inch pots with potting soil, and poked one seed down a bit over a quarter of an inch into each one, humming a song about Mistress Mary. The long rains went on, and my measured circle of elephant garlic came up, like a green and pungent Fairy Ring. I explained how this would work.
"This is a circular garden; the rainbird in the middle will reach exactly to the garlic, all the way round, and this gap here is the entrance. Plant your tall things near the perimeter, and your short things, like squash vines near the middle, so that nothing is in any thing else's rain shadow."
"Okay. And where do the sunflower houses go?"
"What sunflower houses?"
Patiently she explained again. I furrowed my brows. "Won't some of them keep the water off the rest? I was kind of envisioning a row, sort of all the way or half way round, then corn further in, then tomatoes, like a sort of staircase."
"No sunflower houses, no garden." This was said firmly, but I thought I saw a bit of worry around the outer corners of the eyes, as though she thought I might come out fighting for my rows. I did consider it -- briefly.
"Uh, okay, how about evenly spaced, though, around the perimeter?"
"Sure, I'll put one here, and here, and here, and here..."
It was to be the Year of the Sunflower.
For in the morning it beholdes his rising; in his journey, attends upon him; and eyeth him stil, wheresoever he goes; nor ever leaves following him, til he sink downe over head and eares in Tethis's bed, when not being able to behold him anie longer she droops and languishes, til he arise: and then followes him againe to his old lodging, as constantly as ever; with him it riseth, with him it falles, and with him riseth againe. The sunflowers did not appear only in the circle garden. Another sunflower house came up in the hilltop garden, menacing the lettuce and onion beds. And there were genetically engineered sunnies in all the beds around the house; tiny ones, and full sized ones that stood on short thick stems, as if someone had beheaded some giant and left the trophy by the city walls. Many of these were along the east side of the house, and followed the sun until midday, then continued staring straight up, as though wondering what had become of their lord and master. Eventually they became too heavy with seed for this myopia, and drooped daylong, no longer befriended of beesbut increasingly frequented by birds. At first we admired their sunny looks among the poppies, zinnias, marigolds and such, but, later, in seed time, their ungainliness seemed to us to class with the feathery cosmos, the bachelor buttons and larkspurs, and we pretended not to see them.
Nature hath done wel in not affording it anie odour at al; for with so much beautie and admirable singularities, had there been odour infused therinto, and the sweetnesse of odoriferous flowers withal, even men, who are now half mad in adoring the same for its excellent guifts, would then have been stark mad indeed, with doting upon it.
Sunflowers are difficult to ignore. On a hot day in August, I went to the circular garden to look (vain hope) for a reddening blush on the hundreds of green tomatoes, and as I sloped along, parting branches, ran headlong into a massive flower head, dangling on a stem bent double with the weight, and a good eighteen inches across. Such a plant demands attention, and will bludgeon you if it doesn't get it. I growled and pushed it away, and it came swinging insistently back across my path. Involuntarily my eye followed the stem into the thicket from whence it had sprung. Oh, yes! Sunflower houses. Well, there's such a thing here, I suppose, except it's awfully weedy in there; no child has had a go this year. I went looking for Daughter.
But Nature, it seems, when first she framed a pattern for the rest, not being throughly resolved, what to make it, tree or flower, having brought her workmanship almost unto the top, after a litle pause perhaps, at al adventure put a flower upon it, and so for haste, forgot to put the Musks into it. Wherupon, to countervaile her neglect heerin, the benigne Sol, of meer regard and true compassion, graced her by his frequent and assiduous lookes with those golden rayes it hath. And as the Sun shewes himself to be enamoured with her, she, as reason would, is no lesse taken with his beautie, and by her wil (if by looks we may guesse of the wil) would faine be with him. But like an Estritch, with its leaves as wings, it makes unprofitable offers, to mount up unto him, and to dwel with him; but being tyed by the root, it doth but offer, and no more.
Daughter at first was dubious. She had after all, recently seen Little Shop of Horrors. But fathers are still to be humored, until one reaches a certain age. I rummaged about in the garage and came up with a couple of large scraps of carpet. By throwing one onto the grassy floor of the Sunflower House, I was able to make it instantly homey -- and she took over from there.
"I'll be right back," she said, and before I knew it, my weeding was over for the day. Daughter returned with a couple of dolls, Kirsten and Addy -- Our Addy is called Ellie, though, and has a different history than the official one the manufacturer supplies -- and, handing me Ellie, took Kirsten with her into the biggest house.
"You and Ellie move into that one over there..." (the small one) "...and you'll be new in the neighborhood, and we'll come over and see you -- oops, not enough room -- so you come and see us, and we'll invite you in to tea." In this fashion are afternoons of Important Grownup Work lost forever.
It is surprisingly cool in the Sunflower House, while the sun's rays are broiling the lawn only inches away, and shimmering the landscape near and far. One can play for a long time in such a space, and forget the approach of evening. When the four of us gathered our tea things to retreat to our night home, we found the shadows long, and the air golden, and a massive flock of Canada geese skimmed over us, low enough for Emily to hear the wind their wings made, and for even me to hear the talk among them, heading for the river and the gleaning of the wheat fields there.
The Garden Lady met us at the door, and she, being the artist that she is, knew not to break our wondering silence. She only smiled to see that the web of Sunflower Houses she had woven months before had made its catch. It's thus an old tradition becomes a new one.
It is like the Scepter which the Paynims attribute to their Deitie, that beares an Eye on the top; while this flower is nothing els but an Eye, set on the point of its stem; not to regard the affayres of Mortals so much, as to eye the immortal Sunne with its whole propension; the middle of which flower, where the seed is, as the white of the eye, is like a Turkie-carpet, or some finer cloth wrought with curious needle-work, which is al she hath to entertaine her Paramour.
Friends came, from far away, to visit. Adults sat round in the shade of the east front, stirring cups. The screen door banged. Daughter and Kirsten, Daughter's friend and Addie headed for the garden.
We will remember the Meteor Night in winter, when the leaden clouds, heavy with Pacific rain, shut out Orion and his gleaming belt. We will remember the tomatoes, Better Boy, Cherry, Brandywine, and Golden Jubilee, when their poor cousin, the frozen tomato soup, is brought from the freezer to thaw. But most of all, as the huge seed heads are plunked, face up, on the well-house roof to gladden the hearts of the shivering juncos and chickadees, we will remember the Sunflower Houses.
October
IN arid regions, the wise seek out plants that require very little water, the use of which is called "xeriscaping" -- whereas those who own a bit of marsh look for attractive water plants: lotuses, sedges, perhaps a bit of cress. Most gardeners in temperate zones, however, have a wide range of choices and possibilities. Accordingly, some will try everything -- from cacti to Louisiana irises -- and insist that the local setting bend to their will. Plants that have no business in northern climes are fussed over ad infinitum, wrapped against chill winds, covered, uncovered, covered again, and finally cursed for disloyally losing their green fingers to frostbite.
On any home site, the wise will seek out plants that augment the site, not merely visually, but in ways that use what we know of sun and shade, soil, wind, and water, to enhance the lives of those living there and of lives yet to come. When they consider a tree or shrub, they look around them and think. They see not only the height of the plant and its breadth, but also the effect of its presence through time, of its youth, middle age, declining years and inevitable death. How will each affect its surroundings? Many times, the answers will be considerably less complicated to sort out if you will stick with the native species.
Every landscape, and every homesite, has a history, and from this history, if it is known or can be discovered, we can learn something about the site's present and future requirements. Our acre, Stony Run, began in the distant past as alluvial deposits at the upper end of a vast glacial-era lake, which once lay, hundreds of feet deep, from here to what is now Portland on the Columbia River, over a hundred miles north. When the lake drained away, leaving the Willamette River and its tributaries to collect the annual runoff in its place, billions of small round stones from the surrounding mountains, mostly of slow-weathering basalt, lay packed together in a matrix of clay particles for miles in all directions. Seeds, borne in by wind, water, and animals, quickly took root, and a forest sprang up, but one adapted to extremes of wet and dry, of shallow, nitrogen-starved soil, of major disturbances by fire and flood. The dominant forest types were a mixed conifer forest of hemlock and western red cedar on the damp northern slopes, and Douglas fir along the ridges. On southern slopes, hot and dry in summer, an oak-madrone forest thrived, with an understory of poison oak at lower elevations, and of manzanita higher up. In the bottoms, a mix of cottonwood, ash, black cherry, and willow showed where the water ran along the bedrock, deep in the ground in summer, or became a surface torrent in winter.
The valley was popular with humans from their first appearance here, as a place to live and hunt. From the very first, though, they could never resist altering it to suit their needs. Fire was the agent chiefly used; the resulting clearings increased the supply of grasses and fruiting shrubs, which led to an increase in game both small and large, as well as increasing security by providing less cover for marauders from rival tribes. Stony Run, however, remained forested -- part of a vast tract of Douglas firs that survived in the upper valley until the first Europeans arrived with their steel teeth.
A family of settlers, late arrivals, staked out three hundred twenty acres, and dreamed of putting in, as so many others who had staked out the ancient clearings, wheat -- but didn't have the manpower to clear great swaths of the fir forest at once. So they went into the woodlot business, always whipsawing enough cordwood to meet the bills -- they contracted to provide all the fuel for the one-room schoolhouses for miles around -- but never quite enough to put in wheat. Lilacs in the dooryard bloomed, but never far from the shade. It took almost three generations for the land to be anything but a stump ranch, and by then farming had become something of a luxury occupation hereabouts. Filberts could make money, or grass seed could, but it took money to get started, and these were a people to proud, or too honest, to gamble with other people's money. Bit by bit the old home place was broken up, first into four farms, then eight, then twenty. Fences were built along boundary lines, and along the fences spread, first blackberries, then trees. Not firs; though they love sun, those do not usually travel far in open pasture land. These trees were the Oregon ash, black cherry, willow, and cottonwood of the river's edge, working their way uphill along the edges of the annual floods. Also there were, and had always been, patches of great California black oaks, bearded with moss and lichens like live oaks in the hammocks of old Florida.
The ashes, however, predominated. There were second growth ash trees until recently over much of Stony Run, all about two feet in diameter, with the broad growth rings of open-grown timber. The last owner before me, however, fell upon hard times, and felt obliged to convert them into firewood,following the precedent of the pioneers. Upon my arrival I found all the good shade -- oak, maple, and ash -- on the north side of the house, where it would do least good. To the south and west, where shade would be needed when the summer sun reached the nineties, were mostly stumps.
All was not lost. Oaks, when cut, like firs, will not regenerate, but ashes will, and the stumps to the west were all ash. I cleared away the blackberries and the burned cans and tire-wire loops left over from bonfires that the stumps had been subjected to, and watered the stumps. My neighbor, ever alert, was not long in stopping by.
"Morning." He watched the water pouring over the stump. I tried to distract him.
"Good morning, sir, lovely day, yes?"
"Mm."
"Have our geese been too noisy for you yet?"
"Mm? Naahh."
"I have noticed your roses, sir. They're coming along nicely."
"Aaahh, I dunno." He gazed steadily at the stream of water coursing over the blackened stump. I could already envision him going back into the house, shaking his head the whole way, and telling his wife what that fool Bear was up to this time, but I was forgetting that he had been raised in the family that planted the old lilacs. He looked at me sharply. "Ash, huh?"
"Yessir, ash."
"Might work." And then he went back in.
The stumps eventually put out shoots, though one of them waited three years. I chose the strongest shoot from each stump, and flagged it, cutting back the others with pruners. One of these shoots is now over ten feet tall. Ash is a quick wood, quick to rise but also quick to fall, as trees go. But I won't live to see the end of this.
On the south side I would have to be more creative. But I had something going for me. The northwest corner of the property has been allowed, over time, to go native, and is the haunt of wild things: ferns, quail. Someone had planted a bigleaf maple, a generation ago, by the northwest corner of the house, and some of its seeds had helicoptered into the protected zone and flourished. There are a few silver maples around the place, which are prettier in the fall, but they aren't native and they hate the summer drought. The bigleaf (acer macrophylum) is a native and can be found all along the river and on the mountainsides, too, mostly at lower altitudes. It's also fast growing, and though short-lived compared to, say, an oak, like the ash it's an ideal tree for a short-timer like me who needs shade in his own lifetime. I flagged a few of the likelier saplings and waited for winter. On a stormy day after leaf drop, when the maples had gone to sleep, I stole into their sanctuary with a shovel and dug about beneath their feet. One by one, I lifted them, with what little soil would cling to their surprisingly skimpy roots, into a wheelbarrow, and carted them around to the south side of the house. You can't do this with all trees. I have awful luck moving oaks of any size; the acorn puts a taproot down to the day of Creation as soon as it awakes, and woe unto him that disturbs it at its dinner. Oaks will die if you so much as look at them while carrying a digging tool in hand. The bigleaf maple is much more generous. Make a hole, stick it in. Well, it's a good idea to keep the sod back, to add some peat, to stake it for a year or two, and to water generously the first couple of summers, but once it's established the bigleaf will make itself at home -- -- so much so that you will want to put it twenty feet from the house, if you want the next generation not to call down curses upon your head. Not that I pay more than lip service to the idea myself; mine are twelve feet from the house. Pretty things, though. And while they aren't shading the wall yet, on a hot day I can go out and lie contentedly in their shade -- sort of.
Copyright by R.S. Bear
Poet, scholar, librarian, publisher, R.S. Bear is also a gardener and founder and writer of Stoney Run Press. Look for more of his works at West By Northwest.org.
© Copyright 2000-2004 by West By Northwest.org
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