pearled earth

Did you know...

2012-05-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

...that woodchucks love chamomile? This particular woodchuck, who I've recently made acquaintance with, enjoys most herbs (dill and cilantro also being, in his book, "choice edibles"). Though we are Arch Enemies, he and I agree on a lot. For instance, he prefers kale to lettuce, just like me. (I didn't know this, but if you're dining al fresco, a cushion of lettuce is good for sitting on, while you're eating the kale.)

And here is something else I've learned, which I'll share because I think it might be helpful. Do you have a "jet" setting on your hose nozzle? People probably use it to clean their cars, I don't know - but I like to hide behind my gooseberry bush and then, when my woodchuck comes around the corner on his way to the vegetable patch, I blast him with it. If I get good contact, he doesn't return for at least twelve hours.

Much work was done

2012-05-21T04:11:00.000-07:00

Lady's slippers

2012-05-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

Archbald Pothole State Park is sort of a forgotten local landmark. The pothole is a geologic formation - a deep, narrow hole in the rocky ground - that was once a tourist attraction. Now the hole is ringed by a chainlink fence, which you can lean on while tossing your Red Bull can into the abyss, if you are so inclined. So the pothole itself has largely lost its appeal. The park still sees regular traffic, though: it's a renowned spot for picking up dudes, if you're a dude.

But there's something else special! A few years ago a friend tipped us off to the lady's slipper orchids, Cypripedium acaule. We see them now and then in this area, but never in the numbers Archbald has. They like well-drained soil, I read, and this place has it: talusy bumps and hummocks left over from the coal mining days.

It's a pleasant way to pass a Friday morning... sitting on one of those little hills inside a small forest of orchids, enjoying their smell and the sun.

Lonicera sempervirens

2012-05-09T17:02:00.000-07:00

This morning when I let the dog out onto the back porch to barf, the sky was just beginning to lighten, and I could hear orioles in the maple tree. Yippee! These days, when the baker gets out of bed to start his workday, the robins are already at it. This is 3am, or maybe 1am, I am not quite sure, because I am for the most part still sleeping.

Rafts of warblers have been blowing over in the spring rains. Today I finished my last two client gardens. I cursed my last lawnmower-man for mowing clippings into the beds instead of out of the beds. I peed my last desperate pee at the Pump'n'Pantry after having held it for hours in a garden where the door was locked and the bushes were too thin for modesty.

From the final garden, my favorite garden, I helped myself to a little bundle of lily of the valley stems, because I knew my client wouldn't mind. I threw them in my weed basket and they got all dirty, but that didn't matter, because they were for Grandma, and she can't see (but her sniffer still works just fine). We ate chocolate, talked about roasted lamb and peanut butter pie and a dog called Baxter, and smelled our fragrant flowers.

Lonicera sempervirens, trumpet honeysuckle, is budding up. It is native here, and this one came from cuttings of a plant that scrambled around at the bottom of my parent's dirt road.

A short game of I spy

2012-04-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

Espaliered apples

2012-04-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

For the first time, our apple espaliers look like the real deal (we planted them five or six years ago, depending on whose memory you're asking). Their trunks have thickened up nicely, and they have the beginnings of gnarled spurs (the bits that bear the fruit). They are loaded with blossoms! This is all in thanks to Matt's careful pruning and training.

But getting apples is not easy. With diligent spraying of Surround, an organic clay-based barrier to keep out the evil curculio bug, we can coax a modest crop. Then, when squirrels haul our whole harvest up into the neighbor's maple tree, we can dodge the cores as they're hucked at us from above.

None of this matters to me, though, because I am wholly sustained by beauty, and I do not need to eat food.

Chocolate vine

2012-04-16T05:23:00.000-07:00

This is chocolate vine, Akebia quinata. I have it growing on an old sawed-off telephone pole in the yard, which is a good place for it, because when I mow around it, it gets all its lashing tentacles whacked off. And if it didn't receive this twice-monthly amputation, it would surely start snatching small-to-medium-sized mammals and bundling them into its dark, hungry folds.

April's pear

2012-04-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

The weather cooled down just in time to make the pear tree last, and I have been savoring its blossoms from the back porch. I have also been doing a lot of laundry, because warmer weather means dirtier clothes. And because my stinky old dog keeps messing her bed.

More daylight hours give me more energy, which I am putting toward cleaning up clients' gardens, drawing pictures, and hiking. My own garden is dusty and dry, so I've started watering the kale, arugula, sorrel and lettuce seedlings.

My sore back agrees with the calendar: all of a sudden, it seems to be April.

Spring greetings, from my hood

2012-04-04T05:00:00.001-07:00

Sammy awaits Rose's return

2012-04-02T13:15:00.001-07:00

My neighbor, Rose, keeps a tidy house. Her lace curtains are clean and closed in perfect halves. When she goes out, though, Sammy parts them with his damp doggy nose, and presses up against the window. Rose tsks him on her way back up the walk, arms full of library books. Sammy wiggles in anticipation and smears the glass.

For Illustration Friday's "Return" theme this week.

Frost blowing in

2012-03-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

Out with the old

2012-03-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

Spring is all in a rush this year, tripping over itself on the way in (and out) the door. We went away for ten days and my dark purple crocus have been and gone. We are going away again, and I fear that next I tread the brick path to the backyard, pear petals will brush my cheeks as they blow off their branches. I can't bear to miss the pear tree. I wait for it all year.

Spring's arrival always comes just when I least expect it. I am all settled into dark, silent mornings, wool blankets, and the seat of my cushy desk chair. This year my routine is even more broken. I have told my gardening clients I will complete spring cleanups for them - trim, divide, edge, tidy - and then I will be closing up shop as a professional gardener. My stomach gives a little lurch as I type that. To close a business that has been so good to me? To say no over and over, when a sensible person might be hiring an employee and taking on more clients?

But it's not what I want anymore. I want to travel with Matt, and move to the country. Wherever home is, I want to be there - in my own garden, not someone else's. And damn me, I've never been able to abide by something I don't want anymore. Pigheaded or dreamy or whatever I am, I'm off in a new direction, for better or worse.

On a lighter note, signs of summer are early: the exhaust fans are running in the bakery downstairs, Simon the cat has taken up post in the second floor window of the house in the back alley, and the Dancing Man - in all his glistening balletic beauty - is hard at work holding down the sidewalks of South Side with his untiring moves.

Ziar breadseed poppy

2012-03-06T16:59:00.000-08:00

It's the time of year when avalanches happen in my pantry. In shoveling out the debris, I find some summer forgottens... We grew a short little row of these Ziar breadseed poppies (Papaver somniferum, or opium poppy), which are available from Fedco. This past week on my birthday, Matt put a few spoonfuls of our harvest into a batch of heavenly lemon-poppy-seed cream scones.

Days are getting longer

2012-02-28T05:17:00.000-08:00

How rabbits recline

2012-02-24T11:40:00.000-08:00

Today is not the sort of day on which a bunny might be seen in this come-what-may, and-isn't-the-breeze-lovely? position. Mother Nature heard my yesterday's plea for more true gloomy winter weather, when one does not feel she is Missing Out on Everything because she is spending the day at her desk. Bunnies are in their hollers, or under their bushes, or at least definitely not in my salad patch considering the tautness of their bellies or the delicate peppery tasting notes of arugula, when paired with something more mild like a nice tender mache.

Well ahead of schedule...

2012-02-22T16:44:00.000-08:00

First crocus. Where has my winter gone? I am not through with my indoor to-do list yet. Oh dear.

My tobacco is bigger than me!

2012-02-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

I keep finding unposted pictures of happy memories, when the world was green and much less apocalyptic. Here I am with my Scherazi tobacco. I bought the seedling from a woman at the Ithaca farmer's market. She said it had an amazing scent in the garden, and made for a good smoke. I enjoy the fragrance of nicotiana when I am moth-gazing at night, and Matt enjoys a good smoke, so it sounded like just the ticket. I was disappointed when the lovely pale pink flowers came and smelled like nothing. But then on a warm afternoon when the sun was cooking up little thermals of air above the garden, I smelled something... Dark-dirt-animal. Wet-leather-smoke-and-manure, like a damp cigar. This must be the smell the farmer was talking about - one I associate with cured tobacco, and didn't know could come from a green plant. I can never call it up on command - crush the leaves, bruise the stem... nothing. It wafts up like an aura when it wants to, and I love it.

Frederick, master of ambush

2012-02-07T04:48:00.000-08:00

This is Frederick. He lives on Brook Street. In the early morning, from his porch, he spies my dog Laika and I approaching from the east. He does not like this. But at the same time, there's the thrill of the hunt, which is, after all, thrilling.

Frederick does not sound the alarm. No - he has a plan, and it involves Silence and Stealth. He is slingshot-fast. So fast that the human eye cannot trace his path. Now, he is crouched behind his Shrubbery (which I suspect he has - with the help of his master's pruning shears - optimized into The Perfect Disguise).

Here is what Frederick would look like, if you took his Shrubbery away:

I have been duped by Frederick one too many times, and now, understanding his wily ways, I cross the street. This disappoints him, accustomed as he is to winning his nasty little game. He was so looking forward to transforming into the dog version of one of those terrifying samurai throwing stars, scaring the very soul out of my dog and I, and then slamming into the chain link fence at waist level. At that point we would realize the assault was really all in jest, because Frederick would stand, dust himself off, and trot back to the porch for a snack from his kibble dish, and a wait for the next unwitting opponents.

[Frederick (that fiend!) and I are pleased to take part in Illustration Friday's "Suspense" theme this week.]

Criminalia

2012-02-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

In keeping with the "thug life" theme of my last post, here's a question for you... If, sooner or later, all your friends end up behind bars, does that mean you're hanging with the wrong crowd?

Gangs of the city garden

2012-02-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

(Or, My Tribute to Richard Price)

This week's sketch features two of the ne'er-do-wells who are good enough to give me a nod when they pass through my garden, on their separate ways to... where? The dumpster behind the Irish pub? A meeting to discuss New Screams to Make in the Night that Sound Like Human Children Dying? A place where they sell unlicensed firearms (and glocks to cats)?

I will likely never know, but strange as it may sound, I welcome these and other unsavory characters into my little sanctuary. Not that I have any choice - it's more their garden, and I'm just That Lady, Prone to Outbursts, who Lives in the Big Wooden Box.

Here's what I've come to believe. As a city gardener, you can think of yourself as a weeder, a waterer, a seeder, a mulcher, even an urban farmer with utopian organic ideals... Or you can simply accept that your role is to prepare fluffy, soil-filled toilets for cats to shit in. Also, importantly, you provide fortification to the thirteen generations of rats who currently occupy your compost pile.

To sum up, being that I embrace all creatures, great and small (even as I attempt to ensnare them in my Hav-a-Hart trap), I want you to know that everyone is welcome here, from the sweethearts (chickadees) to the scoundrels (dirty English sparrows, guilty of countless atrocities against the ecosystem).

Roving pitbulls, one-eyed-one-eared-stub-tailed tomcats, skunks of ill repute and all other bad actors... My land is your land. This is why, when I come out in the morning, I say "Good morning, friends!" and acknowledge anyone who wasn't there yesterday (song sparrow!), and take note of any fresh blood. Then at night, when I go in, I say "Goodnight, friends!" and everyone goes on with whatever it is they like to do at night, which may or may not include feeding, collecting nest materials, or Forcefully Removing the Ear of a Foe.

January crow

2012-01-28T11:44:00.000-08:00

This week, just a quick sketch of a crow landing in my neighbor's silver maple tree. It's been warm enough to spend coffee and/or cocktail hour on the back porch lately, so I get to see the crows against the sky and hear them saying "hweh-eh" to each other. What does that mean, hweh-eh? Does anyone know?

Harley in the greenhouse

2012-01-23T15:58:00.000-08:00

Finally, most of the way through January, I feel settled into the rhythm of winter, no longer resenting the seasonal shift and upheaval of my routine. Drawing, hiking, cooking and construction have each found a place in my week, and I am able to stay awake past 8 pm! Tomorrow I plan to make mole in the morning (I mean the Mexican chocolate-and-chile sauce, not the rodent), and then continue framing the bathroom-to-be in the bakery, and finish up with open studio figure drawing in the evening (Snow White is going to pose for us!). Also finding time to sort through unedited pictures. Here's one from a year ago today.

My mother's dog

2012-01-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

I, Rosalita, care nothing for cats.

They smell, and they pester my Mum.

If I spy one, I roll it, I bop it, then bowl it,

and off it goes, back where it came from.

Screech owls

2012-01-14T11:04:00.000-08:00

On skunks, ducks, and new goals

2012-01-04T16:07:00.000-08:00

Welcome, 2012. The only noteworthy event around here so far this year is a good sound skunking, received by Laika on the coldest day of the winter yet. Even an old arthritic half-deaf dog can still roll a skunk, if the skunk isn't in much better shape than the dog. Shouldn't a skunk be curled up in a holler somewhere, nose tucked under the protective loft of its stinky tail, on a 17 degree day?

Along with 2011, so went Laika's sparkly red holiday bow, befouled as it was. The whole scenario struck me as quite funny, and Matt pointed out that there is often nothing to improve my dreary mood like a small misfortune that results in an unscheduled period of scouring. It's true. If Laika makes a wretched mess on the floor, and then stands there considering the pile in the same ears-at-attention way she might track a shrew under the snow... Well, I just can't wait to tell someone all about it. Like it or not, I'm going to have to clean it up. So I might as well delight in the disgusting turn my day has unexpectedly taken. My parents, Matt, and his little sister can always be counted on to relish any pets-gone-putrid tale I have to tell.

On a grander note... I feel the need to set some goals for myself this year, to alleviate the dissatisfaction I've been feeling at being neither here nor there. I am ready to leave the city for the country, but the timing is not right. I am eager to quit landscaping for a living, but have no clear idea how to replace that income. We have plans to camp our way across the country, to buy ducks, to build a house... But it all seems so far off! I am not accustomed to waiting - I don't believe I've ever had to do it before. When I've set my mind on something new, I've just gone off and done it, damn it. Is this part of being all grown up, this planning and projecting? I seem to have an adult's time schedule, and still a teenager's impatience.

I am drawing a lot, and my goal for 2012 is to pursue that as hard as I can. Can I make part of a living drawing pictures? All I require is part of a living - I want to be outside the other half of the time, engaged in good old fashioned farm labor... splitting firewood, turning compost, conversing with goats.

And so. Along with the usual stuff, I will be posting one drawing a week, from here on out, until perhaps the day when I am too busy trying to wrangle my livestock. Or until my goals change.

Happy new year to everyone! I hope your dreams for the coming months are vibrant and inspiring.