Category Archives: Seasons

winter, spring, summer, fall, writing about it all

Hydrangeas as Cover

Admittedly the news that inspired this post has already wrapped fish and is now likely composting.  I didn’t want this page lying fallow for too much longer and so offer up this meditation on planting spies.

“They couldn’t have been spies. Look what she did with the hydrangeas,” as reported in the New York Times, June 28, 2010

Maybe 15-year old Jessie Gugig was on to something when she joshed that her Montclair, NJ neighbors Richard and Cynthia Murphy, just arrested on espionage charges, couldn’t have been spies because the latter’s hydrangeas were so lush and well tended.

I live in a suburban community much like Montclair’s: solid old houses, yards whose frontage is edged by sidewalk and landscaped by lawn and enough depth for a satisfying number of flowerbeds. We are gardeners all, enjoying daily walks and taking delight in one another’s combinations of monarda, phlox and campanula. Some of us are annuals-only gardeners; others favor perennials, preferences that can tell you much about a person although the distinction never reaches red state/blue state hubris and animosity.

But all of us garden, and all of us pretty successfully.  It’s part of who we are. We are united by this love of digging in the dirt, bringing forth beauty and vegetables. We commiserate over voracious rabbits and trade tips for ridding ourselves of voles. We are thrilled to share a divided hosta or astilbe with a neighbor who’s got a spot of empty shade. Someone once offered me rudbeckia, cheery yet invasive black-eyed Susan that conquers a garden faster than you can say Cuban missile crisis. When I demurred she replied, “Aha, so you’re a true gardener.” We use this earthy pastime as a yardstick of personal preference and acumen, and experience as well. We get to know our neighbors by their gardens. If someone’s good with hydrangeas, that says something about their character.

And so maybe the adolescent Gugig with, her off-hand comment about hydrangeas, intuited something important about commitment to one’s community. Hydrangeas are picky about where they will grow and blossom profusely; they require space, lots of it and a persnickety balance of morning sun and afternoon shade. Only those rooted in their gardens for the long haul take the time to tend hydrangeas, bringing them from nursery pot to mounds of big blowsy plantings whose blossoms are bigger than breakfast grapefruit. Hydrangeas are a magnet to passersby. Anyone wanting to live sub rosa wouldn’t go for hydrangeas but swaths of ubiquitous impatiens, pots of geraniums and petunias. You walk by them, smile and keep moving. Who stops and asks, “What’d you do to those impatiens to make them get so big?”

Gardening is past, present and future. Whenever we garden, a piece of our selves stays behind, mixing in with the decaying leaves of tomorrow’s nourishment.  Our gardens are our refuge, the place where the mind wanders free, dreaming dreams of days to come; taking solace from grief, the sun on our back, the earth pliant and accepting. For twenty-six years I have tended my azaleas.  Some now span six feet wide and five feet high.  Southern gardeners might sniff a “So what?” But I live in Southeastern Michigan.  I’ve babied these shrubs as long as I’ve had kids; each spring they return me to my roots, to the place where the earth is red and the word “yall” is regularly conjugated. Whenever I’ve thought about moving the first thought is always, “But what about my azaleas?” Gardening is not for the rootless. Leaving behind my azaleas would mean leaving behind a piece of myself as well – that self compelled to preserve childhood beauty and heritage.

Gardening attaches you: to your neighbors, to the earth, to the place deep within you where God, nature and creativity meet. When you garden you grow to love the earth beneath your feet and by extension the community beyond; if your hydrangeas are stellar it says this about you too.

Perhaps these wonderful plants, flowering in rose, white and Cape Cod blue, their leaves large, their blossoms round as a cheerleader’s pompoms, were the perfect American cover after all.

With Thanks to Barbara Cooney

I cannot see a lupine flower without thinking of children’s book author and illustrator Barbara Cooney. In Miss Rumphius, Cooney tells the tale of a woman who returns to the coast of Maine after leading an adventurous life and sets out to fulfill her father’s admonition to “do something that makes the world more beautiful.”

For Miss Rumphius, beauty and lupine flowers are synonymous and so she spends her remaining years harvesting their seeds and scattering them on walks along her beloved Maine coast. Cooney’s paintings, strewn with the periwinkles, blues and violets of Ms. Rumphius’ lupines, made my heart ache with their beauty. One day I wrote her a note of thanks for all the joy her books had given my children and me.

When a card arrived with the postmark — Damariscotta, ME, I tore it open, stunned that Ms. Cooney had taken the time to reply. “My drawing board is lying fallow at the moment,”, she wrote, “but I expect to be back at work momentarily. Still waiting for inspiration to fall from the sky!”

Her confession of a drawing board, metaphorically and literally fallow, touched me deeply. Her? A Caldecott winner twice over? But I understood that fallowness did not mean barrenness. It only meant the creative spark was regenerating. I took comfort in her confidence that she would soon be painting again, her canvass coming to life from heaven-sent inspiration.

For that is how it so often happens. A chance overheard conversation inspires the plot of a novel; the seemingly incongruous melding of maps and dictionaries comes together in searing artwork; a father’s admonition to make the world more beautiful comes alive in the pages of a children’s book.

I planted lupine in my garden with Barbara Cooney in mind. For all of Miss Rumphius’ success, my experience with this luscious flower has been spotty.    I have finally found a place in my garden where it is happy but have been warned by experienced gardeners not to try and transplant the seedlings that sprout nearby in potentially inhospitable  patches.

Gardening entices me for a myriad of reasons — the pure joy of digging in the dirt while the sun beats warm upon my back; the joy of watching seedlings take root and blossom; the fire of righteous anger I direct at the rabbits who dine on my carefully tended plants; the infinite metaphors to child rearing. There are marvelous names that I husband into the loam of vocabulary — scabiosa; heliotrope; scaevola; bee balm; dicentra; holly hock; delphinium; cleome. Who wouldn’t want a plant called “party girl” in her garden?  One seedling planted years ago has morphed into a girl gone wild showing up in back yard and front, confronting the astilbe and sidling up against the asters.

And then there is the lupine.  This year one plant has sent up five, count them five, plumes of violet and white! I admit to indulging in the sin of pride. But it is so much more that that.  The lupines take me back to the days of rocking chairs and bed time stories, back to the years when I tended the slender shoots that were my children, weeding out sass, striving to cultivate kindness and character. The lupines remind me of the marvelously talented author and illustrator who took a moment from her drawing board to write a fan, unwittingly imparting her faith to a fellow writer that inspiration, like rain, can be counted on to fall from the sky.

The Backyard Beckons

Before I took a part-time job as an in-house writer at a local school, working in the garden was just that — working, one more chore to do. Of course, once I got started I enjoyed it: the rhythm of weeding, the cool tactile delight of patting seedlings into place, orchestrating window boxes into a symphony of pattern and color. But gardening was nevertheless one more chore to accomplish.

Working three days a week leaves precious little time for everything else I used to do in five. I was dreading adding gardening to spring’s list of things to do. But this afternoon’s spell in the garden was a little piece of heaven, backbreaking heaven, but heaven nonetheless. The azaleas are in bloom, clouds of crimson, orchid and pink. The ajuga has returned, purple spikes framing the azaleas with their zany spires. The dogwoods are in full blossom, pink as summer lipstick. The lilies of the valley are up in profusion, quiet little white bells nodding beneath a quill of green. Coty’s Muguet des Bois (what the French call lilies of the valley) was the first perfume I ever wore. I tucked a sprig behind one ear and spent much of the afternoon shadowed by my ten-year-old self.

One of the rhodies didn’t fare too well. The winter was mild but for whatever reason, a good third to a half of her leaves have been reduced to rust-colored curls. There are anemic flowers here and there. I’m not worried. This happens every few years. She dies down and comes back bigger and better. A good lesson to remember when a harsh season leaves me feeling wilted.

Moving from bed to bed I fed the azaleas. Some of them we planted more than twenty years ago; they are now close to five feet high and seven feet wide. A little touch of my Georgia childhood up here in Michigan, they thrill me with their brilliance every year. No matter how much snow we have, how endless and pervasive the grey skies, I know the azaleas are there waiting to reward me for making it through another winter.

There are the inevitable invaders: some “volunteers,” some mishaps of my own. I am still pulling up sprigs of saponaria, planted for its promise of a pink delicately scented ground cover. Pink, yes. Ground cover yes. Delicately scented, no way. One gardener’s perfume is another’s yuck.

Behind the azaleas, I brush earth from the memorial stone marking where we buried our dog’s ashes. “Beloved McKenzie” it reads. It’s been two years and still we miss her; miss her happy spirit, her bright eyes, her black nose. A garden holds so much: anticipation and creativity; devastation and bounty; renewal and wonder; God’s everpresence. And sometimes in a quiet corner, a garden also holds the perennial reminder of love given boundlessly and missed so very very much.

A Clean Sweep

Been cleaning for Passover, a yearly ritual greeted with equal measures of excitement and dread. It’s such a pain! There are so many details! But if not for Pesach, would I ever take a toothbrush to the cabinet doorhinges or run a toothpick along the grooves of the roller-drawer supports, driving every last bread-y and pasta-ish crumb from my cupboards? I love the gleam of white, the crumb-less corners, the knowledge that even though no one else will notice, the undersides of my counter are as clean as the top. Were the freezer’s grey rubber seal a four-year-old boy, it would squirm and grimace at my wiping fervor.

There are all kinds of discoveries… the missing skewers that played hide and seek beneath a stack of dishtowels; that box of cornstarch I knew I had bought; the last bit of rubbing spices my son brought back from a trip out West. We made some mean burgers with the mixture.

The sweetest find was a gift bag sandwiched in between a dozen others of its kind.
How had I missed it in years past? Inside the bag were fifty-two slips, each numbered with a quality I loved about my husband. It had been a birthday present, one slip for each year of his life.

I sat down on the kitchen floor and began to read: 42. I love your dedication to family. 2. I love how we call each other and get busy signals. 17. I love laughing with you. Some were poignant: 8. I love how you make silly noises with McKenzie. Next month makes a year since we had to put our sweet dog to sleep. Another, now obsolete, has been transformed: 36. I love how you study with Elliot so he can succeed. These days such father-son conversations run to workplace advice. One referred to a virtue trumped by the economy: 35. I love that you are meticulous with our investments and finances. Sitting there amidst the unswept crumbs and bits I read every single one.

We’re coming up on 29 years. Throwing and tossing have their place. Better by far is what we hold onto.

A Snowy Day

Realized today as I was clearing the driveway of snow for what seems like the dozenth time that I have lived in the midwest for more than half my life. Way more. Excepting a six-year sojourn in New York and a delicious junior year abroad, I have lived in the country’s midsection since 1974. And it was snow that first tempted me. Yeah, snow. The white stuff falling relentlessly this year, the drifts multiplying faster than the water-schlepping brooms in Fantasia.

I went to Kenyon College, drawn in part to the promise of living in snowy Ohio. I was a kid from snow-challenged Georgia, mind you. The only snowfall of my childhood I spent hours scraping every flake I could into a little mound that was meant to be a snowman. It never even reached snowboy status. Kenyon didn’t disappoint. The snow of ’78 (my senior year) forced three days of cancelled classes. I loved every thigh-high-in-snow minute of it.

And then six years after graduation, a move to Michigan. And snow. Which quickly lost its charm. Oh, it was fun sledding with the kids and building snowmen. Coulda made a whole football team with plenty left over for the coach. We live near a lake and even went ice skating a time or two.

But the snow quickly became a bother and a hindrance. I don’t like driving in it. And there is so much to put on. And to lose. Gloves, hats, scarves, mittens, thermal longjohns. And boots. Let’s not forget the boots that make me feel like Lurch, the Addams family’s butler.

But the boots do keep my feet toasty while I’m shoveling. And after a snow like we had this weekend there is the powdery hush that stills the world and turns our block into the dreams of my childhood — crisp, white, iced overnight with magic. Snowflakes are miraculous bits of Divine engineering, every spoke fringed or feathered by Nature’s Arctic hand. There’s a certain satisfaction to shoveling a driveway neat and pristine and then coming in for a well-deserved cup of hot chocolate.

I love the way even the smallest branches are frosted to their tips. As I write, a pair of cardinals flits through the tree beyond the window; the mister’s feathers are barber-pole crimson against the snow-laden tree limbs. The snow scatters beneath them as they take wing, chilled and exhilarated perhaps, or maybe just cold and hungry and yearning for spring.

As much as I sometimes say I want to get the heck out of this State and leave behind the snow plow, the shovels and the back-up gallon of blue windshield de-icer, I would miss a morning like today’s. I would miss the crystalline air and the utter softness of this transformed rain. And I would miss the opportunity to bundle up and go out in the front yard and fulfill once again a childhood dream.

UPDATE…………
Over the weekend we had another six inches of snow. Or maybe it was six feet. At least that’s what my back and shoulders are telling me. Total winter snowfall is now forty inches. Twice the usual.

The gutters are fanged with icicles I tell guests to come to the side door lest they run the risk of getting impaled by one of Nature’s phenomena — an icicle is what you get when water melts and freezes at the same time. Forget about childhood dreams and a snowfall’s powdery hush. I’m tired of shaking Nature’s Arctic hand. Did you know Currier & Ives retired to Sarasota? Yep. Sarasota. Here’s what Frosty has to say about it. I’m with him.

Get Out Your Trowel

Every time I close the arched cobalt blue door behind me and enter Cranbrook’s Sunken Garden my breath catches in my throat. It is just so beautiful. I volunteer in the garden (nearly) weekly during the summer, digging and planting, weeding and uprooting. I return home tired, dirty and achy. And I say a silent blessing of thanks that I have the opportunity to work in this little piece of Eden here in Southeastern Michigan. It’s one thing to visit a spectacular public garden; it’s quite another to work in one, to be a part of it soil, root and petal.

We are a motley group — voluteers of all ages and both sexes, bound by the pleasure of digging in the dirt, making things grow, taking delight as each week brings new color and pattern. We are also bound by an intense dislike of hungry rabbits and visitors who ignore the signs and bring their dogs. Above all we are bound by a commitment to preserve this treasure. We are the Garden’s stewards; I feel no sense of ownership, just gratitude that the garden is here for me to enjoy and tend.

The Garden Mother (yes, that is what each woman who heads up a garden is called) took it on a quarter century ago — cultivating the earth so that it now crumbles in my palm soft as oatmeal flakes. Over the years she and others cleared and planted, experimented and replanted. She knows flowers not only by blossom and leaf but by root as well. She is forgiving of a neophyte’s mistakes and careless feet. “Plants grow back, that’s the beauty of them,” she says, her eyes blue as the bachelor buttons she has just transplanted.

There are such gardens large and small in every community. Most, if not all, depend on eager volunteers willing to get dirty, to weed and water, with no expectation of gain other than the pure joy of working in a place of beauty. If you have a couple of extra hours in your week (and even if you don’t!) consider spending them at a nearby garden. You will reap so much more than you will sow.

Local Michigan photographer E.C. Campbell spent an afternoon at Cranbrook. Her photos are on her blog. Scroll down for one of the blue door.

Summer Cleaning

Been a whole lotta cleaning going on this summer. Seems everyone I know is pitching, storing, trying to get a handle on their “stuff.” A child is leaving home (and leaving stuff behind); another is returning (with a whole new batch of stuff). And after two decades plus there is just too much stuff and somethinghastobedone NOW!

Spring cleaning and summer cleaning are completely different animals. Spring cleaning greets a new season, throws open windows to let in sunlight and fresh air still tinged with winter. Spring cleaning looks forward. It’s frenzied, carried upon the crest of pent-up energy.

Come the tail end of summer only the wasps are frenzied — still building their damn grey paper condos in the space between our storm windows. It’s too hot to climb tiptoe to reach that last speck of dust. Summer cleaning means retreating to the cool of the basement. It’s sitting on the floor, sifting through boxes and inhaling the mustiness and memory of old letters, baby clothes, and cards signed with paint-smeared handprints no bigger than a plum.

Must my husband save a two-foot high stack of Sports Illustrateds? Surely the players have all been traded or sentenced for drug possession or sidelined with hamstring injuries. Do I really need to hold on to my grandparents’ hardsided grey valise? It reeks of cigarette.

My mother and grandmother saved every letter I ever wrote to them and so I spend time with past selves, reliving my junior year abroad, first job jitters, homesickness at sleepaway camp. I open a sealed envelope and see the heavily scrolled border of the page within. A forgotten bearer bond! But no. The document is merely an appraisal for my mother’s Persian lamb coat, the coat that used to hang in the hall guest closet. My favorite hiding place because I could always count on finding a few quarters in the coat pockets.

Spring cleaning decisions are a cinch — toss, toss, toss. Who names a dust bunny or cries to keep it? But summer decisions are hard. My husband insists he will read these magazines. Who am I to deprive him of the pleasure of reading? I save my grandmother’s suitcase because every time I slide those metal latches and lift the lid I inhale the shadow of smoke exhaled by her very breath. I am five-six-seven-eight and with her once again. Spring cleaning heralds the start of a new year. Summer cleaning tells us time, so much time, has passed.

And so I sit and cull. Remember and toss. Save and savor. The garbage bags grow bigger. The boxes in which I save grow smaller. And then I come across two blue plastic spoons molded into the shape of airplanes. We bought them years ago in hopes of feeding grandchildren one day. I make a note so I do not forget where I put them. In a box. Tucked away for the future.

Just in case this has made you too wistful, click here for George Carlin’s classic take on stuff.