Chain Reaction

I reorganized the sun porch because of Carolyn Hol’s two-sentence phone message, asking if I had any more of those “purple plants that look like orchids” for sale. A friend whose plant she had admired had told her it came from me.

When I returned Carolyn’s call, I asked if she meant the plants with long green leaves and purple flowers on even longer stems.

She did.

“Ah. . . that’s streptocarpus, you want,” I said. We laughed. “Sounds like a disease, doesn’t it?” I said.

I told her I didn’t know about their relationship to orchids, but they were cousins of African violets.

“I have been neglecting them,” I said. “I’ll check what I have and call you back.”

I had moved them from the basement grow light to the sun porch a month ago and knew they were languishing. When I checked, I was shocked—many of them looked seriously ill—as did their cousins.

Most plants love the sunny sauna in the porch, but apparently not streptocarpus.

I decided to move them to the adjoining air-conditioned living room. But the sunroom futon shaded one-third of the glass block wall between the two rooms. The plants would need more light.

I moved the futon to expose the glass blocks to the sun, and put the wicker chairs there instead. The love seat replaced the wicker chairs, and the futon replaced the love seat. It was fruit basket upset—without the party or the laughter. Now the weeping fig and philodendron needed new locations, and leaves dropped around me as I sweated and tugged.. The ceramic tiles screamed for mopping. The rugs begged for vacuuming. The violets and streptos needed pruning before their move to the living room.

Finally, I called Carolyn. I had some streptos. “Not show-perfect, but okay,” I said. She’ll stop in soon.

A simple phone call two days ago triggered a major overhaul to the sun room.

The overhaul really started two years ago when I sold the strepto that prompted Carolyn’s phone call.

No, it started three years ago when I experimented with propagating them from leaves.

No, no, the triggering moment was four years ago when I discovered streptos while web surfing. “Relatives of the African violet,” the site said. “But they bloom more readily.”

Given a little time, I could have traced that first cause right to Adam and Eve and the fig leaves.

But I didn’t. I showered and enjoyed the air-conditioned living room, along with the plant cousins.

I wilt in sunny saunas, too.

It runs in the family.

Skeptic Attack

(To be read AFTER the post of earlier today.)

After I posted this morning's blog, my skeptical self attacked.

"Carol," she asked. "If you always followed your creative energy, would your toilets ever get scrubbed?"

Creative Energy

A few hours ago I sat with this laptop empty of words. I looked at the half-dozen garden shimmers I had jotted over the weekend. Their lights had gone out.

Outside the sunporch window, a branch of the Washington Hawthorne that had broken in the early morning rainstorm beckoned me.

Should I desert my laptop? I remembered the advice of an editor when I was stalled on my first book. “Follow the direction your creative energy is leading you,” she had said.

I collected a branch lopper and a hacksaw and followed my creative urge to the broken branch.

As I carted it past the River Birches, I noticed their lower branches were drooping too low.

I lopped off lower branches, then got the patio chair and hacksawed higher ones.

The birches have fewer branches now. But they look taller. They needed the clutter removed so they could reach for the sky.

And so did I.

Gardens of the Mind

Yesterday I never entered in my gardens.

But I gardened—in a Salvation Army store and a recliner.

On the first pass through the store, I found no garden art. On the second pass, a wire wheelbarrow called me. First I ignored it. It was too small and would only create garden clutter.

It begged—flashing me an image of itself next to the ceramic country lad resting in the entry garden. Suddenly I see. Of course—he is taking a break from pushing this wheelbarrow.

I’m not sure what he’s been pushing, but the contents are heavy and he deserves a break.

For just a dollar, the boy has his barrow.

In the recliner last evening, the call came from the Burgess catalog—from photos of a purple d’oro, a tree peony, purple ice plants, burgundy gaillardia. . . .

I made a list. I could expand the backyard corner garden along the backyard border and then . . .
This morning, the boy rests while a wheelbarrow of bright stones waits.

The flower list waits for me next to the recliner. Later today, I’ll place an order.

Joy grows from both the gardens in the yard and in the mind.

Harriet’s Geranium

The geranium is magnificent today with rich red blooms and green leaves.

Each spring Harriet hangs two pots of them on her condo patio and takes one to her husband’s grave. Last fall, when she learned that I try to winter them over, Harriet gave them to me instead of tossing them in the garbage.

I stored the potted plants in my unheated garage, then let them dry and die. My success was limited—one in nine survived.

The previous winter I had used a different technique on my own geraniums. Based on a tip from a gardening friend, I had removed the dry plants carefully from the soil and hung them upside down on nails in the garage wall. I had about the same rate of success.

I’d like a better success rate. So, if you have any tips, please tell me, either by entering a comment here or emailing me at gardensetc@gmail.com . (My cyberspace tip for novices—emailing is easier.)

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying my solo geranium. It is a Harriet Geranium. It has survived a hard winter, it is beautiful, and it brings joy to my heart.

The Wrong Answer

When I asked my question, I had already written her answer.

“Does your garden look as good now as it did for the garden tour?”

Both of our gardens had been featured on the June Pella Garden Tour. Both of them had been show-perfect.

In my script, she would say, “No! The weeds are growing fast, and I’m behind on dead-heading and pruning.”

And I would say, “I am, too!”

And we would comfort each other.

She didn’t follow my plan. “It looks even better!” she said.

She read the surprise in my face, and explained, “A lot more flowers are blooming. Right now, it’s the lilies. Their color just pops!”

“My garden has a lot more weeds than it did for the tour,” I said, weakly trying to get back to the script.

“Oh, well, that. . .” She dismissed them with a wave a her hand.

I went home and looked around. She was right. The lilies were popping. I dismissed the weeds with a wave of my hand and decided to thank her for her wrong answer.

I guess I just have.

Outdoors Revisited

Yesterday, writing about the sun and breeze and sky, I didn’t exactly lie.

I forgot a few things.

No, I didn’t forget them; I omitted them.

Here’s the rest of the story.

Today as I keystroke, the mosquito bites on my thigh and shoulder still burn and tingle.

I remember of burns of the ant bites when they swarmed from the hill I had unknowingly invaded. Flies and gnats joined in.

Under the July sun, I oozed sweat from my feet to my face—and my eyes burned when it streamed into them.

When Nancy Van Roekel arrived to buy an Amsonia Blue Star, I welcomed the indoor break as I put her payment with my other plant funds. Then I went back outside.

An hour later I wheeled the tools and garden waste away and headed for the shower.

But the irritations of bugs and sweat faded in the light of the peace and goodwill that flooded me..

The rest of the story—the bugs and heat and sweat—is not the end of the story.

Thanks be to God.

Going Outdoors

As soon as I finish today’s blog entry, I can go outdoors.

Outdoors. What a strange word. Outside of doors. Without doors. Also without a ceiling or walls. Just a carpet of green furnished with plants and trees, a wide open sky, and the glorious sun.

Simply being outdoors is a joy of gardening.

I slather on sunscreen, put on a wide-brimmed straw hat—and go out to get some sun. The rays that penetrate the screen helps my body produce Vitamin D. The rays that dodge the hat brim raise my endorphin levels—and my mood.

The breeze wakes my skin. Neurologist Oliver Sacks tells the story of a woman whose disorder removed her kinesthetic sensing. Only moving air allowed her to feel her limbs, to experience her humanity. It does the same for me.

The breeze wakes the trees to dance and whisper. The birds sing random melodies.

I notice that the gardens have changed again—without my presence or my control. The ceiling in my heart dissolves beneath the vast sky.

God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.

For the Gusto

This is for my husband Marlo, the vegetable gardener.

Last evening, we ate fresh snow peas and raspberries, picked just before supper—along with Crappie, caught by fisherman friend Dave Daining two days ago.

As I savored each bite, I felt my ties to the earth and its maker.

Others, too, feel that tie. Mary De Jong says it most simply: “Because I enjoy living off the land.”

Stan Heersink feels ties to the land—and to his childhood. “My folks had a big garden, We each had our own row. I tried some dwarf cabbages and other fun plants. The garden did very well. As an adult, I enjoy going out to the garden to pick fresh vegetables.”

Karen Schiebout says, “I think gardening is in my blood, part of my genetic makeup. Every time I can tomatoes, the satisfying pop of the sealing jars brings me back home to Minnesota, to my mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens. It only seems right that I connect to them in this way across the years and miles.”

And we all enjoy the mealtime pleasure that results. Some of us don’t even wait for mealtime. Gayle Wyma says, “While working in the garden, there is nothing like popping a juicy, red tomato into your mouth!”

So, thanks Marlo—and all you vegetable gardeners—for bringing gusto to our meals and building bridges to God’s world.

Creative Hearts

Lois Vermeer says she enjoys “the opportunity to design, arrange, and landscape.” She also enjoys going to nurseries and other people’s gardens, “always open to new ideas.”

Gayle Wyma calls it creative experimenting. “I make a plan, then see how myl ideas for color combination and texture turn out. If I don’t like it, I can move things around and try another plan.”

I share their creative pleasure. This spring, I moved a dozen coral bells from miscellaneous locations to create a curved border for my shade garden, alternating new varieties my multiples of the traditional one with etched green leaves and pink flowers.

I decided to give the new roadside bed a background of tall grasses. In a few years they will form a nice backdrop and lend privacy to our backyard.

I found a location for the cracked plate whose potter had labeled “Mercy”—in front of a seated angel.

Sometime we shape the garden; sometimes it almost seems to shape itself. If I am quiet enough, sometimes I hear it ask for changes. At the moment the front yard orange day lilies—the ones that do so well in Iowa ditches—are asking to move to a larger space in the backyard. When they finish blooming, I will do as they ask.

Responding brings joy. Lois says, “I love to see the perennials burst forth in spring. Every garden season has its surprises.”

When our gardens summon our creativity, our hearts respond to the Great Creator. And joy blooms.

Gardening as Therapy

A psychotherapist once gave me a relaxation exercise: focus your eyes on a spot on the floor. Slowly name five things you see with your peripheral vision, then five things your body feels, then five things you hear. Repeat the process naming four things you see, feel, hear, then three, then two, then one. When you finish the process you are relaxed and at peace.

It works amazingly. When I finish, my body and soul and mind are slowed down. It is great therapy.

Gardening does the same for the members of my gardening group. Sheryl Hixson went right to the point when she described her reason for gardening: “It is very therapeutic and I enjoy it.

Karen Schiebout expanded: “Greg and I call our garden our therapy, even at this time of year when it looks more like a weed haven. But just wait. There’s always next year. . . .”

For Linda Jansen, the therapy is a contrast to her job. “It is calming for the mind and soul. I felel renewed when I can go outside and work in the garden after sitting behind a computer all day.”

For these people and for many other people, gardening produces feelings of peace and wellbeing, probably in multiple ways. We get fresh air and exercise. Our spirits brighten in the sunshine. We experience a change of pace and place. We become part of a process that is bigger than we are, and it produces hope. It opens our eyes, ears, and senses to the world outside of us.

The gardening process does this—as well as the garden itself. Mary De Jong commented, “When I come home to a plant blooming in my yard, it is like coming home to a smile.”

What could be more therapeutic than that?

Why We Garden

Last year a few gardeners from my church decided to organize. They called themselves, appropriately, “Gardening Group.” I didn’t join. I wanted to garden, not talk about it. “I’m a solo gardener, not a groupie,” I thought.

A few meetings into their year, the group planned a tour of De Jong Greenhouses and invited me. I had been to De Jong greenhouse years ago when it was a red sea of poinsettias. I wanted to see it again.

Mark De Jong led us through space after cavernous space of mums, impatiens, roses. . . . He told us about flooding the tables with fertilized water, preventing disease, maintaining temperatures, creating artificial darkness to set bloom, refrigerating plants that bloomed too early. Listening, I knew that running a commercial greenhouse demands a far more expertise than my two decades of experimentation with perennial beds. If I make a mistake, I replace the plant and learn a lesson. If Mark makes a mistake, his livelihood may be in jeopardy.

But my interest in the group was piqued. The dozen people on that tour shared my loves, my hates, my feelings, my fascinations, and my questioning. Sometimes we knew names and habits of the plants, sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes a few of us lagged behind the tour, comparing notes. Other times a few plunged ahead, drawn toward the beauty of a new cultivar.

I became a gardening group convert. In the months that followed, I joined them in visiting local gardens, meeting to exchange plants, and attend gardening seminars. We shared frustrations, we shared joys, we shared knowledge, and we shared lack of knowledge. Gardening was an exciting common bond with people I had only nodded to in passing at morning worship.

I asked them about their reasons for gardening, and I met my self. If I had to find one umbrella term for their answers, it would be the same thing I discovered on that De Jong greenhouse tour: it gave us all pleasure. But they articulated that pleasure in ways that gave me insight into my own—and increased it.

Even though none of them were trained writers, they were so passionate about gardening that they became poets.

Here are twelve of the reasons they gave:
-Therapy, peace,
-Accomplishment, creativity
-Eating produce (for the vegetable gardeners)
-Being outdoors
-Exercise
-Discipline
-Beauty
-Surprise
-Digging in dirt
-Worship

And, having listed their reasons, I’ve run out of space for details. Those will follow in future blogs.

Meanwhile, you are welcome to email me at gardensetc@gmail.com and tell me your reasons for gardening.

Why I Garden

Looking back over my blog entries, I see that critters have dominated. Critters are part of being in the garden—but plants are primary, and it’s time to shift the focus.

Plants began to beckon Marlo and me as the Van Klompenburg nest emptied. “It’s nice to have something around that’s growing, instead of just growing old,” my husband Marlo quipped. I agreed.

We’re both amateurs—and intend retain that status. It wouldn’t be quite as much fun if we knew the outcome instead of taking a leap the leap of gardening faith that begins with the phrase, “I wonder what would happen if I . . .” We have divided our gardening in what I’ve been told is a traditional Dutch division: he does the vegetables and I do flowers. We both think we have the better half.

At first the territorial boundaries were blurred. After mowing, for example, he graciously weeded a driveway bed—and pulled up 24 newly planted mums.

When he planted blueberries, I announced, “You can’t raise blueberries in Iowa!” For three summers, when our friends inquired about the blueberry crop, I smiled as I said, “Nothing.”

He retorted, “When we get the first cup of blueberries, you’ll have to eat crow.”

On year four he harvested a quart of blueberries, and we served our friends blueberry muffins. I ate crow—a crow of black frosting perched on a cake I had created for the occasion.

We’ve decided good fences not only make good neighbors, but good spouses. We keep the vegetable-flower fence in place, and when we glance over it we zip our lips, except to say occasionally, “That’s beautiful” and “This tastes really good.”

According to one maxim, life began in a garden. I like that, because I am convinced God made the first garden. In my garden I get tastes of Eden; life begins there again for me. I have fresh eyes for the world without, the world within. Some say a garden shows God’s desire for the world to go on. Amid the day lilies and roses, I sense him smiling and I feel the warmth of his love. I am renewed—sometimes even when I’m pulling weeds.

In my next several posts, I think I’ll write about why I garden.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on the subject, you can post a response, or you can email me at gardensetc@gmail.com

Have a good day—and spend some time in your garden!

Chipmunks Revisited

For years I have hated the chipmunks who inhabited my yard. They dug under backyard perennials. They deposited dirt on my front yard rockscaping. So for years I fumed helplessly at them.

Last year, Pella inventor Gary Vermeer delightedly reminisced conquering them in childhood with a bucket of water and a dog. Like many Pella natives, he affectionately called them “grinnies.” His dog knew the grinnie procedure so well, that whenever Gary began to fill the bucket, the dog ran to him, already salivating. Gary poured a bucket of water down the grinnie hole, and when it scrambled up to avoid drowning, the dog attacked.

I didn’t have a dog, but I told Gary I could substitute a shovel, and whack the chipmunk when it surfaced.

I didn’t follow through. The thought of blood oozing around a stripe stopped me.

I bought a live-catch trap instead. The first week I caught nothing. I asked my engineer husband to check the trap. “Carol,” he scolded. “The way you’ve set this trap, it would take an elephant to trip it.”

Trap properly set, I began catching them, one after another. I showed my first catch to Gary, and told him I wouldn’t be buying a dog or whacking away with a shovel after all.

I released them on the far side of the Skunk River. Gary teased me they would find their way back across the bridge, but he didn’t convince me.

Some were mature adults, others young. One morning, when I was releasing a young one, I noticed that all the trap’s rubber knobs were gnawed and rough. I knew its mother had been frantically trying to free it in the night. The next day, I was sure I had caught its mother, and promptly brought her to her new riverside home.

I began to picture the Skunk river bank as the site of a vast celebration—a clan of chipmunks rejoicing to be together again and free. I heard them telling stories of their great journeys in the darkness and strange roaring, up hills and down them to this Canaan across the Jordan.

This spring, the Skunk River flooded not only the bank but acres and acres of adjacent farmland. I concluded the great flood of 2008 had ended the great reunion.

I was surprisingly sad.

But I have begun repopulating their promised land, and I will continue to do so as long as they continue to propagate in my yard.

Someday, ages hence, I may even start calling them “grinnies.”

The Twentieth Chipmunk

Last summer I trapped sixteen chipmunks. This summer I had trapped just two more— chipmunks nineteen and twenty, caught in the act of eating together.

I took them across two rivers to release them—as I had seventeen previous chipmunks. (One had died of dehydration and desperation in the August sun.)

These sibling chipmunks waited for their release overnight and through a mild June morning. I went through the usual ritual, placing the cage in a plastic box to protect my trunk from chipmunk pee, driving across Thunder Creek and the Skunk River, pointing the cage toward the tall grass and opening the cage.

Chipmunk nineteen rocketed toward the grass, as had its previous seventeen relatives. But chipmunk twenty wrapped its claws around the cage floor. I turned the trap upside and it clung more tightly to what was now its ceiling. I up-ended it and it remained fixed to the wall. I finally shook its cage, producing level 5 earthquakes in its mini-world. It plunged reluctantly into the grass and crouched there without moving.

In fairness to number twenty, I don’t think he was feeling well. His fur was a bit matted, and he looked a bit thin. Perhaps he had the beginning of dehydration—his sibling must been more hydrated when their foray into the cage began. Or perhaps he had chipmunk flu. Or maybe he had heard horror stories about chipmunks drowning in their bottomland homes in the Iowa floods of ’08.

But, whatever the reason, he chose the familiar cage instead of the freedom of the grass.

Foolish chipmunk.

Foolish me.

Charred Tree

This spring in place of raking, I burned some winter debris from my gardens. I chose a windless day, and before igniting the grasses in two front-yard gardens near the house, I readied a water bucket and hose.

They burned slowly and gloriously to the ground, along with surrounding birch leaves.

The back corner garden was farther from the house--too far for risk. Now an experienced fire fighter, I left the hose and bucket in the front yard.

Those stands of miscanthus grass and hibiscus also burned glorious and golden, also igniting leaves--abundantly supplied by backyard oaks. The flames moved along a trail of leaves toward an arbor vita. I knew its moist green needles were not at risk.

I didn’t count on the dead brown needles lurking inside. Fire whooshed upward, engulfed the green needles, and emitted a pillar of smoke.

I knew a run for the water was futile. I watched as a black skeleton emerged from the flames. Then I assessed the damage. A few green needles still dangled from the west branches. Could these bones live?

I have now watched the arbor vita's charred branches for a month, as I raked away remaining leaves, divided dwarf fountain grasses, and edged the bed. I have lost hope of a resurrection, but I have not cut down the tree.

My gardens are on Pella’s Garden Tour in June. I don’t want a charred arbor vita shouting my shortcomings to the world. Tourists will gaze at the black bones, weigh my garden in the balance, and find it wanting.

I share their judgement. I was negligent: I should have had the hose at hand. I was ignorant: I didn’t know the arbor vitae’s green veneer concealed a tinder pile.

I decide to finish what the fire began.

Saw in hand, I pause. I remember the moment of the whoosh, the orange tongues, the pouring smoke—and how I felt.

I watched ascending billows, heard the crackle and roar, and stood in awe. Even a hose at hand would not have saved it. In the twinkling of an eye, the arbor vita was transformed by power unplanned, unforeseen--and totally beyond my control.

I didn’t hear a voice, but I should have taken off my shoes.

I return the saw to the shop.

For this season, at least, I will leave the charred branches in the corner of my backyard garden, a reminder of a burning bush, of holy ground.

Understanding Woody

Yesterday morning in Orange City, a robin woke me with window pecking. Every spring for ten years since the house where we spent the weekend was built, a robin has tried repeatedly to reclaim its nesting space—and failed. Is it the same robin or second-generation robin, the nesting location imprinted its brain? I don't know.

I do know I prefer its gentle pecks to Woody's dive-bombing the patio doors of our Pella home. Since October of last year, a red-bellied woodpecker has regularly attacked our patio doors with a loud ka-thunk--a sharp “ka” when his beak hits and a “thunk” when his belly does. On impact he spews the glass with black and white streams.

He remains airborne, reverses direction, and perches on the grill cover or patio chair until he gathers strength to try again, first on one pane, then another.

The attacks are new this year, so I know he’s not attempting to re-establish a nest. Our house has claimed this territory for 20 years.

At first I thought he was angry about empty bird feeders, so I re-filled them. Woody attacked with a full belly, spewing even longer rivulets.

Friends told us bluebirds had attacked their panes when they saw movement in the house, defending their territory from invasion. Our bird attacks even empty rooms.

According to an online source, male woodpeckers attack windows during mating season, mistaking their reflection for competing males. But the mating season is spring, not fall.

Failing in diagnosis, I treat the symptoms. I splatter yellow post-its on the panes without success. I tie a helium balloon to the patio chair and succeed too well. Every neighborhood songbird is scared away from the re-filled feeders.

I remove the balloon. Both songbirds and attacks return.

My hairdresser once told me about an owl who window-peeked on them each evening, moving from perch to perch around the house to peer into the room they occupied. One rainy evening, attempting a better view, the owl chose highlines—and electrocution. Our backyard has no highlines.

My husband grumbles. He scrubs the grill cover while I wash windows. “Dumb bird,” he says. But Woody's not birdbrained. He remembers where the feeders are and how to build a nest.

For months I fail to find a better diagnosis. Then, one winter day while reading pop psychology I find a description of Woody— “repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting different results.”

It's an electrifying discovery. Woody's not stupid. He's neurotic!

The attacks are continuing this spring, but I'm not repeating my well-worn defences, expecting different results.

For avian neurosis, at least, there has been no documented case of bird-to-human transmission.

In the Beginning

In the beginning,
God created in me a formless hunger
to share the mysterious peace and pleasure
that fill me in the garden.

A book? Overwhelming.
A column? Demanding deadlines.
Personal journaling? Lonely.

Then I met blogging,
and "In the Garden" was conceived.

It begins in personal journaling,
offers me a column without deadlines,
and may morph someday into a book.

It's spring. I've begun clearing last year's leavings and sewing seeds.

And, this year, I've also launched a blog.