Bookish Gardener

On the tube from the land of the Tube: The Curious Gardeners

As we hunker down to face the, oh, six months or so where nothing will be growing outside anymore, our thoughts turn to what will be our gardening surrogates: books, catalogs, and yes, even TV. A Gardener's Diary on the HGTV channel is the one gardening show I watch religiously, even during the growing season. (Note to HGTV: the world [er, my world] is crying for a weekend marathon of A Gardener's Diary--trust me on this. Note to production company for A Gardener's Diary: Full-season DVDs, please, as fast as you can press them.) If you linger long enough after A Gardener's Diary has ended, you'll catch the next show on the HGTV lineup these days, a BBC import called "The Curious Gardeners". It's a hoot. The show opens with a visual montage of the two hosts and their jaunty convertible, which (the montage, that is) looks like it owes a lot to The Cars' "You Might Think" music video, backed by music that sounds much like the Emma Peel ("m. appeal") era Avengers theme, if it were used in a burlesque show. (Hmm. Second use of "burlesque" [now, third] in this blog. What wacky search string referrals lie ahead?) The show follows garden designers Guy Cooper and Gordon Taylor as they tool around the United Kingdom to visit gardens and talk gardening. Cooper and Taylor are a long-time couple, and their chemistry and personalities entertain, all while the viewer stares at the lush British countryside setting and asks, "How can anything possibly be that green?" The BBC site linked above has good backstory on the show and the hosts. A very heartening tidbit: both Cooper and Taylor were in their late thirties when they started gardening (in the early 1970's), and now these "late bloomers" can look back on accomplished careers in garden design and garden writing (as well as the TV bit). For role models, I'll take "Guy and Gordon" over "Grandma Moses" any day.

Waiting for the Fat Lady's Aria

Almost Halloween, and yet there's enough life in the garden to yield this little handful: goldenrod (Solidago 'Wichita Mountains'), Centaurea montana, blanket flower (Gaillardia), a couple of salvias (nemorosa and 'Blue Hill'), a grown-from-seed calendula, a self-seeded snapdragon, and a came-from-nowhere feverfew (I think). (With any luck, the quality of this sort of visual aid will improve once Bookish Gardener gets a few remedial photography and flower arranging lessons under her belt.) Not a pansy or mum in this bunch. Gaze upon this and recall, if you will, the climactic scene (or, er, the penultimate climactic scene, depending on how you feel about the diving competition) in Back to School, where Rodney Dangerfield's Thornton Melon declaims his will before the hostile examining committee, in the words of the Dylan Thomas poem, to "not go gently into that good night [...and to] Rage, rage against the dying of the light".

We're Gonna Pay A Call On...

Props to The Hallmark Channel for their Addams Family marathon today. Where would this show be without the late, great Carolyn Jones? Her Morticia is the ideal mother: affectionate, protective, interested and supportive, all without being smothering; the ideal wife: unconditionally adoring, passionate, indulgent and nurturing, all without being "enabling" or passive; and the ideal woman: confident in her beauty, unshakably secure in her worldview, with a will of titanium under her impeccably gracious manners. (I can't imagine Morticia ever saying "Um...") If anyone had been paying attention, Morticia could have been a useful counterpoint to the bleak, self-fulfilling vision in Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Morticia's devotion to family is utter, but not abject, as you find that her "self" (to use that fine Sixties' term) is fully expressed and enhanced (no, I won't say "actualized") in the sanctuary of the roost that she rules. It's an idyllic fantasy: the days spent hand-feeding Cleopatra, the man-eating plant-pet, knitting a multi-armed sweater for Cousin Eimar (an homage to Ray Bradbury's "Uncle Einar"? I've always liked to think so.), and playing the koto while crooning like Yoko Ono. (Okay, maybe that's where the idyll ends.)

Ever notice that Morticia is a gardener? Some scenes of the Addams front porch show an entry door flanked by a pair of containerized evergreens (possibly arborvitae) and accessorized with hanging baskets, leading to a lushly planted front garden (including a bayberry shrub along the walk, if I'm not mistaken). Other scenes reveal that Morticia had a heckuva hothouse, a veritable jungle of tropical plants and vines, including a trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) entwined with, then strangled by, a fellow hothouse crawler. Finally, let's not forget Morticia's favorite household chore, as she expertly deadheads a dozen hybrid teas with secateurs to create a stem-only long-stemmed bouquet for the Addams household. (It's the image I carried in my play-acting mind as I went about my daily deadheading of the Cosmos bipinnatus 'Purity' this past summer.)

I missed a big chunk of the marathon today, but was lucky enough to catch my favorite episode. It may be the only one in which you'll see Morticia seriously lose her cool, as her beloved son Pugsley becomes a Boy Scout, acquires a baseball mitt, tennis racquet and roller skates, and brings home a new pet--a cuddly and curly-haired p-u-p-p-y. (Best Morticia line: "Eagle Scout? Is that the one where the eagle carries off the scout?")

All hail Carolyn Jones, although I'll never be able to shake the cognitive dissonance from having learned that she was once married to Aaron Spelling.

Update (April 24, 2004): Welcome to all the folks (uh, there have been quite a lot of you) visiting from Ask.FunTrivia.com for the answer to the question: "What type of flower did Morticia of the classic TV show 'The Addams Family' cut the buds off when she was arranging 'flowers'?" The answer is "a rose". I see in the comments at FunTrivia.com that someone has suggested "calla lily" as an answer. I respectfully beg to differ. See the show's premiere, "The Addams Family Goes to School", in which Morticia gracefully lops off the heads of what very clearly are long-stemmed hybrid teas, while Gomez looks on adoringly and remarks, "Lovely, Morticia...you have quite the way with roses."

Daffodils; Henry Mitchell

Last Saturday I finished planting the strip bordering our backyard (and fronting the athletic fields of our neighborhood middle and high schools) with daffodils and daylilies (100 each). The daffodils are "The Works" mixture, which "Amos" "Pettingill" (the creator of that pseudonym surely being some progenitor of a writer for The Simpsons) promises as comprising "top-size bulbs of no less than 30 varieties, never more than five of each, [...] blended to provide the widest possible range of color, form, and blooming time". We'll have to see next spring as to how truly varied these turn out to be, but I can attest to their size...these were plump, luscious bulbs, and the quantity packed included more than enough extra to cover the margin of error for the two or three that were found to be weightless and desiccated. I think I will always remember the pinch-me-please beautiful weather, and how the clay soil yielded without resistance to the spade and trowel, turning up more earthworms than grubs.

Funny thing about daffodils. A year ago this time I was making my first plans for spring bulb planting. I remember going from page to page of an oversized technicolor tulip catalog, nearly hyperventilating with the desire to possess everything pictured. Luckily, superego prevailed over id, and I whittled down my order by, say ninety-eight percent or so, and interplanted two dozen bulbs among the lavender (the better to deter rabbits with, my dear).

Some weeks later that year, I planted daffodils for what I can only look back and describe as utilitarian reasons: they were half-price (at that point in the season) at the garden center; rabbit resistant; likely to naturalize; and, as a flower, perfectly okay.

But when the bulbs bloomed next spring, it turned out that the tulips were the okay flower (although they were beautiful; and yes, the rabbits stayed away from them in the lavender border); the daffodils turned out to be the flowers I would come to love. I can't quite explain it, but it's something in the way that each daffodil flower draws one close to look upon and appreciate a quality of integrity in its beauty. (Evil self-editor: yes, you're right; you can't quite explain it.)

And so Henry Mitchell has been on my mind. He died ten years ago this coming November. It is reported in the introduction to The Essential Earthman, in the edition issued posthumously, that he died while helping a neighbor plant daffodils. The only picture I have seen of him is on the cover of my paperback edition of One Man's Garden. Earthman? All man. Shirtsleeves rolled up like he means business, with lit cigarette in hand. (And to think that it was just his prose that made me swoon.) Henry Mitchell wrote passionately and with encyclopedic knowledge about all sorts of plants, but especially daffodils. (An aptly titled chapter in The Essential Earthman is "Daffodil-irious".) The following excerpt, from a different chapter in the book, made me guffaw (not laugh) out loud the first time I read it:

Most of my daffodils have severe defects, by show standards, but then they make a brave show all the same. I have several that are to my eye distinctly ugly, but I like them too. One is a bicolor trumpet, white perianth with a really gross megaphone sticking out in intense neon-lemon, frilled to beat the band, like a whore on Easter. I never saw anything quite like it.

The last column Henry Mitchell wrote was titled "The Dawn Lies in Wait", which includes this gift:

The gardener must acquire plants, but amassing treasures is not the aim or the goal. The aim is to peer intensely at all of them, to enjoy the way in which they sprout up and in due season die down.

The Essential Earthman. Henry Mitchell. (First Mariner Books edition, paperback, 1999; originally published Indiana University Press, 1981.) ISBN 0-395-95768-0.

One Man's Garden. Henry Mitchell. (Houghton Mifflin, paperback, 1992.) ISBN 0-395-70937-7.

Earthman, where are you?

I've been midstream in writing a post on Henry Mitchell, beloved "Earthman", for the past couple of days. My copy of The Essential Earthman, carefully bookmarked in preparation of the post, has quite inconveniently chosen this moment to disappear. My options: tear the house apart (again) to find it; get another copy; and/or request an intervention from Flylady.

Woe is me.

You've been down too long in the midnight sea

Ronnie James Dio, it's being somewhat belatedly reported, lost his thumb in a gardening accident in September, but is recovering after having it re-attached. I wish that his official website would spill more of the juicy details on the precise gardening activity that resulted in this tragedy. By the way, you haven't lived if you've haven't heard Pat Boone's rendition of Dio's "Holy Diver". Look out!

Yes yes yes yes/ Yes yes yes yes

From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar,
When the dawn begins to crack.
It's all part of my autumn almanac.
Breeze blows leaves of a musty-coloured yellow,
So I sweep them in my sack.
Yes, yes, yes, it's my autumn almanac.

--Ray Davies, "Autumn Almanac"

Slate Gardener Diarist

Worth reading: this past week, Slate magazine's "Diary" has featured entries from Constance Casey, a gardener with the New York City parks system. I particularly enjoyed: her descriptions of battling pigeons as garden pests (squirrels, deer and rabbits are bad enough. But pigeons? Criminey.), and her identification of herself as a fellow Michael Dirr groupie (my word, not hers; the book on my lap in my weblog author photo being Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs). You can start with the first weekday's entry, which can be found here.

Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Michael A. Dirr. Timber Press, 1997. ISBN 0-88192-404-0. Please don't tell my husband that I bought this in hardcover for full price.

Embarrassingly happy.

I'm planting daffodils on this ridiculously beautiful Saturday morning. Autumn-crisp air, clear blue skies, temperatures well on their way to the 70's. Yes, it's almost enough to make me forget and forgive the hard frost at the beginning of the month. The one that freeze-burned a dozen buds of my Anemone robustissima, which were probably only 24 hours away from opening into beautiful bloom. (But I'm not angry. Anymore.)

But it is a beautiful morning, and my husband calls over that "something blue is blooming by the chimney." I drop trowel and sprint over to find a half-dozen new blooms of autumn crocus (Crocus speciosus). Absolutely gorgeous. (The color is more violet than blue, but the description was pretty close for my husband, who's a protanope.) Such is my surprise that I clap my hands and jump up and down in the universal gesture of childish (really, it doesn't deserve the dignity to be called "childlike") delight. After a diplomatic pause, my husband quietly remarks, "I don't think I've ever seen you jump up and down like that before."

Why the surprise? Didn't I plant these bulbs with my very own hands less than a month ago? Yes, I did, but only after willfully disregarding the careful and exacting (not to mention bolded and italicized) instructions from the good folks at High Country Gardens to plant the bulbs immediately. Into the ground they finally went, and I must have promptly repressed the fact of their very existence, expecting only that the appropriate punishment for this gardener's dereliction of duty would be to have no blooms at all.

But blooming they are, and unspeakably lovely.

Growing season's over; daydreaming season's begun...

...the Thompson & Morgan catalog has just arrived.