Category Archives: gardening

Digging In, Literally & Figuratively

Artificial Intelligence, design, gardening, politics, thinking out loud, ,

I am a gardener, primarily flowers but also some vegetables. I have somewhat extensive gardens that, in April, demand a lot of attention as they emerge from their winter slumber. I spend several days cleaning up, renewing my war on wire grass and duckweed. I unwrap the hydrangeas from their burlap coats and examine them to see if this year they might bloom. There are perennials to be divided and relocated, lily and gladiola bulbs to be planted, and lots of seeds from zinnias to hyacinth bean vine to wildflower mixes to be spread far and wide.

Spring Garden

This year, I scaled back the vegetables to onions, garlic, San Marzano tomatoes, sweet peppers and jalapenos. My herbs are scattered amongst the flowers, often in pots, and include parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (sorry for the ear worm!) along with oregano, basil, chives, and chamomile. I had great success with ginger last year. The rhizomes came from a Giant in Northern Virginia where I often stop for a break. I bought them at the same store last year and ended up with 4 pounds or so of ginger. Hoping to have the same luck this year, but I know there is really nothing about gardening that can be considered a sure thing. I am optimistic, however, as they had solid knobs indicating they hadn’t been treated to stop growth.

So, that is both the literal digging in as well as my excuse for not following up after my semi-optimistic meeting. I have been outside. Or visiting my elderly parents in Pennsylvania. Or walking the new dog. Or finishing up the spring semester when I taught three classes. April was busy.

But, this morning, I dug in figuratively. I have been spending quality time with ChatGPT and have found it helpful in doing research. I specifically want to create flyers that I can post in my local post offices as that is where we all get our information. I focused on Medicaid as my county has one of the higher rates in Virginia, at 23.2%. I was able to tweak the message for my audience and then used a Canva template to create the final product. I have a couple copies printed and will get them posted. If you would like access to my template, message me privately and I will send it along. I am now working on focused on the more affluent population, largely retirees, across the James River in Williamsburg and James City County. Stay tuned.

Grow Your Own

gardening, ,

My summer garden was largely a bust from drought and critters. I did get a nice harvest of onions, garlic and ginger. In fact, there are still onions in the raised bed as the warm weather is encouraging second growth and blossoms. And, with Thanksgiving just days away, we haven’t had frost yet to make the collards sweet and tender. Gardeners and farmers are watching the climate change a little bit each year. Someone on a podcast recently–maybe Jon Stewart–reminded us that the canary in the coal mine dies. Not sure why that has stuck with me. Warnings are just that and we ignore them at our peril.

This post wasn’t meant to be about climate change but sometimes I let my subconscious do the writing, like my own private AI bot. I nicknamed her Rhetorica when I was in graduate school. Perhaps TMI?

This post was meant to be about was the joy and ease of growing your own food, at least in small batches. My goal this fall was to replace those plastic tubs of lettuce mixes that I was buying regularly. Heads of lettuce–think iceberg and romaine–can be challenging to get to maturity without losing them to bugs and varmints. But, those tubs are filled with baby greens, and they are easy to grow, especially inside. Throw a few seeds in the dirt, give them sun and water, and they are ready to start harvesting in a few weeks. I have been clipping leaves from my first planting in October and put in a second go in early November that is about ready to be transplanted. I started with a collection of 10 different varieties but you can start with a mix of seeds, too.

There is something satisfying about eating food you have grown. I also enjoy a bit of gardening in the winter months. Just a couple pictures: I love the view of the pole barn through the porch door in the second one.

Lettuce Seedlings
Seedlings & Pole Barn

An Apology to Mr. Teale

gardening, Nature, thinking out loud, ,

As I mentioned, I am reading naturalist Edwin Way Teale‘s Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist’s Year. I took him to task just a bit for suggesting that winter is a pause in the turning of the wheel, arguing that the life of a gardener and her garden doesn’t stop, neither for that matter does the wheel of life. This time of year, especially, we are treated to birds taking advantage of our feeders and shrubbery. The cardinals are a favorite.

While I still might quibble over the word “pause,” Teale makes my argument for me in the entry for January 7. He writes eloquently about life being everywhere even on the coldest winter day:

Protected by sweaters and a leather jacket against the biting blasts of the north wind, I walk along the hillside this afternoon. Snow lies drifted among the wild cherries. Where the wind has swept bare the ground, the soil is frozen and rocklike. On this day of bleak cold, the earth seems dead. Yet every northern field and hillside, like a child, has the seeds and power of growth locked within. From cocoon to bur, on a winter’s day, there is everywhere life, dormant but waiting (p. 3).

Circle of the seasons, p. 3

He goes on to describe how some seeds and bulbs actually require a period of cold in order to thrive. For instance, tulips and lilacs signalled spring in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. So, when I moved to Virginia and started my own garden, that is what I planted. I quickly discovered, however, that we lived on the very edge of their range and growing them was challenging. It just didn’t get cold enough.

Now, as the climate warms and the plant hardiness zones shift northward, those spring favorites may become less common in Pennsylvania as well. Developed in the early to mid 20th century, the plant hardiness zones attempt to identify the average minimum temperature a zone. Changes to the existing zones were announced in November 2023 making changes to the 2012 maps. While I continue to garden in Zone 7b, my parents’ zone changed from 6b to 7a, making them warmer by 5 degrees, which may be just enough to discourage the tulips and lilacs from blooming. You can check out your zone on the interactive map. It provides your 2012 and 2023 zones for reference.

Part of the reason my lilacs struggled in Virginia was also the heat and humidity we experience in the summer. They survived but certainly did not thrive, already weakened by a too-warm winter. The American Horticultural Society developed a heat zone map that looks at the other end of the thermometer and what the high temperatures for each zone are.

Gardeners were not surprised when the new maps were released last fall. We have been seeing the changes in our own backyards for some time now. Collards, a staple of southern cooking, may be the canaries in the coal mine. The tradition is that you only pick collards after the first frost. It sweetens them up. But, lately, the frost has come later and later, and one recent year, we weren’t sure it would happen by Thanksgiving. There would be a hole on many holiday tables.

I am grateful to be able to live here on the farm, my own bit of nature to observe, my own bit of wilderness to tend. It affords me a golden opportunity to look closely and connect to the turning wheel of the seasons.

The Cold Plateau of January

gardening, Nature,

Naturalist Edwin Way Teale connected with nature throughout the year. I have added Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of the Naturalist’s Year to my daily reading. In the selection for January 4, he describes midwinter as “a pause in the turning wheel of life” while “the whole circle of the seasons stretches away before us as we view the year from the cold plateau of January” (p. 2).

I don’t know if Teale was a gardener or not. While gardening life slows down this time of year, we never stop completely. I planted garlic in a raised bed in December. We ordered onion sets last fall and will be building a raised bed for their arrival in February. The seed catalogs are arriving daily.

Nature doesn’t stop completely either. As I was taking pictures the other day, I discovered Nigella seedlings in a pot. Also known as Love In a Mist, they are one of my favorites, with sweet blue blossoms that turn to balloon like seed pods, self-sowing and sprouting in the fall, surviving through the winter, then blooming with the first warmth of spring.

Winter Garden

gardening, ,

In the winter, my husband and I spend a lot of time on our south facing sun porch. On a sunny day, it is the warmest spot in the house. The porch looks out over the flower garden that borders this side of the house. Winter has taken its toll on the flowers and foliage, but as with the trees, it has also revealed the foundations of the garden and offers me a chance to reconsider and rearrange. I did a bit of that work in the fall but also have a window in the spring when I can make some changes.

In her book about Beatrix Potter’s garden, Marta McDowell comments that every gardener is tempted to start from scratch, but Potter was too “practical-minded” to do that. I am of a similar mind: this particular garden has been a work in progress for almost as long as we have lived at the farm, and each year, it gets closer to some kind of vision. But, also much like Potter, I don’t mind a bit of messiness. McDowell comments, “She never aimed for a show garden” (p. 271).

Here are a few pictures of the winter garden. I find the dry hydrangea blossoms and pineapple sage branches beautiful. And not everything is dead. That lovely green plant beside my bottle tree is rosemary, a winter garden stalwart.

Winter Garden