Actual Dirt Is the Only Vaccination

 

Trump has no philosophy or ideology. His only governing principle is to hurt people he hates. And that’s a lot of people.

--Gary Pearce

Annabelle Hydrangeas. That is not
our garden

For example, the whole state of Maine, because Maine's governor -- a woman, and how dare she! -- said she wouldn't bow to Trump about barring transgender women from sports. She famously also said, and in public, “I have spent the better part of my career listening to loud men talk tough to disguise their weakness.” Trump promised to cut all Federal spending to Maine.

Trump has taken Russia off the leash, and is letting Putin swallow Ukraine, because Jethro can't get over how Zelenskyy refused to manufacture dirt on Joe Biden. A whole nation gets destroyed.

Trump hates Anthony Fauci, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton, who were all important cogs in Trump 1.0, but insufficiently slavish, apparently, and Jethro removed their security details. Pompeo and Bolton have been targeted for assassination by Iran, and Anthony Fauci has more death-threats against him than Tesla.

I could come up with examples of Trump's mean pettiness for hours, but contemplating all that wreckage is exactly what has driven me into my current obsession with gardening. I've been throwing myself into raking out beds, composting weeds and debris, and mulching every blessed inch of the place with well-aged horse manure, and during that labor with dirt and plants I forget Trump 2.0 and its absolute madness and danger.

We have extensive gardens of perennials, shrubs, and trees -- a collector's garden with many rare natives but also plenty of exotics, particularly the Asians (because many of those specimen species are as close to outer space that I'm likely to come). I have two people who help me, not counting Pam, who will eventually have worked her way on her knees through every inch of every bed, lifting and dividing, and discouraging where discouragement is required, and uncovering the over-taken for a new shot at light -- the "editing" that every well-kept garden requires.

I'm an editor too, though old age has made knee-work more difficult. When stooping, I'm reminded that stoop-labor was the curse on Adam (and talk about mean old gods who love to hurt people!). Gardening is order; also chaos; reassuring in its repetition; but combustible with mutation. It's invigorating; also frustrating, rambunctious, and capricious. With invasives and aggressive native weeds, it can seem like Ukraine, losing territory to relentless plunder.

But it's a cold rainy day today, so I'm inside psychoanalyzing myself instead of dividing Annabelle Hydrangeas.

Are You Ready For the Summer Solstice?

Photo by Lonnie Webster

At precisely 12:39 p.m. this coming Sunday, June 21, the sun will appear to stand still directly over the Tropic of Cancer. The summer solstice, one of the high holy days for the ancient Druids and for gardeners everywhere.

I explain this every year, but it's important to repeat it: sol-stice literally means "sun standing still." It's the precise moment at which the northward tilt of the earth on its axis reaches its maximum and begins its slow tilt back toward the south.

The planet earth rotates around the sun, always tilted on its axis at a 23.5-degree angle. Because of this tilt, the latitudes of 23.5 degrees north (called the Tropic of Cancer) and 23.5 degrees south (called the Tropic of Capricorn) become important for the summer and the winter solstices. The tilt gives us our seasons, our meteorological changes, our summer gardens. If Earth had no tilt and was just straight up and down, there would never be a winter or a summer. 

We're wobbling through space, O my brethren, and the ancient Druids held their collective breath on the solstice to keep the wobble orderly.

But, Oh, My Aching Back!

Don't look for much here in the way of scorched-earth politics while we're experiencing this delayed spring.

I'm digging. I'm weeding. I'm lifting perennials and dividing them and potting up the extras. I'm finishing the pruning. I'm mulching. I'm making potting soil. I'm quilting clods and thanking God for no wind and no snow.

Political commentary will return, like the wind and the snow.

A National Crisis

The sphagnum peat moss supply, which mainly comes out of eastern Canada, is down by 70 to 85 percent. For those of us who make our own potting soil, this is a serious challenge. My usual supplier yesterday delivered the news: "We've got no peat moss."

"When will you get some?"

"Fall, maybe."

Luckily, my backup supplier, Lowe's, had a small stack available for sale, and I loaded several 3-cubit-foot bales into my truck. Have I become a sphagnum peat moss hoarder? Not quite, though the thought did cross my mind.

Why sphagnum is special: peat moss actually contains no organic nutrients of its own, but it's like a particularly valuable sponge for air, water, and the nutrients present in compost. Mixed in the right proportions with compost, perlite, dried blood, green sand, and rock phosphate, sphagnum peat moss serves like a timed release mechanism in potting soil. I've been using it for years and annually make 200+ gallons of potting mix. I'll be making twice that much this spring because we're lifting and potting up hundreds of garden perennials, shrubs, and tree seedlings for the big plant sale in June.

Ironic as it sounds (since peat moss accumulates in wetlands), the present shortage is being blamed on too much rain in Quebec and New Brunswick, where most of the peat moss we use in the eastern United States comes from. Here's a photograph of a couple of peat harvesters at work, though exactly how they work is a complete mystery to me.

Why Am I Sitting Here?

Our star magnolia is busting out, and I'm about to jilt this computer and run away with my garden!

Witch-Hazel Is Blooming

Saw three different witch-hazel trees in full bloom this a.m., walking the dogs on the Boone Greenway. (This is not a picture of what we saw today but looks exactly like what you'll see near the Last Bridge before the Humane Society compound at that end of the Greenway.)

The local variety (Hamamelis virginiana) blooms yellow and grows along the margins of woods as an understory small tree or large spindly shrub.

It's one of the wonders of botany that this native has found its own niche and blooms out of season, compared to most other flowering shrubs.

We have an orange-flowering variety in our garden which normally doesn't bloom until warm winter days in January and February. Remarkably, even then there are pollinators that visit those little ribbons of crepe.

We'll Be Going to Bishopville, S.C.

We just watched the most inspiring, the most uplifting, the most beautiful documentary film about an unassuming self-educated man in the above-named town who over several decades has created the most amazing topiary garden on three acres of red clay, using mainly discarded plants thrown away by a local nursery, a man with the unlikely and wholly unforgettable name of Pearl Fryar, a man who's been celebrated now as an original sculptural artist with a generous and compelling vision and a movie to call his own: "A Man Named Pearl."

Five minutes in and we both looked at each other: "This is a place we've got to go!" So ... a pilgrimage to South Carolina will happen, probably next month. You take I-77 south to Columbia and turn left, the only direction I like to turn in South Carolina.

See what another avid gardener had to say about the place, with many photographs.

Michelle's Green Thumb

It's the First Day of Spring, so what could be more appropriate for the season than hearing Michelle Obama announce that she's digging up the White House lawn for a vegetable garden!

We likes us some veggie symbolism!

It'll help keep the president grounded. Get it? Grounded.

And no greater training for government than seeding, weeding, thinning, transplanting, pruning, harvesting, composting. What could be apter for focusing the presidential mind?

Plus you get to eat the proceeds.

We applaud.

So Sorry

I heard It call my name. Quite distinctly.

So ... time out, while we get our hands dirty.