Driving off to Kansas for my 50th high school reunion ( it was full of old people ) I had the unusual experience of a conversation with a tree: Across the street from my sister's house ( I was there on a pre-re-union visit ) I was getting in my car when the tree in the parkway said "Hello!" Said I, "I never talked to a tree before." It giggled. "Are little kids climbing in you and tickling you?" "Yes," it replied, "Can you see me waving at you?" A branch was indeed waving at me. I asked, "Are you getting enough to eat?" Silence, then, "I dunno. What do I eat?"
The teacher in me took over: "Well, mostly you make your own food from the green stuff in your leaves, chlorophyll, along with sun and water. And you look really healthy so you probably get enough food." "I do? That's cool!" I said, "Well, I have to go. Bye, Brad." "Why are you calling me 'Brad'?" "Because you're a Bradford Pear tree." "Oh, okay. Bye, mister!" And it waved a branch at me.
My sister and her hubbie have decided to landscape their backyard and are circling the perimeter with a serpentine line of red brick. Because they have Bermuda grass—tough and very invasive—they're covering the inside border with layers of newspaper and a 'couple of inches of mulch ( to kill the grass there ). Because it's informal they can plant various shrubs here and there on the border as they become available ( in sales and such. ) They want a variety of hardy ( and drought tolerant ) blooming bushes for privacy. They put in a bridal veil spirea and an upright red barberry for starters and are looking for a purple smokebush and a tamerisk.
Walking in Chicago in Rogers Park, I saw a clever use of squash vines. The owner had let a single long runner spread from a side fence across the front yard. There was a raised flower bed next to the house. The vine was trained in front of the bed outlining it. It looked spectacular.
It's about time to take house plants in if they've been summering in the yard or on the deck. Forty degrees is the limit for most of these vacationers, tho' some ( e.g. hibiscus, dracenas ) are touchy below 50 degrees. If you suspect bugs, soak the pots in a tub of water a couple of hours, let it drain off and bring them in.
I was given a strange little gift of "Haikubes"—a set of white cubes with words on the sides which you're supposed to toss and pick out 17 syllables to make into a haiku poem ( lines of 5, 7 and 5 ). As someone who has taught how to write haiku and written many myself ( without cubes ) I was plucked to find the kinds of words the game contained: pronouns ( I, you, she etc. ) and feelings ( love, hate etc. ) but few descriptive words, few colors and no words dealing with nature. Haiku have few rules but one not-without-which is a reference to nature—weather, animals, plants and usually a time of year in each one. Since many of the sides of the cubes were left blank ( ? ) I taped on appropriate words and suddenly real haiku!
Here's one:
Marvel underground!
It's all too empty up here
In the wintertime.
Better send away for those fall bulbs if you're using catalogs—you're getting close to deadlines. Stick in some species tulips ( hardier than big ones ) and fritillarias and daffodils ( as well as squill and crocus ).
From the "Ten years ago a good deed becomes this year's ad copy" file: A man lokking to buy a neighboring building on my street shows me the sales brochure—"Live in the treetops!" I told him the building has only one tree—a big oak in back overhanging its back balconies. It's there because when they were demolishing the previous house I asked the wreckers if they had to take the tree down too. One said "Yup. Everything." The other said, "Wait, Charlie, the plans don't say nothing about taking out the tree. Let's leave it." So they did. Pat me on the back.
My old friend Marie Kuda gave me three books from the '30s and '40s by Gladys Taber, who wrote on New England gardening for years in Ladies' Home Journal. In one of the books, Stillmeadow Daybook, Gladys and her companion Jill—who lived in a 1690 farmhouse in Connecticut where they raised cocker spaniels—disposes of both of their male spouses on page 3, "...we lost our husbands" ( who are never heard of again ). I had visions of the guys being dropped off in the big woods in the middle of the night like Hansel and Gretel. It's not quite that simple but one wonders how they got away with explaining their same-sex living arrangements this simply in those days. I'll mine the books for tidbits for this column.
Now it's time to sit by the fire with a cat or two on your lap, a cup of hot cocoa and plan out next year's innovations or renovations.
