The Sunflower House at the Children's Museum

The Sunflower House at the Long Island children's museum looks like a fine place to sit and read a little book, maybe even a book titled The Sunflower House about a boy who plants some tall sunflowers in a circle. (If your legs are on the small side, that is).

Or perhaps bump into a ladybug.

On Seeing The Forest And Seeing The Trees

(But I was not in the forest, only the park.)

They say that you cannot see the forest for the trees meaning that you are paying too much attention to the details to see the larger picture.  I get the gist of the idiom, but to really see the forest you must also see the trees. There is no either or. The mind is like the eye in its amazing capacity to switch focus from near to far, and to perceive also, however dimly, those things just sneaking up off to the side and at the edges.

Joe dragged me to Prospect Park to see the blooming witchhazel and I so I went out for the flowers (yay!) but also saw the trees. Joe also brought home a book from the library which I have swiped out from under him, The Man who Planted Trees by Jim Robbins with a subtitle Lost Groves, Champion Trees and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet. I expect it will switch back and forth from specific beetles and regional forest die-offs to global perspectives, particular species and things in between, notably one man's quest to clone the world's champion trees (I read the bookflap). I expect to oscillate between being sad and hopeful, wanting to read it whole and taking my time with it. There is no either or.

On the books cover is an image of a tree cutting in a test tube presumably one of those cuttings from a Champion tree. Or to put it another way, there is an image of a small piece of one big tree.

Capek and his March of the Buds

"So! While I was writing this, the mysterious "Now" must have come: the buds which in the morning were still swaddled in tough bands have put forth fragile tips, sprigs of forsythia have begun to shine with golden stars, the swollen pear buds have unrolled a little, and on the points of some other buds gold-green eyes are sparkling. Out of resinous scales young green leaves are shooting, fat buds have burst, and a filagree of ribs and folds is emerging. Don't be shy blushing little leaf; open, folded little fan; awake downy sleeper, the order to start has already been given."

Karel Capek, The Gardener's Year

Passing an Oakleaf Hydrangea and its unfurling leaves of spring

(I'd forgotten that I was going to try and squeeze in one quote a month from this little book. I misplaced it though and just found it today under a pile of catalogs. If there's one thing for sure about Capek, he wasn't subtle at all about buds and spring marching in.)

The Gardener's February (from Capek)

"But do you know what? The snowdrops are in flower; and hamamelis with yellow stars is in flower, and hellebore has fat buds; and when you look properly (but you must hold your breath) you will find buds and sprouts on almost everything; with a thousand tiny pulses life rises from the soil."

From the end of Karel Capek's February chapter in The Gardener's Year

So what if this winter there were snowdrops blooming in New York City in both December and January and even some hellebores that are past the fat bud stage and already blooming? We know that the earth today is not at all the same one, in many ways, that Capek lived on. Still, most of the hellebores haven't opened yet and not all the snowdrops have bloomed, and you probably should still consider holding your breath when looking at the winter buds on almost everything. You might miss something otherwise.

Hellebore foetidus buds putting on a little winter weight in the Washington Ave Woodland garden Jennifer tends at Brooklyn Botanic

Let's Get This Thing Started Right

Let's pretend it's not 2012, but the beginning of 1928 perhaps and through some miracle of time travel, we are not only in Prague in 1928, but the internet has travelled with us and Karl Capek is blogging just the tiniest bit from the January chapter of his book, The Gardener's Year. He has just told us gardeners that not only in January should we be cultivating the weather (we will trick it into warming up by putting on our heaviest clothes or freezing by writing about how warm it is), bemoaning the advice of gardening handbooks that tell us to use the winter for repairing things we don't have like pergolas and greenhouses, but also that now is the time we should be appreciating the best-known January plants, the "so-called flowers on the window-panes".

Drawing by Josef Capek from his brother's book, The Gardener's Year

"Botanically the flowers of ice are distinguished by the fact that they are not flowers at all, but merely foliage. This foliage resembles endive, parsley, and the leaves of celery, as well as different members of the family of Cynarocephalae, Carduaceae, Dipsaceae, Acanthaceae, Umbelliferae, and so on; they may be compared with the genera: Onopordon or cotton thistle, Charlemagne's thistle, Cirsium, Notabasis, sea holly, globe thistle, woolly-head thistle, teasel, "saffron thistle", bear's breech and with other plants with spiny, feathery, toothed, jagged, cut, clipped or hackled foliage; sometimes they resemble ferns or palm leaves, and at other times the needles of the juniper; but they never have flowers."
Karl Capek, The Gardener's Year

So let's get this thing started right, this new year, time travelling with the lovely words of one that went before us, a writer who loved to garden, and with an appreciation for the humor and the magic, the wonder we will find this year in gardens (even if right now they should only be gardens of ice on the window panes). I hear that tomorrow in Brooklyn, there's a chance of flurries.

The Garden, Moving and Curious

The Moving Garden, Brooklyn Museum

Last minute shopping at the Brooklyn Museum, I passed "The Moving Garden" an installation that encourages of all things, people to give the gift of a flower as a participatory work of art. And then I bought a work of art for my young gardening niece Emma, this beautiful book The Curious Garden by Peter Brown, where both a young boy and his garden are the curious charactors. This kid likes to draw pictures too.

With Regard to Seeds

"With regard to seeds- some look like snuff, others like very light blond nits, or like shiny and blackish blood-red fleas without legs, some are flat like seals, others inflated like balls, others thin like needles; they are winged, prickly, downy, naked and hairy; big like cockroaches and tiny like specks of dust. I tell you that every kind is different, and each is strange, life is complex. Out of this big plumed monster a low and dry thistle is supposed to grow, whereas out of these yellow nits a fat gigantic cotyledon is supposed to come. What am I to do? I simply don't believe it."

Karel Capek, The Gardener's Year, Chapter 4, Seeds.

Like Capek, I am apt not to believe in seeds or rather I tend not to believe in the ones I sow, always worried that somehow I haven't got it quite right this time round. Did I plant when it was too cold or too warm, will the rain wash them away or is it too hot and dry for them to stay sufficiently moist for germination? Maybe the seeds were too old, my fingers a jynx? I used to think this was mostly due to a certain anxious nature and insecurity in myself, but perhaps it's due to the fact that there's still a part of me that simply can't get over this most natural of things, that a plant should grow from a seed. Perhaps, this is universal even and the gist of what Capek is writing; that for all that we know, even at the highest levels of gardening expertise or science, we are all still a bit in awe with regard to seeds and that if we are not, maybe it is only because we are not regarding them in the right light.

I'm enjoying this book.

The Gardener's Year and Gardening Friends

I received a sweet present from my friend Susan in the mail today, a copy of Karel Capek's The Gardener's Year, first published in 1929. And because it is a slim book and one I have been really looking forward to reading, I am trying to digest it slowly and not just gobble it up all in one night as I am apt to do, leaving myself with nothing left to savor tomorrow. Already I've read the two introductions to the book (one by Michael Pollan, the other by Verlyn Klinkenborg), the first short and sweet chapter, and am forcing myself to stop right now on page 7 after reading the lines "Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart."

I have been especially lucky in discovering and pursuing this insatiable passion because I have given my heart over to gardening (or was it stolen from me by the garden I wonder?) in places alongside many others giving their own. I was lucky that my first garden was in a community garden, ensuring that my thoughts about gardening would necessarily forever include thoughts and memories of other people, and I was incredibly lucky to study and work alongside not only the talented gardeners on staff at Brooklyn Botanic, but also my fellow horticulture interns (Susan and Anne included among them). To find a passion at any age is of course a fantastic thing all by itself, but a passion shared with friends is something else entirely.

My friendship with Susan is not solely based on gardening, but it was born and grown in a garden, the most beautiful one in Brooklyn at that.

Because The Ground is Still Workable

we are still ordering bulbs (with sales galore at the end of the season) and still planting, and right now, if I could have one wish granted, it would be to plant bulbs day in and day out everywhere. I feel a bit like a mad squirrel, but there is something really satisfying about digging those holes and dropping bulbs in, and it's a different satisfaction than the one you get planting tiny seeds. Maybe it's simply because you get to dig deeper into the ground when planting bulbs.

And so here a quote from a book that quotes another book. From Robert Pogue Harrison's Gardens, An Essay on the Human Condition where he quotes from Karel Capek's The Gardener's Year, which I am now dying to read.

"While I was only a remote and distracted onlooker of the accomplished work of gardens, I considered gardeners to be beings of a peculiarly poetic and gentle mind, who cultivate perfumes of flowers listening to the birds singing. Now when I look at the affair more closely, I find that a real gardener is not a man who cultivates flowers; he is a man who cultivates the soil. He is a creature who digs himself into the earth..."

I'd like to think that we are cultivating both though, flowers and the soil.

Farm Dreams

Brooklyn grown bouquet.

It wasn't so long ago that my farm dreams were of vegetables only. Now I can't picture that fantasy farm in my mind without some part of it dedicated to flower farming. It's too bad that it's a farm dream a century plus too late. There was a time when farms were the norm here in Brooklyn. The end of Brooklyn's agricultural era and the beginning of the development of Brooklyn as we know it today is captured in the book Of Cabbages and Kings County. It's a bit of a dry scholarly read, but interesting. Especially when you think of how some of that agricultural history is being echoed today with the current interest in urban farming, vegetable gardening and rooftop farms. Who knows, maybe farm dreams are universal and we're all just dreaming the same dream these days. And maybe it's not too late. Maybe it's just the right time for farm dreams.

Bouquet by Joe. Nasturtium and lavender from his garden, yarrow and sweet pea flowers from mine.

Winter Silhouette

A Chinese Scholartree (Styphnolobium japonicum), methinks, near 5th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn.

I can't be on positive, but I think the tree shadow photographed above is from a Chinese Scholartree (Styphnolobium japonicum) in late afternoon light. I walked past the building on my way shopping and only stopped for a few seconds to snap the picture. I did see some characteristic seedpods dangling from the tree, which are slightly visible in the shadow.

The silhouette looks very similar to the one depicted in the New York City Trees book, which was my first introduction to tree identification. One of the book's identification features is a tiny tree silhouette, which pictures each species in winter as it would be growing in the open without competition. Edward Sibley Barnard's description of the Chinese Scholartree silhouette is as follows; "the trunk divides into several large ascending branches, creating a rounded open canopy". That sounds about right to me for the image above. Learning to recognize a tree's silhouette in winter is just another way to get to know and appreciate a plant. I can always go back to 5th Avenue in the spring to see the leaves or in mid to late summer when this tree flowers to see if I'm right.

ID'ing With Lou

The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grownups

What kind of an aunt gives a kid a book with the dubious intent of pleasing herself in future outings together? A less than selfless one no doubt. Luckily my nephew Lou is a good sport and indulged me today by taking out said book and gamely learning to identify some of his neighborhood trees. We left the streets of Fort Greene with the stink of the gingko (female) on our gloves, but not before Lou figured out the names of a few trees in his neighborhood. Below Lou figuring out the London Plane Tree, a familiar site as it's the tree he can see out his bedroom window.




The latest growth and leaf buds on Lou's London Plane.