PARADISES LOST, PARADISES FOUND

Fantin Latour's Hydrangeas

Playwright John Guare told me not to " a lumpen, my dear" when I asked him a question he did not like. Joyce Carol Oates was graciousness personified when she I interviewed her for a provincial newspaper. Two writers, two different stytles, two different approaches. I remember Guare's cowboy boots more clearly than I remember the lecture he delivered at the local university, but i cannot forget the comment he addressed to one of the students in the audience whose mind he compared to worn out jockey shorts elastic. During one of her lecture, Oates contended courteously with the high pitched wailing of a baby whose parents thought he was old enough to begin his career as a culture vulture.

I realize that none of this has to do with gardening, cookery or art. It has to do with my new blog, www.richtexts.blogspot.com in which I will discuss writers and writing. I wait with baited breath to conclude an interview with Chandler Burr, whose title of perfume critic of the New York Times does him no justice. He is much more than that. See my new blog for details.

Meantime, the garden enters its slow phase. There is a second, more modest floraison of the heirloom roses. The rugosa Sir Thomas Lipton seems to have synchronized its blooming with the waxing moon. Pale daylilies, remnants of two subsequent plantings of White Flower Farm mixes and Klehm's Song Sparrow farm specialties keep pace with lavender and china blue delphiniums. Bluestocking monarda thrusts its coarse blossoms among Seafoam roses. Casablanca lilies are in bud. Hydrangeas and nasturtiums compete in number of blooms.

In the vegetable garden all but half a dozen strawberry plants defy the voracious deer as do a few tomatoes, snow peas, okra--planted for the unsurpassed elegance of its flowers--summer squah and pumpkins. A terrifyingly repulsive worm has attacked the radishes and no doubt it will also devour the purple Dragon carrots. Season after growing season in the garden, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Thinking of ruined gardens, I pull Daphne du Marier's Rebecca out of my bookshelf. It rereads marvelously well. I read recently, probably in Burr's You or Someone Like You that "All paradises are paradises lost." Max de Winter and the de Winter villainess in The Three Musqueteers' each lost paradise due to the serpentine convolutions of adultery. In real gardens and in gardens of words, the more it changes, the more it remains the same.

MID-JUNE REPORT

Peas interplanted with green onions. Passion fruit Maypop at the end of the row, on right.

The spice barrel also houses tomatoes.

Our first radishes of the season.

Ornamental quince O Yashima from Bluestone Perennials.

Rose of Spain, aka Russeliana in my garden.

Red Meidilland roses are blooming. Calendulas, pansies, catmint and lavendar continue their lavish show. Dorothy Perkins explodes into hundreds oddelicate blossoms and Seafoam sends out buds to partner Clair de Lune clematis. I have plopped chaenomelis O Yashima and the roses Amelia, Belle Amour, Dublin Bay, Jacques Cartier, Cecile Brunner, Geant de Batailles, Gloire de Dijon, Maiden's Blush, Konigin von Danemark, Madame Plantier, Rosa Mundi, Russelliana, and Tuscany Superb into the rose borders. I have added hakonechloa and ferns to the shady border by the lily pond and began transplanting roses and perennials my poor planning consigned to places that have become too shaded by trees and shrubs. Blanc Double de Coubert, a nice white rugosa rose was the first for which I found new quarters. My old Konigin von Danemark also made the transition from shady border to a sunnier home. Peonies and irises will follow.

The deer continue to assault the vegetable garden, but so far there seems to be a chance that we will get some snow peas. We harvested radishes for the first time--those I plant as markers for carrots that are so slow to germinate I tend to forget where they have been sown. Okra, pumpkin and summer squash look promising. I think that the deer are waiting for them to get to the stage when their destruction will cause me the greatest heartbreak. They waited until the Casablanca lilies were in bud before they nipped them in half. That is how I became aware of their infernal cunning. Any kosher butchers out there? Any purvoyors of teeny quantities of Semtex--just enough to startle Bambi?

April came in like a lion, waving a rainy mane, blowing down tree branches, making the new blossoms on cherry treees shiver. There is nothing to fear. Frost date for my county is mid-May. While it is not to early to plant peas, potatoes, radishes and edible flowers such as calendulas, the tenderer crops will have be cossetted indoors for a few weeks yet. Mine are tucked into recycled yogurt containers and clear plastic boxes. Cake boxes from the grocery store make wonderful containers for potted seedlings. I find them fairly efficient as mini greenhouses provided that I do not forget that without adequate air circulation, my seedlings will succumb to the dreaded damping off fungus.

At the moment, I have Pink Oaxacan, Bulgarian, Fig, Hilbilly, Delicious and Jetsonic tomatoes planted in peat pots. In addition, I have Volcano and Peter peppers, Finissimo a Pala Verde basil in a motley collection of recicled containers. I am anxious to get out and plant the Jerusalem artichokes, the misnamed, yellow flowered plant. Heliantus tuberosus produces tuberers, as its scientific appelation indicates. Its place of origin is Virginia, where Sir Walter Raleigh found it in 1585. Jerussalem is thought to be a corruption of the Italian word for sunflower, girasole. In French, the tuber is known as Tupinambour, from the Tupi word Tupinamba, a Native Brazilian coalition whose members tended to eat French people around the time that good Sir Walter was plundering the natural resources of Native Americas. Toupinambour means uncouth and I suppose the French have a legitimate reason to the manners of the Tupinamba slightly objectionable. Nothing is known about the thoughts of the latter on the former. I imagine they might have said,

"Might taste good if washed thoroughly."

The bathing habits of XVI Century Europeans are neither here nor there. Sunchokes, by any other name are delicious baked with cream and sprinkled with nutmeg. Plant yourself a row.

Zapotec pleated romato from Oaxaca, raised from seed!

Is Althaea rosa nigra, aka hollyhock edible? Thompson and Morgan says so.

Zapotec tomato, take two.


Teeny weeny cucumbers




Cuke





OH DEER OR BAMBI IS FOR THE CHOP

For many years my friend Margaret and her husband have tried to outsmart the deer who feast on the contents of their vegetable garden. It seems that short of erecting a 10' tall electric fence nothing would deter Margaret's unwelcome guests from eating whatever she chose to plant. I sympathized with her plight, saying a praer of thanks for circumstances--longer distance from the Potomac, less trafiic-- that kept local beasties from chomping on my own plants. Sure, I had seen of deer dance across my yard--oh, how cute and utterly picturesque they seemed, the little darlings--fluffy white tails waving in the breeze. That was then. Now, Margaret has stopped gardening, even though it means paying five dollars for a tomato at the local farmer's market and guess whose plants the darling fluffy tailed creatures are eating? Mine, dadblast them. They trim the tops of tomato plants, lop off half the sunflowers, lie on the bean vines and generally behave like utter and complete hooligans.

The good news is that deer are kosher. If I can convince a shochet to lye in ambush in my yard, Bambi is in for a little surprise. Yes, my yard is certified wildlife habitat. No, I do not begrudge the turtles the pound or two of strawberries they nibble every summer, yes, I allow the birds to guzzle the Nanking cherries and I say nothing to whatever it is that gorges on quince and gooseberries. But one has to draw the line somewhere and I draw mine at the expensive tomato plants that took so much effort to raise from seed, water and electricity being costly items hereabouts. I am flinging the glove. Let Bambi come into the garden at her own peril. I am partial to the idea of deer steaks in a wine and mushroom sauce.

In mid-June, the flower garden rests. Coreopsis, that old standbys of perennial gardens does not do well in our clay soil. Shasta daisies need to be replanted in great volumes in order to make a show. Among the roses, only the ubiquitous Dorothy Perkins, purloined from an abandoned farmhouse, puts forth its dusty looking clusters of mottled pink. Blue veronica makes a modest show and russian sage puts in the shiest of appearances. Annuals planted in March demur. Weeds flourish, covering the flower beds in great splashes of misleading green. Black spot, the bane of the organic gardener's existence takes hold upon rose leaves. For real life gardeners, such dismal times balance the easy glory of late spring. It is well that at this point the vegetable garden begins to produce beets, tomatoes, snow peas and rhubarb, although the latter, in spite of muych cosseting and massive doses of blood meal yields just enough to make a deep dish pie for the man in life. We savor it under the wisteria arbor, as sunlight plays hide-and-seek in the woods. A goldfish darts beneath the young leaves of a waterlily, in the fish pond, the wood thrush and mourning doves concertize and all is well with the world.