All Natural

Today I pollinated my pumpkin patch. It's something I've never had to do before. I don't know why, but this year the birds and the bees have fallen down on the job.

It could be the new variety of pumpkin I'm growing.
It could be the weird extra-foggy weather we've been having.
It could be a bad year for bird and bee whoopy.

In desperation, I searched for and found instructions for pollinating pumpkins.

Girl pumpkin flower: see her shapely figure?

It turns out there are boy pumpkin flowers and girl pumpkin flowers. I've only ever noticed the girls. (Is that such a surprise?) Other years, there have always been a few early "lost opportunities." That is to say, a number of those small baby pre-pumpkins just die and fall off. But, by July, I get pumpkins taking hold and growing.

Boy pumpkin flower: a manly profile

This year, here we are at mid-August, and I still don't have any pumpkins growing! This makes me alarmed, because these are baking pumpkins, and I count on having a home-grown pumpkin for my Thanksgiving pie. The clock is ticking.

To intervene on behalf of future pie, I took the boy pumpkin flower and exposed the stamen by peeling off the flower. Then, I rubbed this on the stigma of the girl flower. I did this for as many of the girls as were available--about four or five today.

So what's natural about this? My answer is: what's not? I'm part of nature, after all.

I have a particular horse in this race, which I will now disclose. I belong to what has, since August 4, 2010, been described as a suspect class. (This is a beneficial distinction, it turns out.) For the longest time, what and who I am, including how I managed to become the mother of my best beloved son, has been considered by some (including many voters in my adopted home state of California) to be unnatural. Even though Judge Walker's wonderfully deep and detailed ruling is currently on hold for what feels like forever to me, his words are still on record.

For instance:
"The evidence did not show any historical purpose for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to procreate in order to marry. Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed."

I remember having a big argument with my father in about 1978 on this same point. My father believed homosexuality is a choice--really, an act of perverse willfulness. That's why, even though he was an ACLU member who defended the civil rights of others, on this issue, he wouldn't bend. He's been gone for more than 20 years now, so his time has passed too.

It's my time now, and I say that doing things differently doesn't make them unnatural. It's all natural, because we are all part of the whole.

Plant disease

When I first started dating Iris she told me about a softball team she once battled named Plant Disease. Great name, really.

She was a college student in those days (it was a UC Berkeley intramural team), so maybe it didn't strike terror into her heart the way it might of, had she been a gardener.

I am a gardener, as you may have gathered. And I have a diseased plant on my hands. Or, rather, I should say, I used to have a diseased plant on my hands. I had to perform euthanasia. Honestly, I can't swear it was a "good death" for the tomato plant in question, and, in fact, I fear it may have been a bad one.

I did a Google search (what else?) on "plant disease" and found a wealth of agricultural extension pages with photographic resources. I was able to identify the culprit: Phytophthora infestans.

It turns out that this evil mold is the very same one that caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840's. It gives me pause to think my dear little garden plants are in an life and death struggle with such a fearsome foe.

Here's the story: "The fungus develops during periods of cool wet weather...[especially] if the crop is being grown near large areas of tomato relatives (Solanaceous weeds, potatoes)." Just so! We've had days and days of chilly, foggy mornings, and the affected plant had been near my front potato bed.

I took a chance this year with heirloom tomato plants instead of getting the hybrids from Berkeley Hort that are especially tuned to our foggy Berkeley summers. Every gray morning, I look out with worry on my two remaining tomato plants. One is the same variety as the ill-fated plant, and all I can think about when I look at it are dire warnings against monoculture. The Cautionary Tale of the Lumper Potato.

So far, my potato crop has remained untouched by this blight. The potatoes are battling their own Berkeley challenge, in form of snails and slugs.

I should clarify that I did not tempt fate by planting the infamous lumpers. The handsome pile to the left are my Purple Vikings.

Needless to say, I am not a subsistence gardener. In fact, I can walk three blocks and be at Monterey Market, one of the Bay Area's best produce markets.

And, Iris and I are both still gainfully employed, despite the condition our State's condition is in. So, with any luck, our garden will not be ground zero for the Berkeley Tomato (or Potato) Famine of 2010.

Green menace

Last week, I regaled you with the challenges we have in getting along with another mammal. And now comes the beast in a botanic form...

I refer of course to that monster of the raised bed: Zucchini. Does that strike the same summer terror in your hearts as it does in mine?

Here is my story. When I leave home on these mornings, I very often observe a small squash on the plant, as shown here. In my mind, I am thinking: it looks a little immature. I say to myself, "I'll let it go one more day, and then it will be just right for a stir fry."

My friends, it's as if those giant flowers are actually ears listening in to my thoughts. Zucchini is plotting, is planning, in response to my culinary notions. It puts on the gas, as it were.

Because by the time I get home from work, instead of a summer squash, I am faced with, well, a Zeppelin.

I experience this as a kind of vegetable threat. A woody weapon poised over my head. Act now! After all, who wants to cook an airship? So I'm now pre-emptively harvesting. I spy a small squash and I grab it.

This brings to mind a dinner guest of ours from some years ago. It was another summer, and another year of battling against the onslaught of produce. Our guest happened to be a fellow gardener, and she commiserated with my plight. She asked, memorably, "How can there be world hunger and zucchini?" We all chuckled, but of course we did not have the answer. No signs of intelligent design here...

So, I plod along from summer to summer, idiotically re-planting the source of this problem, because, despite my complaining, I'm hooked on the thrill of a bumper crop. There: I've admitted it.

Invasive species

This is my ode to the garden snail, a creature that is a current constant in my life, due to the fact that we are still having spring rains here in Berkeley. In fact, we've had 131% our normal rainfall this year so far (source: Weather Underground), and I am bound by my drought-training to utter a hallelujah.  But, even so, it's tough to embrace the joy when I walk outdoors in the morning and see these intrepid mollusks gliding across my garden making their slimy ways to my tender plants.

According to UC's Agriculture and Natural Resources Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program, "The brown garden snail, Cornu aspersum (formerly Helix aspersa), is the most common snail causing problems in California gardens. It was introduced from France during the 1850s for use as food." In other words, these puppies are escargots!

For citrus growers, ANR recommends these approaches:
a) pruning "tree shirts"
b) copper foil
c) predatory decollate snails and
d) ducks (!)

The vision of a flock of ducks in amongst the orange or lemon trees is really quite delightful, don't you think? On the other hand, introducing a new batch of decollate snails (these ones are from Egypt) to deal with the old batch of snails just sounds just plain goofy. Oh, and, if they aren't getting enough escargots, they will eat your plants too.

So, the ANR has an alternative set of instructions for the hapless home gardener.
a) handpicking
b) trapping (in beer, especially)
c) copper foil
d) poisonous bait (yuck!)

This hapless home gardener does two things: first, I put cocoa-hull compost around all my vegetable plants. Snails and slugs don't like to crawl across the scratchy surface. As a bonus, when the compost begins to degrade, it forms a crust, which tends to dissuade the neighborhood cats from using my raised beds as kitty litter boxes.

My second plan of action is the recommended handpicking. It is slightly gross, I have to admit--better with gloves. I tend to toss the buggers into the street where they are crushed by passing cars and bikes. Like I said, it's gross.

Now, I started this rant with the claim that it was an ode to the garden snail. It's time to offer the following meditation:

What is an invasive species, really? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an "invasive species" is defined as a species that is

1) non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration and
2) whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health. (Executive Order 13112)." The definition goes on to say, "Human actions are the primary means of invasive species introductions."

So, humans introduce a new species to an environment, and if it causes environmental or human harm, it is invasive. Let's see... As I mentioned once before, my brother and I participated in a genetic testing project revealing that our ancient forbears had traveled from Africa to Asia and then Europe, like most Caucasians. In fact, the march of early humans out of Africa involved them introducing themselves to new environments, causing environmental damage and damage to each other over and over again. Indeed, we continue to do it today, don't we?

I need a new bumper sticker: Invasive species: it takes one to know one!

Sprung!

Having grown up in a place with "real" winter (Chicago), and having made a recent visit to New York, I've been reminded this year that March and April are a transition months. In the Chicago of my childhood, March especially, was quite unreliable, and featured dirty, salty snow banks. Walking to school was a messy, wet operation.

In early April, you would look almost desperately for signs of bright colors. I wrote last week about a "dark unclear space" and I am thinking this week that the bursts that renewed life makes onto winter's scene are just as mysterious and magical.

On one of my days in New York, I took the wrong subway to met Nathan at Columbia, meaning that I had a longish walk to campus. It was a good thing, because it meant I passed by a churchyard with this lone forsythia in bloom, blazing yellow against the dark stone walls.
 
This is the first year I've heard Nathan, a native Californian, ever express joy at seeing trees bud and bloom. He is seeing them with new eyes, having slogged through his first winter of chill and snow. He is going through his own blooming.
 

Practically as soon as I got back in town, my sister visited me here in Berkeley. She still lives outside Chicago, and to her, it is wildly green here right now. My yard is looking good right now, with the wisteria and California poppies in bloom. What I was most happy for her to see were the blooms on the Western Redbud tree I have in the backyard, shown here on the right. I planted this little native sweetheart after my mother died, and I put a locket of her hair in the earth underneath it. My mother was a big treehugger from way back, and I know that many trees have been planted in her honor, by her children and all her friends.

In my front yard right now, next to my garlic, I have brave new Dragon Carrot sprouts. I ordered the seeds from the Seed Savers catalog. They are supposed to be red when they are all grown up. We'll see!

All this growth is plain wonder and mystery! And to top it all off, across the street, a baby boy was just born! Little Philo. How about that?

Life just takes the cake. Or pie, depending on your point of view.

The Pinnacle of Seed Catalogs

Living where I do, I can walk over to a place I fondly call "the Hort" (Berkeley Horticultural Nursery) any time of the year and buy starts of all the vegetables that are seasonally ready for planting here in the San Francisco's East Bay.

But, my heart still skipped a beat when I saw the Seed Savers Exchange 2010 Catalog of Heirloom Seeds, Books and Gifts in my mailbox this week. First: it is stunning. The cover features a crate of many varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

And then, when you open it up, you get 97 pages of full color photographs and detailed, useful descriptions of hundreds of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Just look at a few of the wonderful names:

• Long Red Florence (onion)
• Bloody Butcher (corn)
• Amish Deer Tongue (lettuce)
• Bulgarian Carrot (pepper)
• Ten Commandments (gourd)
• Envy (soybean)
• Long Island Cheese (squash)
• Nebraska Wedding (tomato)
• Small Shining Light (watermelon)

The descriptions for each seed include where it came from (including if it was sourced by a member of the Exchange) and recommended best uses. Last year, I bought the Hutterite Soup Bean seeds, and, now that I have grown them and cooked with them, I can attest to the fact that they have performed as advertised here: "One of the best heirloom varieties for making soup. Beans soak up water well and cook very quickly. Makes a truly excellent creamy white soup."

In the middle of the catalog, you can read about Heritage Farm, in Decorah, Iowa, where the folks who started Seed Savers Exchange make their home, and the Exchange has its operations. By the time I get to this part of the catalog, I am half in love with these people, and I start imagining spending my summer vacation attending the Annual Meeting. This seed catalog is a powerful thing.

Of course, I've been feeling rather well disposed toward Iowa lately, what with the way things have been going down at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in our fair State of California... Maybe a whole lot of us ought to spend our tourist dollars in the Hawkeye State. What do you think?

If you want to get on this wacky bandwagon, buy some seeds, or just look at incredibly lovely pictures, you can download your very own copy of the catalog. You have now had fair warning of its potency.

Bermuda Grass, the Teacher

Yes, you read correctly. This is a reflection on persistence, the long view.

I started down this path of thinking when I read Novella Carpenter's New Year's Resolutions. She aims to deal with both Bermuda grass and perennial buckwheat, having found that her animals won't eat either. She writes, "This spring, I’ll be hosting a big weed pulling party. I might even hire some local workers, but that last stand of weeds has to go!" I wish her the best, I really do.

When I moved into my house in 1986, here's what the front yard looked like:

It's perhaps not as clear as it might be, but behind and under the sad little bushes is a lawn of well established Bermuda grass.

Now, there is at least one positive thing to say about Bermuda grass. It is drought tolerant. It is also poison tolerant. It is probably nuclear fallout tolerant. I guess that's three positive things...

Anyway, despite these advantages, one of the first things I undertook after moving into the house was the removal of that Bermuda grass. Or, let me say, I began my relationship with the Bermuda grass. Here I am, looking fairly pleased with myself, thinking I am establishing dominion over my little section of California real estate.

After this step, I put in a front garden, with raised beds where I am able to take advantage of the best sunlight I have to grow a few vegetables every year.

However, whereas most plants have one way of propagating themselves--and some of the vegetables I want to grow depend on me, the hapless farmer, for help--the many-talented Bermuda grass has not one, not two, but three ways of spreading itself! Seeds, runners, and rhizomes. That's impressive.

The root systems of Bermuda grass can be a couple of yards below ground. For all I know, the ancient "mother root" from my former yard persists under my pretty front garden. Either that or the interlopers I still occasionally find are the result of roots travelling from my neighbors' yards to mine, under driveways and side walks. It's an absolute breeze for this plant.

Vigilance and constancy: these are what are required against a foe of this caliber. When it comes down to it, Bermuda grass is like a really bad habit, a bad penny. You know what I mean, perhaps. In the 12-step programs, there is a saying that gets repeated at every meeting: Keep Coming Back. It speaks to the regularity and fortitude that is required to deal with pernicious issues. Some troubles stay with us, over and over, coming back time and time again. So we must stay with them also, watching for encroachments, of seeds, runners, rhizomes or whatever it may be. And, sometimes practicing things in the garden is not such a bad way to build good new habits, after all.

Catnip Cigars

I had a bumper crop of catnip this year. The plants were watered more than in previous years, because I had moved them up onto a new raised bed we had put into the back yard. Take a look at those big, lush leaves!

These are the cuttings from two plants one week. After another three weeks, I would get another harvest like that.


I have to grow the catnip in a cage to protect the plants from neighborhood cats who are drawn to its delights. The first year I tried growing it in pots set out on the ground, I'd come out to find them mauled out of all recognition.

I grow catnip so that I can make catnip cigars from my sister Ann's 3 cats for Christmas.  Ann makes homemade dog biscuits for our little doggie, so all the family animals are well gifted on Christmas morning.

This year's stogies are jam-packed with "product." As I was sitting down with a big pile of the dried leafy stuff in front of me, portioning it into three smaller piles, I couldn't help but think back a few decades to another time... I swear: you just never know which skills will turn out to be transferable!