Last night was cool enough to warrant two quilts, a delicious weight over my body in the morning. This afternoon was hot enough to warrant a dip in the river, though by the time we got there it was already late afternoon, and shadows stretched long over the bright water. The water was vigorously cold, [...]
On Sunday I went to the Useful Plants Nursery Summer Plant Sale and bought a marvelous assortment of trees and shrubs. While I was gone, Jay pulled up the old floor downstairs, which was a hodge-podge of hardwood flooring, parquet, linoleum, and tile. Now it is down to a bare slab. Later in the day when the Sun’s heat began to fade I went into the garden and picked five quarts of blueberries. The bushes were falling over themselves with blueberries. I ate a bunch, froze a bunch, and there’s still a bounty of blueberries to harvest. So begins the last week before our annual beach vacation.
There is much to do. I can’t think about the floor, and I won’t even try to put my new trees and shrubs in the ground until I get back, but I certainly can wax euphoric about my nursery purchases. I think I’m most excited about the Hybrid American Chestnut. The American Chestnut was the crown jewel of the Southern Appalachian forests, but a foreign blight wiped them out by the 1930’s. Well, not entirely. There are still chestnut stumps that produce shoots, but the shoots are killed off by the blight before they ever mature. The two chestnuts I purchased are American chestnuts crossed back with Japanese and Chinese Chestnuts to produce something close to the original tree.
I also purchased some American hazelnuts. If I had done more research before my purchase I might have bought the European hazelnut, which produces a larger nut more suitable for the home orchard, but now I’m excited that I will be able to produce nuts for our family, and for the wildlife. American hazelnuts are vigorous plants with a tendency to colonize an area, so I’ll have extra plants within a few years that I can plant back in the forest for the deer, bear, grouse, and squirrels on my mountain. By the way, it’s your mountain, too, as nearly all of it is National Forest Land.
There’s nine new blueberry bushes, which means I have now about twenty-five blueberry bushes, though not all are producing berries yet. To go along with the blueberries, I now have two Aronia bushes. These are a native berry extremely rich in athocyanins and antioxidants. Don’t even begin to think that’s enough berries for me! I purchased two female sea berry plants, which have slender silver leaves. When they are loaded down with their bright orange berries, they will be a marvelous sight.
And then there is my Vitex tree. I thought it was Vitex agnus-castus, of which I already have two small plants, but it’s actually something I’ve never heard of before: VItex negundo. Regardless, this small tree absolutely called to me. She has a supple, curvaceous trunk rising to nearly six feet with lacy leaves and delicate lavender flowers. She really does have a lovely shape. This is the information they had about her: A veritable medicine cabinet of a plant. The leaves are anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, and analgesic and are applied externally for rheumatic conditions, bruises, injuries, sprains, sores, and skin infections. The seeds and leaves contain valuable medicinal compounds are used internally for chronic bronchitis, all emaciating conditions, to improve memory and eyesight, rejuvenate hair, alleviate loss of appetite, and to manage skin diseases and excessive bleeding during menstruation. The young stems are used for basketmaking. The leaves are insecticidal and used to repel insects in grain stores. The fresh leaves are burned with grass to repel mosquitoes.
While I dream about blueberry pie with a hazelnut crust , or chestnut stuffing for Thanksgiving in two or three years, right now I have Narrowleaf Echinacea, Golden Sage, Passionflower, Valerian, and Bloodflower that need to go in the garden, as in yesterday. Fortunately the hot and dry weather has broken with a thunderific rainstorm. I’ll pull my bolting lettuces and feed them to my rabbits tomorrow, making way for a bed of herbal delights. But for now, my soft bed of pillows calls, and I will answer, for I have much to do tomorrow—putting straw around the potatoes (and purchasing said straw), taking artwork to the frame shop, setting up a trellis for my poor beans, and some other things I’m quite certain I’ve forgotten about, but will remember at some juncture.
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This Spring I made it a few times to our local Farmer’s Market, which for me is a major accomplishment since I usually do a lot of nothing on Saturday mornings. But I’m so glad I made it, because I met Wilma, a fascinating mountain woman, and bought some currant bushes from her. Now the currants are starting to turn red. Renee checks on them daily, hunting the red jewels for her own pleasure. I’ll be lucky to get any!
When we brought the currant bushes home, my husband told me they looked like the berry bushes that used to grow in his backyard when he was a kid. His mother caught him eating them one time and scolded him fiercely, telling him they were poison. Poison! Poison! Poison! The other day he plucked a crisp red berry from the bush and popped it into his mouth. “Yep, those were the ones that were in my backyard,” he said. “I loved them. They were so tartly delicious. I’m so glad we have some now!”
It’s easy to think that his mom was being a bit harsh, but the truth is, she just didn’t know. Better safe than sorry is not a bad motto, though are there are better ones. Seek and find out, for one, though that’s a little easier now than in the 70s, I’d say.
Consider if my husband, as a child, had been attracted to this plant instead of red berries:
poison hemlock
He would not be with us. This plant is Poison Hemlock, and I found it last week growing by my chicken coop. Though it looks like many other innocuous plants–Queen Anne’s Lace in particular–it is deadly poisonous. I read that it can kill you even if you are just handling the root, if you have a cut on your hands. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that it’s poisonous enough that I washed my hands after breaking off a leaf to smell. I thought it might be dill, which is in the same family (Apiaceae) as hemlock, but I wasn’t looking closely enough.
I’ve educated my kids about hemlock, starting with two years ago when I saw it flowering down the road by the creek. Last year it was blooming on our river land, right by the path, and every time I walked by it with them I’d say, “There it is, the poison hemlock! Be careful! That plant can kill you, quick!” Now they are afraid of yarrow, Queen Anne’s Lace, and any other plant producing clusters of white flowers. I have pointed out hemlock’s smooth stalk and compared it with the fuzzy stalk of Queen Anne’s Lace, but I think for kids these things can get all mixed up in their heads. Learning the difference between what is poison, and what is not, is knowledge that develops over many, many seasons. Be respectful of each plant, I tell them. Some are so poisonous they can kill you, some are so rich in medicine they can heal you. No plant ever poisoned someone that was just looking at it, so learn to use your eyes. I’m still learning that. And trying to figure out how I want to destroy this plant before it goes to seed.
Meanwhile, the peonies in my garden are tumbling over themselves like girls just become women, tossing their beauty about recklessly, littering the path with a carpet of pink petals. I feel like peonies are the ultimate flower, the way they burst open with frills and scent and color, and then just can’t stop, falling over with the heavy delight of being a flower.
The valerian is flowering, and one plant has a stalk over six feet tall! Looks kind of like hemlock, oddly enough. The root of valerian, where it’s medicine dwells, has a powerful stink-foot smell, but the flowers are sweet and clear. I’ll be gathering the seed this year, and planting more valerian this fall. Do you have any seeds from your garden you’d like to trade for some valerian seeds?
Soon the flowers of May will be gone, and the lilies and bee balm and elecampane will begin flowering. I have really enjoyed my native columbine, which was a volunteer in the pot of another plant I purchased last year. It has bloomed profusely, and its blooms are smaller than the more domesticated columbine. I’ll be passing some seeds from this plant along to a friend of mine, who gave me some of the volunteer columbine plants from her garden. They were so cute–little deep purple doubles! I’m wondering if the native will cross with these unusual samples from her garden to make even more interesting varieties of columbine.
And last, but certainly not least, is a branch from one of my peach trees. It’s going to be a peachy summer, I’d say!
I have been planting all afternoon. Tomatoes, lettuces, parsley, rosemary. Weeding, too, because the garden is overrun. And all the while, the peonies are about to burst open, the lupines are a crescendo of color, the native columbine is a festival of salmon-red lanterns, and the blue comfrey is a cloud of buzz and blue. False indigo, sweet blue flag, and the outrageous perennial poppies are blooming, too.
While I plant I am planning. Squash in the back of the garden. Cucumbers by that fence. Narrowleaf echinacea under the currants. Then other things. Pavers for the outdoor kitchen. And screen, too. Construction trash carted away. Mulch for new garden beds along the driveway, which I will narrow to a path.
In the thick of it all, another burst of rain moves through. The goats, tethered to stakes in the blueberry field (yet out of reach of the blueberries), bleat wildly. The goats hate the rain, but I do not. I love the colors of Spring thickening into Summer, bodies of mist stretching up the mountainsides, the dark, wet shadows teeming with Life.
The Moon is in Cancer, so I keep planting, and then lay out seeds for tomorrow: bloodflower for the monarchs, collards, tat-soi. High over me, a kingfisher rattles and rattles, circling over the garden. I grow curious and watch her antics. Soon her partner joins her, and they chase off a pair of some other bird–starlings, I hope. The sky is tinged with pink. I say a prayer for my mother, then turn back to the work at hand.
When I started homeschooling McKinley and Renee, my idea was that we would spend a lot of time following our bliss. I also knew enough from my experience with homeschooling my three older kids that the vision and the reality would not often meet.
But that is changing. There are a lot of reasons for this, or maybe not. Jay and I are getting up every morning and listening to something inspirational, usually something to do with the law of attraction. We had a practice of this some years ago and the happiness we sowed was reaped almost daily. So there’s that. Also I have been exercising on my mini-trampoline on a daily basis, which seems to have a very beneficial effect on my whole being. I’m calm, more organized, and have more get-up-and-go energy. And flaxseeds are awesome, I eat them everyday!
So there are all these little changes, simple, beautiful things, that have also brought about a richer life experience for all of us. Today would be the perfect example of this. We read together in the morning (The Invention of Hugo Cabret), had a great breakfast, and then played with our new compass set, making designs and coloring them in with the brilliant color of Berol Prismacolor pencils.
Later in the afternoon we went down to the river, where I found this serendipitous clump of daffodils blooming. They were happy to be photographed. Renee meandered about, chatting me up with her delightful observations.
Daffodil Surprise
Then we rediscovered our patch of ramps, as we do every Spring. and dug some up for dinner! Ramps, or Allium tricoccum, are a wild member of the onion family, with a strong garlic onion flavor. They appear in early Spring and are an Appalachian favorite. We also discovered that the mint was sprouting and collected some tops of mint as well for our first cup of fresh mint tea this year.
Our Patch of Ramps
Then McKinley had his own ramp to show off! I love the look of determined exhilaration of his face. He made sure I got this photo, arguing with me a bit about whether the flash should be on or off, and what settings I should have on the camera.
Ramp it Up
And here is our ramp-corn-cheddar quiche, along with some of our drawings from the morning, and a quart of delicious mint tea. The banana cookies are not shown, but I can assure you they were delicious. And my house is still clean.
The Fruits of the Day
The free-range chickens are no more. We lost three in as many days, and first blamed it on Alex’s new puppy, but since she muzzled him and the chickens were still showing up dead, their mortality is no doubt from the cold. So we rounded them up today and closed up the coop. They are [...]
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witch hazel blooming along my road
a close-up of the blooms
