Sunday Dinner: What’s New?

New growth emerges from D. ‘Autumn Brilliance’

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“Life is a concept, like the “universe,”

that expands as soon as we reach

what we think is its edge.”

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Kamand Kojouri

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“In new surroundings, one grows new eyes.”

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Marty Rubin

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“Change is like the skin peeling off of a snake.

It is slow. It is sticky.

And sometimes you have to rub against a hard place

to pull yourself through it.

But in the end, you realize

that it was worth it all

to get the the new place

and new person you have become.”

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Stella Payton

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“Nature is not about preserving old things,

but about creating new ones.

New life. New ideas.”

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Gemma Malley

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“Accept that you are not finished,

and a new and better life

is just beginning.”

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Bryant McGill

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“And in the evening
After the fire and the light
One thing is certain: Nothing can hold back the light
Time is relentless
And as the past disappears
We’re on the verge of all things new”

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Billy Joel

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“When we love,

we always strive to become better than we are.

When we strive to become better than we are,

everything around us

becomes better too.”

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Paulo Coelho

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Please visit my new website, Illuminations: Walking In Beauty Every Day

Six On Saturday: For the Love of Trees

Native redbud, Cercis canadensis, glows against white dogwood flowers and emerging green leaves on nearby trees.

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In youth we plant annuals.  By middle age fill our gardens with perennials.  As we grow more keenly aware of passing time we turn to trees.  There is comfort in trees, and economy.  A single flowering tree can bear hundreds, thousands of flowers all opening over a few fleeting days.

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Magnolia liliflora holds elegant pink flowers against a backdrop of white dogwood blossoms.  Our several trees were young saplings when we came to this garden, left by the previous owner.   Now each has grown into a magnificent, flower covered tree.

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I’ve been very focused on trees lately.  I took an intensive three month Tree Steward course this winter, which has given me new tools to observe, identify and appreciate a wider variety of trees.   I’ve learned more about what trees need to thrive and how they grow.  I’ve been planting tree seeds, rooting cuttings of twigs, and watching for emerging volunteer seedlings of desirable trees.

It sounds trite to say that, ‘trees are a gift of nature.’  We can all acknowledge this, particularly when we pause to think of their many environmental benefits.  Trees hold the earth against erosion, help process excess ground water after a heavy rain, filter pollutants out of the air and refresh it with fresh oxygen.  They provide shade on hot sunny days, offer privacy, and improve the soil.  Trees feed and shelter birds, butterflies and many other insects.  Many also provide food and medicines for us.  So many benefits from these incredible plants!

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Our friends at Homestead Garden Center gave me this hybrid redbud tree one cold November day, when it was maybe 10″ tall. I grew it in a pot with spring bulbs for a season, and then moved it to its permanent spot on a hill in our back garden.  This is its first spring to bloom.

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But many of our trees quite literally are gifts.    They either were handed to us by a friend, while quite small and growing in a pot, or they have popped up in the garden where their seed was dropped by a bird or squirrel.  How exciting to find a desirable tree growing in the garden where it can live for decades to come.

A few years ago I was searching for native holly, Ilex opaca, through all of the local nurseries.  I wanted some for a project I was working on at the time and absolutely couldn’t find a single one for sale.  I ended up buying six hybrid hollies instead.

But this winter, I was out walking in our garden and noticed holly seedlings literally everywhere!  If we allow all of these to grow, our garden will become a holly forest in just a few years.   We’ve found many seedlings of other favorite trees:  dogwood, redbud, Magnolia and oak.   Who needs to hire a landscaper or shop the garden center when nature provides the perfect trees for our site?

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Our neighbor helped us dig this beautiful Magnolia grandiflora out of his yard one summer after we lost many backyard trees to a storm.  It was a little seedling of his own Magnolia, and is now growing into its beauty. I’m hoping for flowers one summer soon.  Southern Magnolias once only grew as far north as the Carolina state line.  Now, they have naturalized throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

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I’ve been propagating native trees this winter to sell through our local plant sales, to make natives available to people in our community who want them.  There are so many wildlife benefits to growing native plants, but they also grow very independently, without much fuss or care from the gardener.

I discovered that buying native tree species isn’t as easy as you might like.  Most garden centers and nurseries carry the latest and greatest hybrid ‘nativar,’ or ornamental from Asia.  Finding good, solid native Virginia trees commercially is a challenge.  And so I’m hoping to fill that niche and increase interest in native trees within my own community.  Our plant sales have been rescheduled from April and May to October, but that just gives these baby trees a bit longer to grow.

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This native red buckeye, Aesculus pavia, volunteered in our yard. It was broken to the ground in our 2013 storm, and has regrown from its roots. It is spectacular in bloom, and attracts many pollinators to its beautiful red flowers. Sometimes, the hummingbirds return early enough to enjoy it.  Like the Magnolia, the buckeye was once native to our south, but has naturalized further north in recent years.

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Have you planted a tree lately?  I grow trees in pots as well as in the ground.  Whey they outgrow their pots, I often transplant them into the garden.  But one can just get a larger pot, or begin to prune their roots and keep them small.

At the moment, I have a few acorns just emerging in paper cups.  I’ll soon tear the bottom of the cup a bit to make easy passage for their roots, and plant the tree, still in its cup, into a gallon pot and grow it on.

For the love of trees leads one to want to share them, as well as propagate and nurture them.  Trees make superb garden companions; constant, patient, easy to live with, and always surprising us with something new.

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I dug these two red maples from my parents yard when they were tiny seedlings, and grew them in pots on the deck for several years before planting them out into the garden. Deer will nibble young maples, so it is wise to protect them until they mature.

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Woodland Gnome 2020

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An easy way to root hardwood cuttings over winter is to simply trim them and stick them in a potted plant outdoors.   By mid-spring, most will have enough roots to support some leaves.  The nearest cutting is of the red buckeye, and will soon be potted up and offered at our autumn plant sale.

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Please visit my new website, Illuminations: Walking In Beauty Every Day

Many thanks to the wonderful ‘Six on Saturday’ meme sponsored by The Propagator

Sunday Dinner: Never Assume….

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“Advances are made by answering questions.

Discoveries are made by questioning answers.

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Bernard Haisch

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“Your assumptions are your windows on the world.

Scrub them off every once in a while,

or the light won’t come in.”

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Isaac Asimov

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“It is useless to attempt

to reason a man out of a thing

he was never reasoned into.”

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Jonathan Swift

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“Assumptions are maintained by the hug of history.

Yet, history does not guarantee their validity,

nor does it ever reassess their validity.”

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Michael Michalko

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“You think you know this story.
You do not.”

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Jane Yolen

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“Don’t build roadblocks out of assumptions.”

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Lorii Myers

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“The surface of the earth is soft

and impressible by the feet of men;

and so with the paths which the mind travels.

How worn and dusty, then,

must be the highways of the world,

how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

I did not wish to take a cabin passage,

but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world,

for there I could best see the moonlight

amid the mountains.”

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Henry David Thoreau

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“There was no Jedi so wise

that he could not be undone

by his own assumptions.”

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Claudia Gray

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“Assumptions close doors.

Intrigue opens them.”
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Sam Owen

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“You find the magic of the world in the margin for error.”
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Heart of Dixie

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Sunday Dinner: Symmetrical

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“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open,

you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated

as birds’ wings.”

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Jelaluddin Rumi

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“There are moments when i wish i could roll back the clock

and take all the sadness away,

but i have a feeling that if i did,

the joy would be gone as well.

So i take the memories as they come,

accepting them all,

letting them guide me whenever i can.”

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Nicholas Sparks

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“He felt that there is a loose balance of good and evil,

and that the art of living

consists in getting the greatest good

out of the greatest evil.”

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Machado de Assis

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“To light a candle is to cast a shadow…”

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Ursula K. Le Guin

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“Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos,

including orderliness, balance, harmony,

logic, and abstract beauty.”

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Deepak Chopra

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“what is joy without sorrow?

what is success without failure?

what is a win without a loss?

what is health without illness?

you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other.

there is always going to be suffering.

it’s how you look at your suffering,

how you deal with it, that will define you.”

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mark twain

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Photos by Woodand Gnome 2020

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“You must let what happens happen.

Everything must be equal in your eyes,

good and evil, beautiful and ugly,

foolish and wise.”
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Michael Ende

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In memory of Robert Nowak 1941-2020

and for those he’s left behind

Sunday Dinner: Allies

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“Trees in fog stand without leaves,

dark stems in a maze of inexhaustible intricacy.

Patterns laid upon patterns in a seeming randomness

that gives way to a single beautiful scene.” 

Akiva Silver

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“We all have a lot to learn about living on this Earth. 

It is a strange and wild place

with endless nuance and variation. 

As soon as we learn something, we find more questions.”

Akiva Silver

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“When I look at the sky, what I see there is not simply blue. 

There’s a radiance, an energy, a power. 

It is from this power that trees feed. 

Literally building their bodies out of the radiant sky,

trees of power are strong beings to ally ourselves with.”

Akiva Silver

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“Trees speak to our souls because they offer life to our bodies,

a timeless proposition that predates and outlasts us. 

Trees connect us to forever.”

Samuel Thayer from the foreword to

Trees of Power- Ten Essential Arboreal Allies by Akiva Silver

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“Trees beckon us to sit at their feet, humbly, and listen. 

They speak of the supposedly distant past,

reminding us that it was scarcely more than yesterday. 

They link us to a future that becomes, through them,

imaginable, almost palpable. 

Perhaps we cannot guess what the future holds,

but we can plant it.”

Samuel Thayer

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Trees are the answer to many of our ills,

and the ladder to many of our dreams. 

They are the arms and hands of the Earth,

reaching up to the heavens on our behalf,

grasping the slippery currency of sunlight and rendering it,

through their wondrous alchemy,

in to the stuff of life –

our life and theirs.”

Samuel Thayer

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“We breathe these trees through our lungs,

shelter ourselves with their wood,

and fill our bodies with the energy of their fruit.

Akiva Silver

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“We live at a time where there is widespread disturbance all around us. 

The ground is open and waiting for seeds. 

We can bemoan the tragedies that nature has endured

or we can cast seeds and plant a future.” 

Akiva Silver

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Every seed, cutting or small tree that you ever hold in your hands

wants to live.  It wants the same thing you do. 

You are its ally, as much as it, yours. 

You are able to see and do things that are not possible for the plant. 

Humans can be amazing helpers to the plants we choose to work with. 

Alliances work both ways.”

Akiva Silver

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“Partnering with trees is as natural as breathing. 

We inhale their exhalations and they inhale ours. 

We are designed to work with each other.”

Akiva Silver

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Six on Saturday: Evergreen

Helleborus

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By January autumn’s leaves have mostly fallen and anything evergreen dazzles in the fleeting winter sun.  I anticipate this quiet time of the year when one can see deeply into the roadside woods, admiring the stands of pines, hollies, Magnolias and myrtles normally hidden from view by the leafy, growing forest.

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American Holly surrounded by pines.

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After the year’s many colorful extravagances, the restful simplicity of bared bark, buff leaf litter and glowing evergreens stands in elegant contrast to the other seasons’ beauties.

At home, too, evergreen perennials peek through the fallen leaves, a deep emerald green.  Pointy ivy leaves scramble across the ground and spill from pots on the patio.  Fresh, wrinkled Helleborus leaves emerge from the chilled earth embracing stems of unfolding flowers.

What a delight to see these winter treasures braving the worst weather of the year, unflinching under a frosty glaze.

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Mahonia aquifolium

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Our Mahohias stand crowned with golden flowers this week.  Filled with nectar, they feed native bees and other pollinators who venture out on warmish days.  As we admired a particularly lush stand of Mahonia this morning, a brilliant red cardinal dropped out of the sky to land on its uppermost branch.  Perhaps it was looking for its breakfast, too.

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Camellia sasanqua

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Yucca and German Iris, rosemary, parsley, thyme, Arum and tiny Cyclamen leaves soak up the sun and stand resolute in the face of winter.  A well planned garden needs these touches of evergreen to carry us through until spring.

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Thyme

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No blazing summer Dahlia will ever touch me in the same way as richly green Arum, melting the snow around itself, its leaves unmarred by ice.

These loyalest of garden plants remain with us through the difficulties of winter, inspiring us with their fortitude and blessing us with their beauty.

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Arum italicum shines from late autumn into May, when it quietly fades away. This European native produces enough heat to attract insects and protect itself in freezing weather.  Here, with emerging daffodil leaves, Vinca minor and Saxifraga stolonifera.

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Woodland Gnome 2020

Many thanks to the wonderful ‘Six on Saturday’ meme sponsored by The Propagator

Sunday Dinner: Pass It On

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“What are you planting today

to harvest tomorrow?”

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Lailah Gifty Akita

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“Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas.

Defeat may prove to have been the only path to resurrection,

despite its ugliness.

I take it for granted that to create a tree

I condemn a seed to rot.

If the first act of resistance comes too late

it is doomed to defeat. But it is, nevertheless,

the awakening of resistance.

Life may grow from it as from a seed.”

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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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“Seeds have the power to preserve species,

to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity,

to counter economic monopoly

and to check the advance of conformity

on all its many fronts.”

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Michael Pollan

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“Plants do not speak,

but their silence is alive with change.”

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May Sarton

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“It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds

and think of the rainbows in ’em,” said Captain Jim.

“When I ponder on them seeds I don’t find it nowise hard to believe

that we’ve got souls that’ll live in other worlds.

You couldn’t hardly believe there was life in them tiny things,

some no bigger than grains of dust,

let alone colour and scent, if you hadn’t seen the miracle, could you?”

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L.M. Montgomery

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“Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution.

If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds.”

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Norman Vincent Peale

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“Remember to be conscious of what seeds you plant,

as the garden of your mind is like the world.

The longer seeds grow, the more likely they are to become trees.

Trees often block the sun’s rays from reaching other seeds,

allowing only plants that are acclimated

to the shadow of the tree to grow—

keeping you stuck with that one reality.”

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Natasha Potter

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“Take the time to plant seeds

even if you’re unsure if they’ll grow; who knows,

maybe all it takes is for someone else

to come along and water it.”

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Kai Mann

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“Every gift from a friend

is a wish for your happiness.”

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Richard Bach

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“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap

but by the seeds that you plant.”
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Robert Louis Stevenson

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Six on Saturday: Unexpected Pleasures

Scarlet oakleaf Hydrangea leaves brighten up a foggy, January garden. Edgeworthia flowers hang like tiny snowballs, opening very slowly over winter. Our Camellias remain in full bloom.

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January presents as a quiet month on all fronts.  After a good six weeks of holiday indulgences, most of us are ready to go home and rest a while.  Especially for a gardener, expectations are low.  So low that a new seed catalog in the mail presents a thrill of color and possibility.

Which is why I’m feeling exceptionally appreciative for the unexpected pleasures in our garden this week.  It is wet and almost warm out there, since Christmas.  We had some freezing weather early on, but not enough to kill the geraniums on the front porch or slow down the Verbena and Allysum blooming on the patio.

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Allysum blooms on the patio, enticing the occasional bee. Germander leaves remain deeply green all winter, finally blooming by late April.

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And the Iris!  Ohh la la!  Blooming since New Year’s Eve, we are into our fifth day now of a beautiful blue and white scented Iris.  This is why I love the re-bloomers so very much.

Our rosemary is in bloom, and some daffodils have already broken ground with the first green tips of leaves.  It can’t be spring, in the first week of the new year, and we know there will be cold days and nights ahead.  But this interlude of curious cardinals, an occasional bee, mild afternoons and fragrant flowers charms us with its promise of spring now on the horizon.

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Iris and Verbena bloom together this week on our patio.  The Verbena has remained in bloom since I bought it last April.

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In our climate, one can easily plan for year-round flowers and plenty of interest in the garden on every day of the year.  There is no true ‘down time’ anymore.  I’ve finished my first round of clearing and cleaning in the perennial beds, but am not yet ready to cut down the beautiful seedheads of our native perennials.  Besides, the birds aren’t yet finished with them.

There is still that crate of daffodil bulbs in the garage, too, waiting for me to dedicate an afternoon to finally committing them to the Earth.

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I was delighted to discover, while cutting down the Cannas and ginger lilies and generally surveying the garden,  several dozen seedling Ilex opaca shining through the fallen leaves.  I had wished for some native holly to transplant for a project a few years back.  And the multiverse clearly heard my wish and granted it in abundance.  Were I to allow them all to grow, our garden would soon become a holly forest.

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Rosemary blooms during winter here in Williamsburg. I sometimes cut it to use in Christmas wreathes or winter arrangements.

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So the task at hand is to dig and pot most of those little holly trees in the week ahead.  I’ll likely throw a daffodil bulb in each hole before I fill it with compost or bark mulch, and call it job well done.  The seemingly random daffies will remind me of this beautiful gift of native trees, sown by the birds, and filling our garden this month with vibrant green poking through the wet fallen leaves.

As the final bulbs go into the ground, the first snowdrops and Hellebores have bloomed.  There is always an unexpected pleasure waiting if one will only take a moment to see what is already there.

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Hellebores bloom in our garden from late December through early May, giving flowers during the greyest days of the year.

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Woodland Gnome 2020

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Mahonia prepares to bloom, to the delight of our native bees still foraging on warm days. The Egeworthia, covered in silvery flowers, grows more spectacular each year.  We’re so grateful to our friend who introduced it to me years ago.

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Many thanks to the wonderful ‘Six on Saturday’ meme sponsored by The Propagator

 

Sunday Dinner: Here and Now

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“Here we are,

trapped in the amber of the moment.

There is no why.”

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Kurt Vonnegut

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“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees,

you see all these different trees.

And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight,

and some of them are evergreens,

and some of them are whatever.

And you look at the tree and you allow it.

You see why it is the way it is.

You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light,

and so it turned that way.

And you don’t get all emotional about it.

You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that.

And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’

That judgment mind comes in.

And so I practice turning people into trees.

Which means appreciating them

just the way they are.”

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Ram Dass

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“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion.

What you perceive as precious is not time

but the one point that is out of time: the Now.

That is precious indeed.

The more you are focused on time—past and future—

the more you miss the Now,

the most precious thing there is.”

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Eckhart Tolle

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“You and I are the force for transformation in the world.

We are the consciousness

that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into.”

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Ram Dass

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“It’s being here now that’s important.

There’s no past and there’s no future.

Time is a very misleading thing.

All there is ever, is the now.

We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it;

and we can hope for the future,

but we don’t know if there is one.”

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George Harrison

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“Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment,

whether we mean to or not.

Our actions and states of mind matter,

because we’re so deeply interconnected with one another.

Working on our own consciousness

is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment,

and being love is the supreme creative act.”

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Ram Dass

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“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

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Tennessee Williams

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019 

In appreciation for the life of Richard Alpert:

Teacher, writer, explorer, visionary

April 6, 1931- December 22, 2019

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“Prolong not the past
Invite not the future
Do not alter your innate wakefulness
Fear not appearances
There is nothing more than this”
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Ram Dass

Silent Sunday: December 1

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“It is December,

and nobody asked if I was ready.”

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Sarah Kay

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“I followed the footprints

until they stopped in front of a very old mysterious tree

– a grandfather tree”

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James Barbato

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“Find the sweetness in this holiday season.

Embrace the endless love that surrounds you.”

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Amy Leigh Mercree

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“A gift for the holidays?

A holiday is a gift in itself.”

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Ljupka Cvetanova

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“I heard a bird sing in the dark of December.

A magical thing. And sweet to remember.

We are nearer to Spring than we were in September.

I heard a bird sing in the dark of December.”

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Oliver Herford

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“Now is the time of fresh starts.

This is the season that makes everything new.

There is a longstanding rumor that Spring is the time of renewal….

Spring is too busy, too full of itself, too much like a 20-year-old

to be the best time for reflection, re-grouping, and starting fresh.

For that you need December. …

December has the clarity, the simplicity,

and the silence you need

for the best FRESH START of your life.”

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Vivian Swift

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Photos by Woodland Gnome

the orchid tree can be found at The Great Big Greenhouse

at Huguenot and Robious Roads, Chesterfield County VA

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“From a little spark may burst a flame.”
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Dante Alighieri