Black identity and gardening

When I lived on Highland Avenue in Knoxville in a house that's no longer there, I had a garden out the front. I dug up a whole patch of grass and had an abundant patch of flowers. It was bursting. I overstuffed it with gaudy flowers and contrasting colors and hit it hard with the Miracle Grow. I tended it lovingly and planted it up with discounted stuff I got at the garden center where I worked. I watered it with a great long hose and water that I borrowed from the fire station next door.

I often carried a little portable Sony Radio with me to listen to Prarie Home Companion or All Things Considered while I worked. But public radio isn't all talk, and I like chatter while I work. Sometimes my neighbor came over and talked to me while I gardened. He was from some Caribbean island, I can't remember which one now. I can't remember his name either.

He talked a bunch of shit, but I didn't really care. He'd stand and watch me while I worked and talk about black identity politics and a lot of anti-white racism and a smattering of Marxist theory. But hey, it was chatter.

"Your ancestors were pigs," he told me.
"It's pronounced Picts," I said.

He gained new respect for me when I told him I had some Asian blood from my Finnish ancestors. A one-drop theory of sorts. Had we only been able to the DNA testing we have now, I might have been able to tell him I have a little black blood, too, which I do. I'm sure he would have warmed further with that.

One time I mentioned Alice Walker, an author I like. He went livid. Apparently, she's a traitor to the black cause. This all flashed back to me because BBC Radio 4 is featuring The Color Purple as its radio drama this week.

I'm not sure why he was so anti-Alice. But I suspect that it was because of that book she wrote about female genital mutilation. (Possessing the Secret of Joy). He seemed to take that as an affront to the global African experience. He said she knew nothing of the African experience and that I shouldn't read her books. Fair enough, Walker hadn't grown up in Africa (the protagonist had), but you know she's a novelist. Those people make stuff up.

Apparently, in his view, this destroyed her credibility on all counts of relating the black experience, or any apparently.

I told him he was talking shit. "What do you know about being black?" he said.
"What do you know about growing up female in the South?" I said.

Speckled

Speckled, originally uploaded by London looks.

Toad lily flowers are pretty small, but amazing. This one was at the botanical gardens at Wisley.

I tried to grow one once, but because of my tendency to overplant it got crowded out and disappeared.

Nary a crow to be seen

We saw an amazing display of scarecrows at the RHS Wisley today. They seem to have all been put together by various Women's Institutes around the South East of England. Many of the figures were women and a number celebrated women's suffrage. And one was of the cat in the hat.

The Vol Abroad has a brush with reality teevee

It's true that I have been watching a little more reality tv than I'd have cared to admit a year ago. But I'd never consider actually going on one of those shows.

Still I'm proud to admit that I had a brush with reality tv today - and the daddy of all the British reality tv shows to top it all.

This morning, the guys from Lazee Lawn came around to install my new faux turf. And as they were leaving, they said they were off to the Big Brother house to do some work on their lazee lawn.

The Vol Abroad hires only the gardeners to the stars.


Top cat checks out the new top grass


(See more photos of my new fake lawn going in).

Rip it up and start again

I'm quite excited about the prospect of redoing my garden. Those shrubs and flowers that haven't pulled their weight blossoming weight in past years are facing extinction. The giant tree peony with the surprisingly small blossoms - it barely will be missed.

I want it all done and dusted by the end of Tuesday, but yet I still haven't completely decided what I'm going to do. But it will be heavy on texture and colored foliage.

A cut that's easy to maintain

There comes a time in every woman's life when she says "I can't be bothered with the elaborate 'dos. Just give me a nice simple haircut that takes about five minutes to fix and is easy to maintain."

For me, that point came when I was about ten or so. Roughly about the time I didn't want my mother to brush my hair anymore.

I just can't be bothered much with the whole hair thing. So this post isn't about hair. It's about gardening.

I've reached a point where I need a garden that take about five minutes to fix and is easy to maintain. My garden is quite small, but my plant collection and the fact that I've waaay overplanted means that it requires a fair bit of maintenance. Weeding, pruning, staking, feeding, mulching, lifting, dividing - and worst of all - pest control.

I've decided I'm going to pitch out a bunch of stuff and replant with minimum fuss plantings that I know can withstand me nemeses: the gastropods, the lily beetle and a nasty kind of root grub that goes after rhododendrons and impatiens (a plant I previously thought was easy peasy). I'm going to dig up all my oriental and asiatic lilies and I think I'm going to get rid of a large tree peony, too. (It's nice, but I'm afraid it's just too big for my small garden). I think I'm going to replace the lifted items with hellebores, day lilies, ferns, heuchera and white Japanese anemones. (It won't take many. The garden is small and there are some there already).

And best of all, I think I'm going to make my VolMom do much of the work when she's over in May.

I want less of this


grubs on impatiens


pretty, but evil


snail damage

More of these

hellebore


terracotta daylily


Japanese anemone - though I want the pure white kind


heuchera

What a difference a day makes

Yesterday:





Today:



Yes, that's snow.



Snow in April. Where's the Spring? Spring, Spring, where are you?

The camellias

Camellias in Isabella Plantation. There were quite a few winter blooming shrubs in bloom.

Signs of life

I tend to think of the horticultural year following the calendar year. I often have a few hardy flowers hanging on in sheltered areas of my garden well into December. The weather in England is mild, but the early days of January can bring some harsh cold. But rarely, if ever, pipe freezing cold.

But by the end of the first month I expect to signs of spring, the hellebores in bloom - the green tips of narcissus and snowdrops poking through.

The hellebores are in bloom (pictures from last year) and the bulbs are coming up.

We took a walk in Richmond Park today - for the first time in a while. The weather has been so rainy and overcast that we can barely go for short local walks some days.

In Richmond Park, the witch hazel trees are in bloom. I've never been able to take any photos of witch hazels that I've been happy with - so this one is from Mason Bryant that I found on Flickr. It was too gray today to an attempt a shot against the sky and I can't seem to get the effect I want with the camera's automatic flash. And I guess I can never quite capture the sweet and spicy smell of the witch hazel or the brightness of the yellow in a bare and cold winter forrest.

I did photograph some other signs that the horticultural cycle is starting over. Like these incredibly early azaleas



or these mahonias - another sweet yellow bloomer in the winter woodscape

Your good advice, I disregard it

That's not really true. I've asked for reader advice before and I always - always listen. I've often changed my mind or at least moderated my course of action. But y'all told me it was tacky - but I've decided to go ahead anyway.

I've submitted info to receive a quote on the fake grass lawn.

But let me tell you, y'all saved me. 'Cause there's been a huge advance in fake grass technology between then and now.

I'm telling you, at a glance, the stuff we're getting looks really real. Even the chunk of sample turf looks like a little chunk of real turf - like maybe a zoysia - or a really fine, fescue blend.

Oh, it's sweet. It'll look like the lawn I'm too lazy to ever have.

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Here's a picture of Buddy watching me take the pictures to send off to the faux lawn place. My brother and I wore similar expressions when VolMom made us come outside and keep her company while she gardened.

Busy mom's poinsettia

A couple of years ago Busy Mom blogged about a weird light up poinsettia Christmas decoration that she'd somehow inherited. As usual, it was a funny post. Ha, ha. All the comments were like "Poor Busy Mom, but you should see the weird decorations I/ my in-laws have" But me - I was like, "Man, I want a light up poinsettia."

Oddly, I think about that thing, every now and again. But I try not to comment on it more than once a year. I don't want her to think I'm internet stalking her Christmas decorations or anything.

So when Busy Mom opened a contest to win an MP3 player of a well-known brand and all you had to do was name the craziest thing you'd ever bought online - I thought, well, if she'd sell that poinsettia to me - that would be the craziest thing I'd ever bought online.

But honestly, I couldn't think of anything really crazy that I'd ever bought online. I did shop for door knockers on e-bay. I wanted something kind of different, kind of unique and I got some kind of weird lion manimal thing that reminded me of that mutant lion-guy show that used to be on tv in the 80s. (What was that show?) And I do do a lot of shopping online - but mostly for things like cereal or diapers - as we have our groceries delivered.

But then I did remember something I had bought online. Something that might fall more into the stupid than the crazy category. This was my contest entry:

I bought a house for frogs. We found a bunch of tadpoles near my in-laws house in Scotland and my husband carried them down to London on the plane. We dug out a pond for them in our garden - but they needed some place to live after they got legs, right?

So, I bought a frog house online. It was really cute, with a thatched roof and everything. It wasn't forty dollars cute though. (I'm an idiot). And the frogs? After the first storm they hopped away and we never saw them again.

My cats enjoyed sitting on the forty dollar frog house for a while and sharpened their claws on the thatched roof. And now, it's forty dollar mulch.

Yeah, of course when I bought the frog house the dollar hadn't slid into the latrine storage area so it wasn't actually a forty dollar frog house - but it was still stupid enough. I mean any money spent on a house for frogs is stupid money. After all, how would they know the house was for them? I should have bought the $5 sign that said "Frog house".

You can see a corner of the thatched roof here in the lower left hand corner of this picture.



And I do know what some of you must be thinking - Did she buy that paint-it-yourself gnome online? If so, why is she going on about the frog house being the craziest thing ever?

Well, I didn't buy the paint-it-yourself gnome - online or anywhere else. My mom did, online. That's what we got for Christmas last year. The now inhabit a very, very dark corner of the garden. Next to the frog house.

Anyway, you can add your own entry up til tomorrow over here.

weed in the sky

This is something like Queen Anne's lace - or it might be Queen Anne's lace, but anyway like that flower and carrots I'm pretty sure it's in the parsley family.

I found this in a ditch on Wimbledon Common.

A limited success

I finally gave up on the tomatoes - and pulled up the sole remaining plant this afternoon to be replaced with a winter bedding scheme.

That one red 'un is nearly the extent of my harvest. I got a couple of cherry tomatoes earlier in the season, but that's it. It's just been too damp, too cool and too gray for much ripening.

Oh well, better luck next year. Anyone know a good recipe that calls for one bowl of green ta-maters?

Passport to Pimlico

Cletus - the little South Londoner - made his first ever trip North of the River. I took him up to the RHS Flower Show yesterday in his little carrier. Our own Sweet William was the hit of the show.

I don't know if American readers know about Alan Titchmarsh - perhaps one of his gardening makeover show appears on BBC America or Home and Garden. If you're not familiar with Mr Titchmarsh, let's just say he runs a gardening empire. He appears on numerous gardening shows, he is one of the prime time television presenters for the Chelsea Flower Show (yes, there's a week of television coverage for the show), he's written loads on gardening and he's behind a web based nursery Crocus. No doubt he has his very green fingers in other mud pies, too.

At any rate, several people stopped me while at the show to complement me on charming Cletus and to predict that he'd be the next Alan Titchmarsh. I was also advised, by more than one person, that I should drill the boy in the Latin names of the plants. (I'd have to brush up on my own Latin first.) VolMom's old next door neighbors, who were extension agents or worked for the TWRA or some such, used to drill their daughters in the latin names of the flora particularly wildflowers some of them so wild they were weeds in my book. I was always impressed by this ability - so maybe Cletus will have a little Acer palmatum in his future.

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Despite the fact that there is no more room in my garden, I love going to the shows to spot the next horticultural trends. Volunteer gardeners will be excited to learn that orange is in. There were some fabulous crocosmias and echinaceas in stunning bright, golden orange. If I had more room and more sun - I would have bought. I need to get a reliable pocket sized camera to take around with me, too. It's too hard managing baby and photos, sometimes. But those oranges were spectacular.

Tasty frog

Did you know that frogs can squeak like a rat when threatened by cats?

We tried to save the frog - both of us running around the garden trying to catch the cats while baby Cletus screamed inside. In the end, we decided death scream of frog was better than Cletus wailing. That boy has got some lungs.

Spiky things

Echinacea at Wisley

They shouldn't throw stones

The Vol-in-Law and I took Baby Cletus down to Wisley today - a Royal Horticultural Society botanical gardens. It's hard to tell what an 8 week old baby likes (besides milk), but Cletus really seems to like seeing trees against the sky - and Wisley has plenty of those.

The place was absolutely packed and it seems like many people had come to see the new glass houses.



This is a long awaited development and they are pretty fancy and shiny and new. But we didn't stay long in them because

1. It was the first nice day in a while
2. It was forecasted to be the last nice day in a while (and it's raining heavily again as I type)
3. There weren't enough trees against the sky for Cletus's taste and he let us know.

We decided to come down and get a closer look in the winter time when it will be nice to be inside and warm.

We also had a look at the urban display gardens - including two that use artificial turf.
They also had a look at the model urban gardens that included artificial turf





I asked readers some time ago what they thought about artificial turf and the response was unanimous - a big old resounding, that's tacky. But it actually looked pretty good in these gardens and it might be softer on a little old toddler head next summer.

What does your garden grow?

I like to have a container grown tomato crop. I always forget how big they get, though. But you know what they say...there's just two things in life that money can't buy...and that's love and home grown tomatoes.

I can usually do OK with tomatoes, but my garden is tiny and sometimes our summers here are a little too damp and cool and we're absolutely overrun with snails and slugs. Sure, there are crops that I could grow - like rhubarb which need more cool and which wouldn't do so well in Tennessee. But isn't rhubarb Yankee food? It's a weed. And while I'm all over eating weeds and garbage fish (e.g. catfish) and other peasant grub - I really only ever crave my own soul food. I guess that's the point of soul food.

Sometimes I fantasize about the veggies that I would grow if I had more space, more heat and more blazing sun - i.e. if I were gardening in the South. I would grow tomatoes (lots of them), yellow crook-neck squash, cucumbers, zuchinni, okra and peppers. I might grow asparagus, too - the foliage is so pretty. Maybe I'd grow onions and tomatillos, too.

Still waiting

I'm still waiting for my first ripe tomato. Readers in the South (of the US, not England) will be jealous of cool, moist weather. I however wouldn't mind just a little BBQ weather and enough sunlight to ripen the 'maters. Particularly this imported strain - Cherokee Purple - reputed to be a heritage variety from Tennessee.




See what interesting folds and ridges it has. I did know I was taking a chance with this tomato - it might not do well outdoors in this cool clime (it was recommended for greenhouse growing) but neither of my other two varieties have ripened either.

But each of my three tomato plants are still blooming and fruiting and growing.


I call this picture "Attack of the killer tomato blossom"

Lemon drops

The lilies are in bloom in my garden.