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| Patricia Jones | profile | all galleries >> An Ordinary Day | tree view | thumbnails | slideshow |
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For years, we planted, dug up, stored, and replanted the same dahlia tubers; over time, they grew into impenetrable foot-wide balls of distorted roots. Last year, we did some research and steeled ourselves for the tricky job of separating the tubers so that there would be only one sprouting “eye” on each. This required sharp knives and many judgment calls. In the tradition of letting no worthy effort go unpunished, we now have w-a-a-a-y too many dahlias. In addition to the trays of three each to my book club pals, five to Eric’s garden, 14 to the new Woodland Village cutting garden, and a few to my sister, we have planted 89 dahlias in various gardens at our house and still have about 30 more potted up and sitting forlornly on a makeshift table in the shade. What makes this even more ridiculous is that most of them are the same color (albeit an attractive one: a deep velvety magenta). We now make this public pledge: In the fall we will identify the strongest and most beautiful of the dahlias, and we will save only those. (Well, maybe a few extras as backup in case some of the good ones go bad over the winter.) We will pack them by color so we can actually plan where to plant them. And next year we will force ourselves to try something new; we keep reading that we should nip off side-buds so that the remaining blooms will be bigger and showier, but that will go against our nature. Obviously, we believe that more is more.
The cult of the tomato requires that the first specimens be eaten plain, and this year’s early arrivals did not disappoint. Aren’t they perfect? But context is everything. To see these Supersweet 100 tomatoes in all their true glory, please click here. Surprise! But no tomato in our garden has ever been tastier, more dependable, more beautiful, or more prolific than this cherry type. Too bad you have to slice up so many of them for a BLT!
All of us have our “senior moments,” forgetting a name or where we put the shopping list, and society is usually only too happy to treat an aging person’s lapses with forbearance—make that condescension. Now along comes Gene B. Cohen, author of The Mature Mind, offering hope to sufferers of…no, no, I’m thinking of that drug commercial…with some clearly-explained science, amusing anecdotes, and sound advice and encouragement for those of us who are hoping for at least 30 more twilight years. I was surprised at his list of pastimes which are most associated with arresting cognitive decline. Along with the expected reading and doing puzzles were specific physical activities such as dancing, and ways of living such as maintaining a vibrant social network. In other words, don’t just read, but join a book club that meets regularly; don’t just listen to music, but move to it. I learned how the brain changes when people are demonstrating wisdom and vision as opposed to simply knowing a lot. Cohen is convincing on topics such as the continuous creation of brain cells, the way older people integrate and use both hemispheres of the brain, and the processes of summing up, evaluating, setting priorities for late-life accomplishments, and leaving a legacy. I feel lucky to have the stress-free leisure, good health, and enough money to pursue all the interests I have developed or renewed since retirement. There’s no time to lose! [This is a picture of my mother on her porch. She reads faster than I’ve ever been able to and actually remembers everything she learned in college.]
Another great use for a dried beef glass! (See the entry for May 14, 2006.) Along with our very hot summer, we’ve had periodic rains that have lessened the intensity of our garden watering regime. Some of the downpours have filled the ditch, usually a springtime phenomenon; it has delusions of petite grandeur and considers itself a pretty stream at times. According to our spiffy new rain gauge, in the last two weeks we’ve had two deluges of more than two inches each, several 5/8-inch rains, and a steady shower one recent night that amounted to 1 and 7/8 inches. The combination of blazing sun, sultry atmosphere, and plentiful precipitation has elevated some of our gardens to jungle status, kept the lawn springtime green, and given us a bumper crop of peppers, tomatoes, and flowers of all kinds. Of course, we have been forced to work outside in the relative cool of the early morning and then to retreat to the porch or the air-conditioned house for the midday unpleasantness, but it’s fun to have such high-tech instruments to measure the trend.
As sands through the hourglass, so pass the days of our lives.
The winner is the person who can pull the library books off the shelf faster than Grandma can replace them, which is easy since she has to pay attention to the Dewey Decimal System.
Always make a photographic record of the good times.
If your victim doesn’t cry, you’re not doing anything wrong.
It’s good to experience everything once, preferably before your grandparents notice what you’re doing.
I’ve been staring at a diagram of the reproductive parts of a flower, one that matches pretty well what I see when I peer down into a tulip or lisianthus. But when I compare it to the center of a sunflower, the array of what will soon be sunflower seeds reveals plant parts that are harder for me to identify. This mid-sized Jade Sunflower sports a two inch-wide yellow-green center section which matures starting at the outer edge. I think those alien antennae at the circumference are the stigma. From there, I get lost and stray from the task at hand. What are all those emerging pod people? How could it really be true that the numbers of spirals arcing in opposite directions on a sunflower head are often adjoining Fibonacci numbers (in the case of this particular sunflower, 21 and 34)? Check this sunflower if you want to get lost in the numbers. Since this is a pollenless variety, will that make a difference to bees, and will this type actually produce sunflower seeds? They will certainly make less mess on the table under a bouquet of them. The name Jade is a stretch since the petals have only the faintest Key Lime pie color. In the end, though, any sunflower is cause for celebration.
If you lavish as much time and affection on a “from scratch” garden as my husband and I do, the longed for moments of truth begin in midsummer when flowers astound us anew with blooms and the vegetables yield up something edible. An early milestone is the time when there are just enough beans hanging from the bushes to make a meal-sized pile (but not so many that someone is forced to think about freezing them or devising odd menu items just use them up). This is a delicate balancing act; the experienced gardener, knowing how many ways things can go horribly wrong, is tempted to plant too many of beloved items, leading to the storied baseball bat-sized zucchini or baskets of eggplants no one really likes no matter how exotically beautiful they may be. The handfuls of beans are borne ceremonially through the yard to the kitchen counter where they can be admired extravagantly, as though they differ materially from last year’s first beans. They are rinsed and cooked for four minutes and 45 seconds in the microwave, then dressed with butter, salt, and pepper. The diners comment on the perfect bean-y taste, compliment themselves on their cleverness in bringing these perfect specimens into the world, and bask in the virtue of living close to nature. They hardly think of the hours he spent spreading leaf mold, tilling, laying the landscape cloth weed barrier, or checking the fence against deer, rabbits, and woodchucks. They forget the time she spent examining seed catalogs, ordering seeds, kneeling uncomfortably to place the beans individually in the ground, covering them with clear plastic cups to foil both the birds that spot the sprouting plants and dive down for the seeds and the slugs and cutworms that leave little stalks behind after they eat the tiny seed leaves, and removing and replacing the cups daily for the first week to give the seedlings fresh air. They see only a miraculous mound of beauty that has come from nothing, paid for in a currency that is plentiful for old retired folk.
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