taming a wild dragon

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'Flying Dragon' Hardy Orange (Poncirus trifoliata) at Beal Gardens

I should have taken her picture. (I want to get bolder snapping people.) The college student kneeling at the foot of the Flying Dragon Hardy Orange tree is one of the "slave laborers" in the Horticulture program, and weeding campus gardens is part of her curriculum. When the weather entices, Inge and I head out Fridays at lunch to sit on a bench by a fountain or walk one of the most beautiful campuses in the world. I watched the kneeling student's gloved hands picking at leaves and tiny weeds in black soil and recognized my garden clippers sticking out her back jeans pocket. She flashed us a smile, obviously enjoying her work.

I learn best from watching and imitating, and the student tidying those beds inspired me to put our own beds in order at the farm before winter. In July before the wedding my niece Jennifer worked long, hard - and she said "enjoyable" - hours on the veggie and flower beds to shape and beautify them: ha, wedding weeding. It would be a shame to let them run too far amuck.

Fighting the grass whose roots are bound with my poor iris rhizomes will never end (photo below). I was too lethargic to tend to these ruffley pale iris in their previous bed, and the grass did what grass does, shooting roots far and wide under the iris, herbs and daylilies. Now I pay the price, like I did Saturday in another weekend of warm sun, tediously pulling thin blades and roots, making my carpal tunnel weakened wrists ache.

But yikes, I won't get carried away and manicure the farm with its rustic barns to look like Versailles. I don't just love tended iris, tulips, peonies, columbine, sedum, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and the like. The wild natural beauty of goldenrod, Timothy grass, Queen Anne's lace and sumak in the meadow - maybe not quite as wild as a flying dragon! - is where I go sit to soak in Nature. One day if the whole farm becomes naturalized, will it be by choice, or because of my laziness?

Nature never stops working - it's the ultimate example. But my hat's off to two women of a younger generation for motivating me to get off my butt and take care of all those sweet plants that I depend on in the spring to pull me out of the dormancy of winter.




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these meadowsounds: sumac

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. . . We are here again with the beloved. This air,
a shout. These meadowsounds, an astonishing myth . . .

- read the whole short poem: Ode 3079 - Meadowsounds, by Rumi


beloved Sumac:

(please click to enlarge)

For Julia, who after a long hot summer in Texas especially requested a post with warm autumn colors in cool Michigan.
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homey clean

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Finally, after years of intending to make a home cleaner from natural stuff, I did it. None of the recipes had allured enough to push me past lethargy until Design Sponge shared this one (I've posted my version below). Read here some of the disturbing reasons you should consider it too, such as the fact that 17,000 petrochemicals have been approved for home use, but only 30% of those have been tested for impact on humans, and that the average American home has 10 gallons of harmful chemicals hiding in cabinets and drawers.

There are many things to like about this recipe, but the best for me is adding my favorite scents with essential oils.

Homemade All-Purpose Spray

Ingredients (I bought them all at a health food store, except the empty spray bottle, which I got at Bed, Bath and Beyond):

• 1 empty 32 oz. spray bottle
• 3/4 c. Distilled White Vinegar
• 1 c. Hydrogen Peroxide
• 1 1/2 tsp. Castile Soap*
• 30 drops Tea Tree Oil
• 30-45 drops Essential Oil of choice - I used 15 rosemary drops and 15 spearmint, then I added 15 drops of lavender to rise above the smell of the vinegar (other choices include lemongrass, lemon verbena, clove, cinnamon, anise, sage, grapefruit, lemon, and lime)
  

Mixing:

• Place all ingredients into the spray bottle using a funnel or measuring cup with a spout.
• Add water until contents reach top of bottle.
• Shake vigorously and clean with pleasure!

I can still smell the tea tree oil on my fingers (I had to be sure it was coming out of the dropper). Tea tree oil is also known as melaleuca oil, something that was in Australian soldiers' first aid kids in WWI for its natural antiseptic properties.

With an initial investment of over $30 in the various bottles of stuff, I thought this homemade cleaner might be more costly than a ready bottle of GreenWorks natural all purpose cleaner, but I was willing to pay extra. When Don and I calculated the cost (by the way, apparently there are 600 "drops" in one fluid ounce), we discovered it was only $2.13 total for 32 ounces. (Compare: GreenWorks $3.39/32 oz.)

Squeaky, streakless. I've just increased my chances of becoming a clean freak.




*Castile soap alone is a profound discovery for its simplicity and pure, gentle cleaning qualities.

feeling yucca

What must this yucca think of Michigan? Yuccas love dry, hot climates. No wonder this one's leaves look a little combative jutting through the snow, but the tall stalk of blossoms looks happy in the July heat last summer, below. Well, I guess it's me who's feeling that it doesn't belong here. Do plants feel?

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I don't really understand planting yuccas in the Midwest (what does "Midwest" mean anyway? We are not west at all - see the red area in the map - though we once were, compared to the "East," that is, New England there along the Atlantic and thumbing up into New Brunswick and Quebec.) Even though this is a hardy species, the plant seems like a desert misfit here in the north. (Amazing how it stays evergreen through the winter. Tough plant.)

Spiky points? They belong with Saguaro cactus, Joshua trees and Birds of Paradise -- all picturesque. Oh, the desert must be beautiful in bloom in springtime. But that's where they belong, in the desert. We have lived on two farms in Michigan, and both had yuccas planted by the previous residents. The energy doesn't feel quite right, but I can't bring myself to remove them.

When we lived in California five years I was a misfit living there among yardfuls of succulents - a northern girl in a desert landscape. I am at home among pine forests, goldenrod and Timothy grass, white sand dunes in view of Lake Michigan's layered aquas and blues, autumn leaves, winter snow and ice, and a wood stove glowing with heat. I suppose it doesn't always follow that where you grow up you also feel at home in the landscape. Or that you don't feel at home where you didn't grow up.

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As for this yucca, does it long for the Mojave Desert, or feel glad to cool down here? Just because it's a tough plant doesn't mean it has to live in a hot arid place. Maybe its toughness helps it thrive through Michigan winters.

When the spent yucca blossoms fall from the chandelier atop the stalk and get impailed on the spiky leaves, would you call it self mutilation? Ouch!

This is the only photo I have of a full yucca plant - cropped from one Peter took with my Holga. The tall stalk's blossoms have passed (and a second next to it without a flowering stalk, and another behind it). It's hard to see the 10-foot stalk in this shot, but in case you're not familiar with yuccas, I wanted to show you.

Oh, I miss hanging laundry outside.

Truth is, the yucca stands just as tall and striking in Michigan as it does in the Mojave Desert. Maybe I just need my Bedouin receptors opened, and I could learn some toughness from the yucca too.

Map image, above, used under Wiki Commons agreement from this site. (My words added.)

Yucca illustration, right, found here.

Please check out Charlie's February alphabet challenge here and on my sidebar. I've already posted a photo a day for 3 months at East Lansing Daily Photo back in 2006, so I won't be participating. But if you want to try, it's fun to do at least once! And February is a short month, so here's your chance.

sumac

Days shorten.
Hours pour out of the cup of light.


Before snow-blue evenings,
before indoor candles remind me
I am born of old centuries


the sumac ignites flames
like pleas
to the abating Sun.


For just a few weeks
it rebels in one last effort
to warm the meadow.


Then it cools its fire
and yields.

atumnal equinox tomorrow

On this last day of summer, I'm sharing a poem I wrote in 1994 at the same time of year. It's strange to remember how it was when the kids were home, at the start of a new school year.

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Also, today is the International Day of Peace. See my sidebar and click for more information.

Tomatoes

The tomatoes are sagging to the ground,
red and accusing.
I already had to refrigerate
some overripe ones that stared
at me red-eyed
for a week from the formica.
It is a sin to refrigerate tomatoes
and worse
to allow them to putrefy
on the vine.

For a few brilliant weeks of August
I did my duty to Italian and Mexican sauces,
to Turkish village salad with cucumber
and tomato cubes, onions, parsley, olive oil and lemon juice,
to warm tortillas with scallions,
tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese.
They didn’t ripen quickly enough.
And hadn’t I waited all winter,
spring and summer for this?

But now it is mid-September.
The slanting sun is curling the leaves
of the six tomato plants up
to the sky
like Sunday School children
raising hands for recognition,
not subtly, but nonetheless
ignored in a corner
of the backyard fence.

Today, Saturday, after
a 40-hour week in the office,
the sun insists with all its
clear forgiveness
that I should sit outside,
not out front with the neighbors,
but out back inside the cedar fence
under the mesh umbrella with my back
to the tomatoes.

September is a strangely mixed
month of re-boxing routines
of work, school buses, piano lessons and doctor appointments
into calendar squares
while the air outside is wearing
amber, as if, like honey
it would slow down
the process
if it could.
Flowers are full, better really
than they were all summer when we kept them in order.
And the heavy disarray of ripe tomatoes begs
for indolent days
when stuffing manicotti shells
might fill a morning.

I wonder why someone
would even grow tomatoes
without the permission of Italian, Greek,
Mexican or Turkish time.
Tomatoes aren’t meant
to be rushed
in ripening,
in cooking,
in eating. They are
intended for moussaka and lasagna
and paste that is stored
in a gallon jar under the sink
without a chance of molding:
fresh paste is spooned off every day for a recipe
and a new layer exposed to the air.
In a month the jar is empty.

I deposited six little plants
in June, hoping for a taste, a return
to the old country.
Any old country.
I forgot that behind every taste
hides a little woman or man with shiny red round
fingers.
The old fruit is bursting the skin
and I am not watching.

- Ruth M. 1994

Sunday morning walk

Before the house is awake,

the birds have been calling
for hours.







The bamboo
had a shower

and waits
for the sun

to dry itself.






























Dandelions' gossamer
feathers
remind me of
Don's Polish hen heads.







The grapes have begun to form on the vine.

Iris heads are
reaching up, out

of their skin.

Pelargonium in a pot,
honeysuckle by the pond
magenta-size the air.

Columbine
dances its

insect dance.

A lady is at

home
in the

Russian Olive.

Lilies of the Valley

ring in white.

And back to the house where Bishop is still asleep.

holiday cactus (Schlumbergera)

I think they're supposed to be "Christmas cactus."

Or "Thanksgiving cactus."

But they seem to be "Halloween cactus" again this year.

I take the schlumbergera out to the porch in the summer. They love it and grow a lot.

Then in October when I bring them inside, they immediately begin to bud and bloom. It must be the decrease in light that triggers the bloomin'.

I think the blooms will be gone by Thanksgiving (November 22), when we'll have Don's family at our place to celebrate the holiday.

pumpkins

Don planted pumpkins back in June. You can see him and Lesley here examining the big leaves and little pumpkins Farm Day weekend in August. All these leaves are from just two plants! Vines can grow 6 inches in one day.



Some weeks after planting, flowers started appearing.


Each flower lasts one day.

By mid-day the flowers begin to fold in on themselves.



Every plant has two kinds of flowers, male and female. The male flowers don't become pumpkins, and there are far more of them than female flowers. Bees gather pollen from the male flowers and carry it to the female flowers.


The pollinated female flowers become pumpkins.




Don noticed this white film coating the leaves. It's a fungus, so he sprayed some organic fungicide today. I hope that does the trick.



In another week or two, we'll start cutting the stems and letting the pumpkins cure in the sun for several days. We'll decorate the farm with them and cut up a few for baking for pie, bread, muffins.