Garden Talk

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True Dirt
a gardener talks

lost in s p a c.........
that's what happens when the internets go away. Actually, only if your Model T broke down on the highway and you had to walk through the desert to find a mechanic. Dirt is back after a slightly longer pause than usual and yet, it being late on a hot and smazy July evening, I may just head out back to sit by the whiskey barrel water fall with a gin & lemon, scratch my mosquito bites and wait for the...

spring cleaning
a note to readers... True Dirt will be unavailable for a period of up to a week (starting in the next few days) in order to make needed improvements to our server. I will be back with a new post as soon as we are up and running again..... Briggs...

rights of spring
It exists in Slow Time, that place where there are no deadlines, no telephones vibrate, and there is no season of new television comedy. It is spring. Coming at its own pace. Once in twelve, or thirteen, moons or so. Nothing is definite. No weather, no memory, no seed reliably germinate. Rain, sun, wind, planetary spinning. Spiders appear, and the migrant birds. Today I saw a swallowtail swerve and cling to flowerless stem. Hopeful, perhaps. That is the metaphor. Hope....

the hybernating gardener
ok. I missed January. and most of December. I didn't even look in the backyard until I had to wrap the potted dwarf lemon in plastic last week to keep it from freezing. I have spent most of my time under the down quilt with my ibook not even looking at nursery catalogs. I began to think I would abandon gardening altogether. I went for a little hike with a friend - the first all winter - out in the...

the season's greeting
In the dark days of the garden I avoid the tasks that would take me into the shadow land of the back yard where the day's light penetrates only a sliver's worth across the fence and the borders are brittle with last season's petrified leaf. There is no transforming snow to bury the sad scene in mounds of glistening white, and so far not even the soggy mulch of rain soaked debris. There are no birds and no sound...

of what does the garden dream?: Hadspen Parabola redux
Back in September I entered a garden design to the Hadspen Parabola competition, and eventually was notified that my idea had made it to the second round of judging. Here, at last, are the finalists - as best as I could represent them from the pdf files and assorted documents now posted at the site. The entries varied from a typewritten page describing a redwood tree to an open source "wiki" that allowed anyone to design the garden. I was...

reversal of season
A glimmering on the hilltop beyond the freeway is all that the morning can muster in the way of sunshine, and a ruby glow has begun to seep from the tangle of tree canopies, wisteria and grape vines. The neighbor's fig tree is shedding great flaps of yellow leaves upon the exhausted annuals below, and drips of rain cling to the ragged edges of the oak leaves outside my window. A bruised blue sky is puffed with storm clouds. A...

a personal parabola
Well. As many long time readers of this blog are aware, there are often long pauses between thoughts at this space. This summer I was unusually preoccupied. With the inevitable months-long preparations for a wedding which finally took place on July 29. Which is sort of an excuse for not gardening or writing about it. BUT, something happened one morning a few days before the wedding, beginning with my reading an article by Alice Rawsthorn about a rather famous English...

ants save the planet
Reading Theodore Roosevelt's "The Winning of the West", one comes across this argument for the moral necessity of the American settlers' conquest of the territory long occupied by their human brethren: All men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes, whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than that of the wild beasts with whom they...

midsummer's moment
Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs-- To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind, While the touch of Nature's art Harmonises heart to heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:-- "I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields. Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with...

smelling like a rose
The rose obsession continues...until the last petal drops in my soon-to-be-a-memory spring garden. A friend invited me to join her on an expedition this last Saturday to El Cerrito where the annual "Celebration of Old Roses" event is held in the community center. I have heard about this event for years from fellow gardeners and rose enthusiasts and both me and Sally were expecting something rather grand. In reality, it looks like a neighborhood BBQ held at the community...

the dirt on roses
More has been written about them than any other flower, to the point of terminal cliche. The symbol of love and war and everything hunky dory, they have decorated the homes and objets de art and gardens of the rich and powerful, and the tiny dirt patches and chinaware of the most humble and obscure. There are more kinds and colors of roses than any other flower and more are being created - and lost to posterity - every day....

I may eye May
ply your hammock among the trees, settle your skin upon springy skein, relax your mind and drift back in centuries two, three, four where "...Cromwell could not cease In the inglorious arts of peace But through adventurous war Urged his active star..." and Andrew Marvell escaped prose'aic politics in his poetic Garden, though Society is all but rude To this delicious solitude. and no industrious bee was yet clichéd.... How well the skilful gardener drew of flowers and herbs...

Flora regina
The more I despair of civilization, the more I wonder at nature. I'm sure it's what every gardener concludes after awhile, particularly in spring when whatever it was that we mulled over in the twiddling days of winter - the inadequacies and faults and difficulties of our garden - are waved away by nature's magic wand. I walk out the back door one morning and am stupified once more by the artless beauty of the plant world. Flora returns to...

an octopus's garden by the bay
Went with friends to the San Francisco Flower and Garden show this weekend, at the Cow Palace, that venerable blimp hangar of a space that has hosted everthing from prize winning cows to The Beatles in its time. For a few years now it has been the home of the annual garden show, an extravaganza of garden design showcases, lectures, and garden-related vendors. Unlike the last time I went, two years ago, this show was somewhat less crowded and...

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