The Manic Gardener

Monday Muse: Black Rook in Rainy Weather

October 13, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

This is not a poem about gardens or even, really, about Nature with a capital "N," but it seems fitting in this season of dying gardens and increasingly grey skies, when everything–lungs, arteries, possibilities–can feel constricted.

Since we don’t have rooks in the U.S., this poem deserves a photograph of a crow, which we do have, or at least of rain, but Montana seems to have skipped autumn this year, leaping straight from the almost summer-like temperatures that greeted us when we returned from Newfoundland in late September to the snow that now blankets the ground. I therefore have no rain to show you, and even the crows, which at times in summer drive me mad, appear to have fled. So I can offer only this photo of a rook, cadged off the Web.

Both here and in all the other photographs I found, the rook appears much blacker than crows do, glossier, more irridescent. Which makes sense, given what Plath does with it in the poem.

Image from Rooks and Crowsby Natalie Jacobs.

Continue reading →

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Poetry

A Sister’s Death

October 3, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

A couple of days ago my sister died. Suddenly.

I have been wondering what to say about this here, if anything. Then this morning, just catching up on some other blogs, I saw James’ letter to his dead brother on Double Danger, and Victoria’s post about the return of her husband’s cancer on her blog Victoria’s Backyard. Not to mention Zoë’s struggles with her own cancer, mentioned on Garden Hopping, and recorded in detail on her amazing journal, The Journey. And I thought, all right then. I’ll just do this.

So there it is: my younger sister died Tuesday afternoon, and we don’t know why.

I did not even know she was sick.

Well—she was an alcoholic who drank nonstop for weeks at a time, so she was not healthy. She was so stubborn she managed to carry her habit through three or four rounds of rehab, knocking the best programs in the country flat.

I didn’t get a chance to ask what she thought of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab.” I didn’t get a chance to hear her play the guitar since she took it up again several years ago. I didn’t have a chance to see her garden, or to show her mine. I didn’t get the chance to see the batiks she started making again this spring, though I have one she made years ago on my wall.

Continue reading →

→ 23 Comments

Posted in Personals

Home from Newfoundland

October 2, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

A week or so ago I said good-by to my parents,

farewell to Newfoundland,

and came home to find that both crops

and livestock

were thriving in the care of #1 son, who had graciously undertaken the task. This is the fellow who dashed outside in the midst of the hailstorm last July (when winds reached 80 miles per hour), wrestling tarps up against the house foundation to forestall flooding. So we felt comfortable leaving the house in his hands.

Continue reading →

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Vegetables

Newfoundland #2: Wrong again, Kate

September 24, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

These are gannets at St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve. The dark birds are the young, by now as large as their parents. The one with the fuzzy head is even younger than the one with a smooth head. All this has nothing to do with gardens or with the post below, except that Chris works with these birds, and told me about the garden. In the post below.

This seems to be my week for error. Apparently, much of what I said in my first post from Newfoundland was, well, incorrect, to put it delicately. Aw shucks, let’s just say it: from garden drainage to the “best place in the world,” I got it wrong. Here’s the list:

1) Our B&B host at the extreme southern tip of the island kept saying, “Best place in the world.” That much I got right. But where I implied that he was referring to all Newfoundland, it’s become pretty clear that he had something much more specific in mind: his home town, Branch. I’ve got two pretty good pieces of evidence to support this claim.

First of all, he travelled and worked across Canada for two years after high school, but when he figured out what he wanted to do, he came back to Newfoundland, and when he’d gotten the degree that would let him do it, he came back to Branch. That’s home-town loyalty. Secondly, referring to the home-coming year CDs put out by Branch and the neighboring town of St. Bride’s, he averred that Branch’s singers were much better. (He’s one of them.) Me, I’m bowled over by the idea of reunions held by and for an entire town, and I think all the singers are pretty darn good. (Even if he is one of them.)

Continue reading →

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Organic Gardening

Hail Damage: Potato double reprise

September 21, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

Several days ago I left you hanging, or tried to, but perhaps a more aggressive approach would have worked better, viz:

So now I knew that, thank goodness, I didn’t need to dig up my damaged potatoes. Or did I? (scary music)

To recap: My last post contained the research results I’d found after a hail storm devastated my potatoes in July. According to several experts who’d conducted several studies, potatoes damaged earlier in the season recovered more completely, and had better yields, than those that were damaged later. This was a major relief to me, as it meant I could leave my potatoes, all of them fairly young, in the ground, and they’d continue to grow, albeit slowly.

Dee of Red Dirt Ramblings had suggested, quite reasonably, that I might want to get those potatoes out of the ground forthwith, but since this research indicated otherwise, I proceeded to a gleeful celebration, declaring that she was “wrong, wrong, wrong.” Now, that’s the sort of categorical declaration that in any tragedy would be recognized as hubris, and like pride, it goes before a fall.

Continue reading →

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Vegetables, Weather