Driving Bear Tooth Pass from Yellow Stone National Park through the mountains to Red Lodge, Montana we came upon many natural wonders. It seems a contradiction but at 10, 000 feet above sea level, snow and summer wildflowers coexist. The densest blooms are along the road where the soil has been disturbed by snowplows and cars. These flowers are nature’s survivors. The views were glorious and the flowers beautiful but at times it was a frightening drive. The narrow road curved around bends with little shoulder and a sheer drop down. It was a thrill of a lifetime!

A half-mile down the road from my brother’s home in Ann Arbor, Michigan is a tranquil marsh, the breeding ground and home for a family of trumpeter swans.  If you’re not familiar with them, you are not alone.  They have lived on the brink of extinction for decades and missed being on the endangered list by a feather. In fact, in 1900 they were believed to be extinct.

Snowy-white with long straight necks the trumpeter swan is, I am told, a spectacular sight. At maturity it is 4-feet tall with a 7-foot wingspan and weights up to 30 pounds. It is North America’s largest waterfowl. And yes, it does trumpet, unlike the smaller, mute swans that live in the bay by our house. I would love to see one. Unfortunately, when I visited my brother all I saw was a memorial posted by their many friends at the edge of the pond. Someone had shot the parents and their two cygnets in the middle of night and left their bodies along the roadside. Such a senseless act of cruelty! 

I posted a sign to alert visitors to my problems.

It is that time of year, when the weeds can be overwhelming.  However, my pleasure in weeding increases after a soaking rain and there has been plenty this summer.  After a rain even onion grass, dock, bindweed, lamb’s-quarters, shepherd’s purse, and chrysanthemum weed can be pulled out from soft ground without a trowel.

There is much to be learned from weeding, but not all of it pleasant. A streak of silvery slime on the ground or over a leaf tells me slugs have taken up residence. Squelching slugs is great sport, but not for the squeamish. If I weren’t at ground level, I might not have noticed what was afoot until huge chunks were missing from the leaves.

More often, however, this close-in approach is a treasure hunt.  Peering at the innocent, purple foliage of perila seedlings, I realize they might be good transplanted into a hole in the flower border.  Near-by I spotted forget-me-not seedlings—perfect for the woodland garden where daffodils will bloom next spring.  Verbena bonariensis too, is easy to spot below the sunflower seedling. I think I’ll leave the sunflower where it is. It will be conversation piece and I don’t want to chance loosing it. Of course, bindweed, clover, dandelions and other undesirables have reared their ugly heads. I’ll eliminate stress pulling them.

A zucchini masquerading as a peacock.

Six zucchini plants more than feeds my family of seven, weekend guests and neighbors all summer. After boiling, sautéing and baking tiny zucchini, and pureeing larger ones for breads, we still are surprised to find several hiding, in spite of their baseball-bat size, under even larger leaves. Conventional wisdom in peaceful Vermont advises locking cars at shopping centers to avoid finding your backseat filled with generous donations of zucchini left by a kind, over-productive gardener.

To solve the problem of an abundance of zucchini I came up with two additional solutions. My favorite is to make soup. Zucchini makes a delicious, nutritious, and low-fat soup, with a creamy, velvety texture without the addition of milk or cream. The skin of the squash gives the soup a rich green color and the seeds, cooked and blended into a puree, add rich flavor and texture. Here is my recipe:

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Green Goddess Zucchini Soup 

Serves 8

1 large yellow chopped onion, coarsely chopped (about 1 cup)

1 large garlic clove, chopped

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

3 small zucchini, washed, ends removed, cut into 2-inch pieces

6 cups chicken broth

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

In a large soup pot, over low heat, sauté the onion and garlic in the oil for five minutes, or until the onion is soft and translucent.  Add the zucchini pieces and chicken broth and bring to a boil over high heat.  Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the zucchini is soft when poked with a fork.  Puree one-third of the soup at a time in a blender or food processor, starting at low speed to prevent the hot soup from flying out.  Pour into a tureen and serve immediately  (for a cold treat, refrigerate for several hours. The soup tends to thicken a bit in the refrigerator.   You can thin it with chicken broth, water, or milk, even skim).

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One playful solution to the squash glut is to turn the largest into a peacock centerpiece.  To do it I sliced off just enough of the bottom so it sits flat on an oval platter.  Then I scooped out flesh near the back of the zucchini for the peacock’s tail flowers. The opening is filled with moist floral foam, then I poked in flowers and ferns with arching shapes including white Queen Anne’s lace, pink cosmos, purple butterfly bush, and blue scabiosa.  The beak and the head are fashioned from small yellow peppers and attached with straight pins. I sliced an opening in the top pepper for the beak. As the pepper dried over the next few hours the beak opened. If you are so inclined, a flower can be inserted in its mouth.  Small leaved ivy formed a collar where the neck met the body and where the head meets the neck. The crushed velvet of cockscomb provided the peacock’s comb. And a frilled collar of Queen Anne’s lace decorated the neck. The peacock may be a little quirky, but it amused guests and the seeds of a smile were planted.

A rhododendron that was hit by a falling tree branch.

Everyone is in favor of helping those less fortunate than ourselves, but sometimes we forget that plants too can have disabilities. Last winter a huge branch from a tulip tree fell on a Rhododendron breaking off all of its branches except one.  I thought it was a sorry sight—so distorted. I assumed I would replace it in the spring.  Once spring came, I changed my mind. I have never seen such bloom—all along the one lonely branch. It certainly was trying harder. New shoots are sprouting as well.

I decided I would point it out to garden snobs when they visit and tell them I was training it to be an arch. The truth is it doesn’t really matter what you do in a garden as much as how you rhapsodize about it.

 By Suzy Bales

By Suzy Bales

        

The worst weather and the worst conditions for gardening often bring out the best in people.  Take my friend, Les Brake who lives in Willow, Alaska where winter temperatures plunge to thirty below regularly and snowfall averages 110 inches. The snow is so high he has to worry about the rabbits eating the tops off of his Japanese maples. Winters are long and dark in Alaska, from September to May. Living in a one-room cabin, five miles from the nearest town, Les has little company.

To entertain himself and give friends and even strangers a reason to visit, Les has turned his  garden into a fairyland of “fire in Ice”. He makes ice sculptures out of household kitchen molds and lights them with candles. Snow is the glue that holds the pieces together. A Jell-O mold and a bund pan shape many of his ice sculptures. See if you can figure out what other dishes he has used.

Whenever winter gets me down I think of Les and I smile. He is an artist in his own land.

        

       

       

       

As requested, I’ve added some additional pictures. Can you figure out how they were made?

Les Brake, the artist at work.

By Suzy Bales

There comes a time in every gardener’s life when they are caught with their petals down. It happens after a heavy rain, a drought, high winds or a prolonged vacation. No one wants to admit it is the norm. When visitors are expected our garden should look its best.

I settled on a strategy of donations, distraction, decoys and dazzle. I scooped up several dozen hellebore yearlings lurking just under their mother’s foliage and another dozen rose of Sharon seedlings that strayed into the gravel driveway. These I would donate to the visitors. No one thinks poorly of gift givers, do they?

My next challenge was filling in the bare spots with color. Shopping at the local nursery or dividing and moving plants was not an option. For that I needed more time to assess and plan. So I employed my distraction tactics. I moved a few pots of flowering annuals adorning the terrace into the bare spots in the border.  I reasoned, if the pot is raised, atop an upside down pot, a brick or a block of wood, just above the plants around it, it might be taken for a design element. 

At the front border where a dianthus had departed, I planted a large, scallop-shell birdbath and further back another standing, blue-glazed one. After I filled them with water and floating flowers, they too looked like they belonged. If the blue glaze mistakenly gives the impression there are more flowers, all the better. 

On occasion I bring out a traditional bee skep. It’s hollow and looks like a straw beehive or a pointy turban. I can place it over a sickly plant, use it to shade a new transplant or set it as an ornament in an empty spot. Visitors never know the troubles it hides. Placed in the garden it says I care about the environment. A point in my favor!

Garden statuary are great decoys and move about as needed. After trimming dead or diseased foliage out of the border, I tucked in a stone rabbit to play peak-a- boo.  From a larger opening, a gaggle of geese marched out.

I’ve noted if I give visitors something to talk about, it makes a better impression. So I tried to dazzle them with a wreath of sunflowers on the gate and hung a chandelier, dripping with clematis autumn joy, from a tree over a dinning table.

Since a garden is a good place to shed inhibitions, I’ve tried many a foolish thing to prepare for company. A voluptuous scarecrow relaxing on the front porch where visitors glimpse her pumpkin breasts peaking out of her low cut gown is amusing. The traditional scarecrow farmer bending over a wheelbarrow with his pumpkin buns exposed is another. Together they are a memorable pair. One thing is for sure, none are easily forgotten.

When the group arrived, I decided to be honest. I explained the untrimmed honeysuckle over the door and the roses draping over the top of the windows were romantic abandon. They seemed to buy it. I noted that if you didn’t let the weeds get to a certain size, it was impossible to see if there were any keepers among them. I pointed out a baby tulip tree, and smatterings of columbines, lupines, nigella and foxgloves seedlings and I ignored the bindweed, dock, and smartweed. When a guest admired my 6-foot tall ironweed in beautiful bloom and asked where to get it. I graciously offered her seed as no nursery I know sells it. It is literally a native New York weed.

As the tour ended, I overheard one lady say she found it refreshing to see a lived-in garden. Too ordered a garden, she stated, lacks charm.  Here there was no pressure for perfection so she felt right at home. For regular glimpses of my garden, I invited everyone to regularly check out suzybalesgarden.com.

Thank goodness I didn’t stoop to spiking the lemonade and bringing out the pink flamingos.

Hostess Gifts

Old fashioned as it might be, I always like to take a gift to the hostess when I am invited to a party or dinner out. What to bring is the tricky part, especially for an annoying acquaintance. For example, the new neighbor down the street that just removed a dozen trees without permits or my relative, a world expert on everything.

A garden friend once brought me a gift of one petasides plant. “You will love it he exclaimed, “especially it’s brown flowers in late winter.” He never mentioned that five years later I’d been running for my life as a hundred plants marched up the bank to invade my woodland garden. Was he truly a garden friend or did he have a hidden agenda? Ummm!

If I was to follow his example topping my list for pesky people would be plants with a run-away metabolism, “the flowers of discontent.” They are as seemingly innocuous as a morning glory, humble as mint, sophisticated as gooseneck strife or as exotic as the Asian chameleon plant. The gift, like the Trojan horse, is appealing before it pounces.

Bringing a pot of Heavenly Blue morning glories to a hostess whose party you were forced to attend seems innocent enough. But, each gorgeous blue flower blooms for only a day before it literally goes to seed. Morning glories would, if they could, take over the earth. Since the blooms keep coming, flowering more each week than they did before, so do the numbers of seeds. The hostess, captivated by the quick growing vine and the beauty of the flowers won’t notice the seedlings accumulating at it’s feet. By my estimation, ‘Heavenly Blue’, the most popular hybrid, drops hundreds of seeds over the course of its three- to four-months of bloom. Miraculously, they all appear to sprout anywhere and everywhere they land—in the garden, between paving stones, in cracks, in gravel, in clay and in sand. It’s impossible to weed out the entire population with one swipe. The seeds keep coming all summer and fall until frost steps in. Then, any seed that hasn’t germinated waits patiently until spring to sprout.

They might be welcome if the seeds carried the beauty of their hybrid parent but they don’t. They revert back to a species with smaller flowers in softer colors. And here’s the rub—seedlings, sneaky devils that they are, crawl along the ground, hiding from view camouflaged as they twine around other plants, until they reach up and bloom and then it’s too late. They too spew seed.

Consider a gift of mint, a humble herb yet, a refreshing addition to iced tea and mint juleps. There are dozens to choose from—peppermint, spearmint, pineapple mint, apple mint, ginger mint and more. The dark side of mint is, once its been planted, there is no halting its spread. Its roots run like an underground express making regular stops every few inches to send up new shoots. Even if it’s plucked daily, it advances. The variegated golden mint, running along our shallow stream dove in and swam to the other side, whipping out all the plants in its way.

Gooseneck strife, on the other hand, makes a sophisticated present, a quiet beauty with a gracefully arching head covered in altar-boy white, starry flowers. While I admire the beauty of its softly curved blooms, especially as the sun is setting when it shimmers as if gilded, such looks are deceiving. Its true color startles. Underground the scarlet roots are the devil to dislodge. They run in all directions, sometimes several feet, before rearing into an angelic-looking plant. If the soil is moist and loamy, it is possible to apply a slow gentle pressure and pull out a foot or two at a time. If the soil is dry and crusted, a bulldozer is best. Luckily, the red runners are easy to spot at the base of each shoot when they come up for air in the spring. It is the signal for gardeners to take warning.

Hands down, the best plant for ending a friendship is the chameleon plant, Houttuynia cordata. Hyped in unscrupulous catalogs as a colorful and fragrant groundcover to prevent erosion, it will do that and more. The green heart-shaped foliage, splotched with purple, pink and red, weaves a handsome, dense carpet in sun and shade. It looks innocent enough, especially in May and June when its small white flowers appear. But, pick a flower or tear off a leaf and the stench that rises to greet you, quickly changes your mind. Reminiscent of a foot soldier’s boot or a cold miner’s armpit, it is not easily forgotten.

A friend’s husband gave her a few plants for Mother’s day and she liked them well enough before they stomped across her garden strangling the other blooms. When she pulled them up, they blasted her like a skunk with their scent. So she donned a hospital mask, nicknamed it vomit vine and redoubled her determination until she defeated them all.

Then again, a hapless hostess might leave the gift in the pot where it’ll bloom without reeking havoc or plant it in a strip of ground between a foundation and a sidewalk where it has nowhere to go. Of course, if the recipient isn’t a gardener and doesn’t have flowers, it might well turn a bare yard into a meadow. Then again if you live too close, it may come back to haunt you.

Just like tobacco was considered safe in the 1950’s, pesticides and chemical fertilizers are advertised as being safe today. The truth is they are toxic for our environment. Manufactures are selling us a bill of goods or, to be more accurate, a bill of bads. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides have been linked to contamination of drinking water and to serious health risks to children, adults and animals.

It is a myth that chemicals are necessary to grow beautiful gardens. There were beautiful gardens long before chemical fertilizers and pesticides came into wide use after World War II. Especially hard hitting is the myth they are needed for lawns and roses. Our gardens have been free of chemicals and pesticides for 20 years and it grows lushly and naturally from a few inches of compost spread on the gardens yearly.

Nitrogen from chemical fertilizes leaches into our aquifer and runs into the bay. As a result, algae grows out of control, eventually stripping oxygen from the water which fish and other aquatic life need. Dead zones have already begun to appear, notably in the Gulf of Mexico, which is fed by nitrogen-rich water from the Mississippi river.

Canada banned the “cosmetic” use of pesticides in 96 municipalities, including Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. The Connecticut state legislature recently passed a bill that bans the use of pesticides on the grounds of primary schools. Connecticut is working to extend it further. It is a difficult fight against the big money of the chemical companies.

Modeled on a tactic of the tobacco companies, chemical companies have pushed through laws in 40 states specifying that no township or municipality can enact pesticide regulations stricter than those of the state as a whole. We cannot ban chemicals and pesticides from use on Long Island. It would take a statewide law. We can only urge residents not to use chemicals and pesticides.

Pesticide Facts from Environment and Human Health, Inc.(EHHI):,

• Increased odds of childhood leukemia, brain cancer and soft tissue sarcoma have been associated with children living in households where pesticides are used.
• Some inert ingredients are suspected carcinogens; others have been linked to central nervous system disorders, liver and kidney damage, birth defects, and some short-term health effects.—Attorney General’s Office of New York
• The use of household pesticides has been associated with a variety of childhood cancers. Switching to 7th Generation dishwashing and laundry soaps and cleaning supplies will prevent more chemicals from draining into our water supplies.
• The use of pesticides often harms wildlife and their habitats. Both dogs and cats are known to eat grass. There have been many cases of pets’ deaths from lawn treatments. Commonly used lawn-care chemicals can persist in soil, the air we breathe and water for weeks, which can lead to the contamination of aquatic resources and local wildlife.
• In addition to contaminating surface water, pesticides can contaminate ground water, potentially causing health problems for people drinking it.

Organic Lawn and Garden Care

Compost happens! It’s a major miracle in nature’s grand scheme. And miracle is the only word to explain how rotting vegetable scraps, plants and leaves become fine black velvet humus, rich in sustenance. It is so clean that it protects plants from diseases, parasites, and toxins. It is a medicine for worn-out soils, an elixir for healthy ones. A good dose of humus can raise a soil’s water-holding capacity from only 20 percent of its dry weight to between 300 and 500 percent.

Mistakenly, many homeowners believe it is sufficient to add a chemical fertilizer to their garden each year. Fertilizer does add a few nutrients but they don’t help the soil structure, and over time the soil compacts, preventing nutrients from reaching the roots of the plants. Earthworms can’t live in soils with chemical fertilizers.

Yearly replenishment of the soil with an inch or two of humus is the single most important step in building a lawn and a garden. Fertilizer is not necessary, humus is. If you can’t give up the fertilizer habit, please buy organic ones.

It is simple process to make your own compost. Simply pile up fall leaves in a bin or an out-of-view place on your property and let it rot. Within six months to a year it will be ready to spread on your gardens and lawn. Or, shed the leaves in the fall by running over piles with a lawn mower or feeding them into a leaf shredder and return them to the gardens to decompose.

An Organic Lawn

To keep a lawn lush organically requires a three-to-five- year period of rebuilding the soil and replenishing it with a suitable population of microorganisms, beneficial fungi and bacteria that have been destroyed by the lawn toxins. Once this is done the cost of maintaining the lawn drops way below that of chemical-based maintenance.

Mowing high—leaving 1.5 to 3.5 inches of grass—is better. Longer grass discourages weeds and insect pests, while shorter grass promotes shallow root growth and thatch. Leaving the clippings on the lawn is the natural way to put the nutrients back into the soil. Buffalo grass and creeping fescue don’t need mowing.

Web sites for more information:

www.greenparty.ca/en/nobe/1023
www.safelawns.org
www.beyondpesticides.org
www.ehhi.org/reports/lcpesticides/