The Fairy Gardener: Of Fish, and Graves, and Waxy Bells...

by Jim Edminster, Chicago, IL

Let's start this glorious May Day with a seemingly gloomy item from the NY Times:  A woman, Katrina Spade, is trying to start a composting business.  For human bodies.  She has titled her enterprise the Urban Death Project & estimates the whole process would cost about $2500, much less than any burial.  Think about this a bit - I've kidded for years that I wanted to die on the dance floor & be put in my compost heap.  Cemeteries are overcrowded and even crematoria chapels (with niches for ashes in urns) are becoming too full.  Ms Spade will return about 3 cubic feet of perfectly good dirt to the bereaved for the garden or forest or park.  Dust to dust you all.

A couple more sad stories:  Horticulture magazine reports some (unlabeled) flats of flowers have been sprayed with pesticides that attract & poison bees.  Don't plant Callery (aka Bradford) pears anymore:  they have weak crotches which break easily & worse - when blooming they smell like something nasty your dog has rolled in.  (These are ornamental non-bearing plants.)

I hereby establish the "Ivy League Sub-section of the Guerilla Gardening Society."  Lately people have been putting up large windowless, unornamented red brick buildings in the hood.  These buildings need something.  Ivy comes to mind.  My house has ivy & it has ivy berries.  These berries seem to be flying to the bases of these buildings.  Imagine!

Garden notes off the top of my head - I've been planting some spring bulbs & plants.  My yard is fairly dense so I've marked their burial (this is a theme in this essay) spots with bright bendable plastic drinking straws.  The yard looks like it's full of little periscopes.  I've planted 3 packages of borage which is a foot tall herb with fuzzy jade green leaves & bright blue flowers loved by bees ( & it's not poisonous!)  I moved a trial geranium in & out of the house 3 times before it stayed warm enough for it outside.  My wonderful tenant, Brit, (helped by her white husky, Nova) helped me haul my water lilies, cannas, dahlias & amaryllis out of the basement onto the patio.  I will have to pull MANY yellow jewelweed babies out (because their parents loved the yard & multiplied!)  I've never planted a red tulip in my life but a third of my yard's tulips are red.  All my fish are having a good time in the pond.  I have an actual bed frame in the yard (for a flower bed, of course) & I found 2 old cracked but handsome chairs for plant stands.  This garden is going to be a real garden room.  Just took my sasquatch out to put on the garden path - he's my green apeman I found a couple of years ago.  Found some hardy primroses to plant along my garden path . .I have a 3 foot wide, 40 feet long stretch of dirt between my sidewalk and my neighbor's house - it has many blank spots in it.  I'm going hogwild and planting every color of heuchera (coral bells) that I can find in those spots.  I need more shooting stars along the path and where a small oak-leaved hydrangea passed away (we return to the theme) I'm going to put a yellow wax bells (Kirengoshima) as soon as I can find.  

Ai Wei Wei: Using the New to re-claim the Old

    T4781 contributor, Jim Edminster, recently attended the Ai Wei Wei Circle of Animals exhibit in front of Chicago's Adler Planetarium.

    Wei Wei, a Chinese dissident artist, has stepped back into themes of controversy in the arts, this time addressing the complicated issue of the looting of cultural treasures by imperial powers or occupying armies.

    In 1860, British and French troops looted the Imperial Chinese Summer Palace during the Second Opium War, removing the heads of the Chinese zodiac clock-fountain from the palace grounds.

    As seen in the illustration, the twelve figures, designed by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Castiglione for the Qianlong Emporer, were grouped around a fountain in the garden and are thought to have spit out water as a sort of fountain clock.

    Now we hit upon the controversy:  the Summer Gardens and statues once defined a semi-public space celebrating aspects of local culture through the arts.  These figures were undeniably vandalized and looted by invading armies and arguably, aught to be returned to China.

Summer Palace Plan ca 1888, courtesy WikiImages.

    On the other hand, the remaining original heads probably owe their 20th Century survival to have been looted and removed to Europe where they were somewhat ironically safe from the horrors of Asia in World War 2, from the ravages and destruction of China's Communist Revolution, from the evacuation of China's armies from the mainland to Taiwan, and furthermore, from the intentional destruction of much of China's intact Imperial heritage during the Cultural Revolution.

    Now a stabilized economic world power, China is anxious to rebuild its past and to reclaim a heritage it once wantonly destroyed, as a symbol of its cultural prestige and contemporary ambitions.

Monkey, original

Bull or Ox, original

    Wei Wei wades into this debate with secure footing, having reproduced a set of disembodied Chinese Zodiac figure-"heads," which despite the heated political and cultural debate surrounding them, yet retain a power to define space and elevate one to contemplate time and destiny. 

    Perhaps the original Garden of Clear Ripples could be restored, finally providing a secure and culturally-intact sense of space and cultural connectivity to the people of Beijing.  Perhaps also, Wei Wei's Circle of Animals could help inspire the former occupying powers to create their own images and recreate similar spaces within their own parks, for their own people.  The British, French, and Americans are hardly bereft of their own artistic resources, and perhaps Wei Wei might be willing to continue to lend out his works as inspiration and models, a sort of diplomatic transitional shift allowing the originals to retire back to their homeland while passing the torch to a new generation of sturdy, much less controversial, traveling heads.

images courtesy of Jim Edminster
editing courtesy Agassiz Media & Consulting 

   
   

Boulevards and Hellstrips

Jim Edminster

Chicago’s Fairy Gardener

  Whether you call that strip of land in front of your house between the curb and your front gate a parkway (as they do in Chicago) or a verge or a hellstrip or just curb plantings there are things to consider if you want to alter this area with plants or decorative items:

 

Some things you SHOULD do: 

A)  Find out who this land belongs to.  In Chicago, for instance, it belongs to the city.  (This fact may change what you want to do to it.)

B)  Is there an agency in your town which will tell you of buried sewer lines or phone, water, gas or electric lines in this area?  You don't want to damage these lines or put an expensive plant in a place where it might soon be removed.  (In Chicago this agency is called "Digger:  Chicago Utility Alert Network.")

C)  Figure out whether you have sun or shade in the area - you'll need this info later down the page.

D)  When planning what to do, leave a foot and a half of free space curb-side.  Car doors have to be able to be opened - put nothing in their way.  (Put plants there & they'll be stepped on.)  If you can brick this area or use broken concrete or pavers - don't put grass in - it has to be mowed then.

E)  Plan to use plants of as low maintenance as possible.  No prima donnas please or you'll be sorry (& over-worked).

F)  Depending how wide your property is you need to leave a sidewalk width somewhere to provide access to the street.  (For taxis, moving vans, deliveries, etc.)

Some things you SHOULDN'T do: 

A)  Some places like Chicago don't much care if you plant the parkway but they very much care what you plant.  Don't plant messy trees like catalpas.  Don't plant fruit trees - apples falling on the street are not a good idea.  Ditto nut trees.  (You possibly could plant trees with small berries that stay on the tree for birds.)  NO thorn-bearing bushes or trees - this is just a lawsuit waiting to happen.  (Yes, this includes roses.)  No large showy single flowers like iris or peonies - they're not dangerous but they are eminently pickable (& they will be!)

B)  If trees are already present do not bury their roots and lower trunks with dirt.  This is a good way to smother them.

C)  If there are visible tree roots there do not cut large ones.

D)  Some folks like to put sculptures and the like in the parkway.  Small cute stone kittens and/or colorful glass gazing balls = gone in three days.  If you have a (large) group of friends who want to help you wrestle a 300 pound stone Foo dog into place out there go for it!

E)  Veggies out in this area are not a good idea - they can be stolen & they are highly likely to be polluted by gas fumes & road salt.

Some things you MIGHT consider:

A)  If it is possible, raise the bed by several courses of brick or railroad ties.  You could put the bricks all the way around or let the bed slope down toward the sidewalk.  (If you do the second you might want to put a small fence in front.)

B)  If you have big tree roots you can dig pockets between them to plant hostas & the like.

C)  Ivies can be planted which will cover tree roots.  Neither will hurt the other.

D)  Plant flowers with many small flowers like coreopsis or asters or salvia.  These are not as likely to be picked.

E)  Small bulbs (which can be planted in sun or shade) like miniature iris, crocus, species tulips, and small daffodils are also unlikely to be picked.

Fairy Gardener: Lords-and-Ladies of Spring

 by James Edminster

PHOTO: Arum italicum courtesy Wikimedia.org

  Deep as the snow is I still have Lords-and-Ladies growing green under the snow, (You may know them as Arum italicum; they have mottled dark green arrow-headed shaped leaves & orange berries.  They like my yard so I'm planting lots more.)  Some off-the-top-of-my-head garden tidbits:  I left my goldfish outside in the pond (with an icemelter and a circulating pump and so far no floating piscine bodies.)  Am I the only one smelling Spring in the air?  I go outside to cardinals singing and there are little green shoots at the edges of the snow banks.  The grand total of bulbs I planted was 750.  We'll see how many come up.  (For procrastinators there are still perennial bulbs which can be planted in Spring - primarily lilies and alliums.)  You want a free scarecrow line for the garden?  If you have pets many cans of pet food have pull tabs.  Save and wash the tops & tie them to a line - birds don't like them.  Don't use cocoa mulch if you have outdoor cats or let your dog use the yard.  Chocolate is poisonous to them.  Pots of elephant ears make great punctuation marks around the yard - sun or shade, just water them adequately.  Someone gives you a baby shrub or an offshoot of a perennial - stick them in fancy pot with good dirt & don't plant them out till they're bigger.  New plants to try:  "Spring Symphony" foamflowers (pink/shade);  masterwort (Astrania - pink/part shade);  Salvia Cardona(sun/purple).  "Marcesent" means when plant leaves wither but stay on the plant in winter.  Many oaks do this.  (There is a very fine row of fastigate [means "upright, like a Lombardy poplar] oaks near my favorite bookstore.  I HAD to correct someone who thought they were diseased.)

    Here's this month's recipe in honor of my home state of Kansas:  Sunflower slaw - head of cabbage shredded (red is fun), 5 carrots shredded, can of crushed pineapple, small 3 or 4 oz. pkg. roasted sunflower kernels, 3/4 cup mayonnaise, 3 Tb. lemon juice, 3 Tb. orange juice.  Combine dry ingredients in bowl;  combine dressing ingredients & pour over rest.  Chill & serve.

    Now is the time to dig out that garden map you promised yourself to do for the last set of garden resolutions so you can remember the blank spots, the flat-out failures, the overly successful & those species you've always longed for, since the garden catalogs are here!  Time to order!  Ahem, I suppose I could get all superior and show you the map I did make (really!) except .... I can't find it.  So we're all in the same boat which reminds me of one of the most poignant garden stories I ever heard:  a couple who had been married many years found that the wife had incurable cancer.  One of her favorite winter activities had been ordering new plants for their garden.  It was this time of year and she was due to die in several months - her husband found her in their den ordering plants as usual & asked her incredulously what she was doing.  She answered calmly that she was plotting the resurrection.  So all of you plot your plot's new beginnings & we'll see you all at the next garden club meeting!