Pissing Rain and Standing Water

Having just heard NPR's Melissa Block report on the desperation after the quake in Chengdu, and the continuing absurdity of foreign aid not getting into Myanmar, I'm torn as always between talking plants and talking real life.

Right now I've decided they're not mutually exclusive.

Even as eyewitnesses text, phone and e-mail in accounts from China, native lewisias in the Columbia Gorge are pushing from bud to flower absorbing whatever sun's rays are available (all told, not much); the first ruellia and acanthus flowers have been spotted by an Austin blogger; and a U.K. gardener mourns the absence of bad weather as he heads into the region's biggest flower show of the year.

Thanks for the much-needed visits to Zanthan Gardens and Blackpitts Garden; your blog recommendations enabled me to pick today's small if desperately-needed bouquet.

2:00 PM ET | 05-12-2008 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post

Tips from an Amazon Gardener

As heard on radio, as seen in the Amazon, and now, on the TP blog, here are Dona Raimunda's chives protected against jealousy and evil by sentinel eggs.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

Dona Raimunda is a rock star. A meteor shower. A force of nature. It's amazing to me how that much personality can be contained in such a diminutive body.

She is the mother of farmer Rosario Costa Cabral, the Amazon farmer featured in these pages a few months back. Rosario has made a name for herself growing crops never before tried in her region of the Amazon flood plain, where she's encouraged other farmers to branch out.

However...
Whereas Rosario relies on observation and experimentation, her mother channels ancestral know-how.

Dona Raimunda regularly wanders past her seedlings in the course of the day and blows a bit of her tobacco smoke from her pipe to keep away the crickets and discourage butterflies from depositing their eggs.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Dona Raimunda is who-knows-what-generation caboclo, the Brazilian word for the ethnically mixed people who live in the Amazon. In my Weekend Edition Sunda radio piece about Dona Raimunda, I listed six tongue-in-cheek gardening tips I'd observed watching this caboclo gardener at work. My hunch is they'll make a whole lot more sense if you care to join me in her Amazon garden but in any case, here they are:

#1 Mind how you talk to your plants
#2 Cucumbers and cabbage are sworn enemies and cannot be grown together
#3 Chili peppers are stubbornly reluctantly to let go of their fruit
#4 Plants are no co-dependent; they don't care if you garden in a bad mood
#5 Ugly chives save lives (a reference to putting anti-evil eggs in the vegetable garden)
#6 Smokers are welcome in the garden

She is a rare beauty, the dona, but this isn't a very typical pose. She's usually up to something: telling stories, making acai, and of course, talking to her plants.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

 

3:31 PM ET | 03-22-2008 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

For Love of a Sinkhole

Q: How many paleoecologists does it take to excavate a sinkhole, find seven previously undescribed bird species and reintroduce native plant species to a place they haven't grown in for a thousand years?

A: Depends on the paleoecologists.

Fact is, some aren't mortal. In particular, keep an eye out for the pair shown below. They were recently featured in an NPR radio report that mistakenly assumed they were human, based on their oh! so convincing paleoecologist clothing.

Closer scrutiny has determined it simply isn't possible for this couple to do as much as they do in as many places as they do it and not be in league with He Who Cannot Be Named. Consequently, approach with extreme caution should the pair be spotted one fine Sunday morning within the nether reaches of Kauai's Makauwahi Cave.

Meet the happy sorcerers Lida Pigott and David A. Burney, whose life work in the field of paleoecology has culminated in a picturesque sinkhole where they're bringing an ancient piece of Hawaii back to life. While the couple may or may not be in league with the supernatural, they do have a lease on the cave property courtesy of Grove Farm.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

We'll post more photos shortly plus details as we gather them. Until then, be very afraid.

11:10 AM ET | 01- 2-2008 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

The World According to Elspeth Bobbs

Introducing one of the country's most enchanting -- and disarming -- gardeners.

After a few hours in Elspeth Bobb's company, amidst so many accounts of the joys and bores in her garden ("Wretched catmint." You don't like it? "I'm not a cat!"), I keep coming back to something her husband once said to her who knows how many decades ago.

"If you weren't deaf, you'd be a menace!"

Indeed, this is a woman who likes to take things on and stir them up. And yes, she's pretty darn deaf.

Even if you listened to NPR's Morning Edition story today featuring Mrs. Bobbs, you'd know nothing of her hearing loss. Somehow, it just didn't seem relevant, given her penchant for turning adversity to advantage. But the fact is, she hasn't heard a human sentence for the last 49 years.

"I can hear birds now, and dogs barking, and people talking," she says, one year after having a cochlear implant, "but I can't hear what they say". Instead, she uses her high tech lip-reading skills for conversation, and draws from memory the colors and nuance of sound.

Not unlike the woman herself, there's more in this photo than first meets the eye. Elspeth Bobb's is only one of two faces shown here. Can you find the other, say, George Washington's?

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

One of Mrs. Bobbs' greatest gifts as a gardener is her perspective: Aim high and enjoy whatever happens. It's a set-up of the cleverest kind; she simply cannot fail.

"Exactly, exactly!" she says. "I don't feel disappointed. For instance, this was all lawn," she says, pointing out a huge area now dominated by art installations, islands of plants and mulch. "After the drought in the 70's, the lawn was an absolute disaster. So we just covered it with plastic and put bark on top. Then I said, well we can't have this, so I thought up something that didn't need water and put in a labyrinth. I like to have a project."

Once the labyrinth was in -- an inviting construction made of wood and lined with fine gravel -- Mrs. Bobbs was persuaded to dabble in the altogether unfamiliar. She now has a vibrant and colorful undulating sculpture created by Santa Fe artist Hillary Riggs, in the shape of a logarithmic spiral.

"It's all done by mathematical principles," says Mrs. Bobbs. "It's all about patterns. I've had a lovely time with it ".

"To be perfectly candid, I simply loathe geometry," says the gardener, "but it is very fascinating." This installation, as well as a labyrinth, have taken the place of lawn.

photo credit: Eloise Colocho

 

A quick word about Elspeth Bobb's water use: All her planting beds are under drip irrigation, and she draws from her own well. Several xeric experiments are underway at the garden; working with her gardener and her daughter, she's currently evaluating plants that need no water. Hands down winner to date? Sunflowers.

One last anecdote from my time with Elspeth Bobbs...

While I was taking her picture, she wondered if she should put on her favorite button. Something told me she didn't mean a nice old lady decorative broach. Before I left, she brought it out, a small round campaign-like button. It featured a large scissor cutting through the slogan, "If You Cut Off My Reproductive Choice, Can I Cut Off Yours?"

"I'm sorry to say," this 87-year old spitfire says anyway, "I'd prefer less people, and more gardens".

While you're not likely to spot them coast to coast, a few of these bumper stickers are currently riding around the country. Not the most likely cult figure, our Mrs. Bobbs, the politically active xeric gardener.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Check out the slideshow from Mrs. Bobb's garden, La Querencia, courtesy of Scott Varner at the Xeriscape Council of New Mexico.

3:00 AM ET | 09- 3-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post