November Chores and Pleasures

IT’S ALMOST HERE. Winter, I mean. The clocks set themselves back last night while we slept. Remember going around the house, taking clocks off walls and down from shelves and manually resetting them? Another thing to be nostalgic about. I woke up here in my Long Island cottage and the cable box, computer, and iPhone had all take care of themselves. All I had to do was reset the stove. It’s nice to be up early, with the golden light of morning creeping through the woods…even though it’s “really” not that early.

Yesterday I built a compost bin out of cinderblocks and I’m quite unreasonably proud of the thing. Had been Googling “mulch with whole oak leaves,” thinking I might just rake them off the paths and lawn and into the beds and woods and have done with it. I’m in the middle of what amounts to an oak forest, and there are a lot more leaves to come. Meanwhile, my garden helper hasn’t shown up in weeks, not even to collect the money I owe him. He must be busy raking other people’s lawns.

I’d started a leaf pile next to my kitchen-scraps pile, but it was growing unmanageably large and I wondered how I might contain it. Wire mesh and metal stakes? I looked in the cellar to see what I had: nothing. Then I remembered the pile of cement blocks stashed under a large evergreen at the back of the property. They were too heavy to throw away and I thought they might come in handy someday for building a retaining wall, a foundation, a …compost bin? OK, it’s not a thing of great beauty, but it does the job. I would have made it higher but I ran out of blocks. Anyway, I got great satisfaction re-purposing something that was there already.

I’m out in the country for a few weeks, all things being equal. Naturally, I have a long list of garden chores. Plant ‘minor’ (small) bulbs in the blank space under the magnolia. Wrap burlap around deer-vulnerable and winter-burn-prone shrubs (that’s a big job, to be delayed until I’m feeling particularly energetic). Keep watering and spraying (anti-deer). Spread compost in the perennial beds. Rake, rake, rake.

There’s a can of sunflower yellow Rust-o-leum paint at the ready for this Dada-esque tractor seat, found in the house when I bought it 2-1/2 years ago. Another long-postponed project, but just the thing for a quiet fall evening in the country, listening to Philip Glass or Jagjit Singh, pot of ridiculously nutritious soup bubbling away on the stove…

I’m trying to savor the things I have accomplished here in this garden, so easily forgotten once they’re under control. The wisteria that once had a choke-hold on everything has been vanquished. The agepodium several landscape contractors wanted to Round-Up into submission has largely disappeared, through patient hand-weeding. The backyard, once impenetrable, now an open expanse. And many more.

A dear longtime friend of mine is very ill, making me acutely aware of life’s little pleasures. I’ve been going to yoga at KamaDeva in East Hampton; yesterday’s class ended with this prayer, which I’m moved to share in this month of Thanksgiving. (Don’t read on if you’re not a fan of this sort of thing. I am.)

Love before me Love behind me Love at my left Love at my right Love above me Love below me Love unto me Love in my surroundings Love to all Love to the Universe

Peace before me Peace behind me Peace at my left Peace at my right Peace above me Peace below me Peace unto me Peace in my surroundings Peace to all Peace to the Universe

Light before me Light behind me Light at my left Light at my right Light above me Light below me Light unto me Light in my surroundings Light to all Light to the Universe

And Now to the Backyard…

On its way to pristine (those are hammock posts in the middle, by the way)

I ALWAYS LOVED THE INITIAL PHASE OF RENOVATION: DEMOLITION. Smashing walls, pulling out old fixtures, ripping up nasty carpet is a whole lot of fun, makes an instant difference, and costs very little.

Recently I’ve realized that landscaping has an equivalent to that first heady phase of renovation. Last fall I had five or six big trees taken down on my Long Island property, and a number of smaller ones. The more I got rid of, the better I liked it.

I’m not done yet. This spring, I’m continuing to pare away excess plant material (including, of course, weeds). My guiding light is a section of Julie Moir Messervy’s 1998 book, The Magic Land: Designing Your Own Enchanted Garden, called ‘Abstracting the Landscape.’ Here’s what she says:

“When you abstract a landscape, you strip it down to its essentials and choose certain elements to stand out as important [for me, those include a ‘pinetum’ or stand of evergreens, and a quirky old cherry tree with over-arching branches]. You can create an abstracted landscape by making what exists more pristine…

When you have a beautiful piece of land, sometimes the most appropriate thing to do is simply clean it up — to abstract it by making it pure. The easiest method is to remove all dead limbs and undergrowth. This allows you to see each undulation on the ground plane, to enjoy each stone that may have tumbled there, to appreciate existing trees as individuals or as groupings.

Encouraging the growth of existing ground covers or importing new ones can help you emphasize the beauty of the land; carefully pruning your trees to rid them of deadwood or diseased branches, to limb them up off the ground or to open their canopy up to light and air, allows you to honor what exists as beautiful and to make it the backbone of your garden.”

I’m so on it. On Saturday, a hard-working, knowledgeable guy named Dong, whom I hired from an ad in the East Hampton Star, and his helper, spent five hours pitchforking and hand-pulling goutweed from areas where it had spread (that’s how I’m handling the goutweed situation, after rejecting the suggestions of a garden designer and landscaper who wanted to spray Round-Up as the most expedient solution).

While they worked, I continued to wage my private war against re-sprouting wisteria. From every green bit of wisteria growth, I followed the underground roots, ripping them up and cutting them when I could rip no more, then applying Round-Up to the cut ends with a sponge paintbrush (I’m not utterly opposed to Round-Up; I just didn’t want it sprayed widely, making my backyard uninhabitable for 2-3 days to me and who knows how long to worms, bugs, and birds). I filled 5 contractor trash bags with coils of wisteria root, while Dong filled the back of his pick-up with goutweed and its spindly white roots. Cathartic! No less satisfying than filling a dumpster with plaster, linoleum, and old appliances.

Now that I’ve established a relationship with Dong (though I’m not his first priority, I can tell), I’ve typed up a list for him. I’m envisioning us walking the property tomorrow, if he shows up, tying pink ribbons on excess saplings, raggedy shrubs, piles of brush, and fallen logs to take away.

Meanwhile, the deer are also helping remove plant material, only not the undesirable stuff. They decimated a pair of heuchera ‘Palace Purple the first night after planting (I moved them streetside, where I think they’ll be safe), and have been sampling newly planted weigela, kerria japonica, and dappled willow. They’ve eaten the buds and flowers from perennial geranium and even astilbe. Will somebody please tell me why they don’t eat goutweed and wisteria?

Deer-ravaged heuchera

The Aegopodium Avenger

LAST YEAR IT WAS WISTERIA VINE that was the bane of my gardening existence. The stuff was so out of control it had taken down a shed and killed trees by strangulation. Hired landscapers hacked down much of it; I pulled and cut many trash bags full; and in late fall, my daughter and I applied Round-Up to the cut ends of sprouting wisteria with surgical precision. Though we didn’t eradicate it completely, the situation is much improved.

This year it’s goutweed, or aegopodium podagraria, a super-invasive groundcover that, left to its own devices, would take over the entire backyard, that’s driving me crazy. I have huge sheets of it in several areas. I tackled one of them yesterday, on hands and knees, using a claw tool to pull up as much as I  could of the roots, feeling like a prisoner trying to dig his way out of jail with a teaspoon.

What makes goutweed so pernicious is that it spreads three ways. First, by underground rhizomes, or horizontally running roots a few inches under the surface. It also puts down taproots, like dandelion, and it seeds in late season, below.

It’s practically unkillable, according to contributors to the forum on Dave’s Garden, a very useful site for all things plant-related. “Aegopodium laughs at Round-Up,” one person wrote, and indeed, mine did (see the pitiful results of my spritzing, below).

Once I’ve removed all I can of the root (it can re-sprout from any tiny piece you may miss), I cover the bare soil with cardboard and old rugs, below (porous landscape fabric isn’t good enough, apparently). Soon I’ll put a thick layer of leaves or wood chips on top. And if anything dares to re-sprout, which I’m sure it will, I’ll hit it again with the more concentrated form of Round-Up. Sadly, when it comes to aegopodium, organic solutions just don’t cut it.

I’m pretty sure that both the wisteria and the goutweed were originally planted as ornamentals, perhaps thirty years ago — the goutweed possibly as the prettier, variegated bishop’s weed, which then reverted to all-green and ran amok during years of neglect.

Weed-killing is a nasty business, but it’s got to be done — if you want a garden, that is, and I do. Lucky I don’t have a day job.

How Green is My Cottage

Ummm…not terribly, I’m afraid.

I try. I finally started a compost pile about a month ago. The delay was in deciding where it should go. I finally put it way in the far corner of my lot, 200′ from my back door. So it’s inconvenient, but it will get me out in the woods every day, where I can say hi to the deer that don’t come right up to the house to say hi to me.

I would never dream of mixing newspaper with cardboard when I go to the town dump. They have separate containers for each, with stern posted warnings not to even think about throwing plastic bags in any of them, but to put those in the Non-Recyclable Materials dumpster. We separate glass, metal, and plastic here in East Hampton, whereas New York City is happy just to get it all in one bag.

I got the last remnants of the previous owner’s oil-based paints and boat engine fluids and pesticides to the dump on toxic-waste disposal day last month.

I remember to carry a cloth shopping bag most of the time. Even so, I amass far too many plastic bags under the kitchen sink. Plastic bags are a scourge, along with unwanted catalogues. At my last address, I managed to staunch the flow of catalogues eventually, but that was a) time-consuming (they want your customer # for each retailer), b) took ages to take effect, c) never fully worked anyway, and d) resumed in force when companies caught wind of my new address. I haven’t ordered from Neiman Marcus in 10 years, but somehow I’m back in their good graces. I get several catalogues a week from them, along with Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Victoria’s Secret, etc., and I don’t think I can be bothered to go through it all again.

I hand-painted, painstakingly, a rattan sofa, which took three days, but I just couldn’t see using a dozen cans of spray paint, knowing that much of it would be released into the empty spaces between the sticks of rattan, and thereupon into the atmosphere (and my lungs).

Still, and I’ve been researching this question for months, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get a handle on thirty years of rampant wisteria growth without Round Up, and even then, only time will tell if my finicky ministrations with a sponge brush to the cut ends of the vines have made much difference.

And although I use compact flourescent bulbs outside, I haven’t found any as warm as incandescent bulbs for indoor use. Soft, warm light is very important to me. I’m exquisitely sensitive to glarey, harsh, cold lighting. It depresses the hell out of me. I’ve tried numerous CF bulbs but found none I’m happy with.

In general, moving house increases one’s carbon footprint to Sasquatch proportions. All those packing materials. All the stuff that’s left behind or thrown away. The mountains of garbage I found in this house and basement and had to discard. The old appliances that went into landfills somewhere. The quantity of cleaning supplies you go through (I rarely spring for the very expensive ‘green’ ones).

Green guilt: it’s even worse than garden guilt (for not deadheading the rhododendrons, not washing out the clay pots before putting them away for winter, etc.)

Do you have green guilt, too? About what? Please tell me I’m not the only one.

Fall Plant Shopping

HAVING BOTH DEER AND SHADE to contend with is kind of like being a vegan. It’s doable, but your choices are awfully limited.

I wanted to do some planting this first fall on my woodsy property in Springs, but I haven’t put up a deer fence yet. It’s fallen off my list of priorities, behind a new roof, fireplace, bathroom, etc.

I spent a recent evening looking over the offerings from several online nurseries, including Deer-Resistant Landscape and Wayside Gardens, and drove myself a little crazy trying to determine whether a plant in a 5″ plant from one nursery for $12 is a better or worse deal than the same plant in a gallon pot for $23 from another nursery.

I ended up ordering from good ol’ White Flower Farm, which is probably the most expensive, but I know from experience that their products are reliable. I chose an alder buckthorn (rhamnus frangula ‘Fine Line’, above) – five of them in fact, to reinforce the straggly privet hedge between myself and my next door neighbors – and three of an ornamental grass that is among the few that don’t require full sun: panicum virgatum ‘Prairie Fire,’ below. They arrived in just a couple of days, disappointingly tiny (these pictures show what they’ll look like, God willing, in a few years’ time).

I planted them all yesterday, which first required hacking down five leggy old lilac bushes – rejuvenation pruning, they call it – which you’re supposed to do in spring after flowering, but these didn’t flower last May anyway, so shaded out are they by enormous trees.

Then I spent many hours digging, pulling, cutting, and – with surgical precision – dabbing the cut ends of the evil, never-ending wisteria with Round-Up. (Professionals have repeatedly said it’s the only way.)

I’ve never been a patient sort of person, and I’m generally lousy at long-range planning. My next plant purchase will be something BIG.