Signs of Spring in Seattle

I found this cherry tree blooming in my Capitol Hill neighborhood on December 9th. There are certain cherry trees which always bloom around this time of year in Seattle. I'm not sure why.

On December 20, the day before Winter Solstice, I found this forsythia in bloom. It was on the east side of a brick building. These plants that are right next to buildings which radiate the heat of the sun often bloom before anything else. Still it was surprising to see this sunny promise of spring so early in the year.

My Favorite Books Read in 2007

I'm in the middle of the review process I go through every year, closing the door on the old year and dreaming of what I want in the new year. As part of this process, I go through my journals for the past year and make notes of important ideas, accomplishments, interactions, insights, dreams and the books I read. Since I read about 2 books a week, the latter is quite a list In fact, last year I read 142 books according to my list (I know there are some I didn't write down).

Unfortunately there were as many books last year that I stopped reading as that I finished. My list is peppered with comments like Ugh! and Ew! I don't know if this comes with increasing age (and thus increasing discrimination--I don't want to waste my time) or if the quality of published books has really declined. I suspect both are true. Everyone in my writing group had similar complaints about the difficult of finding good books to read last year.

Nancy Pearl, our famous Seattle librarian who wrote the book, Book Lust, has an age-related rule for how many pages one should read before deciding whether to finish the book: Take the number 100 and subtract your age. That's how many pages you must read before making your decision. Thus if you are 99, you only have to read 1 page. If 50, 50 pages. If 20, 80 pages. I like this rule. There are just far too many good books to read and not enough time to read them all.

Speaking of good books, here is my list for 2007:

Novels

Dark Angels, by Karleen Koen, an old-fashioned and complicated historical novel that really plunges you into the world of restoration England under Charles II. As L. P. Hartley wrote: “the Past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”And it is. In this novel, people don't just dress in costume, they act from a completely different set of beliefs and operate in a different context than we do. The characters are fascinating, especially the feisty, scheming heroine; the details are rich, sensual and historically accurate. I read Koen's Through a Glass Darkly many years ago and loved it, so I went back and reread that as well as her second book. I think this is the best of the three.

Ruby in her Navel by Barry Unsworth is a marvelous historical novel about Sicily in the twelfth century. It interested me because one of my favorite historical novels of all time, Great Maria by Cecilia Holland, also takes place at this time period and focuses on the Normans in Italy. Whereas Holland's novel focuses on the brigand-like life of the Norman barons in the mountains, this novel is set in the sophisticated and cosmopolitan city of Palermo where the Norman King Roger, rules over a kingdom of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Latins and Greeks. The narrator is a bureaucrat. Despite the fact that he's in charge of providing entertainment for the King, he thinks like a bureaucrat, very observant of details and costs and office politics (some reviewers at Amazon thought he was boring). In the end the office politics bring him down, betrayal comes from unexpected places and he has to free himself from his own prejudices to survive.

Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley is equally complicated. Think of what Dickens would have written if he had tackled the world of horse-racing. The writing is superb. Finely crafted yet translucent. We're introduced to a panoramic cast of characters and the action ranges across the United States. The point of view shifts marvelously, we even enjoy learning how horses think about life. I have to admit I found it hard to keep everyone straight and yet I thoroughly loved this book. I’m told it’s like Moo which I have not yet read.

Song of the Crow by Layne Maheu

[this review comes from my August newsletter at School of the Seasons]

Layne was one of the students in my blogging class. His publishers wanted him to start a blog to promote this book which features a crow’s eye view of the Flood. Even though I’m a huge fan of crows, it sounded like a weird premise, that is, until I started reading it. What a delightful and magical book. I’m hooked on the plot, savoring the delicious language (crows have a very earthy appreciation for life) and thoroughly enjoying the experience of life as a crow. It’s one of those books which I’m forcing myself to read slowly because I don’t want it to end. Those of you who are also crow fans will appreciate the bibliography at the back and the crow epigraphs at the start of each chapter.

Non-Fiction

Wild by Jay Griffiths

[this review comes from my Sept newsletter at School of the Seasons

I met Jay Griffiths at the first Take Back Your Time Day Conference in Chicago in 2005. She was an incantatory presence, reading from her book A Sideways Look at Time. Like a bard of old, she wove a spell of magic and enchantment with her words, exhorting us to open up to the juicy possibilities of time.

Last year she released her new book, Wild: An Elemental Journey, one she’s been working on for seven years and she’s packed in seven years of insights and adventures, research and reflections. Jay knows the magic of words. She knows their raw meanings and loves to play around with them. She uses them to dazzle and delight. She follows them down serpentine paths that lead to surprising places. Though she is always pondering meaning, her work is never dry; she is always grounded in the sensuous and the sensual, even the bawdy and the erotic.

I’ve been reading this book slowly ever since I bought a copy when Jay was here in Seattle in February to read at Elliott Bay Books. It’s the kind of book, you can savor, dip into here and there, use as an oracle. The structure is based on five elements: earth, ice, water, fire and air, and corresponding landscapes Jay visited: the jungles of the Amazon, the Arctic, the South Seas, the outback of Australia, and the mountains of Papua New Guinea. In each place, she connects with the indigenous people, the plants, the animals, setting aside Western assumptions and exploring what it is like to live in these wild places. You can read it as a poem. You can read it as philosophy. You can read it as a grand action/adventure story. I don’t think you can read it without being challenged and changed.

Jay was just given an award by Orion magazine for best book of 2007. For an excerpt from Wild go to the Orion site.

Flower Confidential By Amy Stewart

Stewart writes in a much more journalistic style. Her language is clear and her story is compelling. I couldn’t put it down even though all I was doing was following Stewart on her world-wide tour, exploring the flower business, from the greenhouses where roses are grown in Ecuador, to the giant flower market in Amsterdam, and many place in between. Along the way she interviews growers, workers, florists, horticulturalists and explains some new trends in flowers, including the push towards more organic flowers. One thing you learn is that the flower growing business (for the most part) treats flowers like products: they are altered for maximum size and long life, dipped in fungicide, dyed different colors. Stewart also shares some startling statistics: Americans buy most of their flowers in grocery stores. We also spend significantly less per year on flowers than Europeans: about $25.90 average a year compared to $70 in Norway and $100 in Switzerland. If you’re depressed after reading this book, you might want to read Heirloom Flowers by Tovah Martin which talks about the efforts of gardeners and nursery owners to preserve the incredible variety of local and old flowers.

Memoir

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I’m not alone in loving this book. It tops many best-selling lists. I especially appreciate the casual, conversational tone of the narrator and the way she infuses spirituality into her life.

A Strong West Wind by Gail Campbell

Gail Campbell grew up in Texas in the Fifties and became estranged from her parents, especially her authoritarian and conservative father, during the tumultuous decades of the Sixties. In sophisticated and supple language, with an instinct for honesty and directness, Gail Campbell writes an extraordinary memoir about this alienation and how she was able to reconcile with both the severe landscape of her childhood and her father. I was amazed that someone who had previously written only book reviews could produce a first book so beautifully crafted. It reads like it was written by a poet.

East Wind Melts Ice by Liza Dalby

[this review comes from my July newsletter at School of the Seasons]

I originally got this book from the library because it sounded like the author was trying to achieve much the same thing I was trying to do in my blog. I totally fell in love with it and have now ordered a copy of my own. This is not only a well written book but a well published book. It feels good to hold and it’s beautiful to look at.

Taking the Chinese almanac with its division of the year into 72 five-day segments, each with a poetic title, like East Wind Melts Ice or Rice Ripens, as her structure, Liza Dalby writes lovely poetic essays on the changes the seasons bring in Japan, China and her garden in Berkeley, California. An anthropologist by training, Dalby has a deep knowledge of Japanese culture as a result of studying in Japan for years (she has also written about kimonos and her training as a geisha as well as a novel based n the life of Lady Murasaki). Her essays are rich with haikus, folklore, etymological snippets, small personal disclosures, plant recommendations, even recipes. Where else would you learn about the colors of the robes worn by noble women of the eleventh century (Pink Maples wore a top kimono of bright pink, over robes of gold, pale yellow, aquamarine, rose and pale pink). Or that the original Japanese word for the color orange: daidai-iro (daidai color), comes from a citrus fruit like a Seville orange (now the English loanword orenji is more common).

Dog Years by Mark Doty

I read this during the Midwinter holidays and it was magical read. The language is gorgeous as might be expected from Mark Doty, a marvelous poet. He writes intelligently, even philosophically about a sentimental subject—the love of dogs—and yet never slides into sentiment or cliché. I didn’t cry while reading about the deaths of his two dogs (though they died in ways surprisingly similar to my dog Chester) but I feel like crying now every time I see the dogs (Mark’s dogs) on the cover of the book, because I have come to love them as well and know what their loss means. Yet overall this is not a sad book, but an uplifting one.

What I noticed after compiling this list is that it seems 2007 was the year of books about animals. Dog Years. Crow Stories. Horse Heaven. I also read a wonderful YA novel called Strays by Ron Koertge about a young boy in foster care who spends most of his time talking to animals and The Tao of Equus by Linda Kohanov, an amazing book about new ways of working with horses, including using them to assist in the therapy and healing of traumatized kids and abused women. Kohanov manages to weave all of this together with dreamwork and shamanism and feminist history.

I have another whole list of books I read and loved this year about plants. If I find the time in the next few days, I might post that.

Stones and a Spa for Winter

I've just come back from looking at the proofs of my French Republican calendar (you can order it from me at my website store) and I'm thrilled by its beauty. I had a lot of fun creating the calendar grids and embellishing them with colors and fonts. Plus the photographs taken by my friend, Christine Valters Paintner, are incredible.

One of the things I love about the calendar are the seasonal items associated with each day of the year. Usually these are plants, trees, vegetables and fruits, but in Nivose (the month which covers December/January) the items are mostly all minerals, and I was wondering how I was going to honor these items. Then my friend, Elizabeth, suggested a trip to the Korean spa in Lynnwood for the day after Christmas and lo and behold, they have various mineral rooms as part of their offerings.

Hanging out in hot water is one of my very favorite things, and doing that in a luxurious atmosphere, where I could dip in and out of various bubbling pools, and alternate that with visits to a steam room and a sauna was a perfect indulgence for the day after Christmas. The Korean spa also has a cafe, a lounge, body scrubs, massages, pedicures and manicures and other delights I didn't sample.

But we did try the various rooms: a sand room, a charcoal room and a meditation room lined with elvan stone (which is apparently harvested from the bottom of the ocean surrounding Korea). Each of these minerals is supposed to have a different effect on the body and it was interesting to compare the results. I loved the sand room; it reminded me of happy afternoons spent on Southern California beaches and it made me feel sparkly and alive. Neither of us liked the charcoal room much; it felt rather dull and lifeless to me. Elizabeth loved the meditation room and so did the other women who were in it (they had all fallen asleep as far as I could tell). It amplified my (dehydration?) headache and actually gave me a backache which persisted for a day afterwards. I wonder if it magnifies physical symptoms that are already present.

I like knowing that I can go back to the spa when I want to experience certain minerals that will show up in the December calendar. We went on the day associated with lava. I think a hot tub and a stone room are as close as I will get to lava on December 26.

Christmas this year was the day of the dog, and I finished reading Mark Doty's beautiful and brilliant memoir about his life with dogs, Dog Years, on that day. It's exquisite. Sad, profound, uplifting. It will without doubt make my top ten list for the year. It might even be the best book I've read all year.

The photograph above was taken by Mylene Bressan and can be found at
http://18229.openphoto.net

Shopping and Solstice

For years I've been rather critical of the emphasis on shopping at this time of the year. This disdain serves me well as I hate shopping. I put it on a par with going to the dentist, something one must do but let's get it over with as quickly as possible. Armed with a list of what I want, choosing a time when the store is least crowded, I'll dart in, grab what I want, pay for it and leave. (I used to feel guilty because I felt I had deprived my daughter of the pleasure of happy mother-daughter shopping expeditions, browsing lazily through choices, wandering the mall, but it turns out she hates shopping as much as I do. It's her boyfriend who's the leisurely shopper.)

So it came as a total surprise on the Winter Solstice when I usually observe a day of quiet and rest that I longed to go shopping. I must admit this wasn't a desire to go shopping in general: I wanted to go to Lush. Now if you know Lush, you'll understand (especially if I add that I had just run out of their violet scented soap) and if you don't know Lush, you should check out their website and you'll understand. Still it didn't seem like a good idea to go downtown to the mall and the Lush store three shopping days before Christmas. Especially when I was committed to spending a quiet day with no electricity, no telephone, nothing but silence and candlelight.

But in the quiet of my apartment, with the rain pattering on the windows, just me and the dog who was sleeping, I started thinking maybe shopping at this time of year is a natural activity not an artificial one. Our natural response to darkness is to light lights, whether they're candles on the Advent wreath or the bright lights of the nearest store. And our natural response to loneliness is to gather with others, whether that's at a feast on Christmas eve or in a shopping mall. It also occurred to me that bright lights and parties are a great way to push away the thoughts of death and feelings of loneliness that imbue the season.

So what did I do?I went to Lush. And it was sweet. I had an eggnog latte while waiting for the bus. When we got downtown we passed a group of young black men singing doowop songs a cappella outside one of the big department stores. One of them stopped to help an old lady into her cab. People were holding open the doors to the mall so shoppers laden with bags could pass through. There was a carousel and and a long line of kids bundled in jackets waiting to ride on it. There was another long line at the hot dog stand and inside the Sees candy store. Lush was crowded but no lines. I got the last bit of violet soap (and a few other presents) and jumped back on the bus.

When I got home I went on my solitary, quiet walk through the wintery woods and stood for a long time in the holly grove. And that was just as wonderful.

Slow Cookie Epiphany

Every year I have the intention of making 13 different types of cookies for my solstice party, a tradition adapted from the Southern European custom of serving 13 desserts on Christmas Eve. I've never made it to 13; my highest number is 7.

This year, since my goal for my Solstice party was to be as relaxed as possible, I decided to make just my favorite cookies, one batch a night during the week leading up to the party. I also halved the cookie recipes which helped enormously--no more juggling multiple baking trays and drying racks.

But by Wednesday night, I was cranky. I had to throw away two batches of cookies, one because the sour cream had gone bad, the other because I accidently put in too much baking soda. I started to get a little panicked about getting all the cookeis done. I was in a hurry and impatient. The dough kept sticking to the rolling pin. The cookies fell apart when pried from the cookie cutters or else they stuck to the bread board. The kitchen was hot. It was late. I wanted to go to bed.

That's when I had my cookie epiphany. I realized that when you're just checking off items on your to-do list, even if they're things as fundamentally satisfying as making cookies or writing a novel, they become chores.

I decided to slow down and enjoy the process. Who cares if I didn't make a lot of cookies? I could always buy cookies at the store. And as soon as I slowed down, that magical thing happens which always happens in slow time. Time just flew by while I was savoring the silky feel of the flour, the pliancy of the dough, the scent of the spices. The cookies started behaving, rolling out perfectly on the board, filling the baking sheets, emerging from the oven golden and fragrant.

Over the next few nights, I revelled in the cookie-making process. I was alone and sometimes wondered if it would be more fun if I were sharing the experience, but I also liked the silence which allowed me give the process my full attention. Cookie making became a meditation.

In the end, I only made three of my favorite cookies (Kourabiedes, Advent pretzels and Zimsterne). Since I never got around to making my signature lavender shortbread cookies, I did buy some excellent ginger shortbread cookies at the store, but you know what? No one at the party ate any of the store-bought cookies. Apparently they prefer slow time cookies.

Advent Wreath made by an urban forager

Here's my Advent wreath for this year. I made it using a new technique. For years I've been gathering materials for my wreath during walks around my neighborhood, but, I must confess that I often carried a scissors with me, to help me harvest the evergreen boughs I craved.

For the past two years, I've used a new method which I call urban foraging. I go to the nearby 100-year-old park and look for downed branches under the trees. Often a big December windstorm helps me out by shaking branches loose from the trees. But this year the weather had been fairly calm before my excursion. I still found more than enough material to make my wreath. I found yew branches (with a few berries still on them) and other branches with tiny pine cones. I got offerings from Sequoias, cedars, pines and cypresses (but no holly--holly branches just don't break off like other evergreens).

One problem with this method is that the materials are pretty dry and the Advent wreath doesn't last as long as it would if I harvested living plant materials. But it's worth it for the lack of guilt, both in raiding the park (illegal) and cutting branches off plants (I always ask for permission, and usually bring a gift, but am never really convinced that they say yes).

I use the colors of the four directions for my candles: yellow for east, red for south, blue for west, and green for north, and put the greens I associate with each direction close to those candles. So I loved the blue-tinged evergreens I found to go around my blue candle and the yew branches went by the north candle (yew is often planted on the north side of churches because of its association with death and rebirth) and the cypress branches which had new yellow buds on the tips went near the eastern candle.

You can still see the white of the foam base showing through in places so I still need to pick up a few more branches. I look forward to seeing what evergreens appear along my path.

Colors of Christmas (or should I say Yule?)

I walked to the park on Sunday to gather my greens for my Advent wreath (yes, I know I'm several weeks behind) and I was stopped in my tracks several times by the brilliant combination of red and green. No wonder these are the colors of the season.

It got me started thinking about how certain color combinations signify certain holidays. You can't really wear red and green without evoking Christmas. The same with orange and black which always screams Halloween.

Feverfew Cures Migraines

In the depths of grey November, there are still a few flowers blooming on my block and one of them is the cheerful, omnipresent feverfew. I don't know why I haven't written about it before since it's one of the most important plants in my life: it cured me of my migraines.

Ever since I was 8 years old (when my mother took me to the doctor to see if I needed glasses because of my bad headaches--I did need glasses but that wasn't what was causing my headaches), I've suffered from migraines. I've never been as completely incapacitated like some of my friends. I've never ended up in the emergency room with a migraine. I rarely threw up. But I did during the worst migraine I ever had. It came on during a European trip with my aunt, right after a rather rocky crossing of the English Channel on a ferry. (My worst migraines almost all happened while I was traveling.) I spent the next 24 hours in a hotel room off the main square in Bruges. Every time the bells in the clock tower across the square rang the hour, I woke up, threw up and crawled back into bed.

At that point I had tried everything for my migraines. Prescription medication didn't work. Dried feverfew capsules didn't work. Sometimes two aspirins taken right at the first sign of a headache was enough to ward it off. Often it wasn't. I don't remember who first told me about feverfew, but it worked the first time. I've been using it for years and I've had very few migraines and those have been mild. I think part of the reason it works is that I now know relief is available. And I want to let everyone who suffers from migraines know that too.

It's so simple. It grows everywhere (in the Northwest, anyway). It's free. And it absolutely works. I pick three leaves (medium sized leaves, usually tender new leaves) off the nearest plant I can find whenever I get that suspicious feeling that maybe the headache I've feeling is actually a migraine. You want a plant that hasn't been sprayed so I do choose my plant carefully. I eat one leaf and it usually tastes bitter. I wait about five minutes and eat another. And after another five minutes the third. By that time, the leaf actually tastes more sweet than bitter, which indicates to me that it's working.

The biggest difficulty I have is convincing anyone to try it. The longer you've suffered from the agony of migraines, the more things you've tried (unsuccessfully), and the less likely you are to believe relief is possible. And I admit that belief is part of the magic for me. I believe it works and so it does. (Although I must say it has also helped many friends who I've convinced to try it). Yet when I tell people about it, I can see that look in their eyes that says "It may have cured your migraines but it will never cure mine").

If you suffer from migraines, I urge you to give it a try. Here's what you do. Find a plant. They grow wild in the Northwest. I always have one growing in my garden. I keep my eye on the plants in my neighborhood. The plant in the top photo shows the cheerful white daisy-like flowers, besides a feverfew that has no flowers but the characteristic leafy foliage. It smells rather tangy. It tastes bitter. This photograph shows another feverfew growing in the parkway. They can grow to about three feet tall.

November Gold

We had a big windstorm today and these leaves ended up in the corner of the rectangular formal pond in the park across from where I work. They reminded me of these lines from a poem called "Autumn" by Sara Teasdale:

The leaves fall patiently
Nothing remembers or grieves
The river takes to the sea
The yellow drift of leaves.

Pumpkin Art

I've spent years studying and writing about holidays and I thought I knew a lot about the reasons people celebrate: to experience the timelessness of ritual, the warmth of community and the magic of aligning with the natural world . But as I walked around my neighborhood, the day after Halloween, I recognized a new and important ingredient: the opportunity to practice creativity.
Almost every porch had a pumpkin and every pumpkin was unique. The artists had obviously put a great deal of thought into their pumpkins and no one was afraid to display their artwork.

When I was young, my siblings and I had a contest every Halloween to see who could draw the best pumpkin face. Because we wanted to conserve the actual pumpkins, we drew our designs on little cut out paper pumpkins, then colored them in with crayons to consider the effect. The design which was most popular was then carved into the actual pumpkin (no doubt by my father wielding one of the kitchen knives). The paper pumpkins were taped to the wall above my brother's bed where they stayed for at least a month; every year the old pumpkins came out like Christmas ornaments and new ones were added. It was one of those peculiar family traditions which evolved out of a few factors (the eternal competition between me and my sister, my brother's birthday a few days before Halloween, and the orange paint on his bedroom wall).

Here are a few of my favorite pumpkins from my neighborhood. I like the simplicity of this presentation, the white pumpkins and they way their shape is echoed by the croquet balls.

Another unique approach or what to do with a big, lumpy, flattish pumpkin.

These pumpkins win my prize for most unique use of materials. Note the one where the face is carved in the top of the pumpkin using the stem for a nose.

This display highlights the importance of having your own pumpkin. Here's a triplex with three doors to three units and each person apparently carved their own pumpkin.

A Leaf With All the Colors of Autumn In It

Found on the street and scanned on my scanner.

Well, maybe it needs a bit more of brown.

I like the decay and the brokenness.

Our State Grass: Bluebunch Wheatgrass

You can pretty much bet that when I say I’m done with a subject (as I said in my last post that I was done with the topic of wild grasses), I will immediately find something fascinating to say about that topic.

Yesterday my daughter was reading a copy of the State of Washington Voter’s Pamphlet which has all the Washington symbols (bird, song, gem, boat, etc.) printed on the cover and I learned that we have a state grass: bluebunch wheatgrass.

Curious to know more about it, I went looking and found a website that features a good description and a photograph of bluebunch wheatgrass. The website features activities relating to bluebunch wheatgrass, including growing it in your garden. I realized that I’ve seen a lot of bluebunch wheatgrass while driving around eastern Washington.

Many years ago I wrote a story for my daughter called “Chester Chases Swallows in the Sagebrush,” about the time we let our dog out of the car on a deserted part of I-90 (the highway between Spokane and Seattle) and he took off running. I think the correct title for the story should probably be “Chester Chases Swallows in the Bluebunch Wheatgrass.”

Speaking of state anythings, did you realize that many states have state dances? Most of them that have a state dance, list “square dance” as their dance. Washington does. Boring. Some are obvious. Hawaii has the Hula. Louisiana the Second Line. Virginia has the Virginia Reel. Both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania list the Polka. Some are not. Ohio and the Charleston? And some are interesting. New York has Lindy Hop. California has West Coast Swing. The Carolinas claim the Shag. And Texas claims the Texas Two-Step (although I might also nominate the Texas Push). The most amazing thing is that I know most of these dances (except the Hula).
I found all of these on Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_dances
which also has a list of the state grasses, in case you want to find the grass for your state:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_grasses

Photograph: Loren St. John @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database

Last Word in Grass

The other day I was browsing a website I love for its vintage patterns, and I found a photograph of a dress made out of grass. The designer is Robin Barcus, an artist who is currently doing a project which involves creating a dress for each of the fifties states.
This very beautiful grass dress is called Willow Creek Dress in Wyoming, 2006
It perfectly combines two topics I have been exploring in the last month: wild grasses and flower art.

Meanwhile, I found another blogger, the pseudonymously named Henry Thoreau, who has committed himself to a year-long project of identifying wild grasses in his hometown, San Francisco. He is doing exactly what I hoped to be doing and with much more skill and success. We share similar appreciations for the way wild grass prevails in the city landscape and our annoyance at the way modern landscapers plant ornamental grasses in straight rows of clumps.

Henry Thoreau also mentions another blog on wild grasses which is not quite as personal as his writing, but it does provide some awesome photographs and information about wild grasses.

Here are some books that Henry recommended for identifying wild grasses:
Lauren Brown's Grasses (best for the East Coast)
Manual of Grasses for North America, Utah State University Press
In Full View: Three Ways of Seeing California Plants by Glenn Keator and Linda Yamane, with illustrations by Ann Lewis

Because Henry is doing such a good job of finding, identifying and writing about wild grasses, I’ve decided to end my grass identification project (at least for this year, and with the option to take it up again if inspired by Henry’s posts) and focus on other topics. If you are fascinated by wild grasses, I suggest subscribing to Henry’s blog (I will be!).
http://thoreaugrass.blogspot.com/

Crabgrass in my Garden

I love volunteers in the garden, those mystery plants that sprig up and only gradually reveal their character. I’ve got a magnificent mullein that was a volunteer—it always makes visitors gasp—and it’s now the matriarch of a thriving colony of mulleins, most of which I will root out (mainly because they take up so much room).

The woman who gardened in my plot before me planted a plant with red-trumpet-like flowers to attract humming birds. It is more invasive than mint or bamboo. It can't be killed, it sneaks around barriers of metal, and no matter how many times I ruthlessly rip it out, I never win the battle. We are in a struggle.

The newest volunteer in my garden is also in this unwelcome category. In the spring, I noticed a grass that was poking through the branches of my big lavender plant. It gradually spread through my garden in waves, slyly insinuating itself all through the herb and iris bed, then creeping around the back and entering the bed with the dog roses, strawberries, arugula and basil (it hasn’t reached the back bed yet whichis where I am doing battle with the red trumpet flower plant). This plant spreads underground, the white roots creeping through the earth before poking up green shoots in some new location. When I try to rip it up, I sometimes yank out the root, back to its last outpost, but I never seem to be able to track it back to its source. Trying to disentangle it from my small lavender bush, I had to dig up the plant, so inexorably were their roots entwined, and, as a result, the lavender died.

The mystery volunteer is a grass so I finally decided to make it the latest subject in my grass identification project. I plucked a fine mature specimen: tall stem, gay green ribbons of leaves and a seedhead with four horizontal grainy blades like a little heliocopter. Can you guess what it was?

Yes, crabgrass. Unremarkable, insidious, unloved, unquenchable crabgrass. When I googled crabgrass to learn about its name, the suggested combinations were “crabgrass control,” “crabgrass removal,” “crabgrass prevention,” “crabgrass herbicide,” “crabgrass treatment,” “crabgrass prevention,” and “crabgrass kill.” It seems no one wants it around.

My new favorite Northwest plant identification guide (known affectionately as Pojar’s) says that it is digitaria sanguinalis (an interesting name suggesting it has something to do with fingers and blood but I haven’t found an explanation for this name). The explanation for its common name, crabgrass, is that it creeps sideways like a crab, or the nodes look like crabs. The little whirligig at the top of the plant is the inflorescence—it flowers from August to September in our area.

The Plants for the Future website says that the seeds can be ground up into flour and the leaves used to make paper. So nice to know there is a positive use for this plant. I was curious to know how to make paper from grass so I did a little snooping around the internet. Apparently it can be quite a difficult process, involving caustic chemicals. The instructions from Akua at the Art Farm, seemed the simplest.

Resources:
Pojar, Jim and Andy MacKinnon, Revised Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, B C Ministry of Fores and Lone Pine Publishing, 2004

Scanned Flower Art?

I thought I was done with the topic of flower art--see below for posts on flower dogs and flower carpets—when I found an article at Human Flower Project about scanning flowers.

Truly amazing pieces of work, although skeptics ask: Is it Art? Is flower arranging art? Are photographs of flowers art? What about X-ray photographs of art?

Several years ago I saw an amazing show of x-ray photographs of flowers at a local jewelry store. Truly art. Unfortunately I can't prove it because I can't find the artist. Whiel searching for her, I did find x-ray photographs of flowers from Hong Pham, Judith McMillan, and Steven N Meyers.
Some of these I think qualify as art--there is artistry involved in the design. Others strike me as simply unique and intimate ways of looking at flowers more closely.

Birthday Flowers

I've been championing the idea of a birthday flower, that is a flower that blossoms on your birthday. And here's the most recent picture of mine: the naked lady or autumn crocus.

These grow in the parkway a few blocks from my house. I love how they mysteriously appear and just as mysteriously disappear. I wanted to pick one but I know they are poisonous so I didn't (although I think maybe only the bulb is poisonous).

Linnaeus named the autumn crocus, colchicum, after Colchis, the island on which the poisoner and sorceress Medea lived. It has even more wonderful common names. I know it as a naked lady. It's a naked maiden in Germany (because it has no leaves, just a bare flower stalk). In France, they are called dog-killers and bare-bottoms. In England, Wilfrid Blunt (who gives this delightful list) mentions the names: upstarts, daggers, kite’s legs, naked boys and naked nannies. While the Arabs call them, he says, the lamps of the ghoul. That's my favorite. Do they look like the lamps of the ghoul? Maybe a little.

Foxtail Barley

I’m making progress on my grass identification project now that I’ve got a copy of Pojar’s Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast. For instance, this grass that grows in the parkways all over my neighborhood. I think of it as foxtail. And according to Pojar’s, it’s common name is foxtail barley. The Latin name is hordeum jubatum.

Pojar's says it grows along roadsides which explains why I find it in the parkway. Once I brought my specimen inside, the little spikelets starting breaking off. They look like little satellites with their long tails (those are called awns) and their sharp points. Each bristle has barbs that point backwards and these can become lodged and work their way into the nose, mouth, ears, eyes or even intestines of animals that eat them. So right now I’m going to scoop them all up and throw them in the trash, before Pepe, the Chihuahua, finds them.

According to Plants for a Future, it is possible to make flour out of them by grinding up the seeds. The roasted seeds can also be used to make a substitute for coffee. But it’s hardly worth the effort.

On the other hand, when I went looking for references on the Internet to foxtail barley, I found a related plant in the University of Washington herbarium: hordeum pusillum. Now I’m not really sure what I found. Since they are related, perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Wikipedia’s article on barley mentions that barley was a staple cereal in ancient Egypt where it was used to make both bread and beer. The English word beer comes from barley. It is appropriate that I am featuring it in the month of September, for the initiates at the Eleusinian Mysteries, held in honor of Demeter (known as Barley-mother) during the full moon of September, drank a ritual drink (kykeon) made of barley and herbs.

Barley-water (made by steeping pearl barley in hot water) is a popular drink in England where it is often the first food offered to babies. The Victorian Martha Stewart, Mrs. Beeton, includes a recipe for her barley-water in her section on cooking for invalids. Pearl barley is washed in cold water, then boiled in 2 quarts of boiling water. Once the liquid is reduced to half, the barley is strained out. It can be flavored with lemon peel, either afterwards or while boiling.

References:

Beeton, Isabella, Beeton's Book of Household Management, first published London 1861, facsimile Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1977

Poajr, Jim & Andy MacKinnon, Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Lone Pine Publishing 1994

A Hairy Bentgrass?

I wrote in my newsletter about how I wanted to learn to identify grasses--I always like to collect a bouquet of all the wild grasses growing on my block on Assumption (August 15) in honor of Our Lady of the Grain. I went out and found a magnificent speciment in the vacant lot across the street--almost three feet high with some fine seed heads at the top--but then couldn't identify it.

The websites I found through a Google search were not helpful. They wanted details I couldn't provide. To my surprise (and dismay), we don't seem to have a single ruler in the house that measures centimeters. Also I can't see the fine detail of the grass--I don't have a hands len--though I am using the magnifying glass that came with my Oxford English Dicitonary.

Luckily one of my readers recommended Pojar's Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast. It's amazing. The grass section begins with picture keys which break down the Grass family (Poaeceae) into Tribes: the Barley Tribe, the Millet tribe, etc. To distinguish between the 200 varieties of grasses that grow in my region, it helps to learn technical terms like panicle and glume and lemma. Grasses have their own vocabulary, quite distinct from flowers.

At first I thought my wild grass was a fescue but now I'm leaning towards Bentgrass, possibly Hair Bentgrass (Agrostis scabra). According to Pojar's, the name scabra means rough or scrufy, and refers to the way the grass feels. That's my main clue. When you run your fingertips along the stem and even the panicle branches of my specimen, it feels like sandpaper. I feel no certainty about this identification so if you have a better idea let me know.

Pojar, Jim and Andy MacKinnon, Revised Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Lone Pine Publishing 2004

Autumn Crocus Revisited

Here they are two days later.

I'll check again on my birthday.

In Time for my Birthday

Last year, I wrote about how the amaryllis belladoonna is the flower my mother associates with my upcoming birthday (September 4) because it blooms around that date in Southern California where I was born (Burbank, to be exact). And about how the autumn crocus blooms on my birthday here in Seattle.

And here it is, a week before my birthday. I love how ghostly the flowers look as they emerge from the ground, almost more like mushrooms than flowers in their fleshiness which is probably why they are also known as naked ladies, just like the amaryllis belladonna.