Memories of plants in the garden
10th December 2013
Plants resonate with us in a wide variety of ways. We relate to plants in botanical knowledge, a gardening sense, an artistic approach, and in our memories. Old gardens or mature gardens that have been cared for over a long time, such as my own garden, are especially evocative of memories. My garden is a living repository of many plants and shrubs and trees that evoke memories of the persons who gave them to me. In fact, my garden, besides being a beautifully living hortus conclusus, is a place of plants that suggests to me the spirits of the persons who gave them to me.
Some examples. Once, many years ago my father sent a strand of Spanish moss to me in a letter. Now that Spanish moss grows profusely in the row of trees that make up my "jungle patheway" beneath trees. I think of him every time I see the lovely draperies of that moss on the tree branches. My wife's father brought me a root cutting of the Mermaid Rose, Rosa bracteata one Christmas. He joked that he bootlegged it from his home in Texas to us here in San Diego, California--he had hidden it in his boot fearing that it might be confiscated at the state borders. I have propagated that rootcutting into two massive plants, one that scrambles up to the second story on the sunny south wall of our home. He loved and admired the Mermaid, its blossoms being an image of feminine beauty. I thank him for his bootlegged gift every time I see the Mermaid in bloom and smell its rosey, fruity flowers, and I think of how much he adored roses. One more example from the thirty or forty memory plants of my garden: my grandmother gave me a pocketful of Four-O'Clock seeds when I was a boy of six years old. Because of this gifting, I have grown Four-O,Clocks in all my gardens and grow them to this day. I also have a variegated magenta and yellow variety that I collected in Cefalu, which is very near Trabia where my Nonna Lucia La Rosa was born. When I see the blossoms in my garden, I remember Nonna and how much those bright blossoms must have meant to her in the tiny garden she cultivated among the fumes, noise, and coal grit coated mill town of Hazelwood in the crook of an arm of the Monongahela river near Pittsburgh.
This winter I got the desire to grow asparagus. I have never grown it before. I suppose it brings back memories of when I was a young graduate student at the University of Illinois studying English renaissance literature. Winter there was bleak and hard for a boy of the south like me. I had lived and gardened in tropical Miami. Just getting through the winter was for me a personal resurrection.
One of my joys was driving the back farm roads in the spring looking for those fresh succulent asparagus shoots. I would spot a strong vigorous asparagus spear, brake my Volkswagen bug hard, pull over to the side of the road, jump out and cut of fresh spear. You had to get out there early on because all the others were doing it too. After an hour or so we had enough asparagus shoots for our dinner. Was there ever a more fresh, spring smell than the juices of the cut spears that had pierced the loamy, sweet, wet spring earth?
So, I went to the local nursery (Walter Anderson's) and inquired about asparagus roots. Asparagus will mature more rapidly from roots than from seeds or seedlings. From roots,one can expect a few good spears the first spring, but the second and third years are far more productive. All of the asparagus plants along the fence rows near Champaign-Urbana were planted by the birds, so the some spears were an inch thick because the roots were very old.
First off, one should dig long troughs in the newly spaded soil, as long as you want them, a foot wide, and a foot deep. Set the asparagus roots top side up and spread out the roots rather carefully. Then, cover the roots with two or three inches of good earth. As the roots sprout, cover them each time with another thin layer of earth. Gradually you will fill in the troughs until they are almost level with the surrounding earth. I like to leave a slight declivity so that the water will have a place to settle and work itself into the roots. It is helpful to cover the thoughs or rows with two inches of good manure every so often. Keep all that well watered in. Once the roots produce spears and you harvest them, the plants will morph into bushy, ferny plants which will bear seeds (if you have planted seeding varities). These plants will last over twenty years. Right, the birds love the seeds and will spread them all over the garden, starting the process of life and growth all over again!
My asparagus roots came tagged with the most informative of names. One is UC72, and the other is UC157---how creative and thoughful can the university people get. When I asked the friendly nursery clerk what those numbers meant, she politely made something up. I suppose UC means Univeristy of California. So, I shall give the plants flambouyant names when they produce spears.
Just incase, I bought a six-pack of little asparagus plants as a back up. I always do this sort of thing to hedge my bets. And, they are growing well now. As yet, the asparagus roots have not broken the earth. but once we are past the winter solstice, I am sure that they will be sprouting upward to the sun. Excelsior!
From very early childhood, the only constant that I have believed in is that the earth will always bring forth green grasses and plants in the Spring. Yes, for sure, there is the loss of living things, but there is also a regeneration. All things change. In the most profound and realistic appraisal, life evolves along side continuous loss and regeneration. Isn't Memory an attempt to retrieve the past, that which is seemingly lost, but indeed is not lost.
Charles Darwin perceptively and honestly said this when he proved that lowly earthworms continuously digest dead matter and turn it into earth ('mould'-his word) so that it could be the substrait for life again, new life. It's all about digestion and renewal. Darwin is saying that "destruction conserves life". For a complete explanation of this phenomenon, I suggest "Darwin's Worms" by Adam Phillips, a very clearly written little book on Darwin's lifelong fascination with earthworms. Darwin wrote about worms almost to the day that he died.
And finally, is it not only I who can remember which plants evoke individual people? And I do not mean that I projecting on them; that is I am not laying it on. Or, do the plants have an innate life energy that informs me about the complete history of their past? I am confident there is a sympathetic, telepathic relationship, the way strings of a musical instrument will vibrate, resonate is the word, when any other string is touched.
