A SET OF STEPS

A blog I love: Dominique Browning’s Slow Love Life. She was the editor of House and Garden when it was abruptly closed, a tale she tells in Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas & Found Happiness.  She’s also the author of the words I find most useful as I step into a new phase of my life:

"Take a hard look at what you're so afraid of," she said. "Get moving, physically — walking, running, yoga classes, swimming, gardening. When you start physically moving, your mind starts to relax. It helps move you to a new place."

So I took a snapshot of a walk I love, the lichen-covered staircase that leads down to the stream in my backyard and across the bridge to the garden. 

THE OLD MAN AND THE TREE

The tree had been dead for many years.  What remained was a twisted corkscrew of a snag — some 25 or 30 feet high, with a two-foot diameter trunk that forked into two upwardly angled branches about 15 feet above the ground. One of these branches forked again about 12 feet higher up. In all, it was ungainly, unbalanced and could fall in any direction.  It hung precariously over a stone wall that divides  our property from a neighbor, and threatened to fall across the property line into our neighbor's woods.

Suddenly, a couple of years ago, the neighbor appeared on his side of the wall, erecting fence posts every 10 feet or so, then constructing a new four-foot fence along the property line. This was a dire development. Now, if the tree were to fall, it would crush the fence.

Jack took to walking the fence line, studying the dead tree from every angle. He unpacked his digital camera and took photographs. He mused. If the tree were to fall unexpectedly, he wanted the neighbor to understand he had been trying to solve the problem. It was his responsibility to keep his tree in check, just as one would have a responsibility to prevent unruly children from creating a neighborhood nuisance. Felling the tree took on a new urgency. But how? The back woods is across a stream bed, and it would be tough to get heavy equipment over there. Besides, Jack likes to solve these problems himself.

In the past, one technique had worked well for some (more straightforward) tall snags that the power company had left standing elsewhere on the property: get a line around the tree, then use a come-along to slowly coax the tree in the desired direction. But the line had to be high enough to give the needed leverage.  How to get a line to that altitude on this tree?

Dave Epstein, a local gardening guru, has a website called Growing Wisdom that recently suggested some garden projects using electrical conduit. We had a couple of extra 10-foot sections left over from our project, and Jack decided to create a long, flexible pole to raise a line up there. He started with a lightweight line, tied around a short,  heavy weight. Working together, we managed to lift the end of this line up through the lowest notch in the tree and let it fall back to the ground. Then we tied the lightweight line to a length of heavy braided nylon rope, and used the lighter line to pull the heavier rope into place.  It took some doing — we had to free it from some stumps of small, rotting braches as we worked. But finally the heavy line was in place.

Then the fun began. Often you can hitch a come-along to a nearby tree, which provides a strong and secure base for pulling another tree down. In this case, we had little wiggle room. To one side was a small backyard pond with a fragile liner, and on the other was a small planting of epimedium, lamium,  and impatiens, with a serene stone Buddha perched on an old tree stump. We could remove the statue, but removing  all the plants would be a large project and traumatize them at least for this season. Jack thought he could drop the tree safely in the narrow space between the two areas.

He went to the hardware store and bought two six-foot long sections of stout two-inch iron pipe.  He pounded them into the earth in the direction he wanted the tree to fall. To one pipe he attached the come-along chain assembly. At the junction of the braided rope and the come-along, he added a second, parallel rope, which he attached to the second pipe. 

Then, in stages, he ratcheted the come-along to "persuade" the tree to move in the desired direction. As he did, the second rope slackened, and he needed to pause periodically to retie it in a tauter position. Methodically, he alternated between the two (and paused to reset the pipes, which were pulled forward in the ground by the weight of the tree).

While all this was going on, the tree snapped and crackled in protest.  Sections of bark came flying off, and small branches showered around us. It was scary. My job at this point was to worry as I watched the tree sway in protest. Jack, of course, did not need to hear my fears. I did convince him to stop occasionally and wait for the tree to 'show what it planned to do.'  I'm a great fan of J.R.R. Tolkein, and have the highest respect for the feelings and the volition of trees.  Jack isn't such an animist.  But I had seen surprising things in earlier lumber-Jacking  projects — like an enormous maple tree that suddenly leapt two feet into the air and landed six feet away from its stump in an acrobatic adventure that I'll remember for years.

As Jack continued to ratchet, we planned our escape routes — where he would run when the deciding moment came. We were tense, trying to be thoughtful and cautious. I kept imagining the worst. And when the moment finally came, I watched as time separated into two film speeds: in the first, Jack was running toward me, away from the falling tree, but he seemed to be moving in slow motion. In the other sequence, I could see the heavy, spiraling tree in fast forward, rolling and twisting unpredictably as it fell toward him.

It was all over in seconds. Miraculously, the tree fell just as he had planned. When dropping a tree it's always worth spending a long time to consider all the angles you can think of, and it paid off this time. The tree he had fretted about for years was docile, defanged. We celebrated, returned the Buddha to his perch, and called it a night. Tomorrow, there would be time to chop and cart away the fallen menace.

A NOURISHING DAY

Garden designer and writer Joe Eck hosted the 16th annual North Hill garden symposium in southern Vermont last Friday, and a devoted community of his followers showed up. It was a solemn occasion, because it was also a memorial: the first 15 symposia had been hosted by Joe and his spouse and co-author, Wayne Winterrowd, who passed away suddenly last September. In the end, the day was a celebration of both Wayne and Joe  — and of the entire home gardening community. It was by turn information-packed, heartwarming, hilarious, and surprising.

All in all, it was a day of great nourishment. The theme of this year's event was the kitchen garden and table. Every moment brought food for thought  — with too many threads to follow in this brief overview. Here are some of the best.

Bobbi Angell: Pie Recollections

To open the program, friend and collaborator Bobbi Angell offered a mouth-watering, photographic tribute to Wayne's amazing pie cookery. She's the botanical illustrator known for her delicate work in the New York Times, the John W. Scheepers Kitchen Garden and Van Engelen Bulb catalogs, as well as numerous books — including Joe and Wayne's widely admired Our Life in Gardens. Her illustrations will also be part of their final volume, To Eat, which Joe is currently finishing. And why pies? "Because Wayne always said I was too thin!" laughed Angell.

Jennifer Bartley: An American Potager

The theme of kitchen gardens was richly traced by Jennifer Bartley, whose Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American Potager Handbook  includes the North Hill potager (literally, "garden for the potage or soup kettle") as a "guide for dreaming about your own kitchen garden." She rooted her text in the medieval monastic garden, which, she explained, should be located "close to the kitchen" for both visual and physical access. Although the garden at North Hill disobeys this rule, her book includes part of a conversation on this subject with Wayne, who argued:

When we go up to work in the vegetable garden, it is like a little vacation — so controlled and contained. For that reason, until we are very old, and then have to put our vegetables back in the back yard ... we would not have it anyplace else.

To illustrate the importance of the garden in the monk's (or nun's) daily schedule, she explained the garden was not only a place where food was grown for sustenance, but at the same time a place of meditation and prayer — an idea that resonated with the audience.

Thomas Christopher: How Green?

And then, a surprise — and a challenge! Horticulture expert Thomas Christopher, first known for his reports on rose breeding, old-fashioned roses, and "rose-rustling", has more recently spear-headed the trend for resource conservation in the home landscape. He brought new information from the recently published The New American Landscape: Leading Voices on the Future of Sustainable Gardening.

Overall, his topic, "How Green is Your Garden?" was a stimulating mix of startling facts and useful ideas. To start, he gently upended a few "locavore" myths. Drawing on research conducted by the UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), he argued that the carbon footprint and environmental cost of locally grown foods can actually be greater than those of imports transported by air freight from overseas. And the biggest surprise of all: the most expensive contribution to CO2 pollution is driving the family car "from farm stand to dairy to bakery to butcher."

His message: we need to address environmental issues on the basis of facts, not sentiments.

The talk included fascinating reports of how the milder USDA hardiness zones are creeping northward, according to David Wolfe at Cornell. To illustrate how climate change is affected by politics, Christopher explained the "official" USDA hardiness zones (upper map) are used to adjudicate insurance payouts on nursery crop failures, while a new version published by the Arbor Day Foundation (lower map), which reflects the milder climate zones, has yet to be accepted by the government.

 

Although he elicited belly laughs when describing his emergency planting of a fast-growing, freeform, curly cress "lawn," his thrust was not comic but committed: gardeners can lead the way and help others get serious about the earth's limited resources. As a passionate evangelist for the planet, he offered specific details:

-         Grow plants that are appropriate for your area.

-         Create low-cost, on-site water collection systems.

-         Use solar-powered pumps with drip irrigation, not aerial sprinklers, to conserve water.

-         Avoid chemical fertilizers with their high-energy manufacturing process and polluting runoff.

He showed plans for simple root cellars — made from a galvanized garbage can or carved from a corner of the cellar. He estimated that he and his wife grow some forty percent of their vegetables and are always trying ways to do it better. He urged us to become more environmentally aware (go to the market less, plan meals better, don't let food spoil, and finally, pester others to do the same). And he had tips: use phenology (a calendar of natural events, like the blossoming of native plants, the arrival of migrant birds, and so forth) to manage your garden without pesticides; for example, while the chicory blooms it's time to cover the squash vines temporarily with Remay row cover fabric to prevent the dreaded squash vine borer from laying its eggs on your plants.

As we adjourned for lunch, he worried aloud that he had been too passionate, too detailed. No problems on that score. The audience was taking careful notes, asking him to define and spell words like “phenology.”

Roger Swain: The Fruits of Home

When planning an all-day meeting, who better than Roger Swain to pick up the thread after a meal? The humorous, folksy host of some 500 episodes of public TV's Victory Garden sported his trademark red suspenders, work boots, and splendid gray beard.  From Joe's introduction: "... if and when America decides to honor its artists as National Treasures, Roger would surely be a candidate for that title."

"You can be sure, if you bought your fruit at the store, that it's no longer fresh!" That's Roger's introduction to "Returning Fruit to the American Backyard" — a presentation rich in information and overflowing with memorable one-liners. He cataloged the most mouth-watering varieties of each fruit, punctuated with quips:  "Here's why you should grow raspberries — to learn how to prune!" On the hopeless optimism of ex-president Jefferson's agricultural adventures at Monticello: "The perfect plan: establishing a fruit orchard at the top of a mountain in Virginia with no water!" After repeated photos of a woman's hand holding colorful berries: "The women in my life provide the scale!" He is visibly nourished every time he gets a laugh — it's a bravura performance, and we eat it up.

Joe Eck: Our Life with Onions

Joe's biggest challenge in finishing the book, he readily admits, is to keep Wayne's voice alive in their final book together. To provide a taste, he read a selection from To Eat, in which their relationship with the quirky Egyptian onion was an emblem of their years together, moving, as the onions do, from place to place and finally landing at North Hill. His success was ratified by the audience, with warm murmurs of approval.

Beatrice Tosti di Valminuta: A Casa e Con Amore

If food is love, Beatrice (pronounced the Italian way, bay ah tree che) Tosti di Valminuta, chef-owner of Il Bagatto in NYC's Lower East Side, must be the go-to gourmet. As she enters, we watch in amazement as her assistants tote a "groaning table" in from stage right. Reviewing samples of Italian vegetables —  artichokes, pole beans, zucchini romanesca, and other salad greens —  Beatrice describes how Romans gather wild greens  — the simplest of ingredients —  and dress them with extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar (NOT balsamic vinegar —  it's too dear.) And herbs with everything: pigweed in fava beans, mint in the peas. Every ingredient reminds her of a recipe!

"And why does mother's cooking taste so good? Because she wants to nourish you and she cooks with love!"

Her handout contains additional recipes for Biete al Pomodoro (swiss chards -- or dandelion greens — with tomato), Spinaci alla Romana, Broccoli Strascinati in Padella (good enough to make broccoli lovers of anyone), and Piselli o Fave (peas or fava beans) al Proscciutto.   Finally, to celebrate and cap the day, she's prepared the final recipe in her handout, which she calls "an homage to Vermont" —  it's a freshly made pannacotta of local goat cheese topped with in-season strawberries marinated in fruit juices —  "Fatto a casa e con amore", says Beatrice.

Fresh food — grown in the kitchen garden, prepared with love. It doesn't get any better than that.  Joe Eck and his friends offered a day of total nourishment for body and soul.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

At times of change you realize that, as the old saying goes, change is truly the only constant. Our lives are full of change. And it's scary.

There's another saying that a friend once used, to console me when change was paralyzing me: "All change is evil."

It isn't, of course. But if human language is unique in having a future tense, humans may also be unique in letting the future make us tense. We know there's something ahead, but we cannot be sure what it will be.

So how to relax, in the face of such uncertainty? We are probably weakest at times of transition. It may be unplanned and unwelcome -- a serious accident, the loss of a job, or the loss of a loved one. It may be hoped-for and welcome -- graduation, an unexpected new relationship, a career opportunity, or the birth of a child.

In some cases, it will be complex and mixed, like the challenge I face right now. How do I withdraw from the work I've always done -- lose that paycheck, as well as the relationships and self-definition that my work provided -- and still move ahead, doing work that rewards me with enough income to get by and also makes me feel that I'm doing work that matters?

This is a challenge that faces us baby boomers as we try to organize a 'retirement' strategy, or out-of-work employees who haven't reached 'retirement' age. If we are weakest at a time of unplanned loss, how do we reconnect with the strengths we have when the tides are full? This is the question I need to answer.

I take encouragement from my Page-A-Day(R) calendar from Workman Publishing, which e-mails me "stiff-upper-lip" messages from its Keep Calm and Carry On edition:

"Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear." -MARCUS AURELIUS, Roman emperor

Keep Calm and Carry On, you may remember, was a famous poster published in London during the years of the Blitz, and the daily messages I receive in my inbox remind me that things, of course, could be worse.