Labor Day Planting In the USA

Rudbeckia, coryx, coleus, alyssum

Here's to the work ethic. And days off. Hope everyone, American or not, has had a wonderful weekend.

Previously:
4th of July

15 High WASP Practices For Growing And Using Tomatoes

1. Buy an organic seedling at your locally-owned nursery. You approve of capitalism, but prefer not to ravage the planet with the chemicals of agribusiness.

2. Plant said plant in your front yard. What? That's where the sun is, that's where the tomato plant is going, the neighbors will understand. And no, we don't think it's overly quirky.

3. Install simple drip irrigation. It's very nice to rough it, and grow food, and all, but we're not going to stand around with a watering can for days on end. Thank you very much.

4. Rebel against cages. Decide you are going to stake your tomato plant simply, with dignity. Drive a stake into the ground. Imagine you are done. Spend the next couple of months tying your plant to said stake with unsightly white twine, searching wildly for more stakes, and even using your kids old stilts for yet another stake. Eventually simply lay your excess tomato plant branches on top of your basil plants and hope for the best.

5. Wring your hands at the unbearable cute of your first green tomato. High WASPs like to wring our hands, it ties us to our heritage.

6. Curse the same green tomato when it takes forever to ripen, even as all around you people are forecasting bruschetta with a chance of basil.

7. Read that you need to prune suckers, those little vestigial branches that grow next to real branches. Hear that Accordion and Lace's mother's wisdom from the old world says you prune the third branch from the third branch. Realize that since you don't have an old world any more you'll do as told. Try to prune. Get lost in the scent of tomato branches on your hand, and the marjoram that you've crushed in your efforts. Go have a glass of wine. Remember France. And childhood. Back then even sunscreen smelled good.

8. Squeal when your first tomato reddens. Look at it closely. Repeatedly, like a toddler at Christmas.

9. Pluck your tomato carefully, as though it might explode. Feel the shock as it separates from its stem. Revere the process.

10. Make Fresh Bruschetta for your son. Chop your one tomato. It really is yours. Add 2 or 3 finely chopped cloves of garlic and a handful of basil leaves, shredded by hand in a surprising fit of sensuality. Add some olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste. Slice a sweet baguette into little ovals and toast them. Doesn't matter how. Sit at the counter and eat quite impolitely, spooning the bruschetta on to toast, and murmuring in pleasure.

11. Go outside one morning and realize that you have built it and they will come. Prepare for tomatoes galore. Go buy fresh mozzarella, (bocconcini are good) combine with more basil and call it Caprese Salad. Even if you never go near a plate.

12. Roast a bunch of tomatoes in the oven at high heat until they collapse in their own sugars. Smear the resultant jammy mess on everything.

13. Make Raw Tomato Pasta With Goat Cheese.

1 1/2 lb firm ripe tomatoes
1 bunch fresh basil (leaves from as many stalks as you can grab in one hand) If you are tired of basil use some other herb. Parsley. A little marjoram.
8 tablespoons of the best olive oil you can find
salt to taste
4 oz of the best goat cheese you can find
1 lb good quality spaghetti

Core, seed, and chop the tomatoes into very small dice. Chop the basil coarsely. Combine tomatoes, basil, olive oil and salt in a large pasta bowl. Crumble goat cheese into small pieces and add to bowl. Cook pasta in large pot of boiling, salted water. When tender but al dente, drain, add to bowl, mix, serve.

Don't make cooked pasta sauce, San Marzano canned tomatoes meet those requirements perfectly.

14. Make soup. For a change-up to all-tomatoes-want-to-be Italian, try very easy Chinese Tomato Noodle Soup.

1 teaspoon vegetable oil
2 large ripe but firm tomatoes, cored, seeded, and cut into small dice
2 scallions, trimmed and minced
3 tablespoons Chinese rice wine or sake
21/2 tablespoons soy sauce
5 cups Chinese chicken broth (to make quickly, combine 3 cups commercial chicken broth, 3 cups water, 1/3 cup rice wine or sake, 4 slices smashed ginger. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, simmer uncovered for 20 minutes )
1 teaspoon or less of salt
ground black pepper to taste
1/2 frozen peas, thawed
1/2 very fine noodles, somen, capellini, cooked until just tender then rinsed under warm water and drained.

Stir fry tomatoes and scallions in oil until fragrant (~10 seconds), add rice wine and soy sauce, cook for one minute, stirring. Add broth, salt and pepper, simmer for 5 minutes. Add peas, cooked for 30 seconds. Add noodles, cook for 30 seconds until just hot. Serve.

15. Give the rest of your tomatoes away. Stave off the end of summer with generosity. Pretend that this will go on forever. Tomato plants, like the High WASP species, end as abundance starts to decay, faintly, perfumed. With tomatoes, as with High WASP family fortunes, charity redeems most excesses.

Image: Me. My very own tomato. I grew it myself.
Raw tomato sauce pasta recipe via Pasta Fresca
Chinese Tomato Noodle soup via Nina Simonds Asian Noodles
(support your local bookstore)

Would You Like To Plant Betty Draper's Garden?

We know how Betty, Don and the gang dress. We've seen Betty's interior design, her knotty-pine kitchen cabinets, console television, and hard-edged sofa. But how, we might wonder, did her garden grow? 

 Little Sally Draper and I share a birthday, more or less. I remember what gardens looked like in her day, at least here in Northern California. Midcentury children played in well-behaved foliage and pink, white, and blue highly structured flowers. Not dissimilar to Joan and Betty's dresses. Naked Ladies, also known, less colorfully, as Belladonna Lily. Agapanthus. 

 Because so many houses were built all at once, gardens were laid out uniformly. Fuchsia, rhododendrons, c amellias, star jasmine, juniper hedges, and lots of lawn. Thinking that water would last forever. Featuring concrete. Thinking that it, too, would last forever. We may have killed our snails with poison, but we looked quite tidy doing so. Maybe that's what so compelling about the midcentury American aesthetic. For a moment, all kinds of cultural threads lined up. 

 Midcentury landscapers may have believed that nature was only a backdrop for man's infinite trajectory of achievement, but over the past fifty years we've gained tolerance for graying and scruffy foliage, drought-tolerant grasses, even weeds. We understand that rhododendrons, native to the hills above Darjeeling, probably don't belong in the Mediterranean climate of Northern California. We've figured out that that concrete cracks. And lavender, a fantastic replacement for lilies of many kinds, smells rapturous.

I wonder, what did the gardens of America's midcentury look like in your neck of the woods? Do you remember? Does your mother? Your father? Maybe you live in the Draper's suburb outside of Manhattan? In Texas? Chicago? Miami? Leeds? Neuilly-sur-Seine? After all, in 1962 it was 1962 everywhere, not just in Draperville. Or perhaps we could challenge Matthew Weiner to go ahead and show us the plantings.

How To Plant A Cottage Garden That Feels Bigger Than It Is

I have a little cottage garden. A little cottage garden surrounding a little ranch house built when Silicon Valley was still a twinkle in Fairchild's eye. When the neighborhood was little. Which it is not any more. But I digress.

In Northern California coastal regions, a cottage garden hedges its bets by including drought-tolerant grasses amongst the hydrangea, and relying on Mediterranean flora for inspiration. A High WASP, fading family fortune to blame, may hedge some additional bets, relying on camera angles to suggest the grandeur of her childhood homes. But she will tell you in advance. You deserve that much.

So here's how to plant a cottage garden that feels bigger than it is.

Mix up your plants, unexpectedly
I'm fond of massing plants. Somewhat more structural than your archetypal cottage layout, but if there's no room for interpretation of the classics, where then is taste? Even if masses in a small garden mean 8 plants of one type, 6 of another, 12 of another - let them grow in organic shapes and entangled if they will. Here, the front yard in sun, the back yard in shade.

Lychnis, lavender, fleabane

Hydrangea, phormium, cotoneaster, myosotis, native California iris

Hide your fences, and your neighbors
You see that patch of brown above, through the greenery? That's my fence. On the other side of my fence are my neighbors. I do my best to pretend they aren't there. Gardeners with gas mowers and children in swimming pools thwart me on occasion, but I raise my chin and think of England.

Build paths, or suggest them
These paths may wend their way only around a raised bed, or through a shrub or two to the back fence. Which might be nearer in reality than you pretend. Again, front yard in sun, back yard in shade.

Lavender, lamb's ears, upright rosemary


Ferns, native Californian iris, bleeding heart, cotoneaster, hydrangea, bay laurel

Plant a cutting garden in its own bed, or pot if that's what you've got
My cutting garden followed the sun to my front yard. Luckily Northern California also supports gardening eccentrics with visible tomatoes. For cut flowers, I have one rosebush. And since I can see it out my kitchen window, for the most part I cut roses only in my imagination, preferring they live on outside rather than drop petals with a tiny thwap on my kitchen counter.

The rose. I do not know its name.


Cherry tomato plant, basil, cuban basil, marjoram, thyme, parsley, mint, more mint. Still more mint.

Write up a list of future projects
Things left undone, projects for the future, empty containers are all markers of hope. Anything unfinished is a vista, of sorts.

Finally, when in doubt, plant another rosebush. They are likely to light up for you, early in the morning. Which, although a cheap date sort of photo opportunity rife with easy sentiment, can lift a full heart in real life. I suggest we do not dismiss roses.

How, And Why, To Plant A Cottage Garden Anywhere On Earth

I have a proposition for you, one which I do not expect to be controversial. Here goes. Gardens are wonderful.

My High WASP cohort is with me on this one. We do love a garden. And our genre of choice is the English cottage. At home we are not prone to formal plantings of colored annuals, spelling out our monograms. Nor to singular shrubs, lonely, disciplined, labeled. Nor to wallpaper plants, i.e., 60 sad impatiens in a row, advancing before 23 well-behaved azaleas, flanking 7 uniform hydrangeas. While our vacation houses might get a little fanciful - topiaries, follies, the crunch of French gravel paths - at home we like to balance our personal formality with the comfort of a mixed border. Or two. Or six.

High WASPs plant cottage gardens even when the cottage is, well, a little grand.

If one still lives in the family manse, cottage-ification is by necessity limited to regions near and dear. Overseeing an entire acre, or two or forty, covered in artfully massed and scattered and staked perennials? Please, no. Unless you are the queen of something. For ordinary manses, rolling swaths of sustainable vistas are a good thing. But the walkway to the front and back doors, the borders around the paved stone patio, or the brick-decorated swimming pool will most likely cottage-up. And if family fortunes have declined, and one lives in a regular house, swaths and vistas are a thing of the past. One learns to appreciate the small.


You might well wonder, "What is a cottage garden?" You might well consider, "Do I want one?" I ask you in return, do you like:

• Mixed and crowded plantings whose final architecture you can't quite predict
• The Fibonacci curves of nature
  
• Dedicating space to growing plants to cut, either flowers, or food, or both
  
• Walking amongst your plants, and the paths to walk upon
• Honoring the geography where you live?

As you can see in the photos above, cottage gardens should be planted every which way, as though they might have chosen to grow in situ of their own accord. The effect you are looking for, which might in fact be the High WASP credo, is, "Oh this old thing?" Even though you or your landscape architect might in fact have spent at the very least a lot of time, if not money, planning and designing. And then spent a lot of time planting, watching plants fail, and replanting. Dignified chaos is a lot of work.

You should also remember that cottages sustain themselves. You will need to plant things to bring inside, flowers, or herbs, or vegetables, even when you don't have an acre for a cornfield. I remember the cornfield, next to the barn, opposite the cottage, where we stayed on my father's family place. And the deer that would walk out at night, as we held our breaths and waited. But I digress.

Do not worry. Strawberries in a pot count. Orange trees in pots count. Basil leaves on a windowsill count. You only need the chance to crush, or sniff, or bite something you have grown.

Your cottage garden should have paths, to wind through the greenery, to conceal and reveal. Even if the only path you have is the one leading from the sidewalk to your front door, or up the stairs to your apartment, let it meander just for a minute, if you can.

Most importantly, the cottage garden must adapt to the environment in which it finds itself. Plant a polite space, following the culture of your adoptive home. High WASPs wish for nothing more than the nirvana of appropriate. Above, the garden on the right is in fact in England. The garden on the left? Chicago. Planted affectionately, in a corner protected from winds.

Noe Valley, San Francisco. Where a cottage garden includes the plant known as Kangaroo Paws. Under a crayon-blue sky, cottages might have a kangaroo or two nearby. In the desert, a cottage garden might consist of succulents, cacti planted as though they'd just happened to arrange themselves in patterns along your walk, in amongst the swept dust and broken pottery embedded into adobe walls.

You didn't think palm trees were part of a cottage garden? They are in Santa Barbara. While in the hills above Silicon Valley, Mediterranean natives do a heck of a job mirroring the foxgloves, hostas, and peonies of other climates. No need to imitate the cottages of other lands.

So get out the tools hiding in your garage. If you want to get fancy, put them in a basket. Tie a bow on the handle. Do not bewail the lack of a gardener. Gardeners work on the vast nether reaches. What is close to home we do ourselves.

Enjoy the digging, the weeding, the pruning. Nothing is so good for the soul as a good pruning session. Protect your cottage. Curiously, weeds ignore demographics, weedkiller is poison for everyone, and you don't really have to get your hands dirty. One could say the earth is our cottage, if one wanted to speak out.

Archetypal Cottage
Grand Cottage
Corn
Path
Chicago
Noe Valley
Mom's House, LPC
Dad's House, LPC
Garden Necessities, LPC

Saturday Morning at 7:54am

I heard raccoons howling in the night. Thumping on my roof. They must be climbing up my elm. I haven't even looked to see if they went after my pond plants again. Like I said, this will be a long battle. Sometimes victory is simply continuing the fight. Hearing night howls as no more than a sign that, in the morning, you may have to get wet. Knowing that as long as you keep up the fight, you will have pond plants.

You will also be wet. And muddy. Again. Only you know if pond plants are worth it. Me, I'm doing it for the papyrus.

Image:
Fir0002/Flagstaffotos
GFDL License

Secret Nefarious Villains

As I said, the next morning all my pond plants had fallen over. Again. And this time I noticed that my lovely floating water hyacinths were gone. Vanished. Remember that beauteous purple-leafed plant? Only shreds left by the side of the pond. Alas.


Aha.

I googled "Raccoons Ate My Water Hyacinths." Indeed, they did. And climbed over everything else on their way to the water hyacinth feast. This explains the fallen plants. And some recent midnight howling.

I haven't given up. Now it's a long battle between me and them. Today I put all the plants in the middle of the pond. Thinking those little bandit-faced suckers won't be able to reach. I'm relentless, I tell you, relentless.

If I fail, look for more posts on what shoes to wear with navy blue. Or tartan. Wait, what shoes DO you wear with tartan? Hmmm. Good question, even if I succeed with the raccoons. Adding to your identity should mean more "That." Not no more "This." Have a lovely weekend.

To Be This AND That

Sometimes our efforts to stretch, to take a risk, to be both this and that, leave us humbled. Humbled and muddy.

I have a pond in my backyard. I've always been the type to avoid home maintenance. It scares me. But it's never to late to learn, or so I hoped. In the last few years the pond had become more of a puddle. A home for wayward mosquito larvae. I was determined to get it back. To become a High WASP 52-year old former executive and a robust, hardy, no-nonsense woman capable of things like pond maintenance.

I bought plants. I put plants in the pond. Set them up on overturned plastic pot containers with gravel. This is what it looked like. Gracious living at its best. Make special note of that lovely purple-leafed plant in the background. You will want to remember what it looks like later.


The next morning I went outside. All the pots had fallen over. I set them up again. Overnight they fell down again. I set them up. Next morning, down.

I was determined. I called the nursery. They said try setting the plants on cinder blocks. Orchard Supply was out of the right size. I had to go to Egypt.


Not really. But that's how I felt. This is the garden materials supply store. The presence of heavy equipment made it clear I wasn't in Egypt. But didn't make me feel much safer. I was overwhelmed.

Still determined, I drove around in terror, startling at each very large bulldozer. I eventually convinced someone to help me load 7 cinderblocks into my car. To help me load 2 30 pounds bags of gravel into selfsame car.

I paid at the window. I drove home. I carried each cinderblock to the pond. I laid them this way and that way, lengthwise, sideways, stacked, alone. I spent an hour kneeling on pavers, up to my shoulder in stagnant pond water, dropping my glasses here and there, cursing, completely drunk with sun and the strength that remains in my upper body to this day.

I took a shower. I washed my hair. I basked in the glory of my competence and independence.

The Fierceness Of Flowers

The reputation of flowers, in my opinion, is deeply flawed. Think about it. Even the term, flowery, means delicate, ornate, soft. Have you looked at any flowers in their natural state lately? My roses almost killed me over the weekend. My arms were marked with punctures as though tiny pipes had blown poison darts at me from the suburban rain forest.

I got back at those roses. I cut some branches and put them in a vase on my kitchen counter. Now I can see the thorns though the clear glass and the water. Thorns as big as my thumbnails. The flowers themselves are peach or apricot colored, but redder in the bud. The shades of flesh and blood. The open blooms are chaos, the opening buds full of promise.

Pascoe Porter, Old Rose, flickr

Remember the next time you think of flowers that in their true habitat, their natural habitat, they are fierce beings meant to ensure the future life of their species. You should still put them on your wedding tables, hold them in your hands as you walk down the aisles if you want. But make no mistake about their real selves.

Cutting Bamboo In The Afternoon

Cutting Bamboo in the Afternoon by High WASP featuring UGG Australia shoes

Waged the honorable bamboo war this afternoon. Victorious. Had to lick wounds yesterday, rose bushes triumphed. Scars to show.

Not that the above is what I actually wore. The only things I own in this picture are the sunscreen, the Sigg water bottle, and the Uggs slippers. Slippers in which I do garden, I confess. I'm old. If I want sheepskin on my feet when I am doddering around with pruning shears, dagnabit that's what I am going to wear.

It's just so beautiful here in Northern California when the sun shines that who can care about the rules? And I think I will dream of buying myself a striped tote bag for my gardening tools, and seersucker shorts, and a special gardening shirt to protect me from venomous thorns. And a Japanese saw, which I will place on a stone and contemplate in its beauty.

But for now, the bamboo is thinned, the rose bush is staked, the weeds are lying dead on top of other weeds at the side of the house, and the shadows of the elm tree branches are moving on my windows. All of which leads to a sense of bemused gratitude. It's so easy to be happy here, given, of course, some privilege.