Triumph and Disaster

Every spring I am pleased to hear the dawn chorus of birds and amazed when things start growing in my garden, particularly after a very cold and/or snowy winter. This year, "winter" seemed to concentrate itself in the month of March. But even now, in April, it has been colder than average here in New Jersey.

Glory of the snow, April 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

Still, no matter the year my first reaction in spring is usually the same: "Wow! Look who's here! You survived!"

First come the crocuses and the snowdrop. Both bloomed when they were supposed to, in late February, as the first daffodil shoots started coming up during some unusual warmth. Then came the March cold and four nor'easters, the second dumping 20 or so inches of the white stuff. But the snow melted and these flowers re-appeared and continued to bloom.

Then came the glory-of-the-snow, a small blue flower with a white center I planted in one part of the garden years ago and then moved, only to forget where I put it until it suddenly showed up. It does so every April.

Another surprise: Last year I bought a peony root and put it in a large pot. It did not do very well. I left it in the pot for most of the summer until I read more about how it likes to grow. Since deer allegedly don't eat it - peony flowers are showy and highly perfumed - I dug a hole and put it in one area of the garden I do not net. I marked it with a small flag and hoped for the best. Walking over to the compost pile one recent morning I checked and found two small, red shoots. Signs of growth! I hope the deer don't discover them.

Look closely. There are two red shoots here. Maybe the deer
will miss them. (Margo D. Beller)

One year I put the cannas I keep in two pots on my enclosed porch for the winter, covered in plastic. I later learned I had made two big mistakes - cannas are supposed to be kept cool but not subfreezing, and they are not supposed to get damp or they will rot. Plastic covering kept them damp and that winter the average temperature on the porch was 32 degrees. It took some time but the plants, once divided, managed to survive and grow. Since then I've stored them in the garage, which provides more shelter.

But for every triumph there seems to be a disaster.

This year the potted rosemary kicked the bucket after 10+ years of providing me with fresh herbs. Did it get too much water or two little? Too much dry house heat? I don't know. I did nothing different than I had in previous winters but even perennials die at some point. So now I have a glass jar full of dried herbs after I took off as many leaves as possible before struggling to get the plant out of the pot and into compost.  A friend let me take two cuttings of her plant, which had come from my plant, and I'll try growing rosemary again.

Then came the white flies.

I have a bad habit of trying to keep so-called "annuals" going over the winter. This started when I kept one pot of peppers indoors and the next year it grew more and bigger peppers. So each year I keep at least one pot of peppers. I have also been known to try to keep annuals going beyond most people's expectations. I kept a mum going for over 10 years, for instance. This past winter I tried that with begonias, coleus and ageratum, with little success. The begonias, ageratum and two of the six coleus died.

Last fall I found a tomato plant growing near my compost pile, perhaps a seed sown by a chipmunk or squirrel. I dug it up and put it in a pot. It grew very fast -- too fast. It had to be caged, staked and tied. It started to flower in December. Unfortunately, like all tomatoes, I discovered it was a white fly magnet.

The previous winter I had a terrible time with white flies. They infested all the plants, which had to be taken outside and shaken, cleaned and quickly brought back. The peppers were banished to my enclosed porch until I could put them outside. They were composted that fall.

Tomato, before composting. (Margo D. Beller)

This time I had kept two plants going, one of which provided me with small but good peppers during the winter. The other has started growing its own fruits. No flies, or so I thought, until I accidentally kicked one of the pots as I cleaned up rosemary debris after moving that pot. I had noticed but ignored some important clues. Some of the pepper leaves had started to brown. "Honeydew" was showing up on the front window. Now I had flies and, worse, I had hundreds of flies on the suddenly wilting tomato.

So the peppers were whisked outdoors, shaken and put on the back porch, where they were wrapped against the cold expected that night. The tomato was taken to the front yard, hit with a spray of water and put behind the deer netting, wrapped. The next morning the peppers were brought indoors, even though there are still some flies around. The tomato was a disaster. I put it on the enclosed porch and today it went back to the compost pile.

From compost came ye and to compost will ye return. I'll be buying my tomatoes from the farm market.

Mid-summer Morning Walk

Rocky's "office" (Margo D. Beller)

For a number of reasons, I have stopped taking daily walks in the early morning before work. Part of it is the heat. You have to get up early to walk when at midday it is 10 degrees hotter than it should be in suburban New Jersey, and there are some mornings it is all I can do to get to the bathroom in time, and then wrap a robe around me so I can put the thistle feeder out for the goldfinches.

But I have been trying to walk more, even though the birds I hear I can find as easily in my backyard - fish crows, Carolina wrens, cardinals, grackles, song sparrows.

As I walk, staying out of the way of the people running on the sidewalks or the people with dogs or the ones with the baby carriages, I think about other walks in other years.

That made me think of Rocky.

Tomatoes (Margo D. Beller)

Before MH and I moved to New Jersey, we lived in Queens, NY. Our landlady, who lived upstairs, had a big backyard where she grew tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant, zucchini and had a huge fig tree. When she would visit her daughter's family in California, she would allow me to pick the vegetables, leaving most of them on her kitchen table and taking the rest. I have never been able to eat a fig or a tomato since then without thinking of Mary's garden. All the tomatoes I've bought, even from farm markets, just don't taste the same.

Then we moved to NJ. A few streets over, every summer, a handmade sign would be hammered into the grass at the corner. "Tomatoes" it would read, with an arrow pointing up the street.

It took me a few years to finally get the interest or the courage to investigate. I found a house on the corner where a huge hunk of property had been converted to growing tomatoes. I walked to the garage and looked in. A neighbor across the street called over that "he" might be in the house and to come back. It took weeks but I did.

I talked to Rocky, the man selling the tomatoes, who was in a wheelchair and hooked up to air because of emphysema. It did not stop him smoking or watching TV, usually westerns, with a small fan going.

Zucchini plants (Margo D. Beller)

He told me how he would put in a winter crop, plow it under, put down manure and then put in the various types of tomatoes. When he couldn't do it, neighbors would come over and do it. I picked a number of tomatoes and he threw in some basil he was growing. The tomatoes were delicious, the closest to Mary's I'd found.

For several years I would visit him every week, stocking up on tomatoes.

Then, two years ago, the sign did not go up. I later heard Rocky had died. His family has kept the garden going but now only half of it is tomatoes and they are not for sale. In the other half of the garden grow zucchinis and peppers. That house must have a lot of stewed tomatoes and sauce in the cellar.

I miss Rocky and I miss those tomatoes. I don't miss the walking, however. I'll have to make do with farm market tomatoes.

Oh Snow!

Last week, when it was sunny and clear and autumnal, the little voice in my head said I should not go birding but stay home and attend to the last of the pre-winter chores.

Cutting back the overgrown rose of sharons. Pulling in the pots of cannas. Mowing the lawn. Weeding.

I don't usually listen to that voice but this time I did. Considering the snow that is falling at a December-like pace, I am glad I did.

The only problem was, I hadn't pulled in the pots of vegetables. I had hoped the remaining tomatoes and peppers, including some very small ones fooled into growing by the milder September weather, would redden - in particular the peppers, which get sweeter that way.

So I left the pots where they were, figuring I had time. Besides, by the time I finished the other chores I was sore and couldn't lift a thing, including my spirits.

Then came the weather report about today, Saturday, Oct. 29. Significant snow in Morris County before Halloween?

Out I went in the pre-dawn on Friday before work to pull in the tomato pots, beheading the plants and hanging them, fruit attached, in the basement. Out I went in the post-dusk after I got home to tear apart the cage I constructed to keep out the deer and squirrels and chipmunks and anything else, then take the huge pepper pots. Everything is now on my enclosed porch. The plants are not warm but they are dry and I can take the time to work on creating order from the resulting chaos, only a hint of which you see in this photo.

This year we have had the hottest month on record and the wettest month on record. We also had the most powerful Category 1 hurricane - Irene - to hit this area.

Now we have had the worst pre-November snow since the early 1950s. We got the power failure I feared from the snow weighing down the trees - which this morning were so colorful with the autumn leaves - and hitting the power lines.

(I was able to update this blog because we got the power back, at 2:45 a.m., after 12 1/2 hours.)

To all who don't believe in climate change I say there is something very, very wrong in our atmosphere to create abnormal weather like this. New Jersey is in the process of deciding whether to join a major lawsuit with other eastern states to defend the federal Environmental Protection Agency against challenges from coal producers, whose pollution blows east over us.

That our pro-business governor has to think about whether New Jersey should be involved shows just how much of phony he is when it comes to the environment.

We were lucky to get the power, and the heat, back. For now at least, it is literally cold comfort.