Tales from the Microbial Laboratory

~views of a Mermaid~

~oh, just some thoughts~

Has anyone noticed that the dolphins are back, swimming around in the garden? 

The County Clerk was in search of dolphins in the Delphiniums around this time last year - and while wandering around my own garden, there they were, atop my garden's annual larkspur, swimming away.  I noted this, the County Clerk noted this - and then (now how cool is this?) we became linked on Dowdeswell's Delphiniums LTD website, and their page on the History of the Delphiniums.

Life is indeed a fascinating journey, isn't it?

~~~~~

When I returned from Virginia a few weeks ago, I brought back a number of my Mother's plants - plants given as gifts after she passed away - and ones that my Father didn't feel that he could care for. 

For years I have given Mom amaryllis bulbs each fall, like I did this past fall as well - and this year the same five bulbs came back with me, and are now planted in a once small (but now not quite so small) collection of amaryllis'.  They don't always bloom, sometimes they do and it is a wonderful surprise - but this morning I added last fall's bulbs to my garden once again. 

Such activities have become ritualistic in nature, and I felt sad as I planted them, knowing that I would no longer hear her say 'Can't you plant those bulbs in the ground down in Charleston?  You'd better remember to take those bulbs back with you when you leave.'

~~~~~   

I'm trying, really trying, to get back on track with the whole new house thing.  One project that I had started, but then stopped before completing - was pruning the lower branches from the three bald cypresses in the front left garden. 

They are beautiful trees - if you haven't seen bald cypress green in the early spring, well then, you should try to next spring - because it is about the freshest green around.  So I managed this week, in the evenings, to finish removing the lower branches - up to about six feet - which has opened up the area remarkably.  The area under the trees has been naturally mulched with bald cypress leaves that drop each fall - and through the middle of the trees is a simple flagstone path - but now I'm thinking that there is room for some shade-loving plants in this area.  I'm not sure what yet, I need to think about it more - but I'm sure that there will be something that will be just perfect for the space. 

(And perhaps there should be a bench?  A place to sit for awhile, to admire the green?).

~~~~~

One of my japanese irises is starting to bloom - the one that caused me to drive to the Sumter Iris Festival last year (resulting in the purchase of three new japanese irises...).  It was my first japanese iris, and seemed quite happy growing along side a birdbath that I try to keep freshwater in - a daily activity that of course benefited the iris, because they need quite a bit of moisture.  Two of the three new ones look as if they might bloom this year as well - that will be fun to see.

There are so many plants for one to become addicted to - I fear that I am an equal opportunity addict when it comes to the garden, restricting myself just seems so...so foolish.

~~~~~ 

I've been spending alot of time this week writing thank you notes for my family, because of the many acts of kindness that we have received.  My family started a 'fund' at my parents church on behalf of my Mother - a fund to help support the purchase of fresh flowers each Sunday for the church's altar.  For over 25 years my Mother was responsible for these flowers, and she was adamant that artificial flowers shouldn't be used - and many of the arrangements consisted of flowers from her own garden.  We have been overwhelmed by the generosity of friends and family - and it has been fun for us to watch this fund 'grow'.  We know that this would make Mom smile.

This week I was also a bit overwhelmed by the kindness of friends and colleagues here in Charleston - on Wednesday I was presented by the lab and a group of friends/colleagues a gift certificate (from a wonderful garden center) for a water fountain after a potluck lunch, and later that same afternoon, several colleagues gave me a beautiful concrete planter filled with a wonderful collection of succulents.  Later that night on the phone, a wise and charming friend asked me if there were any Sempervivums in the planter - to which I replied 'yes' - and then he told me that Sempervivums was latin for 'always living'.

~~~~~

I took this photograph of my garden's flame azalea a few weeks ago, but simply hadn't gotten around to posting it.  I have definitely fallen for the deciduous and native azaleas...how could one not do so?  They are almost like the anti-azalea...if that makes any sense at all.  Their colors are simply exquisite, and I wanted to share this one with you.

As for life outside the garden - it is busy.  I need to think about tile.  And lighting.  And this week I did manage to go to one lighting store and one tile store - a solid start, I think.  I'm trying to get back on track after a difficult month - perhaps I am, just a bit, but I'm really not sure yet.  I'm sad, and quite frankly would love for Mother's Day weekend to be OVER.  It's just too soon. 

This week I had my first dream with my Mother in it:  My Brother, Father and I were in my parent's kitchen in Virginia, and I was sitting at the kitchen sink, getting ready to wash dishes.  Suddenly, my Mother walked in from the bedroom hallway (my Father couldn't 'see' her, but my brother could) - and we just stared at her as she walked up to the kitchen sink and said 'I'll wash and you dry' as she handed me a dishtowel.  My brother, standing behind us, mouthed 'c-r-e-e-p-y' - and I just stood there, drying the clean dishes that my Mother was handing me.  When the dishes were done, she walked out the kitchen door to the sunroom, and was gone.  That was when I woke up.

~~~~~

So, I feel that I need to apologize for not roaming around the blogosphere so much these days, nor responding to comments here at the Microbial Lab.  I appreciate your comments, and do read them - and I think with time I'll be a bit more engaged in all of this.  I do hope so.  But for now I find myself mostly writing thank you notes, working in my garden, trying to catch up on lab stuff - and learning to accept life without my Mother's presence.  Each day there is a new reminder of her absence, but each day we all also get a bit stronger and are more grateful for having had her in our lives.  One day at a time...or so I'm told.   

 

~joining the party~

Another hydrangea, joining the party.

The room's getting crowded, they're all vying for attention - eyeing their reflections, primping in the mirrors.

They're really lovely at this stage: eager, filled with promise, ready.

They change each hour - during these early days of spring.

~~~~~

Blaue Hortensie by Rainer Maria Rilke, July 1906, Paris

So wie das letzte Grün in Farbentiegeln
sind diese Blätter, trocken, stumpf und rau,
hinter den Blütendolden, die ein Blau
nicht auf sich tragen, nur von ferne spiegeln.

Sie spiegeln es verweint und ungenau,
als wollten sie es wiederum verlieren,
und wie in alten blauen Briefpapieren
ist Gelb in ihnen, Violett und Grau;

Verwaschenes wie an einer Kinderschürze,
Nichtmehrgetragenes, dem nichts mehr geschieht:
wie fühlt man eines kleinen Lebens Kürze.

Doch plötzlich scheint das Blau sich zu verneuen
in einer von den Dolden, und man sieht
ein rührend Blaues sich vor Grünem freuen.

(Translations may be found here).

~links (for me to remember later)~

oakleaf hydrangea, happy I think

~~~~~

A draft of my landscape plan is due to my architect tomorrow. 

Sitting in front of me is a survey map of my place, with a crazy, plant-obsessed plan scribbled on it.  A formal garden in the front right corner (an oval surrounded by live oaks and camellias and hydrangeas and dogwoods and...), a shady front left corner (with bald cypresses, a large southern magnolia, a river birch and lots of shade plants), a working-woman's side left garden ( lots of sun and beds for vegetables and berries and cut flowers and herbs and figs and...), a rear garden with a split personality (part bamboo-garden and part orchard), and a right rear garden with native azaleas and sweetbay and yellow anise and...oh, there's along list of what also could go back there.  And all of these gardens - the left, the right, the rear - connected by a perennial/mixed-perennial border.

~~~~~

Yes, I'll have to quit my job, forgo all other responsibilities - to even possible do this - but deep down I'm thinking in my deranged brain that...hey, it's possible, sure, I can do it.  And...I think I can.  Most of the plants exist already - there's just alot of work to be done.

~~~~~

And regarding LEED and what they care about:  at least 60% of the acre will NOT be turfgrass.

~~~~~

SERPIN (Southeastern Rare Plant Information Network) - South Carolina

South Carolina Native Plant Society (along with their excellent links page)

South Carolina Plant Atlas

Coastal DNR Managed Lands

Woodlanders (Aiken, SC)

Hydrangea serrata 'Kurohime'

~reclaiming one's garden (and thoughts on grief)~

For the past two days, I've been immersed in my garden.  It's been therapeutic - I realized Friday evening in a conversation with a friend that I wasn't the best of company (for them, and in reality, even for myself) - and so I retreated into the shady green spaces of my garden to work through emotions that I'm not sure that I even, tonight, understand.

Grief is a strange egg.  It floats, it crashes, it ebbs, it sneaks up on you - it makes you feel unsettled, unsure, insecure, and angry.  Three weeks ago tonight was the last time that I spoke with my Mother - at least in a conversation where she spoke to me as well.  As I moved throughout my garden this weekend, I encountered half-finished projects that mirrored my Mother's ups and downs over the past year:  I had started trimming the lower branches (many of which were dead) from the bald cypresses in the fall, right when we learned that my Mother's lung tumor had grown and so she was going on a new targeted therapy, Tarceva.  I started cleaning out the bed in the front, by the gate, right before I learned that the primary tumor had metastasized into numerous locations.  This weekend my garden felt like a living chronology of my Mother's illness, as I slowly worked on each unfinished project - while remembering the past year in painful detail.  My garden looks better tonight, but I am exhausted.

~~~~~

I've written of Li-Young Lee before.

This weekend, quite unintentionally, I ran across a wonderful reading he gave at UC Berkeley (found here - I recommend the webcast).  He spoke of his Father telling him when he was a young boy to say 'goodbye' each time he inhaled, and 'thank you' each time he exhaled - and he said that 'as we die, the meaning of our lives get unfolded'...and how communicating, almost any form of communication - especially the spoken form, requires the dying breath.  Oh, he spoke more eloquently than I am writing tonight - but if you find yourself feeling a bit as I do, then I believe that you will find yourself engaged in what he has to say.   

But for someone who speaks and writes so much of death - he also writes wonderfully about what it means to be alive.

From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

      

~~~~~

I cut the chinese wisteria off at the base this afternoon.  It's vines - reaching up the stairway to the side deck and even across the deck rail at the top for 10 feet or more - by tomorrow will all be wilted - slowly turning brown in our warm May sun. 

I have enjoyed this vine for years, but honestly can't manage it.  It's also necessary to take down before the demolition of my current home.  It was time.

~~~~~

Goodbye and thank-you.

Lee's words - those of his Father - have haunted me this weekend.  I am writing the thank-you notes on behalf of our family, and I feel that with each one that I write, than I am saying a small goodbye to my Mother, and a thank you to both her and our friends and family.  I've only written twenty of them - and I have many more to go.  I work in the garden, and then stop for awhile and write a thank-you note.  This has been the rhythm of my weekend.

~~~~~

It is time to walk the Wild Dog.   

~invasives (and my LEED landscape plan)

This morning I've been taking a look at the Invasive Plant Species of South Carolina list - in preparation for the development of my LEED landscape plan (which I started thinking about months ago, but got distracted by other things).  According to LEED, the 'intent' of the landscape plan (SS 2:  Landscaping) is to 'Design landscape features to avoid invasive species and minimize demand for water and synthetic chemicals.'

~~~~~

The prerequisite for this states:  '2.1  No Invasives Plants.  Introduce no invasive plant species into the landscape.'

~~~~~

First thing to notice is that this doesn't mean that non-native plants can't be introduced into the landscape (I think if we were all limited to truly native plants, that would be next to impossible...right?).  The second thing, that I need clarification on at some point, is the use of the word 'introduce'.  I have invasives in my garden - they were there when I bought the place, and many of them are, to put it simply, a part of the place.  So right now I'm going on the premise that I can't introduce any NEW invasives into the garden - but with respect to the ones that are present in the garden as I type this, well - I suppose their fate is up to me.

(Now, I fully realize that the LEED certifier might look at my plan and disagree with my interpretation - but I'll wait for that to happen, if indeed it even does).

~~~~~

So what's invasive in my garden?

~~~~~

You'll have to fight me to take down the chinese tallow trees (Triadica sebifera) on the side fence row.  It's a non-native invasive (from China) - and I've mentioned it often in these pages (...when it's filled with blackbirds, as a virtual blackbird buffet, and as a resting place for the cedar waxwings - oh, and there's those well known pieces of popcorn, and the fall color) - in other words, these trees are a part of the place.

The chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) can go.  I know, I know - when it blooms in the springtime, I forgive it completely for the other eleven and a half months of pure headache.  It has taken over the shady areas underneath my current dwelling, I fight to keep it out of the tea olive and texas mountain laurel - it stretches aggressively into any shady place it can find, putting down roots, taking up residence.  It has won - it has been winning for years - and there is a chance that later today I will take my little battery-powered chain saw and at least cut the main stalk at it's base.  These are not easy things for me to do - it will feel like a betrayal - but I know that I need to do this.  And the slippery slope of plant addiction:  I recently read where someone had their wisteria in a large pot - placed in a central, sunny spot in the garden (it seems to be a bit more manageable in full sun) - trellised, of course.  I think it's worth a try.  (I could regret this.  I most likely will regret this - but I have few regrets, so it shouldn't be a terrible burden to bear.).

Golden bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea).  I won't eradicate it from my garden.  It's in the back left corner - and each spring when it's canes start coming up, I just snap them off when they're small and flexible.  The stands backs up to a tidal creek - so it won't spread in that direction.  I think I can manage it, and I'm willing to put the effort into it.

Yes, there are nandinas (Nandina domestica).  Just a few, but I have noticed them popping up in other locations over the past few years.  I'm not a huge fan of them, but these are sentimental members of my garden:  they are passalong plants from my Mother's Virginia garden.  I'll probably let them go, but I'm not sure yet.

So - then there's chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense) and japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica).  I'll try and get rid of the honeysuckle (but secretly, and somewhat happily, I know that I won't succeed).  The same probably goes for the chinese privet, that are really only in a few areas (along the fence row) - and have you ever seen the beautiful blue berries in the fall? 

~~~~~

(I realize that I'm not thinking clearly here - or even scientifically, truth-be-told.  I am a sentimental gardener.  I know that my ability to manage these plants in my single acre along the Atlantic coast is being approached naively - for example, the berries of the privet travel - they move, and it's silly to think that they only impact my garden.  I do know this.  I'm trying to come to grips with it, develop my own personal invasive species policy - and with time, I imagine that I will do the right thing.  But I do need to think a bit more about this first.).

~~~~~         

 

   

~honeysuckle~

Late summer I always tell myself 'You really should get rid of that honeysuckle covering the back fence'.

Each spring I find myself wandering the back garden, and saying to myself 'I can't imagine a world without the fragrance of honeysuckle in the early morning'.

The Dan and The Duck(s)

My place is not a good place for a duck.

The Dan's first duck capture - well, that beloved duck survived for about a month.  Now - unstuffed, it's neck broken, the feathers on it's back long gone, it's beak shattered, and left without the ability to quack - it's just a shell of it's former self, although the Dan still takes this duck to bed with him each night.

The Dan loves the duck (and yes, she has an odd way of showing it).

~~~~~

So today, while on an errand to PetSmart (to buy supplies for the lab fish:  CatDaddy, Joy and Rico - you see, it seems that Joy has a swim bladder problem), I couldn't resist getting The Dan a new duck.  So Dan is back on the yoga mat, with the new duck - being a happy crazy-dog.  She's even meditating from time-to-time in a duck-induced zen-like state.

~~~~

We'll see how the new duck makes out.  I'll give it's quacker until Sunday, Monday tops.  The back feathers might make it through next week.

~~~~~

The duck makes the Dan very happy (although it doesn't help that search-for-silence thing in Pamdanistan...what was I thinking?).

   

~...in the midst of that quiet...~

Yesterday, during lab meeting, Katherine read to us a short poem by Charles Simic.

~~~~~

Ghost Stories Written

Ghost stories written as algebraic equations.
Little Emily at the blackboard is very frightened.
The X's look like a graveyard at night.  The teacher
wants her to poke among them with a piece of
chalk.  All the children hold their breath.  The white
chalk squeaks once among the plus and minus
signs, and then it's quiet again.

~~~~~

Which made me think a bit about Simic - which lead me to read a bit of a 2002 dissertation found on-line, "Orphan of Silence:  The Poetry of Charles Simic" by Goran Mijuk - and on page 12, these words of Simic's were shared:

Silence, solitude, what is more essential to the human condition? ‘Maternal silence’ is what I like to call it. Life before the coming of language. That place where we begin to hear the voice of the inanimate. Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

Which made me think about the value of silence in my life.  It is required for real observation I think - essential.

~~~~~

Summer Morning by Charles Simic (from Selected Poems 1963-83)

I love to stay in bed
All morning,
Covers thrown off, naked,
Eyes closed, listening.

Outside they are opening
Their primers
In the little school
Of the corn field.

There's a smell of damp hay,
Of horses, laziness,
Summer sky and eternal life.

I know all the dark places
Where the sun hasn't reached yet,
Where the last cricket
Has just hushed; anthills
Where it sounds like it's raining;
Slumbering spiders spinning wedding dresses.

I pass over the farmhouses
Where the little mouths open to suck,
Barnyards where a man, naked to the waist,
Washes his face and shoulders with a hose,
Where the dishes begin to rattle in the kitchen.

The good tree with its voice
Of a mountain stream
Knows my steps.
It, too, hushes.

I stop and listen:
Somewhere close by
A stone cracks a knuckle,
Another rolls over in its sleep.

I hear a butterfly stirring
Inside a caterpillar,
I hear the dust talking
Of last night's storm.

Further ahead, someone
Even more silent
Passes over the grass
Without bending it.

And all of a sudden!
In the midst of that quiet,
It seems possible
To live simply on this earth.