Plant Whatever Brings You Joy

The Face of a Rose

Not one for keeping records of my garden, but rather a woman who relishes the treasures and surprises each day and season offers, I’d be hard-pressed to say if this particular garden ever once displayed the abundance of roses it currently does, but I’d say, “No. Nearly September? Hardly.” And yet here it is. And so I share the wealth with all of you.

This loveliness comes from a batch of Meidiland roses I found orphaned at one of my rare ventures into a big box store. Gradually I’ve transplanted them into bigger and bigger pots and they have not disappointed! I love their simple beauty.

Here’s another of the Meidiland sisters, now living in a very large pot and quite prolific!

Honestly? I hardly expected to see another 4th of July rose this year–there were hundreds last May, I can barely believe how one plant could generate such a bevy of beautiful roses, and yet, here they are, in Indian Summer. It’s full of buds so I just count the blessings.

Now. In the far back corner of the garden adjacent to an ancient apple tree, from which I’ve just harvested the best delicious apples (organic, of course!) used to live a huge overgrown plum tree, which sounds lovely unless you are from Northern California where an abundance of basically useless plum trees grow. No one eats them, not even the birds, which tells you something. And so it was happily removed. What to put in? As it so happened some elderly neighbors were pitching some very old heirloom roses, if you can believe that, to my good fortune. When they arrived, as bare root roses, we shall kindly call them after being rooted from their long slumbering home, I stuck them in a very large washtub full of icey water. Eventually they moved to black plastic pots, where they began to rally, and last spring I told a teenager helping me in the garden, “Oh, just put them where the plum tree was growing!” Which he did, randomly, in about fifteen minutes. That fast. And here’s how they’ve thanked me.

“I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.” ~Emma Goldman

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Love planted a rose, and the world turned sweet.” ~Katherine Lee Bates

And here was my big surprise. Because I kept asking myself, “Where did Jevyn put that dark red rose that looks like a Dr. Huey but isn’t?” Haha. I realized that I’d stuck a cutting from a neighbor’s yellow rose into the same temporary pot as the dark red one, and, my teenage helper recognized them as one rose, and so there they are, married forever. Quite nice, actually. I call it my Happy Accident.

I shall bookend with another of the yellow roses, which are truly the most spectacular. I hope you have enjoyed this morning walk in my sweet garden. Thank you for visiting!

Love and garden blessings,
Kathryn xoxo

**I want to give a special shout out to my long time faithful subscribers–and to my newest subscribers, too. Thank you and enjoy!

Book News: Lots to report! Western North Carolina Woman will be running an excerpt from Plant Whatever Brings You Joy in their September issue. And we’ve restocked copies of the book in Malaprop’s in Asheville; throughout Copperfields in Napa and Sonoma; and at Four Eyed Frog Books in Gualala. Copies always available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and in Barnes and Noble brick and mortar stores around the country–and many indie bookstores as well, for which I am most grateful! I’ve also been working some magic on our publishing site, Estrella Catarina, where the home page sports testimonials for my book from publications around the country of which I am very proud!

Posted on August 24th, 2015 by Kathryn
Filed under: Plants | 6 Comments »

The Garden as Trickster

Haha! The garden continues to teach me, this time about my powers of observation, and how not all is at it might first appear! Bet you’ve had that experience, too, right? In my last post I wrote about the concept of the seed bank, and, particularly, about the “discovery” that I unexpectedly had lambs ear growing in my garden! Well, guess what? It’s Giant Mullein (Verbascum thapsus). It’s quite a joke on me, as I’d written–extensively–about mullein three years ago. Yet, there were enough differences this time that I convinced myself I was looking at a different plant entirely. I’m letting this soak in as I need to remember that it’s not uncommon to mistake one plant for another and that it’s actually critical to be fully aware of that fact. This is especially true for herbalists gathering plants in the wild. Or mushroom hunters! How did I get misled? In reflecting, I see there are several reasons, all worth noting for future.

“Mistake not one plant for another.” ~ Kathryn Hall, Plant Whatever Brings You Joy: Blessed Wisdom from the Garden

For starters, it was a different color. It was soft grey, not green. Note the difference. Here was the mullein I’d originally written about:

And here is the leaf of the new ones:

Totally different. Even softer!

Secondly, this year’s mullein stayed close to the ground in flowerettes for a long time before any spike emerged. That was the point at which I’d concluded it was lambs ear.

Once I’d convinced myself it was lambs ear, there was no going back. Even the eventual emergence of the flowers did not trigger my old memory of the mullein that had originally visited me! I’m guessing because it was the only time I’d ever seen it anywhere. Once was not enough! It had been three years since I’d seen any growing here. I’d assumed it no longer was on this property, concluding the two or three I had in 2012 were a one-off.

Also, my perception was that this plant grew as a family, which charmed me no end. They have stood like sentinels this summer, just in front of the butterfly bush. As I compare this stand with the single one above it seems that the one above has leaves that grow more separately and more sparsely. Can the weather make a difference? Or the soil?

Imagine my delight when I read the original post today and found I’d written of a “smallish mullein” obscurely hiding under the butterfly bush! Apparently it was doing more than that! It was leaving its seeds behind to emerge as a virtual Giant Mullein forest three years later! Surprise!

So now I’m referring you to the original post, if you are interested in reading more, which was quite thorough in its practical coverage. And I offer thanks to Mary Ann Newcomer, Nancy McDonald Wallace and my cousin, Julie Rice, who all helped guide me in the right direction. I don’t think I will forget this lovely plant again! And I certainly hope it has established itself and makes an annual appearance! I have enjoyed it immensely, and so have the bees!

Love and summer gardening blessings!
Kathryn xoxo

Footnote: I’ve just looked up Giant Mullein one last time and discovered there are some who call it lambs’ tongues! So, tongues, not ears, then! I find this very funny. 😉

Book Notes: I thoroughly enjoyed running the Goodreads Book Giveaway for ten copies of Plant Whatever Brings You Joy, and that resulted in this lovely review being posted by one of the winners, which cheered my author heart no end.

“Not knowing what to expect from this book and then reading it was a truly wonderful surprise. Plant Whatever Brings You Joy made me take deep breaths and relax as I read each page. Each of the chapters is a surprise from Kathryn Hall’s life. After I read a chapter, I reviewed the title of it and thought how it translated to my life. What a great experience. Thanks to Goodreads First Reads for a copy of this great read, and for Kathryn Hall in having the wisdom to share it with us.” ~B.W.

And, btw, if you are on Goodreads, please friend me there, and if you’ve read my book I would be most grateful if you rated it on Goodreads–or Amazon! Thank you so much! It makes such a difference to authors when you do this.

Posted on July 23rd, 2015 by Kathryn
Filed under: Plants | 6 Comments »

The Seed Bank

Readers of Plant Whatever Brings You Joy will be familiar with this one of the 52 lessons: “Never pull up and discard what you cannot identify,” a metaphorical invitation to not pre-judge that which enters your life that seems unfamiliar. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” as we know. The blessings in our lives can show up in many different unexpected packages. So when I planted morning glory seeds in March on a rosy obelisk, well away from the rest of the garden, so it could not overcome whatever was growing nearby, I thought I was so clever both to get a head start, and to plant in a trouble-free spot. Imagine my surprise when what emerged were clearly not morning glories. To this day in May I am befuddled by what came up, and how, but the only “logical” explanation is that the morning glory seeds did not come up, but something that had lain dormant, waiting, did. But what? Reluctantly, I continued to water the mysterious seedlings, seeking patience, fostering curiosity, attempting to transcend my annoyance that my vision for my lovely blue flowers climbing the white obelisk was not to be. But what were they? For the longest time I didn’t have a clue. And then suddenly, out of the blue, I had a solid moment of surprised recognition. “I think those are hollyhocks!” I found myself thinking. Stunned. Incredulous. Hollyhocks? Two dozen in one spot? How could that be? I ran to the back of the garden and picked a large hollyhock leaf from my established hollyhocks, and ran back to compare. Indeed. Impossible to imagine, yet there it was. Identical. So the truth of the matter is that I planted morning glory seeds from my glass bottle of collected seeds from last year, still in their husks, some of them, and what emerged were a myriad of hollyhock seeds. Not a single morning glory seed among them.

For doubters (easy to imagine) let me assure you that I know my way around flat, round, dry, paperlike hollyhock seeds and hard dark morning glory seeds in their dry husks. No question. But there you have it. The only (near impossible) explanation is that I’d chosen a dry patch of earth away from the main garden, a place that never gets watered beyond rain, and beneath that seeming barren spot were the seeds of someone else’s long ago garden just awaiting that exact set of circumstances to take place.

There’s a metaphor in that one, dear ones, and I will let you ponder.

And as if that were not enough (it must be the time) I spent countless days admiring a new crop of mullein, in the exact spot where mullein had spontaneously emerged two years ago, and about which I wrote, watering it, talking to it, and wondering when it would bolt and produce some yellow flowers–which never happened, and why? One morning I looked at it and found myself saying, “You are not mullein. You are lamb’s ear.” What?? In the nine years I’ve lived on this property and tended this garden I have never seen a sprig of lamb’s ear. Not one. Nor have I planted it. Nor did it blow over the fence. No. For who knows how long, lamb’s ear has been living, invisibly, under the surface of the earth, unbeknownst to me and anyone who has ever walked My Garden, just waiting for the perfect conditions to make its beautiful self visible.
How stunning. Nine years. At the very least.

The oldest carbon-14-dated seed that has grown into a viable plant was Silene stenophylla (narrow-leafed campion), an Arctic flower native to Siberia. Radiocarbon dating has confirmed an age of 31,800 ±300 years for the seeds. In 2007, more than 600,000 frozen mature and immature seeds were found buried in 70 squirrel hibernation burrows 38 metres (125 ft) below the permafrost near the banks of the Kolyma River. Believed to have been buried by Arctic ground squirrels, the mature seeds had been damaged to prevent germination in the burrow, however, three of the immature seeds contained viable embryos. Scientists extracted the embryos and successfully germinated plants in vitro which grew, flowered and created viable seeds of their own. The shape of the flowers differed from that of modern S. stenophylla with the petals being longer and more widely spaced than modern versions of the plant. ~ Wiki

So let’s think about this, metaphorically. What beauty, what gift, what treasure lies within you, or your children, or your spouse, or your best friends, or your students, invisibly, that is awaiting the perfect conditions to make itself gloriously known, adding to the blessings that surround you? This is something impossibly close, something you are apparently oblivious to. This gift would be content to lie beneath the earth for a long long time. It has no scheduled agenda. However, with the right amount of tending, of rain, of warmth, of sunshine, it might surprise you. What would that be in your life?

I shared these stories with an elderly neighbor recently, a longtime gardener, and she said, “You know we all thought with the drought there would be no wildflowers this year. But the truth is there are more than we have seen in decades.” (She hikes. A lot.) About the hollyhocks and the lamb’s ears? “It’s the Seed Bank,” she said. Yes. The Seed Bank.

It is time, apparently, for us to suspend what we tell ourselves, what our natural expectations are, and to open to the possibility that all is not precisely what we think, how we see things. It might be different. Or better. Or unexpected. And a bigger outcome than we imagined. Better than we could have thought up for ourselves. It happens. What a miracle and blessing that the garden stands ready to remind us at any time.

Love and garden blessings,
Kathryn xoxox

Book News: Are you a member of Goodreads? If not, it’s easy to sign up. Now through June 5th Goodreads is hosting a Book Giveaway for Plant Whatever Brings You Joy. A simple click enters you into the Giveaway! And there are ten free copies being mailed out to winners! 6/10: Congratulations to the ten winners! Books were mailed to you priority mail on Monday! Enjoy! xoxo