nothing illegal in the winkelwagen

Researching and finding vendors for obscure vegetable seeds has become a real obsession for me, and I think it stems directly from the absolutely apocalyptically just fucking god-awful weather in New York.  It's snowing today.  SNOWING.  It is spring, it's practically APRIL, nothing is green, there's still glacier-like snowpack in the shadows and the snow is still coming down.  Fucking hell.  I think the seeds are like a little promise of warm weather ahead, and I need all kinds of reassurance at this point.

I've placed an unnecessary and excessive order with the crazy-awesome Dutch seed house Vreeken's Zaden, which I'm hoping a friend in Holland will send on to me although neither of us is sure about the regulations involved with shipping seed internationally.  Here's hoping customs doesn't confiscate my black Spanish carrots, Indian eggplants and Australian Jarrahdale squash (an historically true-to-type yellow-fleshed strain, SCORE!).  I did order weed seeds, but not the weed anyone is expecting -- Scandix pectin-veneris is a tasty chervil-like umbellifer and is almost certainly classified as an invasive in the States.  But so are dandelions which are one of the most nutritious and useful species on the planet and a great example of why officially categorizing plants as weeds is just stupid.  I didn't put any cannabis in my cart so I'm hoping we're good.

Tristan and I are in the middle of a two-day paste paper and book-making class at the Art School of Columbia County.  I love this place, in part because they're so welcoming to Tristan even though the classes are generally for adults.  The fantastic teacher, Beth, sent us home with all the extra paint for making paste paper so we'll be painting up a storm for the next few days.  Everyone can expect handmade books for Christmas.

Tristan's books are amazing, the wrinkles and smudges are mine.

Dispirit didn't suck.  And I appreciate that SF's Blue Bottle has set up shop in NYC so that I can actually enjoy a coffee when I wake up away from home, but I don't appreciate that it's yet another example of the many things that are better on the west coast.  I sure wish New York would warm up enough to stop me thinking that I've made a huge mistake. 

fingers crossed for fewer bagels

totally unrelated photo by Tristan

I lived in the Bay Area during the late nineties and early aughts (yes, I'm using it, deal) and during that time there was a mildly interesting but incredibly lazy and mostly unbearably ironic underground metal scene.  In hindsight it all seems terribly pathetic.  Some of the musicians have moved on (geographically and artistically) to more worthwhile things, but nothing particularly notable or successful.  One exception is John Gossard, who has somehow consistently been part of something good and interesting and honest.  Even if the music didn't always float my boat, at least it was real and imaginative and sincere and in sharp contrast with the tired parody parading as art elsewhere.  The most recent incarnation of this phenomenon is Dispirit, and they're playing in Brooklyn this weekend!!  I'm going to see them Sunday and I'm staying in Manhattan in hopes of actually getting some sleep after. 

They'd better not suck. 

Only two weeks until we head to Iowa for Easter.  I can't wait to have fresh herbs in my omelet and fresh flowers on the table.  Everything is already up and out of the ground there!  Meanwhile, tomorrow we're expecting more snow here.  Harumph. 

Avoiding Unnecessary Articles and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Are these contorted magnolias?  Someone from Kiev Kyiv would know.

This afternoon I felt compelled and was writing a little something about Ukrainian tomatoes and lilacs and such and realized that I was using the phrase "the Ukraine" like Americans tend to do.  And it's wrong!!  Or so I'm told.  I'm just going to scrap the whole thing because I'm afraid that I'm going to offend someone with my excessive and unnecessary use of articles.  So there's that.  I tried.

Instead I'm going to share some highlights of our trip to Brooklyn yesterday.  It was pouring rain all morning but that didn't stop us from enjoying the first signs of spring at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  It did stop me from getting any good pictures of them, though.

Out-of-focus snowdrops and a gorgeous old crepe myrtle.

Cornelian cherry, I think.  Note the coffee cup.  Nice touch, no?

Inside we attended a workshop that, much to my chagrin, had almost nothing to do with gardening.  It had to do with lasagna (and not lasagna gardening or lasagna composting, but actual edible lasagna) and a professional chef that invited Tristan assist him in demonstrating how to assemble a vegetarian collards-based lasagna.  Tristan was so unbelievably thrilled and did a great job and I'm such an idiot, I didn't even THINK to grab the camera.  Ugh.  Anyway, then we got to EAT lasagna!  It was delicious and it was free!!  Hurray for happy kids and free lunch.

And then we went to the BBG library.  And they were having a book sale.  And because of the rain and the size of my bag I restrained myself enough to buy just six books.  That might be a personal best.  I couldn't bear the thought of books getting wet (or carrying them on the subway).  My favorite of the lot is this:

Written, illustrated and published by two ladies in Iowa in 1940.  Yes, really! 

Everything about the book is smart and clever and sweet.  Look at the table of contents!!

No, really, LOOK AT IT.

The illustrations are fantastic.

"Less Known Lily Folk", including Blue Dicks.

Even if the whole day had been crap, finding this book would have made the trek to Brooklyn worthwhile.  But the day wasn't crap!  After lasagna and the library we heard Onika Abraham of Farm School NYC speak about what "organic" means to her and how the quest to make our gardens organic should really be a journey toward remembering who we are and where we've come from and honoring our heritage by utilizing the practices and knowledge of our ancestors.  I realize that to her, a black woman in New York, this means something more specific and maybe more important than it might mean to me.  But agriculture has been practiced by various peoples on nearly every continent for thousands of years.  We're all burdened by a collective amnesia with regard to our past and our identity.  Having our hands in the Earth is a primal reminder of what we are; that we live not only in concert with nature, but that we are nature itself, and cannot live in spite of it.  Onika's speech was inspiring and beautiful and poignant and it felt like a real privilege, for myself and especially for Tristan, to see her and hear her.  BBG posted a too-short Q&A with her here.

The rain let up just enough during the afternoon for us to explore a little more and allow for the most befitting mist to form over the ponds in the Japanese garden.  It was breathtaking.

 

After that the day took a turn for the worse.  I won't go into too much detail but someone tried to send us home with a sweet potato and we went to Rockefeller Center and it was just barely sprinkling and apparently New Yorkers really like umbrellas but not sensible shoes (WTF!?) and it was all I could do to not push people into traffic.  But Tristan was able to go to the LEGO store and I was able to soothe my psychosis with Mozartkugeln from the Lindt store.  And I'm in love with the subway and how cheap it is and how the signage is totally sufficient!!  Good public transportation is so undervalued.  I don't care if it smells like pee (okay I do a little bit, but it's about the bigger picture, right?).  We love New York.

Summer Rambo

We bought a beetle!!  A turbo beetle.  Whatever that means.  What's important is that it fits into the free (but tiny) parking space that I've been given and that it won't cost me a fortune as I commute between the pool house and Hudson.  And it makes Tristan happy, which is almost worth the $5k that I paid in excess of what I'd budgeted.  The salesperson tried to get me to fork over another five grand for gingham seats, but I demurred. 

Don't call it cute!!!  Okay, you can.  It is.

The car won't be mine to drive for probably another week, so for now I'm holed up in my apartment, concentrating on trees and seeds and specifically apples.  Of course I'm growing French apples.  Among the ones I've ordered, including the obvious choices of Calville Blanc and Orleans Reinette, is one with the peculiar moniker "Summer Rambo".  The name doesn't immediately seem particularly French and apples might understandably be the last thing the phrase inspires, but this is in fact a very old French apple, whose name has been horribly anglicized over the course of centuries (I think this is why the French can be so uptight about the preservation of their language, just look what happens!!). 

Thanks to the fabulous 'Apples of Uncommon Character', I am over-the-top tickled and giddy to be armed with this bit of trivia:

One person who is a fan [of Summer Rambo] is the author David Morrell, who in 1968 was struggling to find a name for the main character of First Blood, his novel-in-progress about a Vietnam vet.  As he cogitated, his wife came home with apples from a local farmstand.  He bit into one, loved it, and asked what it was called.  "Rambo," she said.  Morrell rushed to his typewriter, and an action icon was born.

We should all be so inspired by fruit.

This weekend we're going to Brooklyn to see some crocuses and socialize with fellow gardeners at the Making Brooklyn Bloom event at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.  Gardening in the city has to present challenges that I can't even imagine, and these people are probably made of tougher stuff than me.  I hope to be inspired by their ingenuity and creativity and continued perseverance in the face of so much concrete.  And be utterly humbled and grateful for my 23 acres of woods and water and earth.  And old apples and young Sylvester Stallone.

Ghost Orchards and Greenport

It is rare since moving to New York that we have a car, but today we did and we drove to the Greenport Conservation Area just north of Hudson to enjoy the miraculously above-freezing weather.  It was quiet and gorgeous and just exactly what we needed.  We encountered only one other person on the trails but an inordinate amount of dog shit.

Beautiful.

If only dogs could read.

I've mentioned before that I have trees en route for our little future farming gardening operation at the pool house on School House.  Some of those trees are listed in a book by Rowan Jacobsen called Apples of Uncommon Character.  I curled up with Apples tonight, along with a glass of Pomponette, the most beautiful wine imaginable.

Tell me that's not the most beautiful beverage you've ever seen.

There is a passage in the forward that had me crying like a baby.  John Bunker of Fedco Seeds is notorious for seeking out "lost" apples, and one such apple was the Fletcher Sweet.  From Apples:

One of Bunker's best finds was the Fletcher Sweet, which he knew originated in the Lincolnville area.  In 2002, he met a group from the Lincolnville Historical Society.  They had never heard of the apple, but they knew of a part of Lincolnville called Fletchertown, which, like so many other old villages in northern New England, had since been reclaimed by the forest.  The society posted a note in the local paper saying it was looking for an old apple called a Fletcher.  A seventy-nine-year-old named Clarence Thurlow called the paper and said, "I've never heard of a Fletcher, but I know where there's a Fletcher Sweet."

Thurlow led Bunker to the dirt intersection that had once been the heart of Fletchertown, pointed to an ancient, gnarled tree, and said, "That's the tree I used to eat apples from when I was a child."  The tree was almost entirely dead.  It had lost all its bark except for a two-inch-wide strip of living tissue that rose up the trunk and led to a single living branch about eighteen feet off the ground.  There was no fruit.  Bunker took a handful of shoots and grafted them to rootstock at his farm.  A year later, both Clarence Thurlow and the tree died, but the grafts thrived. 

Mr. Bunker has since returned Fletcher Sweets to Lincolnville and anyone can purchase their own shoots (scions) for grafting from Fedco Trees.  Additionally, you can indulge almost any antique apple curiosity at Trees of Antiquity, an absolute favorite tree source (and resource). 

The beauty and magic of heirloom seeds and antique trees is that they are relics pregnant with potential; little living artifacts. Possibly less individual than a painting or a song, but a little piece of someone's soul lives on.  If ghosts had gardens old apples are what they'd grow.

I want to write more about the trees I've ordered but I have an early (and probably awful) morning planned for tomorrow.  I need to buy a car but am burdened by a total lack of male genitalia.  This unfortunate dearth of a penis on my part somehow renders all car salespeople absolute dipshits.  I can't think of anything I'd like to do less right now, but carshopping has to be done and I'm a little in love with this Fiat even though it's doubtful I'll even fit inside.  We'll find out tomorrow!