amounts

I am always surprised at the amount of rain that falls in Indianapolis. Yikes, didn't Bobby Goldsboro sing about this in some schlocky song? Points off for that thought.

The weather lady on tv this morning said that we have only had seven days in March that were completely dry. Which is appropriate for a place that was once wall-to-wall massive forests. Big trees need moisture.

An early 19th century settler wrote that his family traveled across the entire state and saw the sky only once at a small river bottom clearing north of what is now Indy. Those old forests had a massive tree canopy. The trees thrived in all the rain that fell between Lake Michigan and the Ohio River.

Our Indian tribes were woodland Indians. This wasn't the place of buffalo and prairies.

It was a killer for the early farmers, or for their small horses and oxen. Like overactive beavers, they got rid of the trees.

Now you can drive across the state and you would never guess what the place looked like two hundred years ago.

rain

By afternoon, the rains began. In fact I was at a meeting and in a moment of distraction looked out the window and noticed the dark clouds rolling in. We all heard a clap of lightening, which is of course, a sound not heard during the frigidity of winter. It is the sound of confrontation between warm and cool, and it started the showers.

These are steady rains, not great bursts.

The soils are so soaked that water glides just above the grass and dirt as it flows down to the ditch along the road. This makes the ground not only soggy, but squeaky, as water squirts out from under one's foot. For days now, the White River (which I cross 3 or 4 times in morning and evening) is up over its banks, flowing rapidly.

But with the dog, out in the yard, I forgot about the floods. I worried about the rain being too hard on the daffodils (isn't that like a fickled gardener?). While the grass is up and green, it is still not high, and none of the obnoxious weeds are up full force, making the lawn more manicured than it normally looks.

chilled air

This morning started out cloudy, temps in the 40s, enough light to enjoy walking in the garden with the dog, not too cold.

With that diffused light the yellow blooms popped out as did the emerald green of the lawns, all flush from Winters dreaming.

I asked myself why this kind of cool, almost damp kind of weather is so engaging for me.

It's probably my Irish genes. Somewhere in my past, there were gardeners on that isle that passed on to me their thrill of land, air and plant merged together in a garden.

In Texas, we did not have that kind of spring chilled air. The first time I ever encountered it was during a trip to Virginia and Hampton Roads in the 1980s, attending an old college friend's wedding. Some of us took a quick day trip to Colonial Williamsburg. It was in early April, and there were still bulbs blooming, as well as dogwood and redbud. It was so cool I had to wear a sweater, and again, with cloudiness all around, enough diffused light to allow the plants to show off their colors.

Many good things one can say about a Texas spring (particularly its wildflowers); however, direct light washing over everything does not show off the color of plants very well.

Years later, my first spring in DC overwhelmed me. Each week brought something new, a color, a plant, some known to me only through reading, the kinds of ordinary plants that do not thrive in Central Texas but are essential to many Mid-Atlantic gardens.

This attraction to the cooled air, not bitter like winter, but not heavy or warm either, is short term. Soon enough, we'll have warmer temps. The bugs will come out. There will be the shade from tree leaves. Gardening will slow down and a certain sobriety will take place among the plants, calmly producing their flowers in the warmth of the season.

But now, I hunger for the riot of the moment.

further conversation

The discussion that Karen has moderated (look below) about the current todo in the Episcopal Church is spilling out among our blogs.

Here are further thoughtful comments by mumcat, and a post by Father Jake.

examples

Where blogs can go?

Shelley at burningbird is celebrating three years of blogging with a little old and little new.

In addition to her thoughtful essays, she illustrates her writings with knock-out photographs. It's stuff that she thinks about and stuff that she sees. Essay writing and photography are forms that are not usually presented to us instantly. With blog publishing, we are getting her thoughts and pictures fairly close to real time.

She has done fine writing on the poet Emily Dickenson and is now musing on 20th century photographer Walker Evans (of Now Let Us Praise Famous Men).

Her blog is a feast (as opposed to the popcorn and snacks most of us in the blog world dish out).

In a completely different field, Karen, the proprieter of the Heretic's Corner, has been grappling with the current civil war within the Episcopal Church. You will find her essays here (part 1) and here (part 2).

She is one of many seminarians linked here, and frankly, their thoughtful postings are worth spending time reading. They are also giving us examples of how folk in the church can communicate and talk to each other.

You may or may not agree with Karen's conclusions, but as she, like the rest of us, struggles with the ying-yang, we will find that calm thoughtfulness and prayer may help us through the storm.

to do list

Of all the to do list items that are starting to stack up, the one that I am putting up at the top is to stop and look at flowers more closely.

Georgia O'Keefe said that she painted large canvasses of flowers because nobody ever has the time to get down close and look at them.

The growing life of a garden, from beginning to end, in any given year, is very much a temporal experience, much like hearing a piece of music. And like listening to music, we suspend our ordinary understanding of time to enter the time of the garden.

Especially since perennials offer us only moments of their blooms, I think it is important to slow down a bit and watch them, observe them, touch them (and if fragrant, smell them). These flowers are so short-lived in their beauty, that to miss stopping and looking at them is to be impoverished.

Probably the very thought would drive most folk to the dentist. But then that's probably why they don't garden.

In Asian gardens, there is often a focus on a few blooming things, with the cycle of the flower becoming symbolic of our own human life cycles. I am not an Asian gardener, but there is something to be said about listening to the life of plants, their art and simplicity.

That's what I thought about this morning as Franklin and I did our morning inspection. Of course, he smells the scents of what animals have passed through while I hold a branch of forsythia, looking closely at the big yellow trumpets up and down, a particular that I often ignore for the stronger mass of general yellow.

This is looking like a good year for the daffodils. Most of my clumps in the beds are bold and sturdy, with lots of blooms. I am slowly moving ones out in the yard that fail to bloom (due either to loss of light because of the growth of trees or shrubs, or lack of food and good soil).

And the daffodils that I planted in late fall have finally started breaking through the dirt. The old dog lived after all.

beginning and endings

While knowing that any day on this earth could be my last, I enter this spring season with a sense of possible loss. Just as my garden is maturing and filling in, I realize that we may move in a year and a half and this could be my last full year gardening here.

Like the pecan trees located in Central Texas river bottom land, I am prone to put my tap root down deep wherever I live. There are so many ifs in the air about all this that I won't stress about it, yet for the moment it looks like we might be leaving the Townlet sometime next year.

It's hard to leave a garden behind. The ones I have created in the past have continued on, some better than others. Gardens are both works of imagining and of problem-solving, based on sunlight, soil and water. And one walks away from them with the hope that they will continue to provide a conversation for the folks taking over, and with the hope that another patch of land will show up, waiting for building a new garden.

But I must admit that I would like to grow old with my garden and look forward to a time when I can.

Meanwhile, I will be thinking more about trees and shrubs this year. I'd like to add a few more redbuds and maybe some dogwoods. A few more viburnum. Flowering quince. Roses.

thoughts

The giant spring clock started ticking this weekend -- at least inside my head.

At some point, the clock will stop and I will have to wait till fall (outside of routine maintenance like weeding and watering).

Now is the time when my project list gets pulled out and I start thinking of the steps to complete what needs to happen in my garden. I will never get to all of the items on the list, but enough gets accomplished each major gardening season of spring and fall. If I think about it, I see progress in my garden building.

For many, looking at a blank, flat yard is daunting at first. When we first moved here, I stared at the yard for a long time and come up with a visual imagined idea of what I wanted for a garden in this space. As I look at how all this has finally shaped up, it feels like pieces of the puzzle are finally fitting together.

While the final shape is close to my original plan, I did miss the boat on somethings, particularly on the dimensions (the width) of the beds. I was toying with slender beds like the rose beds in the Bishop's Garden at the National Cathedral. Over time, I figured out that my slender beds were too skinny and needed to be widened.

I am moving some plants around, too, figuring out that my sometimes whimsical decisions on what to plant where may not work. More editing.

big time

At the end of this warm and beautiful day, the colonel invited folk over for barbecue (he got a new smoker). Dogs, kids and folks gathered, and we chatted and ate.

And somebody else brought over a copy of the April edition of Indianapolis Monthly (not put on their on-line site yet) that lists the Townlet as one of 10 outstanding neighborhoods that you've never heard about.

Over a year ago, one of the neighbors across the street made the cover of Better Homes and Garden magazine for their nifty recreation of their kitchen. A couple of years ago, the weekly Nuvo listed a home in the townlet as one Indy's architectural hidden treasures.

This feeds our smugness at living in a little village paradise in the middle of the city.

spring chill

But as much as I enjoyed digging out shorts and t-shirt that I haven't seen in months, I don't wholly appreciate a day of warm harsh sunshine this early in spring.

Just like a grouchy, complaining gardener, you might say.

But early spring flowering bulbs and shrubs need a little chilled air, and a little cloudiness, to show off their blooms and to allow them an opportunity to extend their blooming life longer than a couple of days. Of course, harsh winds, a sudden freeze, a hard driving rain storm call all cut off this period as well.

Still, I hate to look at new opened daffodils wilt under harsh sunlight.

This morning, the air is color and there's a little moisture going on, and this is about right.

One of my neighbors in the townlet has a tulip poplar that is starting to put on its blooms. We're now hearing about a return to cold temps. She told me yesterday that they have only gotten three or four good blooms out of the tree in over 20 years of living in the neighborhood due to inclement later winter weather.

winter break

The temps got up to 79 degrees (F) yesterday, and I spent almost all afternoon puttering around in my garden.

I straightened out the edges of my two main perennial beds in my front garden and re-laid out the shade beds (now, I have to dig out the extensions for this, add amendments and add additional plants.

The long lost daffodils planted in late fall are beginning to emerge.

And I shared Japanese anemones and lambs ear with a friend.

The lambs ear (stachys byzantium) are an excellent cultivar that I picked up at a nursery a couple of years ago. It doesn't send up a flower stalk (a big plus, given the clumsiness of sb's flowering efforts, a big green column with tiny purple petals that serve at spreading seed in places you may not want the plant). And with big broad leaves, it thrives in Indy, providing compact but consistent growth. During a break in winter, I divided several and they are all putting out leaves.

return

One of the more heartening signs to spring is the growing ball-like clumps on my viburnums. Soon those clumps will open into large white globes of blossoms, and a vanilla scent will fill the air around my front porch and the front of my house.

Virburnums are often the first of the shrubs to put on leaves, and the last to drop them. They tolerate some shade, and come in a lot of varieties, scented and unscented.

over

I am glad this week has come and is almost over.

Spring has finally rolled in with rain showers. My daffodils started opening their buds this morning as did my forsythia plants. In the next day or so, my front garden will be ringed in yellows, a color I don't automatically pick in plants, but that does wonders for my cold encased heart at this time of year. After this wave of yellow, pinks and purple will become dominant.

So we will have spring. I don't know why this winter seemed harder than any other, but I've been anxious to get back into the garden.

One morning this past week, I work up at 4:00 am and in taking Franklin outside, I noticed the already loud singing of birds. Each day I've look closely at what is popping up through the dirt, making note of what is returning and what has yet to stir.

I've ordered some tall summer phloxes (purple and pink), a few D-A-E roses (including Winchester), and a laced-cap hydrangea.

I saw my first such hydrangea in England and have been desperate to have one in my garden.

The last round of daffodils that I planted in late fall have still not emerged. I will dig around this weekend to see what's going on with them.

I still need to widen the hosta beds in the front, and continue building the backyard garden that I started last fall.

Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening stopped by for comments recently.

She was incredibly helpful when I first got started, giving me good advice on how to reformat my blog so it would look close to what I wanted as well as pointing me to internet resources on html code.

Thanks Kathy for all your encouragement. I am sure you provide it to others as well. You probably know more about gardening blogs than anybody else in the country.

rebuilding the neighborhood

Great story in yesterday's New York Times about Berkley landscape architecture professor Walter Hood and his work to improve parks and neighborhoods in Oakland.

cold again

Yesterday, snow fell all day, not in some accumulating fashion, but more like smoke ashes falling off and on throughout the day.

This morning temps were at 20 degrees (F), but the sun is out and the sky is clear.

The weather chatters are talking mid-60s by Saturday.

One of my neighbors cleaned out the winter mulch from his beds and we chatted briefly, continuing an ongoing conversation about composted chicken manure.

It looks like he will be ordering some to work in and rejuvenate his perennial beds. The result is excellent and he will be ordering from a good local compost merchant.

I keep looking for sources of chicken manure for my compost heap. It is the hottest (or one of the hottest) of the manures. Put on fresh and raw, it will burn through and kill the plant, but aged and broken down, it potentially improves plant growth dramatically.

I used it for a client a couple of years ago, working in three yards in two long borders. Fantastic results.

imagined corners

We sang Lee Hoiby's arrangement of John Donne's At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners on Sunday.

Someone pointed out that when Donne wrote his poem, the idea that the earth was round had not been around that long in popular culture.

I read the text repeatedly, and while I have some understanding of what he was writing, it is the imagery that continues to burn through in my mind.

I know I've heard at least one other arrangement of the text, but cannot put my finger on what it was or when I heard it.

numbers

I've always enjoyed letter writing and putting out this blog is sort of like that activity - more like putting out a series of short letters actually. I've tried to not make it too private like a journal, but purposeful for the moment in describing my few odd thoughts or descriptions of the world around me.

I've certainly enjoyed conversations with lots of folk off-line and on-line because of it. Building a blog is a relaxing experience.

When I started in October, my conversation with family and friends usually centered on describing what a blog was. Since then, the media has been answering that question to the larger public repeatedly. The question doesn't get asked as much.

About a week after I started blogging, I figured out how to add a site counter. And according to it, I've had 2,000 visits as of today. Thanks for stopping by and sharing with me your thoughts and by providing links to your blogs.

My world would be much poorer without reading what you have to say about whatever strikes your fancy.

A toast to blogs and bloggers!

hmm...

In a Washington Post story today on Kerry's potential at fundraising, this quote stood out:

George Bush promised that he would be a uniter and not a divider," said Alan D. Solomont of Massachusetts, one of Kerry's top money men. "The one group he has united are Democrats."

now they tell us

Recently a Tennessee county went on record as encouraging their county attorney to figure out how to ban all gay people from their county.

According to this AP News Story, they don't know what all the fuss has been about, but for the record, they only want to ban same sex marriages from their county and state.

According to the county attorney:

Fritts said. "There has just been so much misunderstanding about this. It was to stop people from coming here and getting married and living in Rhea County."
...

Fritts said he advised the commissioners that they could not ban homosexuals or make them subject to criminal charges. The U.S. Supreme Court last year struck down laws on homosexual sodomy as a violation of adults' privacy.

...

Twelve-year-old Caitlin Kinney and others in a noisy crowd at the courthouse Thursday night were disappointed at the reversal.


The seventh-grader said she doesn't want homosexuals in the community. "It's not a Christian thing," said Kinney, identifying herself as a Baptist.

scale

It is an American trait, I think, to ignore looking around at where we are. Are we always in such a hurry, or have we merely trained ourselves to ignore our landscapes?

Uncomfortable with our neighborhoods, we thrive in building entire neighborhoods on our cotton fields (in my youth) or the corn fields (here in Indiana), moving on to somewhere else when we have used up the old, its drabness and dowdiness no longer tolerable.

And the in-between places, we let go to hell, so to speak, a hell of mismash large box stores, strip malls and lots of parking lots. How drab a street of franchise businesses look when they are set next to each other alongside a six lane city street.

It's been said by somebody that the grand architecture of our cities are now designed to be admired from a car going 60 miles per hour or so on a freeway past them (think Houston).

The scale of buildings and streets in this country rarely fit into a scale that is manageable for the human eye or that is fit for our walking through and living within them. One of the great pleasures of living in a city like DC with its height restrictions and lack of freeways is that it is often experienced by walking through it.

Back in the 1960s, Lady Bird Johnson led a Keep America Beautiful movement that in some ways lost out to the more important then emerging environmental movement. In her memoir, you can read where she and several hundred Garden Club ladies planted thousands of daffodils alongside the parkways in the DC area. Those bulbs continue blooming each spring.

impatient on the last day of winter

Growing up in Waco, I learned quite early the power of books to take me to other places. I am unsure whether that was as much from a need to escape to another place as it was simply enjoying other places more than the one I was in.

Gardening is like that for me. It takes me away to places I like to be. Even thinking about gardening. If I am sitting in the dentist's chair, and the whirling sound of his drill starts its whine, I close my eyes and picture a simple plant, its blooming, its texture, its place next to other plants. And then I relax a bit.

Looking outside this morning at a gray, cloudy sky, I am grateful for Zathan's garden blog. Its proprietor gardens in South Austin, a few blocks from where I used to garden, and his blog is a testament to his patience and delight in observing, tending and talking about his garden.

Short of images, I've been envious of his photo of a blooming Texas Mountain Laurel, that hardy and slow-growing shrub/tree that flourishes among the rocky soils and heat of that part of the world and that does smell, as he points out, like grape bubble gum when it blooms.

a spot I think about

At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood.
-- John Donne

late evening light

But when I got home, the sun had come out, and there must have been enough warmth to make the cold snow soften the ground through its melting. Last week a few tender plants had been brave enough to come out of the earth, but what cold has come over the last few days had not discouraged them.

I have daffodils with buds forming. All my late planted tulips are breaking through as well. No sign, I think, of the daffodils I planted in the fall. But since I've planted daffodils for the past three falls, I doubt my own memory and wonder if they have emerged and I am confused over what has already come up. No, I tell myself. Last fall's bulbs need more time.

Sedums that had broken off in fall, and that I had stuck back in the ground in new spots, have rooted. Their sage green vegetation remind me a little of brussel sprouts (of course, the plants of brussel sprouts usually remind me of French wedding cakes). Spreading associations, I heard a marketing researcher call it when I was at the conference, and I am guilty as I eye my garden.

I wonder among my plants in dress shoes, and I silently curse myself for doing this, the giddiness of seeing my dog (whom I've liberated from the house), the two of us wandering among the garden to check our inventory overtaking any common sense a man of my age should have about walking in soft dirt in his work clothes. Not the first time, I must admit.

Franklin and I took our walk around the Townlet. We are in pre-spring. There is no doubt. Winter can still strike again, but it will be temporary, and the warmed earth has convinced nature to start the show. Like an AA member who clings to the serenity prayer, I long ago stopped worrying about what would be lost in spring. I have no control over this. Nature has an amazing resilience. Sure, something will die or get nipped. But this is what happens at this time of year, and I am starting to see it less as a war between me, protecting my garden from the Goths and Visigoths of killing frosts bent on destructive raids, and more of the normal flow of life. I am a great believer in paying attention to the moral instructions found in the garden.

My forsythia are now heavy in buds, and I sense that they are getting that moment of sauciness that I attest to them right before they open their yellow blooms. Wiry, dramatic, a little loose, I think, they whet my visual appetite for blooms. A sin, perhaps, in this Lenten season, but perhaps also sign of coming attractions, something that Lent holds out before us.

return

It was a gray, cold day in Chicago, and driving out of the city and down the rural countryside of Indiana (taking the route of a colleague, I didn't take my normal route which brings me through Gary and the mega structures of American manufactoring erected along the southern shore of Lake Michigan -- my first visit to Chicago was on a train from New York in the early 1980s and the conductor gave a description of each company as the train rolled past it).

We passed the melting snow as we drove home.

notes from another planet

We walk among parallel worlds in the same universe.

Listen to AM radio. Watch certain religious television programs. Attend a marketing conference on sponsorships in Chicago for three days.

While I have not done the first two in a while, I just got back from a powerful conference bringing together sponsors (companies) and properties (venues, other companies, nonprofits). I ended up filling in for a colleague, and while I found much of it quite useful and helpful to my work, and I applaud the seriousness and effort to provide the sponsorship industry (which includes the nonprofit where I work) a lot of useful stuff, I must admit I was a visitor dropping in.

It felt a bit like going to a very large high school. There were jocks -- sports marketing is a very big business in this country. MasterCard, for example, lists as its sponsorships the NFL, NHL, MBL, NBA, PGA and a couple of others. Priceless.

An Olympics sponsorship cost $60 million dollars. I heard a lot about these sponsorships as an example, one that doesn't fit into my own work, but as somebody who watches the Olympics, a somewhat interesting fact.

There were cool folk -- the fellow from Jane's Addiction (a 90s band, I am told) who founded the Lollapalooza concerts and lots of Europeans dressed in ways that look cool on them but would be considered too silly for Americans.

Smart, brainy folk -- the kind who probably always answer hard questions before the teacher can finish her or his sentence. The fellow who heads up marketing research for NASCAR is very, very smart, as is a psychologist who does market research by watching people and recording their actions, who asks folk to pick images to create collages reflecting what they think, and who pairs the names of celebrities with certain concepts to chart the connected path between these concepts and the celebrities, telling us something about our images of celebrities, but also segmenting us into specific camps (the group who see certain celebrities the same way).

No. There are not only two kinds of people in the world.

A lot of stuff. A lot of hotel air in conference rooms. A lot of watching people networking, that speed-dating exercise where one uses less and less words to quickly come to the point about her or his work, watching the moment when the eye of the other person wanders to find a more appropriate or attractive (in a marketing sense a better connected) person.

Hearing the rush of all these voices in those networking moments, all that hotel air brought back out of their lungs with these terse This is who I am pleas, looking for the brilliant moment when, like winning the lottery, a marketing executive will fall in love with a property executive, and sponsorships will be made. Hearing the rush, rush of those voices in those moments, one of those human sounds in a hotel ballroom that we rarely recognize because our brain in automatic self defense tries to mute it out, it is a moment of awe, terrible awe. Hear it a lot, hear it swarm up into a great sound, and you will think of Las Vegas, where the rush of sound comes from electronic slot machines, but these are human sounds, made by people, in a big room, lips moving, sound coming out, my property provides one of a kind ....

There was jargon. Companies must activate a sponsorship. Properties must offer sponsorships that differentiate, differentiate, differentiate. We must understand the emotional connections between customers and sponsors, and we must make them, while providing pass-through rights and 360 degree activation for the sponsors. We must also inspire the community and the sponsors employees, called associates. We must provide more with less. We must overprovide. We must understand the platform and build on it.

I met some very nice folk, and learned some important information, so I if am mocking anybody, then I include myself.

And while there wasn't really any hippy contingency (part of my high school experience), I did meet a fellow who represented the Woodstock Tatoo and Body Art Festival.

This conference was held in the Chicago Hilton, and among my memories of my youth is the 1968 Democratic Convention. Political junkie that I was, I watched all the presidential conventions, as much as possible, and that hotel, and Grant Park, always remind me of one of the moments when America was coming unhinged. Tear gas got into the hotel. It was Humphrey's headquarter hotel and there had been a big protest in the park across the street. Mayhem. Of course, I saw this on a black and white television some 36 years ago.

Nice hotel. Midwestern baroque.

wisdom

Here is sage encouragement to writers from the always articulate Rebecca's Pocket.

willowy

Among spring blooming shrubs, one of my favorite is forsythia.

The previous owner of our house had a hedge of forsythia on the west side, clipped like a privet.

I am sure that the intent was not malicious, but what an insult to such a wonderfully wild plant. I have a similar prejudice against clipped azaleas, too, but since I am back in the alkaline belt, what azaleas one sees here are few and uninspiring, so my rant button doesn't get pushed that often over their abuse in this manner.

Forsythia. Even the name sounds lovely. Left to its proper habitat, it will grow long, willowy limbs that shoot out of the trunk, curving and twisting toward the light.

It's yellow blooms in spring can, like many spring bloomers, be too brilliant, too gaudy, but when do we need that shock of color most than after the exile of barren winter?

To clip this plant into a hedge is to deny its true essence. There are so many better choices for a clipped shrub than forsythia.

I transplanted the plants forming the hedge three years ago, coming up with about nine or so solid little plants. This third year, they have started putting out the long, limber branches, and I feel as if I personally liberated them.

However, like many blooming shrubs, left to their own device, they will become overwhelming. To keep blooming shrubs healthy and manageable, it is important to thin them out (the season immediately after they bloom), taking old woody limbs out, letting new ones thrive and grow.

This is the time of year when a limb or branch can be brought inside, put in a sunny window in a vase of water, and the blooms forced open for color inside. In our corner of zone 5, outside of a few croci, nothing is blooming yet. But one more wave of warmth, and the spring rollout will begin.

If one lives in the DC area (or is visiting), then you have to go to Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in Georgetown. Beatrice Farrand, the designer, created a paradise of forsythia on one edge of the garden, and standing in the middle of these plants, one sees the visual power of many forsythia amassed together. But hurry. The bloom cycle doesn't last forever.

colder

Temps were around 20 degrees (F) this morning, and the ground felt a little crunchy went Franklin and I went outside. It's been quite windy and this morning there were solitary snow flakes drifting through the air at moments when the sky was mostly blue and then gray.

Back to sweaters and a bigger coat.

Supposedly it warm up a bit more later next week.

Still no sign of life emerging from bulbs planted in late fall -- the timing the first year of new bulbs could be set by the same folk who made that Disney movie where the dogs are on a long trip and the old one, who is voice of Don Ameche, looks like he is not coming over the hill. Exquisitely timed to make a dog lover cry, one beat past any expectation that the old dog is still alive the old dog comes over the hill returning home.

At some point in the next few weeks, they will sprout through the dirt.

language

The long drives to work and back ought to be good for something other than tolerating the companion news programs that our local NPR affiliate broadcasts after "Morning Edition" or "All Things Considered."

So now I play tapes to aid me in learning Italian.

My mouth muscles are programmed to speak English syllables. My poor brain is not very bright at grasping the grammer and idioms of other languages.

My track record at learning other languages is not very good. There was the 9th grade Spanish class. There were two years of German in college that took three years to complete.

Neither experience made me feel good about trying to learn another language.

But now I have a new attitude. Keep practicing in the car. Don't try to translate into English. Try to find meanings in the phrase. Work on pronunciation. Practice each day. Understand that the tongue and lips, so molded by English, might be freed up to roll my rrrs and let loose in the wavy accents of Italian. I am in a child-like state of learning Italian words, naming things. (And secretly I am astonished at how many German words come to mind as I try to remember what I've learned, not to mention a lifetime of picking up a little Spanish here and there).

I am having fun. No grades. No expectations.

walk

Now that the frozen ground has thawed, activity is commencing. Franklin and I took our walk this morning, and his nose is drinking in the smells of the air, at times just leaning into it, grabbing scents and savoring them like a wine taster, and at other times discovering smells here and here and then there, darting so excited.

Which says to me that furry creatures are running around all over the place, and in his Scottish heart he wants to hunt them down. The leash is expandable, giving him some freedom in those moments to stop the walk and to dance out his taste of smells, but then I must reluctantly pull him back in and commence our exercise.

more music

We heard the Indianapolis Opera production of Mozart's Cossi Fan Tutte on Sunday afternoon ("All Women Are Like That").

Thank goodness that Mozart had some appreciation for the female voice. As usual with his operas, the story is silly, although not too far removed from, say, an episode of I Love Lucy. Two couples are madly in love, but a cynical older fellow convinces the men to test the fidelity of the women in an elaborate ruse. Against their better judgment, the women prove fickle. The men sing that all women are like that. But what about the men? They're all pretty cynical.

I think the answer is to never think too hard about Mozart operatic story lines. It is the music, frankly, that gives us moments away from mundane reality. In this piece, we get wonderful ensemble variations and powerful singing.

Seeing opera at a matinee is always a plus. Certainly more civilized than on a Friday night after wrestling with the burden and toils of the week. I like my mind to be alert when I am in the audience and it is easier to do so in daylight hours.

music

Barbara Pym's dowdy Anglican characters often sniffed about the popish sensibilities of certain parishes or priests in mid-20th century England. While I never think of myself as Anglo-Catholic, I could be tempted after last night.

We had a rare opportunity to hear a full-length concert by the Men and Boys Choir of St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue (New York), one of the higher and more British parishes in this country. Trinity and St. Paul's co-sponsored the choir as part of their concert series. Because neither parish is large enough for the audience, the concert was held at St Luke's United Methodist Church on the north side of Indy, a bustling congregation that comes closest to a Methodist mega-church. (The space is excellent as a concert hall, but as a friend remarked, one would have a hard time thinking about worshiping in it on a regular basis. That said, a lot of people do just that. A few minutes into the program, I wasn't reflecting on sacred architecture).

Gerre Hancock is the longtime director of the St. Thomas choir, (a professional choir and boy chorister school program). The parish is located across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral and up a block or two on Fifth Avenue.

I've attended a few daily services there but have never heard the choir perform. Hancock is a leading Anglican musician, both conductor and composer. I believe he is retiring soon and this particular concert series represents his last for the parish and the choir school as its director.

It was a long program, but worth every moment. The twelve men and 20 or so boys (ages 8-12?) sang a little of many different types of sacred music (Bairstow -- their singing of his Let Every Mortal Flesh Keep Silent was much more ethereal and other worldly than our little parish choir's performance of it). They sang selections from Byrd, Bach, Stanford, Palestrina, Purcell, Rorem, Bruckner, African American Spirituals.

The encore was a song written Carly Simon for the movie Working Girl.
She had heard the choir sing over the years, and wrote for them her anthem Wall Street Hymn that is used as the closing of WG.

Wonderful energy, diction, moving interpretations, lovely dynamics. I've always appreciated the English male choral tradition without really embracing it. It is a pure sound, but frankly, I like to hear female voices.

St. Thomas uses male counter-tenors as altos, tenors, and basses, with the boys providing the treble or soprano line. Still, if I could hear music sung like that each Sunday, I might be a little more, well, popish.

quiet

My inspiration for blogging comes from the letter writers and diarists of the Victorian and Edwardian era, periods when folk put down words for all the sensations, thoughts, feelings and ideas buzzing around in their head. E.M. Forster once said that he never knew what he thought till he wrote it down.

These writers used language to paint pictures for us, giving us some insight into what it meant to experience life in the past. But they also taught us examples of how to be human.

Because they did not have radio or television (or other electronic opiates) playing in their ears, they had the opportunity to sit and reflect on naming the leviathons in their life, emerging out of the depths of the sea, the stuff of human experience, whether terribly funny or horribly tragic.

Willing to write down what was in their head, they lived life unplugged, to borrow an MTV term of a few years ago.

We need a chance to hear what is being drowned out 24/7 (an inhuman phrase). Seasons like Lent or Advent call us to be quiet. To think. To reflect. At the beginning of our Lenten litury each Sunday, to repent.

There was an article in the New York Times about Alistair Cooke's last letter from America for the BBC. He is 95 years old and has not been able to leave his New York apartment for the past couple of years. His doctors advised that he give up his weekly on-air letters. Cooke started this series in the 1940s and by the mid-60s he was never missed a week in meeting his deadline. A blogger of sorts.

Blogs can be full of nothing, silly little rants or giggly surveys (You are an AMC Gremlin. Squatty. An idea whose time never came). But blogs are also like Cooke's letters, describing for some unknown audience what life is like in another part of the world, interpretation, story telling, painting with words.

hard work time

As long as it is not freezing or snowing (or raining), this is the perfect time to garden.

No bugs.

No sweat.

Cool temps.

The downside is that the ground is quite soft, but that can also be a good thing. It is much easier to weed, transplant, work in organic amendments.

I'd much rather spend this time doing the hard work (making new beds, transplanting, planting) and use the spring and summer for routine maintenance and general pleasure at watching plants grow.

garden notes

Our morning temperatures are 20 degrees warmer than usual, and that has set off a bit of early springtime activity in what is still winter. Wind has been blowing through off and on for days, so being outside is not as enjoyable as one would think.

Daffodils are up by six inches or higher. Tulips are also pushing out. My tall pink sedum have started growing out of the dirt. Yesterday, I pulled off the winter mulch (leaves and such) off of my perennial beds so that I could spread larkspur, hollyhock and bluebonnet seed out on the soil.

I also pruned roses, and started lining up old brush (dead purple coneflower stems, daisies, Japanese anemones) along an area where I intend to extend the border. I'll run my mulching lawnmower over it.

In this Lenten season, I look at these small stirrings in the garden and reflect on the hope for spring. There is still enough Texas left in me to feel like planting right now, but of course, we still have two - three months of potential freezing temperatures.

oops

I forget to remind you that yesterday was Texas Independence Day.

clean-up

Surveying my garden this morning -- and oh, the sun is up at that time now -- I noticed more daffodils and tulips coming out of the ground. It is time for me to cut out all the dead vegetation and put it on the compost pile.

And its time to prune my roses.

These are good things.

same sex

When I was in Austin, I noticed this column by the Statesman's South Austin columnist, John Kelso (registration required):

It baffles me that George W. Bush has called for a constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriages. Why is he in such a tizzy over such a common situation?

Same-sex marriages are nothing new. Don't almost all marriages eventually turn into same-sex marriages? I'm figuring it takes about three years for most marriages to turn into same-sex marriages.

Her: "That's the same sex we had last night, the same sex we had last week, and the same sex we had last year."

Him: "You wanna order a pizza?"

yeah, yeah, yeah ... now lets talk about herbs

The other day Tripp left a comment that he was ready to talk about herbs in window boxes.

I've not much experience in window box herb gardening (or any kind of window box gardening), so I post this as a bit of dialogue. Feel free to correct or add to the conversation.

Sunlight

Herbs like sun. They, like most sun loving perennials, need at least six hours of direct sunlight.

Soils

Many herbs do not like wet or rich soils (e.g., sage and rosemary). They grow in a warm climate on thin rocky soils. So if you are planting sage or rosemary or lavendar, don't water them too much.

You will need a potting soil that will allow for moisture to drain through, with enough stuff in it to hold on to some moisture, particularly for the other plants that need more water. While I usually make my own potting soil (no virtue in this other than I like mixing dirt), you can easily buy a bag of pre-made potting soil. Make sure that your container has drain holes so that moisture doesn't stay trapped in the pot or box. In a terracotta pot, I often put gravel in the bottom, with a few broken pieces or chards, and then put in the dirt. This helps drain excess water.

Potting soil is much lighter than the soil found in the ground. Because of its lightness, the plant will be able to root out easily, and the dirt won't dry out so fast (unlike ground soil). Why? Because ground dirt that is put in a container has heat coming at it from two to three sides as well as exposure to air. In the ground, it is only exposed to the surface air and temperature, while below surface it keeps its moisture because the temps are cooler. Ground dirt pulled out of the ground and exposed to heat and air becomes brick.

Season

Some herbs are cool weather. For example, coriander (or cilantro) is a cool weather annual. Once the temps warm up, the plant quits its leaf production (cilantro) and starts going to seed (coriander). Then it dies.

Rosemary will not survive winter outside in zone 5 (Indy or Chicago). In a protected place, with mulch, it might survive one year or two. But eventually it will die. This is a heartbreaking fact.

Sage will survive. Chives will survive. Some thymes will survive. Parsley will survive, however it is a biennial (lives for two years, mostly) so you will need to replace it (cue Simon and Garfunkel).

In winter, you may want to repot and place rosemary plants in a very sunny window. They won't grow big, but they will continue to live (cue Susan Hayward).

Water

Plants need moisture. In Austin, during summer time, I had to water my potted plants once a day and sometimes twice. The trick to watering is to stick your finger into the dirt. If it is bone dry, then provide water. If it is damp, do not add water.

This is where the so-called green thumb comes in. Plants are not objects. they are living things. They need air, sunlight, water and food. If they are not getting these things, they will die. The green thumb is the person who actually starts to notice their plants and thus respond. The green thumb is the person who, while not knowing enough to be a smarty pants, will start asking questions. Like why are the plant's leaves turning yellow (too much water?). Or why are the plant's leaves turning brown (not enough water?).

Observe. Ask. Don't be afraid to make a mistake. You can always throw the plant away and start over. But try to learn a few things.

The Big Bang

One shouldn't garden without asking philosophical or moral questions. Why herbs? For cooking? Sure. For theological tradition? Monks tended herb gardens for food and for medicinal purposes. Yes to the above, but so what.

It is, I think, the tactile pleasure of herbs, the smells that smear on your hands when you touch or pinch them, the subtle colors, the textures, that calm the crazed person who needs to stop and catch his or her breath.

Herbs are humble, not peacocks, but faithful and steady friends, living plants that deserve a place in your garden.

what I won't see

I've decided that I will not be seeing Gibson's movie, The Passion of Christ. Lot of random thoughts here:

1) The conversation around the movie, for the most part, has been quite interesting, and frankly, I appreciate the fact that as Holy Week approaches that folk are having conversations about Jesus.

2) Perhaps part of it is my Baptist upbringing. I've heard plenty of preachers re-create the Passion in sermons, and certainly Baptist hymns did the same. While protestant worship has often been devoid of art and sculpture, particularly connected to the Jesus of the cross, the Passion has had a special role in Catholic worship and mysticism. As an Episcopalian, I know we fall in-between, but the bloody Jesus on the cross hanging over the altar is one of those expressions that fall outside my own practice of worship.

3) There was a quote in the NY Times last week from Reinhold Niehbur that American Christianity was bloodless, and that is particularly true of our worship spaces.

4) During Holy Week, the one service that I sometimes miss is Good Friday, usually because of work, but I admit that I am not fond of the terror of the day. I don't skip reading the scriptures of Christ's passion, or thinking about it, or reflecting on it. You cannot celebrate Easter without it. Yes, of course. But I am reminded of a description written by St. Paul: ... who for the joy that was set before him, endured the suffering and shame.

Jesus did what he did because of obedience to the Father, but he did it also for his vision or faith in what would follow. Part of that vision is us, the church, God's people. Hence, the empty cross, the empty tomb.

5) At some point last week, I read a part of Leon Wieseltier's essay in the The New Republic. It's the meditation on violence, I think, that pushed me to the decision to not see the movie. A couple of quote:

For The Passion of the Christ is intoxicated by blood, by its beauty and its sanctity. The bloodthirstiness of Gibson's film is startling, and quickly sickening. The fluid is everywhere. It drips, it runs, it spatters, it jumps. It trickles down the post at which Jesus is flagellated and down the cross upon which he is crucified, and the camera only reluctantly tears itself away from the scarlet scenery. The flagellation scene and the crucifixion scene are frenzies of blood. When Jesus is nailed to the wood, the drops of blood that spring from his wound are filmed in slow-motion, with a twisted tenderness.

...

The only cinematic achievement of The Passion of the Christ is that it breaks new ground in the verisimilitude of filmed violence. The notion that there is something spiritually exalting about the viewing of it is quite horrifying. The viewing of The Passion of the Christ is a profoundly brutalizing experience. Children must be protected from it. (If I were a Christian, I would not raise a Christian child on this.) Torture has been depicted in film many times before, but almost always in a spirit of protest. This film makes no quarrel with the pain that it excitedly inflicts. It is a repulsive masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film, and it leaves you with the feeling that the man who made it hates life.

6) I don't watch Tarentino films. Even in something like Lord of the Rings, I turn my head. I rarely can watch someone shot on screen. Maureen O'Dowd in the Times last week said that after seeing Gibson's movie, she wasn't left with feeling a need to celebrate God's love, but to go out and kick some Roman butt, sort of the effect one has after seeing Braveheart, for example.

7) The most interesting part of the conversation, for me, relates to non-Christians, particularly to Jews (since Romans aren't around as such) and how they are reacting to the movie. I read a comment by one Jewish fellow who reminded readers that lots of Jews died on Roman crosses, a point often not recognized. How blithely we Christians overlook their sensitivity to past Christian hatred and violence toward them. Since I am not seeing the movie, I won't comment on whether or not it will be used to hurt Jews or other other non-Christians. I hope it will not.

no red carpet

It's terrible to confess it, but ...

I did not watch the Academy Awards last night. I was too tired. It feels odd to have them this early. Partner was away.

We taped it and I'll look at Billy Crystal's opening.

At least we will no longer have another Lord of the Rings next year. Enough already.