Buddha among the Flowers
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Category Archives: garden
Whimsical buddha
You never know when or where you might get an idea for a new blog post. Or for a new story or novel, for that matter. Or for how to live your life. It’s not just the dark inner creative places where these things bubble up from; it’s also the sum of your experiences and your relationships and your emotions and thoughts and dreams, and your way of making connections among these things.
Looking over the statistics for this blog for the last few days, I noted a search that had resulted in two views. The search term was “whimsical buddha”.
What was this person looking for? And why? Did he find it?
Would I be disappointed if I knew?
Well, I don’t know, but I do have a whimsical buddha for my mystery searcher, wherever he is, if he’s still looking. The buddha sits in the garden at night in the drenching early April rain. “He looks so forlorn,” I say to Dan. “I feel sorry for anyone who has to be out in the rain on a night like this.”
“Oh–just a minute,” replies my kind-hearted husband, and the next thing I know he too is out in the cold rain carrying an umbrella, to lend the poor buddha a hand.
September rain
Bowing down in the rain, the hosta places its flowers in the Buddha’s lap.
Atavistic
As I sit at the kitchen table going over the program for Worldcon 67 (Anticipation 2009), the sky darkens. And then really darkens. Rain pours so heavily it drowns out the sound of the waterfall. Flowers are subjugated into down-facing humiliation, and I marvel that they have evolved to stand such a beating.
Thunder roars.
Amber, who has been napping at the edge of the rug, looks up in alarm. As the thunder strikes again, he scrambles, terrified, to his feet.
Amber, the world's silliest, most doglike cat
I try to soothe him. “It’s okay, Kitty. It’s all right.”
But Amber is not to be soothed. He knows that whatever this is, is horrible. He slinks from the room, keeping as low to the floor as he can. Later, I find him hiding on a chair pushed far under the dining room table. He won’t let me touch him.
What I like about my arborist
I have hired an arborist to trim some branches that overhang my back yard and shade it too much. Here is his proposal, in its entirety, written on the back of a business card:
This is, for readers who are not familiar with my back yard, a perfectly clear description of exactly which limbs to remove from exactly which trees to give my garden a bit more sunlight. And how much he will charge for this work. So now I am confident that my arborist knows what needs to be done; and three weeks from now when he shows up, he will look at this and remember.
I really like this arborist. Here are some of the things I like about him.
I know that the trees I want trimmed are oak trees. But he knows that they are *white* oaks.
He loves a beautiful tree. Every arborist that came to give me an estimate looked at the old American elm tree by my driveway (indicated in my arborist’s proposal by the small semicircle near the bottom center) with unabashed admiration, and my arborist is no exception.
He likes making a beautiful tree even more beautiful. “You see those dead branches there?” My arborist points to a spot above the branch he is to remove. “While I’m up thereI could take those out. And look; there are some dead branches on the tree over there, too.” He indicates another tree. “Would you like those out?”
I’ve never seen any of these dead branches before. While I am still trying to adjust to a job that may cost more than I want to spend, he apologizes. “I’m always noticing dead branches,” he says.
“No,” I decide. “Leave all that. Just take out the branches we’ve talked about.”
Surprisingly, the arborist is relieved. “Thank you,” he says. “This was starting to look like a really big job.”
I like watching him think about how he is going to do the work. “We’ll have to string a cable here, and one over there. I can use that to get to that branch over there. And then, maybe…” I envision men flying by cables across my back yard. Tarzans of the ‘burbs. This job looks like it will be fun.
And this is what I like most of all: My arborist appreciates the small things about trees. “I saw a hummingbird the other day,” he tells me. He’d been doing some work near the Charles River. “He’d swoop down under the bridge that was nearby–or maybe it was a she–and get a spider web, and she was weaving it into a nest all the way at the very end of a branch. It was a tiny little nest, no bigger than this.” He makes a circle of his thumb and forefinger.
There is something really wonderful about a man who appreciates the hummingbirds.
Poison
While research poisons for a story I’m writing, I have discovered that the aconitum I planted in my garden last year (and that has come back so nicely this year) is none other than the famous poison monkshood, or wolfsbane. It is a potent neurotoxin that produces numbness, paralysis, and (yes) death. All parts of the plant are poisonous.
But never fear. Yesterday, right next to the aconitum, I planted foxglove. Foxglove is the source of digitalis, itself a deadly poison. But digitalis is fortunately also an antidote for aconitine.
What luck!
Deer oh deer
It’s spring, and the hosta have come up all over the garden. This is good news, not only because it means the weather is warmer and the garden is prettier, but also and more to the point: The deer did not manage to kill off all my hosta when they clipped them down to bare stalks last fall.
Even the expensive designer blue, cream, gold, dark green, and chartreuse hostas in mix-and-match stripes and leaf-margins are back. Given the amount of shade here, the leaf-patterns of these hostas are an important part of the garden: The shy and retiring Allan P. McConnell, Aristocrat, flamboyant little Feather Boa, Grand Tiara, Great Expectations, June, Touch of Class, and the hard-to-find Venus, with unprepossessing green leaves and marvelously large and fragrant flowers in August. There are also lovely swathes of narrow-leafed and wide-leafed green hostas and twisty green-and-white-leafed hostas that are legacy plants from the previous owner and that we have propagated across the garden over the years.
So now, my job, as I see it, is to make sure that the deer don’t get these hosta again.
Last weekend we went to Lowe’s, and I bought two different types of deer repellents. I installed the one and sprayed on the other. Yesterday, I did some research on the Internet to see what else I might do. I found that there are many products on the market, including those that smell bad to deer, those that taste bad to deer (don’t use these on your vegetable gardens, though), and both. My favorite of these is a substance called “Milorganite”, which is made from Milwaukee sewage. Really! And–it’s organic!
There are also many recipes for deer repellent that can be made right at home from readily available (or, well, obtainable) ingredients. These range from eggs to liquid detergent to hot peppers to garlic to hair clippings to urine (don’t ask).
But of all the recipes posted by helpful people on various Web sites, my absolute favorite is from Hanxter at www.deer-departed.com. Please click through and read it! Even if you don’t have a deer problem! This may not be the most effective solution to the deer problem, but hey — turnabout is fair play.
I wonder if they have a hunting season in Newton.