My favorite part of gardening is when native plants show up and bloom all on their own! Asters are all around the edges of our yard, and in so many other Maine yards in our neighborhood right now. Different varieties, all beloved by pollinators, tiny beautiful blossoms when you look closely.
My least favorite part of gardening is wrestling with the invasive species that show up on their own. For the last three weeks I’ve been pulling buttercupplants that spread all over under the honeycrisp apple tree, and were also just starting to infiltrate the raspberry patch. So first I pulled up all the plants I could, in sections, then I set down cardboard over the area, watered it, and spread a thick layer of wood chips on the cardboard. Handily, the tree is right next to our pile of wood chips. The hope is that the cardboard and wood chips will smother the rest of the buttercup roots that I am not able to eradicate.
Halfway done pulling buttercup plants and layering cardboard.
While I was at it, I also pulled up all the oregano under that tree–my other nemesis, though it has its uses as an herb. It was intermixed with the buttercup. I was sad that I had to cover other ground plants like wild strawberry, and I hope they will spread again over the wood chips once things settle down. But finally, it was finished. (For now–I imagine I will have to be on the lookout next season for sneaky little survivors.)
Completed!
Meanwhile, the other least favorite thing about gardening is watching how climate change is disrupting the patterns that nature usually unfolds in each season. Yesterday, I discovered that there were open blossoms on the cherry trees–just a few–but this is October in Maine! Last winter’s unseasonable warming and freezing killed all the blossoms that should have come out in the spring. We have yet to harvest any cherries from these trees beyond one or two. And now this. I have heard that other people are noticing weird blooming out of season on other plants too. I don’t know if the cherry trees will survive. I hope they will. I tend them as well as I can, but there are forces far beyond the little garden here in our yard.
Meanwhile, I try to be grateful for the gifts that still emerge, the asters and goldenrods, the frogs and birds, and that I am able to go outside to watch and learn.
Our first Honeycrisp apples are almost ready to pick!
Our semi-dwarf apple tree is bearing fruit for the first time this year, and we are excited for the dozen or so apples that will be ripe soon.
How naive I was when I first decided to plant an orchard in our back yard. We started with two dwarf cherry trees in 2017, of the varieties Lapins & Black Tartarian. The next spring we planted a Contender peach tree, the Honeycrisp apple, two blueberry bushes, some raspberries, and three hazelnut bushes. In 2019 I grafted two other apple trees, Black Oxford and Blue Pearmain, this last just transplanted to its new bed this year. (Not to mention our mulberry tree further back in the yard, and three more blueberries planted later.)
I think I imagined that one would put in a lot of effort at the beginning, with preparing the ground, planting the seedlings, adding companion plants, tending, and so forth, then the work would ease and the fruit would be there for the picking in the years to come. Maybe that was some of what attracted me to permaculture and a food forest. Little did I realize that an orchard requires even more tending as the seasons go on.
And there are the ups and downs–the first peach harvest went entirely to the squirrels-we were so sad. Then we had an amazing crop last year, that we ate fresh, shared with the neighbors, and froze, some packages of which are still in the freezer. This season, no peaches at all. We have yet to have a cherry harvest. This would have been the year, I think, but the abundant flower buds were empty from the deep winter freeze. On the other hand, the raspberries are very reliable, and the blueberries have begun to come into their own. And the number of birds have multiplied in our yard, whether or not there is any fruit on the trees. They love the orchard.
All that preamble to say, I did some more pruning this past week! After watching a whole bunch of Youtube videos about summer pruning, I gained the courage to go and cut off a whole lot of branches that were vigorously seeking the sky on the peach tree and the Black Tartarian cherry. (I had already done some pruning on the Lapins because of its black cherry aphid problems.) When I post the “after” pictures below, you might not believe how many branches were piled up on the patio waiting for me to take them to the compost. The trees still look flush with abundance green, though I think their tops might be about three feet lower than before.
Peach tree and Lapins cherry after pruning.
I also discovered a lot of small curled leaves on the Black Tartarian, without any evidence of aphids. After some research I learned that there is a fungal disease, cherry leaf curl, similar to the peach leaf curl that I dealt with by picking off the affected leaves. I can’t be certain what it is, but I went back around and pruned off any branch ends with those curled leaves on both cherries. All the pruned cherry branches I cut up and put into garbage bags to go out with the trash–three bags full–so they wouldn’t spread the problem.
You might notice from the photo that the companion planting under the trees is now very low to the ground. I have taken to mowing most of it, including the oregano that spreads everywhere, and I put the cuttings in the compost to bring back later. The mowing doesn’t seem to bother anything, it all comes back. Under the Lapins cherry tree, I actually put down some cardboard to inhibit the oregano and then covered it with wood chips. It is an experiment.
Pruned Black Tartarian cherry tree.
This is not to say that the trees won’t also need winter pruning. That is the thing. They will always need lots of pruning, summer and winter. The work is never done. I might do less of it or more of it, depending on my own energy levels. But there is always more work that I could do to tend to their care. Even with my trying-to-be-minimalist approach. (I have read that there are people who secretly plant fruit trees in random places, to great environmentalist applause; but I wonder about who will do the tending.) So while I often wax eloquent about permaculture and gardening, please be warned about the other side: this relationship with garden trees requires a lot of work, more than I ever expected.
I should end this post with a caveat: I consider myself a learning gardener, and none of these reflections should be taken as advice. I have no idea what I am doing at least 50 percent of the time. My intention is creating a mutual relationship with the earth and the plants, and reflecting on that process. As always, I am humbled by it all.
This year one volunteer sunflower plant came up next to the patio, starting small. Now it has expanded into this multi-branched extravagantly flowering giant! Doing a little research, it seems to be a native wild sunflower, because of its branching habit and the size of its flowers, and its continuing blooms. It is still one plant though, a community of flowers that is connected at the root, and much loved by all sorts of bees, other insects, and birds. It is easy to see how they belong to this place and to each other.
Bumblebee and honey bee on center of the sunflower.
What does belonging mean? It is easy for me to get caught in a “not-belonging” wound, the scar of a childhood moving from place to place, always starting on the outside, trying to find my way in, feeling invisible and unconnected. It is not that I haven’t had some times of belonging–there was the group of friends at college, the group of activists at the Catholic Worker or the women’s peace camp, the lesbian community in Boston. Changing perspective sometimes took me away from earlier forms of belonging, sometimes into new communities–sometimes not. In some ways I belong to my family of origin, but my lesbian identity and feminist politics created a deep barrier.
On this personal journey, becoming a UU minister created an avenue for me to nurture community, to bring other people into a sense of belonging. And in that ministry, I had a form of belonging, too, right at the center of community, but also always a bit set apart in my role. And it also meant moving once again. Even though I have retired, I am still a bit set apart because of the role of a minister. Reflecting on it, I’ve also experienced a form of belonging in my connections with ministry colleagues. But the wound continues to shape the ways I navigate the current chapter of my life. I continue to wonder, “Where do I belong?”
As I explore various facets of belonging, the feeling remains elusive. Do I belong to this place like the sunflower and the bees? I am not indigenous to this land, it is Wabanaki land. When I reach back to my own ancestors, language is a barrier between us–I don’t speak the German of my father’s ancestors. I don’t speak French (even if I understand a little), the language of my Quebec ancestors, and even of my distant Innu relatives in these times. I don’t belong to Nitassinan (which would be my matrilineal homeland) or Quebec or Austria or Germany. I don’t belong to an ethnic community. What does belonging mean in white America, especially for those of us who reject the racism of its founding?
All these thoughts are coming round in a scattered fashion. When the feelings come up in me of “not-belonging,” it helps me to remember these childhood wounds, these societal wounds. I can acknowledge and honor those feelings but then make a choice to open my heart to new possibilities of interconnection. I am becoming interconnected to this land, as I tend the trees, appreciate the wildflowers, make habitat for birds and frogs, eat the blueberries that grow. There is a reciprocity that is developing between us. I must choose to open my heart to new people as well–not dwelling in the old fear that there will be no room for me, but being curious about the ways that we might be interconnected already, or the ways that we might find to connect right now.
Today I see one more lesson about belonging in a tall pink cosmos flower that we didn’t choose or plant, but somehow it rooted itself next to the road we live on. It is now blooming on its own after the rest of the plants have faded. It is not in the “color scheme” of the roadside garden bed. I guess its motto is a variation of the old adage: “Bloom where you are planted.” Bloom wherever your seed happens to land.
Excitement in the yard this morning! I woke to see out my window a juvenile hawk standing in the grass between the bird feeder and the elderberry bush. I went outside to take a photo, and they seemed undisturbed by my presence–I got within 4 yards of them. At one point they turned in my direction, checking me out. I didn’t really want them to be stalking the birds that come to the feeder, so I looked back at them. After a bit, they turned and flew into one of our spruce trees.
But that wasn’t the only excitement. Later, after doing errands and coming back again, I heard a wren chittering in the yard. I saw that a small bird was caught inside the screen tent, flying from side to side, unable to find a way out.
During the last two days I had heard a tiny brown bird chittering away over near the Joe Pye Weed and perching on the fence of our neighbors. I thought perhaps there might be a nest in the underbrush there, because the bird moved about like they were trying to lure me away. The Joe Pye Weed is so tall that it towers over the fence and over us, and with other tall wildflowers nearby, it would make a very secluded area underneath. I saw and heard enough to identify the bird as a wren.
Flowers in bloom on the tall Joe Pye Weed plants.
So yesterday, our friend Sylvia came by to tend to her herb garden–she is the one who originally planted the Joe Pye Weed, and other native plants that we love. We were sitting out in the orchard chatting, and the wren came back to the fence. We hadn’t seen any wrens earlier in the season. So that in itself was exciting–bird visitors! Maybe a nest.
Tiny wren grooming itself on the fence.
But today, I was distressed to find a wren in the screen tent. I went over and opened one of the panels, and walked inside the tent to try to encourage the bird to go out. They kept going away from me, from one screen panel to another, but not out. So I opened up another panel so the opening was wider. I worry about how long they had been in there. They would have to have entered either underneath the panels in the grass, or through very narrow slit openings at the corner of the roof. Finally, they flew out the wider opening and over to the nine bark bush by the pond.
I came back into the house, and told Margy about the wren and the hawk. She was excited too, and told me how much she loves my bird adventures. I love that I have her as an audience for my joy.
Later, I wondered if the juvenile hawk was stalking the wren earlier, and the wren had creeped into the tent for safety. We humans only ever see part of the story. The rest is a mystery. But today feels like one of those days where we really are a wildlife sanctuary. I hope my story can bring a little joy to your day.
Our Lammas harvest festival blessing was being able to watch the fledging of the robins’ third brood of three chicks. (That makes nine chicks all together!) They had been getting active the last couple days so we were expecting it. But what a nice surprise to look out the window and see the first fledgling perched all alone on the deck railing, looking around at the big wide world for the first time.
They probably saw their mother hopping on the ground further in the back yard. (We did too.) Then the mother flew up next to it on the railing for encouragement. (That was photo number one). After looking at each other, they each looked out beyond, and then the mother flew off, and the baby soon followed, alighting high in the hazelnut bushes.
The other two remained in the nest for a little while, but soon the second one flew out toward the orchard. Finally there was just one left. I wandered around outside, but the parents were chirping at me, their warning calls. I saw the parent robins also diving and shrieking at squirrels in the pitch pine tree branches, and angrily calling at a cardinal who came into the cherry tree–too close as far as the robins were concerned. Back inside for a while, I saw the dad robin come to the nest–with a piece of grass in his beak, but I didn’t see food. He sat with the third baby for a while, so tender. After he left, the baby shrunk down into the nest, only its beak visible. Hiding mode.
I had to go out in the orchard to do some mulching, and then I sat at the patio table. I could hear number three chirping every so often from the nest, their head visible again, and then I’d hear another chirp from the direction of the hazelnut bushes. When I came back inside, I kept an eye on them through the windows. They got out of the nest finally, and hopped along the beam to the other side. While the first fledgling had seem so confident and proud of itself, this one seemed quite scared about jumping from its safe little home. But everybody had left. It huddled up next to the opposite side beam.
Finally, the little one started to stretch their legs, and move their wings a tiny bit. They moved up to the very edge of the beam. They hovered there for quite a while. One of the parents came back to the deck railing down below and behind the nest. I also saw a female gold finch perched on the railing in front of the nest. Not sure what that was about. A chipmunk was scurrying below on the patio. I stood still next to the back windows and just watched–I didn’t take any more photos. The gold finch left, the parent left, the chipmunk left. The little one perched on the edge. Then they bravely jumped off.
I heard a flutter of wings against the screen window of our music room, just to the left of the deck out of my sight. I went out the door to observe, and saw that the baby was hanging by one claw stuck in the screen, and flapping their wings against it. I walked to the edge of the deck, reached over and cupped my hands gently around the baby, careful to contain their wings, lifted them to release the claw. I let go and they flew down to the lemon balm patch. Be still my heart. They slowly hopped out onto the patio, hopped over some garden hoses, making their way over to the mulched area under the cherry tree. They hopped into the grass behind, and finally they flew up over the grass into the trees.
And then the nest was empty. They say that robins raise two or three broods a season, and if that is true, they may be done with the nest for now. They’ll feed the babies for a few more weeks out in the bushes and trees. I wonder how all nine of their children are doing? Did they all survive? I hope they are thriving. We don’t see them once they leave the nest, so we never know.
I feel a sense of joy, and a sense of loss, all at the same time. I feel grateful for the privilege to observe the robin family, and for the moments I was able to capture in photos. I feel sad to look out the window and see them gone. I am also grateful that I was able to give them a little shade fromthe sun, and maybe that helped.
Our new screened in pop-up tent is set up, ready for summer visits.
There is a phrase I’ve seen online that applies to Margy and I–we are “still COVIDing.” It means that we know the COVID virus is still circulating, still dangerous especially to elders and those with other health issues, and we are still taking all precautions. This despite the end of the declared public emergency and the end of mask mandates. So we always wear N95 masks if we have to go inside stores or offices, we don’t eat inside restaurants, and we don’t go inside where crowds are gathered. We try to keep a six foot distance even outside.
Sadly, we feel more isolated now that so many people have chosen to live with or ignore any risk. (It felt so different to be in it all together, even alone in our homes.) I am sure that many people are very carefully weighing the risks and benefits to make their choices, but I am guessing that many others are just following along with the culture’s decision that the emergency is over. We are often the only people masked in a store or even a doctor’s office.
I read an excellent article in The Conversation.com which explores how ageism plays a role in this issue.
“COVID is not over, but we are acting like it is. Many COVID research programs are winding down. Can you imagine winding down research into any other condition on the top five mortality list? The reason for not doing more to prevent COVID-19 appears to be ageism, plain and simple. There is no logical explanation for accepting an unnatural degree of hospitalization and premature deaths in elders except that we value the lives of younger people more.”
It is baffling to me, even with this analysis. Because even programs for elders are dropping precautions. I try to understand why people make the choices they make, but it also fills me with sadness. It seems there is a great divide between us.
In the midst of all this, we decided to treat ourselves to a screen tent, a pop-up gazebo. (I have had screen tents before, but they had all worn out a while ago.) We have been looking forward to the possibility of more visits with friends during the summer, when we can sit outside in our yard. But the weather has been so rainy all of June, and the forecast predicts more of the same. With this gazebo, we can visit during more kinds of weather, and still be safe together. It is an investment in our happiness. How are you keeping safe and happy during these hard times?
The last robin chick in the nest. The others have left in the night.
Today all the robin babies fledged from the nest. When I woke, there was just this one left. Its parent came by to check on it, not bringing food, but flying up to the nest and then back down, as if to say, here is what you do now.
Shortly after, I saw it take its first flight, flopping over to the screen window of our house, where it tried to grab hold but then fell down to a soft patch of lemon balm below the window. (Now I am wondering about a sound I heard last night, of something bouncing on the screens in my room. Might that have been earlier chicks making their first flights?) A bit later, I went down to the patio, and something flew by from a perch on the chairs, then to the grass on the other side of the orchard. All the while the parent robins were chirping loudly and continuously, whether to warn me away, or to reassure the chick, I don’t know.
I was wondering what would happen next for the fledglings, and learned via research that the parents will keep feeding and teaching them for the next few weeks, while they hide on the ground or in bushes, trying to avoid predators and learning to find their own food. I am so glad that there are no more neighborhood cats roaming in our yard. The mother might start another brood soon, but the father will keep watching out for these fledglings during this time. All the chicks will stay in this territory for about 4 months or so.
I wandered around the orchard and the yard trying to see what I could see, while the parents chirped at me, and I spotted this chick on the pallets that form our yard waste bins, with a parent nearby perched on the same bin.
Finally, I was heading back to the house and suddenly saw another chick perched quietly in the hazelnut bush.
I had to go inside then to eat my own breakfast, and download the photos. As I have been writing this, outside on the patio, I’ve seen the parent robins go into that bush with food, so it must still be there–it is a great hiding spot. I am torn by competing desires: to observe and photograph the young ones, or to just go inside and ease the parents alarm. They should know by now that I won’t hurt their babies. Actually, they don’t seem to mind me when I am sitting at the patio table, not walking about.
In the meantime, I am glad we have lots of tall plants and bushes and trees that make good spaces for the next phase of their young lives. It all happens so quickly–less than four weeks from the eggs in the nest to the small birds out and about. I wish them all the best!
During this cold rainy spring season, we have been delighted with the baby robins, batch number two. There seem to be four babies this time, and they seem more lively than the first batch of two. But maybe it is just that there is less room in the nest. Still, they all can fit underneath mom, or hidden sleeping in the nest. But then they poke up their little fuzzy heads, with mouths open wide like a choir performing. (Not very loud though–we don’t hear a sound.) Both parents are busy going back and forth with worms and grubs. If we come out on the porch near them, the babies all lower their heads and hide. Well-trained. So we watch from the windows.
We’ve had two weeks of very cool rainy weather, and that counter-clockwise low pressure weather system has kept away the wildfire smoke from Canada, while folks to our south are facing orange skies and unsafe air. Still, we’ve paid attention, following the news, and thinking about what might happen if it does come our way. It is easy enough for Margy and I to stay inside, or wear our N95 masks outside.
But now that we are deeper in relationship with our land, I am anxious about how such bad air might affect the robins and frogs and squirrels and other critters who live here with us. They don’t have masks and can’t get inside. I wonder if the babies of these critters wouldn’t make it, so vulnerable in those first weeks of life. My heart is wide open to our little microcosm of earth life.
And yet it is the macrocosm that emerges most in this story, because the smoke is coming from far away in Quebec, from wildfires made more destructive by climate change. We aren’t alone in our microcosm, we are all connected by the winds that blow across the globe, undeterred by artificial boundaries. I have been somewhat removed from wildfire problems. I have seen them on the news in California, Alberta, Australia. This is the first time they have come close to where I live. But truly we are all more and more vulnerable. And of course, some much more vulnerable than others. I worry about people without houses, struggling just to survive, in a tent or with a tarp. They can’t get out of the bad air.
There is so little I can personally do about these large issues at this time in my life. That is some of my motivation for trying to tend our little garden–to love this small place of earth in hopes that more and more people can learn to love the larger earth, our great mother. To share the beauty of this earth in writings and photos on this blog, that beauty might inspire love. But love includes grief, and the more we love the earth, the more we grieve for the destruction that human beings are perpetrating.
The green frogs are back in the pond. I saw one about a week ago, but yesterday I managed to get a photo. As I got near, another frog dove down to the bottom–so there are two. Once again it is lovely to sit by the pond quietly, watching them sit quietly. And we now have the added pleasure of hundred of little tadpoles. I stopped scooping out algae to avoid scooping out the babies, so the pond isn’t so “pretty” to human view, but the frogs, tadpoles and honey bees seem to really like the algae. The frogs like to hide under it, the bees land on it to drink, and apparently it is good food for the tadpoles.
I was also happy to receive three new plants of sweet flag–or kiwhoswasq, as I learned in Passamaquoddy class. That means “muskrat root”, since apparently muskrats eat it, and it is also a useful medicinal root. It should do well in the pond, and multiply itself there. It doesn’t look like much yet, so I will wait to post photos. Meanwhile the ferns are coming back on their own.
Finally, one more picture of the frog, after it jumped down to the water, sitting on a white rock, surrounded by the tadpoles. They are all over the pond now, especially around the edges.
Finding Our Way Home 