On the Road

The moving van, filled with our belongings, symbolizes almost 12 years of incomparable memories and beautiful relationships made in East Haddam, Connecticut. 

The big rig left Thursday. On Friday Lyn and I passed along our house keys to the new owners, a fine young couple who we believe will appreciate the home and garden as much as we have. By Friday night we'd driven the Soul to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, bound for Marietta, Georgia, where we will start a new life.

As I make the transition, I thank you all for your good wishes and caring comments. Stay tuned.

In the Magazine

When the talented gardener and writer Tovah Martin and photo artist Kindra Clineff visited my garden last year to gather words and images, I never would have predicted that the resulting profile would be published as Lyn and I prepare to leave the garden I built and loved for almost a dozen years. Well, that profile is in the Summer issue of Country Gardens magazine, standing as a strong and beautiful tribute to the acre that gave and taught me so much.

Tovah (left), and Kindra: On the job.

A Moving Lesson

Gardeners, homeowners, apartment dwellers: Hear me, now. From time to time, get rid of some of that stuff you've been hoarding in the basement and the garage. In those closets, shelves and drawers. You know what I'm talking about. Those clay pots you bought over time just in case you needed backups. That shiny new slow-cooker you thought you'd use so often. Those pants you haven't fit in for three years. That seriously colorful sweater that takes you back to the '80s; they're not coming back.

So, start clearing out your excess now, unless you think you'll never move. We have friends who have lived in the same place for decades, and they know they can't move; the pain of getting rid of layers and layers of belongings would just be too great.

Even after a mere 11 years, the combination of attachment and volume makes packing and tossing a huge challenge for Lyn and me.

(An example: Hundreds of books amounting to a walk through our reading lives had to be culled, comparable to writers' having to cut words from stories.) But, knowing we'll be moving to Marietta, Georgia, in about a week, we've almost gotten the job done; empty shelves now share space with full boxes.

We divided the labor. Lyn's tackling the basement, while I work the garage/potting shed. I must say she's done better than I. Moreover, she's not only doing the basement; she's packing much of the rest of the house too.

Motivated by her organized progress, I kicked up my game, filling a lot of boxes and emptying a lot of garage shelves in the last few days.

Way overstocked, I'm keeping enough pots (below) to satisfy . . .

. . . and getting rid of enough to make me feel righteous about sparing down. 

Years ago, I would have taken these pots just in case I had a plant-buying binge at my next garden. But, I've learned my lesson, and I've learned it well. I'm done with hoarding. And fortunately, our next home has no basement and no garage.

Prelude to a Leaving

In step with the calendar's turning another page, change is in the air; Lyn and I are selling our Connecticut home and garden – and preparing to buy a home and start a garden in Georgia before May turns to June.

As we were exploring the whethers, ifs and hows over the last few months, we gradually got used to the once unthinkable prospect of leaving such a carefully built garden and a home fitted and furnished just as we wanted; both would nurture us for the rest of our lives, we had thought.

But, we have always known, and now we affirm again, that the only constant in life is change.

To be sure, we will miss friends and other Nutmeggers who've so warmly welcomed us to East Haddam, this scenic town of about 10,000 hard by the Connecticut River, whose natural beauty and bountiful greenspace are protected with contagious civic zeal.

I was on Land Trust Board.

While we hold dear our times and friends here, we also know this is a good move – the right one at the right time.

Our Georgia daughter Leslie and her 8-year-old son Henri can use our help, and we'll benefit from giving it, as they both are truly fine and delightful humans. Moreover, if we should ever grow old, they could help us too.

We do not go as strangers; Georgia is a place we've always loved.

To be sure, I, a native of Alabama who also lived for years in Mississippi, just keep on going back to Georgia; this will be my third move to the Peach State, Lyn's second. Previously, we lived in a neighborhood of Victorian homes in Atlanta's West End.

This time around, we'll live some 20 miles north of the city, in Marietta, whose bustling square is a gathering place for many of the town's 57,000 residents. When I first lived in Atlanta and worked at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the 1970s, many Georgians pronounced the town's name May-retta. Whether many still use that pronunciation is in some ways my gauge of how much a place may change amid an influx of people from far-flung places, where language all sounds the same.

Lyn was an official at the 1996 Games.

For now, there is the goodbye and the preparation for it. Including the process of discarding long-forgotten, unused items stored for years in the basement or garage. And closets, chests, kitchen drawers. Everything from excessive t-shirts and clay pots, potting soil to multiple bottle openers and gallon jugs and books. It's cathartic discarding all this; it brings a feeling of lightness and happy righteousness.

But how does one say goodbye to the home and garden of a lifetime?

One room, plant, stone at a time. Right there is the best room ever for reading and for getting orchids to bloom. Here's the Japanese maple I bought for its height. Over there – the lilac I planted as a baby; look at it now. That boulder? I remember how long it took for the man with the backhoe to get it in juuust the right place. "You're close!" I'd shouted. "Six inches to your left!"

Now, as leaving time nears, I focus more and more on the next canvas, about as blank as this one was back in 2001. For inspiration, I go back to the two images that show this space in front of the house in 2001, and in 2010.

Along with these images, I'll take a few reminders of this garden – a chunk of moss here, a cutting from a prize shrub there. A little piece of the passalong perennial. A stone, naturally.

And as a bridge between here and there, I'll return to Georgia some of my traveling plants, including the queen of the travelers, Sarah Frond, the Boston fern that was the first plant I bought when Lyn and I began living together in Washington, D.C. From the nation's capital, Sarah went with us to Atlanta.

Like Sarah, a couple of pieces of lava rock are going back to Georgia. The little red rock was a gift from a gardening friend who left it on our Atlanta porch one Christmas Eve. The maple planted in it is a gift, too, from a Connecticut gardening friend.

I bought the gray stone at a grocery store in Atlanta. It's been home to various plants over the years and now is growing a lilac; this'll be interesting, as that shrub is not "supposed" to grow in Georgia. I hope it can't read.

Always, timing's everything. We're leaving after the hardest winter I've ever seen, and I've done time in Cleveland. Moreover, if I had to choose between all hot and all cold, I'd take all cold. So, it ain't the winter what done it; that said, I will certainly enjoy a longer growing season down South.

As timing would have it, spring has only just begun in earnest here in my acre of gardens. All the beautiful bloomers and leafers are beginning to lively up, promising the rebirth that we all welcome in gardening and life.

Heading South to home to start again, I take it as a sign.

Where Has Work Pride Gone?

One of the more memorable magazine covers I recall from many years ago was headlined: "Why is Service So Bad?"

That question came back to me as we three men stood in my friend Harry's kitchen telling stories about car-repair wars. Mine involved a Prius battery – not the big battery powering the hybrid engine. This was the smaller "auxiliary" battery that runs the lights, radio, computer and such.

Lyn enjoys a contemplative moment before the battery dies.

On the day the battery died, Lyn, the primary Prius driver, came in and said those words nobody wants to hear: "I don't know what's wrong, but it won't start." 

Suffering through the hard cold days of winter, the little battery conked out last month. Yes, I could have tested and changed it before it checked out on us, but, silly me, I thought the Toyota service people would have done that, as the car is a 2006 model, and as I had the car gone over thoroughly, replacing various parts in November, 2012 to the tune of $1336.85. And, then routinely serviced in February, a month before the battery failed, at a cost of $176.91. All at a dealership in Westbrook, Connecticut.

Thinking the battery could not possibly be shot, I tried over and over to start the car, finally accepting the astonishing truth: Somebody failed to check the battery. When I telephoned the Westbrook service department and said that, the answer was a verbal shrug, as the service adviser noted that she couldn't know whether the mechanic had tested it, but if so, and determining it was dying, "we would have been happy to sell you a battery."

Not believing I'd be in good hands at that dealer, I had the car towed to the Toyota dealer in Colchester, Connecticut, where service people echoed my disbelief, then set about changing the battery in a routine job, quick and fairly priced.

My experience led to Harry's telling about a similar episode with his family's Chevy SUV, whose brakes screeched like they needed work – an easily identifiable sound. Harry said the dealer checked and pronounced the brakes fine.

The third man in this conversation was a neighbor, who happens to train mechanics; he checked out Harry's SUV, driven primarily by his wife Sue, confirmed the brakes needed fixing and did the job, making the vehicle safe to drive.

I don't know how common our stories are, but we all agreed there is a general problem that cuts across trades and professions.

Too many "take no pride in their jobs," said Harry, marveling that "people who do have pride are looking for jobs."

The buddy who fixed Harry's Chevy said: "It scares me," that so many take so little pride in their work.

It scares me, too. Whether a lack of pride or run-of-the-mill incompetence, problems like ours could wind up getting somebody stranded by a dead battery or smashed up with dead brakes.

Bonsai Get Sprung, Celebrate Spring

Despite temperatures in the 30s as I write this on a sunny Sunday morning, despite that, I know spring has arrived, officially; the bonsai have left the garage.

Free at last from the longest stay inside the garage.

Normally, my bonsai go in late fall and come out in March. But there's nothing normal about this year's weather. Now, however, all's good. The bonsai will catch up with their recovery from months in low light, their suspended animation.

Already, some bonsai show signs of reflecting the flowering colors of the season.

The rhododendron 'PJM' is budded and blooming for the first time since I dug it out of the ground two years ago after it had grown for about 10 years. I did that to create an "instant" bonsai whose trunk base is much larger and aged-looking than it would have been had I started the bonsai from a small plant.

'PJM' growing big and strong.

Quince will show real fine, once it gets going. After the flowers, fruit will dangle from several branches.

Quince just getting started.

My collection, displayed in a pea-graveled area near the side door, always offers a calming welcome, a transition from the outside world.

Leafing and blooming a couple years ago.

The bonsai don't yet look like the image below, but they've come a mighty long way from where they were. 

Boston, Bombs and America

Bombs in Boston take me all the way back to the times I traveled the world as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s, looking for news and often finding routine violence, destruction and the fear of getting bombed at any moment. It all became routine.

In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, for example, my guides kept their semi-automatic weapons on the back seats of their vehicles, covered with blankets. Walking near the Knesset one day, I heard a loud explosion that sent me scurrying for cover, only to discover it was a construction blast, not an incoming rocket launched by Palestinians.

An Israeli I was talking with when the noise hit smiled sadly and never flinched. "It happens all the time," she said.

How sad, I thought, to become inured to ever-present danger. What must it be like to live day to day with the knowledge that at any moment a bomb hidden in a trash can could blow up and kill randomly.

That was then. Before Egypt and Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya made bombs and carnage routine fodder for TV news. Still, that was somewhere else.

Now, Boston's bombing recalls so many others, including those of the 1960s and more recently, the one in Oklahoma City in 1995. They remind me that I really don't have to wonder what it feels like to know anything can happen anytime. Nor does anyone else in America; we've been tempered by fire.

Magical, Mysterious Appearances

In order to see, we sometimes have to stop looking.


So it was with clivia. Throughout late winter and early spring, I'd peek between the strappy leaves, looking for signs of blooms. Nothing.

Then, this week, there came a change in the weather; suddenly the outdoors beckoned, taking me out there, diverting my attention from all things indoors, including clivia. While I wasn't looking at it, it had been working hard to produce its first blossom of the season. And what a stunner it promises to be as it continues to push its way up through the leaves to stand atop its sturdy stalk.

Over and over, I experience examples of looking without seeing. Like the time I could not find a ring full of my main keys, including house, car and post office box.

Convinced they were gone for good, I had new keys made. And, I stopped looking. Weeks later, I removed the cover from the compartment holding my car's spare tire, and there, right on top of the spare, was my key ring.

Similarly, who among us hasn't had "refrigerator blindness," looking desperately for mayonnaise to make the perfect sandwich, only to have it go missing until the next day when it shows up.

Blossoms are notorious for magically appearing after gardeners have bird-dogged buds for days on end. Clivia is my latest example. Overnight, when I wasn't looking, a second flower squeezed up through the leaves. 

Together, they produce a mighty pleasing fragrance that decorates the living room, which may be why I was compelled to walk over – and see. With warmth growing and buds on shrubs and trees bursting like fireworks in July, I can hardly wait to get out there and see what I stop looking for.

Some Things Are Not Disposable

When it started is hard to say. Maybe it was when appliances such as television sets, refrigerators, washing machines stopped lasting 30 years or more. When we stopped repairing computers and just bought new ones. The prices had dropped, along with any expectancy of a long life. 

Bit by bit, we came to where we are now: the disposable society. Even houses and sports arenas became disposable; we casually dubbed them "tear-downs," and it was cheaper not to keep them.

In this environment, it is refreshing to come across a relic from the past that escaped the trash pile. So it was the other day when, recalling a coffeemaker Lyn had when we married twentysome years ago, I asked if it was still around, knowing its 30-cup capacity would relieve me of repeatedly using a relatively small-capacity French press when I brewed group-style coffee.

Old coffee machine also a time machine to the past.

After I toted  the 14-inch tall pot up from the basement and fired it up, it took us back to the 1980s when Lyn, then Linda Harris, anchored newscasts at WBZ-TV in Boston. The remains of her identification label still stick to the pot.

Beyond the '80s, this old pot took us back to our childhoods in the 1950s – the era of the coffee percolator. The aluminum pots our parents used at home were smaller versions of Lyn's old office percolator.

Never having used this java workhorse, I carefully calculated the ratio of coffee to water and plugged in the pot for brewing. In just a few minutes, a red light lit,
visible through repair tape, signaling the brew was done.

On the home brewer  one knew coffee was ready when a glass ball on the lid showed bubbling brown liquid. 

The first cup was strong, really strong, even for a high-test brew lover like me. Lyn and others decided it needed watering down to be drinkable. But the more I sipped, the more I got used to it. Pretty soon, I was enjoying it.

I had seen the same pleasure on Dad's face and on faces of countless other coffee drinkers. Many men, like my Dad and Lyn's Gran, poured coffee into a saucer, then blew on it before slurping – to cool the steaming liquid and intensify the flavor at the same time. 

And the percolators they used? Disposable, no; they kept them until they wore out. Which was never.

April and Springtime

I hope April doesn't fool me the way March did – dumping big loads of bad weather. I always celebrate March 1 as the meteorological start of spring; it feels better than waiting for the vernal equinox later in March. I know, however, that spring's arrival has many markers – and they're not the same for everyone. So, here I go again, welcoming spring.

Among the ways I know it's spring:

– Moths gather at the porch light and try to follow us indoors at night.

– Buds begin ripening on rhododendron, pieris, lilac.

Rhododendron

Pieris

Lilac

– Light jackets replace the heavy ones.

– Skies send rain instead of snow.

– The bed gets one fewer blanket.

– Fits of sneezing follow garden walkabouts.

– The alarm-clock birds return to duty.

These are but a few signs of the season. Whatever anyone thinks of spring's arrival, Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem "Spring"  is knowingly cynical. I've loved this poem since I discovered it in the 1960s – and have quoted pieces of it in writings from time to time. This year, this April Fool's Day, I read it again. And celebrate April, and spring, with its many signs.

In its entirety, here's "Spring":

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Happy April.

Maddening March's Long Run

April, waiting in the wings, clears its throat, but March remains reluctant to leave the stage. Its calling cards, snow and ice, pattern my earth in spots ranging from small to large – to giant swaths that seem not to have shrunk in weeks. Today, with less than a week to go, March will have to step it up if it wants to clear out of here in time for April to have a clean canvas.

Herb garden's still buried, but route from kitchen to garage is passable.

Slowly, slowly, path to the front door rises from beneath the snow. 

Out back may be the last snow standing. Cover extends to field and beyond.

Pity poor Bette. Just when she ventures out, a visitor makes her cower.

The sheer weight of time, along with sporadic temperatures above freezing, will erase the aging snow cover. Eventually.

Fortunately, March always goes, even if it leaves behind some of its raggedy white cloaks. And April always comes, scattering buds, leaves and flowers – but, like us, keeping a sharp eye, hoping maddening March-type weather doesn't double back for an encore.

     

Winterbound: the Upside and the Backside

Out of this longest cold season I've ever known, some good has come: I've enjoyed what a friend of mine in the North Georgia mountains used to call "some serious butt time."

A neighbor back in the late 1990s, she was talking about sitting out on our cabin porches on hot days and cool nights, listening to birds and our melodic creek. Here in Connecticut's frozen 2013 I'm talking about sitting indoors, reading, writing and eating.

With so much butt time, I've gained new appreciation for my king chairs, valued (if not particularly valuable) ones collected over the last 20-some years with Lyn's encouragement and designer eye.

Perhaps every couple has some version of our special seating; in every room with chairs I have mine, and Lyn has hers. They allow us to talk, read, watch television, play with gadgets, eat. Be.

Living room king chair sits well for TV, reading, fireside chats.

Fitting that it once served in an English pub; it's in the dining room now.

In with the books, plants and sunshine. And sometimes the napping. 

From house to man garage/potting shed/bonsai storage center.

King chairs are an alien concept to some visitors; they settle in, unaware of the special role these chairs play. Others sense something about the size and placement and sit elsewhere. Happily, friends and relatives have learned where not to sit. Which makes for decidedly more pleasant visits. 

Occasionally, one of us will intercept a first-time visitor and deftly steer him to another chair. Occasionally, too, I wonder if mine is odd behavior. Or whether it's just typical of in-a-rut, set-in-our-ways old people.

Amid such thoughts, I have one other that pulls me up, reassures me that no, the juices still flow. That I have a variety of king chairs, but, as the country music legend George Jones song says: I don't need no rockin' chair.

 

Searching for Signs of Survival

After weeks of ice, cold and snow, today feels like a day of transition – if not to spring, then at least to pre-spring. Yesterday's teasing 50s had to be a sign.

Even as big winds blow and a little more snow falls, I know that nothing lasts forever; spring's inevitable rising will overcome winter's stubborn persistence.

Heading out to the back garden, I'm surprised to feel myself sinking half a foot into the aging, crunchy snow, determinedly unmelted. As much trouble and pain as the big snows have caused, they likely have helped some plants stay alive by providing insulation and moisture.

Along the way, I note signs of survival all around. Lilac looks like it's thinking about swelling some buds. Rhododendrons that took last year off show promise of blooming this year. Conifers, wearing winter colors of gray and rust, shrug at wind, snow, cold and shout: "Bring it! Hit me with your best shot."

No surprises, so far. These plants survive hard winters without breaking a sweat; they're supposed to. But I am headed for the two camellias I planted in the ground, even though they are not "supposed to" grow this far north.


Both are Camellia japonica 'Bob Hope'. In their normal growing range, they typically bloom in winter, but living outdoors in Connecticut they're more likely to bloom in spring or summer. If they survive.

The taller one, now ending its second winter outside, bloomed last spring. Buoyed by that success, I planted a smaller one last year, and it's now ending its first winter outdoors.

Carpet piece and tree may provide extra protection from the cold and wind for small camellia.

Approaching the smaller plant, I see it's up to its ankles in snow but seems to be taking it in stride. It has buds that seem fine, succulent, even. Barring surprises, including a serious late deep freeze, I believe blooms will come.

These are excellent signs, I say to myself, turning now to look at the taller plant, the one that bloomed profusely last spring  Alas, that was then. Today, last year's big bloomer stands budless.

Budless, but very alive. It's possible of course that buds could appear later, or it could skip a year because it's been in shock for almost two years of outdoor living. In any case, it stands as a vibrant sign of survival. I admire it, turn around and head back, looking for others. 

Killer Cat's Been Driven Mad

Pity poor Cat Bette.

Full of moxie and swagger all last year, efficient and lethal as a killer of birds, rodents and my patience, she now has devolved into a lump of depression, rarely venturing out into the world that used to be hers.

It's snowing today, which is sinking her deeper into her funk. Like a mad Shakespearean character, she wanders from room to room, howling from time to time, eerily echoing the 40 mile per hour gusts trying to get inside the house.

Occasionally she snaps to and approaches the kitchen door . . .

. . . only to hear the wind, which drives her back to the safety of another spot on another rug.

Even when we toss her out the door or when she dares to try a walkabout, she's squealing like a stuck pig to get back inside in less than half an hour. And when she dashes in, as if propelled by a tornado, she wails for food – even if she wolfed down a fortifying snack just before going out.

Her killing grounds have been covered with snow for weeks, the temperatures have been brutally low, and the birds are rarely seen, so in some ways her lack of motivation is understandable. But I believe Bette's funk goes beyond the obvious.

For one thing, neighboring cats go out and in regularly, seemingly without undue fear or pain. Some come by to check on Bette, like the one that left these tracks going by the kitchen steps just this morning:

Bette, on the other hand, studies an open door, cocking her head to the side before jerking herself around and bolting in the opposite direction – as if suddenly frightened by something I can't see.

I think I've figured it out; it's not the weather. It's the ghosts of birds.

The Rorschach Orchid

You can see the same plant – or anything else for that matter – over and over in the same place, and there's that one time it surprises you; it looks different to you. Like something else altogether.

That's what happened on a recent early morning when we saw one of my familiar red-leaf jewel orchids (here's one in bloom), the one that lives in the fan window. "Look at that," Lyn said. "It looks like a cardinal."

I thought it did, too. Until I photographed it. Then, it was a hummingbird.

We must have been looking at the leaf from an angle that eliminated the stem, which the camera picked up as the hummer's beak.

There may be eyes and brains that that could look at this image and see nothing but a leaf. That's one way to be. But I can't imagine that.

Garden of Permanent Spring

Like the professional weather watchers, I mark March 1 as the first day of spring. This works for me not just meteorologically, but also psychologically. In life and gardening, winters get longer as I get older. And the one ending now was bone-chilling, snow-drifting, mind-numbing cold.

What better way to celebrate its end than to look at pictures of a Japanese garden in Georgia that felt seasonless to me when I visited it in December, a time that is considered "down time" in many gardens.

The 40-acre Japanese garden is one of 16 meticulously designed and tended spaces at Gibbs Gardens, set amid a natural wonderland of 300 acres in Ball Ground, Georgia, about an hour's drive from Atlanta.
 

Ronni (left), Leslie

On a good day for driving, and just chilly enough to make good walking, gardening friends Leslie Breland and Ronni French introduced me to Gibbs, where we met up with marketing director Barbara Schneider, who graciously showed us around, though the garden had closed for the season (now  re-opened).

During our walkabout, I made a few happy snaps, which offer a small sample of what we saw. No images, however, can show what such art can make you feel.

 

Sculpted pine on shore of lake. Mesmerizing.

View from across the lake, including stones carefully chosen and placed.

Water-loving bald cypress, with knees aplenty – a natural wonder.

Lichen, moss on tree creates aged, timeless beauty.

Leaves on the ground, beautiful as copper coins, signal season's passing.

The walk, which lasted a long time, but seemed over in a short time, was a brilliant illustration of how soothing a space can be: reassuring in its verdant aliveness, a constancy bridging all seasons. Call it a permanent spring.

I needed that during this winter. As spring begins, I still need it. The picture below, taken today in my front garden in Connecticut, shows why.