Cacoethes Scribendi: It's Summer ('Bee'-hia Grass) Time in Florida

Cacoethes scribendi--scribbler's itch--has finally got my attention. It's as irritating as an overgrown lawn in the midst of a manicured subdivision. I might have been missing from the blogging scene for a couple of weeks, but our summer lawn never gives up--at least not while the rain falls on a regular basis. We have a mix of grass varieties in what passes for a lawn at our home near Pensacola, and the star of the bunch, at least in my mind, is Bahia Grass 'Pensacola,' Paspalum notatum. I think it's the perfect grass for our hot-summer-cool-winter, Northwest Florida climate. It's drought-resistant, going dormant when the rain doesn't come, has few insect problems, and--if left to grow for longer than a week--attracts those wonderful pollinators I can't get enough of in my vegetable garden, especially bees. Since we can't be home often enough this summer to keep the lawn mowed to a respectable height, the bees have been especially busy. Just look at the size of those pollen baskets on that bee's hind legs!

When I managed to sneak away from SAM for a couple of days last week, it wasn't so I could go partying with the girls, even though Daughter and I did manage to stop by Blazzues in Pensacola last Wednesday night, which is swing night. She's the swing dancer, and I don't do either one--swing or dance. I had fun watching her get swung around the dance floor while I politely rejected offers to dance, drink, and make merry with the menfolk. My excuses were genuine. I already have a full dance card--points to her wedding ring--and my left foot has been acting more sinister than usual since I whacked it against a concrete step while moving into the apartment. It's a good thing we have a riding mower to tackle this monster of an acre and health insurance for a visit to the podiatrist. At least it--the lawn, not the foot--seems like a monster in the summertime when the Bahia blooms and its seed heads sprout. Besides the seed heads, the only other irritating aspect of this grass that I can think of is its tendency to dull the mower blades. This UF publication recommends setting the blades to keep the grass height at 3 to 4 inches, which is higher than most turf grasses and therefore not attractive to most lawn lovers. It provides "a good low-maintenance lawn where slightly reduced visual quality is acceptable." In that case, it suits me just fine even though it's certainly not a grass cushion to rest on while reading your favorite summer-time scribe. I give it a "V" for victory. What's your favorite kind of grass--the lawn kind, I mean--and summer-time scribe? 

Cacoethes Scribendi

If all the trees in all the woods were men;

And each and every blade of grass a pen;

If every leaf on every shrub and tree

Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea

Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes

Had nothing else to do but act as scribes,

And for ten thousand ages, day and night,

The human race should write, and write, and write,

Till all the pens and paper were used up,

And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,

Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink

Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.

A poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Malus: Why Did the Apple Get Such a 'Bad' Name?

The Fall of Man, Hugo Van Der Goes, 1470

After looking at my Prunus (plum) trees last week and wondering about their relative worth as cultivars, I got to thinking about another member of the Rosaceae family--the ubiquitous and oft-maligned apple. Marnie of Lilacs and Roses fame gave me the idea for this post with her funny comment in my last post. She asked "Don't we all have yards full of the 'recommended' disappointments?" I, for one, am guilty as charged with that crime. You know, the one that involves listening to bad advice because I see something pretty or maybe familiar from another garden in another place and time and just have to have it, no matter the consequence. Okay, I confess: I sin regularly; I'm an impulsive gardener. SAM caught me in the act, and my lusty passion was exposed--this notion came from a recent post by the Idiot Gardener; you will get a kick out of his humor--at one of the big box stores on Saturday. I had a good excuse, really! We had to get the house and the yard--especially the yard, in my opinion--ready for a real estate open house yesterday. After we had plopped several bags of mulch on the large, flat cart, SAM went off in search of something in the hardware section of the store and left me to my own devices in the garden section. He should know better by now than to do something like that. I wasn't too indulgent this time, though, just adding a few six-packs of annuals--not beer!--to the cart so I could freshen up the herb/flowering bulb pots near the front porch. First impressions are important in the real estate market, especially these days. With all of the foreclosures and short-sale deals on the market, every little bit of home-selling trickery will be attempted--nothing unethical, mind you. No back-of-the-limo, down-to-the-wire, last-minute appeals here to sway any undecided, onlooking fence-sitters. I was out front and center in the yard, adding my mulch and flowers, and on Sunday we had several visitors to the open house. Okay, so three of them were neighbors, one just curious, but two of them, an older couple down the street have a daughter, you see, with husband and kids, who wants a bigger house and, of course, a pool! Does she like gardening? If her parents are any indication, she must. Okay, she will probably pass muster, but that first couple who arrived won't. I couldn't gauge much about her honest opinion, other than the fact that her nose kept getting higher by the minute. My mom refers to this type of person as a (with an umlaut on the "a") hoch-nase. His smirking response to SAM's question about gardening was: "Well, our dogs do, and our kids have four-wheelers!" Nope, sorry. It's not your kind of house or yard or neighborhood. There are no covenants here, but some things have to at least pass Walk2Write's litmus test. Lord knows, I've probably just squeaked by in the neighbors' opinion. I hope they all realize that my intention has always been good.

 (Church, downtown Tallahassee, March 2010)

So, what about Malus and its bad reputation? According to some apple growers who are serious about informing people and keeping the ball of public opinion in their court, that painting by Hugo Van Der Goes sparked a forest fire of discontent among apple lovers, beginning in the fifteenth century. Most of the malcontents were apparently illiterates, believing that the apple was the fruit Eve had craved in the Garden of Eden and that it equates with temptation, lust, debauchery, you-name-it, just as the Church had hammered home to them. They couldn't read (or maybe didn't care to check) that the apple is never mentioned in the book of Genesis. As you can imagine, the apple growing market must have suffered tremendously as a result of manipulating public opinion. Interestingly, the same thing happened during the late 1980s and early 90s with the Alar scare, only this time the Church--as we know it, anyway--had no hand in the problem. Sensationalism, somehow, got out of hand once more to sway public opinion. It kind of makes you wonder about intention and its consequences. William Blake probably didn't help the apple's case with his verse about venomous spite. He may have been riding the long-running wave of public opinion to make his point, whatever it was.

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright,

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

(a poem by Wiliam Blake from Songs of Experience, 1794)

Think (W)hole Thursday--Plum Good!

If birds of a feather flock together,

Do bats have a thing for flocking of wing?

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away,

How will those docs ever earn their pay?

Would a plum chewed in May

Make this "reform" okay?

A trip to Leon Sinks Geological Area last weekend produced some fruit for thought. I guess I must be "karst" (think Irish accent here). There has to be some limestone bedrock embedded in my brain that finally gave way. Today I worked a couple of hours at the Santa Rosa County (University of Florida) Extension Demonstration Gardens in Milton. Now that the weather has finally warmed up a little here in sunny Florida (ha!), work and joy aplenty await the willing worker who will give up some time to dig in the dirt and savor some rhyme! I worked most of the time with a veteran of the program with which I'm involved. When I arrived, she put me to work trimming some Japanese maple trees, and we talked about many things, garden-related and not. One of the things that impressed me the most about her was her willingness to let go. Let go? From our talk as we worked, I gathered that she spends a lot of time helping other people. She has been a Master Gardener for a number of years, yet she doesn't try to lord it over anyone just learning the ropes. I had a free hand to shape those trees, and I would have continued shaping them ad infinitum just for the sake of talking with her. Specific details of that conversation don't really matter. Over the course of a couple of hours, I learned--again, mind you!--that intention is key to my health and progress as a human being.

I took that picture of plum tree blossoms this morning before I drove to Milton. Last year, SAM and I planted two plum (Prunus) trees after finding healthy specimens at a local nursery. I went with the recommendations of the employee there and purchased two different cultivars of Prunus salicina for the purpose of optimizing pollination and fruit production, one of them known as "Bruce" and the other "Burbank." I wish I--and maybe the nursery owner(s)--had taken the time to be better informed and had followed certain recommendations backed by years of recent research. Maybe someday I will learn to seek, recognize, and follow the path of good intention.

We see the reverse in TREES of what we do in [RIVERS]. In these, all comes from one common stock and is distributed into innumerable branches, beginning at the root where the trunk is biggest of all, and ending in the extremities of the smallest twigs. The water here, in the sap of those trees, has a contrary course from what it has in rivers, where the course begins in the extremities of the smallest branches, and ends in the mouth of the river where the river is largest, and all the waters are collected into one body...

(from Jonathan Edwards' (1703-1758) Images or Shadows of Divine Things)