WFREC: Cheers! Here, Plants, Everybody Knows Your Name

I don't know why, but for me it's a pleasure to pull weeds--as long as they're in someone else's garden. Maybe it's because I get to learn something new every time I visit. Wouldn't you know this lovely shrub is a Clerodendron ugandense (maybe 'Blue Wings')? I didn't until I asked the real Master Gardener in charge of volunteers at WFREC. It (the WFREC Gardens in Milton) is one of those places where, if you're lucky enough to be a plant, everybody knows your name. Everybody except me. I'm still learning, and it takes a lot of repetition. One of these days those plants will be as familiar to me as the characters on Cheers! I credit years of television reruns for that phenomenon.

Bees visiting this shrub don't have blue wings or extraordinary power, but they do tend to transcend ordinary when captured on a flower.

Some beds, it may be noted, were designed in formal style. If not for outside heat and obligations, I would have stayed there quite a while.

Who can resist antique roses that invite you to sit a spell and enjoy their smell? Forget your venting and breathe in their scent(ing)?

I'm glad that there were signs to remind me of the names. If not for that small help, I would have to resort to games...

Like memory-jogging-hopscotch or pick-a-plant-by-number or jump-in-the-nearest-fountain. Or smell-the-rosemary or ask-the-master-gardener-again or climb-the-nearest-mountain.... Oh dear, I would not have you deluded. In Florida, you see, the mountains are not included.

If "cool" is what you're looking for, then take a walk among shaded caladiums galore.

Some weeds in other beds are left for next time 'round. You won't notice if you don't look closely--they never make a sound.

(Thanks to Mary, my friend from NFREC and Gardening Friends of the Big Bend, who gave me the idea for this post.)

Growing Chamberbitter--Mithridates' Curse or Blessing in Disguise?

Chamberbitter, variously known as Phyllanthus urinaria, leafflower, shatterstone, gripeweed, and Bhumyamalaki (Sanskrit) makes itself right at home in my northwest Florida garden. If I didn't know better, I would say it's a noxious weed. It has its way with every flower bed, the veggie garden, and any other cultivated spot in my yard. The seeds it bears on the undersides of its leaves spread easily by design. Every time I pull up one plant by the roots, several dozen more potential plants fall to the ground to take its place. Since it possesses such an obviously aggressive method of reproduction, I just had to know: where did this plant come from and what is it good for? An agent with the Clemson University Cooperative Extension Service thinks it might be something other than a noxious weed. Shawn Jadrnicek calls it "A Valuable Weed [that] Lurks in the Garden." If you click on this link that I've provided, scroll down to read his article. According to him, this weed is anything but noxious. In fact, if ancient Ayurveda practice has any credibility--and who can argue with thousands of years' practice--chamberbitter might well be the answer to my current (perennial) weed dilemma: seek and destroy or harvest and use? Hey, if the vanga sena treatment works--consuming seeds with rice water--I might soon be poo-pooing those gynecological symptoms that menstruating and perimenopausal women consider so burdensome. And that purported benefit would be only the beginning. Look what else chamberbitter has the capability of conquering:

• anorexia
• hyperacidity
• gastric burning
• peptic ulcers
• urinary disorders
• diabetes mellitus
• skin disorders
• liver disturbances
• anemia 

...Therefore, since the world has still

Much good, but much less good than ill,

And while the sun and moon endure

Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,

I'd face it as a wise man would,

And train for ill and not for good,

'Tis true the stuff I bring for sale

Is not so brisk a brew as ale:

Out of a stem that scored the hand

I wrung it in a weary land.

But take it: if the smack is sour,

The better for the embittered hour;

It should do good to heart and head

When your soul is in my soul's stead;

And I will friend you, if I may,

In the dark and cloudy day...

 

--from "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff," by A. E. Housman, 1896-- 

 

If there's any hope for my garden, it might be as a nursery for this pernicious--as most horticulturalists as well as naturalists consider it--weed that came aboard with some other, more delightfully ornamental, horticulturally recommended, exotic introduction to my landscape. The veggies I would like to see growing here don't find the soil or other conditions appealing, but the chamberbitter does for some reason. Could it be that Mithridates has finally found a way to confound the Western modus operandi in the garden of all places?

...There was a king reigned in the East:

There, when kings will sit to feast,

They get their fill before they think

With poisoned meat and poisoned drink,

He gathered all that springs to birth

From the many-venomed earth;

First a little, thence to more,

He sampled all her killing store;

And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,

Sate the king when healths went round.

They put arsenic in his meat

And stared aghast to watch him eat;

They poured strychnine in his cup

And shook to see him drink it up:

They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:

Them it was their poison hurt.

--I tell the tale that I heard told.

Mithridates, he died old.

--A. E. Housman, as above--

Nature Notes--To Ogle or Not--The Nature (or Nurture) of Weeds and Aquifers in Florida

Ramblingwoods.com (Michelle) has invited us to find something interesting in nature and post about our impressions. Please visit her site by clicking on the link above or to the side of this post and find links to other bloggers who have joined her Nature Notes meme this week.

We (SAM and I) kept Micah overnight for the first time a couple of weeks ago. His parents spent the night in the cuddy cabin of their boat so they could watch the Blue Angels air show the next day at Pensacola Beach. They figured that watching the show from the water has got to be more comfortable than mingling with thousands of other sweaty bodies on the beach in mid July, and it was. Micah's visit included a trip to a local park situated on a feeder creek for the Blackwater River, and we discovered this unusual looking (ugly?) duck. According to this site, it's a Muscovy duck, and its coloring suggests that it has been domesticated. Its willingness to come so close looking for a handout gave us another clue that it's not wild.

Micah just loves to fish--no hooks allowed just yet--especially with Jap-pah around to lend a hand. Jam-ah did not get a chance to take many pictures. She had one hand on the camera and one hand ready to keep Micah from falling in the water. A passion for fishing runs deep in this family's gene pool. I'm hoping that a passion for gardening does too.

On a recent morning, while listening to the local high school marching band practice nearby, I worked in the vegetable garden and mused about some things. In mid-July, the weeds grow bigger and stronger than just about anything else in the garden. Temps and humidity levels have been slightly more comfortable this past week, making the task of weeding much more bearable. I guess the latest heat wave got the best of me, and I let the hoe sit idle for too long. The weeds have gotten out of hand and run amok among the veggies. Of course, instead of the weather convincing me to take a break, it could have been the spirit of a former neighbor egging me on....

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I spent my last two years of primary and first two years of secondary (high) school in a small town in Illinois some 30 miles east of St. Louis. Dad was getting close to retirement from the Air Force and was on his last tour of duty after we had spent four years living in Germany. He wanted a real home--not on base--and a piece of land to call his own and plant with fruit trees, flowers, and vegetables. We settled, for a while, in a fixer-upper with an acre on the edge of town. It was close enough to school so that on nice days I could ride my bike or walk to class. Our closest neighbors, the Ogles, lived directly behind us on the original homestead, which included a several-acre pond surrounded by woods. It was accessed by a dirt road that ran right next to the Ogles' garden spot and close to their house, nearly hidden from view by brambles and untrimmed shrubbery. Mr. Ogle's brother had sold my parents their fixer-upper, and we learned that certain traits ran deep in and throughout that particular gene pool.

Most of the time I enjoyed helping my dad in our garden, except when hay-fever season arrived or when weed-pulling time came around, which was too often for me! The weather always seemed to be hot and sticky when the weeds threatened to take over the garden. Once in a while, Dad would feel sorry for himself and me, and we would grab our fishing rods, not poles--they were equipped with line guides and well-oiled, spin-casting reels--and head to the Ogles' pond, walking by their house to let them know where we were headed and why.

Dad had bought a small row boat so we could fish in style, and I felt honored when he finally let me take the oars and steer a course while he looked for signs of bass activity in the water. There were some whoppers in there, and we usually had success at bringing home some supper after a few hours on the water. Dad even taught me how to filet the fish we caught, telling me it was an important survival skill for a modern girl--a geeky one at that--to learn. Boy was I ever gullible!

On the way home after catching our limit, dictated by Mr. Ogle's scrutiny,--since he had stocked the pond he often referred to the bass as his babies--we would pass by his garden enclosed by a rusty wire fence. Dad would usually shake his head, sigh, and mutter a few choice words under his breath about the property's lack of obvious care. Though Mr. Ogle plowed up the garden each spring and it looked great then when newly planted, by the middle of summer the weeds had taken over, and some of them grew taller than the adolescent me! Apparently, the justification for this return to nature had something to do with the weeds protecting the tender vegetable plants from the scorching summer sun and keeping the soil intact during heavy downpours. Dad did not buy this explanation at all, but I thought it was a brilliant idea at the time. What could be better than not having to weed the garden in the heat of summer? I'm wondering even now if benign neglect isn't such a bad idea, especially since there are so many water management issues facing Floridians, and overpopulation in some areas is stretching the limits of the freshwater resource. After all, the Ogles seemed to harvest just as much or more produce from their overgrown garden spot as we did from our zealously tended one.

There was perhaps one major drawback to the wilderness garden concept--snakes. I did see a few of them occasionally slipping through the Ogles' fence onto my parents' property. From a distance, I don't consider them a nuisance at all. They take care of any animal pests that might chomp on the veggies and don't expect anything in return other than a little respect and a wide berth. These days, though, when I venture into the garden to pick what's left of the vegetables after the bugs and heat have taken their toll, I do take a sharp hoe with me, just in case I meet up with a snake that stands its ground. Saturday afternoon I witnessed one at least five feet long (not a fish tale, this one!) slithering as fast as I can run, across the back yard and into the brush line beyond our property. It was being chased and pecked at by a pair of mockingbirds which have a nest somewhere in one of my shrubs. I was amused and shocked at the same time. How could a five-foot snake in the garden escape my notice? It hid among the weeds and neglect.



"Consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds,--it will bear some iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration in the labor,--disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinction with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another. That's Roman wormwood,--that's pigweed,--that's sorrel,--that's piper-grass,--have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don't let him have a fibre in the shade; if you do he'll turn himself t'other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust...."--from Henry David Thoreau's Walden, Chapter 7, "The Bean-Field"