Garden Rant

Lighten Up, Francis.

At some point this afternoon, if you're not too busy chilling the Champagne and pouring yourself into that little black dress, you might hear me on All Things Considered ranting about The Conversation That Would Not End in 2007. 

That's right. I dared suggest that I was tired of talking about local food.  And now I must pay. The emails are swarming into my in-box like angry hornets.  I cannot possibly answer them all, so I come here, where we know how to turn a rant into a full-fledged brawl. The lines are open, folks.  Jump on in.

The gist of the commentary is that I don't object to eating locally-grown food--I love it. I just think it's time for us to stop obsessing over it.  I think we've become too pleased with ourselves and our farm stand lettuce.  We can't seem to stop talking about how virtuous and wonderful we are for having purchased or grown better broccoli for our plates.  But really, can't we think of anything else to talk about?

George Ball Ruined The Cook's Garden

Y'all remember The Cook's Garden, don't you? Cute little catalog with charming woodcut illustrations and interesting seed varieties from around the world?  Brought a bazillion interesting lettuce varieties from Europe, helping to fuel the craze for interesting mesclun varieties?

Now, I know that the catalog's founders, Shepherd and Ellen Ogden, sold the catalog to Park Seed years ago, probably before I even discovered it.  But somehow, Park managed to hang onto some of the catalog's charm and personality, and for many happy years I looked forward to the catalog's personable and reliable descriptions.  They always got my biggest seed order.

And then George Ball got involved. Yes, that's George Ball of Heronswood fame. CEO of the 125 year-old Burpee seed company. When he first bought the company in 2004, it didn't seem too worrisome.  Ellen Ogden, who stuck around to run the catalog, was quoted at the time as saying that nothing much would change:

Ogden says she expects the page count and format of the catalog, which uses illustrations instead of photographs, to remain the same. “I'm sure we'll stay within the same budget,” she says. “I don't think there will be that much change. I think George is very sensible and cautious in that respect. I don't think we'll be trying to expand it too much.”

Yeah well, that was 2004.  Yesterday the new Cook's Garden catalog arrived, and I'm sorry to report that it's another mundane color catalog filled with strangely dull, disagreeable pictures of plants I don't want to grow in my garden.

What the hell has happened, I wondered, to Mary Azarian's beautiful woodcut illustrations? Where are the interesting descriptions of obscure lettuces found in some Hungarian garden?

Guest rant: I love the lightlife

Here are fellow writer and gardener Ron Ehmke's thoughts on holiday lighting as installation art—Eliz

This is the photo I’ve been promising Elizabeth, that she in turn has been promising to share with GR readers:

Turns out it’s just as hard to photograph an over-the-top lighting display as it is to shoot an elaborate garden, so you’ll have to trust me when I say that photos don’t quite do this monster justice. Same problem with this beauty, located at the end of my block:

In this case, for instance, you cannot sense the stroboscopic effects or the synchronized aspects, and you cannot hear the accompanying music broadcast on Christmas Eve.

I haven’t actually been to this house in Holland, NY but I’ve seen it on local TV, and any home display that merits its own website and DVD is gonna catch my eye. If you missed my link to it in a comment on one of Susan’s recent posts, here’s another shout-out to an absurdly ambitious four-home collaboration in Ontario that can only be described as an interactive digital art project.

And that’s where I’m heading with all this: as I’ve noted elsewhere, I really do see holiday light displays as one of the few occasions when average citizens—people who don’t otherwise consider themselves “creative”—feel empowered to think and act like artists. Gardening, it occurs to me more and more, is another such opportunity, and it makes sense that many gardening centers raise extra income in the winter by hawking Christmas decorations. True, the possibilities for garishness and mindless consumerism are endless in both cases, but the same is true of capital-A art, too. (For the record, the examples of excess I’ve cited above just happened to be handy; I have no way to document the beauty I saw last night, in which the façade of a house and its surrounding landscaping were entirely bathed in two shades of blue LEDs, giving the home a dreamy, surreal glow that clearly bore the mark of a thoughtful designer—not so far, I’d suggest, from the work of an artist like Dan Flavin.)

Yes, excess electricity use is a bad thing, and I applaud people actively seeking creative alternatives. (Most of the homes above are moving to LEDs, I see. I'm still not convinced their appeal won’t fade along with most other mass-market trends, but if nothing else they expand the available palette in interesting ways.) As another GR commenter has pointed out, this is a time of year when we Northerners can use all the light we can get, whether from displays, candles, or fireplaces, and light is as promising a medium as greenery is in the summer. Shine on!

Gardening can save your life

I use my gardening as a form of meditation. I lose all negativity; it drops away like a dead skin and with it the pain goes.

That’s what Judy Toner, who suffers from fibromyalgia and depression, told writer Anne Dempsey in this story in the Irish Independent. Feeling totally without hope after two failed marriages, and in almost constant pain from her illness, which is related to chronic fatigue syndrome, Toner was sleeping 13 hours a day, and finally reached out to a suicide hotline. They talked her down—after hours—and called her back the next day. She told them she was going to try volunteering at a nearby public garden, Airfield, located in south Dublin.

Seven months later, Toner credits her first day of work at Airfield, which features five acres of ornamental plantings, including a highly-regarded walled garden, as the “beginning of the rest of her life.” She further asserts that she is only totally free from pain when she is gardening: digging, raking, and planting.

I’ll take her word that Airfield is a garden worth her daily labor—its website, oddly, is almost devoid of photography of the actual gardens (what little I found is here)—and I’m even more willing to believe that working in the garden has brought equally dramatic psychological and physical benefits. As not only the Washington Post has noted, gardening is great exercise. Writer, artist, and gardener Bruce Adams researched this for Buffalo Spree in 2006 and found a 1993 study by Barbara Ainsworth that rates gardening as providing the same benefit (i.e., same exertion levels) as moderate walking, bicycling, and water aerobics. Except that it’s better, because it’s not as stressful.

Add to this research Amy’s already cited about bacteria in dirt increasing seratonin levels, and Toner’s story seems good anecdotal evidence of the very real benefits of our favorite obsession. Now, if only we could convince those young would-be gardeners. And all the people we know who are still popping Prozac and vowing to get to the gym some day.

Hort Biz Gets Even Greener in '08

by Susan
This recent post lauded Garden Center Magazine's focus on sustainability in the new year and complained that since the mag isn't on line, we'd miss it.  Well, not to worry!  The first article, "We Really Can Recycle Horticultural Plastics" featuring three successful pot recycling programs, IS available in pdf via that link.  And in other news of the same excellent project, they also launched the Project Green Industry blog.  It's the one place that growers and retailers can find all the magazine's sustainability articles, but in even more depth than in print, including interview notes, trends and news.  Just add reader comments and you've got a forum going on these important subjects.  It's a great example of a magazine using the Internet to enhance the printed product.

When editor Carol Miller wrote to tell me about their new blog I naturally asked for an interview so I could pick her brain about all this.  Seems that the sustainability situation is "chaotic" right now in the U.S. industry, especially around the writing of standards for growers.  Should they have to give their employees paid maternity leave in order to get the highest rating?  And if GMO plants are to be banned, how should that be defined?  To include all hybrids?  And who should be writing the standards, anyhow?  Here's Carol's article about the controversy on Open Register, with insider details about Veriflora and EcoOptions from her very confidential source.

More news from Carol:

• Many Canadian municipalities have banned the use of pesticides on ornamental plants, unless the homeowner can prove there's an infestation.  So why are they ahead of us?  The suppliers there aren't as powerful as they are here in the U.S.  (Will we EVER figure out how to take money out of politics?  Sigh.) 
  

• Europeans follow the MPS standards for sustainability, which are proving to be quite effective, with the giant Ikea buying plants only from growers with the highest MPS rating. Input from the grower community helped make these standards so good.

• When Carol mentioned cracking down on pot volume I did a mental double-take, thinking the new hort rules were somehow connected to the War on Drugs.  But no, the crackdown is on compliance with ANSI standards for container size, so we won't be hearing about it on the talk shows after all.  And an even bigger pot issue is about how to recycle them, with ELLE plugs [pdf] made of paper and lycra showing promise.

• I was awfully impressed with a garden center near me that's almost 100 percent organic and asked if she's seeing much movement toward that nationally.  On the West Coast, yes, where we'd expect it, but they recently did a Green Trends survey of 209 garden centers and 55 percent said they were "passionate" about going organic.  And SOME of them must be right-coasters, maybe even no-coasters!

Washington Post says:To Get in Shape, Grow Vegetables

For real.  A full-page feature in the Weekend Section recommends these activities for getting in shape: dancing, taking a break at work to walk to a coffee shop and back, playing with kids, playing with dogs, joining a sports team, and watching TV while on the floor doing some crunches.  Then last (though first to most of us but we won't quibble) is this.

Be green:  And organic!  And stop spending so much money at Whole Foods!  Michael P. O'Donnell, editor of the American Journal of Health Promotion, prods his colleagues to plant a vegetable garden if they have the space.  (And in this area there are lots of community plots for folks who don't.)  It might not appear to be the most vigorous activity, but all that digging and watering and care-taking can add up.  Plus, O'Donnell says, it creates a "more personal relationship with food," especially when you play farmer and chef.

Wow, WaPo staff writer Ellen McCarthy gets it!  (Michele, take note.)  And how about this O'Donnell guy she's been reading? From his bio it looks like he's a worthy advocate for the cause. 

Divine Revelations, 2007

1. Sheet composting in the vegetable garden.  Where does mulching end and sheet composting begin?  I'm not sure, but possibly when you begin layering mulches, as I'm doing, with alpaca bedding next to the earth and ground-up leaves over it.  I'm not to the Ruth Stout point of knee-high mulch madness.  But this deeper mulching is certainly working for me--keeping down the weeds, keeping the soil moist, promoting explosive plant growth.  It's allowing me to have a BIG vegetable garden at a weekend house.
2. True red cranberry bean.  A strange bullet-shaped heirloom shell bean with a beautiful, shiny deep red skin.  So delicious, it turned my chili into a work of genius. 
3. Jarrahdale pumpkin.  A beautiful blue-grey pumpkin with insides that bake up dense and creamy, not stringy and watery, the bane of pumpkin pies.  Thanks to Jarrahdale, I'm getting "best pie I've ever eaten" reviews.
4. Variegated Solomon's seal.  This not-uncommon perennial, which theoretically craves moisture, was a complete star in the droughty summer of 2007, just getting bigger, lusher, and more beautiful, and saying to the world, "Drought, what drought?"
5. Callas sunk into my little fish pond.  See photo.
6. What the color scheme for my back beds really should be.  The bearded irises and Endless Summer hydrangeas are doing so well, I need to bring back the blue I've been banishing and get rid of all the pink flowers I don't much like anyway.  Blue, maroon, and yellow.  Now that's a color combination!
7. Blind date with my Garden Rant partners in Buffalo.  Of course I was going to like them.  But I had no idea they'd be quite as lovely as they are.    

Paradise Lost

This week, the NY Times ran a truly scary story about tropical diseases arriving for the first time in Italy, thanks to global warming and the tiger mosquitos that can now survive there.

Of course, at my country place in formerly frigid Zone 4, I now get at least half a dozen tick bites a year working in the garden.   My old dog Lulu has had Lyme disease uncountable number of times, and my nine year-old daughter has had it once.  If you ask the vet, he will tell you he never saw a tick until about 5 years ago.  They're a new arrival.

Garden and Travel Writers: Part II

Here's Part II of our interview with travel writer Chuck Thompson, author of a new book called Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer, continued from Monday:

You raise a very interesting point when you say that "inside information on the vagaries of the travel industry itself borders on sedition."  This is very true of garden writing as well--the horticultural industry is kind of like the man behind the curtain we're not supposed to talk about.  Which is interesting, because other industries--entertainment, high-tech, automotive--are discussed and criticized.  What's up with that?

I can't speak to the horticultural industry, but travel and transportation companies are so competitive and operate on such doomsday margins that they have erected elaborate veils of secrecy to shield their operating procedures from competitors. A general atmosphere of paranoia pervades the entire industry. There's also a strong sense of loyalty and rivalry in the industry. My sister works as a banking administrator and I think she's changed banks and jobs probably four times in her fifteen years in the business—it's rare that a pilot for one airline will ever switch and go to work for another one.

You talk about how the most memorable travel experiences are seen as "too over the heads of our readers."  It sounds like travel readers are seen as being completely different, and much less sophisticated, than travel writers and editors. We see the same attitude in the gardening media. You must interact directly with your readers/fellow travelers sometimes.  What do you think of them--the people who read the magazines you write for, the people who go on the trips you write about?

This has been a common fight of mine with editors. I've never heard the exact words or been commanded to write for "the lowest common denominator," but in so many words that message has been passed along in some way at almost every magazine where I've ever worked. Personally, I've never understood how a magazine can tout demographics that show an average reader household with college degrees and six-figure income (magazines love to claim these high-end readerships), then turn around and make editorial decisions that assume their readers are like your 87-year-old grandmother, the one who supposedly needs to be protected from the bad news that nephew Jimmy just got busted for smoking at school or whatever, so that no one ever tells her anything interesting. Or that half the funny references you want to make—whether to the Punic Wars or a Fifty Cent lyric—have to be expunged because some blessed soul out there in the hinterland might not understand them.

Magazine editors are forever going on about "our readers," but this mythical creature has as many imagined incarnations as there are editors on the staff. And, for whatever reason, they're usually imagined to be less intelligent than the person in the cubicle making the judgment about some stranger in Idaho or Florida or Utah or wherever.

"I was pregnant and crying, but it didn't help."

An unlucky young couple in Glendale, CA got hit such a huge fine for trimming some native trees without the proper permit that you simply won't believe it.  Read the article.

Naturally the couple started a website about it, where I found under "Improve the Ordinance" this comment by a certified arborist:  "In 28 years in the business, I have found tree preservation policies mostly an impediment to good tree care."  Yeah, that's what happened in my town.  Passionate single-issue activists were much more vocal in our tree-law-writing process than, oh, arborists and people who believe that dead and dying trees might pose a hazard to human safety.

Oh, okay, the fine was $347,600.  I'd be crying, too.

Thanks to Kathy Purdy for the story, which she spied on Ethereal Voice.

Greenfingers, Rikers-style

The idea of prison horticulture will not be unfamiliar to those who enjoyed Clive Owen as a convict who finds redemption through gardening. In fact, the film Greenfingers is based on the true story of Leyhill prisoners who won two gold medals for their horticultural efforts at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, opened a 1,000-acre arboretum, and supplied plants and organically grown vegetables to surrounding towns and other prisons. Sadly, though, I saw this comment on the imdb site: “Gardening is pretty much a national sport in England, so perhaps the movie makes more sense to the Brits than us in the states.”

The Rikers Island greenhouse pathway, in 4 seasons.

Perhaps so. Perhaps the whole thought of prisoners doing anything but being held at bay by guards with automatic weapons is unfamiliar to American filmgoers as well. It was therefore inspirational to me to hear of the efforts of James Jiler , who for ten years has been directing the GreenHouse program at the Rikers Island jail complex. The men and women working under Jiler’s guidance have not only been creating a lovely and useful series of gardens and landscapes on the extensive Rikers Island complex—they have contributed to community gardens, tree replacement programs, and horticultural businesses throughout Manhattan. Jiler has taught Rikers Island inmates about sustainable practice as well as contemporary landscaping, and—in spite of their necessarily brief tenures in the GreenHouse program (Rikers is basically a holding center)—many former prisoners have garnered the building blocks of a lifelong career.

I read about all this in Jiler’s recent book, Doing Time in the Garden (New Village Press, 2006). Jiler works with the New York Horticultural Society, a non-profit, which is instrumental in funding the GreenHouse program. I’ll have more information about GreenHouse, as well as other prison horticultural programs, in an upcoming post, which will include an interview with Jiler. Do you have such a program in your area? Do you think horticulture can help combat the seemingly hopeless cycle of criminal “justice” culture in America?

Let there be (LED) light!

by Susan
Does this photo give you pause?  And not just about the tackiness of such holiday overkill but about the waste of energy, the gift of carbon emissions this homeowner is giving to their community?  Yeah, me, too.

Even when the display is more restrained and tasteful like this next one, it still raises the red flags of environmental incorrectness because we've passed a tipping point about all things energy, and nowadays even Al Gore gets attacked for excessive square footage.

Speaking of the Goracle, he naturally was blamed (by Bill O'Reilly, so consider the source) when the town council of Great Barrington, Massachusetts voted to scale back its display of "holiday lights" out of concern for the environment.

So could festive outdoor lighting be doomed in the age of global warming?  Consider the effect on the collective consciousness, especially here in the northern hemisphere where it's dark and gloomy this time of year.  And paradoxically, holidays are depressing for many of us and we NEED all that light and color and the public cheerfulness of even the tackiest of displays.  Okay, I need it.

But I needn't have worried because once again, technology comes to the rescue in the form of LED (light-emitting diode) lights.  They last 80,000 hours compared to 2,000 for incandescents, use 1/4 the energy, and present much less fire hazard due to their relative coolness.  National savings compared to incandescent mini-lights are estimated to be $100 million in energy costs every year and 144,000 fewer tons of carbon emissions.  If even half the incandescents replaced are not minis but full-size (typical of outdoor lights), the savings are more like $375 million and 470,000 tons every Christmas.  Rockefeller Center has switched to LEDs and looks as glorious as ever.

Another trend in holiday decorations noted by industry-watchers is more variety in "blow-up lawn art," like Santa on a motorcycle.  So not to worry - delicious tackiness will always be with us, and with more variety!

However glorious those blow-ups may be (or not), here's hoping that technology continues to solve the problems and allow us to brighten our spirits when we need it most.  Imagine what these urban scenes must look like without those lights.

And Merry Christmas to all our Christmas-observing readers, from the GardenRanters. 

Photo credits:  top, by Blue Ridge Laughing in Richmond, VA; next, taken at Shady Brook Farm in Yardley, PA by ListenToReason; next, taken in Waterford,  Ireland by Wmgc; finally, in Kansas City by Kansas Explorer.

Browse another 200,000 or so photos of "Christmas lights" on Flickr. 

 

Garden Writers and Travel Writers: Part 1 of 2

Travel writer Chuck Thompson's new book Smile When You're Lying:  Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer is a brilliant exposé of the inner workings of the travel media.  He's been a travel writer for national magazines for a decade, and he's had enough of the blandness and false cheer that travel editors demand of their writers.  Consider these passages from the introduction, but substitute "garden" for "travel," and you'll see why I'm so excited about this book:

"The biggest reason travel writing is dull...is that most of it is devoid of anything approaching an authentic point of view.  On those rare occasions when travel writers are allowed to express an actual opinion, it must be a completely harmless one that's also shared by the travel industry at large."

Hmmm.  Sound familiar?  Or how about this?

"The most memorable experiences--getting laid, sick, lost, home--always seem 'too negative,'  'too graphic,' or 'too over the heads of our readers' to find their ways into print.  Inside information on the vagaries of the travel industry itself borders on sedition.'

Thompson goes on to tell some of the best travel stories his editors refused to print, and to tell the story of the travel magazine he got to edit--the one that was supposed to be different from all those other travel magazines, but never was.  It's part memoir, part travelogue, and part manifesto for travel writers and editors.  I was so taken by the book that I asked Chuck if he'd do an e-mail interview for GardenRant.  He said, "Disgruntled garden writers? God, I love it," and agreed right away to answer some questions.

So after the jump is Part 1 of our interview, and I'll run Part II on Thursday.  Chuck's book tour schedule is here; he's got events coming up in Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Oxford, MS, and Toronto. 

They dare not speak our name?

Here’s some more ill-natured griping during this festive holiday season. But surely you will not blame me for objecting to Garden Gate’s use of 3—3!—big pictures of Buffalo gardens in their January/February issue without any attribution. One is on the cover. It is a garden located at 72 Lancaster that some of you (attendees of Garden Walk) may have seen. There is also a detail shot of the same garden illustrating a feature on Shasta daisy (Leucanthemum superbum) “Becky” on the inside back cover. There is also an image of a Granger Place patio on page 30, illustrating a piece on “Inviting Spaces.”

Many of you have also hosted members of the media in your gardens or neighborhoods, so you know—as exciting and welcome as it is—it can also be a bit of a pain. In Buffalo this summer, we had a bunch of magazines—including Garden Gate, People, Places and Plants; Organic Gardening (represented by Amy); Upstate Gardener's Journal, Canadian Gardening, and several Better Homes and Gardens specialty publications—visit us, largely as a result of Garden Walk and the Garden Walk book. Gardeners were told that photographers could be coming at any time over one weekend, starting at 6 a.m. Plants and furniture were moved around for them, and we had to be careful not to impede their progress in any way (we were asked not to speak to the Better Homes people, as I recall). Then, after all that, just a few gardens were actually targeted for use in any of the articles. Which is fine. That’s the way it works. But if a garden is used, I do think they should say whose it is and where it is. It’s refreshing to see a lush, summer scene in Buffalo featured in a garden mag at this time of year.

Unfortunately, no one will know. Let's hope the BHG pubs do better. And thanks to all the mags who DID properly ID us!

More on rain barrels...

Friend-of-Rant *Don at Urban Ministry Garden tried to leave all SORTS of great information in a comment on this post, but Typepad accused him of spamming and denied the comment.  I told him not to be TOO insulted, since just the other day Typepad accused me of the same thing and wouldn't let me comment on my own damn post right here on the Rant!  (It's especially humbling, since I was so recently urging users of Blogger.com to switch to wonderful,  no-hassle Typepad - ha!)

Or maybe Don's contribution was a wee too long as a comment, but not for a supplemental post.  Just click "Continue reading".

Now with all the great input from Don and others, how are the DC Urban Gardeners ever going to produce one article that explains it all?  Back it goes back on my ever-expanding list of Things To Do in 2008.  Thanks, y'all!

*Follow that link to see Don's caroling group. He's the behatted one playing the recorder.
 

My long-simmering beef about master gardener programs

Two things I read over the last week have impelled me to finally rant on what bugs me the most about master gardener programs. The first is a column by Buffalo horticulturalist Sally Cunningham in which she writes about the recent passing of two local master gardeners, one of whom she trained. The second is Kathy’s post at Cold Climate Gardening, in which she speculates on why more twenty and thirty-somethings don’t garden and why that should matter.

I’m going to assume that the late Adrian Kyriakopoulos, one of the master gardeners Sally trained, was older than she, as she notes that he tolerated the sobriquet “wise old man.” I’m guessing Sally is about my age. It would probably be safe to assume that many of the master gardeners trained by Sally were older than she. Why? I’ll tell you why. Master gardener training is held during the day on Fridays where I live. From what I hear, weekday training is quite common in other areas—at least it is in Austin, Chicago, and Cleveland, as I was told by Pam, Gloria, and Kim.

So, who’s free to attend a day-long session on Friday or any other weekday? I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that a lot of the attendees are retirees. The training is just one day a week. Why couldn’t those hours be allocated to late afternoons on weekdays or Saturdays? The weekday training shuts out anybody who works—and these days most of us can count on working fulltime well into our sixties, as hideous as that sounds. (Personally, I don’t plan on retiring, though I’d like eventually to move into 100% freelance.) Is this a factor in keeping young people from gardening? Probably not a major one but it certainly can’t help. If one thirty-something is taking a master gardening class on Saturdays, he or she could tell friends. At least it would be a known possibility. I’ve heard some of the justifications for having the classes during the weekday; one was that the accompanying volunteering would take place at that time. Well, that’s just not true. I volunteer for public plantings all summer, always on Saturdays and weekday afternoons. And, boy, could we use some younger volunteers! (I could probably pull down some cold weather duty at the Botanical Gardens too.)

Obviously, I can’t begin to answer the question of why younger people don’t garden; I’ll leave that to Kathy’s post and its many interesting comments. But I do think that master gardener programs should adapt themselves to the way people live and work in the twenty-first century if they don’t want all their graduates to die off before a new generation of MGs can step forward and take their place. As Susan has compellingly related here, there are plenty of problematic issues with these programs. I feel a good start toward fixing some of them might be to make the training more accessible to all gardeners.

Foodies Achieve World Domination: White Flower Farm Starts Raising Beef

Possibly more evidence that Michael Pollan's food journalism has altered the culture profoundly, if weirdly: White Flower Farm is now selling its own grass-fed beef.

I haven't eaten supermarket beef in at least a decade, since I discovered how delicious my local farmers' organic beef is, so I certainly approve in theory.

In practice, however, I worry about the branding strategy. Do you really want to be thinking about gristle and bone while ordering overpriced perennials from White Flower's exquisitely photographed catalog?  After all, it's White Flower Farm.  Effete, pristine.  I cannot imagine the scent of manure coming off that catalog.

A musical memory

How can I be nudging Graham Rice to stray from the stated topic and write about music, and not join him in solidarity by doing it myself?  So here goes.  Susan

I have a seasonal lament: Christmas music everywhere, and not a note I want to hear.  Christmas Carols have finally lost all charm for me after decades of overkill.   Same goes for the "classics" on public television, which to me are truly wondrous in their blandness.

But I do have one memory of a Christmas musical event not long ago that was wondrous in a good way, starting with the setting.  It took place at DC's Folger Shakespeare Library, all decked out in authentic decorations and lit solely by candles.  The magic of candlelight let me forget how hard the wooden pews were and be transported by it all.

Ah, but the music - the Folger Consort performing an evening of early French Christmas music that was totally fresh to me.  It was almost shocking to discover Christmas music that hadn't been ruined and I wondered at the time why we don't hear more of these unfamiliar seasonal gems.  But of course part of the seasonal gesthalt is returning to the familiar, to family tradition.  Fine, but this year I don't have to sit back while even my favorite radio stations join the chorus of the familiar.  This year I'm armed with my favorite new toy - a lovely green Nano.  More on gardening with the awesome iPod next season, I'm sure.

Sadly, a second memory always follows that first one - of the memorial concert for the founder of the Folger Consort, Scott Reiss.  He died two years ago this week, and the musical community he was so central to put on a remarkable celebration of his musical life shortly thereafter, another wondrous event.  He'll long be missed by people who love early music, folk music and the humble recorder, of which he was the master and I was an earnest bumbler. 

Wanted: Your real-life experiences with rain barrels

by Susan
Here in DC we're compiling information about good landscaping practices for our website, and have canvassed the local eco-listservs to that end.  Here's what we have so far on the subject of rain barrels, and I welcome your feedback, corrections and additions.  Details about suppliers, Making them yourself and maintenance are needed but my BIG question is this:  Can one or even two 55-gallon barrels really make a difference, or are they mainly feel-good items, as one expert suggested to me?

Why all the interest in rain barrels?

• They reduce or eliminate runoff of stormwater into our watershed, which means less downstream pollution and sedimentation.  Even here in the East where we've been having prolonged droughts, global weirding has also brought more severe downpours, so the runoff problem is just getting worse.
• They reduce the load on our municipal water supplies.
• They save (a little) on our water bills, though not enough to justify using them on the basis of cost alone.  In one test a rain barrel saved about 1,300 gallons over the summer, and one user told me he'd saved $35 over the course of the summer.
• They collect naturally soft, chlorine-free rainwater for use on our plants, which may result in increased plant health (though our petroleum-based roofing products and bird poop contribute their own pollution to the mix, sorry to say).
• Reflecting these advantages, starting in 2008 Montgomery County, MD will be offering rebates to residents who use rain barrels. 

My Idea of A Great Houseplant

Zantedeschia aethiopica--or calla or arum lily--always figures prominently in my fantasy gardens.  For example, the garden below from House & Garden's December issue:

The stone balustrade separating the garden from the mountain lake, the cupid sitting on a dolphin, and callas dominating the pool, well thanks, I wouldn't mind at all.  Particularly right now.

Even more to my taste are those balmy gardens in foreign climes where the calla lilies are naturalized on some beautiful hillside leading down to the sea.  A native of South Africa, zantedeschia aethiopica is apparently such a robust grower, it's considered a weed in some parts of the world.  (It's really time for a stricter definition of the word "weed," one that excludes callas and embraces Black-Eyed Susans.)

Last winter, Lowe's offered zantedeschia aethiopica tubers, variety unnamed, for $4 each.  I thought what the hey, bought three and stuck them in a pot.  They produced giant, gorgeous arrow-shaped leaves and promptly bloomed in the house, large, pristine, pitcher-shaped white blooms.  Not just a success.  For someone with my narrow horizons, an absolute dream.

Then I took a clue from the Brent and Becky's Bulbs catalog and, in the spring, sunk the pot into my little backyard fish pond--where the callas promptly took over the joint, growing too large for their container, producing an amazing mat of roots that attempted to crawl over the top, and keeling over irritatingly.  I repotted them in a bigger container in aquatic soil--where they did the same thing again.  Fortunately, I guess, winter threatened before they got the full Fish Out Of Water treatment, with me scrambling for bigger container after bigger container until finally I have to dump my charge into Peerless Pool in the state park.

Then I brought the pot of callas into the house and gave it my patented houseplant treatment: actionable neglect with an occasional muttering of imprecations.  Did I gently remove that amazing mass of roots from the sprinkling of rocky aquatic soil that was barely covering them into the nice, rich potting soil they deserved?  Reader, I did not.  I stuck the pot in a North-facing window and forgot about it.

What did zantedeschia aethiopica do?  Started blooming again.  I love this plant madly.  Despite its tropical look, the books all say that aethiopica, unlike other callas, can survive in rich, moist soil even in Zone 6.   I've got dry soil in Zone 5.  Time to try this baby in the ground.