All-In, All Over: Groundcover Week

            All the groundcovers are blooming. And spreading. And taking as much ground as they can get their little roots and stems and leaves into. And they're all running into one another. They can't help it, it's their nature. They have organizational problems. Or, more properly speaking, I do.

            These low-lying, ground-hugging plants have to get all they can while the getting is good because the taller perennials and the shade trees will in the next month or so grow tall, overtop them (to use the Elizabethan phrase), put them in the shade, put a period at the end of their sentence of seasonal growth.

            The groundcovers are blooming now because they have a direct line to the sun. If you're pachysandra, to take a large and prominent example, you have your little white thistle-like flowers ready to go in March and early April when you can be sure there will be no big forest of leafed-out shade trees to block the work of floral reproduction.

            If you're going to survive at ground level under the big guys, you better make hay when the sun shines. As it does early season. The pach pack puts out its vines, sends up flowers, makes its yearly statement, sets itself up to survive in the shady months follow.

            But it's not pachysandra fighting the little border wars that have me bent over, nose on the ground, trying to sort out who's who. It's the little guys that are giving me fits. I have many theoretical hierarchies I try to preserve as I try to keep the core territories (or homelands) between these species patches at least a little bit intact. I don't do clear definitions or straight lines. I reason that things growing over, on top of and through each other are the way of nature. Of course, we're not aiming for nature pure and wild here; we're aiming for a garden. I don't simply want to stand around mutely witnessing the survival of the fittest. I want to see a lot of different plants doing their thing. To keep the variety going, I'll step in.

            So here I am eye to eye with a very low-growing understory thyme patch. The groundcover varieties are wicked small. But there in the midst of a tiny green eden of Thymus Albiflora growing between two bricks is something else, with even thinner leaves, growing up through the thyme. It could be a blade of grass. It could be the start of a maple tree. It could be one of a couple dozen other species that I have either welcomed into this jumbled paradise or been unable to remove even though I have labeled them "weeds." Many of this latter category I know by sight but not by name. I remove them wherever I see them (that is, of course, when I get around to it).

            A middle category of desirability exists as well. Those tiny-leaved creepers that are kind of cute early in the spring when they hide among all the colonies, or between the bricks, and make even smaller whitish flowers. They trespass on the the "territories" of other tiny-leaved low-to-the ground, matted groundcovers we have invested some time and elbow grease in. When the invaders take up too much room, or run out of flowers, or stop being "cute," I pull them out. These are judgment calls.

            It's like life. Judgment calls all the time.

            The Mazus, to take an example from the small end of the size spectrum (yet not the smallest) probably give us more brightly flowering color per unit measure than any other groundcover we have planted, but their colonies consist of completely separate, very small plants with remarkably thin and shallow roots. You can pull up individual Mazus plants, especially when you don't want to, just by looking at them. Their roots are mere threads. So when you pull up the intruders in their midst-- violets,for instance, and any number of those nameless of "weed" varieties whose appearance and MO I am all too familiar with -- you're more than likely to get a few of the Mazus as well, no matter how carefully and surgically you manage these removals. Then you mutter to yourself, displeased with your effort, over the waste of pretty flowers.

            But remove -- extricate, eradicate, rescue, transplant, and just plain weed -- you must. We're looking at more border incursions and pure and simple territorial aggressions than ever this year. Anything growing in, among, or anywhere near the Irish moss spoils the effect. The delicate plant parts (they look like mini grass blades) are too vulnerable to sustain any sort of incursion. You can't pull a blade of ordinary grass out of the moss's low, shiny "mat" without taking some moss with it. But, where it flourishes, for however long, it has a bright fuzzy quality that makes you want to pet it. Think of the shortest-haired cat in the world. Or a guinea pig, maybe.

            We have a big hunk of sweet woodruff planting itself in the middle of a large island of low, thickly matted thyme. Our best thatch of thyme. The sweet woodruff is already up high and spreading; pulling it out will leave a hole. To complicate, the invader is already blossoming, holding up its white thimble-top blossom to the sky. The blossoms are delicate rather than broad, and not as showy as blossoms such as the Mazus.

            We have plots of speedwell blossoming now -- it's their season too -- along with the vinca, the violets, the phlox,the ajuga. But what to do about the sweet woodruff is the issue now, which has so altered its border (without any assistance from me) that I can barely anthropomorphize it as a country, a colony, a homeland with its own "natural" borders anywhere on the property. 

            These are cows in the cornfield, so to speak. I need to get them back into the corral. This year there are so many places where outsiders, whether weeds or visitors from another privileged species, encroach on the homeland colonies. You have to pick out the invaders -- once you've decided which are the invaders, and which might add a valuable "diversity" to the mix in a particular spot -- or else you will lose all order and separation and your garden will become a "state of nature" (an ironic phrase in the present context).

            All this, I say again, is a lot like life. The way the plant species blend into one another seems to resemble the way groups of people intermingle. Even very old places from the Old World are not homogeneously populated. So-called "nation states" are actually peopled by many nations, tribes, clans, "minorities," ethnic groups. England is not full of English. It has Celts, Britons, Saxons, Angles, Danes, Norsemen, Normans and people called the Welsh, Scots, and Irish, to mention some obvious contributors and, in more recent decades, people from all of the Commonwealth states. Russia, as we are learning from the headlines these days, includes national groups few people have ever heard of.

            This is far from an exact comparison, of course. Human beings are all one species. But plant migrations are fascinating subject, though they cause problems for gardeners. You can't help feeling you're "playing god."

Up the Garden Path

           It's hard to live in the moment. But something happens in the last week of April and the first days of May that has me trying.

            The low phlox (top photo) blooming under the big maple tree makes a tiny stretch of tired sidewalk glow with color. It's the bright moment of the year for this little piece of the earth's surface.You have to enjoy while it lasts because, trust me, it doesn't last very long.

            It's tulip season (second photo). Tulips tend to deteriorate after a few years. Professional display gardens tend to pull up all the bulbs every other year and plant new ones. These yellow and red ones keep coming back. We forget about them from one year to the next, but they appear to keep track of time very well without us.   Some taller violet colored tulips fight their way up in a spot in front of the house crowded with shrubbery as well.

            Pale violets (third photo), spotted with purple dots. They will grow on your lawn, mixing with the grass and clover, if you don't use "weed killers." I think this batch moved with us from Plymouth.

            Up the garden path, front yard style (fourth photo). The stepping stones we put down the first year to mark the curving path from the so-called cottage garden in front of the house were overgrown and covered by dirt almost immediately. Some of the plants I tried to grow along them haven't survived there either. But the roses, lavendar, adromeda, butterfly bush, and maiden grass (too low to be seen yet but a fast grower when its new green spears come in) have all flourished.

            In the back garden (fifth photo), the fresh colors, and new leaves of plants emerging from the ground and beginning to take their proper shape make a jumbled but pleasing May Day early spring climax.It's the light that pulls everything together in this photo.

            Some taller plants in a view just a few feet to the left (sixth): the Chinese peony, the first leaves on the thin-limbed dogwood; the red Japanese maple against the fence.

            A closer view of this piece of the back garden (seventh photo) bring the vinca, day lilies and the dark green of the evergreens behind them into focus.

            A shadow-striped photo of  the right-hand side of the back garden (eighth photo), looking toward the oak tree. Spring vetch at the base of the tree is blooming purple. Also purple penstemon, the itea shrub, low artemisia, and too many other plants to remember all the names.
            Rediscovering all these plants in the certain slants of light of the just-now season is the peculiar pleasure of a time that can't last .You have to be there when it happens. I'm glad we had the chance to be there then. Because now it's now, and time is always fleeting.

Snakes in the Woods: (Almost) a YouTube Sensation

In the ancient Greek story, Tiresisas the seer is walking in the woods one day when he comes upon two snakes in the act of coitus. He strikes them with his stick and is instantly transformed from a man to a woman. Years later he comes upon another  pair of snakes in the same act. A quick hand with the stick and, presto, he's changed back to a man. Tiresisas is now in a postion to answer the eternal question the Greeks -- a famously philosophical, and scientific-minded, race -- put to him. Who has more pleasure in the act of love, the man or the woman? For the record, the seer's reply is the woman.

            I'm afraid we saw something different in the woods today. Two snakes -- one much larger than the other -- locked together. The reason in this case, however, was the large one was eating the smaller.

            It took a moment before we understood what was going on. Then came that little shock of disbelief. The larger snake, the only one we saw at first, was much larger than any snake we've ever seen around here. Its skin was black and the scales smooth. Accustomed to the homey little things we call garter snakes, I couldn't believe how big he was. Usually when you come upon a snake, it's hightailing -- or low-winding -- away from you, in a hurry to hide beneath some convenient underbrush or leaf pile as fast as its legless body can go. Not this one.

            While the snake had some patchwork patterning, like striations on his skin, I couldn't talk myself into believing he was some kind of eccentric variation of rattler. But he puzzled us by being half under a leaf and brush pile and in no apparent hurry to make himself scarce.

            One end of him corkscrewed out of the leaf pile and came into plain view.

            "So that's the head?" Anne asked.

            "It looks like the tail," I replied.

            "Then he has tails at both ends."

            That is kind of the way it looks. The other end of him is obscured by the leaf pile. Then some  other pointy end pops out.

            "No," I say when the picture comes into focus, "that's his head -- eating another snake."

            The big snake has his mouth open -- I can't say "wide" because it looks narrow for what he's attempting -- and is clearly around what must be the head-end of the smaller snake. Some blood shows on the smaller one's skin. We can't tell how much of the smaller one is already inside that mouth.

            What we can see is a lot of thrashing. The big one moves its body abruptly from side to another; it looks like some fancy computer graphic swinging a convex curve into concave and back again. Then it straightens its long body, as if to open the tube of its inner self some teeny bit wider to take more of the tube-like body of the creature it's consuming into its slow-moving digestive track.

            This may sound disgusting, but in the moment it's eerily fascinating.

            The skinny one -- the common garter snake, the kind of snake we're used to seeing in the woods doing that rapid rustle in the grass routine (producing the moment of consciousness Emily Dickinson brilliantly described as "zero at the bone") -- appears to be trying to move its tail. The skinny end of it wraps around the body of the larger one as if seeking purchase to pull the rest of itself back out. Or this may be, we speculate, a reflex from a creature essentially dead already. Maybe the far end of the tail hasn't got the message yet.

            In any event it's going to be a long day for the black snake even if he does get to the end of what he's -- bitten off?

            "His eyes are bigger than his stomach," Anne says.

            But I don't know how to measure a snake's stomach. Or is stomach a meaningless term for snake anatomy? I am a child in matters reptilian.

            What looks to us like a death-match struggle of unfairly matched contestants wrestling in the dirt may be the only way a snake of this size gets a full meal.

            The consumer yanks the consumed in one direction, toward us, and we jump back. Then he drags it back into the leaf and bush pile.

            I don't know how long we would have kept watching, and I doubt final consumption/consummation is imminent, but big snake now begins to slap its tail back and forth in the leaves, making a low noise.

            It's too much like the behavior of a rattler, only there's little real noise and no rattle. Still it looks to me like communication. I think he's finally realized we're there: two large creatures standing near and watching him work.

            "What's that?" she asks.

            I suspect it's meaningful, I tell her. "I think he's warning us to stay away. I think it's communication."

            "OK. Then let's go."

            We assure one another we were just about to get a move on anyway.

            Back at the house, Anne ID's the big snake as a "black racer," from 36 to 60 inches long, and sometimes stretching out to 6 feet. I'm estimating the one we saw at about 4.5 feet. A photo on line confirms the smaller one as a garter snake.

            I recall deciding right before we left the house for our walk that we didn't need the camera. Of course, what we really needed was a video camera.

            "Too bad," Anne points out. "It would have been a YouTube sensation."

A Garden High on New York City

Many ways of looking at the High Line, the new high-on-life public park on the site of a long-gone elevated train line.

            More people gather there in one place, well one long place -- 30 blocks? we never reached the end of it -- than venture into most cities all weekend.

            You know how great it is to go to the top of some tall building and then look out at the skyline, the rooftops, the buildings, streets and tiny people below from the superior point of view of putting all the world's smaller things in their place? The High Line offers that. Only it's not one elevated point of view. It's a moving perspective that changes every few steps.

            Somewhere well south of 23rd Street, but I can't recall if we're down to 14th St. yet, someone calls out "look to your left." And there, that strangely familiar tower with the gracefully curving point on top, turns out to the the Empire State Building. You look a little further, below the 14th Street stairway now, and off to your right is an more strangely familiar figure with a pointy hat holding a torch in the air. Someone says, "That can't be the Statue of Liberty!" But it is.

            Like people watching? You don't have to position yourself on a street corner or a park bench and pretend to be doing something else. All the people on that busy street corner climb up the stairs and rubber-neck along with you.

            It's almost too crowded. On a particularly inviting mild spring Saturday afternoon, judging from the amount of gaping and pointing and exclaiming going on -- not all of it by us -- many, many people chose to make their first visit to the High Line. What percentage of the country's total population -- and, comparatively, what percent of the total number visitors to New York City -- will eventually pay that first visit to the High Line? Later, when the day's travels took us close to Central Park in midtown, I was almost surprised to see that folks were relatively thick on the ground there too. Not to mention the Sikh music festival (many guys in lavender turbans) that closed down Madison Avenue.

            Much closer than the famous landmarks visible on the skyline -- including the Flatiron Building and a host of others Anne's parents knew the names of -- some new architectural conversation pieces loom right up against the High Line. One of them is a tall rectangle with a shiny glass facade. You could throw pink rubber ball against it, and enjoy the mirrored moment. Given the nearness of the objects and activity on the walkway, any sort of mirror would produce interesting light effects. But this building is also partially clad in big patches of rust-orange panels of indescribable shape, color and material that suggested to me the look of the rusty tan-orange mold that grows prominently on certain rock formations in the woods. It's a memorable look, with the strangeness of contemporary art.

            Art does happen here. Somebody organized a collection of sculptures suggested perhaps by actual figures or types in the urban landscape. The umbrella title for these is "Busted." Not sure why. They're not exactly busts. The one I photographed is long and skinny-legged like a Giacometti.

            The place is actually a garden too.

            The old rails are incorporated into most of of the -- let's call them beds, the lateral spaces that run alongside the walking path, generally on both sides. A lot of this space is filled with cement paving of an interesting repeated pattern that suggests it might have been lifted from something functional, but I can't imagine what. The pattern looks like the extended fingers of one hand, with the space between the fingers filled with dirt; and the dirt filled with plants. Lots of spring bloomers, from daffodils in some places to stunning young ornamental trees whose tightly packed pink blossoms flow directly out of the principal transverse branches.

            The floral color was very strong, enough to make me wonder a little what they would do in mid-summer when these spring perennials stop blooming. Judging from what's there now I feel pretty sure they have a plan.

            Even a little music. A man sits among the people, bowing the long string of a Japanese stringed instrument. Another plays hand-drums along with a drum tape. A little boy sits in on a couple of drums and plays them shockingly well.

            It's a fresh set of eyes on the city.

            It's both something new to look at. And someplace new from which to look at everything else that's always been here. Only some of it is new, and some of it might as well be, because you've never see it before.

            Almost everything works. Almost. The city installed some fancy elevators across the street from the stairways to take folks who need a lift up to the High Line. The reason they're not working, the sign tells us, is they were damaged by Superstorm Sandy.

            That was six months ago. The existence of the sign lets you that the bureaucracy is working even if the elevators aren't. Given the number of people there last weekend, they could probably take up a collection and get the things fixed.