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Holiday Ornaments from Garden Gleanings

Making Christmas tree decorations was a boring-day activity put into play by my mom, who worked tirelessly at keeping four restless kids occupied during wintry holidays What we made weren’t great, mind you, but they were originals.

Among the different creations, were hard-tack flour-and-salt cookie ornaments and garlands of chains made from glued rings of colorful strips of craft paper.

Easy Ornaments from Garden Gleanings

The Santa face, painted on a dried okra pod by Sherry Battista from Crystal Springs Mississippi, is a “must have” favorite of all who see it.

Did I mention this was way before the Internet, when we only got a handful of black-and-white TV channels?

Continue reading “Holiday Ornaments from Garden Gleanings”
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Kids Gardening Brochure

Stuck at home with kids who are bouncing off the walls when not on their electronic devices? I’ve simplified some pages from two of my children’s garden books and prepared a brochure of gardening projects that can keep young people occupied and learning during the stay-at-home days – we’re all in this together, right?

Vine Teepee

Just drop me a line via the website contact form, or at garden@mbponline.org. (Your e-mail will not be used for any other purpose.)

These extracts give a flavor of the brochure:

Way before it was proven science, every time a new child was born into our family my parents would have a small fresh load of real topsoil – D-I-R-T – delivered to their big back yard, and for several years it was that kid’s personal pile to scatter with toys and garden tools. The yard looked like a giant fire ant colony but when the kids got older, they helped their granddad move the pile around to fill low areas and tree stump holes. What started out as personal playgrounds ended up as a lesson in taking responsibility and helping with community work.  Continue reading “Kids Gardening Brochure”

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Plant Swap Treasures – Memes of the Garden (with update from England)

Pssst! I got jewels of Opar and a string of pearls… wanna make a deal?

My garden is stuffed with hard-to-find plants that came to me with sweet folk names and back stories.Their charms have been spread over and under fences around the world, cutting across cultures and languages.

But worthy as they are, many are not easily found for sale – to get a start, you gotta have informal connections.

They are passed around like the simple string game which has no written instructions yet is known by children worldwide.

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Simple and easily transferable

For decades, as the co-author of the Passalong Plants book, I’ve been overseeing small and large-scale plant swaps. Often there is little in common between participants except a love of plants.

True anecdote: Some years back the Pulitzer Prize winning author Eudora Welty told me over dinner that her mother “stopped going to her garden club meetings when they stopped swapping plants.”

But not to worry, thanks to folks with generous spirits, the tradition is alive and well at plant swaps around the world.  I’m featuring just three here.

Felder at the first Flora Plant Swap, 1990
Felder at the first Flora Plant Swap, 1990

Continue reading “Plant Swap Treasures – Memes of the Garden (with update from England)”

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Worming Their Way Into My Affections

There be monsters underfoot.

Night Crawler Earthworm from My Garden
Handful of a year-old night crawler from my garden

While checking on my garden’s rainfall drainage patterns during a recent downpour, I caught one of the longest worms I have ever seen as it ventured out of a sodden raised bed. When I tried to gently tug the foot-long creature out of the soil, it resisted, clinging, alarmed, to the sides of its burrow with tiny, claw-like bristles similar to those that so swiftly propel “graboids” (Caederus mexicana, the twenty-foot long terrors of the Mojave Desert). Continue reading “Worming Their Way Into My Affections”

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Stonehenge and the Return of Grian: The Season for a Reason

Welcome back, Grian!Stonehenge

It’s nothing new, marking the turning of seasons by the waxing and waning appearance of the sun. Certainly the most striking is during the morning of the winter solstice, when once-lengthening nights roll over into ever-lengthening days and the promise of warmth, new crops, and renewed life. So of course ancient people celebrated the midwinter return of the sun.

And where better to experience it than through the carefully-aligned great trilithon, the largest of the standing stones of Stonehenge? It and the others were lined up thousands of years ago to pinpoint the specific morning that for eons has heralded the return of Grian – which Celtic people called the sun.

Grian is Risen
Grian is Risen

Continue reading “Stonehenge and the Return of Grian: The Season for a Reason”

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Felder Truck and Garden Art

Feldertruck

Some folks get it, some don’t. Others paint it.

My old truck with the garden in the back has been driven to countless flower shows and events across the eastern half of the US. It has been featured in magazines, online sites, garden books, and on NPR programs. It still drives fine, and the garden still flourishes through heat and cold, year in and year out, with only twice-a-year replacement of a handful of seasonal annuals.

The antique truck is better known than I am. Over the thirty or so years I’ve had it, it has been through many makeovers. Its current, cheery form has been preserved on film – as a result, people often call out a greeting while I’m driving through Jackson.

FOR MORE ON MY TRUCK AND ITS CELEBRATED GARDEN, CLICK HERE

Some years ago, a neighbor gave me a painting of the truck, a detail of which is above. Recently it has been put to more canvas by celebrated artists: water colorist Wyatt Waters, my own daughter Zoe Pearl Rushing of Dimebox Art and feather artist Elaine Maisel of Feathermore. Continue reading “Felder Truck and Garden Art”

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Booglified Garden Plants

Booglify: Felder verb; to become mushy after freeze and thaw. “My canna’s leaves booglified into slimy cell goo.”

Far as I know, there ain’t a formal word for what happens when, come Autumn’s first freeze, summer plants melt into a putrid glob. But it’s nasty.

Purple Heart (Tradescantia pallida) drips at first freeze
At first freeze, purple heart (Tradescantia pallida) droops, then drips. Then stinks.

Want technical? Me neither – studied plant physiology in college, and can make your eyes cross with esoterica. Short version, with apologies to Professor Price, is that in general plants are organisms made of living, multiplying cells with fairly rigid walls filled with gooey protoplasm made of tiny functional bits suspended in water. Water between the cells holds soluble nutrients, proteins, enzymes, salts, and other stuff which normally moves in and out of cells to keep things running smoothly.

In cold-climate plants, some of the substances act like antifreeze and some plants can shift them around to reduce cells’ drying out or bursting; some plants don’t.

I do understand the horror. Continue reading “Booglified Garden Plants”

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England’s Northern Soul Food

Savory pies are the soul food of northern England. The go-to salve that sells out early the morning after a lost football match, or when BBC coverage of politics gets too much to bear. When a local lass needs a little comfort or cheer.

And – apologies to every opinionated foodie out there – the very best are hand-crafted at The Real Thai Pie Company, offered for sale at tiny Haworth’s Bakery. It’s just a short hike uphill from town center in Darwen, nestled in the West Pennine Moors of Lancashire. Right across from the Vic, if you get lost or need directions (ask anyone).

On his travels in Thailand some twenty years ago Doug, the laid-back but passionate baker, came up with a unique, award-winning creation – chunks of meat, potatoes, carrots, and piquant pinch of fiery spices in just enough creamy gravy to keep it just right for eating out of hand. In a word, addictive.

A Real Thai Pie Company chicken pie
Green chicken pie from The Real Thai Pie Company

This is just a photo. Can’t capture the friendly Lancashire gemutlichite found at this fragrant little shop, much less the steamy wares of the Real Thai Pie Company. Get there early.

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Stumperies – Beautiful Horrors

Summer Stumpery 2020
My summer stumpery

“Quell’orror bello che attristando piace”  – that beautiful horror which delights while it saddens (Italian poet Ippolito Pindemonte)

Stumpery. First time I heard the word was one of those finger-snap moments, a cerebral light bulb thing.

St. Louis Botanic Garden
New stumpery at the St. Louis Botanic Garden

I mean, who’da thought it was a thing? I mean, we’ve been doing it all along, right?

But here I am, nearly thirty years later, actually standing in the oldest stumpery in the world, and thinking about how to enlarge my own backyard collection of tree trunks, stumps, and gnarly limbs (and how my kids will have a hell of a time dismantling or burning it all down when I’m gone). Continue reading “Stumperies – Beautiful Horrors”