Attaching memories

My cousin Merty died last February. A few months before she died, she asked me to take home one of her beloved Christmas cacti. I wanted to warn her that I wasn't trustworthy. I didn't have a green thumb. I couldn't guarantee that her plant would outlive her.

But instead, I thanked her and placed the green plant in my bathroom in the hopes that it would get good light and moisture, and that if I saw it every day, I might remember to water it.

Much to my delight, it bloomed last December and, as if on cue, has bloomed again this week. Every time I look at it, I think fondly of Merty.

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This morning, I trimmed the spent blossoms off the sedum plant out by our birdbath. One by one, I cut the long pale stems topped with brown dried blossoms. And with each cut, I thought about my beloved Grandmommy. You see, my start for this plant came from Mary Rinehart's garden on Cannons Lane. It has followed me from Natchez Lane to Rainbow Drive, to Calumet, to Dover Road.

I remember sitting in Grandmommy's driveway a half century ago with my sisters carefully smashing the top layer of a leaf from this succulent. If I rubbed it just right with my thumb and index finger, the top cellophane-like layer would separate from the fleshy center. I could then blow it up like a little balloon. Great fun for an 8-year-old (or even a 58-year-old!). I taught Maggie, Jack and Mary how to do it as well.

But back to this morning...once I cut all the stems to near ground level, I discovered the most beautiful baby sedums. I got such a kick out of seeing them huddled into the very center of the plant, tightly packed, just waiting for spring.

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Not all my plant gifts are attached to memories of those departed. I've got spice bushes in the backyard from Paul and Jackie, a magnolia tree from Sherry, irises from Lynn and Vivian, peonies from Gay, tulip trees from Sandy, ramps from Maggie, an orchard of fruit trees given to us by friends, lily of the valley and wood poppies from Holly, and a monster fern from Kathleen.

But perhaps my favorite is the houseplant that Mary left in my care when she moved to Brooklyn. It's a big floppy-leafed Fiddleleaf Fig tree. It seems to like its home in our study and is growing by leaps and bounds. It's a little bit like having a puppy around. Every time it sprouts a new set of leaves, I text Mary a picture. Every time I see it, or give it a drink of water, I think of Mary, off on her big adventure in NYC. I can't guarantee I won't kill it, but I'm trying very hard not to.

Christmas Tree Lane

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Not really, but maybe come December 2025, it will. Ed and I are in the process of planting 40 conifer trees on both sides of one of our trails. We are creating our own Christmas Tree Lane. For now, all it looks like is a Charlie Brown version of our dream lane.

It all started on our fall trip up the east coast. After a long hike in the Fundy National Park in New Brunswick, we found ourselves on a path leading back to our car. The path was lined with evergreens – all different kinds – tall ones, short ones, fat ones, skinny ones. It was like walking in an enchanted forest, but not a scary one – rather a beautiful, magical one. It smelled of Christmas, the real thing. It was eerily quiet to walk on pine needles, the only sounds were chirps from small sparrows. The sun shone between the branches, many of which were laden with pine cones.

I told Ed I wanted one of these enchanted paths at Farm Dover. And, because my every wish is his command, we ordered some seedling trees from Pikes Peak Nurseries in Pennsylvania, and this week, they were delivered right to our front door.

Before our post-Thanksgiving feast yesterday and then again this afternoon, we planted trees. I would march off seven paces and place either a Norway Spruce, an Eastern White Pine, a Canadian Hemlock or a White Spruce at the appropriate spot along the trail. Ed would dig the hole and then I'd kneel down to place the bare roots in the hole and fill it in with the dirt. I'd hold its branches up while Ed carefully stomped around the little trees, compacting the dirt, making sure the tree was stranding straight, or almost straight. Then we would move on down seven paces to the next site for a tree.

We've still got a dozen or so more trees to plant and we are hoping to get out tomorrow afternoon before the weather turns bad. Then we'll sit back and wait for them to grow into a beautiful lane – just like the magical one we found ourselves on in New Brunswick.

Royalty flutters by

When we planted our fields in native grasses and wildflowers, we included in the mix a large scoop of common milkweed seed. Milkweed: it’s that plant with the fluffy seeds that escape from pods and float through the air this time of year. As a child, I confused it with a dandelion seed head and would always try to catch it and make a wish. I thought it was magical.

Turns out, it is magical. It’s the only plant that Monarchs eat when they are in the caterpillar stage and the only one on which they lay their eggs. Unfortunately, it’s been rapidly disappearing from meadows, rural fence rows, and sides of roadways, thanks to Roundup® and urban sprawl. Studies estimate that the plant decreased 21 percent in the U.S. between 1995 and 2013.  

And because it is disappearing, so are Monarch butterflies. Remember chasing monarchs as a child? Remember, how they were everywhere? In my memory, they were the most common of all the butterflies. But, despite our best efforts to plant the food they love, we’ve only seen a few on our farm this year. Every time I see one, I whip out my camera to capture it, but it always manages to fly off before I can press the camera icon, find my subject, and snap. It’s a gone girl. 

I’ve also taken to inspecting the leaves of milkweed, hoping to find some tiny eggs or a host of caterpillars munching happily through the green leaves. Haven’t had much luck there either. Seems the milkweed contains a poison that the caterpillars have adapted to – but it stays in their bodies, making them poisonous to any predators.

My awareness of the plight of these beautiful creatures was heightened upon reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, whose plot hinges on an invasion of monarch butterflies in a small Tennessee Appalachian town.

It wasn’t until we visited the 270-acre Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens at Boothbay that I got a close up look at what I’ve been seeking all summer. There, among the beautiful flowers and plethora of milkweed, were hundreds of monarch butterflies, as well as plenty of yellow-and-black-stripped caterpillars, eating hungrily on the milkweed leaves.

And best of all, I got to see the lime green chrysalis, decorated with metallic gold dots, that hung from the wood siding of the various structures around the gardens.

I couldn’t take enough photos, Ed finally walking ahead of me back to our parked car as I called out: “Wait! Just one more. Just one more.”

So, to be perfectly transparent: Yes, I took all of these photos, but all were taken at the Botanical Gardens on our recent trip. None were captured at Farm Dover.

But even now, in mid-October, we occasionally see a lone monarch or two fluttering around the goldenrod and daisies in our fields. I wonder how much longer they will stick around before striking out on their up-to-3000-mile migration to Mexico. I hope the ones that make it, spread the word that there is plenty of milkweed at Farm Dover and invite their friends and family to come back to Kentucky next summer.

What fun it would be to have that most royal of all butterflies fluttering by!

A Growing Vision

From day one, I had a clear vision of how I wanted our house to look and feel. What I couldn't quite figure out was how we would leave our imprint on the land. When we bought Farm Dover, it was being farmed, rotating corn and soy beans. Before that, it was a dairy farm.

Fortunately, my partner in this adventure is Ed, who possessed a very clear vision for the land. Before we even broke ground on the house, he met with a wildlife biologist from the Ketnucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources to figure out how we could create a healthy wildlife habitat, particularly for quail.

One of the recommendations from the biologist was to eradicate the fescue grass and convert most of the fields to native warm season grasses. We chose to plant Little Bluestem, as it is ideal for quail, providing them with excellent nesting cover while maintaining enough bare ground to allow their chicks to move freely.

Turns out, planting native grasses is tricky work. One must have the right equipment to drill the seed into the ground and the expertise to know how to do it and when to do it. With a bit of calling around, we found our expert: Greg Stephens. Greg interviewed us about what we were trying to accomplish and suggested that we add some specific wildflower seeds to the native grass mix. Last summer, he planted most of our fields with Little Bluestem mixed with Black-eyed Susans, False Sunflowers, Greyheaded Coneflower, Purple Coneflower, Partridge Pea, Butterfly Milkweed and Lance-Leaved Coreopsis. With this wildflower mix, one or more of the varieties would be blooming from May through October.

It took a full season for the plantings to get established. Last summer was hot and dry and not much was happening out in the fields. I was beginning to wonder if they were supposed to look like they did -- and if so, what was all this fuss about native grasses/wildflowers?

I want to show you how our fields look today. It just takes my breath away. It is acres and acres of the most beautiful yellow Coreopsis.

The quail love it; mornings and evenings we hear them calling bob white back and forth. The bees are buzzing all over the place. The red-winged blackbirds rise up from and dive down into the grasses, as they fly to and fro from their nests. The gold finch perch on the slender flower stems. Millions of fireflies at dusk stage a magical show, put on just for my entertainment.

I can't wait to see what comes up next.