garden memoir

Growing

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Garden and running update today. I hit the long pause on running after a bad spell with my arthritis which in turn precipitated some emergency oral surgery. Pain and winter weather side tracked me for several months, complicated further by starting a new job which required a new morning routine.

From a run earlier this week in NYC.

I realized I was hitting month five and I sat down and had a talk with myself. Through dedicated dieting I had lost some of the extra weight which was also impacting my earlier attempts to running so it was worth trying again.

Finally I decided that the benefits of running outweighed the issues. It will be a long slog back to even as fast (slow but less slow) as I was before and three miles is my limit for now. My trainer was taking two weeks to do a race in Hawaii and between that and a holiday weekend which would let me onramp a little more easily I decided there was nothing to do but commit to it.

Running clothes and bits needed to be assembled. I took a familiar route in the city and committed to just do the most I felt good about. After trying several different choices on my playlist I settled on Beethoven for that first run. Routine was my friend and memory muscle kicked in for 2.8 miles.

Garden clogs were a gift! Loving them.

There’s something about running which unknots something deep in my brain while loosening the muscles in my lower back. Somehow getting back into that routine even makes me feel more settled at the new job, as if I have found the old Pam again.

Sunset over Bahr’s Landing restaurant. A beloved local establishment.

For all of that which is good, after five consecutive days running, however much slower and more abbreviated these runs are, my thighs are screaming. Whatever theory I have about the three mile walk to and from work daily and the multiple flights of stairs I climb there being the same as running is just wrong. I would not hurt this much otherwise!

Roses in the garden in NJ.

Meanwhile, warm weather also brings the call of New Jersey and I had to head down here to meet some workmen early Thursday morning. I got into some early planting on my last visit, discovering what had wintered over (most of the herbs, the strawberry plant, that post can be read here) and put out some early veggies – lettuce and cucumbers, and I also set some dahlias which were ready to go. I bought a tiny grapevine which is thriving and a raspberry plant which just is not. The cukes didn’t do well, but the lettuce has thrived. I made myself a salad with fresh lettuce from the yard shortly after arrival.

Three cat loaf this morning post-breakfast.

Sadly most of the peonies were past their prime, but enough were left to bring a small bouquet inside. The roses are riotous and at their height. Mom loved roses and always planted them with great success and I get to enjoy them now. The peonies were gifts from me – selfishly I guess because they are one of my favorite flowers. I added a few in the early spring but it will be another year before the transplants flower I am told. (Someone also told me that epsom salts make them flower more – I’ll let you know if I try it!) The luxury of being able to cut flowers in the garden for the house is not at all lost on me.

The enthused fig trees.

The dahlias had already outgrown their containers and a new strawberry plant needed transplanting. A trip to Lowe’s produced tomato plants, a pepper and some replacement cucumbers. This resulted in a frenzy of planting this evening. Tomorrow I will tackle the planters in the front yard and restore the geraniums to the outdoors after a winter in the kitchen window. The potato vine has wandered out of the pots and taken root in the ground – I will have to see about restoring it to its pots of origin.

Transplanted strawberries and dahlias.

Speaking of returning to the outdoors, a tiny fig tree I purchased a Whole Foods last summer shot up inside over the winter and is a gangly six footer now. Despite that it seemed pleased to head outside today. Sadly there was a hibiscus tree and a jasmine plant which did not enjoy the winter inside I am afraid.

So while my muscles are sore what I am doing feels good. Slow but satisfying growth.

Tulip Time: Part One

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It’s spring time in full bloom here at Deitch Studio and I bring you a somewhat unorthodox Pictorama post about tulips today. It’s a two part post where Kim and Pam meeting of the minds post as our nascent floral interests convened this month.

I will start by saying that I have loved tulips since college where I remember seeing my first gorgeous bunch of them in someone’s room, a wonderful harbinger of spring. I think they were apricot colored and I guess the whole concept of cut flowers was very adult as well. While we grew flowers in New Jersey my mother, at that time, was not so big on harvesting them, preferring to let them run their course in the yard.

I am a big fan of vases filled with tulips, all colors and types. Trim the stems and add a couple of pennies – if in the sun or a warm spot they will force quickly. A cooler shaded spot to keep them longer.

Those yards of my youth consisted of sandy stony soil and were resistant to cultivation, despite my mother’s best efforts. As a result her purview was focused. She produced a credible vegetable and ultimately herb garden and managed to get shrubs and trees to grow, but less so bulbs of the annual variety like tulips. (Although someone gave her stunning and unusual iris bulbs which were perennial and a few of which exist in my yard today. Perhaps a future post on them.)

From my former office at Jazz. I generally had cut flowers on my desk each week.

Meanwhile, the lovely if extremely finite, nature of tulips fascinated me. I always say, there’s nothing more dead than a dead tulip. However, if true, in some ways there’s nothing more vibrant than one it its prime – their life and death cycle perhaps being part of the appeal. As plants they hit the ground running, so to speak, and once they hatch from their bulb they race to a full stem, bloom tightly folded. And then, bam! It opens. Amazing! Before you know it, the plant is spent and that’s pretty much it.

If left in the ground you can get a second showing the following year. When I worked for Central Park we had an annual Tulip Toss where the spent bulbs were dug up and replaced with fresh. The bulbs were given to smaller parks and interested individuals who would plant them the following year with a less reliable yield.

Now, I have mostly enjoyed my tulips as cut flowers indoors. However, as Pictorama readers know, I went gardener last year after inheriting the house in Fair Haven. Although I confined myself largely to herbs and veggies, one of my final acts of gardening in the fall was to plant some tulips out in the front yard.

Photo from a friend’s trip to Amsterdam this year.

As many know, a siren call to all wildlife are bulbs, seeds and flowering plants. Now, I try to take a pretty philosophical view of critters munching my blueberries and strawberries (read about that a bit here if you like), and I think mom planted the berries for the birds, but the seeds, bulbs and flowering plants (think geraniums) make me a bit sad. Anyway, understanding that it could result in spring disappointment, I planted a row of tulips and one of daffodils (less tasty it seems) in the front yard.

Our backyard is fenced and I generally do not have deer visit back there (although bunnies, chipmunks and squirrels abound, as well as myriad birds), but the front yard is fair game and can pretty much be considered a buffet for the plant munchers.

Nonetheless, I ordered some bulbs from a nursery and spent a chilly, dirty and backbreaking afternoon of planting last fall. I was a bit late getting them in which was a strike against me.

Last year’s strawberry plant. It wintered over and is laden with blooms already. The birds, bunnies and I will have strawberries galore this year.

My trips to New Jersey are somewhat sporadic and dictated by both things that need to be done there or other things which need to be done in Manhattan and keep me here. However, the women who look after the house and cats keep a weather eye on my garden as well and send frequent reports.

The tulips were not eaten as bulbs and low and behold – they came up unmolested. Now the race was on for me to get to New Jersey before a strolling four-legged resident feasted on them.

I had forgotten that I had purchased these brilliant bright orange and red ones. I zipped down to New Jersey and caught them in their full glory. So cheerful! Their straight stems and gaping blossoms opening to the sun and sky in the morning and shutting down again at night. I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed them.

I left on a Monday night and by Tuesday morning the report came – they were gone. I am so grateful that the critters waited for me, but I guess ultimately they proved to be an irresistible nosh.

By coincidence, last night I was catching up with a Frank Borzage directed film I had never seen, Seven Sweethearts. I am a huge Borzage fan and will sit down for any film of his I haven’t seen and TCM is doing a sort of mini-tribute to him this month. They appear to be focusing on the later films. (Why anyone would show Borzage and not show Lucky Star – an all-time favorite film – I have no idea. I collect stills from them and have written extensively about my love of his silent films here and here for starters.)

Charmingly artificial Borzage background on this still from Seven Sweethearts.

Now, I can’t really recommend this 1942 era film, except Katheryn Grayson (dressed of course in Dutch girl garb) is in fine voice. I wouldn’t say I didn’t enjoy it – there are some unmistakable Borzage touches including some very charming fields of faux tulips. The setting is an imaginary location called New Delft, a sleepy tourist town where some people come and never leave. Central to the town and the plot is a hotel owned by S. Z. Sakall who is Papa to seven daughters – five with sweethearts at the start of the film. Alas, none can marry until the oldest sister and she’s an aspiring actress so no interest in marriage there. You can fill in the rest. It is pretty available to be streamed online (free or nominal fee) and at the time of writing I caught it on the TCM app after a showing late on Thursday night.

All this to say tulips figure largely in the film and there are scenes, glass shots and charmingly artificial sets, of acres of tulips. I especially liked a scene where Katheryn Grayson tells Van Heflin that these tulips can tell the weather – that they close up with the darkening of the sky before the rain. It reminded me of mine, gently opening and closing in the front yard.

Last little fellow who popped up after all the others.

Meanwhile, I got a report that one lone little tulip showed up after the fact and I have the photo you can see above. Tomorrow, a bit more on the background of tulips and, oddly enough, where they intersect with comics.

Yard

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Taking a brief break from the big box of Felix, I share a recent photo postcard acquisition of this serious fellow with his cat and dog in a lush garden setting. He is surrounded by bounty from his garden, including an enormous melon, leafy greens and something that looks like eggplant perhaps. He is plant and pet proud! It is the sort of photo which, Felix notwithstanding, is the mainstay of the Pictorama collection. This card was never mailed, nor is anything written on the back.

Kitty, a nice orange tabby, who is distracted by something off camera to the left of our view, sports a collar and perches nicely on Dad’s lap. The black dog at his feet is has a bright white chest and a substantial collar. Our man is dapper in a vest and collared shirt, neatly trimmed mustache and combed hair. His expression is serious, but he is pleased with the photo taking. He sits atop a simple wooden bench with spindly legs.

I am curious about the ropes or twine coming down from the tree, perhaps vines were being trained up them. There is a mass of unidentified leafy foliage behind him. A house peers through an arbor covered with ivy or something similar. There is an opening to a fence on the other side and these draw our eye back, deeper into the space.

Mystery bush in the backyard which has grown enormous. My tomato plants, which remain totally happy, are hidden behind them.

I myself am fresh back from a few days of hectic gardening in New Jersey and this photo of pets and vegetable bounty remind me of the garden there. All the cats are indoor ones and cannot join me in the yard, but otherwise I might give this fellow a run for his money posing on the deck.

The herb garden in an earlier state.

Yesterday I was feeling the residual effects of digging some deep holes for transplanting lavender plants, not to mention hauling soil and water around earlier in the week. Evidently my gym and running trained muscles are not those employed for gardening! Among my duties, was transplanting a sizable jasmine plant, purchased online and which arrived in my absence. It needed to be moved to a proper pot which was one of the more pressing duties.

This is more or less what the jasmine should look like in bloom.

I lived in London many years ago and I have never forgotten how much I loved the smell of jasmine in a pub garden I used to frequent so I am very keen on trying to grow it. Jasmine’s ability to survive a winter in New Jersey seems questionable, so I have put it in a large pot and will consider bringing it into the garage over the winter. I purchased a trellis for it and was surprised how quickly it seemed to take to the idea of climbing up it. In the summer humidity it almost seemed to grow before my eyes. The arbor in this photo puts me in mind of it – would be lovely to have one with jasmine climbing up it.

The first dahlia of the season! Hydrangea blooming away behind them.

However the trellis seemed like a sort of marvelous thing in itself and I thought it was wonderful to purchase for $14 – such an interesting object, simple and made neatly of wood. There are several others in the yard, most notably a few holding up large pink honeysuckle bushes which mom ordered. I only found out fairly recently that she was especially fond of honeysuckle. Not sure if it was to provide bounty for the insects and birds or just because she liked them.

Largely the garden was planted by her for birds, bugs and small animals to nibble and attract. Blueberry bushes bulge and despite my mother’s more charitable inclination in providing for the bunnies, squirrels and birds, I am determined to at least let some ripen and taste them this summer. To that end I fought with a complex bit of netting I purchased and, in my own ham handed way, draped it around one of the bushes. We’ll see how that goes. I think I saw a squirrel laughing at me.

One of two blueberry bushes, laden with not-quite-ripe berries.

I also had it in my mind that I wanted some sunflowers as I have very fond memories of growing them as a kid. I purchased some seeds and planted them a few weeks ago. Although I haven’t grown anything else there from seed I thought that growing a line of them against the fence would be a no brainer when I tucked the seeds in the ground.

When I arrived the other day I anxiously checked them and found the spot utterly barren. Upon further inspection, something had delicately dug and nibbled the seeds all up – a nice meal. Arg! I purchased two small plants which were already well underway instead, not to be utterly thwarted. Admittedly my approach to the garden has been to plunge both headlong and headstrong into the process.

Hope springs eternal! Here are the two new sunflowers I just planted.

I should not only talk of failures – a stunning dahlia is already well underway blooming and meals there are liberally seasoned with an abundance of herbs from a garden I put in near the kitchen. It is, as an herb garden should be, close enough to the house that I occasionally wander out in my pj’s to snip some for a morning omelet. I am sorry not to have recent photos to provide for some of it, but will share an update after my next trip back later this week.

Planting

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: My mother has always had a garden. Perhaps it speaks to her largely Italian roots where there was a grape arbor in the backyard, cherry and other fruit trees and a kitchen garden for vegetables. (Posts about my grandmother’s house and that yard can be found here, here and here.) It was fertile soil (Jersey is, after all, the Garden State) and responsive to care and planting.

The Cittadino family yard at the turn of the century.

Mom also majored in zoology and botany in college which was as close as she (she a mere woman at a girl’s college) could come to a pre-med course. Much of that work in botany would come out over time, making up the fascinating accumulation and source of information my mother is. (Although of course I suppose that’s what mother’s are!)

In the first house I have clear memories of residing at, there was an impressive rock garden planted by the previous owners. It climbed up the sloping backyard and in my child’s memory was enormous – probably much smaller than I remember. One of my earliest memories is being about 3 and sitting with my mom as she worked in that garden. I think she was weeding and I picked up a handful of tiny frog as I ‘helped’ her. He jumped, we all jumped and I screamed in terror as my mom tried to explain the nature of the frog to me.

I believe that this more formal sort of garden was not really mom’s taste which was clearly a bit more natural, wild even. However, presented with this beautiful garden she certainly did tend it lovingly.

In the cottage on the river where we lived until I was about 11 the soil was sandy and salty from the water. Betty dug her heels in and really did battle to make anything grow there. Through considerable grit she achieved a smattering of rose bushes and something that served as a lawn, although may have been largely well-trimmed weeds in reality. No matter, lawn was never a passion of hers.

Magnolia tree near mom’s which inspired the purchase of one for her yard.

In summer she coaxed a bay of giant sunflowers in a side yard that was otherwise a fairly no-nonsense vegetable garden. It was there that I learned the joy of bountiful homegrown tomatoes and a surfeit of zucchini, and the occasional eggplant. It was tough going though and I also remember the failure of corn and all the evergreen trees that died too. (She had had a plan to buy live trees for Christmas and plant them. As one after another died she realized that this plan would not work and bought an artificial tree instead. The practice of cutting trees for Christmas really bothers her.)

The yard was all mom’s. Dad traveled constantly for work and his schedule only allowed for occasional involvement where he worked under mom’s direction. His background as a city kid did not allow for much gardening expertise or interest.

We moved several blocks away when I was about 12 and there my parents stayed until a few years ago. Although still on the water it was less likely to flood and the soil, while not that of her youth, was definitely several notches better.

Here she planted numerous trees, which we had the pleasure of seeing mature over those decades. Because the water table was still very high, it was the willows that thrived, although there were nice oaks and maple trees too, a weeping cherry. There were some lovely old trees on the property, one outside my bedroom window housed a screech owl, foxes made a home of a dead one in the backyard. She had her tree failures – a beloved copper beech that never really thrived as I remember.

Irises in mom’s yard, but not the ones she brought from the other house.

She was serious about tree care and people came at least annually to examine, prune and make suggestions. Living in a hurricane zone it was necessary to know that your trees were fit to withstand those high winds. After the devastation of Hurricane Sandy the loss of trees in the yard and the neighborhood left it sad and denuded. These were old friends that were gone now.

In this yard mom combined flowers and vegetables. There was a grapevine and strawberries – the wildlife got far more of these than we ever did however. The tiny delicious strawberries seemed somewhat miraculous to me. Tomatoes still reigned, but herbs were what I remember most. She planted them in the ground, but also in containers. It was lovely to hop outside and snip some fresh herbs for whatever I was making for dinner.

Mom’s house when we first purchased it.

There were glorious rose bushes in a variety of colors and some stunning irises that a friend had made a gift of and which he had brought from his home in New Orleans. There were azaleas and a glorious butterfly bush. In later years, with no family to feed, mom focused her planting on flowers and plants that would attract and feed the birds, insects and wild life of the area. The result was a cacophony of birds, buzzing bees and often a half dozen bunnies in view at any time. Deer found their way there and fox. Hawks and even vultures stopped by looking for prey. The yard was a wild kingdom of sorts in later years.

Mom’s house earlier this spring.

When mom moved into her current house she had a blank slate as the previous owners had only done basic maintenance. Mom is housebound now, but has a trusted gardener known only as Mike to me. Between them they have transformed the small yard, front and back. Mom is entirely focused on flowers which she enjoys from a windowed room at the back of the house. The irises were rescued and transplanted here and she can tell you about other plants and bulbs shared by friends and acquaintances, some rescued from Mike’s other jobs when they no longer suited the owners.

I have contributed some peonies (which have come into their own this year), a hummingbird feeder and a weeping cherry and a magnolia tree are on their way to her presently as belated Mother’s Day gifts. I took a tour of the yard when I was there last weekend and it was nice to see how it has grown in. After this long year spent in our Manhattan studio apartment walking around her little paradise is better than ever.

One of the peonies I gave mom, blooming this month.

This multi-colored honey suckle reminded me of the masses of it we had growing wild in our yard growing up. Dad showed me how to extract a single drop of nectar from each – amazing! When I remarked on it mom told me it is one of her favorites and that she had asked for it. A fact I never knew.

Multi-color honeysuckle.

In order to better survey her kingdom mom has a friend who records mini tours on video. Larry does a great job and I am enjoying these too.

Having lived in a Manhattan apartment my whole adult life I don’t know if I inherited mom’s green thumb or not. Kim, with his green thumb, tends our mass of African violets and single aloe plant. I miss those fresh tomatoes each summer!

Sour Cherries, Quince and Tomato Water

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: The day before Thanksgiving a bag showed up with my doorman and tucked inside were two delightful little jars of jam and a mason jar of tomato water. These were sent by Liz, a colleague, friend and chef who lives in my neighborhood and has so kindly sent along such care packages periodically during the long, shutdown time. Her bag of goodies not only improved our breakfast repast, but set loose a wonderful torrent of memories shared with my mother, mostly of the yard I knew as my grandmother’s, where my mother spent most of her childhood. Today’s post is devoted to those memories.

The jar of tomato water which I am rapidly consuming.

To start, for those of you who have not experienced it, tomato water is the water you drain out of tomatoes. This is sometimes done before canning or cooking tomatoes down in recipes. The result, assuming you like tomatoes, is drink that is like a wonderful burst of summer in your mouth. Liz introduced me to this delight, made me a fan and always includes a mason jar of it. This one is yellow – and tastes of those different tomatoes. Still very yummy and a real treasured reminder of summer as we head into a darker, gloomier season.

Quince tree at The Cloisters

One jam is quince. It is my introduction to it and I like it very much. The only quince trees I ever made the acquaintance of were up at The Cloister’s garden in Fort Tryon Park. There are lovely ancient looking gnarled examples in that garden and a quick read shows that some types can live, with care, longer than a human life span, and that getting them to produce an agreeable fruit isn’t easy. Back in 2012, the New York Times was inspired to devote an article to quince trees, In Praise of the Misunderstood Quince, specifically launching the discussion around those venerable examples of the trees at The Cloisters.

The other jar was plum and sour cherry jam. This one opened a Pandora’s box of taste memory because I have not had sour cherry jam or preserves since childhood. My grandmother used to make it each year – children and their spouses and the grandchildren were all tasked with a morning of picking the sour cherries off of an enormous tree in her yard. As I was a small child I assume my memory of it as being an enormous tree may be a bit exaggerated, but I do believe it was a mature and large specimen.

The yellow ones are similar to the cherries I remember gathering.

The cherries were yellow with a sort of red blush – more yellow than the ones I found to show here but that is the idea. We collected them in plastic buckets – strangely I remember an aqua colored one in use specifically. My grandmother had an enormous, ancient double sink and she would be in the kitchen cleaning them as we brought them in. I don’t think I was privy to the process of cooking them down, but the end result were jars of cherries that would last us the better part of a year. This ideally to be spread on her own homemade bread which we consumed in enormous slabs.

A subsequent conversation with my mom reveals that growing up, when several generations lived in the house I knew as my grandmother’s, the property next door also belonged to them. (I have written about my grandmother’s house and yard twice before. Those posts can be found here and here.)

My grandmother’s house as it looked in 2017.

Mom tells me that her grandmother taught her that it was planted very intentionally, almost entirely with food producing plants to feed the family. (My mother points to this as being particular to the Italian immigrant side of the family which was her mother’s.) Great grandma did not approve of the decorative plants my mother liked – wasted effort and space. To my mother’s memory, in addition to the cherry tree, there was: an apricot, a walnut, a chestnut, something called a freestone peach (which evidently failed to produce much), and two pear trees. My mom remembers her father always keeping walnuts from the tree in his pocket to share with the occasional inquisitive squirrel who would come and take it from his hands.

An undated photograph of a wedding feast in what I knew as my grandmother’s yard. The grape arbor, in keeping with the food theme, was gone by the time of my childhood.

I remember the chestnuts on the ground there. (Of course I was very small and closer to the ground than the fruit bearing part of a tree after all.) The furry, prickly outside of the chestnuts always fascinated me, as did the surprise of the velvety smooth chestnut inside. I never developed a taste for chestnuts, my father was fond of them though and I believe we did toast them in our fireplace experimentally one winter. My dad would buy them on the street here in Manhattan where you can smell them roasting in winter even now. (Well, at least in the now before now – are there chestnuts roasting without tourists in midtown?) The chestnut tree was an odd survivor of a nationwide blight (not unlike that which destroyed so many American Elms), and mom says people from Rutgers came to study it and photograph it as a survivor.

Chestnuts in their furry wrappers.

I love walnuts so I am surprised I have no memory of those on the ground or of that tree specifically. The parcel of land to one side of the house was sold when I was still very small, although mom says the walnut tree was near the garage so not sold off as was one of the pear trees which sadly was cut down to build the house there.

Mom says she adored the pear trees and that she can remember eating pears right off of them. One tree was on the property that was sold and was cut down for the house to be built. The other of those two trees was destroyed by a lightening strike which split it down the middle, leaving only charred halves. Mom said it was like losing an old friend.

She shared other memories of climbing up into the apricot tree, which had a long, low lying branch, to read her library books in the summer. She and her friend Jackie had competitions to see how many books they could read in a summer – I did the same with my friends as a kid, must have been her idea. It was the beginning of my life-long voracious reading habit.

Despite being housebound these days my mother still enjoys the garden, in her recently acquired home on a small plot of land. Under her instruction, the yard has been planted by a patient and lovely man known only to me as Mike, with many flowering plants – however specifically and thoughtfully designed to feed the birds, bees, butterflies and wildlife she likes to attract and to watch from the windows. A garden that provides, but in a very different way.