Garden Blogger's Muse Day for May 2010

That is May, the month I love the most, and when my turn comes to make the world, as surely it will, I shall make make my May ninety days long. December, January, and February shall be allotted ten hours each; I have not finalized my plans for the other months, but none of them shall exceed May.

Jamaica Kincaid in MY GARDEN (BOOK):

I've been rereading Jamaica Kincaid's book and read the above quote yesterday. I still like the words, but the desire for May ran stronger when I lived in a northern city.... here the month to wish for might be April - or even November!
Another quote from this book works wherever one lives:

I have really learned this as a gardener: listen to everyone and then grow the things you love. I have learned as much through my own conceitedness and from my own mistakes as I have from all the great gardeners I have met.
This month, this May - Jamaica- you are my Muse!

Happy May Day, Lei Day, Derby Day and Happy Muse Day at Carolyn's Sweet Home & Garden Chicago blog.

Looking for Julie and Julia

Looking for Julie and Julia was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Read at your own risk- POSSIBLE SPOILERS (and some Bad Language)

The Meryl Streep movie Julie & Julia made me too curious about Julie Powell & Julia Child. Now only a post the length of a term paper can corral my thoughts and contain the links.

MSS of Zanthan Gardens and I were at the Alamo Drafthouse South for the first show of Julie & Julia on opening day in Austin. The Drafthouse is always fun, the crowd was receptive and the turkey club sandwich I'd ordered in a nod to the era was quite good.

The movie starts in 1948 as Julia and Paul Child, married less than two years, drive in an elegant automobile to Paul's new post with the United States Information Service Department. During their five years in Paris, Julia first learned to eat the French way, and then decided to learn how to cook the food she loved to eat. Julia's book, My Life in France, written by Julia with Paul's great-nephew Alex Prud'homme, and letters written by Paul to his brother Paul Child were credited as the base for this part of the movie. I haven't bought My Life in France yet, and wonder whether their real Paris home could have been anywhere near as lovely as in the movie.

I was a goner from scene one and the best part of the movie for me was the tender, humorous, supportive and loving relationship between Julia and Paul - Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci seemed so perfect! Julia's sister Dorothy is played by wonderful Jane Lynch and there's a scene at the train station where Paul beams as Julia rushes to meet Dorothy.

Just thinking about any scene with the two sisters makes me smile! Chopping onions can make me smile! Next time I cook manicotti they will make me laugh!

Because of PBS, we've been able to watch Julia on television for decades - along with picking up cooking ideas, I absorbed the belief that Julia was civilized and generous and loyal. Julia's life in Paris seemed even more civilized and calm when contrasted with the contemporary tale of Julie Powell, afraid to turn 30, riding NY subways to work.

All that I knew about Julie on August 7th was the stuff of press notices - she was a New York blogger who cooked all the recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking over the course of a single year. Local news included the information that Julie is originally from Austin and that her parents live here. The Julie in Nora Ephron's movie is unhappy, emotional, at loose ends, loves her patient, encouraging husband Eric, is worn out by her job and is very self-absorbed. That part of the movie starts in August 2002 with Julie working in a cubicle for a government agency planning the memorial for the Twin Tower property while her friends put together multi-zillion dollar deals and get books published.

When her husband Eric gives her the idea to start the blog it seemed pretty real to me, although she didn't rewrite everything 5 times. On that day at the Alamo it was easy for MSS and me to relate to a character who was a blogger, especially one who seemed truly serious about writing. We laughed as the movie Julie creates her blog, and felt her thrill as she receives the first comments. The date of 2002 fell a year after MSS started Zanthan Gardens and a year before I started the original Diva of the Dirt site - long ago in blog years.

Paris in 1948 looked exotic and beautiful...Ephron has loaded Julia's story with mid-20th century hats & dresses and postures, elegant rooms, cigarettes, private dinners, restaurants, architecture, furniture, cocktails and guilt-free dining.
For me- who lives in a suburban development in the middle of Texas - the scenes of city life in a super-grubby apartment over a pizza parlor in Long Island City, Queens, New York seemed almost as exotic as the Paris settings.

The style and energy of Parisian life also make Julie's post-9-11 life seem even more drab and dreary in comparison, with a few scenes that seemed right out of Joe Versus the Volcano. (a movie written and directed by the same John Patrick Shanley who wrote & directed Doubt, starring Meryl Streep & Amy Adams, thus proving that everything is connected somehow.) I was glad Nora Ephron allowed both Julie and Julia to rejoice in and appreciate their loving, supportive spouses, something that should be done by all of us who have better partners than we deserve.

Julia's story was full of real people like her cowriters Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle (loved Linda Emond as Simca), her editor Judith Jones, her father, and her sister Dorothy, who did marry Ivan Cousins (in June, 1951 in New York according to a genealogy website).

Nora Ephron's treatment of the two stories gave us an entertaining and emotionally engaging couple of hours with interesting actors, fun sets, stunning food, nifty conversations, a few digs at pretension, sight gags, snappy lines and situations leading to punchlines. I didn't expect great accuracy from this kind of movie, but thought it could be fun to try figuring out what is based in fact and which things are Nora, Nora, Nora.

Again... the movie was fine - this post is not about changing it, or improving it, or telling Nora Ephron what she should have done! But sorting and making lists and finding links to what was probably true and what ended up in the script is a fun game and I wanted to play that game.

I still intend to get My Life in France and Julie/Julia and at least browse Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I read that the movie-tie in version of My Life in France lacks photographs that were in the original book. Even without the books, there were plenty of articles and interviews about Julia, Julie, the project and the movie available online. Julia had many birthday interviews after she turned 80. Some of the data may be wrong, but patterns emerged and I've tried to figure out what is probably true.

Earlier this week I saw J & J with my husband Philo at the Gateway in the Arboretum. We'd enjoyed the pairing of Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in Doubt and I was sure he'd like this movie. I tried to guess which scenes would crack him up. For me it was even more enjoyable to watch Meryl and Stanley portray Julia and Paul Child at this second viewing, partly because I had more background information.

For example - those posed nude photos in the bathtub really were made for their friends. Beverly Levitt quotes Julia in a 90th birthday interview.
"My parents were outraged," she says with a laugh. "They thought we'd hired a photographer to come into our bathroom. They didn't know that all photographers have timers. It was the '50s and everyone was so prudish."

The official sources agree that Julie and Paul really were together in the OSS, he did have a reputation as a loverboy, they really did have reputations as genuine party people. Paul & Julia seemed to rejoice in and love the families of their brother and sister. I liked this interview with great-grand niece and namesake Julia Prud'homme, who played the bridge instructor in the movie. My fond impressions of Julia and Paul didn't change....but they deepened.

What did change was the way I felt about the Julie character the second time around. Amy Adams did a fine job with the part as written and with the lines she was given. But those big light eyes looking sincerely and adoringly at her idol now appear to be more Nora, Nora, Nora than Julie, Julie, Julie.

After seeing J & J the first time I'd found and read over most of the entire original blog of the Julie/Julia project and tried to read most of the comments...later posts have hundreds of comments and something in the comment posting format led to many duplicates.

Was the Julie in the blog anything like the Julie in the movie? In the movie, all we learn of her background are a few passing mentions of Amherst and her mother's voice on a phone, calling from Texas. In real life Julie is Austin-born and bred, her parents live here and I heard that her mom doesn't sound one bit like Oklahoman actress Mary Kay Place.

Eric Powell is played by Chris Messina from Vicky Cristina Barcelona. During the course of the year Julie & Eric go back & forth to Austin for visits and family events. Her parents and Eric's parents come to visit them in Long Island City, offering help, recreation and unsolicited advice - friends and members of the extended family encourage and comment and telephone. The blog is sprinkled with references to places in Austin - Mr Gatti's, Central Market, Three Amigos, Whole Foods.

Google "Julie Powell images" and you'll see that dark-haired, dark-eyed Julie doesn't look anything like Amy Adams ... she looks like an Austin smart-ass to me. Julie in the movie wonders tearfully if her 'occasional' swearing on the blog could have turned Julia off.... Julie of the blog drops F-bombs like apostrophes and has strong opinions on everything.

Julie in the movie calls Julia "adorable". Julie on her current blog, What Could Happen? says, "The trouble is, I would never say something like Isn’t Julia Child adorable? Julia Child, for chrissakes, this literal and figurative giant of a woman who changed the lives of thousands and the entire American culinary landscape ... adorable?"

In the movie, Julia and her sister Dorothy make allusion to their dislike of Pasadena Republicans and rue the McCarthy years... apparently all true. Julia was still outspoken about politics at the age of 90 when interviewed for MS Magazine. Movie-Julie doesn't have much to say about politics, but Julie on the Blog sure does - with opinions on elected officials and elections - national, Texan and New York.

In the movie Julie has a friend Sarah, played by the interesting Mary Lynn Rajskub. In another scene Julie meets three overachieving college friends for their traditional Cobb Salad lunch. It was a funny scene, but it didn't feel real and the friends could be the snobby rich friends in anyone's movie. The actress who played the dreadful Cassie is Vanessa Ferlito.

(I don't know Vanessa but when she was in the Tarrantino & Rodriguez movie Grindhouse, Philo & I were among a dozen or so people watching night filming of a scene in a parking lot on Burnet. While the special effects people worked on setting it up, Vanessa acted like a real person, coming over to the barrier, holding the baby of some fans, smiling at toddlers and speaking to their parents.)

Rather than having just one true friend 'Sarah', Blog Julie had a core of terrific friends like Helen & Emily & Lisa, who struggled with the undependable transit system to get to Long Island City, share food and support her.

I was glad to read that the Cobb salad friends are fictional! Here's what Julie said in a Slackerwood interview:
"People ... say things like 'I hated your friends with the Cobb salad.' There were no friends with the Cobb salad. That's Nora Ephron's invention...people are equating me with this fictional character. It's a little surreal, but you get used to that too."

In the movie, Julie and movie Eric move to an apartment over a Pizza Restaurant. Before the movers arrive movie Julie lets the cat out. While unpacking she sits on the floor looking glum. Months later, photogenic friends appear for dinner parties where hostess Julie produces perfectly cooked food from her hot apartment kitchen without even working up a sweat.

Real Julie and Eric do move to Long Island City, but that happens after the blog has started, the apartment is over a Greek Diner and Julie complains about the lack of pizza places in Long Island City. They work to improve the apartment. From Julie's blog:

"My Eric and I had a bona-fide yuppie experience yesterday. We went over to our new Long Island City loft apartment to tear up the tile in the kitchen...After an hour and a half on our hands and knees with a chisel, we'd mostly gotten up the piece-of-shit beige linoleum and uncovered some older piece-of-shit-green tiling beneath... we hit wood! Not only that, but between the vinyl and the wood was some gorgeous, maybe 30s handpainted stuff with flowers and deco designs! Most of it was covered with tar and unsalvageable, but hey! Pretty exciting! We felt like really terrible archaeologists!!"

Movie Julie has the cat. Real Julie had cats plural, and she also has a snake named ZuZu. To feed the snake Julie goes shopping in Park Slope at "the mouse store". I'm having a lot of trouble imagining Amy Adams feeding mice to a snake.

Movie Julia Child strolls around Paris making friends with the purveyors of fresh meat, seafood and vegetables, and it looks like a dream - like a trip to the best Farmers Market in the world where you never think about what anything will cost.

Movie Julie Powell goes to Dean & Deluca, purchases her ingredients and then has Lucille Ball moments getting her loot home on the subway. She also has a few meltdowns when the cooking doesn't work out.

Real Julie and Real Eric work all day, then spend exhausting hours shlepping from store to store in search of the ingredients needed for the recipes. They complained about Dean and Deluca (shrimp for $24 a pound?) doing better at Jefferson Market & Fairway. Many of the recipes in the book call for kinds of meat that have to be ordered or searched for - veal bones for marrow, kidneys and giblets and gizzards, livers, calves foot, beef shins, mussels and squab, vegetables like celeriac & shallots - she needed truffles, arborio rice and semi-sweet chocolate, espresso powder, rum. She buys a goose and when she starts to cook it finds out the liver, a necessary item, is missing. There were failures and substitutions and many times she couldn't afford the exact ingredient or didn't have the right kitchen tool to follow Julia's instructions exactly. One of the items she tried to juggle in the actual overloaded subway incident was a live mouse for ZuZu.

The shopping part reflected some of my own experiences... going to 3 different grocery stores trying to get what I need for a recipe ... and I have a car! I can't imagine how exhausting it must have been to do this after work, traveling on the subways while carrying perishable foodstuffs. Hunter-gathering takes a hell of a lot of time in the real world.

Julie doesn't give the actual recipes, but the blog has space for blow-by-blow recitals of actual cooking processes. Sometimes the dishes do not turn out as well as they should - other times Julie describes their deliciousness so well you want to try the recipe. The complicated recipes took longer than expected and there were mounds of dirty bowls, pots and tools. Sometimes Julie came home from work and started cooking at 8, eating at 11:30Pm .... the 'saintly' Eric did most of the dishwashing and also cooked non-French food like Enchiladas on Spicy Thursdays. Her mom worried about her exhaustion and Julie was very sick at one point.

Like Eric, many people in our family have trouble with rich food. We laughed in recognition at the scene where Julie lies snoring while Eric pops antacid tablets like M & M's. There's payback when those who can't digest butterfat indulge in whole milk, sour cream, real whipped cream and butter, which is why we enjoy seeing Julia cook with butter but seldom use it.

That reminds me - the Butter Tribute at the Smithsonian was recounted in the blog on September 8, 2003. Julie wrote that she & Eric were worried about being caught bringing the butter into the exhibit containing Julia's kitchen. She added:
"... It was interesting to watch the little kids who came in watch the video that was running of Julia shows and interviews with other chefs about her. I can’t tell if it was just the hypnotic pull of television or what, but the kids actually watched it..."

That line brought to mind an image of my daughter age 4, recovering from a scary bout of bronchitis, wrapped up in a blanket in her little rocker. She watched Julia after lunch each day, rocking and giving the show complete attention - once turning to me to ask, "Is Julia CHILD a grown-up?"

Real Julie & Real Eric watch, discuss and quote TV, DVD's, and Netflix rentals including Family Guy, Extreme Makeover, Buffy, David Strathairn, Bollywood movies, the Austin-made Waking Life , Frances McDormand and Christian Bale in Laurel Canyon, True Romance, Mostly Martha, West Wing, X-Men, the Sopranos, Val Kilmer.

I read the blog in chunks of weeks and the timing for finding one post amused me... Philo & I had been watching episodes of a British comedy series called Manchild with Anthony Head. The very next day I read Julie's comments about Anthony Head's character on Buffy.

I'm very interested in seeing how the Julie/Julia Project was condensed into a book since I loved the blog comments and the interactions between Julie & her commenters and the commenters with each other. In both blog and movie, many of her readers and commenters sent Julie gifts of ingredients and some hit the Contribute button.

In that interview by Natalie Haughton, Julie talked about the difference between herself and the movie Julie and also touched on the whole JULIA HATES ME thing:

Q: What did you think of the movie and how you were portrayed by Amy Adams – was it accurate?

A: Yes and no. I thought it was a really lovely movie. Amy Adams is a wonderful actress, and I am a big fan. The characters were based on what's in the book. (Powell met Adams after the movie was filmed.) Amy is portraying Nora's version of me. Amy – Nora's Julie Powell – is a softer/nicer person who doesn't curse as much as I do. Nora made the kitchen as constricting as possible – it was smaller, but not as nasty (as my kitchen).

Q: What about the scene in the movie where Julia Child didn't like/approve your project?

A: A reporter had interviewed her and asked her about project. She said, "I know about the project, not interested in it," and was basically dismissive and had no comment. It was devastating. It's corny, but I had been living with "Julia" for a year, and the one I invented understood what I was doing. It was hurtful because I spent a year doing a tribute to her courage and generosity.
She changed me. When I picked up the book and decided to do the project, I thought I was just trying to learn how to cook French food. What I was getting from this book and the pages and her writing was this avocation of courage and pushing forward and daring me to do something I didn't think I could do. By the end of the year, by her example and cooking through the book, I had become more courageous.


More on that "Julia hated Julie thing" - when Judith Jones, the editor of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and a character in the movie was interviewed by Constance Droganes she said, "If they met I think Julia would have liked her. But given what we had to go on from the early blog I don't think Julia thought she was a serious cook. Secondly, you just didn't use swear words in cooking. Not where Julia was concerned," says Jones.

I've read speculation from many sources about what Julia would have thought of Julie... it was interesting to hear my own husband unknowingly echo some of them when he wondered whether Julia was turned off because she thought the MtAoFC was a gimmick for Julie to get famous.

I guess it's possible, but were blogs already considered a launching pad for writers back in 2002 when Julie started her blog? I'm not sure how many people read blogs then. Websites, yes - people like Harry Knowles and Ain't It Cool News had been recognized by the late 1990's as having influence, but I'm not so sure about blogs. Wouldn't the blog have been more focused if she'd planned it to be a book? Would she have cleaned up the language?

Julie claims not - she says this in the Slackerwood interview:

"When I started the blog, I didn't know what a blog was. I thought it was going to be for my mom to read. So by the time I had a readership, I had set this level of intimacy. I couldn't go back because I had readers, and they'd basically call bullshit on it. I'm really glad that it happened that way, that I didn't know what I was getting into because it was so important to the development of my tone and my voice as a writer. I don't know that I could do that now. If I started a blog for the first time now, I am inevitably going to hold stuff back. I still think I try to be honest as I can and upfront as I can be. Knowing that there are potentially millions of people reading --"

From my position in the middle generation between Julia and Julie, the theory that Julia didn't like Julie's blog because of the swearing seemed plausible. My mom and aunts and most women I know who were around before World War 2 could put-up with certain swear words - "damn" and "hell" and probably "bitch", possibly "bastard" and possibly a well-placed "shit". I've seen references to Julia Child herself saying, "Balls!", "Screw it" , the manicotti remark and possibly even giving the finger. But using "fuck" in the middle of a paragraph? I thought that would have been an almost insurmountable problem for many women.

But writer Russ Parsons doesn't think it was just the swearing - he knew Julia and claims that Julie's problems with the recipes seemed to demonstrate a lack of seriousness to Julia. His arguments are pretty good!

After the project had been in swing for a few months it did get noticed, and as she reached the home stretch in August 2003, Julie even allowed herself to joke that if her story were made into a movie, it should star Kate Winslet.

These numbers seem pretty solid: Julia McWilliams Child was born August 15, 1912, graduated from Smith in 1934, worked in advertising, did freelance writing and volunteer work for the Red Cross. She was 29 when the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor threw the USA into World War II. After she joined the OSS she met Paul Child and in September 1946, when she was 34, they were married. The Childs arrived in Paris where Julia met French food in 1948. Cooking school came later. She was 49 when Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published.

After reading so much about Julie and Julia I liked both of them even more. And it's impossible not to wonder what would have happened if that meeting between Julie & Julia had taken place after the project was completed... would Julie's nervousness make her act like an oaf? Would 90-year old Julia be reminded of her less-formed self at thirty? Maybe Julia would have admired Julie's determination and grit but how would she feel about cooking as a self-help project? Julia first fell in love with the sensual pleasure of eating perfectly cooked French food - only later did she decide to master French Cooking.

Julie, on the other hand, didn't spend much time playing with her food - she pounced on it, killed it, and then laid it as tribute at the feet of the one she loved.

Maybe Julia would have been okay with that eventually - word is she loved cats, and her kitchen in the Smithsonian featured one of my family's favorite Kliban cartoons on its wall

"Love to eat them mousies / Them mousies I love to eat / Bite they little heads off / Nibble they tiny feet."


Some of the sources:

Paul's NYTimes obit tells a lot about his entire life, including the decades before he met Julia.

Here is Julia's NYTimes obit, with mention of the Valentine postcards in the tub.

This MSNBC appreciation of Julia at her death in August 2004 includes biographical notes and quotes.

This NYTimes article from 1997 includes a birthday poem for Julia by Paul, referring to her legs and her "sweetly rounded bottom"

Julia Child celebrates 90 years, Beverly Levitt interview

Julia's Kitchen, now at the Smithsonian

Interview with Julia's namesake Julia Prud'homme

Slackerwood interviews Julie Powell

Natalie Haughton interviews Julie Powell

Reflections on Julia and Meryl by Julia's assistant, Gourmet Magazine Chef Sara Moulton

Julia Child film on American Masters

The Russ Parsons Post - many thanks to ChuckB of MyBack40Feet for leading me to it!

MS Magazine interviews Julia in 2003

Dale Roe on new TV shows - Jane Lynch to be in "Glee"

Looking for Julie and Julia was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Notes from Near and Far

The photos used in this post, "Notes from Near and Far", belong to the family of Annie in Austin.

Do any of you email garden photos to your family? Do they send garden photos back to you? I'd like to share some photos from our garden and some taken by family members in other states. My part of town had just over one inch of rain Sunday night to Monday morning and the rain lilies have responded. The pink ones are Zephyranthes 'Labuffarosea' The native white rainlilies are called Cooperia pedunculata by the Wildflower Center - but there seems to be some disagreement on the name.
Let's just call them Cooper's lilies - here they are with Pink Skullcap/Scutellaria suffrutescens. A month ago these peonies bloomed at middle sister Josie's house in IL - bet her daylilies are unfolding now On Thursday, someone in Washington State enjoyed a radish sandwich While rereading Eric Grissell's A Journal in Thyme I discovered that garden blogging can change how you read a book. This paragraph about making labels for small starts of rock garden plants made little impression on me during previous readings:

"I checked the names in the various books and catalogs at my disposal. One name, in particular, gave me trouble: Paxistima or Pachistima. This is a native American dwarf evergreen that looks like a prostrate boxwood (at least from a few feet away.) I've seen it spelled both ways, but I spelled it yet a third - Paxistema- another nomenclatural hybrid. Fortunately, I caught the mistake after writing only half of the labels."

But when I read it a few days ago the word Pachistima jumped off the page - Kate/Smudges made me recognize the botanical name for Kate's Ratstripper!




Jake's peaches looked great a couple of weeks ago- I sure hope there will be another photo when they're ripe.

This year's heat and drought did something weird to the 'Best of Friends' daylily from Pam/Digging. Last June it looked like this but last week the solitary bloom looked like a small, pale shadow of the formerly robust friend. I'll do my best to help this Passalong daylily recover and bloom again, but right now am just glad it's still alive.

In June the rose 'Sheila's Perfume' bloomed with pansies for our son and dear daughter-in-law in lllinois.Their pansies have faded in the last couple of weeks so they sent another picture when the marigolds and zinnias took the stage. Can you see the lily in bud at right? Although Oriental lilies are sometimes called "expensive annuals", this lily has bloomed for our son and his wife for nearly 10 years.

Back in Austin this unnamed oriental lily has fewer blooms in this hot, dry year but it looked good on Thursday and was amazingly fragrant in the dappled shade of the back border
The birds planted a tall annual sunflower like this a few years ago. Now each spring we look for seedlings, and if they're growing in a good spot, we let one or two grow tall again. This year's sunflower is at the NE corner of the tomato frame. Although it looks a little ratty, Philo and I are really glad we let it grow. We've been watching a pair of small birds hang on it - at first we thought they were American Goldfinches but the photos didn't quite seem right. They didn't look like photos of the Lesser Goldfinches either. Instead of a black cap - the male has a black head and back. After viewing many pictures and reading descriptions, we think they are Arkansas Goldfinches, a Western species that wasn't named for the state of Arkansas but because they were found on the Arkansas River in Colorado.


Our young GrandDog Penny lives on the left coast with her two avid gardener-ownersIs it any wonder that she's already learned to help out in the garden?
For the first time in a decade we've managed to grow a few big tomatoes - the kind of four-inch fruit that fills a slice of bread. We've planted many varieties in the last 10 years and kept records but our records can't help us this year. We'd like to find this variety again we bought the plant at Shoal Creek Nursery and the flat wasn't tagged. No one was able to come up with a name... just saying it was "definitely an heirloom variety." It's wonderful! If anyone out there recognizes it we'd love to know the name of this delicious tomato.

Tomato sandwiches, acrobatic goldfinches and an amazing local firework display have enlivened our three day weekend - I hope yours has been fun, too!

The photos used in this post, "Notes from Near and Far", belong to the family of Annie in Austin.

Congratulations, Chris!

Thank you to everyone who visited the Transplantable Rose during the blog tour and entered the drawing for a copy of Nightshade, the sixteenth mystery in the China Bayles series by Susan Albert.

Congratulations to the lucky winner - Chris Quinones of Massachusetts!

Welcome Susan Albert and the Lifescape Blog Tour!

Today's post is written by Susan Albert - author of the China Bayles mysteries, set in the Texas Hill Country, and a series called The Cottage Tales, with Beatrix Potter. A couple of days ago more than thirty garden bloggers from all over the USA were part of the first "Spring Fling" held here in Austin. Meeting Susan at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center here in Austin was part of the fun! Today it means something extra special to be able to say...Wecome, Susan, to the Transplantable Rose!

“Unbecoming a Gardener”

A big thanks to Annie for hosting me here at Transplantable Rose today. This blog tour celebrates the launch of Nightshade, the sixteenth China Bayles mystery. China is a former criminal defense attorney who has opted for a quieter life as the owner of an herb shop in Pecan Springs TX. Of course, her life isn’t really very quiet (there are all those dead bodies!) but the time she’s able to spend in the garden helps reduce all that stress. That’s how it works for me, anyway, and for gardeners all over the world.

From Garden to Native Grasses

I’ve had a garden here in eastern Burnet County, on the northern edge of the Edwards Plateau region, for over twenty years. On the 31-acre place we call Meadow Knoll, I have tended a half-acre of garden, composted, mulched, saved my own seed and grown my own seedlings, experimented with new varieties, and canned my own produce. I’ve spent hours every day in the garden and loved (almost) every minute of it. (You’ll find a somewhat fanciful map of our place here.)

But I’ve grown older and creakier, my writing work takes more time, and we’ve acquired a second home—which means I’ve had to cut back. The veggies went first, since they were also irresistibly attractive to raccoons, deer, and various voracious insects. (Bet you know about that!) I stopped planting flowering annuals because they were work- and water-hogs. Then last year (2007), we got over 20” of rain in July, which did in many of the non-native perennials. We were gone in August and September, and since it didn’t rain during those months, the rest of the garden—except those brave old roses, survivors all—gave up the ghost. Instead of replanting, Bill and I spent most of the winter returning everything (except the roses, a few vines, and a daffodil border along the woods) to the native grassland from which we originally wrestled it. Enthusiastic and unrepentant, I plead guilty, as Sara Stein puts it in Noah’s Garden, to conduct “unbecoming a gardener”—a phrase that has a great deal of significance.

Wild Gardening

But I’m not garden-less, and I know I never will be. One of the things I’ve learned over my gardening years is that nature can do a lot better job of it than I can. She knows what grows best, where and when and how. So I’m turning it all over to her—the whole job, from planting to watering to growing. And having lived in this place and observed it for over two decades, here’s what I’m expecting from my Hill Country wild garden.

Color. In April and May, the fields and roadsides will be blue (bluebonnets and mealy sage), purple (winecups and redbuds), and pink (paintbrush). In June, there’ll be a blaze of yellows, reds, and oranges (gaillardia, coreopsis, and standing cypress, which grows along our creek and along the railroad tracks on the ridge). In July, the incredible blue of gentian, and blue ruellia, and in the fall, a burst of azure sage along the fence row. Oh, and goldenrod, and sunflowers and coneflowers and Englemann daisies—my, oh, my, all that astonishing gold.

Shape and form. Landscaping, I’m told, is all about shape and form. My wild garden offers plenty. In winter, there are the strong trunks and bare limbs of pecans and hackberries and mesquite—the mesquite decorated with hanging gardens of mistletoe. The firm, rounded shapes of Ashe juniper, the free-form sprawl of the mustang grape that grows along the fence, the spiny paddles of prickly pear, the spiky thrusts of yucca, the massed forms of Lindheimer muhly grass, the pyramids of bald cypress, bright with autumn color. I can’t take credit for any of it—all I can do is appreciate it.

Harvest. If beauty isn’t enough bounty, consider this. The yaupon holly and roughleaf dogwood that grows at the edge of the meadow provide a feast of red and white berries for the robins in winter, and the cedar waxwings will line up to strip the junipers of their generous purple fruit. The raccoons love the mustang grape in August, the lime-green hedgeapples in September, and the tart-sweet flameleaf sumac berries in November. The oaks and pecans feed the squirrels all winter, and the winter-tourist goldfinch love the dried sunflower heads. The hummingbirds adore the native salvias, Turks’ cap, desert willow, and fall obedience plant, and the native bees are wild about the buttonbush in the marsh and the buffalo gourd along the edge of the lane. The abundant fruits of that enormous buffalo gourd support whole communities of mice, voles, gophers, and such. (Recently, I found a cache of last summer’s seeds neatly tucked under a rock by some furry creature who must have forgotten where he put them.) The wild turkeys join the raccoons and squirrels in enjoying the mesquite seeds, dogwood and sumac fruits, and mustang grape. In the wild garden, there’s something for everyone, and—in a good year—enough to go around.

You get the picture. Instead of feeling that I have to go out and weed, I go for a walk. I don’t bother with loppers or shears. If the mustang grape wants to take over the fence, have at it, my friend, there’ll be more for the raccoons. I’ve hung up my rake, for the leaf litter is home to insects and microbes and lichens, the wild garden’s recycling team. And I don’t bother to spade, either, since the wind and birds and insects and animals carry seeds, and I’m learning to let them do the planting.

But please don’t think this change of heart and habit comes easily. I’m clinging to my old roses, I’m growing my favorite culinary herbs in a wheelbarrow, and I wintered over some really spectacular geraniums for the planter on the deck. But I’m no longer hostage to the garden. I’ve shifted into “admire” mode. I’m not only loving it, but finding it easier to live with.

I live in the country, and my wild garden is all around me, like a green embrace. But people who live in the city can enjoy their wild gardens along roadways, in vacant lots, in untended back yards, in far corners of the neighborhood park. It’s all in what you look for, you know. If the ungardening bug bites you, sit down for a spell with Sara Stein’s Noah’s Garden or (if you’re a Texan) Sally and Andy Wasowski’s Native Texas Gardens. That’ll give you something to think about while you resist rushing out to buy that exotic plant you just read about in one of those glossy garden magazines.

Thanks, Annie, for giving me a place to celebrate my wild garden. And thanks to all the readers who are following this blog tour through cyberspace. If you have questions or thoughts to share, post a comment. I’ll be around today and for the next couple of days to answer questions and carry on a conversation.

About the book drawing and Susan’s blog tour

If you’d like to enter the drawing for a copy of Nightshade go here to register. But you’d better hurry. The drawing for Transplantable Annie closes at noon on April 10, 2008.

Want to read the other posts in Susan’s blog tour? You’ll find a calendar and links here.

Coming Soon - Susan Albert's Blog Tour!

This post, "Coming Soon - Susan Albert's Blog Tour!" was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.

Once I realized my 2008 turn as hostess for the Divas of the Dirt would land on St Patrick's Day weekend the menu choices were quite clear - we had to have steel cut Irish Oatmeal at breakfast and Corned Beef sandwiches with coleslaw for lunch.

As I stood in the kitchen mixing the coleslaw, the scent of dill reminded me of one of my favorites in Susan Albert's China Bayles Herbal mystery series ... A Dilly of A Death. Thinking of that book reminded me that Susan Albert will be a guest at the Transplantable Rose in a few weeks, visiting on April 8th as a stop on her Nightshade Blog Tour. Among the blogs on the tour are some familiar names, including friends Carol of May Dreams on March 24th, Cold Climate Kathy on the 26th, Rurality on April 1st, Crafty Gardener on April 4th, and Zanthan Gardens on April 10th. At each stop along the tour you'll be invited to enter a drawing for a first edition of the newest book in the series, the ominously titled Nightshade - eight stops makes you eligible for the grand prize drawing of an audio book of Susan's personal favorite in the series, Bloodroot.

Some of you may also know Susan Albert as the author of another series, the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter - with Beatrix as the heroine. I intend to read the first book in this series soon. But will I love Beatrix as much as I love China's best friend Ruby? To anyone who knows me, my identifying with a youngish, slender, six-foot-tall, redheaded owner of the only new age shop in Pecan Springs might be ludicrous... but inside my head - I am Ruby!

More details on the Tour will be coming soon - in the meantime check out the first bluebonnets on Susan's Lifescapes blog from the Texas Hill Country outside Austin - and have a Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This post, "Coming Soon - Susan Albert's Blog Tour!" was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.

Garden Bloggers' Book Club - Thyme of Death

I enjoy mysteries, and some of my favorites are the kind that come as part of a series, with an amateur detective as the main character. For the Garden Bloggers Book Club, Carol has invited us to read a mystery connected to the garden - a sub-species of the mystery that may have its origins with Agatha Christie's Miss Jane Marple and Jane's garden-mad friend Dolly Bantry.

I considered reading the official choice, but decided instead to make the club a reason to buy another volume of the China Bayles series, by Susan Wittig Albert. China's adventures as a lawyer-turned-shop owner are fun to read no matter where you live, but since both she and her creator dwell in Central Texas, for me the local angle is irresistible!

The book I bought is called Thyme of Death - the first China Bayles book, which began the series in 1992. Shortly after we moved here I was introduced to China with a book belonging to the middle of the series so I thought it would be interesting to see how we first meet China Bayles. Susan Albert introduces China as a fully-formed character, with her personality and beliefs evident right from the beginning. I do think that a couple of the other characters seem slightly stereotypical in this first book. China and her friend Ruby lose a terminally ill friend to what looks like suicide, but may actually be murder. We find out a lot about everyone in town as the story unfolds. Thyme of Death was nominated for both Agatha and Edgar awards - the plotting is pretty good, the conversations engrossing, and the details of life in the town of Pecan Springs make the start to the series special.

In real life, Albert's fans have been heartbroken to discover that they can't actually go to China's Thyme and Seasons Herb Shop with it's adjacent garden full of fragrant herbs. Alas! Pecan Springs is not a real town, although after reading one book, you may sympathize with those confused fans and wish that you could visit China's shop, too. There is a genuine sense of place in these mysteries - the town may be fictional, but the geography, biology, botany, genealogy, and meteorology are real. The medical and forensic details of the murders seem well researched, and with a Texas lawyer as the main character, there are opportunities to explore how local laws work, along with some comments on political events. Each book has a relevant plant or herb in the title, and many of the later ones have a recipe or two, including these two favorites.

Susan Wittig Albert is also the author of another mystery series called the Cottage Tales, with Beatrix Potter as the mystery solving protaganist. We recently rented the recent movie Miss Potter, and enjoyed it very much. I don't require a film biography to be all that accurate - it's a movie! But once the credits have rolled, I want some facts about the real person. I read Susan's review of the movie and found out that most parts of this Beatrix Potter bio-flick were factual, but some scenes were pure fiction, and that timeframes were shifted for dramatic reasons. Now I'd like to read some of the Cottage Tale series, to see how Susan imagines Beatrix - and to guess what kind of actress should be calling her agent and optioning the book!

Susan Albert not only tells a good yarn and spins a fine mystery - she also spins, dyes, weaves and knits real yarn. And she's even a blogger, writing about her Hill Country home and garden, wildlife, and fabric arts at Lifescapes and appears on local PBS, visiting with Tom Spencer at the Central Texas Gardener.

Knowing something about the author is fun, but you can enjoy China Bayles without any backstory - just open the book and head down the path to Pecan Springs.

Added Oct 1st: Carol has links to the other reviews at her Virtual Book Club meeting.

The Multi-tasking Garden Blogger

Here's the dilemma:

I met with the Divas of the Dirt on Saturday and wanted to write about it.

I’ve been immersed in a genealogy project and wrote a report.

We had 4 inches of rain last week and I have a push mower.

Philo and I are looking at paint chips. Why do the colors I like always have food names? Like butter, cream or Belgian Waffle?

Hank wrote a wonderful 15,000-word essay centered around Hydrangeas and I read a lot of it. Here's a link to the 15,000 word essay but be aware that downloading his blog entry will take some time.

My book report for the Garden Blogger’s book club is due today.

Sweet Home Chicago Carolyn’s Poetry day is planned for tomorrow.

I decided to knock two things off my list with a rhyme about the book. Here goes:


My Summer in A Garden by Charles Dudley Warner
Is a public, domain-free download from Google.
But a paper book is nicer for relaxing in a corner -
Wish I’d made that choice instead of being frugal.

I viewed the screen and scrolled along as Charlie spun his stories,
Connecticut’s the setting; Eighteen-seventy the time.
For nineteen weeks he hopes for horticultural-type glories,
But deals instead with critters, weeds and clime.

His manner is quite jocular, avuncular and dense.
While making fun of nation, gender, sect.
When sticking to his garden Warner’s words are full of sense
But some parts are not Politic’lly correct.

If you like hoes and vegetables these tales will make you smile
I chuckled at his Devil Grass and produce-swiping folks.
Though Warner’s gone from this world for a very long, long while,
Just search the web – his name lives on in snappy quotes and jokes.

The Divas of the Dirt had a great morning at the Austin Smith & Hawken, enjoying a talk by manager Zach on outdoor entertaining. We later went to brunch and there was shopping involved. That blue cactus mosaic at the top of the page was seen at the new Domain shopping center. Go read about our day, see more new photos and find links at the

Divas of the Dirt blog.

[A bit of clarification, added August 1st:

I'm happy to be a member of two separate groups of Austin gardeners - the Divas of the Dirt, who do garden projects together, and the Austin Garden Bloggers, who write about gardening. I write about them both, but the groups are not connected in any other way.]

Passalong Plants - The Book

Passalong Plants -the April/May Selection for the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club.

By the time this book came into my life, my world was already filled with plants passed along by other gardeners, so Felder and Steve [we were instantly on a first name basis] didn’t introduce me to the concept, but they gave all of us a great name for what we were doing, validated our experiences and filled an entire book with objects of desire. We were introduced to some quirky yard art as well as some truly odd plants.

The two authors, Steven Bender and Felder Rushing talk about individual plants in a neighborly, anecdotal way, sometimes lurching over the line into Jeff Foxworthy territory, but with genuine horticultural information under the kudzu. I have no resistance to this kind of Southern- style writing, treasuring old paperbacks by Lewis Grizzard and Celestine Sibley, enjoying the YaYa Sisterhood, and loving movies like Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes. If you can’t swallow garden writing served with a side of cheese grits, you may need a lot of iced tea to get you through the pages, but the plant stories are wonderful. I love my copy, sometimes rereading the book for fun, and sometimes using it as a reference for specific plants.

Many of the most tempting stories are about plants that won’t grow above zone 7, giving the Northern gardener a case of zone envy. Felder and Steve are currently considering a new book about Passalong Plants for colder zones, so if you live where camelias freeze, read this book first and hope they’ll write a companion volume in the future.

Last March, I posted about meeting Felder Rushing, and mentioned that my copy of the book was written-in, and stuffed with notes. The extra pages at the back of the book were blank when I bought the book, but were soon covered in lists of plants and people. I noted daylilies named ‘Timeless’ and ‘Charm Bracelet’ as coming from Bernice, that Sweet Autumn Clematis was given to me by Ruth, whose plant came from Sophie. The Malva moschata was from Dorothy, Iris from Lorraine, Peonies from Patty, Sweet woodruff from Sherry, orange lilies from Laverne and that the Jack in the Pulpit was passed along to me by my mother. Most of the passalong plants in our Illinois garden stayed there when we moved to Texas in 1999.

But among the passalong plants in my present garden are two that traveled long and winding roads to live in Austin, Texas.

Look into the photo above and you’ll see some tall while phlox, cavorting with a white Echinacea and some Perovskia last July. The family legend says that my great-grandmother grew the phlox in Michigan in the early 1900’s. By 1924 she'd given a division to her daughter, my Grandma Anna, who took them to Chicago. Grandma passed them along to my parents in the 1950’s. Decades later, I took some of the white phlox with me to a rental townhouse, then to our first house. Another four years passed, I redivided the burgeoning clump and took some to our second house, then repeated the process and planted them in the square garden at the third house, seen below.

The phlox are blooming in the upper left corner of this decade old snapshot - with the head of an 'Annabelle' hydrangea flopped artistically across the center.

In the mid-nineties our son M. took some of the white phlox for his garden and after we moved to this house in 2004, M. returned the favor, bringing a division of the heirloom phlox down here - to make this the fifth home where we’ve grown them.

The journey of another plant began on April 13, 1992, when a garden club speaker in Illinois gave me wands of corkscrew willow - extra greenery from an arrangement. I managed to root one of the slender twisted branches and grew it in a whiskey barrel. The wand eventually expanded into an attractive tree, from which I rooted more cuttings, one for my son M. and a couple for my friend Barbara.

We left the original tree in the whiskey barrel in Illinois, but after a while I missed it, and wanted one here. Both M. & Barbara gave me wands from their now larger trees, with no luck at first, but this piece from Barbara finally made roots in 2005. The young willow now grows in a big pot, placed so any drip of condensation from the roof will land in the container. Also in the container are some passalong agapanthus plants from Pam/Digging.

I started writing this while waiting for a couple of passalong daylilies to bloom, but as I waited, the draft grew longer and longer, and now the daylilies need a whole post! Since I want to tell the stories of the passalong plants in our garden and the people who shared them with us – let’s call this Passalongs/Part One.

Felder Rushing at Florarama

The answer to all of the questions at the end of the last post is Yes! I did get to hear Felder Rushing speak in person. Philo & I did get to Florarama [AKA Zilker Garden Festival]. I bought the two replacement Duranta plants, and also found another Barleria-Philippine violet, a Pigeonberry, a Denver Gold columbine, a Dwarf myrtle, a Bletilla-ground orchid, another hot pepper for Philo, raffle tickets to benefit Zilker Park, and bought Felder Rushing’s book Tough Plants For Southern Gardens, seen above with my well-read copy of Passalong Plants, which I've scribbled in, stuffed with notes and filled with post-its.

You know, that passalong book has been in my possession since the middle nineties. It had me craving Crinum lilies and wanting Banana Shrubs/Michelias when I lived in Zone 5-Northern Illinois. I’ve read and reread it, and made lists of plants I’ve been given and plants that I've given away from three different gardens.

When Felder Rushing walked up to the podium and started talking it was like hearing an old friend – a very wise and funny friend. He talked of left-brain horticulture and right-brain gardening. He talked about his ancestors and his descendents, about plant societies and rules, bottle trees like Pam’s, using plants that want to grow where you live, told how to use plants in combinations, and then he shared the his “Gardeners’ Bill of Rights”, which was quite empowering! He introduced his radio partner, Dirt, who spent decades as a chef, but is now a radio gardener with very unusual advice, a mellow voice and very interesting stories.

Can you imagine how glad I was that we were in that audience?

Apparently with age comes boldness - because after the talk I not only asked Felder Rushing to sign my book, but mentioned that the Garden Bloggers' Book Club had chosen Passalong Plants as the next selection. I even gave him one of the little business cards Philo made for me with the girl-in-the-hat icon and my blog address.

This was my second burst of courage. Earlier in the day, I approached John Dromgoole [John is the garden guru I linked to in The Gardener’s Year post] and told him that there were a bunch of Austin Garden Bloggers who were fans, that we loved his nursery and that we had links to the Natural Gardener’s website on our blogs, so that people all over the country may have heard that rooster crow. And I gave him one of the little Annie cards, too.

For the Wisteria fans, let’s close with a photo of Zilker Botanical Garden’s method of dealing with this lovely, rampant vine. Their venerable Wisteria is pruned into a tree-form on a small, manmade island in the middle of a koi pond: