Thank Goodness for Gardening

March 2020 may go down as the month that gardening saved my sanity.

A month that began with such promise went sideways with a speed and whip-lash-inducing severity that, in my memory, is unprecedented.  No, I didn’t test positive for Covid-19; but more than a dozen speaking engagements as close as my town library and as far away as South Carolina, Florida, Illinois and Missouri fell like dominoes and evaporated out of ‘an abundance of caution’.  It wasn't fair; I had a new book to talk about and people to entertain.  I confess to having fallen into a funk that no amount of binge-watching Cheers reruns could cure.

Ten days into the month, Betty appeared in the bedroom that serves as my office (where I was, of course, immersing myself in contagion statistics).  She had a rake in her hand.  “Stand up, Mister Gloom and Doom,” she said.  “I would like you to help me clean up the garden.”

Betty had the kind of look of her face that said the use of the words, ‘would like’, was not intended to be taken at face value.  This was a command, and was to be obeyed now.

I found crocus along the sidewalk

I rose from my chair and, for the next three days, we pulled a winter’s worth of leaves out from under shrubs.  I mended a stone wall.  We cut back the four-inch stubble on perennials, and carefully trimmed out broken branches.  And, along the way, I found dicentra already leafing out; awaiting only the removal of six inches of oak leaves to start on their early spring flowering.  Daffodil greens were three inches high and, where there was bright sunlight, heads were forming.

The aconite planted last fall bloomed

I removed a mulch of pine needles and discovered a small forest of greens that meant the winter aconite bulbs we planted in October were going to bloom.  Off our patio, a clutch of hellebores had probably been in bloom since February, but were under so many leaves, I had forgotten they were there.  When I carefully pulled off leaves and pine needles by hand, I found myself with a pink and white reward.  Those small signs lifted my spirits more than I can express in words. 

It was not all ‘rake and discover’.  Cleaning the garden also meant hours on my knees pulling out thousands of inch-tall pine seedlings and a nasty green weed with world domination hard-wired into its DNA. 

The garden was staked and fences
bloomed immeiately

Then, the sun warmed the soil and, a week later, miracle of miracles, we had crocus by the hundreds.  My spirits had done a 180.  I was looking forward to working in the garden. 

On a Friday toward the end of the month – when the temperature rose into the mid-40s and no rain was in the forecast - we gathered a group of intrepid volunteers and put down 220 stakes to mark our town’s Community Garden.  The next day, we put up our fence – or at least tried to.  A cold, nasty wind whipped up and drove us indoors.  But we will be back out.  We have to: the garlic is already three or four inches high and will be fodder for deer if we don’t protect it.

The hellebores were there all along

Perhaps the rejuvenation of my spirits has some kind of cosmic, Karma-like reverberation.  One morning in late March, an email appeared in my in-box.  The garden club convention in Missouri I was to speak to in early May was one of the first to cancel the event at the beginning of March.  But they were now planning their 2021 event.  Everyone had been looking forward to my talk.  Might I be available the first week of May a year from now? 

Of course I could; and I wrote them back immediately.  No sooner that that email was posted, my phone rang.  The group in Illinois was cancelling my talk, also scheduled for May, but was anxious to know if I could be re-booked for the same date in 2021.

I write this looking out my office window.  A few weeks ago, I saw only missed opportunities I thought would never come again, and contagion as far as the eye could see.  Now, I focus on the mass of yellow, white and blue crocuses and aconite.  And I know we will all get through this.

The Coupon

In the first episode of the classic TV drama, “Mad Men”, department store heiress Rachael Mencken is listening to a presentation from Sterling Cooper, a Madison Avenue ad agency.  The year is 1960, an era of rampant sexism.  Pitchman Don Draper gives Ms. Mencken the agency’s best advice: a 10%-off coupon in select ladies’ magazines. 

The part of our property that is not
wetlands - roughly half an acre - is an
enormous planting bed for trees, shrubs
and perennials.  No grass!

Mencken explodes with outrage. “Our store is 60 years old,” she says.  “We share a wall with Tiffany’s.  Honestly, a coupon?”  Smooth-talking Don Draper responds, “Miss Mencken, coupons work.  I think your father would agree with the strategy.”  The equally suave Roger Sterling adds, “It’s not just research.  Housewives love coupons.”

We’re meant to recoil in horror even as we smile smugly from our 21^st Century perch: the idea that women could be successfully manipulated by the simple expedient of offering them a coupon.  Today, such a heretical thought would never see the light of day.  Perish the idea!

Well, maybe not exactly or, maybe there has been some kind of role reversal.  Six weeks ago, I found a coupon in my inbox.  It came from one of my favorite nurseries and it offered $20 off of any delivery.  Not off of any plant or shrub… just twenty bucks off of a delivery.

The old mulch is peeled away
down to the underlying loam

Well, it just so happened that Betty and I had been discussing buying leaf mold – those finely chopped-up leaves that have aged a year or more and are perfect for mulching flower beds.  We have something better than flower beds at our new home:  an entire yard – half an acre – that is one enormous shrub, tree, and flower bed.  It consists of eighteen inches of screened loam topped by several inches of mulch and, since last October, a coating of chopped autumn leaves.  Our great idea was to put another inch or two of leaf mold on top of that parfait for even better future soil, impervious to weeds and grass.  We knew we were probably going to buy leaf mold, it was just a matter of where and when.

So, off we went to the nursery, my printed-out coupon in hand.  We went straight to the sample bin of leaf mold.  Great.  Exactly what we wanted.  Ready to order!

Not so fast.  Betty started looking at the other bins.  And especially at the aged leaf and grass compost.  It was jet black, crumbly, and smelled of the good earth. 

The old mulch comes away in
matted chunks that need to be
broken up

“We need this,” Betty told me, letting a handful of black gold trickle through her fingers.  “We have dozens of shrubs still to plant and hundreds of perennials.  This is perfect!”  And so we bought ten cubic yards of compost instead of ten cubic yards of leaf mold. I used my $20 coupon which brought our total purchase price down by about five percent.

Three days later, a truck delivered our ten cubic yards of compost.  Which is when we discovered our strategic error: compost and leaf mold are not the same thing.  Leaf mold is a great insulator; it’s like bark mulch except that it is fluffier and looks nicer.  Compost also looks very nice, but it is a nutrient-rich medium in which to grow things.

Had we purchased leaf mold, we could have raked it over the plantable part of our property, topping the loam and mulch with a fresh insulating layer that, in a year or so, would itself become part of the soil.  Time commitment?  About a day.   Compost, on the other hand, is like adding a layer of super-rich, ready-to-plant soil.  It would also take about a day to spread compost over our yard but, once in place, it would nurture each and every seed that fell on it, be that seed one of grass, weeds, poison ivy, strangler fig, kudzu, or maple trees.

The dark area represents what has been completed to date.
It's roughly five percent of the job.

To put it mildly, that would not be a smart thing to do.  Here’s what we did instead:

Over the course of four weeks, we used about three cubic yards of compost to plant those new shrubs, perennials, and annuals.  Which left us with just seven cubic yards of the stuff.

All the while, we contemplated an alternative – any alternative - to what in our hearts we knew all along was the only possible solution for the other seven cubic yards.

This week, I began what is without a doubt the hardest work I will do all summer.  In five-foot-by-ten-foot strips, I am raking off the top few inches of mulch from our yard… 

No.  That’s not right.  “Raking” is an inaccurate description.  A year after being put down, the bark mulch has begun breaking down into its own, soil-like texture.  It is, in short, now a solid, hard-pressed mat of material.  To remove it, I bang the tines of my steel rake into the mulch and pull up a piece a foot wide and a few inches long, which I then chop into bite-size pieces that resemble what was put down originally.

When the old mulch has been pulled into a pile and the loam below is exposed, I add tubs of compost and spread that compost out to an inch’s thickness.  When that is done I pull the reconstituted mulch back over the top of the compost and loam.  The compost lays atop the soil, gradually enriching it for the next round of shrubs and perennials we will plant.

As of this morning, I had completed work about 400 square feet of our yard.  I have another 8,000 square feet to go.  Gosh, I’ve done five percent of the project! 

Which is exactly what that coupon represented as a discount to the purchase price of the compost that got me into this situation.

"Well, No, You Can't Be As Desperate As That..."

Like everyone else in America, I am spending Sunday evenings this winter in front of my television watching ‘Downton Abbey’.  And, like every male watching the show (or at least I suspect this is the case), I was only half paying attention last week because Lady Edith’s wedding preparations and resulting tribulations can hold me spellbound for only so many minutes. But Betty loves the show and so I watch it, too, provided I’m allowed to read the newspaper, work a Sudoku or read email at the same time.

The Dowager Countess offers Lady
Edith some advice about gardening

At the risk of providing a spoiler alert, in last week’s installment it is 1921 and Lady Edith has been jilted at the altar by Sir Anthony Strallan (who appears to be on the wrong side of 70 but whom Lady Edith desperately loves).  Lady Edith takes to her bed, sobbing.  Then, after perhaps a month, we see Lady Edith trying to come to terms with her new status as Perpetual Spinster.  Seeking direction in her life, she goes to her grandmother, the Dowager Countess, and the following exchange takes place:

The Dowager Countess:  “Surely, there must be something you can put your mind to.”

Lady Edith:  “Like what, gardening?”

The Dowager Countess: “Well, no, you can’t be as desperate as that.”

At that point, I put down my crossword puzzle and started shaking my fist at the television.  How dare Downton Abbey put down gardening!

Gertrude Jekyll, a
contemporary of the
Dowager Countess

And then I started to think that, well, it’s 1921 and maybe gardening really was a ‘desperate’ avocation for a woman, and especially a titled woman.  Then, a couple of names popped into my mind.  The first one was Gertrude Jekyll.  Ms. Jekyll was born in 1843 and so would likely have been a contemporary of the Dowager Countess.  By 1890, Ms. Jekyll was the most sought-after garden designer in the United Kingdom and she would go on to create more than 400 gardens in Britain and America.  In 1921, Ms. Jekyll published Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, a book that would inspires millions of mixed flower borders.  It was likely in the Downton Abbey library.

Beatrix Farrand.  Martha Levinson
could have made the introduction

The second name that occurred to me was Beatrix Farrand.  Born in 1872, she was American and so wouldn’t have had a title, but it is quite likely that the Levinsons (the American family that married into the Crawleys and replenished their fortune) could have arranged an introduction, as Ms. Farrand was the niece of Edith Wharton, who would have been a neighbor of Martha Levinson in both Newport and New York City.  Ms. Farrand began designing gardens at 25; roughly Lady Edith’s age.  And, Ms. Farrand was working in England in 1921, designing the magnificent garden at Dartington Hall in Devon.

Vita Sackville-West.  Although
titled (she was Lady Nicolson),
she did a little gardening.

But, even knowing that the Dowager Countess was rather openly class conscious, it would have been impossible for her to ignore Vita Sackville-West (or, to introduce her more properly, Lady Nicolson).  Born in 1892 and so only a few years older than Lady Edith, Lady Mary already had several successful published novels by 1921 (‘The Dragon in Shallow Waters’ was published that year).  In 1930, she and her husband would acquire Sissinghurst Castle, where Lady Mary would go on to do some very nice gardening.

I realize that Downton Abbey is drama and that it is the product of the imagination of Julian Fellowes.  But Mr. Fellowes seems to have it in for gardeners.  In Season One, we learned that since the Norman Conquest, the Dowager Countess has won the annual prize for ‘Best Bloom’ at the Downton Village flower show.  But the Dowager Countess actually has nothing to do with growing those roses.  It is her gardener who does all the work, and she simply shows up to collect the prize.  Moreover, in doing so, she is deliberately slighting the work of her own butler’s father, whom everyone in Downton knows has exquisite rose-growing skills and who ought to have been winning the competition all along.

All right; so maybe I’ve been paying more attention to Downton Abbey than I let on.  But darn it, Mr. Fellowes, go a little easier on us gardeners.

Ehrlichiosis

One day late last June, my wife, Betty, began complaining of feeling tired and a constant stomach pain. 

There are two things you should know about Betty:  first, that she is not a ‘complainer’.  If anything, she is the kind of person who doesn’t speak up even when she is freezing or about to have heat stroke.  Second, she has enormous energy.  Feeling ‘tired’ is not normally a part of her vocabulary.

When this condition persisted into a third day, I pushed her to go see her doctor (something else she does not do willingly).  Betty’s internist did an examination and then sent her down for blood work.  When Betty returned, her internist was wearing a surgical mask and handed one to Betty.

My wife's home away from home
for four days and three nights

“I’m calling for an ambulance and sending you to Brigham & Women’s,” the doctor said.  “Your white blood cell count is down to 20% of normal.  Until then, you’re in complete isolation.”

An hour later, Betty was admitted to Brigham & Women’s Hospital where she was put in an isolation room.  I was allowed to drive her into Boston, but that was the extent of the concessions to her dignity.  For the next two days, she was poked, prodded, and subjected to every conceivable test by a battery of specialists.  She was, for lack of a better description, “an interesting case” because there was no ready explanation for her extremely low white blood cell count.

If you are conversant with diseases and markers for them, you know that a low white blood cell count is closely tied to leukemia.  Brigham & Women’s is next door to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and connected to it by a host of passages through which passed oncology interns and residents eager to do bone biopsies.  Fortunately, Betty exhibited none of the other symptoms and so remained in the hands of the infectious disease people.

Ehrlichiosis bacterium

On her third day, she was visited by yet another specialist, who had heard of her condition and wanted to know more.  He spoke with Betty for half an hour, determining that she was an avid gardener who spent a lot of time outdoors in multiple gardens.  Betty also said that she occasionally found ticks on her body but removed them promptly and had seen no rash.  The specialist asked an odd question: if Betty had recently been to the Gulf Coast.  Betty said, “no”.

“I think I know what’s wrong with you,” he said.  “I think you’re the sixth case of Ehrlichiosis I’ve diagnosed this year.”

Then, he said something scary:  “If I’m right, doxycycline will kill the bacteria that are shredding your white blood cells and we’ll see some improvement within 24 hours.  But, if I’m wrong, the doxycycline will mask other markers and make it harder to find the right infection diagnosis.  What do you want to do?”

Another vial of blood was drawn and Betty started on doxycycline.  It would take a week for the results to come back.  It confirmed that Betty had contracted a rare disease: Ehrlichiosis. 

Double-click to see this chart at a
more readable size.  The nymph
deer tick is the second smallest

Ehrlichiosis, or more specifically, Human monocytic ehrlichiosis, is a tick-borne disease seen, when it is seen at all, in Texas and Arkansas (hence the question about whether Betty had been on the Gulf Coast recently).  There, it is carried by the Lone Star tick and infects a few thousand people each year. 

The good news is that Ehrlichiosis responds to doxycycline, the same drug that is used to treat Lyme Disease.  Betty’s white blood cell count began climbing within 24 hours and she was released (after four days and three nights) to complete her recuperation at home.

The bad news is that Ehrlichiosis takes a well-read infectious disease specialist to spot and, even if Ehrlichiosis is suspected, there’s no ‘quick test’ for it, as there is with Lyme Disease.  Moreover, the absence of a rash is not at all uncommon; in fact, it occurs in fewer than half the cases.  Betty had the muscle aches (her stomach) and malaise that are common symptoms, but not the chills and fever or nausea that are the most common ones.

As the specialist explained it, the scariest part of Ehrlichiosis is that it is so hard to diagnose.  The bacteria invade the blood stream and begin attacking white blood cells.  The infected person gets sick but there’s no clear indication of what’s wrong.  In the meantime, the person’s immune system is badly compromised, and a hospital is a terrific place to pick up additional bugs.  As the infected person picks up those secondary infections, they’re treated for them, but without treating for the underlying ehrlichi bacteria.  In a ‘good’ outcome, the patient comes down with a secondary infection that is treated with doxycycline.  In a bad outcome, the secondary infections keep piling up and the patient dies; the underlying diagnosis never made.

The second scariest part of Ehrlichiosis is that researchers are still unclear as to how long a human has to come into contact with an infected tick.  For Lyme, it’s 24 to 48 hours.  Betty never noticed a tick and did not remove one in the week before her symptoms appeared. She is meticulous about showering.  Could it be that even a brief contact with an infected tick is sufficient?

And, here’s another scary footnote: even after Betty’s white blood cell went back to normal, the lack of strength and continuing tiredness continued for several months.  Those symptoms are common after-effects of the disease.

A month after Betty was released from the hospital, researchers from the Mayo Clinic formally reported their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine that a previously unidentified strain of the ehrlichia bacteria had infected deer ticks in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and were spreading the disease to humans, with 24 cases confirmed.  The report, however, made no mention of New England as a target.

So, call this a warning.  If you garden in New England, there’s a new, very nasty bug out there to be wary of.  Ehrlichiosis has joined Lyme Disease, babesiosis, and anaplasmosis as a reason to slather yourself with tick repellents, and to wear clothing that gives ticks fewer point of contact.

Mom's Garden

I like to think that maybe Mom hit the lottery, went on a luxury cruise around the Mediterranean and is, at this writing, fending off the attentions of some superannuated lothario on the Côte d’Azur. The alternative is too sad to contemplate.

Perhaps I should explain.

Rather than cut down a dozen trees on our property, fend off the deer and figure out how to fix the rototiller, my wife and I have a 20 foot by 60 foot plot in our town’s community garden. The town tills up the land, marks off the plots, supplies a large pile of manure and unlimited water. We fence it, plant it and keep it neat. For this we pay the bargain price of $40 a year. Last year, we harvested produce worth, conservatively, ten times that figure.

Anyone can sign up for a plot, first-come-first-served, and no gardening experience is required. In point of fact, once you’re there, you can get all the advice you need, much of it first-rate if you talk to the right people. You would think that with such a payoff ratio – plus the lure of indescribably fresh tomatoes, basil and corn – every plot would be lovingly tended now that everything is ripening.

Alas, there is summer gardening and there is… human nature. Of the 40 plots in the community garden, at least six are abandoned. Some still have fencing but other have shed even that pretense. The gardener gave up with all the rains of June or else they came back from those two weeks in California and discovered that the weeds had overwhelmed their little plot.

Which leads me back to Mom’s Garden. It’s the first one you see as you enter the community garden; a 20x30 plot. A four-foot fence went up in early May and, attached to the fence, a colorful, hand-made sign announcing that this is ‘Mom’s Garden’. Inside, a garden was laid out and planted and a weather-proof chair appeared. For a few brief weeks, it all looked perfect.

Then, the weeds began to sprout and, worse, the grass. The community garden was carved out of a hay field and is still surrounded by acres of greenery that is mowed just twice a year. If you don’t continually pull the grass, it takes over with a vengeance.

The rules of the community garden state that a garden plot that is not worked by the first week of June can be turned over to someone on the waiting list. Well, Mom’s Garden had a fence and some seedlings appearing, plus that chair. But, by early July, the grass was knee high. This week, the grass was chest-high and seed heads were ripening. The chair may or may not still be in there somewhere.

Perhaps Mom’s Garden was an unwanted gift from the kids. The kind of thing that seemed like a great idea at the time, except that no one bothered to consult Mom about whether she wanted to spend her summer hoeing and picking off bean beetles (“But we made you such a cute sign…”). If that’s the case, the kids ought to get to the garden once a week and show Mom some respect by weeding the thing.

Personally, though, I like the Mediterranean cruise explanation.

Stewards of the Land

The town of Medfield had several incarnations before it was a suburb of Boston. It was, however briefly, the straw hat capital of the world. It was an artists’ colony. It played a small but pivotal role in the King Philip War. Mostly, though, it was a farming community. The land upon which our home was built 14 years ago previously grazed sheep and was a working farm.

Around 1880, Boston’s growing affluence coupled with an excellent rail network created a new market opportunity for Medfield: ice. Farmers diverted streams to flood fields to a depth of six feet or less, then harvested ice in the winter, storing the ice in sawdust for use throughout the year. It was a good, niche business until the advent of year-round ice-making equipment in the second decade of the new century.

Danielson Pond, behind our home, began its existence as an ice pond. Sometime after 1880, a colony of snapping turtles (Cheldyra serpentina) made it their home. For a hundred years, the snappers lived in the pond, doing what turtles do. Each spring – in the last week of May – the pregnant females lumbered up the slope to high ground, climbed the farmers’ rock walls, and found a suitable place to lay a clutch of eggs. A few hours or a few days later, the turtles returned to their pond.

The building of our home and the creation of the gardens around it has been a transient event in the lives of these turtles – some of which are many decades old and have shells approaching two feet wide. Just as they learned to breach the farmers’ walls, so they have accommodated themselves to our home and garden.
Saturday morning, a turtle made her appearance on our front lawn. She was mid-sized – her shell was perhaps a foot wide indicating she was 15-20 years old – so she had made this trip many times before. She was investigating the perennial border along the sidewalk when we first encountered her. Directly in front of her was a mound of common Lady’s Mantle (Alchemilla mollis). To its right, an infestation of Japanese anemone we have been attempting, with limited success, to dislodge for years. To the turtle’s left, a carefully nurtured clump of Eupatorium chocolate that will be in its glory in late September.

We made the decision when we first encountered these snappers that we would do nothing to interfere with their egg-laying ritual. They will lay their eggs where nature dictates and, if it’s in the middle of the Eupatorium, so be it. There may two to three dozen one-inch-diameter eggs in a clutch laid in a shallow hole. Most will be immediately dug up by foxes or other foragers. Those which are not eaten will hatch in eighty days and must make a perilous trek past waiting predators which consider soft-shelled newborn turtles a delicacy. The literature suggests perhaps one turtle egg in a hundred makes it to become an adult.

Snappers may dig three or four holes before finding a satisfactory depository. The ‘dry holes’ remain excavated but uncovered, the final nest will be filled. We’ve identified as many as five nests on our property each year. It is our practice to mark the sites so as not to accidentally walk on or dig in the area. This year, we’re also top-dressing the nests with Milorganite – a fertilizer made from sewage that animals reportedly find repugnant. If we can improve the hatching percentage by a few points, so much the better.

We are stewards of our little chunk of land. While the pond may be the work of man, the turtles pre-date our occupancy by more than a century and it is our responsibility to accommodate ourselves to their nesting habits, not the other way around. One of our first acts as homeowners was to build a series of stone ‘ramps’ over the old farmers’ walls, the better to facilitate their migration. If our stewardship entails rehabilitating a few perennials or rock garden plants along the way, that’s a small price to pay.

The Slug and I

Last Tuesday morning, the Boston Globe reported something I already suspected: that eastern Massachusetts was on track to have its ‘dimmest’ June since record keeping began in 1885. According to the article, Boston and vicinity had, through June 22, received just 32% of the ‘available’ sunshine. In an average June, the region gets 55% of the possible sunshine between dawn and dusk. In June 1971, a record of 77% was set. (Also in that month, the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers. Coincidence?) Until now, only 1903 was dimmer and, with a week of gloomy weather in the forecast, the record seemed certain to fall.

I do not know if we eclipsed the title, but I can state with some certainty that at least one record was set: I have never seen more slugs on my plants than I did in June. The slug population was off the charts.

I have learned that the common garden slug (Arion distinctus) is constantly with us, but usually as eggs. Charmingly, garden slugs are hermaphrodites, so any two slugs can get together, make whoopee, and play rock-scissors-paper for the right to lay a clutch of 15-30 eggs which lay dormant in the soil until it rains.

If you live in New England, you may remember that it rained in June. I can, personally, count on the fingers of one hand the number of hours in June when it did not rain. And, so, with cool temperatures and lots of moisture, the slugs hatched and came out to play. And to eat every plant in sight. By mid-June the slugs were fat, roly-poly things having feasted on the trays of annuals that were purchased in May with the expectation of planting beautiful, colorful containers.

My wife and I began looking for solutions. Being environmentally responsible sorts, we bypassed the Armageddon solutions at out local garden center. These pellets promised to Kill Slugs Fast, but cautioned in the fine print that they would also take with them to animal kingdom heaven ladybugs, earthworms, cats and dogs.

The Internet, that vast repository of wisdom, offered multiple ‘organic’ solutions to our slug problem. The first suggestion was to create a barrier of lava rock around the plants we wanted to protect. This probably works extremely well in Hawaii. It is of minimal utility in Massachusetts. There was also a tip that we could use lint from our clothes dryer as a deterrent. However, to be effective, we would need to add four ounces of vinegar to the final rinse water (I promise I am not making this up). Something called Quack Grass is reported to damage the nerves that slugs use for feeding. There was even a recipe for ‘Quack Grass Cake’ (corn bran, powdered milk, cornstarch, the aforementioned Quack Grass and 16 ounces of beer, beaten to a paste and run through a meat grinder). This seemed a somewhat promising lead until I Googled Quack Grass and got 134,000 hits, almost all of them in Q&A forums on gardening web sites asking, ‘Help! How do I get rid of the stuff?’

I decided that what we needed was not a deterrent, but a method of eliminating our garden pests, responsibly. One web site offered a list of predators. Rhode Island Red hens, the site said, are great slug hunters that eat every specimen of Arion distinctus they can get their beaks on. A nice idea, but our neighbors might object. Blackbirds, crows, ducks, jays, owls, robins, seagulls, starlings and thrushes are also known slug eaters. We have successfully encouraged all of the preceding (except seagulls) to visit our yard. But they do not appear to have developed a taste for our slugs. Perhaps they did not read that particular web site and get their dietary marching orders.

A further search yielded the tantalizing fact that there is a predatory nematode that has been demonstrated effective against slugs. Phasmarhabditas hermaphridita (hermaphrodite vs. hermaphrodite!) are being “mass reared” in England but are not yet sufficient in production to be used widely. Like some D-Day armada, they await the time when their numbers swell sufficiently, when they will likely be launched against the garden slugs of Normandy.

We decided it was time to stop reading Internet articles and start practicing Better Living Through Chemistry. Out came the trusty handbooks. Isopropyl alcohol works. Wonderful. It will also kill many of the plants to which it is applied. Next. Wormwood tea works. Great, but we don’t have any wormwood. Next. Ammonia works. It also burns tender leaves. Next. Quassia works. Wonderful. The nearest quassia trees are in Ecuador. Also available from your neighborhood herbalist at prices so staggering you can afford to replant your property when it stops raining. Next.

Iron phosphate. It kills on contact. It’s poisonous to slugs. It won’t harm plants if you use it sparingly. We looked for the downside. There wasn’t one. The slugs ingest the iron phosphate and lose the will to live. Where had this advice been hiding?

It must be that iron phosphate just isn’t glamorous enough. Wormwood tea, lava rock and Rhode Island Reds all have a certain folksy quality that sound authentic. Iron phosphate sounds… industrial. We found some. We applied it. A week later we had far fewer slugs.

We’ve dealt with the stragglers the old-fashioned way: we’ve removed them by hand, then applied shoe leather to slug.

There are Gardeners, and there are helpers

There are a handful of paintings that bring an instant smile to my face when I see them. They’re the kinds of painting where the artist has recognized some deeper truth about the objects before him (or her) and managed to convey that ‘something’ onto the canvas. One such painting is John Singer Sargent’s “Mrs. and Mrs. I.N. Phelps Stokes”, which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Edith Minturn and Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes were married in 1895, and one of the couple’s weddings gifts was of a portrait to be painted by Sargent. Sargent's first intention was to paint a single portrait of Edith during the summer of 1897 in Venice. After numerous posing and preparatory sessions, the artist decided to paint her as if she were just returning from a brisk walk outdoors, with a greyhound at her side. After Edith’s part of the portrait was finished, however, the greyhound was no longer available and I. N. Phelps Stokes suggested that he take its place. Sargent agreed, and the single portrait became a double portrait.

But, if it is a double portrait, it is one of the most lopsided ever done. Edith is radiant and forthright. It would not be an overstatement to say that she glows. Her husband, by contrast, is consigned to the shadows. Yes, he’s there, but he’s a stand-in for the greyhound. In another fifty years, I have no doubt that he will fade and the pentimento of a dog will take his place.

But the painting, in turn, captures the reality of the two. Both were from wealthy ‘reformist’ families. Edith threw herself into women’s suffrage and housing reform, among other noble causes. I.N. (he hated ‘Isaac Newton’) turned his attention to writing the definitive history of the City of New York – six volumes and over 7,000 pages. She was the sparkplug in the family, his role was to be supportive and to write large checks. Sargent saw it and captured it on canvas.

I was reminded of that portrait Sunday afternoon and evening as I attended a Master Gardener Open Garden. There are several hundred people in the Boston area who have gone through the Master Gardener program at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Several times each summer, a Master Gardener will open his or her garden to other Master Gardeners. These tend to be spectacular gardens, all them designed and tended by the homeowner rather than by some ‘name’ landscape designer.

Most Master Gardeners are women. Until this year, the courses were given all day, one day a week, which makes it difficult for anyone who worked full time to gain the accreditation. People who go through the same class tend to become friends.

There were probably thirty people at the garden in Quincy on Sunday afternoon and evening. Many Master Gardeners brought spouses. And, throughout that afternoon and evening, I could not help but be reminded of the Sargent portrait. The women – the Master Gardeners – were in charge. They talked of gardens and of plants. They dissected plant diseases and growing problems and evaluated landscaping choices. Their talks were animated and full of energy. They spoke for hours about their own plans for new beds and rare and unusual cultivars. Master Gardeners also get a heavy dose of environmental awareness as part of their studies and these women discussed organic and pesticide-free laws care and composting as though it were second nature.

The men… drank beer and ate guacamole. They were appendages in the spirit of Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes. They acknowledged readily that their responsibility is to dig holes and move plants when requested, and to be supportive, including the occasional writing of a large check.

The garden is stunning. It’s a quarter-acre lot with a 1930s-era house in the middle, but packed into that lot is enough landscaping for an estate. The lot slopes steeply making it possible to build multiple garden ‘rooms’ that are functionally invisible from one another. The owner - one of the rare male Master Gardeners - is a pharmacist by training who managed to become a Master Gardener in the same class as Betty by working extra shifts. Paul is also married and, in the true spirit of I. N. Phelps Stokes, his partner, John, says his contribution to the garden is to ‘suggest accessories’.

I never thought of myself as an I.N. Phelps Stokes but, being around those Master Gardeners and listening to them talk about plants and ecosystems as fervently as Edith Phelps Stokes surely talked about housing and universal suffrage, I knew how he felt. The best thing you can do is be supportive. Who knows, I may even write the next definitive history of something.