Human Flower Project

Friday, February 29, 2008

Pencils Down for Saraswati

Young learners (and old), wearing mustard yellow, bring the palash flower and open minds before Hinduism’s goddess of learning.

Palash flower (Butea frondosa) sacred to Saraswati,
Hinduism’s goddess of wisdom
Photo: Sandy Ao

“It’s almost like we keep the best for the last!” Sandy Ao writes. Thus our friend in Kolkata, India, describes the final ritual of the Hindu calendar year: Saraswati Puja. The celebration honors the goddess of wisdom (something we may hope to have gained a bit of over the past twelve months). Its purpose is mainly to nourish the seed of brilliance inside young minds, but it’s an inspiration for less young thinkers also—the only floral custom we know of that acknowledges, in Sandy’s words, “books and pencils are holy.” (We think so whenever in the presence of a well sharpened No. 2.)

Offerings to Saraswati, Feb. 11, 2008
include a chalkboard with flowers
Photo: Sandy Ao

Sandy attended several pujas around Kolkata, at her son’s apartment complex, in a private home, and on the outskirts of the city. She also passes along her neighbor Mr. Pradip Kr Pal Choudhuri’s Sanskrit greeting:

Saraswati
Mahavage (highly revered)
Bidye (educated)
Kamala Lochone (lotus eyed)

Biswarupe (reflecting Universe)
Bishalakshmi (hugely good)
Bidyang Dehi (bestowing education)
Namastute (bowing down to you)

“As Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge and wisdom,” Sandy writes, “I guess we are free to chant the above mantra within our own understanding of her deep mystery.”

On the day of Saraswati’s puja, February 11th this year, students “visit the pandals (temporary shrines) and avoid touching books or pencils, “ except as part of ritual. A ceremony called Hathe Khori (literally “hand” and “twig quill") is when many children first learn to write.  Sandy informs us, “The pandit will write the first three letters of the alphabet on the slate with the chalk, including the English ABC and 123 with the Bengali alphabet’s ABC and 123. English is an important language nowadays, so both languages are being taught on this day!

First alphabet with the pandit’s help
at Saraswati puja in Kasba, Kolkata
Photo: Sandy Ao

“There will be two ladies to help the pandits while this ritual takes place. First one lady will blow the sound from the shell, and then another one will sound the gong. I guess it’s to wake up the sense from the child… to become alert. After all these rituals, the priest will place some flowers on top of the written slate and show that to the goddess for the blessing.” Could composition classes world wide—journalism, too, for that matter—be improved with Saraswati’s favored palash flowers (Butea frondosa) sprinkled over binders, keyboards, reporters’ notebooks? Undoubtedly.

Many of the children come to the ritual wearing bright yellow garments, color of the mustard flower which is India’s harbinger of spring. “First the pandit will take the child on his lap and then arrange a brass spoon - in fish shape - filled with holy water from the Hoogly River, and place some marigold and bael leaf in it, and offer it to the goddess. While doing that he will tell the goddess the name of the child.”

Sometimes the tiny scholars resist. “This particular 5 year old girl needed 3 - 4 times of pushing and pulling to make her sit on the lap of the pandit to complete this ritual.” Sandy photographed the Saraswati puja in “the village,” actually Bosepokur Lane, Kasba, which is now part of sprawling Kolkata. She was pleased to see how gently all the adults urged the youngsters on. “Everyone around will help the child to learn the first word on this Saraswati puja day. How good it is to feel there is no ugly competition among the parents and children while prompting the children to learn wisdom/knowledge from the goddess.”

Sandy especially was grateful to be invited to a private ceremony in a Kolkata home. Twelve year old Dabu Mukharjee enjoyed his first Saraswati puja, organized in his honor by his older brother. “Maybe the elder brother did not have the opportunity to study himself,” Sandy explains, “so he paid all the expenses of the puja from his earnings and offered a puja for Dabu this year at their home.” The Mukharjee family rose and bathed before 5 am Feb. 11 to be ready for the pandit’s arrival. Hindu priests are, of course, enormously busy on these holy days. “There are thousands of puja to be taken care of within a few hours time. All the pujas have to be done before noon,” and, Sandy writes, the priests usually visit poorer families of the community earliest in the morning.

Saraswati puja at the Mukharjee home in Kolkata, with 12 year old Dabu, his
mother and older brother. Dabu wears a sandalwood tikka on his forehead to
symbolize the rite has taken place and “indicate a third eye, that’s wisdom.”
Photo: Sandy Ao

Sandy noted that the Mukharjee family’s statue of the goddess—as all others she saw—has only two arms (two limbs less than the four-armed statues of past generations) and learned that the change came about at least 70 years ago. But why? She was told, “We want the goddess more like us, human, and not some one from imagination.”

At Neelachal Housing Complex, more well-to-do children came wearing grown up attire, little girls in bright saris, the boys in Kurta and Dhoti. A lawyer friend told Sandy that the adult clothing symbolizes “though the children physically are still young, mentally they are matured like the grown-ups,” or soon will be, as they learn to write and gain the blessing of wisdom’s divinity. Here many children laid their books and pencils before the idol. “I overheard a few children exchange notes of which books they brought along to be kept with the goddess,” she writes. Most brought the textbooks in their weakest subject at school, to be blessed by Saraswati and returned to them as classes resumed the next day.

Saraswati holds the pens at the observance of her puja, Feb. 11
Photo: Sandy Ao

The Saraswati puja offers humility as mental refreshment. School’s out. Kolkata’s major newspaper, The Telegraph, serves a free meal to the city. Except for those tiny ones seated in the pandit’s lap and writing out their first letters, it’s time to put pencils down. “Before goddess Saraswati, we are forever ignorant,” writes Sandy “and we should go to her with an empty page (open mind).”

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Project Budburst ~ Late to Science

On the lookout for flowers? This is our kind of science project.

Pink Primrose (Oenothera speciosa) in Austin, TX
nearly ready to report on climate change, 2/26/08
Photo: Human Flower Project

We’re not much for joining. We were always mediocre at science. But as of today we’re all aboard Project Budburst.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research—a group of 70 universities-- is trying to track climate change in the U.S. by engaging “citizen scientists” to report when plants leaf out, bud, and bloom. Has global warming changed the lives of lilacs, dandelions, or mayapples in our yards? Well, first we gotta look.

“Watch locally, discover globally” seems the motto of this effort. Compiling observations from people all across the nation, the scientists who dreamed this up can get a surer sense of how our planet is changing. “Plants can serve as quite sensitive climate sensors,” Dr. Kay Havens, a project leader and director of plant science and conservation at the Chicago Botanic Garden, told Steve Curwood.  “By looking at bloom time and leaf time that gives us a good indication of whether or not the temperature is changing in an area.”

Project Budburst makes reporting on local plants easy

Last year’s pilot study drew over 900 observations “and of those, nearly two thirds were done by children under 12,” Havens said. How often do you get to take part in a nationwide, multigenerational science project—no math skills required? They make it a cinch to register (either by name or anonymously), find your latitude and longitude, and then choose a tree, shrub, wildlflower or weed to keep an eye on. You can pick from their list or select a local plant that interests you.

We’ve selected Pink Primrose (Oenothera speciosa) as there’s a little patch of it right down by our curb (and Glenn Whitehead’s big pastel drawing of them on the wall inside; it blooms twelve months a year). As of today we see leaves but no buds in the yard. But three doors down, at Victor’s, it looks as if we may be able to report a bloom later today. (Any specimen within a half mile is in bounds.) This plant, we learn, blooms in the mornings in some parts of Texas, in the evenings elsewhere. so we’ll also discover whether the primroses hereabouts are larks or owls.

Project Budburst was launched two weeks ago, so we’re a bit late getting started. But there’s nobody handing out grades (or gold stars, for that matter). We hope that our U.S. readers will consider taking part in this far-sighted Human Flower Project and that readers in other parts of the world will let us know of more citizen-science efforts to study climate change.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Wedding Flowers for Two Grooms

When the couple about to be married are both men, will there be bouquets? Maybe. But consider a cascade.

Andrew Solomon and John Habich at their wedding dinner
Northampton, England, June 30, 2007
Photo: Jonathan Player, for the New York Times

It was a June wedding. Last summer, writer Andrew Solomon and editor John Habich celebrated their civil union before about 300 guests. The two men were married in England (Solomon has dual US/UK citizenship) where, as of 2005, civil unions between same-sex couples have been legal.

The New York Times published a gorgeous set of photographs by Jonathan Player. What an event! The ceremony took place on a broad staircase at Althorp, the estate of the Spencer family, below portraits of the late Princess Diana and her ancestors. At the reception and party afterwards, the newlyweds radiated happiness. Guests sat down to dinner in a “marquee” on the Althorp grounds, decorated in black and white, with lots of mirrored tabletops and waves of pink roses.

Solomon and Habich exchange vows amid floral drifts and tapestries
Photo: Jonathan Player, for the New York Times

But what about flowers at the service? Do grooms carry bouquets? No reason they shouldn’t. But Solomon and Habich chose not to. Instead wide swaths of hydrangeas stepped all the way down the staircase. And roses (we think that’s what these blooms are) hung from the upstairs balustrade, like fluffy pink tapestries. (Habich also wore a small pink flower on his lapel.)

Erin and Chloe
at their civil union in Vermont
September 2000
Photo: Erin and Chloe

From what we’ve seen and learned, lesbian weddings tend to double up with bouquets. Sometimes both brides wear floral head crowns as well. (Yet another reason to legalize same-sex marriage, we say!)

Several years back, we ran a piece about Flowers from the Heartland. This 2004 film documented a small movement of Midwesterners who sent flowers to the weddings of gay and lesbian couples in the U.S. as tokens of solidarity. Same-sex marriage is still controversial here. Twenty-six states (most of them in the Heartland) have passed laws against it. Only in Massachusetts is same-sex marriage legal; New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, and New Hampshire permit civil unions. Most recently, New Jersey’s governor has indicated he will sign a bill legalizing same sex marriage (after the November elections); California’s state Supreme Court will be taking up the matter next month.

What about the rest of the world? The map below, from wiki, offers about as vivid a picture of cultural differences as one could imagine. In the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa (in dark green) same sex marriage is now legal. In Iran, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Mauritania homosexuality (not same-sex marriage, just being homosexual) is punishable by death.

Map of the World’s laws on homosexuality, via Wiki

Two bouquets? One world? We’ve got a long way to go.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Lick an Ambassador: Floral Stamps

Can’t afford to send flowers? Give your postal carrier a thrill and leave your correspondents panting for more.

We wandered into a philateletic Eden yesterday and now return with tongue hanging out – ready to lick and send flying hundreds of floral stamps from around the world. Who cares what’s in the envelope? This Congolese acanthus bloom could take the sting out of an eviction notice, don’t you think?

A Polish website for stamp collectors offers thousands of familiar and exotic blooms. Every nation on earth, it seems, has issued floral stamps of some type. And in every case, we see how flowers serve as ambassadors to humankind.

Most commonplace are stamp series that show off spectacular native flora. We found this set of Zimbabwe’s desert plants especially striking, but there are scores more. Look around!

There are some very elaborate presentations, like this example from Lesotho: a native orchid sits (with perforations around it) below a waterfall. Just one stamp, but you feel as if you’re getting a whole landscape, a smart way to show a local plant in its habitat and, one would assume, boost sales.

For shaped stamps, Mongolia has gone to great lengths, scrunching flower images into triangles and leaning parallelograms. (To its credit, Mongolia is also the only nation we’ve seen that honors the dandelion with a stamp.) But Bulgaria’s set of flowers and honeybees is the most witty and elegantly shapely design, a cone dweller’s view with six sides.

Liechtenstein: Cornflower and Cattails

Flower stamps necessarily put local aesthetics on display. We were especially taken with two art nouveau sets of stamps from Liechtenstein, proof that good things come in small principalities. These are the most stylish of the many hundreds of flower stamps we surveyed. (And you may note that among all this website’s topical stamps, there are three times as many floral varieties as cats or sports or anything else.) From Scandinavia are many fine muted duotones. This Swedish set is especially lovely. And for some reason, this group from Finland, with their looming red crosses (signifying a tuberculosis charity) was delightfully eerie.

Cambodia

In stupendous contrast to the Nordic designs are candy-colored sets like these from Nicaragua. Other rainbow-robbing flower stamps have been issued by Zimbabwe, Surinam, and these beauties at right, from Cambodia. Planning to write a Dear John letter? Well, at least have the wherewithal to hunt down cheerful postage.

Some countries have not only living flowers but floral art to boast of in the mail. The most gorgeous examples we spotted were these from Germany, with details from illuminated manuscripts in Deutschland collections. Would somebody please mail us a letter with one of these affixed? Paraguay also has issued several floral stamp sets featuring international works of art.

Monaco: Concours International
de Bouquets (1974)
commemorative stamp

All you florists out there need to start lobbying your national postal services to keep up with the Joneses in Monaco, Malaysia and Romania. Each of these countries has issued special stamps featuring flower arranging. Monaco appears to have hosted the Concours International de Bouquets several years running, and on each occasion has issued a set of stamps showing a range of fine floral designs.

Our tongue’s getting dry...too much to mention. The photographic flower stamps of Cyprus (other examples from Turkey and Tanzania) don’t strike our fancy but may appeal to shutterbugs. Micronesia may have produced the most educational Human Flower Project stamp set – showing four native flowers and how each one is used in traditional leis and crowns.

North Korea:
Homage to Kimjongilia

But remembering that stamp designs are always chosen by someone in government – to reflect the administration’s interests, even in such a marginal matter as national floral imagery— we must end with a bow to blatantly political, gummed ambassadors. These flower stamps from Yemen are tiny collages of plants and national emblems, both overseen by someone important looking (We’re not sure, but would guess this to be longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh in his younger days).

Most stamps from the United Kingdom, even these without one letter of type, still include the silhouette of QE2. And North Korea, of course, offers Kimjongilia, the red begonia named for Kim Jong Il; the North Korean issue includes quite a lot of supporting material, including what appears to be a musical score, for those ardent types who sing about dictators and flowers as they mail.

The most wonderful political stamp set we’ve seen yet is this collection from Cuba (much in the news this week, with Fidel Castro’s announcement that he’ll be stepping down). In colors as vibrant as the Mexican loteria, each stamp shows a hero of Latin American history with a tropical blossom – as charming a human flower postal project as we’ve discovered on any envelope. (Make sure to see the entire set for full loteria effect.)

Cuba: Historia Latinoamericana

There are many hundreds more interesting examples on the site, ahem...so dear Cuban readers, and all others within licking distance of floral stamps, we aren’t too proud to beg. Please write.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

No Movie for Real Men, or Women

We offer a still with flowers from a movie you can miss and still be cool.

Josh Brolin gets a respite and flowers between killings
Image: No Country for Old Men

Before it arrived in Austin, the Coen Brothers’ film No Country for Old Men was taking shape as a pop culture necessity. Must see… Best of...etc. To miss it would leave you somewhere between never having heard of Bob Dylan and failing to get the polio vaccine: in that wasteland a.k.a. No Country for Cool People.

Still, we refrained, until several of our most trusted movie buff friends highly recommended the flick, too. There would be No Uncool Country for us, damnit! Today we feel suckered, and worse than that, completely confused. What is praise-worthy here? The movie is an expensive horror flick. There are a lot of grim faced men with stubble. There’s a villain with a Prince Valiant hairdo. Mainly, though, there is non stop killing. Strangulation with handcuffs. Thunks in the forehead from an air-donker. A car crash. A car on fire. Spray from a big gun with a bean can (?) on the end. Pow-pow from a revolver taken off a corpse. There are two dead pit bulls (one with flies). There are many dead “Mexicans” in and around motel rooms on the Texas border. There’s a girl with bad grammar killed in her bedroom right after her mother’s funeral. There is a fat red haired man executed at his desk in a high rise building and at least four Scots-Irish looking guys with weak chins who are shot to death, one as he offers to jump the bad man’s car (aw! that’s too mean!).

With all the killings there also gets to be lots of blood—on the broken glass of a shot-out truck window, trickling across a carpet, in a bathtub, soaking through several snap button cowboy shirts, dripping from a deer in flight, even poured out of a cowboy boot. Uh-oh, we should have said “Spoiler alert!” We would hate to have ruined that scene where the cowboy boot gets tipped over and fake blood pours out (We understand the Coens’ exported the stuff from England, since your ordinary old U.S. manufactured fake blood will not do—What a pisser to live in No Country for Decent Fake Blood!).

We hope we’ve provided enough details so that all our readers can skip the movie but not look uncool. If the subject comes up, here are some comments to make with confidence.

“This is the Coen Brothers’ best film since Hudsucker Proxy.”

“Javier Bardem was superb, so much more virile than Hannibal Lecter or Hillary Clinton. Hah-hah!”

“The Woody Harrelson role was a bit redundant, didn’t you think?”

“All the little border towns were so evocative.”

“No. I did not think Tommy Lee Jones bore the slightest resemblance to Barney Fife!”

That should do you.... In the meantime we’re going to be reading up on nihilism, unless we can find something better to do, like laundry.

For those of you who still may be tempted to see the movie, we offer this great philosophical howler from near the end of the film. Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) goes to visit his poor old uncle in a ratty trailer. The old guy is destitute and confined to a wheelchair, has a weekold pot of coffee on the stove and is covered with stray cats. So what does his nephew do? He talks about himself of course! He complains about the sorry state of the world, says he’s “outmatched” by the bad guys, and then stares out the window.

Sheriff Bell: “I always thought when I got older God would sort of come into my life in some way.  He didn’t.  I don’t blame him.  If I was him I’d have the same opinion about me that he does.”

Awww!

Scratch a macho nihilist (or take his fake-bloody boots off) and you’re left with grandiosity, self-pity, and wet socks. If you won’t getcha own bean-can gun, Sheriff, and go find that bad guy with the Prince Valiant hairdo, can you at least make your old uncle a fresh pot of coffee? 

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Sheep, Sex, Shipping: Valentine’s ‘08

Consumer frenzy, love policing, and labor rights hug the headlines February 14th.

A shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand, sets the mood for sweethearts
Photo: Chaiwat Subprasom, for Reuters

Hallmark holiday? We prefer to think of Valentine’s as comic, an invitation to lighten up on everybody and see the redbud on bare February branches.
Here’s some floral news confetti.

NEW ZEALAND: Tessa Laird writes that a florist in Wellington is boycotting red roses this Valentine’s Day. Jeanie McCafferty, owner of Next Stop Earth, contends that demand for red roses in February drives prices six times higher than normal—or even tolerable. On an average day in Wellington, a dozen red roses sells for about $10, but with demand so high at Valentine’s, they go for about $65. “You can get a fantastic bunch of flowers from us for that price,” McCafferty says. McCafferty also refuses to deliver flowers to workplaces on Valentines “as it put pressure on her staff and couriers.” She recommends that everybody postpone their flower-buying till March.

Tessa’s reaction: “I like it!” But Tessa, Jeanie, we don’t understand. Without excess, without irrationality, without “stress,” where’s the magic juju? We and hundreds of frantic florists will be interested to hear how Next Stop Earth fares.

At Maridadi flower company in Naivasha, Kenya, a worker loads red
roses from a greenhouse, February 9
Photo: Simon Maina, for AFP

KENYA: Widespread violence after national elections here disrupted flower production—and a whole lot more. In Naivasha, where most of the Kenya’s flower farms are concentrated, homes were burned and people were massacred last month. The “flower farms were relatively untouched but no one showed up to pick the roses and hypericum at Wildfire Flowers the next day, or the day after.” Flower companies hustled to get back in operation, phoning workers to reassure them that the factories were safe, then sending “runners out to homes” to convince workers to return. It appears that long days of flower production and shipping resumed in time to meet heavy demand in Europe. Kenyan companies “have flown flowers to Nairobi or directly to Europe rather than risk impromptu roadblocks. Those that go by road move in daily truck convoys protected by police.”

Sting Ray, be mine!
A special Valentine’s treat at Tokyo’s Sunshine Aquarium
Photo: Itsuo Inouye, for AP

JAPAN: The Sunshine International Aquarium celebrates Valentines all month long. Throughout February, there are special events with a Valentine’s theme.  At left, an aquarium staffer brings an underwater yummy to a ray on February 2 (maybe Ground Hog Day needs renaming).

COLOMBIA: Some 60% of cut flowers sold in the U.S. are imported from Colombia. Just two days ago, eleven religious leaders from the U.S. signed and sent a letter to the president of Dole Fresh Flowers, the largest flower company in Colombia, asking that the corporation permit workers to unionize.

“These workers report that they organized independent unions in order to address concerns about low wages, long hours, high productivity quotas, humiliation by management, and health problems associated with repetitive motion and over-exposure to pesticides,” reads in part the letter to David DeLorenzo, Dole Flowers’ CEO. The religious leaders, brought together by U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project, urge Dole to permit the latest union effort at its La Fragancia plantation to move forward (Dole closed its Splendor operation last year, where flower workers had been successful in building a union).

INDIA: Fundamentalists, both Hindu and Muslim, have tried to suppress romantic tokens at Valentine’s Day here, but in Bangalore, street vendors of roses have been doing brisk business. A flower seller in Raipur, though, says sales of flowers and cards, too, are just one quarter of what they were in 2007. Religious ethics aren’t to blame.  “Today’s youth, armed with a high disposable income, is buying the most expensive cards and gifts in addition to spending it on eating out,” said an executive of Archies, a card and gift company.

TAIWAN: A survey of women in Taipei, published this week, showed that 70% of Taiwanese men thought their lady friends wanted flowers for Valentine’s Day. However, 92%of the women surveyed “said they would prefer other gifts, such as chocolates or even a marriage proposal.” The research was conducted by an environmental group called Green Sense, which urges the public to buy potted plants instead of cut flowers (marriage offers being out of most people’s price range.)

Sheep nosh on red carnations, flowers that an Israeli embargo
prevented from leaving Gaza
Photo: Reuters

PALESTINE: Flower growers in Gaza have resorted to feeding their carnations to livestock. An Israeli “lockdown” in the area ruled by Hamas has meant that farmers have been stuck with their harvest, unable to export this Valentine’s season. “I apologise to the lovers on the day of their love because I cannot bring flowers to them,” Ziad Hejazi says. “Our flowers have become food for the sheep.”

THAILAND: A poll in Thailand revealed that 1 in four teenagers celebrates Valentine’s Day by having sex (without indicating what rates on an ordinary Thursday might be.) “Police plan to swoop on motels, malls and parks to ensure youths behave themselves on the ‘Day of Love.’”

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Front Gardens in Winter (see ‘Attitude’)

On a walking tour of Cambridge, England, John Levett gets down to the bones—and girders and porta-potties—of his city’s gardens. Are we having fun yet?

Essay and photos by

Gimme the facts.

Spending on gardens peaked in Britain in 2003 at £5.9b. Last year it dropped to £5.15b. Hardly free-fall. Growing spending on so-called organic gardening (organic no doubt if using a wooden plough harnessed by sisal to live oxen) plus an ageing population is supposed to boost demand for garden products but the thirty-six hour work-or-die day is sending the tendency the other way. Whatever, there’s still a loada bucks in the thing.

A leading garden centre chain, Dobbies, has adopted the slogan: You don’t have to have a garden to come to Dobbies. Stating the obvious really, seeing that in most centres these days you can get double-latte with mango chutney and a brain transplant while you go through the car wash. Which must account for their annual ten million punters.

And prompts the question: What do they buy and what do they do with it when they get it home? I buy mulch; potting compost; fish, blood and bone; various highly toxic lethal non-organic potions; bulbs; seaweed extract (doing my bit to wipe out whatever essential link in the global food-chain that feeds on it plus the rest of the hierarchy up to the polar bear, panda, lemur, meerkat or photogenic must-save-it-if-it-means-sacrificing-my-own-children endangered species of choice). This combination seems to work. My garden has a brief flowering period from April to early Summer (I’ve never got the hang of the all-year-round-garden much promoted by the TV horticulturalist) then it’s heads down all the way to those Autumn leaves and Winter death. It’s much loved and has magic. And enhances greatly the next door carpet warehouse wall.

Which brings me to my front garden. I don’t have one.

Nor do most Brits. They have front works-in-progress.

The face is the window to the soul (a vomit-inducing thought but a useful sentence-starter) and the front garden is the window to an attitude. There are places to be seen about England where a cottage stands in its own grounds, flowers sprout in curved beds, roses cluster around the front door and vegetables are harvested in seasonal routines; Adam the gardener tamps the tobacco into his corn-cob, adjusts his leather knee-pads, takes off his moleskin jacket and starts his double-digging of the beet bed; Doris, his wife, bakes, scrubs the front step and rushes to pull the plough when called for.

But not hereabouts. Cambridge is worth a trip for at least one apotheosis of late-Mediaeval ecclesiastical architecture but don’t detour for the front gardens. It’s a Sunday close to the fag-end of Winter and I have a theory. Gardens aren’t supposed to be doing much except await the next Great Leap Forward (although on a bike ride out Newmarket way last week I caught a verge of daffodils near Dullingham; must be the horse droppings). But looking at the framework of the garden without the distraction of stuff like flower heads, leaves, blossom gives out an idea of what gardening has been going on; what’s the gardener’s root theory of horticulture; does the praxis fit the theory; is the garden team marching in step or off down the pub. A nation holds its breath. I went for a walk.

First, the building site. Time was when you bought a house and lived in it. Quaint idea that. These days loft conversion, basement irrigation, kitchen and restaurant extension, patio colonisation are the minimum additions. The front garden is the builder’s yard. Ever heard of a tidy builder? Me neither. One satisfied to pee in the cement mixer. Not these sensitive days. Get that portaloo in there. And the builder’s billboard.

Then there’s the concrete solution. Airstrip One. Easy maintenance, doesn’t crowd the neighbours, no overhangs, won’t block the sunlight. Fit the family’s family of 4X4 tractors so essential for the badlands of East Anglia and the High Sierras of the Fens. Building complete. Car park sorted. Get a steel gate. Suits you, sir. Floodlights, porch lights, patio flares, intruder beacons, machine gun nest. Collect the set. You can never have too much security these days.

Next comes the Never-Quite-Got-Started. It’s close to the building site but more progressive. The cupboard that was going to the waste tip but never got that far; the caravan that would have been useful if we’d kept up the payments on the car; the bike I’ll get around to fixing a chain to; the useful-for-Summer-play-days inflatable pool; the fit-for-life trampoline. Promise I’ll sort it after Easter...we’ll get Dave’s pick-up...it’ll all go in there. Promise.

Then there’s the ooo-so-easy kooky idea from this month’s Editor’s Choice of the Garden Book of the Month Club. “Now here’s a great idea for that steel girder left over from last year’s loft-to-playroom conversion. Turn it on its side, plug the rivet holes, weld a plate at each end, give it a coat of non-toxic Ocean Blue and you’ve got a home for Koi and lilies Donald Judd style.

A perennial: Let’s grass it over. Easier said than grassed. Most let’s-shop-for-a-garden shoppers don’t suss out that grass (whatever version we’re talking about) is a plant, needs planting correctly, needs feeding, watering, raking, pruning continuously (otherwise known as mowing). Sun helps too. There’s a guy near me with a small front patch that’s peachy perfect. I asked him once if he’d been a green keeper or groundsman at a lawn tennis club. Nope, he just had the time for it. And the lesson is: short of time? Don’t grow grass. Don’t shop for an oak.

Opps. Missed one. Let’s stick chippings down. Remind ourselves of that holiday in a Welsh quarry.

Most front gardens in most modern developments are a joke; a vague nod back to between-the-wars when building land was still cheap, suburban half-timbereds were designed to acknowledge something baronial and a buffer zone between you and the road gave time to prime the muskets when Bolsheviks threatened.

But even the modest Victorian villa was given a space large enough to park a bike (just). In those that aren’t bike parks there’s some success. The single rambler that cascades; the serpentine wisteria that clings; a potted shrub; three potted shrubs. There’s the inevitable water feature with gunge; the beach pebble tessellation; the rock garden; the tufa garden; the sink garden; the sunk garden. And the pram garden.

Dusk came around five. I walked home along the Backs (cunningly so called because they run along the backs of the colleges) and took a short cut through Clare. I like its view of the Cam and it’s got the finest inner quad.

Coming out onto Trinity Lane I noticed the best front of the walk. Cluttered as anything I’d seen, dressed for winter, tended, walled, gated, overlooked and locked, no space to swing a swinging thing but a gem.

There are probably more television progs about gardening on British tv than the rest of Europe combined. Gardener’s World is the longest running from the days of Percy Thrower in the ‘60s when cultivating a plot still leaned heavily on wartime Dig for Victory practice; through Geoffrey Smith in the ‘70s and his As-Tested-On-Vietnam potions for greenhouse fumigation and soil disinfecting; the wonderfully appropriate Clay Jones; the ‘80s and ‘90s and the emergence of the ‘celebrity’ gardener and his (always a ‘his’) sidekick (think John Steed and Emma Peel...never a Cagney and a Lacey). These days everything’s sponsored by, recommended by, as featured in, buy the book of the series, buy the seeds featured in the series, quality loam as scraped from the boots of…

Something gets lost in all this. What I didn’t do (have never done) is ask the front-gardeners: Do you enjoy your gardening? I see so much effort, so much expense for so little effect. That’s OK as long as there’s fun in the thing. Some sort of mentally sitting down in the garden, stopping one’s outer life, not bothering with the plan, creating one’s version of Glastonbury Tor on a spring morning (bad example that..too full of Morris Dancers and would-be Merlins), maybe Walden (as was...without the hot dog franchise as is), maybe a Miss Jekyll and Mr Lutyens cast-off (did they ever?).

Forget all that. What I’m getting at is...I get an impression that gardening, front or back, is now in the league of home decorating along with the fitted kitchen, the bath suite, the games room, the home entertainment centre. Buy the garden. Select a style, choose a price range, decide on a colour scheme, indicate optional extras, specify if fitting is required. Too much quick fix and instant solutions; gardens for this age. It’d be nice to think that gardens could be different; away from the rest of life. But, then again, in the majority world they are. Aspirations are often the same but the rhythms are different, resources scarcer, priorities on a different page, patience a part of being. Or am I just flaffing about nothing?

Just remembered. Every July, Cambridge hosts four weekends of open studios when artists open-up their homes & work rooms to anyone who’d like to pop in. Their gardens get opened too. Do artists let go in the garden? Or are they just a bunch of control freaks like Monet? Is Donald Judd’s girder in a west Texas desert more significant than the bloke’s round the corner?

Addendum Again...remembered Bill Laws’ book on Artists’ Gardens and Artists in Their Gardens by Easton, Laskin and Mandell.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Miami’s Big ‘Oh’:  A World of Orchids

Orchid-fans, you shoulda been there, but if you weren’t, Greg Allikas offers a fine show-and-tell of the 19th World Orchid Conference in Miami. Thank you, Greg!

Lc. Mona Pink ‘Hiromi,’ one star of the recent world orchid show in Miami, Florida
Photo: Greg Allikas

By Greg Allikas

True orchid devotees try to attend at least one World Orchid Conference in their lifetimes. A very few have attended most or all of them! Since 1954 these events—bringing together the global human-orchid community—have taken place in a different country every three years. The last one was held in Dijon, France, and the next will be in Singapore. But this year it was Miami, Florida’s turn, a dazzling orchid spectacular for South Floridians and their guests from around the world.

In five days, January 23-27, the 19th World Orchid Conference delighted and educated thousands of visitors. Two of South Florida’s most vital orchid societies—The South Florida Orchid Society of Miami, and the Fort Lauderdale Orchid Society—co-hosted the event. (Robert Fuchs, the current WOC president, and Ken Kone served as co-chairs). Both groups have held their own annual orchid shows, which are among the finest and largest in the U.S. so there was an ample pool of experienced talent to draw on for this major undertaking. Volunteers from all of South Florida and many local orchid societies pitched in with crews before and during the event.

Walking through the doors, visitors were face to face with the mountainous Grand Champion exhibit by R.F Orchids of Homestead, Florida.  This wall of flowering orchid plants featured purple Vanda hybrids on one side and white Phalaenopsis on the other. Its antique props a 150-year old cart at front and a Burmese offering temple at back, featured special orchids.

Reserve Champion Exhibit by Kruss-Smith Orchids, Apopka, Florida
Photo: Greg Allikas

The Reserve Champion exhibit was created by Krull-Smith Orchids of Apopka, Florida. This 1000 sq. ft. Japanese-inspired garden featured a Phalaenopsis “cherry tree” and bridge over a “river” of scarlet Phragmipedium besseae flowers. Frank Smith’s superb culture of slipper orchids was evident throughout the exhibit and won the Grand Champion plant award for Paphiopedilum Michael Koopowitz ‘Krull-Smith’ AM/AOS.

Directly behind Krull-Smith was Singapore Botanic Gardens’ stunning exhibit. Created mostly with cut flowers, a silk-draped tea house served as a focal point. The exhibit from South Africa featured plants that were all Disa species or hybrids—a beautiful genus of scarlet, pink or yellow flowers not often seen in the U.S.  Their culture is difficult and requires constant moisture supplied by cool water. A beautiful and inspiring exhibit of diverse soecies was presented by Andy’s Orchids from California, Many exhibits provided creative ideas for displaying orchids, but overall, the flowers were the stars here!

The logistics of shipping orchid plants and flowers halfway across the world for five days of display can be complicated. Take, for example, the participants from Ecuador. Their exhibit was beautifully conceived: against 20’ tall photographic banners of the country’s two main habitats, the orchid plants were to be set in small trees and mossy banks. But because of paperwork difficulties getting the plants out of Ecuador, the orchids sat in boxes for two extra days in less than ideal conditions. When they arrived in Miami, more than half of the orchid flowers had faded. Dispirited but undaunted, the group salvaged what they could and borrowed unused plants from other exhibitors. They did what they came to do…create a beautiful orchid exhibit!

Paphiopedilum Michael Koopowitz, Grand Champion Orchid Plant, 19th WOC
Photo: Greg Allikas

A World Orchid Conference offers the best opportunities for buying new and unusual orchid plants, and the 19th WOC was no exception. Whether you were just shopping for a few plants to decorate your home or for a recently discovered species from distant jungles, you could probably find them at the 19th World Orchid Conference. Fabric wares, crystal, jewelry, glasswork, photography, painting and arts & crafts could be purchased in the second level mart area, where the art and photography contests were also on display.

Billed as the largest orchid show in the U.S., rivaled only by shows in Tokyo and Taiwan, the Miami event featured over 100 exhibits of orchids and orchid-related arts, crafts and supplies. This was the first time a WOC had been held in the U.S. since the 11th show—in 1984, also in Miami.  The attraction for locals was mainly the orchid show itself, but many orchidists, some who traveled across the globe, came for the educational opportunities. Four days of concurrent lectures offered topics to appeal to the scientist or the casual orchid hobbyist. These triennial events provide a forum for the leading experts and orchid researchers to exchange information and compare notes. For some of them, the show itself is just a venue to meet and network.

From all who attended the 19th World Orchid Conference, there were few complaints, many comments of high praise, and too many special moments to mention. (The official 19th WOC Proceedings, available this summer, will include photos of the trophy and medal winners, social events including the Tropical Night Gala, Preview Party and show, and abstracts of all the presented lectures. The proceedings can be ordered online at the 19th WOC website.) As beautiful and compelling as our favorite flowers can be, what makes the worldwide orchid community so satisfying is the people. Make plans to attend the 20th World Orchid Conference in Singapore in 2011 and experience the beauty of orchids and the warmth of our gracious hosts!

Friday, February 08, 2008

Year of the Rat Pollinator

Bees and bats do it, as do mice—pollinate flowers, that is. Some of South Africa’s most marvelous low-to-the-ground species should have a banner year.

Paper cutout/Year of the Rat
Image: Hudson Museum

Happy New Year to all our Far Eastern readers, and anybody else who’s ready to start over…

Year of the Rat began February 7 and will extend through January 25 of next year. As usual, the stock market swamis are chiming in (though we haven’t yet seen a rodent festooned at Korea’s stock exchange, as an ox was in 2006).

But no matter what the dollar and yuan do, 2008 should be terrific for proteas and the succulent karoo. Both are therophilous plants, meaning they’re pollinated by rodents ("rats," if you like).

Namaqua Rock Mouse (Aethomys namaquensis) pollinating Protea humiflora
Photo: Colin Paterson Jones

This gorgeous photo, by Colin Paterson Jones, shows a Namaqua Rock Mouse pollinating Protea humiflora (protea is the national flower of South Africa). Not mice only, but shrews, gerbils, and—yes, rats—visit several of the low-to-the-ground species of proteas and Hook Pincushions.

“Rodents are attracted by a strong musty odour, and a reward of syrupy sugar which is secreted in large quantities. In order to prevent birds and insects from stealing this nectar, rodent-pollinated (therophilous) proteas have inconspicuous brown or black involucral bracts. Flower-heads are usually hidden inside the bush at ground level, where they are accessible to rodents. The insides of the involucral bracts may be pale white and the tips of the flowers may be shiny red - both serve to guide the rodent to the nectar in the dark.” Here’s much more about the experiments, photos, too.

Steven D. Johnson, a botanist at the University of Natal in Petermaritzburg, South Africa, set up a night experiment to discover the pollinators of the dramatic Massonia depressa, also known as Succulent Karoo: “Imagine water lily leaves spread on the ground,” says Johnson. He and his team released gerbils in an enclosed area around the plant “and the rodents dove for nectar, leaving the flower intact but their snouts gilded with pollen.”

Here’s more on Year of the Rat, including a description of rat-natives’ more and less appealing traits. For proteas and succulent karoo, the most vital of these is certainly industriousness. Get down!

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Learning to Read the LA Landscape

Over waves of ethnicity, sophistication, kitsch, style, and vision, Jill Nokes surfs (on wheels, of course) the city of Los Angeles.

Toltec totems and taco stand, Los Angeles
Photo: Jill Nokes

By Jill Nokes

Im mid-January, I found myself in Los Angeles, sharing the stories from my new book Yard Art and Handmade Places as part of the Barn Lecture Series hosted by Santa Monica landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power. Because I had never been in Southern California, I was eager to find out how the stories, so place-specific in my book, would translate to the people out there.  More than ever I felt the challenge of how to present the yards and gardens and their makers not as oddities or curiosities, but as generous people with something to say. I worried that sophisticated Californians might be distracted by what would seem to be just another corn-pone Texas song-and-dance.

To my delight, we were made to feel at home from the first moment we arrived.  We stayed in a guesthouse nestled back in a lovely garden belonging to Carolyn Bennett, a landscape historian who works with Nancy Power and organizes the lecture series.  Despite dreadful weather and what passes for a “dormant” season there, everything was still beautiful in a voluptuous French-Mediterranean way that we can only envy in Texas. Immediately I began to make mental notes to re-arrange things (again!) in my garden.

Carolyn Bennett’s garden in Los Angeles
Photo: Jill Nokes

The LA traffic was indeed horrendous. One friend told us it took her two hours to drive seven miles to work! But with Carolyn’s recommended short-cuts and Jack as my skilled driver and navigator, we managed to visit a few of the monuments and sites on our list. I stared out the window, mesmerized by the changing pattern of signs, old, new, and refurbished architecture, street life, plants, and people.  From the passenger seat, it was easy to understand how Los Angeles is home to people speaking more than 260 different languages. (The Los Angeles Police Department has just developed a “Phrasalator”: a bullhorn device equipped with recorded messages in a variety of idioms for blaring out helpful announcements like “Welcome to this event! We are here to help you celebrate your First Amendment Rights!”, and , “Put your hands behind your back!” )

On our list of things to see were architectural monuments like the Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry Partners and twenty years in the making. It felt good to be in a city that believes enough in the promise of the future to create a daring tribute to beauty and music.  The concert hall even had a series of pocket gardens, tucked in among the swoops and folds of the huge stainless steel walls.  In the main garden, we admired preposterous Pink Ball Trees (Dombeya wallichii), full of shivering hummingbirds.

We also went to the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. With clouds low in the sky and rain threatening, we had the grounds almost to ourselves and were thus rewarded by the display of thousands of Aloes in bloom. Set so artfully among Agaves, Aneoniums, Nolinas, and towering yuccas and palms, the tall stalks of the aloes appeared as glowing torches: improbable blossoms that had evolved to court unimaginable pollinators, of this time and of times forgotten.  The just-blooming camellias and static tranquility of the Japanese garden expressed a more melancholy beauty.

Jack Nokes, el mero chofer, relaxes in the cacti and succulent gardens at the Huntington
Photo: Jill Nokes

Linking these main attractions, the hectic roads unfurled like a state fair midway, festooned with signs competing for your attention in Spanish, then Korean, next Chinese, followed by Arabic. Neighborhoods would transition from one block to another, each replacing the last settlement like waves on a beach. On one busy corner there stood miniature replicas of the massive ancient Atlantean warriors of Tula, Mexico, faithfully represented in their ornamental headdresses, with butterfly-shaped breastplates (butterflies representing the soul of the fallen soldier), large belts, and leg wrappings. Close to their sides, their arms grasped an atlatl on one side and an incense bag on the other. Once iconic symbols of Toltec power (one of four unifying forces in the pre-Spanish history of Mexico), the figures now draw your attention to the opportunity to buy carne guisada tacos for $1.39.

After my lecture, several people insisted that Carolyn take me by a couple of local sites they felt might have a kinship with the folks in my book.  One was the “House of David.” It put me in mind of the statuary we had just seen at the Huntington Gardens. Apparently someone originally from Ethiopia became successful enough (note the Bentley and a Carnival Glass colored SUV that looks like those commemorative after-shave bottles Avon used to sell) to buy a big house and then decorate it with miniature replicas of Michelangelo’s David. At Christmas time, all the Davids wear perky little red Santa caps. At first, this unique aesthetic display was hard for the neighbors to swallow, but I was told that they “have come to terms with it.” This was a familiar pattern to me: the exuberant display first makes people uncomfortable because it’s different but gradually becomes the drive-by gotta-see favorite.

House of David
Photo: Jill Nokes

Carolyn also told me other things as we drove around: how some Korean immigrants got in trouble for cutting down huge trees in their yard because of some cultural aversion to having “shadows” thrown upon their houses.  Also, it seems they prefer to buy only white cars.

After we were back home, I thought some more about some of the things we had seen. I wondered why no one seemed to know the backstory of some of these vernacular places and the cultural myths that went with certain assumptions.  But then I had to admit that I too was often in too much of a rush to stop and ask questions. It was not until I was visiting friends recently in a neighborhood in far north Austin that I realized how many immigrant groups had settled up there. The landscape of refurbished strip malls, signs in many languages, tempting foods being offered, was just the same as what I had seen in Los Angeles. But because it is not in my neighborhood, I assumed that it had nothing to do with me.  After visiting California, I resolved to go back and explore.

Last week, Ellen Goodman wrote an excellent essay called “Who We Really Are.”

“This business of naming ourselves, this question of culture and multiculture, racial and multiracial, keeps coming up in the presidential race…For a growing number of Americans, especially children, home is not one race or ethnicity, if it ever was. Home is where – and who – your family is.”

Maybe I am stuck in the bias I developed while writing my book “Extraordinary Expressions of Home” but it does seem that in a complex and scary world where making connections with “others” is often so daunting and difficult, that the yard and garden might be an overlooked invitation for meeting our neighbors, our extended family.  I plan to get out of the car and ask around. If I find out anything, I’ll be sure to let you know.