The Illustrated Garden

                                                            Alabama Beach Mouse  (c)2008 Val Webb

                  Sketch: Delmarva Fox Squirrel (c)2008 Val Webb

A few weeks ago, Terry Burger mentioned the dwindling fox squirrel population in his beautifully written — and unfailingly relevant — blog.  I had no idea what a fox squirrel looked like, so I did a little research. Here, I quickly realized, is a furry little creature with a cuteness quotient worthy of a Disney animated feature. Big, bright eyes and chubby cheeks.  An abundantly fluffy tail.  A perpetually cheery and inquisitive facial expression.  I remembered reading that funding for species protection has been found to heavily favor cuteness. Public support is strong for penguins, pandas and koalas… but most people find it difficult to get misty-eyed about critically endangered fish, moths or worms.

Nevertheless, the fox squirrel and the equally appealing Alabama beach mouse have been added to the growing collection of little paintings on postcards I’m creating for an upcoming show. Postcards from the Edge of Extinction will open May 9 at the Mobile Arts Council galleries. 

Last night, we dined on the first salads of spring. The leaf lettuces (buttercrunch, romaine, oak leaf and red oak leaf) are sweet and crisp. They taste like sunlight and promise. We picked the tender side leaves at dusk, after a day of soft rain.  Mmmmmm… eating the first harvest of the spring garden always feels like the height of luxury.

      Murdock in the Catnip    -    artwork (c)2008 Val Webb

You don’t have to be a cat owner to justify growing catnip in your garden. It’s a beautiful herb with downy, heart-shaped leaves and the square stem that signifies mint … and it’s very useful stuff. Years ago, when I lived in the mountains, I met older folks who insisted that planting catnip close to their cabins would repel termites — a bit of folk wisdom that would eventually be rediscovered by research scientists. After my youngest daughter was born, the midwife told me that warm catnip tea would relieve a colicky baby. An herbalist friend in Florida recommends catnip for menstrual cramps. Maud Grieve, author of A Modern Herbal, reports that the herb is helpful for headache and nervousness. The list goes on and on.

My catnip, like its tenacious mint cousins, seems determined to crowd its neighbors right out of the planting bed. What began nine months ago as a modest little sprout has rapidly grown to a large, sprawling bush with aspirations both tall and wide.

Catnip is easy to grow from seed, from dividing a larger plant at its base, or even from cuttings rooted in water. It has been my experience that big, robust catnip plants grow where there’s plenty of sunlight and not too much moisture. They like less water than the rest of the thirsty mint clan. My bed is on the sandy side, but is enriched with good compost — and these conditions result in a high concentration of volatile oils (capable of sending approximately 75% of the cat population into spasms of ecstasy with a single sniff). I’m starting seeds now for the young plants that will go off to our downtown growers’ market in late summer.

The leaves and stems, either fresh or dried, have a powerful effect on most kitties. If there are any four-legged catnip junkies in your household, you may want to protect your young plants with rabbit wire to prevent tender leaves from being rolled upon, or plant your catnip off by itself. I once had a cat who would use his paws to uproot entire catnip plants and devour roots, stems and all. His fondness for recreational catnip usage resulted in a lot of damage to neighboring herb plants.

The plant is at the height of its medicinal powers when the white-and-purple tops are in full flower, and herbalists recommend harvesting catnip by cutting the entire plant back to about six inches in height. Do your cutting at mid-morning, and then remove any dead or discolored leaves. Here in the land of 100% humidity, we dry herbs in a dehydrator or inside a closed-up vehicle on a hot day. When I lived in a slightly drier climate, I tied catnip in loose bundles and dried them inside brown paper bags. Either way, your catnip will retain more potency if the leaves are dried whole.

 Spring has come to Mark’s water garden.

 
Gardeners here on the subtropical Gulf Coast are extremely well acquainted with fast-growing legumes. The most infamous is kudzu, a Japanese native plant innocently promoted in the 1930s as a means of erosion control. Farmers were paid $8 an acre to plant the twisting, woody vine in their unused fields, where it rapidly swallowed up the landscape.  The plant had no natural enemies in this country and — surprise! — it thrived in heat and humidity. County extension agents, amazed and dismayed, estimated kudzu’s growth rate at 12 inches per day. Barns, vacant houses and carelessly parked pickup trucks disappeared beneath a shroud of glossy green leaves.  Urban legends sprang up, detailing the terrible fate that awaited anyone who fell asleep too close to the edge of a kudzu patch.

The snow peas in our garden are distant cousins of kudzu. (Other Leguminosae include lima beans, soybeans and peanuts.) Most years, my Sugar Pod snow peas top out at their usual 3 feet in height… but this year they seem to be in hot pursuit of Cousin Kudzu’s nickname: The Vine That Ate the South. Planted in the fall, then encouraged by an unusually mild winter, they grew. And grew. And grew.

Now we’re plucking sweet, crunchy pods from a snow pea jungle just over seven feet high. We’re steaming the tender, pale green pods. We’re stir-frying them. We’re eating them raw on salads. Visitors to the house are sent home clutching complimentary bags of snow peas. Fortunately, tender snow peas and other edible pod peas freeze beautifully.

My favorite snow pea recipe in the universe is on the sketchbook page at the beginning of this post. We cooked up a batch last night, and here’s how it looked just before being devoured by two hungry gardeners:

It comes from The Moosewood Restaurant Kitchen Garden, a book that manages to combine gardening tips, wildly delicious recipes, inspiration and elegant illustrations. (Read a few pages, and then try to resist the urge to run right out and start planting seeds. I dare you.)

I always try to keep at least 1/4 of my total garden space in legumes.  Here’s why: Peas and beans are good sources of protein for hungry vegetarians, and they are good sources of nitrogen for hungry garden soil. Hardworking bacteria living on the roots fix nitrogen from the air. When your harvest is over and it’s time to till up your plot in preparation for the next season’s crop, you can dig leguminous plants right into the soil while the vines are still green. They rot down rapidly, and all that stored nitrogen is released. (Legumes will also work their magic on your compost pile, if you prefer.)

Paisley

Thanks to everyone who sent emails and left comments for Paisley. I’m happy to report that, despite her rough arrival in the world, she is now a happy and very healthy one-month-old.  I love being a grandmother twice over (grandbaby Lily will be 10 months old this month).

It’s fun to contemplate which spring veggies to plant for maximum baby taste appeal — I’m thinking squash and sweet potatoes, for starters. Though Paisley won’t be ready to chow down on organic produce for a while,  Lily can look forward to some tasty midsummer treats.

Lily 

Grandbaby Paisley arrived Monday night (7lbs 7oz, 20 inches long) after a very, very difficult birth. She is amazingly cute and vigorous, in spite of having to spend this week in intensive care recovering from a fractured skull. In fact, she may be ready to go home today! Yay!

Thanks for all the nice emails. I hope to be back to garden-blogging regularity within the next few days.

I’ve divided the Builders’ Show posts into three digestible chunks, with sketchbook doodles to accompany each bite.  The show is vast (housed in the nation’s second largest meeting venue, the two-million-square-foot Orange County Convention Center) and so we spent hours hiking long miles of elaborate product displays, attending the continuous lectures and seminars, and venturing out into the surrounding county to visit actual concept houses. 

Highlights this year included a top-secret sneak preview of Dell’s new waterproof, smashproof, drive-your-car-over-it-proof “Rugged Laptop.” After seeing it during a lecture by Dell marketing chief Mark Jarvis, we got up close and personal with this new super-tough computer at Dell’s exhibit. It’s heavy. It’s square. It looks like the lovechild of a laptop and a Hummer H2. And, with an estimated price tag around $3,000 it has premium pricing in common with the Hummer. But you really CAN drive your car over it, according to the helpful Dell representative manning the booth.

It’s been a busy week of finishing up illustration jobs and clearing the calendar to accommodate our trip to Orlando, Florida. I’m accompanying The Perfect Man to The International Builders Show, a massive gathering of home builders and designers from all over the world, with attendance hovering around 100,000 most years.

So what does this have to do with gardening? Well, more than you might expect. Jam-packed into four crazy days are more than 290 seminars and classes taught by some of the planet’s leading innovators in areas like sustainable landscaping, designing for conservation, green homes… lots of educational fun. I’ll be taking all of you along with me in spirit, journaling daily from the event and posting each night. (This event always attracts its share of celebrity participants — Ty Pennington and Alton Brown in past years, for example. Colin Powell delivered the opening speech two years ago. Pack your bags! Here we go…

Here in the cradle of Mardi Gras, schools and businesses have shut down while the parades roll and the revelers dance in the streets downtown. Warm, damp, windy weather is blowing ashore from the Gulf of Mexico. Suddenly it’s short-sleeve weather again. The garden is calling! We spent all of yesterday turning the patch of soil that will soon be planted with early potatoes, and after hauling and spreading five loads of compost I’m reminded of my unfulfilled resolution to exercise more. Ouch!

I’ve completed two more gouache paintings for my show, Postcards from the Edge of Extinction.  Meet the Thick-Billed Parrot (Mexico) and the Splendid Leaf Frog (Central America).  The patterns on the leaf frog’s skin truly ARE splendid… and fun to paint, too.

The Perfect Man gave me an early Valentines Day present this afternoon: a wonderfully intricate Andy English wood engraving, Two Turtle Doves. For Andy’s fascinating step-by-step post on how he created this lovely image — and a photo of the finished print — click here. Prepare to be amazed!

Here in the deep South, our pleasantly cool winter weather is punctuated with the occasional three-or-four-day arctic blast of subfreezing temperatures. During these brief periods, much grumbling can be heard throughout the region. We don’t like the cold.

“That freeze last night killed off the rest of my winter vegetables,” we tell our friends at the local feed and seed store, the one place where such garden casualties are treated with sympathy and concern. “But at least the cold will kill off all the bugs.”

Alas, science is rapidly proving that it simply isn’t so. We now know that insect blood contains a protein that works very effectively as a natural antifreeze. The antifreeze protein prevents ice crystals from growing, so the bugs survive frigid weather and are still very much alive (and really, really hungry) when warm days return.

That’s the BAD news. The GOOD news is that the same handy antifreeze proteins are found in some fish blood, and their amazing properties offer hope for future technology that would allow transplant organs to be safely stored at low temperatures. (The antifreeze protein is already being replicated using yeast that contains a fish gene. And, um, guess where it’s being used? Let’s just say, if you’re eating a Breyers Light Double Churned chocolate ice cream bar right now, you might want to go ahead and finish it all up before you read any further…)