The pitcher of doom (if you’re an insect)

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Alabama, botanical art, colored pencil, ecology, sustainability, Val Webb

Meet Sarracenia leucophylla, the white pitcher plant. I drew this specimen following a day at Splinter Hill Bog, 628 acres of whispering longleaf pine forest and bog at the headwaters of the Perdido River in south Alabama. I felt fortunate to have a real, live pitcher plant to work from — when the first botanical illustration of a Sarracenia was made in 1576 by the court botanist to James I of England, all he had for reference was a dried-up remnant of a pitcher plant collected by Spanish explorers in Florida.

In those days, scientists could only guess about the plant’s strange cupped structure — and after a great deal of study, they concluded that pitcher plants were benevolently designed by God to provide safe refuge for small creatures. (Alas, that’s exactly what the plant’s unsuspecting victims probably think, as well.) Three hundred years later, Charles Darwin was the first to guess at the true purpose of the plant’s unique architecture: not a shelter, but a deadly trap. When experiments showed that pitcher plants digested and absorbed bits of venison dropped into its throat, the mystery was officially solved.

Among all the hundreds of families of flowering plants on the planet, only ten include species capable of trapping animals. There remains much we don’t know about these carnivorous beauties: their lifespan is uncertain, for example, because they sprout from a thick, fleshy rhizome that can spread out underground to give the appearance of multiple plants. In the wild, a large stand of plants may be just a few old — but widespread — individuals. And the intricate patterns on some Sarracenia may extend beyond the visible light spectrum; there is evidence to suggest that they actually have other patterns that can only be detected with ultraviolet vision.

So much to learn, but we may not have that chance — pitcher plant habitat is disappearing at an incredible rate. Wetlands throughout the world are being drained for development. Even preserved wetlands often become contaminated with agricultural and residential runoff. Most of the large Sarracenia stands of the past are already gone.

Fortunately for pitcher plants in my region (and for those of us who like to draw them) a number of bogs are being carefully protected. The largest is Splinter Hill Bog, where this beautiful specimen was growing. There’s also a bog at Weeks Bay Estuarine Reserve near Fairhope, and at the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge just north of Gautier, MS.

 

Eating the Yard: an update

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food, gardening, green living, local food, sustainability

Ahhh… Cooler temperatures are finally here, and the front-yard garden is thriving in the absence of oppressive heat and hungry insects. Broccoli and cabbages line the front walk, hemmed with a few multiplier onions and some sprawling purple petunias at one end. This bed was created in a single early October afternoon, by double-digging the existing topsoil with a spade and then hoeing in a two-inch layer of clean, crumbly black mushroom compost. (I use mushroom compost because human sewage sludge — delicately referred to as “biosolids” in the federal regulations that allow it to be lumped in as compost and sold to unsuspecting gardeners — is frequently lurking in commercial bagged manure products. Ewwww.)

At the far end, some Brussels sprouts snuggle up to a row of romaine lettuce.  Next week, when the romaine is harvested, I’ll fill in their little slice of real estate with some yellow globe onions. After several years of large-scale gardening, I really love working on a more intimate scale… planting and transplanting just a few square feet at a time provides a constant parade of assorted produce. I probably need to exercise more self-control in this area, though. Does anyone really need nine varieties of lettuce? Salads, anyone?

Some of the aforementioned lettuces are in the “baby bed” next to the driveway. I set out seedlings very close together and they grew in a leafy mound that can be gradually eaten as the baby lettuces are thinned out, allowing the remaining plants to reach full size. These little fellows are Tango Early Oakleaf, Lolla Rosa and Red Sails, all from Good Scents Herbs and Flowers in Robertsdale, Alabama. In other beds are Deer Tongue, Arugula and Tom Thumb.

Gypsy sweet peppers, Buttercrunch lettuce, more Oakleaf, onions and giant mutant basil share one raised bed. Each bed is 4×4 and 10 inches high, filled with equal parts peat moss, mushroom compost and vermiculite. I use pine needles for mulch. Thanks to a trio of towering longleaf pines overhanging the yard, mulch falls conveniently out of the sky every day.

Meanwhile, the newer raised bed is home to Red Bor kale, Swiss chard, and some upwardly mobile heirloom snap peas on a scrounged-bamboo-and-Zip-tie trellis.

My backyard is small, and only a few precious spots receive the full sun that herb plants crave. Some of the sunniest real estate is a skinny strip against the south side of a storage shed. The peppermint in the background, doing its level best to climb out of a wooden crate, sprouted from a single cutting in August.
A pocket garden at one end of the shed has snap peas, bulb fennel, cardoon and a few leftover lettuces. And that protective fence embracing all the backyard plantings — the hardware store refers to it as rabbit wire, but it’s beagle wire to me.

Building a better clothesline

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ecology, green living, sustainability

I’m doing laundry today, and feeling a twinge of guilt each time I shut the dryer door and press the button to start the wet clothes tumbling. You can count on an Alabama summer to provide blast-furnace heat each day — heat that will dry those soggy jeans almost as fast as you can hang them out — but it’s awfully easy to find reasons to default to the convenience of my electric dryer. I know better, of course. Hanging my clothes outside is a simple way to shrink my household environmental footprint. Dryers gobble up a considerable amount of electricity — more watts per hour than washers, water heaters, air conditioners or dishwashers — but a clothesline doesn’t use any at all. I think about the oily mess unfolding on the Gulf coast beaches 30 miles south of my house, a disaster that resulted at least in part from our huge national appetite for energy, and I resolve to do better.

Levi Strauss & Co. is getting in on the energy-saving act through a contest called Care to Air. They’re seeking ideas that will improve or replace the clothesline, and anyone can participate. Air drying ideas will be accepted until July 31, and winners will be announced in August. In addition to the satisfaction of helping to cut energy use, five finalists will win $500. A panel of judges will award prizes ranging from $4,500 to $1,000 for first, second and crowd favorite (that last category will be decided by online votes). Levi’s new clothing care tags urge their customers to only use cold water for laundering, to line dry and to donate old jeans to Goodwill.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the hardware store for some clothesline.

Jones Valley Urban Farm

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food, gardening, sustainability

In the heart of Birmingham, on a city block that was once the address of a notorious housing project, is a three-acre oasis of organic goodness. We took a road trip yesterday to visit Jones Valley Urban Farm, now ten years into their mission of reconnecting people to fresh food. Our first stop was Pepper Place Saturday Market, where shoppers crowded around the Jones Valley booth to buy just-picked veggies and herbs.

In addition to the weekly market, the farm sells tasty organic produce to grocery stores and restaurants in the region, runs a farm stand and provides food to customers through their Food Box subscription program. They also offer 30 raised bed community plots for local families who just want to do a little gardening on their own:

At the farm property, rainwater is captured by a “butterfly roof” sheltering the Jones Valley farm stand. The fresh water is channeled into an enormous rain barrel:

A self-service farm stand provides seven-days-a-week access to fresh produce and other farm products:

Easily visible from the nearby interstate highway and from an adjoining forest of high-rise apartments, Jones Valley is designed to serve as a model sustainable urban farm. The farmers enthusiastically welcome visitors of all ages. They host weekly workshops, school programs and youth internships that focus on sustainable agriculture and nutrition.

Lush squash and sprawling cucumber vines appear to spring effortlessly from the rich soil, but I know better than that… Crops here are meticulously planned to allow regular rotation and to maintain a healthy, organic soil bed. Arugula is a year-round crop in central Alabama, and the farm has a perpetual harvest from three raised beds: we saw one recently planted, one almost ready for harvest and one that is being picked and sold now:

Flowers are an important crop at Jones Valley, too:

It’s always summer on the seed package

Tags

gardening, green living, illustration, sustainability, Val Webb

Out in the winter garden, it’s cold and rainy. But on my drawing table, it’s the middle of June and the homegrown tomatoes are ready for picking. I’m halfway through with the new children’s seed package design for a group of young organic farmers out in Sonoma County, California. The open-pollinated heirloom seeds inside the finished package will find their way into the hands of schoolchildren and neighborhood community gardeners.  I love being part of this process.

Design work also provides a welcome opportunity to listen to podcasts while I draw and paint. Last week I discovered City Farmer Stories, broadcast from Vancouver. And yesterday, tucked into the newest issue of Organic Gardening between an article on tracking chipmunks and another about peace trees in Hiroshima, was info on three more audio opportunities:

Heritage Radio Network features a smorgasbord of different programs hosted by chefs, farmers, artists and even — according to OG — the occasional artisanal cheesemaker.

An Organic Conversation on Green 960 AM in San Francisco, focuses on health and sustainability.

The Food Chain covers food policy with journalist and urban farmer, Michael Olson.

Happy listening, everyone. And keep warm!

Notes from the Valley of Wormwood

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art, drawing, gardening, herbal medicine, herbs, illustration, journal, sketchbook, sustainability, Val Webb, watercolor

What I know of the divine science and Holy Scripture I learnt in the woods and fields.    — St. Bernard, 12th Century sustainable organic gardener

Today is the feast day of St. Bernard. When I think of St. Bernard, I think of wormwood. And when I think of wormwood, I think of the Herb Lady and an August morning 25 years ago.

I lived in the mountains then, in a little house on a ridge eight miles from the nearest small town. I was seven months pregnant, had a big garden, a two-year-old, a four-year-old and a difficult marriage. Because the house was isolated, had no phone or television, and my husband was only home on weekends, I spent most of the time alone with two young children and the gentle embrace of the surrounding mountains for company. Money was tight, so I drove into town just twice a month for supplies and a fresh stack of library books. We read, hiked and gardened while it was warm. When it got cold, we read and I chopped wood. The girls played in the creek to the west of us, or in the pasture to the east. It wasn’t a bad life, but it could sometimes be awfully lonesome.

During one of my bi-monthly supply runs, a shopkeeper told me about the Herb Lady.  “She grows all kinds of herbs up at her place. Herbs to cook with, herbs for medicine, everything. And this time of the year, she’s dividing the plants and she’ll send you home with bags full of roots and cuttings. I’ll draw you a map,” the woman said helpfully. In my mind’s eye, I pictured an ancient, plantwise granny… someone who might welcome a visitor interested in herb lore. The shopkeeper paused from drawing a complicated series of squiggles.  “It can be a little bit hard to get to,” she said. ” What kind of vehicle you got?”

But for a chance to visit with a real, live adult person and have a conversation that went beyond a cash register transaction, I was prepared to navigate some wilderness. Two hours later, miles from the place we had turned off the paved road, our little station wagon bucked and slid along a muddy track through the woods. It was unusually quiet in the back seat, where two small passengers frowned as tree branches scraped the sides of the car. I hoped the map drawn on the back of my hardware store receipt was accurate. I hoped that if it wasn’t, I would manage to get the car turned around on the ever-narrowing trail. I also hoped (perhaps most of all) that if my previous two hopes didn’t work out, the mountain panthers I’d read about in my latest library book were well and truly extinct.

The thick canopy overhead parted abruptly, spilling sunlight down on us, and the trail opened up into a cozy little valley. The Herb Lady’s tiny farm looked like a Disney movie set: red barn, white cottage, antique pickup truck. A fat tom turkey came strutting up the driveway to scrutinize us with his beady eyes. And then there was the garden.

Herbs climbed trellises on three sides of the cottage, spilled over the porch railings and sprawled in rock-walled beds . It was August and the plants were at their peak maturity, so it was easy to pick out the familiar culinary varieties — dill, chives, a vast mass of Greek oregano, four kinds of basil — happily growing in the largest and most diverse herb garden I had ever seen.

The Herb Lady was around back, knee-deep in a drift of comfrey, and she greeted me as if we were old friends.  She wasn’t a granny after all.  All that herb knowledge was walking around in a slender, twentysomething frame with red garden clogs and a halo of frizzy blond hair. She poured mugs of mountain sumac “lemonade” for each of the girls, then took me on a grand tour of the herb beds. For nearly two hours, I enjoyed a wonderful, adult-vocabulary-level conversation about planting, cultivating and harvesting herbs. Every few minutes, the Herb Lady stooped to pull apart a root system or separate a clump of stems, and she handed me the new plant wrapped in a piece of newspaper. By the end of our herb walk, the ingredients for a very respectable kitchen garden lay stacked neatly in the grass.

The last plant she showed me was a thick, feathery profusion of silvery stalks and leaves. It was strange and beautiful, and it was taller than I was.

“This is wormwood,” the Herb Lady said. “Artemisia absinthium. But I only grow it for historical interest. I can’t give you any to take home.” And then she told me about this powerful, bitter herb: a popular medieval remedy for worms, as its name implies; a distant cousin to sagebrush; an ingredient in absinthe, a notorious drink in nineteenth-century Europe; an herb associated with grief and mourning in cultures all over the world. Finally, she pointed out, it repels fleas and moths — which is why she grew it just outside her back door.

“If you’re Catholic, you might be interested to know that wormwood is part of the story of St. Bernard,” the Herb Lady said. I wasn’t Catholic, but I was interested in the story anyway: frail and pious, Bernard was only 22 when he was made abbot over 12 other monks. They were sent to found a new monastery in the desolate Valley of Wormwood, in medieval France. For years, the little group lived on wild herbs and water while they struggled to clear enough of the forest to plant the garden that would eventually sustain them. The garden and the monastery were successful, and the monks’ simple devotion attracted and inspired a large number of people. Faith, patience and a garden were the only tools they had at their disposal, but that was enough.

Later, I drove home on the narrow mountain roads with two little girls asleep in the back seat and a car that smelled like a giant bouquet garni. With hours of happy conversation behind me and hours more of happy gardening ahead, I remember thinking that even in the Valley of Wormwood, there must have been a few really good days.

Butterfly Days

Tags

butterflies, drawing, food, gardening, green living, local food, sustainability

There was a beautiful Eastern Black Swallowtail in the fennel patch yesterday. This morning, the herb’s tender green shoots were peppered with tiny butterfly eggs. The little orbs are pale yellow now, but they will turn black just before they hatch into small caterpillars. In several stages, these fast-growing creatures will pass through increasingly vivid color patterns — all the while steadily consuming an impressive quantity of fennel, parsley and dill. Individuals lucky enough to avoid hungry wasps will eventually transform into a chrysalis and, finally, something that looks a lot like this:

 (c)2009 Val Webb

Meanwhile, we have defaulted to our usual steamy south Alabama late-summer gardening schedule. Manual labor is now limited to really, really early in the morning. We’re prepping beds for fall planting, checking our saved seed and picking those die-hard eggplant and peppers… and some scrumptious ambrosia canteloupe that the Perfect Man incorporated into an experiment in edible landscaping.

Summer is also canning time. Last week, it was green tomato chow-chow… and this week, it was blueberry jam. The hardest part is not opening the jars immediately and devouring the carefully preserved contents. It’s a treat to live with a man who has impressive food preservation skills! (Here’s a tip for any guys out there who might be contemplating an online dating service: just be sure your profile includes the fact that you’re inordinately fond of Mason jars and pressure cookers, and then stand back.)

Garden sketchbook: Saving seeds

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art, botanical art, drawing, flowers, gardening, illustration, sustainability

 

I hate cutting the faded flower heads off my favorite echinacea purpurea. But it’s some consolation knowing that each spiny head will yield dozens of seeds to plant and share.

This dried coneflower was drawn in watercolor and colored pencil.

Rain on me

Tags

irrigation, sustainability, water

Harvesting rainwater

 I’m not an expert on irrigation, but the cool new rainwater collection system at our local Master Gardeners demonstration plot seems like a no-brainer to me. Worldwide consumption of water is rising fast — twice the rate of the population — but fresh water makes up less than 3 percent of all the planet’s water resources. When a scarce resource falls right out of the sky, it makes sense to harvest it. That’s exactly what the folks at the county demonstration garden are doing.

Fruit trees... demonstrating!

Rainwater can be collected from any relatively clean surface (rooftops and pool covers, for example) and then used for irrigation, flushing the toilet, washing the car,  rinsing garden tools  — just don’t drink it.

The system at the demonstration garden uses rain gutters on a small outbuilding to capture water:

These gutters capture 160 - 240 gallons per 1" rainfall

Even a tiny toolshed can yield a surprisingly large volume of fresh water. According to a formula from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, a 10 x 10 foot surface collects approximately 50 gallons for every inch of rainfall.  The main tank for the demonstration garden holds 1800 gallons, and it was full:

Next stop after the rooftop: the storage tank

The thick, vertical pipe visible at the corner of the red building is the first flush diverter. It’s a simple device that catches the first flush of water during each rain — the rain that rinses off any dirt, bird droppings, acorns or leaves that might have landed on the roof recently. Once the diverter is full, the remaining water passes over it and runs into the storage tank. See the plug at the bottom of the pipe? That’s where the first flush water can be drained, between rains.

Storage tanks can be made from all kinds of clean containers. .. however,  the Cooperative Extension folks warn that you need to be very careful about what has been previously stored in them. New or never-previously-used fuel tanks, fiberglass containers or septic tanks are what they recommend for larger capacity. There are also polyethylene tanks manufactured for use in the sugar industry, which are cheap to buy and easy to rinse for repurposing as water storage.

Light colored tanks should be painted dark green or black to prevent light penetration. If you bury your storage tank, color doesn’t matter.

Distribution is by gravity or a small pump

(We’re down here in a subtropical climate zone, so temperature extremes are never a problem. But in colder climates, exposed storage tanks would need to be durable enough to tolerate water freezing and thawing during the winter. The recommendation is high-density polyethylene, and a domed top or overflow pipe to allow expansion.)

The demonstration garden slopes gently away from the water containment tank, so gravity alone was enough to provide pressure for drip irrigation. But it’s a big garden, so last week a small electric pump was installed at the base of the storage tank. Now the Master Gardener volunteers can sprinkle, mist and hose to their hearts’ content. If you don’t have electricity in the vicinity of your water storage, a gasoline pump will work.

I’m intrigued. I think a set of rain barrels and some spiffy new catchment gutters on the art studio might be a good fall project. After patiently answering my many questions, the County Extension agent gave me some sources of additional, more detailed information. I’ve listed them below. Happy harvesting!

Virginia Rainwater Harvesting Manual

Rainwater Harvesting

The Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting

Harvesting Rainwater for Landscape Use

Eating the yard

Tags

edible landscaping, flowers, food, gardening, green living, horticulture, local food, sustainability, toxic plants

When it comes to scary subject matter — the stuff you try not to think about when you wake unexpectedly at 2 a.m. — Stephen King can’t hold a candle to Poisonous Plants of the Southern United States. If you’ve ever wondered what would happen to you within 48 hours of, say, nibbling a little lantana from your curbside landscaping, this handy guide from West Virginia University will tell you in excrutiating detail. (Don’t read the lantana section if you are about to have lunch. You’ve been warned.)

Eeeeeeeeek!

As the grandmother of two toddler girls who love to pick flowers, I’m all for nontoxic landscaping.  Better yet, edible landscaping.  So this year, while our regular backyard garden is doing its usual exuberant summer thing…

… some food crops have replaced traditional landscape plants on the “public” side of the fence.  Five itty-bitty Bush Pickle cucumber plants, tucked next to a privacy fence and around the foot of an antique urn, have produced several dozen fat seven-inch cukes and show no signs of slowing. No sign of wilt or insect infestation, either — which, here in the coastal subtropics, is cause for rejoicing.

We tried a ten-foot row of Greasyback Cornstalk beans, a wonderful heirloom that was my great-grandmother’s garden favorite, against a section of privacy fence. A strip of plastic bird netting is tacked to the fence posts to give the beanstalks something to grab. I’m watering them with a dipper from our algae-rich fish pond, and they’re producing lots of characteristically knobby, slightly shiny green beans.  Some catnip and St. Francis finish off the little bed.

There’s something very satisfying about landscaping with table fare.  Our lawn crops over the past two years have expanded to include citrus, blueberries and culinary ginger, and we want to keep moving in that direction. Eating the yard isn’t for everyone — there are a lot of folks living in suburban housing developments with restrictive covenants, for example, and inner-city gardeners whose street gardens are fraught with unforeseen hazards.

But, personally, I love the idea of yanking out a poisonous invasive and replacing it with something the grandbabies can happily harvest. Hey, lantana! Let’s see you do this: