Hidden Treasures

Maybe its just a mushroom. Maybe not. One man's trash is another mans treasure. Some see a fungus, I see a living pearl in its botanical oyster. This giant mushroom sprang up underneath the slender weeping foliage of the nearby ornamental grass. Mushrooms are often considered a nuisance, or unsightly, but I love little things like this in the garden for several reasons.

For one thing, its just so darn big you can't help but admire it. Come on, how often do you see a big honkin fungus... uh, livng pearl like that, huh? It was easily eight inches across. For another thing, if only for an instant, when you do see these little gems, it allows your mind wander into the "gnomes and faries might really exist" realm. Who hasn't stopped and wondered if there wasn't really something out there that would make the fantastic real. And finally... and this is the one that makes me swell with pride... its a sign that your soil is actually very healthy! You see, mushrooms are the fruiting body of the fungus that grows beneath the soil surface. Most soil fungi grow in long root like strands called "mycelium" and it is a parasitic organism. It lives on complex organic matter that soil bacteria (who also like organic matter) find a little tough to chew. It is kind of like "everything has a purpose, and there's a purpose for everything." The presence of fungi means the presence of organic matter. Organic matter means healthy soil. I, of course, swell with pride at that since I am a soil scientist.

Little gems (and big ones) are everywhere. You just have to know either WHERE to look or HOW to look. I think it is more of a matter of HOW.

OPEN GARDEN TIME!!!

Yeah baby, its that time again. Time for the 7th Annul Daylily Open Garden! It is our delight to open our garden to visitor from where ever they come. We started it years ago to show folks that modern daylilies are more than just the little yellow "stella d'oro" that you see in commercial landscaping just about everywhere or the orange "ditch lily" you see growing on the roadsides. Yes, the modern daylliy has come a long way; they have so much to offer a garden. They are called America's favorite perennial for a reason.

For the past three years, we have been selling our "surplus" and donating the proceeds to the Volunteers in Mission "Taiama" farm project that I have been so blessed to be a part of. Just a week ago, more than 200 trees and 140 pineapple plants were delivered and planted at the farm. It is our hope that the trees will make a significant impact on the nutrition and economy of this little village in one of the worlds poorest countries.


So, if you want to make a difference; if you want to make an impact, or if you want to just stroll the paths of our garden and gawk at the colors, sizes, and shapes of hundreds of daylilies and perennials, come on out. Email me for directions.

Bloggers note: all of the grass you see in picture above is now taken up by MORE GARDEN SPACE!!!

Treasures

Treasures are anywhere and everywhere; you just have to know how to look for them. A couple of years ago we opened up the seedling field from our daylily hybridizing to friends who, by making a donation to our Farm Mission in Sierra Leone, West Africa, could chose a daylily seedling and give it a name. We would take care of the official registration through the American Hemerocallis Society, they just had to come up with the name. One of those seedlings is shown on the blogpage here. H. 'Taiama' is named after the village where we go to do Medical, nutritional, agricultural, and other types of mission work. Many people chose to honor or memorialize loved ones. My best friend Rob, a long time supporter of the mission, asked me to chose one for his wife, and our friend, and name it after her, Ashlee Nicole, as a birthday present. Now, I must say it isn't easy to make that kind of choice... you never know what colors someone likes or whether a flower will appeal to them or not. But one day, Alison and I were looking at our seedling bed and this one spoke up and said "I'm Ashlee Nicole, happy to meet you." We think it is a real treasure, just like Ashlee.

LY-cor-us or ly-COR-us, they're still naked ladies

Everywhere you go you run into it. That look of puzzlement that you get when you are talking to a fellow plant lover and you say the name of a plant, pronounce it differently than they know it. Then, after the look, you get the proper pronunciation put back to you. Now, I grew up calling the flower shown below a Pe-OH-ne, and then I became educated and highly knowledgeable about plants and of course learned the correct pronunciation is PE-oh-ne. Locally, they are known as the former and I do get some looks and corrections periodically. I sometimes like to get digs in to people by repeating the correct pronunciation.
The peony pictured here is a nice yellow we purchased recently. Yellows are a difficult color to acheive in peonies. We actually were eyeing another one but decided not to shell out the dough for it and go for this one which should have been orange and yellow. Hmmm, appears that luck was on our side!
Of course Peonies are not the only flower that has its local name. My personal favorite is the Clematis. Until I moved here, to Paris Tn., I don't know that I had ever heard it pronounced any way other than CLEM-it-tus. Or maybe time and fading memory are just failing me now, who knows. But here, they are known as Cle-MAT-us. This is the one I pariticularly love to torment people with by never conforming to the local pronunciation. Sometimes people even have to ask me if we are talking about the same plant. (I get a big inward grin when that happens, hehehe) I love clematis. I love anything that vines and twines, but when it flowers like a clematis, its a real winner! This one is growing in our garden; scaling an old spoked wagon wheel I found just for this reason.

With so many plants having dual pronunciations, I could go on and on, but will close with the title theme, the Lycoris. LY-cor-us or ly-COR-us? Resurrection lillies or Spider lilies? I prefer just calling them naked ladies. Now, come on, who's gonna complain about having naked ladies in their garden no matter how you say it??

Shameless Plug.. its not my fault.

OK, I know that this is a shameless plug for one of my boys, but I tried emailing the video below and it was too big to go from either of my email sources and at home it would take about 3 days to load on our dial-up connection. So, this was suggested by my friend Rob... its his fault.

The setting is the Paris Strings Spring Concert. My youngest son Colin is in the Fourth Grade Orchestra playing violin. He was selected as "Concert Master," and that is a great honor. The Concert Master comes out after everyone else is seated and "tunes" the orchestra, then takes his/her seat. The lead violin is usually chosen for this honor. So, without further delay...

Here today, gone tomorrow

Authors note: This blog could possibly be rambling... I am know to do that occasionally... apologies in advance.

Hello, hello. Its been a while since I blogged. The richness of the experience in Africa all to quickly succumbed to what I recently called the "pace and swill" of the western world. However, I have made a commitment to myself to share some of the insights I have gleaned from these trips to Sierra Leone and the ones on my Christian journey. And I have one to share now.

The garden is starting to burst from the ground now, in mid April. The tulips and daffodils have had their day and are beginning to fade (but still making a show). We scavenge discounted bulbs from Lowes a few times and have had great success with them. We rarely buy anything from the retail stores (Lowes, WalMart, etc) unless it is on clearance. But as nice as the bulbs look now, if you walk through the garden right now, what you will notice most is weeds! Yes weeds have already taken over. Weeds like the one pictured above called "Henbit." And when I say taken over, I mean they are everywhere!

Am I worried you ask? Well, no, I am not. And why? because the weeds that are ruling the roost right now are called "ephemeral weeds." Ephemeral weeds are weeds that grow quickly, bloom quickly, seed quickly, and, thankfully, die quickly. They are almost going to seed when they germinate from the previous year's seed that has lain dormant all year. The reason I am not so worried, is that they are essentially gone by the time the real Spring and Summer flowers decide it is their turn. Now, I can say that i am a bit regretful that I am unable to "harvest" the fodder for my compost pile (oh for a couple more hours in each day). Yes, I do wish I could rid the garden of those weeds before they go to seed (an almost impossible feat due to the short life cycle) so that the cycle could be short circuited and maybe the next year they are only a minor nuisance. One of those scoundrel weeds has seed pods that shatter on the slightest touch and scatter seed in a wide area around making it nearly impossible to be rid of. Grrrr. When they die back, however, they leave little behind in the way of nutrients for the garden so it is as if the garden never knew they were there. They are mostly water and organic matter. Little substance for the greater scheme of the garden.

The garden is a collection of individual plant and ornaments, and creatures. Each exists to fulfill its own mission of birth, life, reproduction, and death. But when taken as a whole, the GARDEN is something more. It is itself a living, breathing thing. It has a heart, which in our garden is daylilies. It has bones, the trees, shrubs, and woody structural elements. It has a skin of good soil and mulch. It has a circulatory system in the paths that wind through it. And best of all it has little gems which are like the little things you notice about your spouse for the first time after so many years. The subtle variation in their eye color, the shape of a collar bone, the character of their face when they interact with a child. These little gems, the Heucheras, the Geum, the verbena, or trilliums, they are what make the garden a unique individual. In the life and existence of a garden, each separate component contributes to the whole to make it live. The ephemeral are counter to this scheme. They spring forth, live hard and quick and die. They live and leave little behind to show that they were there.

People can be ephemeral too, and never even know it. So many people live day to day disconnected from the "garden" that is the world around them; their neighborhood, their community, their town. So many people live and die thinking that self fulfillment is the purpose for which we were created. They never realize that the real purpose is to be part of the garden. A low, mounding verbena without a back drop of a tall monarda is just a mound of verbena. It shines its light upon itself But together, they shine brighter, they lend light to one another, and enhance, and make a difference to the whole garden. Likewise, a life lived for the community, for a neighbor, for mankind is a life that allows the garden to shine brighter; it lends it light to the garden rather than using it to light itself. It enhances and makes a difference. It is difficult for humans to live their lives in perpetual service to their neighbor (and I use this term neighbor the way that Jesus used it in the story of the Good Samaritan) but I am sure that the more we live in it, the more our hunger for self fulfillment is satisfied. In contributing to the whole we are fulfilled.

Figuring it out

Bloggers note: This is a blog from a couple of months back that somehow I forgot to post

I used to have a supervisor in North Carolina who, when I described an unfortunate situation, would always say "It's not as bad as a kick in the teeth, is it?" Well, I have to say, this one hit me almost like that.

So, we were milling around saying our good-byes to the village of Taiama, Sierra Leone on a Wednesday morning when Christiana, the head nurse, came to me and said "Craig, you are bringing Moringa trees? I have Moringa seeds." I said, "Where did you get Moringa seeds?" the reply was "From the Moringa tree right there." Now, In case you haven't read the previous entries about my trees planting project, now would be the time... I'll wait right here while you do that. {Jeopardy music playing} I did the research on the trees that were offered me for sale by the Kakua Educative Tree Seed Orchard (KETSO) and discovered that the Moringa was a God-send tree that held fabulous potential for the farm and nutrition projects in Taiama. So, I arragned to purchase 100 of these trees, among others, which wasn't easy given the poor internet availability there and the distance, etc. Well, that was in place, deposit paid, everything arragned for their delivery in May when the kick in the teeth came. Right outside the building we were in was three Moringa trees. Now it wasn't really that big of a blow, but I can remember it vividly. It was like I was watching a movie. All that work, all that money raised, all that time invested, and there in the front yard of the nurses building was a Moringa. Not only that, but a Moringa tree big enough to be producing seeds and big enough from which to take cuttings. Turns out there are two other younger ones nearby as well. So, for a little while, I felt like a complete dolt. I paid for, and brought them something they already had.

Ahh, but fast forward to last night at our Wednesday evening class at church. Dr. Rob pointed out that, in the story of Moses's confrontation with Pharaoh, he had to cast his staff down in order for it to become a serpent. Given what the staff represents to the shepard (which is what Moses was) that was no small thing. The staff was the defining symbol of a shepard; it was the single most useful tool of his trade; it was an extension of himself. The staff represented him. Symbolically, he was casting himself down... giving himself up, in order to accomplish that which God had planned for him. It would not become a serpent while the held on to it. It would not become a serpent until he cast it down, until he took himself out of the picture. Never mind that Pharaohs magicians did the same thing with their dark arts, Moses's serpent consumed theirs (now there's a sermon for you).

Enlightened, and now heartened, I see that, though there are already a few Moring trees there, God intended me to bring some. Possibly He did it for me as much as for them. I had to cast myself down, go "all in" as my best friend Rob would say, in order to accomplish that which God had planned for me. I am humbled that He would choose me, and I am anxious to see what he has planned for those trees!

Trees are only a link in the chain

I made much adoo about the tree planting project for Taiama farm in advance of my trip. There was some justification for that effort. Trees produce fruit, fruit produces income, income produces empowerment. In addition to the production of fruit, some of the trees are there for their soil enhancement properties, and still others (in addition to that) are to be consumed by humans and animals for much improved nutrition and production. The concept of alley farming between rows of these soil improving trees is going to be promoted, thus fulfilling the vision of Taiama farm being a model of modern agriculture for the region. The most important part of the tree planting effort is not in the fruit produced, the fodder created for animals, the improved nutrition that the Moringa trees bring, or the modern agricultural practices displayed. The true value in planting trees is the investment in the future.

By planting a vegetable seed, the planter is looking at the season for relief from hunger and for short term income. By planting a tree, the planter is putting his hope in a few years down the road, and into the next generation. I can see how difficult that might be for the people of Sierra Leone who lost half a generation to a Civil War that they had no hand in starting. Can another Civil War be that far away? Can an investment in trees payoff before some other devestation is laid on the land and the people? Only time will tell, but we must make every effort to lift up a down trodden nation so that it will see that it has value, it has vitality, it has hope. The planting of a tree is a tangible manifestation of hope. Good Lord willing, that hope will come to fruition.

Sierra Leone Sojourn

A sojourn is defined as "To stay for a time in a place; to rest." Such is a mission trip to Sierra Leone. For all the work, all the lack of comforts, all the strain being on "Africa time," and all the food issues, each a story unto itself, it is still a sojourn.

This time around, my third trip to Sierra Leone, I spent time on the farm and in the Pharmacy. Pharmacy time is, for me, a simple effort of counting pills and packaging them up for whomever is acting pharmacist. In most cases, the pharmacist was my friend Robert Hill. He is given the task of reading the short hand of the doctors prescriptions and calling out what needs to be filled. That is the hard part. Anyone can count pills, and when you put your head down and just do the job, the time eases by proportionate to your energy level dropping. I took this picture one day as things were beginning to ease up in the pharmacy. With a point and shoot Nikon Coolpics, it isn't bad. A little better framing and a little better handling of the light and it would have been fabulous. Aren't these girls just beautiful? They were quiet and not very engaging, sick I suppose. But their mother struck me deeply. She is a typical Sierra Leonean mother, young, pretty, and quiet. I see her quiet suffering in her gaze toward her daughters. There is a story behind her eyes; a story that we may or may not want to hear. Maybe she is normally an energetic, engaging, funny, or gregarious, but today her countenance is showing the wear of living in a hard, poor society. Today she is showing what life is really like in the most impoverished nation in the world. Today, she is Sierra Leone.

Hopefully in the days and weeks to come, I can blog about the days I sojourned in Siera Leone. So many stories to tell, and so much left to decifer in my mind. Certainly a lot of enlightenment yet to come. So, I will leave it here for now. This picture is of a decaying mural painted on the outside wall of a girls secondary school where one of our Sierra Leonean friends, Samuel Kangaju, is a teacher. It is just a glimpse of that culture and how difficult things are to change.