Don't Go Into The Light

It's been a very busy year, and the last three or four months didn't disappoint. After wrapping up a fairly busy nursery season at Shelterwood, managing or teaching 35 photography classes at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, teaching landscape painting for three weeks at Chautauqua Institute, photographing at several sites in far northern and southwestern Minnesota, yesterday I opened my exhibit, "Don't go Into the Light," at my Minneapolis gallery Rosalux. 

Reflection of artwork in the plate glass window.

The gallery is open 12-4pm Saturdays and Sundays through November and I will be on site for Sunday hours. We are also hosting a couple of special events on climate change and native plants:

Radical Resilience: Climate Change, Habitat & You

Saturday, November 19^th, 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM

&

Native Plant Clinic

Sunday, November 20^th, 12:30 PM – 4:30 PM

Has news of a changing climate left you feeling anxious? Has the current drought changed the way you feel about your home landscape? If you want to irrigate less, help pollinators, feed birds, and see thriving life, this free program was designed for you.

Rosalux Gallery and the artist and owner of Shelterwood Gardens, Frank Meuschke is hosting an event on Minnesota-specific climate changes and what you can do to build resilience into your home environment.

Radical Resilience: Event Schedule

Seats are limited. To help with a headcount, please register using this link.

 

1:00pm: Frank James Meuschke introduces the event, gallery, and artwork

1:15pm: Past, Present, & Future Climate in Minnesota -climate scientist Sam Potter, PHD

2:00pm: Q&A with Sam

15 minute break

2:30pm: Bird & Bat Habitat (in Your Yard) -Hennepin County wildlife biologist Nicole Witzel

3:15pm: Q&A with Nicole

3:30pm: Planting for a Changing Climate -Shelterwood Gardens’ Frank Meuschke

End of Program: Free Bird & Bat House Raffle!

To limit spread of the Omicron Covid in our community, we encourage masking at this group event and please stay home if you do not feel your best. Thank you.

 

 

Forced March

 

The day was not ideal -but was it ever going to be? I mean, at least the wind was a breeze and the temperature above 30°. As far as I could tell it was the best day out of the following ten or the previous three. Sleet and graupel, thunder and lightning, snow, wind and temps dropping to ten degrees forced me to plant in the snow on a day more like March than October.

 

 I tilled last Sunday before I knew for sure what was coming and that tilling modestly displaced the snow so that I could mostly make out my rows. The little hump in the top center is a few kale I left in place should things change and another few leaves can be eaten.

Despite the drought this year, several heads of garlic sized up well and even when they didn't, there were plenty of large cloves. Above, Porcelain variety named "Music," a well known large garlic. My other Porcelain is the strain known as "Armenian."

The real trouble was the snow drenched soil which, as the image of my wheel dib should tell, clung hardily to my gloves and glued the cloves large and small to it! The weight of the accumulating goo slowly pulled my glove away from my fingers, disabling dexterity and my attempts to push the glove back with the slick left handed glove were fruitless. The soil, wet and cold, clung to soaked gloves made for cold hands, but that was the worst of it. I completed the project in a scant three hours if I cut the clove popping done in the morning from the calculation.

 

I’ve reduced my garlic count this year to about 500 -my lowest count since my first year growing garlic. At the end of the day, the patch looked like I had a fight with a tub of Oreos cookies and cream, but was glad to be done and not out there today or any of the days to come. 

 

I still have, ahem, a few projects sitting unfinished under snow. I'm holding out for a brief warm up that I tend to think will come whenever the temperature drops so incongruous with the season. So, some porch work this November, or if I am lucky, just before Halloween? Scary thought is how many things sit under the snow that were near completion or that I thought I could get to, but simply couldn't, by dint of weather and age.

Three Day April Blizzards Bring May...

What can I say about the three day blizzard that has been occupying our senses for 36 hours now? Not much, other than it is April 14th today. The robins have arrived twice, sandhill cranes arriving for weeks, other birds looking for nesting sites, squirrels stripping the buds off treetops, silver maples have flowered weeks ago. Up at Cedar Creek, I even heard a few chirps of the spring frogs four days ago, despite the snow that still resides there.

My garlic, always up by now, here or in New York, is buried under frozen -really, solidly frozen soil. This was Friday morning, just before the coming snow.

The Home Depot has littered the store with racks of perennials and annuals in every aisle.

As of 2pm, the blizzard rages on.

As of 4pm, the blizzard rages on.

As of 6pm, on and on.

 At six thirty, the greenhouse, should have thousands of native sedges and forbs seeded in trays.

Six thirty, the backyard and studio. There's is a lot of blowing snow, but we've hit about 10 inches with 18 more hours to go. The temperature hasn't made it over 25° F today, and is descending to about 18° F by Monday morning. People might say, hey -its Minnesota, but this is unusual, even for here.

First of Harvest

Turban strain 'Xian' is all but completely harvested from the sheep farm next door. I have a seed supply's worth of very large heads and an exceptional amount of food size. I don't think I lost any over the long season. An auspicious beginning, but I still cannot say where I will be growing next season -the itinerant farmer said.

Building A Name

Part of our love for our place in the woods and wetlands is a desire to share it. I already do this with writing and photography in this journal, but we are working towards doing more, particularly with artists, possibly writers and researchers over the coming two years by forming a non-profit residency program that offers time and space in the woods. This complex undertaking begins with what appears to be the simplest of things -a name.

It has made the most sense to run with Prairiewood because I have been blogging under the domain for years and because it describes our environment in the simplest terms. Betsy and I like it and easily imagined our wooden sign out front. However, in this age one needs both a name and a domain, and sadly, prairiewood.org is parked in some profiteer's portfolio. Although Prairiewood feels right, feels like home, the unavailable domain is just one reason to look elsewhere. There are three for-profit or non-profit Prairiewoods in Kansas, Iowa, and right here in Minnesota. To be expected -its an easy name where prairie meets the woods. The Kansan place is a retreat center, the Iowan a Franciscan spirituality center, and the Minnesotan an environmental learning center. So, prairie wood or woods is out.

Naming an organization can be a challenge, especially a young non-profit whose mission may shift or identity change as it gains its legs. The name needs to reflect place and be open to the mission of the organization; it needs to be able to capture its potential audience and be capable of absorbing shifts in identity.



Our place is 60 percent wetlands and 40 percent sloping woodlands, both of glacial origins, in the far western edge of the North American Eastern Forest known as the Big Woods in Minnesota. Our woodlands are a combination of different communities that encompass lowland cottonwoods, red maple-ash swamp, maple-basswood slopes, and oak uplands. Our wetlands are combination emergent marsh, willow-dogwood swamp, and wet meadow.

Just to our southeast is the Minnetonka Lakes region of our county, although Minnesota has more than ten thousand of those. No more than half mile to our east is Painter Creek (or Painters, depending on where you look) that drains into the Minnetonka Lake system. It is not, however, part of our watershed. We are the headwaters for a string of wetlands that drain into Dutch Lake which then drains into the Minnetonka Lake system. This watershed is all part of the greater Minnehaha Creek watershed.

To our south, again not more than a half mile or so, is Little Long Lake. It is not part of the Minnetonka Lake system, nor the Minnehaha watershed. Technically it is part of the Pioneer-Sarah Creek watershed that drains to the Crow River which makes its way to the Mississippi well north of Minneapolis. Little Long is an isolated glacial lake, with an esker to its western edge and a glacial lobe to its east. I don't believe it has any drainage and is maintained by groundwater and runoff from its own limited watershed. Little Long is the metropolitan region's only grade A lake, meaning it has high water clarity, low eutrophication due to nutrient loads, and lower than typical chemical contamination. It is not a motorboat lake and has few residences on its shoreline. Wild rice grows there. You can swim in it (take a pass on the Minnetonka system). Finally, the esker land making up its western flank has recently been bought by the park system to preserve its natural state in perpetuity.

From these features we can extract names that, if not identifying our exact place, exemplify the region's best qualities. PainterCreek, LittleLong, EskerWoods (the glacial feature), Dogwood (Red Osier), Waterleaf (Virginia Waterleaf), CattailWoods, WoodsMarsh, MapleMarsh (is marsh a positive?), GlacierWood (sounds cold), EphemeralWood, EphemeraWood, VioletWoods, WetlandWoods, possibly anything 'Wood.' I'm usually fairly clever in this wordy arena, but outside of Prairiewood, not much has expressed the essence of our place. Maybe I'm coming at it from the wrong direction? Maybe the cultural aspect is more important?

Our idea is simple and grew out of our experiences at artist residency programs, which for me came most acutely from my month at Weir Farm National Historic Site in the Southwest Hills region of Connecticut. We believe that time away from ordinary distractions can open us up to the creative process, can be regenerative, can free the path toward insight. This doesn't have to be time in wilderness, in fact it can be anywhere that is away from the everyday.

Closest to my heart is the time to explore, to reflect, time to think without disruption in the midst of nature. I imagine a landscape of woods and wetland clearings, gardened to enhance the native understory but with an understanding of the altered ecology, the mixture of humanity with nature. Ecological preservation is a goal of the non-profit because it will enhance the experience of our residents in a region that is rapidly converting its remaining woodlands into housing developments and being over-run by a monocultures of buckthorn, garlic mustard, and reed canary grass. The resident can navigate the woods-wetland edges on trails laid out by Betsy's father, Rex, in his fifteen years here. Building on his work, our goal will be to construct wetland boardwalk trails that bring one out of the woods and into the sunshine. 

The core benefit of our non-profit is to the program residents -artists, possibly writers and researchers who've shown through the quality of their work that they've earned some time to be inspired in a beautiful setting, away from daily responsibilities and distractions. We also strive to cultivate an interest in the arts in our community by introducing our program artists to audiences locally and in Minneapolis via artist talks and possibly even school groups who visit our site to explore the trails and meet the artist in their studio. Of course, we have a lot of work to do before we get there. A studio will need to be built, as well as relationships with partner organizations. And most importantly, we need a name.

When People Ask Where The Good Food Is

...I usually tell them its right outside.

Four heirloom tomato plants have produced more than most any I had ever planted at the beach farm.

I've been looking forward to the German Stripe, the latest to size up and ripen.

Japanese eggplant, 'Kyoto,' have been exceptionally prolific.

I put my green bean seeds in a little late, but still, they are producing now. 

Although my broccoli starts were a failure. Too late, as always.

But I was saved by this guy (sorry to say that I lost his name with a piece of paper) and Anderson Acres. You see the sign, to the left, that says start your fall garden. Yes! Getting starts together at the right time in summer is challenging given busy summer schedules and difficult weather. Hardly any garden business has starts available at this time of year, probably because there isn't much market for it. I'm so glad to have found them at the Minneapolis Farmers' Market in stall 311.

I bought a handful of these lettuce starts, broccoli, cilantro, parsley, and basil.

The fall lettuce.

Betsy's dill, the pickler that she is.

Our local hardware gave away (really, for free) many vegetable starts in July, most well past their prime. I focused on those sturdy sorts that do well in cooler weather -chard and kale. Small and weak when planted, they are now doing fantastic. We eat them every day.

A four pack of heirloom peppers from Shady Acres (whose stall Anderson Acres occupied at the farmers' market) has become quite a bounty of peppers. I've never had such luck. One plant has eight large peppers!

And they're beginning to turn red.

Of course, there are still tomatoes ripening.

These "cherry," or is it "grape," have been fantastic. The name I believe is 'Juliet' -a little sweet, little tart, and meaty -that is the key for me. I do not like watery small tomatoes that pop when you bite into them or crack after heavy rains. These I pick and eat right there in the garden.

With more to come.

The woods has not produced its usual bounty this year, except for the morels early on. Maybe we've missed them, having been so busy with work on the house and field. Of course, we'll keep looking.

The Headwaters

Driven to rise early by force of street sweeping law, I headed south to my old place on Friel to see how things have held up. Little has changed in our old building. Still the disrepair and blandness, but now less a garden. 

In autumn of two thousand two this was the sunniest, most pleasant of all the apartment wrecks I had seen in several Brooklyn neighborhoods. I had never considered living in, where? -Kensington? Behind a chain link fence, under the blazing hot sun, there were telephone poles stacked in what would later become the garden.

With the arrival of three Russian Zelkova, sun had been replaced by shade -the light loving garden I had planted then stretched beyond its limit. Change was a force, plants groped for light or gave up, and when we chose to move, some of these plants were boxed for transport on a plane and a few others went to friends. I assume that the rest met a dark end by glyphosate.

The corner piece of a neighborhood has returned fully to the weeds, excepting a few daylily and phlox -stalwarts of the brown brick wall. Gardening is presence. We assert ourselves with the language of plants. For my old neighbors my presence is still felt, now in absence of flowers and a plethora of ailanthus, smartweed, and poke.

_________________

Having made a quick peace with the old place, I moved on down Coney Island Avenue, Avenue J, Bedford Avenue, and the Belt, over the Gil Hodges to Fort Tilden, the beach.

To my eye, beach farm neighbor, Jimmy, has taken over the old plot. This pleases me. Jimmy's a good gardener, fun, conversational, and present.

 It is reassuring that the neighboring plot, adjacent to the west, is still as weedy as always.

And that Wolf has continued on with his tomatoes.

I was charmed by the sight of my old garlic signs used as stakes to support new beds.

______________________

At the moment I have the sensation that this is all I miss of New York City -the ocean, its sandy buffer, the dunes and the salt-enduring flora.

I stood, I sat, for about an hour, alone, but for the gulls.

_____________________

I was reminded at Tilden that I wanted to bring Seaside Goldenrod back to Minnesota, yet I didn't want to risk taking a plant from the sandy roadside of Rockaway Point Blvd -outside the park (but why chance it). I headed to Red Hook, where the cracked asphalt streets and sidewalks can yield many clumps of S. sempervirens.

I found this cluster on a trashy, industrial block, growing below a security cam and above the asphalt. I grabbed my shovel and scraped its roots from the pavement.

I've grown one Seaside Goldenrod, pulled from a Red Hook pier, in my Friel Place garden. It did okay, suffering from an orange rust each year until, finally, it did not return under the shade of the new street trees. Of course, I like it for its air of the beach, its flowers well-loved by bees, and especially because I thought it may do well in a garden covered by sidewalk-salt laden snow.

I do not know how tolerant of cold it will be, after all it is a seaside plant, but indications are that it is growing along the Great Lakes. I am saddened to see it is listed as a non-regulated invasive species in states like Wisconsin and Indiana. Apparently it is making inroads along our salt-encrusted highways. Could it be that a coastal native is problematic, as much so as a day lily, queen anne's lace, and all the others along highways that are among the most highly "disturbed" sites we have? Am I at the forefront of an invasive wave of Solidago sempervirens? Will it be my fault?

In a case like this, I choose a source that supports my endeavor. From the USDA:
"Nevertheless, because seaside goldenrod has a moderate growth rate, a shorter life span than other Solidago spp., a limited ability to spread through seed, and produces seedlings with low vigor, it is not considered an invasive plant."

Additionally:
"It increases the value of wildlife habitat by providing food and shelter for butterflies, birds, and small mammals. The migrating monarch butterfly uses seaside goldenrod as one of its primary food sources in the fall."

This adaptive plant has the potential to spread itself along the corridors of our own ruination. It also provides an excellent bit of habitat in the difficult, salty locations we've demanded. I have attempted to walk the garden plant/native plant tightrope over the years and it appears that Seaside Goldenrod in a Minnesota garden is the net I fall into. A condition of native is always where one chooses to draw the line. At one end is purity (and Michael Pollan's take on nativism's racial and nationalist ideology) and the other end chaos (and the destruction of the beauty we perceive within ecosystems).

Solidago sempervirens, bagged and ready.

A Blue Moon

It is easy to miss what is going on in the sky, particularly if you are, like us, surrounded by trees. But this full moon, on July one, was hard to miss. In fact, it had been keeping me up at night, presenting itself in the wee hours after our nightly storms had cleared, glowing brilliantly above the southern horizon, a flashlight in my sleeping face. This July happens to have two full moons, the second of which is known as a blue moon.

If it weren't for an evening out at a friend's place in Minneapolis, I'm not sure I would have noticed the peculiar proximity of two planets fairly close to the horizon. As we sat talking about our art and possibilities, I perceived this celestial phenomenon without uttering a word. I may have missed the planets at their closest moment, but the event warranted an evening trip to the road just to our west, one that is up on the ridge and had been cleared for farming years ago.

Venus, the brightest body in the sky other than the moon and sun, is on the left and Jupiter sits to its right.

Not quite a celestial phenomenon, but the reddened light of the afternoon sun clued us in to smoke in the lower atmosphere. Originating in Canadian wildfires, the smoke arced down with the jet, creating hazy sun, sunset-like light earlier in the evening, and the low-hanging moon became an unofficial blood moon.

The Bad Bath

We're not much for bird baths and although usually filled with rain water, I can't say I've ever seen a bird washing up. I'm going to hazard the assumption that bird baths are a thing out of drier climates. Out of place here and with a swath of moss removed to plant ferns given to us by our neighbor, I reinvented the bath as dish of moss.

Solar Gardening

We're looking into solar. 

We belong to a electric utility cooperative. What this means is that we are members of a regional electricity distribution network that buys power from other producers (what they call -upstream supply). As members we have access to an opportunity to participate in a solar garden.

What's a solar garden? It is a small field, an acre give or take, that has been set up with a solar array. The coop pays for the installation of the solar array with member dollars who opt to prepay for their "share" of electricity. Each panel installed in the garden is worth a set amount of annual kilowatt hours. You can pay for your whole home electricity needs or just a portion of its needs. You may purchase 20 years of your electricity outright (and therefore pay nothing more for your monthly usage over that 20 years) or pay a predetermined KwH rate for that 20 year period that averages on par with the conventional electricity rate. In other words, no matter how you pay for it, your electricity rate is flat over 20 years.

The "garden" is shared among any cooperative members who buy in. The electricity is delivered over the cooperative's electric lines already in place. This way you do not need to install any panels on your home, cut down any trees for efficiency, or disturb your roof or even worry about damage (insurance is included in the rate). The panels in the garden are installed in the optimum position for maximum light gathering.

You may be thinking, isn't it cold and snowy in Minnesota for solar power? It is, but we have other advantages. Solar panels are more efficient in the cold than they are in, say, the heat of an Arizona desert. We also have exceptionally long summer daylight hours, so the panels make energy for longer periods than in a place closer to the equator. So, while our efficiency decreases in winter due to lower light levels, we make up for it with our cooler, longer summer days. The panels will be maintained by the cooperative who have so far shown to have first rate service (I've had them over twice for service -I did not pay for this and they were generous and courteous).

I'm very excited by the idea of cooperative electricity. Now, if only the giant upstream producers had less legal pull in the state capitals, we could build more of these solar gardens. As it is, the cooperative must get permission to build the gardens, and does not get to own them outright. The machinations of power are complex, it appears, something I hardly understand enough to discuss. At this time the coop has 50,000 members but there are only 400 solar garden members. This needs to change.