Seeds from my mother's garden, for you

The last thing I did, on leaving my parents' property, was fill little paper cups with seeds: opium poppy, nigella, calendula, and dill - four of the flowers that self-seeded wildly and, during a certain part of each summer, made my mother's garden the enchantment that it was. The poppies are the stars - hundreds of them, in every incarnation: single, double, frilled and fringed... grape-colored, wine-colored, vermillion, lilac... and cupcake! There are some that look just like pink cupcakes.

I put together packets of the seeds for friends, and have a few left over to offer here. If you would like one, please leave a comment or email me (zoe[at]fastdoggardening.com). I would be so delighted to know Mom's seeds are sprouting hither and thither across the country next spring.

After the acreage next door to my parents' land was bulldozed to make way for the natural gas industry - horse pastures, swamp, and woods, ripped up, flipped over, and ground in - my mom carried that year's poppy seedheads across the new moonscape and strew them along the edge. I didn't know she'd done it until the next July, when there they were, visible from the road - a stubborn streak of soft, strong, beautiful poppies across a wasteland of ugly, ruined earth. I think it was her way of protesting, saying Not Here, Not This.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed. Our community is small, and people know and respect my mom. They know her garden, and her politics. They know, like I do, that if there was ever anyone capable of saying Fuck You with flowers, it's her. She did it with artistry, and showed what she stood for - not just what she was against - at the same time.

And so... These seeds I want to give you - they are special, because they are the seeds of dissent. Gardening feeds our spirits and our bellies, both, and it is, at this point in history, an act of rebellion. Tending garden gives a person passion, satisfaction, peace, and awe - experiences the consumer culture can't offer... It is a wholly constructive endeavor, and yet it rejects so much bullshit at the same time.

The photo at the top of the page was taken by my dad, Michael Poster, in Mom's garden.

Goodbye

Last night I picked a few more seeds from mom's garden, and said goodbye to my parents land. Goodbye to the foxes, the rocks, and the rye. I will keep crying over you for awhile, but also look forward to the year ahead, as Matt and I ready our little house-in-the-city to be sold, and begin the search for a few acres in the country, and a new heartland.

In my mother's night garden

I grew up an hour north of here, on ten acres that my parents have owned for 35 years. There they carved out a home from a horse pasture: house, artist's studios, wood shop, gardens. Hardwood forest grew up around them, thick and strong and tall.

Now my parents are leaving. Their reasons are complex, and some are sad. While their land has matured and, in ways, reverted (from cleared to wooded), adjoining land has recently been bulldozed and developed. Instead of the honey scent of milkweed flowers blowing over and into Mom's garden, there is diesel exhaust. Gas wells are being drilled in the area; the rigs are ironclad and obtuse, and marching in ever closer.

It seems like wildlife has concentrated on Mom and Dad's land in the past two years - both new species and a denser population of old ones. It is bittersweet - I see all those animals, my parents included, clustered in the middle, looking out. They stand in solidarity, but they are cornered.

For my parents, there is a way out, and if they could take all the others to Vermont with them, I guess they probably would. They would pack foxes, rabbits and nuthatches (with snacks!) into crates in the car, and off they'd go.

At the very center of my being, there is my parents' land. I grew up out of arrowwood tunnels and shad bowers. It is painful, all this long writing of the last chapter. All this forever saying goodbye. But that, I think, is what has caused my family to gather so many nights in the garden over this summer, and last. And so we got to know a gift: nocturnal sphinx moths.

They are loud (bzz bzz), and as the evening grows darker, the moths flap out of the shadows of the treeline. The biggest one (in the second and third pictures above) I think might be an ash sphinx, and to my eye, it is just a bit bigger than a hummingbird. It loves Mom's lilies ('Arena' is the one shown here).

My dad, Michael Poster, made these pictures last summer.

Married... the menu!

 

Now that things are all said and done, it's worth pondering: which came first, the proposal or the pig? It's a question without an answer, because there was no real proposal - we just all of a sudden moved getting married from the "maybe" to the "why yes, let's" list.

And then Matt started talking about the pig. Or he had been talking about the pig all along. I'm not sure. In any case, Matt needed a pig, and Farmer Pete had just the one. Pete and Matt slaughtered the pig and put it in the freezer a few months before the wedding.

The rest of the menu was designed to complement our porcine guest of honor. It was easy to decide what to eat: we just picked all our favorite things from all our favorite places.

Cocktails:

Rosie's sangria
Two Pennsylvania brews:
Victory Hop Devil and Lionshead

Wines selected by AV Restaurant:
Terlato Pinot Grigio
St. Antonius Riesling Spatlese
Toasted Head Barrel Reserve Pinto Noir
Paul Louis Vn Mousseux Blanc de Blanc

 Cocktail hour hors d'oeuvre:

Cow's milk cheeses from Calkins Creamery
Goat's milk cheeses from Ardith Mae Farm
Breads from Mockingbird Bakery (aka Matt):
walnut rye, sunflower sesame flax, olive,
and whole wheat sourdoughs, and ciabatta
Salumi platter by Pat Quinn
Roasted vegetable platter by AV
Smoked trout mousse and Sundried tomato white bean dip
by Summerhouse Grill
Olives, Hillside Farms butter

Supper:

Green salad with Hakurei turnips and scallions
from Skoloff Farm and Prospect St. Gardens

Garlicky ranch and Fig chutney salad dressings
by Toby Landon of Fig

Bean and corn salad and Fresh cucumber salad by AV

Macaroni and cheese with LeRaysville cheddar by Soup Chic

Homemade vegan sausage and peppers
by Can't Stand the Meat?

Pulled roasted pork from Clodhopper Farm
with Matt's rhubarb chutney

Sweets:

Raspberry buttercream and Lemon curd cupcakes with Daisy flour
by Emily Severson

Gluten free chocolate brownies by moi

...the above made with Hillside Farms butter and local eggs
Amazing artisan, raw, vegan chocolates by Immortal Mountain

 

 

Tent photo by Michael Mullen

Matt with pig and goat cheeses photos by Tonia Eden Mayton

The boys with pig and cupcakes photos by Michael Poster

Fireflower

My mom started this gas plant (Dictamnus albus 'Rubra') from seed. It took years to bloom. But when it did, it was stunning. Handsome, really. Dark leaves, robust flower stalks that do not topple. And... it does a party trick!

The stems of gas plant are sticky with the oil it emits. After you light it and you're just sitting in your chair sipping your drink, a smell creeps up in ribbons: citrus and ozone. Dark magic. I do not know if this plant is edible to deer, but I suspect it is not. On close inspection, the plant in Mom's garden is almost pristine - no insect-nibbled leaves, which is pretty miraculous for any plant at all. I love it.

Roar of the Antique Cat

Just before frost, there was flame

A Candle: California poppy bud

A Campfire: Calendulas

An Underwater Desert

My mother is a painter and a gardener, so it makes sense that her plantings have an artist's eye. I can't really do this year's doorway composition justice with my photos, but it is my favorite garden arrangement of the season, so I wanted to share it anyway.

Above, there is a wide, squat pot just southwest of center... It is stuffed with succulents my mom picked up in the spring. To me, they look like sea anemones that are cactuses. The mat underneath is golden moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia 'Aurea').

Below, the zinnias in the background are terracotta colored when they open, fading to sun-bleached sand when they are spent.

This astounding purple fellow has little cups that hold water.

Sometimes people ask if the saddle shoes were mine when I was small. They weren't. I was born to be woods-wild, so white would never do.

You can only see its leaves in the first picture, but this hot red hibiscus unfurls a flower or two each morning.

Duplicity

In my mother's garden

I had a really happy childhood, so I don't know where my steady, stormy lava flow of anger came from.

Today I drove west, to Bradford County, to buy plants for a job. I like going to Bradford County because I can drive fast, blasting the same The Fall song over and over again, and the air whirls in my window carrying honey meadow smell. It's pretty there - the Amish hang blocks of deepwater purple and blue and green on their wash lines to dry.

That's all lovely, I know, but the anger-making part is this: The oil and gas industry has taken over my birthplace with drilling rigs and armadas of trucks - tankers, thumpers... tailgaters.

Here, I'll sum it up: They are extracting natural gas by drilling and fracturing a shale formation deep within Pennsylvania's netherworld... poisoning pure water, transforming air into cancer, and generally laying waste to my heartland in the process. They've made it a policy to not drive anywhere without half their wheels on my side of the double yellow line.

It takes exactly three white pickup trucks chock-full of cowboy hats and one skyscraper-high drill rig with an American flag on top to make my eyeballs roll back in my head and the words "kill-kill-kill" snap into place where my irises were.

I could blame Texas for this mess, but that would be the easy way out. And besides, I love Texas, land where sunset melds with highway and my wanderlust sighs relief.

See, therein lies the rub. I'm so angry over an oily, greasy goldrush on gas. And I'm so weightless and peaceful when I'm burning up the open road, in my sweet little black truck.

Harley and me