Kiss the Earth

Last spring I bought a plant called Salvia elegans- pineapple sage. The name sounded luscious and since I wanted to fill my herb garden with interesting new things, this seemed like a good addition. Planted it among some other sages, used its aromatic leaves for all sorts of culinary creations (some of them rather strange) and then, about two weeks ago, I noticed little red tubular flowers popping out everywhere. They were exquisite! Tiny, delicate, adding colorful accents all over an herb garden that was slowly going to sleep.

This week I visited Longwood Gardens, where I'm always astounded by the power of numbers. You and I may have one or two hydrangeas in the garden but Longwood has, what, hundreds?! We've got a licorice plant or two, but Longwood? Stadiums full.

Sure enough, I came upon several outposts of a familiar-looking plant with small red flowers. I checked the label and there it was: pineapple sage. Seas of it. I think I really missed the boat in my herb garden. I bought one measly old Salvia elegans last spring.

So now I'm thinking that instead of buying herbs to use as herbs, why not use them like any other flowering plant?

One summer I did that with Swiss chard. Instead of confining it to the vegetable patch, I grew it among the perennials. It looked...a little bizarre, to tell the truth, even though it was the 'Bright Lights' variety with the yellow, pink and red stems. Very colorful. Unfortunately, visitors would walk by and invariably remark, "How come your spinach is over here?" Kinda ruined the effect.

But I could plant a dozen or so Salvia elegans in the perennial beds. They look more like perennials than chard. Or I could go the traditional route and stick 'em in with the herbs.

Wise - you might say sage - advice, either way.

For the last few years, my mother has been kind enough to give me as many geraniums as I can manage at the end of the season. She has some of the largest ones I've ever seen, huge, almost top-heavy heads of lavender, salmon, fuschia, pale pink and that orange-y red I used to hate ('cause that's all there was in Geranium World) but now love. I've potted them up and put them in windows all over the house.

Some advise that geraniums should be cut back and then put in the window, but I've never done that. The results have been spectacular! They thrive in my dining room, filling the windows with their cheery blooms all winter long. Some I've transplanted back outside in the spring, also with excellent results. Two containers out front had luxurious red ones all summer. Despite the cold, they're still blooming away, though piles of crispy brown leaves cover the base of the containers.

This fall I decided to branch out and try to bring other plants indoors. I read that you can do this with impatiens and Persian shield and so, that's exactly what I did a couple of weeks ago. One of my friends told me to let her know how it goes. She's never had any luck with impatiens over the winter. Ironically, as I dug them up for the trip inside these annuals had never been fuller or brighter.

Anyway, in the two or three weeks since all this uprooting began, the Persian shield drooped as if I'd poisoned it and the impatiens' flowers dried up, turned into projectiles and flung themselves all over the sill and rugs. The leaves inexplicably narrowed and stiffened and now they look nothing like an impatiens, more like a generic Plantus plantus. (See photo)

But I carry on, unwilling to believe that all this work was for naught. I even bought large new pots. I did take a few of Mom's geraniums, as always, and wouldn't you know. As if to mock me, they're once again blooming up a storm in every window they inhabit.

Can a plant say "I told you so?"

I love a lot of flowers, except - as noted in earlier posts - most mums on the market, so you'll have to humor me when I say that I've not yet hopped on the lily bandwagon. I need to work on this. Not that you have to like everything.

The other day while at Longwood, I wandered through the East Conservatory and found these lilies. I don't remember the light being low but somehow this photo came out looking like the sun had set or the werewolves had come out or something.

It's haunting, isn't it? If lilies always had such drama and mystery, I'd be a fan for more than the moment captured here.

Do you have memories from childhood that revolve around visits to public gardens? Most of mine are about private gardens tended by my parents and grandparents. But I do remember going to the Philadelphia Flower Show from the time I was very little. The memories are mostly big picture ones - of the warm, sweet smell that greeted you when you descended from the escalator into the great hall, of the polite jostling that took place as you tried to get closer and closer to the exhibits, of the crowds, the colors, the feeling that spring had arrived indoors.

My recent trip to Longwood Gardens was to visit the new children's garden. (Story coming this Friday). The folks there hope that kids will enjoy their experience so much, they'll want to come back to the garden again and again. They're hoping to plant a seed, if you will, rather than teach about specific plants or offer lessons in botany.

Got me to thinking. Kids are like sponges in the garden but seems to me they're mostly interested in seeing, touching and smelling things that are extremely something or other. They love big stuff, and tiny stuff, flowers with a large sweet scent and plants that smell yucky or look weird. I don't remember learning too many specific things - other than this is a rose, this is a tulip - till I got quite a bit older. And I guess that experience is pretty universal, unless your parents happen to be horticulturists or botanists.

So perhaps there's something to the idea behind this new garden. Now I know why there are no plant tags. Because this is a garden to be enjoyed, not studied. Yes, indeed! As you can see from the photo at the beginning of this post, the enjoyment involves a lot of water, packaged very beautifully.

When I was there, little kids were dipping their hands in the fountains and splashing their moms. I got the feeling this would be happening regardless of the artistry of what was holding the water. But the point is... it's all in the garden, not out on a street corner.

Whether this is enough to make them want to come back for more, we'll have to wait and see. Seeds have sprouted, certainly, with less prompting.

Look how beautiful this sugar maple is, even on a morning as dreary as this one. Yet I look at it and think soon, all those rich red leaves will be on the ground. And I'll be out there raking them up.

So it was with some interest that I read a message from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons about the hazards of leaf-raking, a seemingly benign activity that sends more than 76,000 people a year to doctors' offices and emergency rooms. Their injuries relate to "non-powered garden tools, including rakes."

These well-intentioned folks have some suggestions for how we can avoid injury, which had the unintended consequence of making me laugh so hard, I forgot about the 20 mega tons of wet leaves that cloak my yard.

See what you think.

1. Before raking, warm up for about 10 minutes with light exercise and stretching. Do this afterwards, too. (Ha! If I can muster the energy to get out there and rake, I'm just gonna go for it!)

2. Choose a rake that's comfortable for your height and strength. Wear gloves or use a rake with padded handles to prevent blisters. (Double ha! I grab whatever rake's in the garage, whether it has all its teeth or not. Padded handles?! What are those surgeons smokin?)

3. Avoid using old rakes that are rusty or have loose or broken parts. (You mean, I have to toss my toothless wonder? It's stood by me all these years.)

4. Don't let a hat or scarf block your vision. Watch out for large rocks, low branches, tree stumps and uneven surfaces. (Nothing blocks my vision except the curtain of leaves that continues to fall as I'm raking away.)

5. Vary your movements, alternating leg and arm positions often. (I can hear my neighbors now. "Yeah, the gardening nut has finally lost it. Thinks she's a fairy in 'The Nutcracker.' ")

6. Bend at the knees, not the waist. (Good advice. This I can manage.)

7. Be careful of wet leaves. They can be slippery. Avoid falls by wearing boots with slip-resistant soles. (Wet leaves? Got that. But does this mean I can't wear my bald sneakers?)

8. Don't overfill leaf bags. (Otherwise, like me, you'll be dragging them so far, the bag tears and all the leaves spill out, prompting temper tantrums that do NOT look like anything you'll see in "The Nutcracker.")

9. And my favorite: Do not throw leaves over your shoulder or to the side. This requires a twisting motion that places undue stress on your back. (Hmmm. What am I supposed to do - rent a backhoe? and as for undue stress on my back, I'm there.)

Bottom line here is to be careful. And don't forget to laugh.

The other night, still unused to darkness descending before 5 p.m., I strolled out into the garden to see what was still in bloom. Actually, there was quite a lot of color out there ... several Swiss chards, lots of Wave petunias, some bright red and pink verbena, a few stray zinnias, some of that neon red pineapple sage I mentioned recently and a half dozen anemic stalks of monkshood.

I picked a few dried hydrangea heads, ones that were carmine, purple and green all at once, then turned to head back when I saw two camellia bushes nestled against the wall. Barely discernable in the deepening darkness, they brought such instant pleasure, I smiled.

Like many things in my garden, I'm not sure what kind this camellia is. I suspect some variation of Camellia japonica, because that's what most of the camellias we buy are. It's a single blossom, though camellias come in semi-double, anemone, peony and formal double varieties, too. I prefer the single. No flash. Utter simplicity, the lines so classic against the thick, dark, glossy foliage.

Camellias came to us - actually, our Southern brethren - in the late 18th century from China and were named for Georg Josef Kamel, a Moravian Jesuit missionary who studied plants and animals in the Philippines. It's thought he probably never set eyes on the flower Linnaeus later named for him. (These stories sure are strange, aren't they?)

But camellias have long been popular in Asia. I read that they've been displayed at Korean weddings as far back as 1200 B.C. That's old.

In this country, their popularity surged in the 1950s. Was that because the Queen Mum loved them (more than mums - ha ha)? Who knows. But I might have dated their "discovery" to that era. My mother carried camellias at her wedding in 1947, and I remember when she told me that many years ago, I didn't even know what a camellia was.

I took special pleasure in that little bit of family history when I picked a few camellias last week and gave them to her. They are so pretty - small, round, sweetly pink with yellow centers. I hope they brought her pleasure, too.

You can't really appreciate their delicate beauty or soft aspect in this photo, which looks as if I took it in a cave. Might as well have been. By the time I made it back to the house, the night shade was more like midnight.

I envy our fellow gardeners in the South and other parts of the world who can grow these lovely things year-round or most of the year. But there's something special, too, about their sudden appearance when the night grows long - and their resiliance to the cold and wind that mid-November brings.

Tonight, in the dark, with winter coat and gloves, I'll check on them again. Knowing them, they'll be there.

Been trying to get around to the many nature centers, parks, arboretums and public gardens in the Philadelphia area, but it's taking forever. That's great news. We have so many to choose from.

This past weekend, before the rains started, we headed for the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, a homey place in upper Roxborough I've always enjoyed for several reasons. It has six miles of trails that are interesting and beautiful and challenging enough. In other words, you don't have to be an accomplished climber to manage them, although one of my knees was definitely talking to me yesterday.

I also like the Schuylkill Center (www.schuylkillcenter.org) for its scale. The building is cozy and comfortable and staffed, as most of these places are, by people utterly devoted to education. We walked in and started chatting with the person behind the desk about various trails and what we'd see.

This was my third trip here in a week - two for a story that will be in the paper on Friday (stay tuned) and one for my own enjoyment. We started out on the Ravine Trail and patched together a hike by heading off on other loops, wound up at the Widener Bird Blind, which was full of birders, and finally back at the main building. In between, we settled into a bench to admire a stand of pine trees, enjoying the thickness of pine needles on the ground, the many pine cones dotting the branches and the intoxicating smell. Nothing quite like the scent of a pine forest.

We also came upon a pond painted with leaves from shore to shore. It was such a sight, we stood there admiring for several minutes before pushing on. We passed a group on a "turkey trot," looking for wild turkeys in the woods. We stepped gingerly, trying without success to avoid crunching leaves, and headed on.

We turned a corner and came upon a stretch of trail completely covered in brilliant yellow maple leaves. It was stunning, and my husband, ever the adventurous photographer, grabbed the digital camera and got down on his knees, then on his stomach and maneuvered around to get a bird's eye view. The result shows that he is quite the artiste.

Around another corner, we found a different color scheme, this one all those earth tones fashion designers and makeup-creators and people who sell paint strive to reproduce. Rich, dark greens and lighter sages and shades like Christmas trees and mint leaves. Then a stretch of red. Browns everywhere, red, yellow.

The sun was starting to fade and we noticed it was silvery-gray, quite a typical November sky and a fitting end to Thanksgiving weekend. Soon enough it'd be back to work and on toward Christmas, but two hours on the trails at this unpretentious nature center is good fortification for work or madness of any sort.

Just remembering the sights of our afternoon, the smell of the pines and the flutter of birds as we approached, is sustaining.

I depend on my Consumer Reports to give me advice on which refrigerator or clock radio to buy, but did you know CR also produces an On Health newsletter? It's written in the same plain talk the magazine is known for, and for me, at least, it offers some clarity on issues that can be very confusing to consumers.

The latest issue offers advice on whether men should get prostate-cancer screening and women should have mammograms. You'd think, intuitively, the answer to both would be yes, but that's not always the case. See what I mean?

There's a great deal of overlap between health, diet and our favorite pasttime, as any tomato-growing gardener out there knows. But this month's CR health newsletter offers yet another reason to grow or buy organic tomatoes. It quotes a 10-year study that found that organic tomatoes contain between 79 and 97 percent more of two important flavonoids than conventionally grown tomatoes.

Flavonoids - what a Star Trekky name that is! - are natural antioxidants that our bodies need to stay healthy. They basically protect the membranes of cells and help prevent hardening of the arteries. And there are lots of 'em: more than 20,000 that we know of and probably many more. They're in almost every fruit and vegetable, with especially high levels in apples and onions. Green tea, too.

And tomatoes.

So why do organically grown tomatoes have so many more of these beneficial antioxidants than tomatoes grown the usual way? According to Consumer Reports, experts believe the difference is due to the overfertilization of all those conventionally grown plants.

Makes you look at the stuff in our supermarkets with an even more critical eye.