Each Little World

Mystery No. 2: Finding Iris Chang

"Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind" by Paula Kamen is an entirely different kind of mystery than yesterday's "Echoes." For starters, it's non-fiction; but it's an equally compelling page-turner with some surprising revelations at the end of the story — a literary, rather than a criminal, investigation.

Kamen became friends with Chang after convincing her to switch majors from computer science to journalism; she then found herself eating Chang's dust as her fellow student won internships, jobs and awards that outpaced Kamen and most of their friends. The two remained close, however; supporting each other with phone calls, letters and e-mails about everything from dealing with chronic pain to pregnancy to publishing; but especially the progress of each other's books.   

Chang won instant fame and fortune with the 1997 publication of her book, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII." She was beautiful, she was thin; she had a successful marriage, a new baby, three books to her credit and another in the works when she committed suicide in 2004 at age 36. Her friends, including Kamen, were stunned and disbelieving at both the news of her death and that Chang had just been diagnosed with a mental illness.

 

University of Illinois Archives: Iris Chang Papers

Iris Chang and Paula Kamen at their 1989 graduation

from the journalism school at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.

When Kamen couldn't reconcile the perfect Iris Chang she knew with the woman who killed herself, she went looking for the answers that resulted in this book. She used Chang's own methodology: "Ask yourself, what is the single most important question that this book will answer ... then ask yourself, what are five to ten questions that must be asked in order to answer my main question?"

Kamen asks — and answers — all those questions and many more — especially about mental health issues — as she reconstructs Chang's life and death. While the story of Chang is fascinating, what caught my interest even more was all the research and information that Kamen amasses. It starts out as background and eventually becomes the story.

Some of Kamen's side roads:

* A discussion of the range of acceptable behaviors among Asians and Caucasians. When Chang began acting outside the narrowly acceptable Asian range, her white friends missed all the cues. The book points out that even for trained mental health professionals, there is "an extreme lack of clinical research into non-white subjects and how they experience mental illness."

* Chang was apparently bi-polar. She was also undergoing hormonally-based infertility treatments in an attempt to get pregnant. Those prone to bi-polar are extraordinarily sensitive to "all major hormonal shifts," according to Kamen's findings; meaning the treatments would most likely have had a profoundly negative effect on Chang.

* "Research has shown that Asian Americans end up seeking mental illness services only when the disease has become completely unmanageable," according to Dr. Jha, a co-founder of the Asian American Suicide Prevention Initiative. "The individual will try to tolerate it and compensate for it, and the family has a very high level of tolerance for it." The only time in her life that Chang saw a therapist or went on medication was in the few months before she died.

* "American college students of Asian descent are twice as likely to seriously consider suicide as their white peers. Furthermore, Asian-American women between fifteen and thirty-four are twice as likely to actually commit suicide as their white counterparts. China alone accounts for a staggering 40 percent of the world's suicide deaths and more than half the world's female suicides."

KEMPTON/WORDPRESS/IRIS CHANG THE MOVIE

Chang covered dark topics and met a painful end, and Kamen doesn't shy away from any of it. She looks at the book, "Final Exit;" how its author intended it to be used vs. how people actually use it, and how Chang used it. And she discusses journalists and the personal price they pay for covering the world's traumas and pain.

Ultimately, Chang's mental illness was "the main culprit" behind her death, says Kamen, and Chang's death has been the door that has opened the discussion on this issue in the Asian-American community. But reading this book suggests that there are many more tragedies out there, as real and painful as Chang's, if less publicized. Kamen's book is one step toward public awareness about the lack of research about how gender and ethnicity can shape mood disorder. It is also a great tribute to her friend, Iris Chang.

(Iris' Web site is still up should you be curious ...).

A mysterious pair

"When her father, Gerlof, rang one Monday evening in October, for the first time in almost a year, he made Julia think of bones, washed up onto a stony shore.

Bones, white as mother-of-pearl, polished by the waves, almost luminous among the gray pebbles at the water's edge.

Fragments of bone.

Julia didn't know if they were actually there on the shore, but she had waited to see them for over twenty years."

— "Echoes From the Dead"

My reading year has started well. Modeled on Becky's blog: "A Book A Week," I've managed to read my quota. And if I concentrate on books read — rather than the weather — then February is proving to be a stellar month. 

First up is the captivating debut novel, "Echoes From the Dead," by Swedish author Johan Theorin, translated by Marlaine Delargy. Twenty years ago, a five-year-old boy walked out of his grandparents' garden into the fog and was never seen again. No trace of the child was ever found, leaving his mother, Julia Davidsson, in a half-world of alcohol and grief. Now, one of the boy's shoes is mailed to Julia's elderly father, a retired sea-captain who still lives on the desolate island where the tragedy happened. Together, the estranged father and daughter try to piece together what happened so many years ago. 

As might be expected, most of the characters we meet have secrets and have been scarred by events in their own pasts; this leads to the book following two concurrent timelines: past and present. The tone is dark and foreboding, yet never melodramatic. If, like me, you live in a place like Wisconsin, the names, the Nordic gloom, the waterside towns that now depend on tourists instead of fishing and shipping: all will strike a familiar chord. As will the evocation of the landscape — a depiction as strong and vibrant as any character in the book. A friend of mine says you're imprinted by the place where you are raised; much of this story revolves around the fierce love such a place engenders in the people raised there.

The ending — though ultimately life-affirming — is still surprisingly stunning and heart-wrending. A page turner til the end, I made it last two days but could not slow myself down. A nod must also go to Marlaine Delargy for the lyrical and evocative translation that draws you in from the opening sentence. 

(A final aside: I noted the Euro cover depicts the child while the American version depicts what looks more like the mother to my eye).

Tomorrow: The other half of this mysterious pair of books.

My Garden Odyssey: Breaking ground

Episode XIV

HE SAID: On Friday June 6, 1997 Jon, the landscape architect we had hired to help us, arrived early with a gas-driven sod cutter. It didn't take him long to slice the area of grass I had marked into long strips. We forked the sod into wheelbarrows and piled it in the south-east corner of the yard to compost in a long crescent-shaped mound.

On the following Monday, the John Deere tracked backhoe, or "trackhoe," as I learned to call it, arrived. Ken, the operator Jon had hired, drove the trackhoe off its trailer onto a bunch of old tires so as not to mar the new blacktop on our street. The machine trundled up our drive and, with a few deft maneuvers using the four foot wide bucket to lift and pivot the tracks, made its way through the narrow space between our house and the neighbor's fence and into the middle of our back yard.

We established a reference point for the laser transit, used to measure elevation, while Ken began to scrape the topsoil off the area we had cleared of sod.

In the meantime Jon wanted to know which rocks were to go where.

SHE SAID: It was difficult for me to go off to work and leave Mark to make all the play-by-play decisions on this momentous first day. But we knew that only one of us could be in charge at this point and it had to be Mark. We'd looked at hundreds of pictures of rock arrangements and tried to pinpoint why we liked some and not others. I translated my preference into musical terms and told Mark I didn't want "too much jazz."

HE SAID: I spent the rest of that day trying to keep both machine operators busy: providing measurements and direction to Ken as he steadily excavated the hole that was to be a pond and piled the soil into two mounds further back in the yard. And selecting rocks and their locations for Jon to place with the Bobcat. I was also trying to find opportunities to take photographs of our progress.

By the end of the day I was exhausted. I was physically spent from running from front yard to back selecting rocks to set, and from climbing up and down from the mounds of soil to the bottom of the hole to take readings from the transit. I also ached from digging holes to set the rocks in and tamping stones and soil around their bases.

Added to that, I was mentally drained from having made a thousand decisions we would have to live with for as long as we were in our house. Emotionally I was on the verge of hysteria, convinced that we had made an enormous mistake.

SHE SAID: I came home and could see that Mark was exhausted. I was overwhelmed at the sight of our grassy yard that had become a big, dirty mess. We had our portrait taken in the "pond" to mark the end of the first day. And then I tried to reassure Mark. I think I was whistling in the dark, but I told him that it was only a hole in the ground and, that any time we wanted, we could simply fill it up again and go back to grass. 

HE SAID: As odd as it may seem, that thought has continued to sustain me through these past twelve years.

After a couple of drinks and dinner at a nice restaurant — followed by a good night's sleep — I felt a lot more positive. And once we started to build the stone wall at the right side of the pond, it began to feel like we were moving in a constructive, rather than a destructive, direction.

I had tried to anticipate as much a possible; but, of course, surprises are inevitable. Although I had surveyed the site and tried my best to calculate the amount of soil that the excavation would produce, I was off by more than a little. There must be a rule somewhere that says that disturbed soil triples in volume.

In the end, instead of using all the earth from the pond to build the mounds, I had ninety cubic yards too much — six and a half dump truck loads that we had to pay to dump elsewhere.

Over these first few days and weeks, complications arose and solutions were found, often in discussions over lunch. With Jon's masterful handling of rocks with the Bobcat, the wall continued to evolve into a beautiful composition of large and small field stones; a complicated pattern that we've continued to enjoy year after year.

We continued to set rocks around the pond as well, working from the back of the property toward the front. Major rocks we set on the mounds suggested names which have persisted. The tall stone on the right hand mound made us think of Buddha, with his followers surrounding him. The low rock, with the hint of a head, on the left mound suggested a turtle. 

Finally, as the need to drive through it with the Bobcat ended, the pond itself began to take on the shape that I had envisioned. Around the perimeter you can see the trench we dug to set the cement block foundation wall and a round of cardboard marking a place for a large rock to be set later.

Next week I'll describe the progress we made, despite the weather.

For more episodes of the history of our garden, click on "My Garden Odyssey" in the categories list.

Compost brigade

Fritz Haeg has spent the last ten years "obsessively gardening," as he phrases it. All that time planning, planting, growing, harvesting — GARDENING — has resulted in a number of revelations. Though gardening is central to them, they are not about the specifics of the subject. Haeg's revelations are more philosophical and revolutionary. Gardening is "a complicated metaphor about what it means to be human," he emphasized at last week's Symposium on "Incredible, Edible Gardens" at Madison's Olbrich Botanical Gardens.

Haeg is interested in looking at "all the stuff that falls to the bottom;" stuff which, in our world, has zero value — except in the garden. It's all about what we hold dear as a society; what we do with garbage and used-up items. In the garden, what falls to the bottom is compost: the future of the garden. Garbage becomes life; junk becomes art. Gardeners are the rare group of people that take everything from the bottom and put it on top. We are the opposite of the top-down political/social/economic world around us.

Haeg takes our most basic garden chore — maintaining a compost pile — beyond ecology to activism. Suddenly my stainless steel bucket on the kitchen counter is a revolutionary gesture. "Celebrate compost" is Haeg's rallying cry. Without leaving my garden, I can answer him. I can make what Haeg sees as the ultimate statement: Move my compost pile from the side of the garage to a place of honor by the front door!  

FULL DISCLOSURE: These are not pictures my compost. That's a subject for another post.

Salty garden

Unless you live where it seriously snows, you probably just think how pretty our gardens look under their winter blankets. And they do look lovely. But underneath Saturday's 6.7 inches of fresh snow is four months of nasty accumulation.

Picture storm after storm dumping ice and snow on your Japanese maples, willows, pines, the arborvitae hedge, the lollipop lilac and the yew globes. At some point, all but the big trees are buried. A lot of the snow that's on the ground has been shoved there by snowplows throughout the winter. On both sides of the driveway the snowbanks are manmade, shaped by shovels and snow blowers. 

Last year the garden — front and back, north and south aspects — still had such significant snow cover on March 29th, that we shot a bunch of photos to memorialize the last residue of our record snowfall: 101.4 inches! We're already at 66.5 inches of snow this season, so I may be looking at a similar scene in another month.

Long before Spring, the snow hardens into dirty mounds; they extend far out into the street which slowly narrows over the course of the winter. When the snow finally melts, the gardens that slope down to the curb look like a lunar landscape. The last of the oak and maple leaves — the ones that never got raked up in the fall — are flattened down by the weight of the snow into a mat. On top of it are flakes of yellow paint where the plows scrapped the curb, empty cigarette packs and other detritus. But worst of all is the salty grit thrown up after every melt/freeze cycle. 

Looking at this brown carpet last Spring, I wasn't sure the small spring bulbs would even be able to push through such a crusty mat. And if they could, then they'd be resting on all that salted surface. As strange as it sounds, I decided to literally roll up the top layer of leaves and debris and discard it. I got the idea because it started doing that on its own as I was trying to do a little early cleanup. 

Because we don't have sidewalks in my neighborhood, I've always been aware that the front sixteen feet of our property belongs to the city. Knowing it might get dug up for utility work or street widening, I resolved to plant nothing fancy or temperamental there. There are assorted bulbs (Crocus tommasinianus, Muscari, Narcissus poeticus), Hostas of every size and sort, Japanese painted ferns, cranesbill geraniums (Geranium macrrorhizum), Lady's mantle (Alchemilla molis), early and late daylilies in shades of yellow and peach (Hemerocallis), and a white rugosa rose. 

As for trees, an old Bur Oak — my pride and joy — marks the corner where our driveway meets the street. At some point in its long life, this tree had its bark sliced off on two different sides near the base but still it survives. I'm sure that when the silver and sugar maple trees were planted 50 years ago, when our house was built, road salt was not an issue. Purdue's extension booklet on road salt and plants, suggests keeping sensitive plants at least 30 feet from the road, especially if it has a high traffic volume. Most of the trees just make that cutoff.

When I planted my curbside perennial gardens, I gave some consideration to road construction but none to road salt. Though we've tried to use only sand and ashes on our driveway, some years salt is a must. Locally, the city follows a low-salt diet but there are plenty of times when it's used on our streets. In both instances, that salt winds up on garden beds.

In hindsight, I've discovered most of my perennials are tough; they've survived years of winter salting. The same goes for the trees. According to the University of Wisconsin Extension booklet, "Salt Injury to Landscape Plants," most of our trees closest to the street have a moderate to high degree of salt tolerance. (Purdue also has a long list of the tolerance of landscape plants in their publication).

If I was just beginning to landscape my streetside gardens, I'd use these publications as a guide — not only for tree and shrub choices but for ways of minimizing the effects of salt. One UW suggestion is to create a berm to keep salty water from moving into root zones. Most of my streetside garden is planted on a slope which has the same effect naturally. 

But now that I've been reading up on the subject, I'm considering a different approach when the end of March comes around. This time I'll flush the high-saline areas with water to move salt out of the plant's root zone, as both publications suggest. The end result should be less salt and a more healthy garden and leaves that can be left in place to decompose.

Winter weekend afternoon

The snowstorm that was supposed to hit us mid-week pretty much fizzled. So I didn't pay much attention Friday when a friend e-mailed to cancel our planned museum meet-up this afternoon. She was probably a lot less surprised than I was when I looked out the window this morning. 

Not only was it snowing heavily, there was quite a lot on the ground already. The deck, the stone walls and the green spots that had appeared around the base of various trees and shrubs in the garden during the recent thaw were all under a blanket of snow again. 

But there's nothing more lovely than a snowy day when you don't have to work. Even better, when you don't have to leave the house for any reason. We had everything on hand we could possibly need. We'd hit the library to pick-up some DVDs yesterday. And stopped at the bookstore to use our 40% off coupon on a new book on Japanese gardens (!). The fridge and freezer were full. 

We loafed and lazed and looked at the views out every window. It was an almost perfect day — until we realized there was one reason we had to go out.

Down and dirty in the garden

I lot of what I wear in the garden is tried and true and old. My favorites are from Smith & Hawken, when there was both a Smith and a Hawken at the helm of that company. I requested my first catalog in 1981 after seeing a tiny ad in the back of the New Yorker magazine.

The catalog was black and white, mostly offered tools and all the images were illustrations, not photographs. I was immediately hooked on the company's authenticity and the quality of their merchandise. As a result, most of my tools are imported British Bulldog brand; meant to last not just a lifetime, but generations (as long as I take care of them properly ...).

I bought both the gardener's smock and original garden pants depicted in this Smith & Hawken catalog when they sold more items that were functional instead of garden tchotchkes. I'm still wearing both items quite a few years later. 

The clothes I wear most often — and that have held up best over time — also came from Smith & Hawken. I've been wearing the same pair of charcoal gray "original gardener's pants," as the company called them, since about 1991. Made of tough cotton canvas, they are amazingly durable and cut for bending and moving in the garden. Seams are double stitched and reinforced and there are pockets for removable neoprene foam knee pads. There are also plenty of other pockets and loops for all my gear. I also ordered a "gardener's smock" — really a V-neck jacket with snaps and three pockets — at the same time and that I'm still wearing. 

Granted, I have not worn these pants continuously; sometimes I switch to shorts in the summer when it gets too hot and humid. But they are more comfortable, and offer more freedom of movement, than anything else I've found; certainly much more so than jeans. And I always use some kind of kneeling pad — in addition to the slip-in pads — which has also helped their longevity. Frankly, they are so sturdy and long-wearing that, in our capitalist economy, they were probably considered counterproductive at some point. You only need to buy a pair every 10 years or so — which makes them great for the consumer but not the company. 

I know a lot of people just wear their old jeans for gardening, and probably think I'm crazy for buying clothes specifically for gardening. But I tend to feel that what I wear to work in the garden is no different than any other tool I use to make that job easier, safer, more comfortable or more satisfying. 

We snapped this shot of gardeners' work gear in the gallery at Wave Hill, a 28-acre public garden in the Bronx, on the palisades above the Hudson River. It is a stunning location and is one of the great American gardens that should be on everyone's list to visit. This apron belonged to Marco Polo Stufano, Wave Hill's first Director of Horticulture and the guiding genius of the place, now retired. 

Currently I'm looking at the pants at Duluth Trading Company and also trying to find a local supplier for Snickers/Skillers, a brand of Swedish work pants that were recommended in "Garden Your Way to Health and Fitness" by garden designer Bunny Guinness and physiotherapist Jacqueline Knox, as replacements for my ancient S&H pants. I recently checked their book out of the public library and it has lots of info on exercise, injury prevention and ergonomic designs as well how to dress in the garden. 

These women know what they're talking about as this little excerpt shows: "... get into the habit of regularly wearing a hat, along with high-protection factor face cream, even if you are only planning on spending a few minutes gardening. After all, as most of us know, five minutes working in the sunshine can easily turn into an hour!"

Here are the straightforward and serviceable gardening clothes of Gelene Scarborough on display at Wave Hill in 1998. 

When I was young my hair was blonde and I had the pale complexion to go with it — which meant that I sunburned easily. At the time, my mother worked for a dermatologist and cautioned her daughters about staying covered up in the sun. Her advice was way ahead of its time; I followed it then and still do, since my complexion and propensity to burn have not gone away with age. 

As for hats, I wear brimmed (usually straw) hats more than baseball caps. Partly it's a case of liking them and partly for health reasons. A dozen years ago, "Operation Hat Check" was inaugurated at Farm Progress Days in Wisconsin. This was an initiative of the National Farm Medicine Center to urge farmers to wear wide-brimmed hats because they offer more protection from the sun for the face and neck than the typical farmer's cap provided. Skin cancer in the farm population was a topic of much study and discussion at the time and I adopted a wide-brimmed hat as a result. 

I also have mosquito netting (from S&H) that fits over the crown of my hat with an elastic band to keep it in place. At the bottom are loops to hook the netting over the buttons of my shirt. If the mosquitoes are bad enough to wear the netting, you can bet I'm wearing long pants and long sleeves!

This photo of me was taken around 1997 when we began construction on our current garden. In the intervening years I've become more conscientious about what I wear when I'm working in the garden — for both health and safety reasons. One of the benefits of getting older is that I am OK with the "crazy old lady gardener" look and now dress more for garden function than fashion.

As for gloves, I've probably tried most of them and have dozens on hand at any given time including rubber gloves for grabbing gunk out of the pond and disposable latex-style gloves perfect for weeding moss. It seems like almost every job could use a specific glove, so I tend to switch them over the course of a day in the garden. And there are times when I do like to go gloveless — especially at the beginning of the gardening season when getting one's hands right in the dirt feels so wonderfully rejuvenating and sensual!

Mark's garden gloves at the end of the season!

Though I have both rubber boots and clogs, I rarely wear anything but lace-up leather boots in the garden. I like the fact that I can sit and weed my moss garden or grab a shovel and move a plant without having to stop and change footgear if I've got my boots on. We also have a variety of paving materials in our garden, including a lot of stepping stones and stone steps, and they are all easier to navigate with sturdy footgear.

There are times, however, when one has to give in to nature and wear — or not wear — what makes sense for the job and the moment. This photo of Mark (below) was taken one particularly rainy summer when he was trying to clean up a muddy construction site aka our garden-in-progress. The mud was virtually sucking his boots off so he decided to just give in ...

What do you wear in the garden when you're not sitting for your garden portrait? I'd love to hear if you've got a favorite kind of gloves or hat or sunscreen that you swear by. I'm always looking for good solutions to everyday garden concerns. And since I won't be out in the garden working for at least another six weeks, there's time for me to implement your suggestions to update my work wardrobe!

Dressing for the garden

I'm dreaming of Valerie Finnis. No, not the delicately pale blue Muscari that bears her name and is planted in my spring garden. I mean Valerie Finnis, the photographer. It's because of Finnis that I started gardening in a rather confused fashion. I got the wrong idea about garden fashions — what gardeners wear to work in the garden — after seeing some of her portraits in old books and magazines. 

In the early 1950s Finnis, an expert in Alpine plants, acquired her first camera, becoming one of the first women to specialize in photographing plants and gardeners in their domains. She never took more than one exposure of each subject because she considered film too expensive to waste. Finnis made portraits of dozens of gardeners who were both accomplished and quirky — in and out of the garden. 

VALERIE FINNIS

I might consider Rhoda, Lady Birley (above), suitably dressed for the garden if I couldn't see her feet. Sorry, those pretty little party shoes she's wearing are not only silly looking but downright dangerous when you're holding a pair of pruners the size of the ones Rhoda's clutching. But her scarf — or whatever's around her neck — is a perfect color match to her garden blooms.

Finnis captured both Nancy Lancaster (below) and Rhoda, Lady Birley (above), in the garden wearing outrageous hats — something dear to Finnis' own heart. Both of those women were drama queens so I should have guessed they were dressed for the camera and not the garden. But, at the time, I didn't know any real gardeners, so I couldn't be sure if they actually gardened wearing such strange and rather lovely attire. These photos are the reason why I have more garden hats than any other item of garden gear.

VALERIE FINNIS

Nancy Lancaster well-covered here in the midst of a rosebush. Though the hat looks used and useful, it's still a pretty outrageous coverup!

VALERIE FINNIS

This hatless portrait (above) of Nancy Lancaster, doyenne of English country house style, is on the cover of Valerie Finnis' book, "Garden People." Lancaster's sporting a scarf and a hollyhock in "buttah yellow," the color of her famous — and much imitated — salon. I'm still not sure about her outfit; that jacket looks too nice to be so close to a hose!

There seem to be a limited number of photos of Vita Sackville-West in her garden at Sissinghurst Castle. I've seen one where she's beginning to dig the border in the southwest corner of the Tower lawn — by hand. Of course, it's a ludicrous image when one considers the size of this garden. But what really makes it laughable is that Vita is wearing a skirt! 

Most images show her wearing jodhpurs (below) that look more suited to the stables than the garden, along with knee-high lace-up boots. The whole get-up always looks highly uncomfortable to me.

VALERIE FINNIS

Vita Sackville-West (left) examines an urn at the base of the Tower at Sissinghurst Castle. Her garden assistants — Pamela Schwerdt (center) and Sibylle Kreutzberger — are dressed like Vita in jodhpurs but with rubber boots. The picture below shows the pair — who eventually became joint Head Gardeners at Sissinghurst — in more modern and comfortable long pants. But the two women are wielding wooden wheelbarrows, albeit with rubber wheels! Still, I might put up with a fair amount of discomfort if I could work somewhere as beautiful as Sissinghurst!

VALERIE FINNIS

I love the image Finnis captured of Mr. and Mrs. Gerard Parker, a pair of snowdrop enthusiasts (below). He looks like he just stepped off the train, briefcase in hand, and she's perhaps coming home from a committee meeting. They meet — by chance or choice? — in the garden.

Of course, I like the photo because it reminds me so much of myself. I have a tendency to pull into the driveway, get out of the car and get lost in the garden — all before I've opened the front door, checked for mail or greeted my spouse. This picture suggests I'm not a bad person, just an addicted gardener. An issue for my husband, but clearly not for the Brits!

VALERIE FINNIS

Mr. and Mrs. Gerard Parker get up close and personal with their snowdrops.

At age 46, Finnis' married another avid gardener, Sir David Scott, then age 82. An hour after the church ceremony, the newlyweds were out in the garden weeding together. If that's not a match made in gardening heaven, I don't know what is. I don't believe this is the wedding day photo, but clearly they're dressed for work here: though gloveless, their heads are nattily covered.

Valerie Finnis works in the garden with her husband, Sir David Scott. Finnis fell for Scott because he was the first person she'd ever met who recognized Gillenia trifoliata (Bowman's root). 

TOMORROW: What gardeners really wear.

My Garden Odyssey: Final prep

Episode XIII

HE SAID: We were finally nearing the point when all our garden talk would be translated into action. My plan was just about complete. We'd found a landscape architect to work with us. We were almost there. Just a few final details to finish: dealing with all the necessary experts and getting their reports on Soil/Safety/Trees/Slope.

First, we did a series of soil tests of various parts of the garden through the UW-Madison Soil & Plant Analysis Lab. 

 

SHE SAID: Then we called "Diggers Hotline." This 24/7 line is operated by the utility companies and must be called any time you're going to dig a trench, excavate, or build a fence to make sure you don't sever gas, electric or water lines. They come out and mark everything (above) to keep you, and their lines, safe.

Before we began construction we called Bruce Allison, certified arborist and author of two of my favorite books: "Every Root an Anchor: Wisconsin's Famous and Historic Trees" and "Wisconsin's Champion Trees." Allison came out and identified all the trees on our property, talked with us about what to keep, suggested the best place to build the pond to protect the roots of our major trees, and helped me calculate the age of our Bur Oak. His crew then did a superb job of pruning our big trees which had been virtually untouched since they'd been planted. (A regular pruning schedule for these important trees is now part of our maintenance plan). 

Finally, to save money, we decided to survey our lot ourselves one springlike Saturday. As a result, I now know that our property slopes 14 feet from the back lot line down to the front curb. Mark rented a transit and I was his assistant, marking off the measurements every 10 feet — in two directions — on a sheet of graph paper. That means we had 200 points to measure, minus the ones covered by the house and driveway (above).

This may sound crazy but it was actually a critical step. We needed these numbers in order to dig a pond into the side of a hill without having the water slosh over the edge and into the living room — which was at the foot of the slope. Moving long tape measures, standing around in between, and then noting measurements on a piece of paper are not my ideal tasks. This little job took hours.

When the sun went behind the clouds and snow started falling, we had just enough measuring left to do to make the day miserable. By the time we finished, we were not only questioning the wisdom of this whole garden idea, we were wondering why we had gotten married. But, as Daniel Mount said to us in a recent comment, "realizing what you must give up to have a garden only adds value." 

 

HE SAID: My design called for digging a three and a half foot deep pond as well as a thirty foot stream with a smaller pond to act as a headwater. The excavated soil would then be used to form a pair of mounds behind the pond. Knowing the slope of the land allowed me to calculate the amount of soil we would be moving. 

SHE SAID: During much of our planning time we'd been stockpiling rocks, initially at Madison Block & Stone, until we had enough for the boom truck to deliver to our driveway. We had the early loads piled off the actual driveway on my intended plant holding bed. But as we got closer to starting construction, rocks started getting piled on the lawn on the opposite side of the driveway and eventually on the driveway itself (above).

Our front yard began to look like the kind of house where an abandoned fridge or a rusty car up on blocks might show up next. I think our neighbors we're a little nervous — but also more than a little curious. As a result, they came over to check us out and stayed to become helpers, donators of materials, and eventually, fans of our pond project.

One neighbor called us up to offer a multi-stem Pagoda Dogwood tree (Cornus alternifolia, above) that he'd planted too close to his house and had to go. It took Mark and three neighbors to get it out of the ground and onto our truck. But we managed to get it onto the front lawn and planted by ourselves. Today it's so big we've begun to trim the lower branches of the sugar and silver maples it grows beneath. 

It was a huge gesture of welcome and a significant financial gift as well. At the nursery, that tree would have easily cost us $150. Today, that neighbor and Mark are good buddies who share advice on everything from books to trucks.

Our right-next-door neighbor had his stone driveway walls redone at about this time and gave us all his unused limestone (below). Initially Mark turned it into an Andy Goldsworthy stone pile but eventually they were all used to line the inside edge of the pond. Then another neighbor called to say he was dismantling his brick patio and told us we could have the bricks, but we had to haul them away ourselves. He only lived three doors down from us but we were truck-less at the time. So Mark spent a weekend ferrying wheelbarrow loads of bricks house to house!

One of the last — and biggest — jobs was taking out a 50-year-old arborvitae tree (probably Thuja plicata) at the corner of the house. It had to go to make a path for the track hoe to get into our back yard.

HE SAID: After estimating the height of the tree (about 50 feet), and measuring the distance between our house and our neighbor's (25 feet), I realized I had a bit of a problem. The solution I came up with, being decended from two families of lumberjacks, was to climb the tree and "top" each trunk. Being a clever husband I waited until Linda was away to tackle the job. 

She came home to find me with one foot on the roof of the house and one on a limb of the tree, sawing with both hands. Her question to me was: "Do you want me to call an ambulance now, or wait until you fall?"

I left six feet of trunk to act as a lever to pull the root ball out of the ground. I had a thirty foot heavy duty chain and a sturdy Ford F-350 pick-up truck. I had dug an eighteen inch deep trench in a six foot diameter circle around the base of the tree, cutting all the roots that I found. I drew the chain up taught, revved the engine, and slowly let the clutch out. The truck drove forward just far enough to lift the back end completely off the ground! The tree didn't budge.

After digging the trench deeper, cutting more roots, and soaking the ground around the the arborvitae overnight I finally managed to pull the thing out onto the driveway and down to the curb. A week later a city supervisor — clipboard in hand — came to my door and asked what I had planed for the stump and root ball. I played the honesty card, fell on his mercy and said I didn't have a clue. He finally agreed to have a city truck and crew pick it up if I could reduce it to a size their mechanical claws could handle.

At last the night before D-Day arrived. Dig Day, that is. I spent the late afternoon and early evening making final decissions about rock placement. I had been studying some of them for over a year and now it was time to commit. With the crew and equipment arriving in the morning, there would be little time to dither over what rock to put where. So, with chalk in hand and a chart with all the major rocks numbered, I marked their orientation to the house and the depth to which they would be set (below).

 

Then I tried to get some sleep.

 

Read other episodes of the history of our garden by clicking on "My Garden Odyssey" in the categories column.

I go walkabout

HE SAID: Our recent February (partial) thaw overcame my winter lethargy and got me outdoors and into the yard for the first time since early December. With the temperature hovering around freezing, I grabbed the camera and went to see what there was to see.

There's something sad and pathetic about this caged dwarf Ginkgo, not unlike how I've viewed myself these past few weeks. We're not sure if the rabbits relish them, but we don't want to chance it.

The seed heads of star fruit (Penthorum seloides), a marginal water plant, hold their color well in the winter. It looks especially good here against the dark basalt rock — an angle I usually don't see unless I'm in the pond wearing waders.

For some reason I respond positively to pairs of things. I don't know why. In this case I'm sure there is a bit of anthropomorphising going on.

I was smitten with the range of color in these delicate Japanese maple leaves set against the snow.

Having been taught painting at the end of the Abstract Expressionist era, I can't resist the ever changing patterns of nature. I'll take an image like this over a dramatic sunset or bright perenial bed anytime.

Acer 'White Tigress' (snakebark maple) is a tree with georgeous bark. Even though this one is currently quite small, its visual impact is very strong.

The bark of a river birch has to be among the most dramatic of any tree. It's nearly impossible to take a bad picture of these beauties.

The first bright color of spring in our yard is invariably man-made.

I just don't understand why people feel compelled to throw their trash out the car window into someone else's yard. When we first moved to this neighborhood I thought maybe we were a target, but all the neighbors complain of the same thing.

Nevertheless, there are signs of better things to come.

It's always amazing to me how some plants retain their color and freshness despite the harshness of winter. This Autumn Fern looks ready to spring back to its summer glory as soon as the snow releases it.

And lastly, a pair of Epimedium leaves hug a rock for warmth until the final thaw arrives — and with it, Spring.