A garden in the rain

It rained all day yesterday; drizzling, no down pouring; overcast and gloomy.  One friend emailed saying he “覺得有點落寞” with rain, another friend, “悶悶不樂”.  I felt even worse; miserable, weary, dull and flat.

Both Milton and Shakespeare used “flat and weary” to describe depression.

My hopes all flat: Nature within me seems
In all her functions weary of herself;
-          Milton

“How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”, uttered by depressed Hamlet.

Returning home from work, I was hesitated to walk into the garden, not because it was drizzling, but the rain deepened the already melancholy mood of the garden at this time of saying good bye.  I took the following pictures from the back porch.  The beauty still lingers.  Let’s hope it will be a long good-bye.

Rain affected Hemingway even more.  It rained on all sad occasions in his A Farewell to Arms.  We read,

“In the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain,” and

“The vineyards were thin and bare-branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with autumn.”

The last paragraph of the novel tells how Henry (the protagonist) walked out of the hospital after Catherine Barkley died of a difficult childbirth,

“But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn’t any good.  It was like saying good-bye to a statue.  After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”

The last word of the novel is “rain”.

My favorite spot in the garden

My favorite spot in the garden this season turns out to be where the folding chair sits inside luffa garden, nay, luffa cabin.

It is the best place to have the inner soul to cultivate equanimity in defiance of all outward troubled worlds (this was written when our son-in-law, Sean, was diagnosed to have multiple myeloma).  Sitting there one is surrounded by the lush green, calm, cool, serene and soothing, whether it is after sun-set or high noon, one feels all the same.

Sitting there looking at the luffas hanging or laying, one is gratified that labor of love comes to fruition.

I like to sit there and read, not that I have spare time to indulge.  I still cannot think of anything better to read than Viola/Olivia’s “Willow Cabin” scene in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

          Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
          And call upon my soul within the house.
          . . . . .
This is the best time to re-read the post of “Make me a willow cabin at your gate”.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2014/12/make-me-willow-cabin-at-your-gate-and.html

From Memorial Day to Labor Day: from elative mood to melancholy mood of gardening

We gardeners look forward to seeing the Memorial Day, the “official” day of the beginning of the garden season, even though we had been working to prepare the “home” for the residents of the garden for nearly two months.  It was full of excitement and expectation; a gardener believes in tomorrow.

Labor Day is another story; it is the beginning of the end of the garden season.  Beauty still lingers and there is beauty at the end (風韻猶存), luster is leaving although color remains.

Two blackened areas are newly planted 冬莪 and 台灣小白菜, along the fence are the snow peas that were planted at three different times; one is not emerged yet.

Thus it is particularly uplifting that we’re still cultivating at this time; it gives us hope and anticipation.

There are entries of “planted 茼𦶡 (冬莪) on 9/13/15” and “planted 台灣小白菜 on 9/14/15” in my garden journal.  Some like it hot, but these Taiwanese veggies like it cool.

I like to read Ecclesiastes because of its literary flavor and strength, but read it with mixed emotion as it is too depressive, reminding us of everything is transient and fleeting, 人生無常, so to speak.

This is from Ecclesiastes 3:

There is a time for everything,
   and a season for every activity under the heavens:
   a time to be born and a time to die,
   a time to plant and a time to uproot
. . . . .  . . .

So it is not entirely irrelevant to mention Ecclesiastes when all the summer flowers in our garden are waiting chrysanthemum (菊花; they live next to the New England asters--see photo below) to bloom to say good-bye before they “perish with beautiful reluctance” as did all Emily Dickinson’s flowers.

By the way, the title of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises comes from Ecclesiastes 1:5

The sun also rises, and the sun goes down,
And hastens to the place where it arose.

A Jeffersonian garden

In order to elevate our garden I call it a Dickinsonian garden.  After a pilgrimage (朝聖) to Monticello 2 years ago, I also began to imitate Thomas Jefferson’s garden with the hope that one day I can call it Jeffersonian garden.

What strikes the visitors to our garden most is the ethnic veggies, such as luffa (絲瓜, 菜瓜), Chinese spinach (hollow green, 應菜, 空心菜), bitter melon (苦瓜), Taiwanese pumpkin (台灣南瓜), Chinese cucumber (小黃瓜), etc.  Exotic though they may look to some; they’re the ones we grew up with.

Jefferson also had ethnic (American) veggies in his garden at hotel de Langeac in Paris while serving as the Minister (Ambassador) to France for 5 years (1784 to 1789).  We read “I cultivate my own garden here.  Indian corn for the use of my own table.”  Corn was not available in Europe then.  He also asked his Monticello’s neighbor, Col. Nicholas Lewis, to ship him “sweet potato, watermelon, cantaloupe, acorns . . .”

While visiting home, Janice helped me weed and clear one area where I planted snow peas, thus in my garden “diary” (a FileMaker file) there is an entry of “planting snow peas on 8/29/2015.”  The most recent planting was 9/9/2015.  I am doing what Jefferson recorded in his Garden Book.

snow peas

We have fig and kale in our garden; Jefferson’s favorite.  Jefferson liked kale, praising it as “the most valuable garden plant”, “a very delicate green”.  He sent seeds to every garden friends that he could find and boasted to Barbour that “no body in the U.S. has [it] but those to whom I have given it.”

Kale

Jefferson’s wife had died before he went to France.  I never figured out his exact relationship with a French lady, Maria Cosway.  He wrote her in 1795, “I am eating the peaches, grapes and figs of my own garden; I only wish I could eat them in your native country, gathered on the spot; in your good company.”  He suggested a trip with her to Italy, although he said he would also invite some other lady friends “We will leave the rest of the journey to imagination.”

Fig

Our figs (outside the garden) came from Dr. Liang’s garden two years ago.  They are still young and need protection against the harsh and freezing winter.  We stopped by today to buy tree wraps at Lowe's and they have sold out.

Dickinsonian garden: rich confusion and chaotic order

Martha Dickinson (Emily's Dickinson's niece) remembered her aunt’s garden “rich confusion was its aim . . . you want to come upon mignonette in unexpected places, and to find sprays of heliotrope in close consultation with roses . . . No stiffness, no ceremony.”  “This kind of garden—asparagus waving near phlox, roses entangled with peonies.”

Substitute the names of a few flowers and veggies; it also can describe our garden this way.  It is rather “busy” and if there is any order, it is a chaotic one.

We also have many flowers of Emily Dickinson’s favorite: daisy, daylily, tulip, rose, lily, jasmine and zinnia.  We do not call this Dickinsonian garden for no reason.

Our horticulturist friend saved the fate of bitter melon (苦瓜)

In response to the inquiry of our question of why some of the Pen-Fu luffa (澎湖絲瓜) are bitter (but, not 米桶 luffa), our good friend, Ching-San Huang, a horticultural expert, had a scholarly post, to which I haven’t got a chance to respond yet; I will show you his article soon.  First I will say he saved the fate of bitter melon (苦瓜).

Some garden friends said it was due to the “genetic cross” between Pen-Fu luffa (澎湖絲瓜) and bitter melon (苦瓜).  It seemed plausible from the genetic point of view.  We can insert the human insulin gene to the E-coli, which will dutifully make human insulin, which is the first biological.

It was a fascinating story of the race of making human insulin by Genentech and Biogen in 1970s (Genentech won the race).  The discovery of restriction enzyme (so that DNA chain can be ‘cut’ open) by Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer paved the way for Paul Berg to develop recombinant DNA technology.  Genentech was founded on the knowledge of the discovery of restriction enzyme and recombinant DNA technology.  Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson (the venture capitalist) were the cofounders of Genentech.

If the human and E-coli genes can work together, so can that of Pen-Fu luffa (澎湖絲瓜) and bitter melon (苦瓜).  Besides our Pen-Fu luffa (澎湖絲瓜) and bitter melon (苦瓜) are in the same neighborhood, next to each other.  The bees may carry the gene that makes cucurbitacins (葫蘆苦素, which is responsible for bitter taste) from bitter melon (苦瓜) to Pen-Fu luffa (澎湖絲瓜).

But, Ching-San Huang said that was not the case; the expert has spoken, so it shall be, we thus gave up the idea of no more bitter melon (苦瓜) in our garden.
Bitter melon (苦瓜) plants are delicate and slow-growing.  Being in the same section with Chinese cucumber, they began to flourish only after the Chinese cucumber season was over.

Ox heart tomato is not entirely a failure after all

After picking all the ripe tomatoes, mostly cherry tomatoes (yellow or red), Joy said she has picked all that can be picked.  The large tomatoes, mainly ox heart ones, were not too pleased, since they were basically ignored.  They began to grow more steadily.  These photos were taken today.  The ox heart tomato is not entirely a failure after all.

We tend to grow a variety of tomatoes; some for its sweetness; some for its texture; some for its disease resistance.  I have noticed that all kinds of tomato plants look alike; I can never tell which is which unless I label them.