GARDENING 101: Gardening Counter-intelligence

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/22/09)

As young soldiers, really adolescents, trained in counter-intelligence and covert operations, we were tutored in surveillance, a watch and ward vigilance for espionage and sabotage. Such training has been invaluable in gardening, surveilling pests who sabotage a garden.

I can still hear the captain. "The quiet ones, the ones to whom no one pays mind, the ones that slip by unnoticed, they'll bear watching." Aphids don't call attention to themselves, slip by unnoticed, and bear watching. Sucking the life out of a plant, they're found on the underside of the leaves, not on top where they can be easily seen.

He also talked about twitches, furrowed brows, and squints, the small signs signaling the stress of risk. In gardening it's a leaf's curl, a slight discoloration, and a stem's canker. Signs of a far deeper and far more devastating threat are eyes turned glassy and pupils narrowed or leaves dropped, stems withered, and plants suckled dry by parasites.

Surveillance is one of the gardener's first responsibilities, every morning and evening patrolling the garden with eyes peeled, looking for the quiet ones. On these patrols through the garden, it's best is to poke underneath the leaves while sniffing out lurking culprits . Check litter, such as small piles of leaves or pieces of wood. Scatter them, bend over to peek underneath, and then dispose of them. A principle task for a gardener is to snoop. Enjoying a garden isn't enough. Inspecting it is crucial because only an inspected garden will thrive to be enjoyed.

At the first hint of sabotage, don't hope the problem will take care of itself. It won't. It'll get worse which means that the gardener on patrol must come prepared, as in well-armed with a spray gun and a hose equipped with a nozzle. Never allow the enemy an avenue of escape. Ne pas faire de quartier.

Two sets of eyes are better than one so, if possible, take along another snoop while on patrol.

Never use ammunition that afflicts the garden, such as friendly fire poisons. Human beings are singular amongst animals in that they foul their own nests, such as spraying poison on their gardens and food. At the first sign of under-sided sabotage, turn the nozzle down to a sharp stream and wash the insects into oblivion. If they appear again, spray them with insecticidal soap, offing the under-sided saboteurs without poisoning the garden. If they appear again, off'em again until they are no more. Sans merci.

Saboteurs surprise, striking from secluded and secret lairs, so it's important to find their hidden cells and destroy them. Grasshoppers lay their eggs underground in the fall so that they can strike by surprise in the spring, suddenly flying out of the sun, like dive bombers in a blitzkrieg, devouring a garden.

Turning the soil with a spade helps expose the nests of eggs to the air, destroying them. But spading is not enough. Nests of eggs will always be missed. Happily, grasshopper nymphs have a thing for wheat bran, and if the wheat bran is mixed with NoLo, their voracious appetite will be their undoing. Always encounter enemies at their weaknesses. The grasshopper's vice is gluttony.

NoLo is short for Nosema locustae spores which are fatal to grasshoppers but harmful to no one else. NoLo can be purchased in the armaments section at local nurseries or over the internet.

Finally, in the fight against sabotage, allies, such as, green lacewings, lady bugs, and praying mantises are always useful. More eyes and mouths will find and devour more saboteurs. These allies can be bought, but as with all bought friends, they're fickle and tend to fly away. So release them at dusk so after a night's rest they can ravage at first light. These fickle friends can be kept in a garden with the hospitality of such plants as dill and yarrow.

The captain, a classics scholar in civilian life, often quoted Demosthenes warning the Athenians of Macedonian perfidy, "There's one safeguard known generally to the wise. What is it? Distrust." Vigilance is one safeguard known to wise gardeners keeping their gardens safe from saboteurs.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2009

A PEACEABLE KINGDOM

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/17/09)

James Reeb, a social worker in a Boston slum and Unitarian Universalist minister, was clubbed to death by racist thugs in Selma, Alabama, March 9, 1965, as he left a restaurant on his way to a meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., at the Brown Chapel. He died in a Birmingham hospital on the 11th, forty-four years ago. The Greek word martur means "witness." Jim bore witness.

We'd been in the Army together but had seen each other only once in about twenty years until that day in Selma. We spoke briefly and went our ways. Then down the street I heard a commotion and saw a rush of people and police. Jim was being beaten to death. As I tried to break through the crowd, the police hustled me to the jail and then the bus station and told to get out of town.

The thugs were later tried and acquitted to the cheers.

I remember the eyes of death in faces of the crowd and the police. The same eyes of death afflict our modern culture, the racial wisecrackers, the denigrators of women, the purveyors of hate and violence. However, we seldom see them in the eyes of gardeners. The reason is simple, gardeners love life. Now, there are a lot of nut bags, cranks, grumps, ditzes, and scolds amongst gardeners, but behind their often odd behaviors is a love of life, else they wouldn't plant and seed year after year. Theirs is "a peaceable kingdom."

Not only to do they plant and seed, they also care for living things as well, but beyond that they deal with death as lovers of life. Lovers of death don't deal well with death because they don't believe in life. Inexplicably, growing things die, and, as such, there is always in a garden the mystery of death. Gardeners never quit, they just seed and plant again. Never forsaking hope, abiding in faith, they love life.

The lovers of death tend to get fixed on things past, arrested in the recesses of their own histories, hoarding their grievances, treasuring their indignations. The lovers of life move on, aware that they are writing their own histories in the moment. They move forward. If a plant doesn't thrive on one spot in the garden, gardeners find a new spot. If it doesn't thrive in the new spot, they'll try a different plant.

Lovers of death have difficulty with nature's inevitability and divine irony. They have trouble with brick walls. They like to run into them head first. They believe the old adage, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Gardeners will more than likely rewrite the old adage, "If at first you don't succeed, find out why, and then do it smarter the second time." Plants cannot be forced to thrive where they don't want to thrive. Not many people realize it, but plants have choices, too, and some of them don't it like it high, dry, cold, and windy. They like it low, humid, hot, and still. Some like swamps.

Gardeners not only love life, they like to share it, always trading and sharing seeds, plants, and tips. They push their cuttings on their friends and neighbors, giving them flowers and vegetables, often times more zucchini than their neighbors ever want to see again. They're always happy to talk with total strangers about their flowers and vegetables, even inviting them to tour their backyards. Sometimes, they look a little zany in their enthusiasms.

Also, gardeners thrive in adversity, else they wouldn't garden in Flagstaff'. Very little daunts them, be it weather or pestilence. They rise to the challenge, believing in life in the face of adversity, as in growing tomatoes in the High Country.

The Church of Scotland's prayers of thanksgiving at a funeral read, "We thank Thee for the goodness and truth that have passed from their lives into the lives of others, and made the world richer for their presence." Gardeners make the world richer for their presence with goodness and truth as well as beauty and life. The proof is in their eyes. They're bright with a love of life.

Copyright© Dana Prom Smith 2009

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
--Reinhold Niebuhr--

GARDENING 101: Manufacturing Soil

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D (2/16/09)

The author of such popular phrases as "the medium is the message" and "global village," Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media wrote that a medium is an "extension of ourselves." A medium could be a hammer, fork, cartoon, rifle, fishing pole, tennis racket, motion picture, or even soil. It's anything by which people extend their ability to affect their environment, empowering themselves to bring about a cascade of changes.

Soil is the gardener's medium. Without it, save for hydroponic gardening, there's no gardening. Soil is the medium through which gardeners extend themselves to affect their environment, and, as such, soil is the gardener's message.

Dirt isn't the same thing as soil. Soil is manufactured by gardeners using sand, silt, clay, and organic matter, in short, enhancing what has been given them. In Flagstaff, we also have limestone, sandstone, and volcanic debris.

The ideal soil consists of 40% silt, 20% clay, and 40% sand in addition to organic matter. Sand is gritty and can be seen with the naked eye. Both silt and clay are finer, so fine that their particles cannot be seen with the naked eye, clay being the finest.

The problem with clay, of which there is an abundance in Flagstaff, is that when it dries, it hardens, so hard that most of the garden plants wither because their roots cannot penetrate the clay. However, it holds moisture well while sand doesn't. Mixing sand with clay loosens the clay while keeping its ability to retain moisture.

Alas, sand is scarce in Flagstaff, but we have a good substitute which may be better than sand. Volcanic cinders are everywhere and are about 2/3 sand and 1/3 geochemical nutrients. Mixing volcanic cinders with clay loosens the clay. Weathering, such as harsh winters, howling winds, and torrential rains, gradually releases the nutrients from the cinders.

Forget about silt which occurs in washes, along stream beds, in certain meadows, on alluvial slopes, and on deltas. It's of no practical value since most of it occurs somewhere downhill from Flagstaff.

The next step to a nascent soil of clay and cinders is adding organic matter. Organic matter is important because it positively affects the mycorrhizae already in soil, making them more effective. Mycorrhizae are fungal middle-men or brokers, transferring nutrients from the soil to the plant's roots. The soil may be loaded with nutrients, but without mycorrhizae they aren't transferred to the roots.

Obviously, the best organic matter is decayed organic matter because the nutrients are in the decay. Also, organic matter aerates the soil as do the cinders. Organic matter turns the clay and cinders mix into what might pass for clay loam. The best kind of soil runs through the fingers. If it clots and doesn't flow, like blood in the arteries on the way to the heart, it ain't so good. Clots, clods, and clumps are signs that the nutrients aren't flowing as well as they should, a gardening mycrocardial infarction.

Digging kitchen scraps (no fat, meat or oil), manure, and decayed pine needles, fallen leaves, clippings, even shredded newspapers, into the soil is good, but compost is better because as the name suggests, it's already decomposed. Compost is simply a pile of organic matter with a 3 to 1 ratio of carbon material to nitrogen material in which the carbon material is broken down by the nitrogen material, releasing the nutrients. Carbon material is often called brown while the nitrogen material is called green, although coffee grounds are green horticulturally if not visually.

Composting is best done in bins and large containers, but our homesteading ancestors did it in piles, usually several paces from the cabin. In a way, the modern composting movement is a return to the past as a way of finding the future in a horticultural time warp.

Compost is the heart of the medium of soil. It's the difference between a garden that thrives and one that withers. Thriving gardens are the message of the medium, a message with a cascade of consequences, beginning with food and beauty and extending all the way to a habitable planet.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2009

MISHMASH GARDENING

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/5/09)


A conversation with Pat Pedersen, a self-avowed mishmash gardener, brings to mind Proverbs 17:22, "A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones." Pat is a good medicine, especially for those with dried up bones. She embraces life amidst all of its chaos.

She loves color, bright colors. She plants, hangs, and pots all kinds of plants that bring color into her life, resulting in a house and yard that appear a mishmash, a chaos.

Her love of color may be rooted in her father's automobile accident.
A marine veteran of Midway during World War II, he was struck down in his prime by an automobile driven by teenagers. Crippled, he lost much of his sensory awareness, depriving him of that verve so closely tied to smell, touch, taste, hearing, and sight, isolating him in a chasm of sensory oblivion and despair.

Thrust overnight into a private wilderness, in her childhood Pat became her father's caretaker. Amidst that chaos, that void, and perhaps because of it, she grew aware of her senses, particularly sight, loving colors, especially bright colors. Not only that, she came to treasure them.

Many gardeners like order, everything in its place, a place for everything, neat and tidy. Others favor systems, organizations in which everything has a function, using words like "communities" and that particularly dreadful word "interfaces."

Mishmash gardening may appear willy-nilly, even hurly-burly, with no sense at all. Not so, its meaning is elsewhere.

In his book Chaos, James Gleick writes about the first theorists of the new science of chaos, "They had an eye for pattern." "They had a taste for randomness and complexity, for jagged edges and sudden leaps." This could well be a description of Pat's garden, a garden of brightening surprises, of unpredictable delights, of beauty over classification. For those addicted to order and organization, it may offend, but beyond the offense there is a pattern of vivacity, a love of life, not merely predicable and expected, but "surprised by joy."

Chaos is a Greek word, not meaning disorder, but rather primal emptiness, a chasm, a void, an ultimate yawn. As such, it was the opposite of an orderly universe. The poet Wallace Stevens wrote, "The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind." The French existentialist Albert Camus picked up the theme and extended its consequences into Absurdité which best describes the anti-meaning of her father's tragedy.

The rational and the orderly are human attempts to fix meaning on the unpredictable and the absurd, an urban grid on a random wilderness. Those attempts aren't the reality. Life is not tidy, nor is Pat's garden. She's filled her corner of that primal emptiness with color, with peonies, dahlias, and begonias. That's been her pattern, ever since the chaos of her father's tragedy. For those who look for straight lines and perfect curves, her garden is "randomness and complexity," "jagged edges and sudden leaps" filled with color.

She says that Martha Stewart would call her garden a "bad thing," but rather than listening to Martha Stewart, she hears Frank Sinatra sing, "I did it my way." The secret to her patterns are, in her words, "Plant what you love." Her love of color even reaches to her "passion for purple potatoes."

She hopes "for her garden to become totally coherent," and as she waits, she dances with her pots and hanging baskets, looking for coherence in a world "without form and void." In other words, the pattern to her garden is a dance of color, not idée fixe but danse de joie.

Alfred North Whitehead wrote in Science and the Modern World that religion is "something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest." So with gardening. Meanwhile, out on the edge of the wilderness in Mountainaire with her great Pyrenees, Mr. T. and Poofy B., and her companion, Tom, Pat's dances the dance of faith with her pots and planters amidst the chaos, much like Brother Lawrence practiced the presence of God in a 17th century monastic kitchen with his pots and pans. As faith and hope abide, she believes, "gardening is about love."

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2009

GARDENING 101

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (1/22/09)

While visiting my children in California for Thanksgiving, we visited the Temecula Olive Oil Company. I casually asked, "How's business?" The reply was quick, "Just great, ever since the recession hit. People are cooking more at home now."

Also, people are growing more of their own food which presents as many challenges to novice gardeners as home-cooking does to novice cooks tackling their first cheese soufflé. While the recession is bad, growing fresh vegetables is good. They taste better than "store-boughten." They're more nutritious and good for the soul and as well as the body. Some people claim they don't have souls, but even though they don't know they have any, it's still good for their souls.

The first issue is soil which has to be prepared, as in turning
organic matter into the dirt with a spade. Our dirt in Flagstaff lacks
organic material which is crucial to fertility. Most veteran gardeners have found that raised beds are efficient for both watering and soil preparation. For fertilizers, "a wide spectrum" fertilizer is useful. If the vegetables are leafy, it's best to use a fertilizer high in nitrogen, and if they're fruits, a fertilizer high in potassium and phosphorus.

Since this is Gardening 101, it's easy-to-grow vegetables. Tomatoes which require lots of attention probably belong in a 501 graduate seminar.

Kale is easy to grow, nutritious, and culinarily adaptable. As a cool season vegetable, it's suited to Flagstaff's climate. There are several types of kale, Russian, Italian, and Scottish. Foodies favor the Italian. Scottish is pleated and attractive, like a kilt. Russian has broad leaves. The Italian is the touchiest to grow. Kale seeds can be sown a few weeks before the last frost and throughout the growing months. Kale plants last well-beyond the first snow fall and are oddly sweetened by a freeze.

The next easy-to-grow vegetable is the prolific zucchini which has many varieties. Unlike kale, it wilts with the first tinge of frost. However, while it grows, it produces a host of succulent fruits which have a wide variety of uses in the kitchen. The easiest way to prepare zucchini is slice it in disks and sauteé it in olive oil, salt, and oregano. Its flowers can even be eaten. (Cf. Hattie Braun's recipe on http://oldfartskitchen.blogspot.com.) It's best to seed it just before the last frost June 15.

Surprisingly, onions, as a cool season vegetable, are easy to grow. Since they need plenty of water, it's best to plant them in trenches. The easiest way to grow them is in sets which are really small onion plants. They can be planted in Flagstaff as early as March 19. A couple of favorites for sweet onions are the Hybrid Candy and Hybrid Superstar. Although onions look like a fruit, they're actually a ball of leaves and need nitrogen fertilizer.

Another vegetable that's easy to grow are snap beans also called string or green beans. Rather than mess around with lattices, poles, etc, growing bush beans is easier. Again, the varieties are many. A few old favorites are Kentucky Wonder, Beurre de Rocquencourt, and Blue Lake. There is a new heirloom from France, Triomphe de Farcy, which produces long, thin pods. After blanching, they can be frozen.

Next in line are beets which are easy to grow, wonderfully nutritious, taste good, and are easy to cook when roasted. They come in white, red, pink, and yellow. Also, their leaves can be used in salads, especially the leaves of the Bull's Blood. They store well and can be frozen after being cooked.

Finally, a word for lettuce. It's a cool season vegetable and is easy to grow in Flagstaff, and its varieties are seemingly endless. The easiest lettuces are the loose leaf varieties because they can be harvested gradually as they develop. Three favorites are the chartreuse Black-seeded Simpson, the red-fringed Lolla Rossa, and the speckled Forellenschuss.

Veteran gardeners, like military veterans, often boast about their hardships in the field. That's too bad, because gardening is a happy experience and not all that hard if the gardener uses a little gardening moxie and is touched with patience. Bon jardinage and Good Eats!

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2009

THE TAMED CYNIC

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (1/14/09)

Reinhold Niebuhr, the great American theologian, in his lectures on homiletics said, "If your sermons don't anger ten percent of your congregation at any given time, you've not been preaching the gospel. Just make sure it's the right ten percent, and that they're angry at you for the right reasons. Remember, your chief function in the pulpit is to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted." In terms of the earth, it's time to afflict the comfortable.

In his Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, he wrote that the disillusionment from which idealists often suffer is only useful when it comes full circle from disillusionment with others to disillusionment with themselves. Sadly, many "true believers" are seldom disillusioned with themselves. It might be added that the politically-correct, the neo-Puritans of today, are also seldom disillusioned with themselves.

A possible consequence of disillusionment, other than cynicism, is looking at things in a new way, such as an awareness of where one is in the scheme of things, an awareness that the earth is a gift given by God in trust, not as an object of exploitation, and that we're the trustees of that gift.

One of the first acts of thanksgiving is cherishing the gift. The earth isn't a throwaway, disposable toy, as if we were "legacy children" whose only purpose is to consume what has been given us. The earth is all we have. There aren't any spare earths, as Terri Swearigen said, which we can inhabit if we ruin this one. Rather than exploiting the land as does much of modern industrial agriculture and corporate America, gardening begins by cherishing the land.

Cherishing the earth is sustainability which is, sadly, a lame word burdened with connotations of minimalism, just getting by. Renewing or enriching are better words because they imply increasing the value of the gift as in plowing the profits back into the business. An effective trustee increases the value of the trust, and gardening is one of the best places to increase the earth's value.

The prevailing attitude toward the earth by our culture of consumption has best been epitomized by mining and drilling, that is, the exploitation of the earth's finite resources rather than a renewal of those resources. It has been, in fact, a kind of functional atheism in which we vainly kiss off the presence of the divine, behaving as though we have taken possession of the earth to do with as we please. If the earth is a finite system of resources, it cannot sustain an indefinite exploitation without collapse.

Aldous Huxley, the early twentieth century novelist and critic and author of Brave New World, wrote "Modern man no longer regards Nature as in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave toward her as an overweening conqueror and tyrant."

It takes no wit to see the future of the earth if we keep on conquering it as an overweening tyrant. A good place to start is tailings from mines. I remember as a boy the mountains of rock and sand left from the gold rush miners on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada: beautifully fruitful land forever turned into a wasteland. Those images are child's play compared to the scrofulous lethal uranium contamination of modern tailings in Arizona.

In The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot wrote:
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

Gardeners are the front line in reversing this trend towards oblivion because they work directly with the earth. First, they bring the beauty of flowers and grasses and then the taste of fresh vegetables, all of which flourish in a rich soil. Gardening begins enriching the soil by that unromantic but necessary activity called composting. It's the first act of thanksgiving, cherishing the earth, enriching it by plowing the profits of the land back into the land.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2009

GOING FOR THE GOLD
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (12/14/08)

My fifty-five year old gold crown fell out while munching on a taco at the Tamale Pot. When discussing a replacement with my dentist, J. Thomas Montfort, he asked "Do you want gold again?" I replied," I'm not sure it's smart to invest in gold at 81, you know, the cost/longevity ratio."

Then he asked, "How long do you expect to live? How about your ancestors and relatives?" Taken aback, I realized that many died of cancer in midlife while several lived into their nineties. After I related these chronicles of death, he said, "Well, you've probably passed the dangerous period. How long do you expect to live?" "I'd like to hit 96, the Methuselah factor, as our financial advisor says."

Eyes twinkling, he said "Well, then, let's go for the gold." After a pause, he asked, "What're you going to do then?" I replied, "Recalibrate."

Then I remembered Hans Vaihinger's Die Philosophie des Als Ob, in which he pointed out that we really don't know much of what we claim to know, but act als ob, as if, we do. In theology it's called faith. Philosophically, it's called presupposition. Since I don't know, I decided to live als ob I'm going to hit 96.

As in dentistry, so it is in gardening. No matter a gardener's personal time-line, it's time to go for the gold, als ob, and recalibrate the garden which is best done in winter when the garden's naked of foliage with its shape and design revealed.

If a garden hasn't changed over the years, it's probably time to look at its design all over again on the assumption the gardener might've learned something as time passed. One of the advantages of age is that one picks up new ideas along the way. The old hymn reads, "New occasions teach new duties, and time makes ancient good uncouth." Winter gives our curiosity, the most useful of our emotions, an opportunity to take a hard look at our garden's design and imagine a garden more beguiling.

An effective garden in some way or another resembles nature, and nature is asymmetrical. The Grand Canyon is not a straight-line, immense concrete trench as if it were designed by the Bureau of Reclamation. If it were, it would be ugly. A tree is not perfectly balanced any more than a face. As a matter of fact, walking is an exercise in sustained imbalance. The trick to an interesting garden is a design that resembles nature as much as possible. In other words, rethink all those perennials standing in file as though they were sentinels on guard, and along with that those front yards dismally coated with gravel. Front yards shouldn't resemble the perimeters of military disciplinary stockades.

Nature is neither rectangular nor straight line. Its contours are unexpected and, thus, interesting. Curiosity is drawn by the unknown, not the known. A symmetrical, evenly balanced garden is static because it doesn't lead the eye. If a line doesn't lead the eye, soon enough the eye will stop following the line. A landscape is not done by the numbers, but with the mind's eye.

The latent power of an S curve intrigues the mind more than a straight line. In contrast, a straight line is power spent and leads only to an end, a conclusion. Life, as with a garden, is an unfinished experience. In short, T squares, rectangles, and graph paper tend to restrict the imagination and issue in homeostatic gardens, gardens without movement.

Walking along one of Flagstaff's many trails is one of the best ways to draw inspiration for a garden's design, taking note of nature's contours, its unexpected twists and turns. Since we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, mimicking its design is a valuable way to envision a garden afresh.

Indeed, following the contours of nature, our imaginations can take wing and fly to the uttermost reaches of our innermost space, as we go for the gold, fashioning our gardens anew als ob. Many are the roads to Elysium, but the fairest, as Sir Francis Bacon said, is round about.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2008

THE BILL GATES OF VEGETABLES

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (12/1/08)


The Bill Gates of vegetables, kale is kind of nerdy and really rich, rich in nutrients, not money, nutrients being more important to the good life than money although money is pretty good, too. Not only can kale deliver on the nutrients, but, being a skinny nerd, it can deliver the goodies with low calories. It doesn't have the beauty of ripe, red tomatoes, dangling from the vine, waiting breathlessly to be plucked, the elegant beauty of cosse violetto pole beans casually leaning against a trellis, or the seductive grace of red bell peppers peeking out behind the folds of their foliage, beckoning come hither. No, kale's the workhorse of the vegetable kingdom, a no-nonsense vegetable, a real donkey.

The usual question people ask about kale is: "What can you do with it?" Similar questions are often asked about nerds, "What can they do other than fix computers? How do they fit in?" Not as easily as tomatoes, cosse violette pole beans, or bell peppers, but, as with Bill Gates, fitting in or not, you'll sure want them at the table. Nutrients count.

Not to be too harsh about kale, its leaves are attractive. Russian kale has a nice broad reddish leaf with odd holes here and there and frilly edges, but as a vegetable it doesn't have nearly the charm of forellenschluss, an Austrian heirloom lettuce whose coloring resembles the back of a speckled trout. Unlike a kilted Highlander, Scotch kale is a ruffly, monochromatic, rather dull-colored affair; however, as with the Red Russian, it's jammed with nutrients. Attractive for kale, it has nothing of the charm of lolla rossa lettuce, bright red and frilly.

Tuscan kale, the Italian heirloom, is long and slender, and is thought by many foodies, such as Martha Stewart, to have a more delicate and sophisticated flavor than the others. The leaves of the double-duty Portuguese walking-stick kale grow at the end of a long stem or pole which is lots of fun for children and those who want to grow their own walking sticks.

All these differences aside, kale is das Wundergemüse. The first is that it's easy to grow. As with me, any damned fool can grow it. Also, as a cool season vegetable, it can be seeded early in the spring and harvested late into the fall after the first snowfall.

Resistant to most insects and bugs, it does fall prey to aphids, the enemy of most leafy things. At first sight, the aphids should be attacked with the hose, washing them off the underside of the leaves. If that doesn't work, attack them with insecticidal soap using a hose attachment. Be sure to wash off the soap before eating. Don't try poisons. Eating poisoned kale is unwise and cancels out the benefits.

Planting dill here and there in a bed of kale is a good defense because dill attracts ladybugs and green lacewings which crave aphids and aphid larvae. Also, the tall dill plants towering over the kale makes for a rather attractive and graceful vegetable bed.

Now, what to do with dieses Wundergemüse? First, cut out the stems. Then steam it, cut it up, and put it on pizza. It's sweeter than spinach. Also, shards of kale do well in soups, such as chicken and beef barley. Good Eats!

As a veteran foodie with a triple by-pass to show for it, I was a long time in coming to kale, but as a gardener, it's so easy to grow that I've looked for ways to use it. Being super nutritious and low on calories is a big plus, especially if one wants to avoid a repeat by-pass.

Finally, there's kale with garlic and dried, sweetened cranberries. Steam two pounds of kale (preferably Red Russian) in 1/1/2 tablespoons of salt, a teaspoon of dill weed, and 4 quarts of water, drain. Sauté a couple of minced garlic cloves in olive oil until fragrant (30 seconds). Combine kale, garlic, and cranberries, and heat for 4-6 minutes. "Bon appétit!"

A word of wisdom attributed to Bill Gates: "Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one." So eat lotsa kale and get rich.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2008

AVOID THAT SKANKY YARD!

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (11/13/08)

Meine Überfrau bought a Shop-Vac the other day. Delighted as a child with a new toy, she spent the day vacuuming her studio and the garage, even the rectangular crevasses in the concrete. This was a far cry from the glamorous sophisticate I married more than twenty years ago, who, as a flight attendant in the glory "chateaubriand and champagne" days of TWA first class, flew across the world like most people walked across the street. Not so now. Now, it's Shop-Vac Mamma. Happily, I can eat off the garage floor after having been kicked out of the house for tracking compost on the carpet.

One of SVM'S favorite words is "thoroughly" as in "thoroughly clean," while mine are "slipshod" and "slapdash," preferring the minimal expenditure of energy in an energy crisis. Just enough to get by without doing anything more than is absolutely necessary.

When I was a boy, my parents spoke of "good stock," not so much in relation to cattle or trees, but to people as in "good family." A runner-up was "hard worker."

Gardens require good stock and hard workers, especially at
autumnal clean-up time when Shop-Vacs aren't much use around the backyard. When the air turns crisp, it's hand work and hard labor with the only reward being "thoroughly clean." As SVM likes to say, "Any job done worth doing is worth doing well." The tools are clippers and rakes.

Next comes, "A place for everything, and everything in its place," a kind of horticultural mise en place. On the other hand, I like to file and store things on the floor and vacant table and desk tops. That way I can still see where I left them, no "out of sight, out of mind." In the autumn of the year, with SVM it's not only "thoroughly clean," it's also "put away." I leave out the shovel and the rake so that I don't waste precious energy putting them away and getting them out, like shoes left on the floor. But for the winter's garden, it's stick them all back in their place if you have any, and if you don't, make places. Also, roll up the hoses and store them in the garage.

Now, comes the fun part of autumnal gardening, pulling out the annuals, clipping and shaping the perennials, fighting over pruning the trees, raking up the pine needles left from the last wind storm, storing the pine needles in black plastic bags beside the curb for the guys from Environmental Services, and generally sweeping up debris. Gretchen, a true Teuton, approaches all this cleaning and straightening up with bustle and gusto. When I lag, she remonstrates with a question, "Just what do you want, a skanky yard?"

"Heaven forbid." A skanky yard? So I drag myself, trailing MS. CLEAN, like a school boy trudging his way to school, clipping, raking, getting bits of debris stuck inside my boots, expending precious energy in the name of cleanliness and orderliness.

Then came the disaster. Red/green color blind, I dumped yard debris in the green trash barrel thinking it was brown. Well, the guy from Environmental Services stopped in his tracks, climbed up on his truck, yanked out the offending bag of pine needles, lectured us in front of friend and foe, threatened us with fines, and drove off leaving me with a bag of pine needles and a profound sense of shame. Only in sustainable Flagstaff can the garbage man induce guilt.

Not that I'm paranoid, but I swore I heard tittering in the neighborhood.

The final phase of autumnal gardening is "getting ready" for spring five months ahead. It's mulching plants and trees, turning compost in the soil, spading in blood meal for the onions, raking in bone meal for the daffodils, and seemingly endless chores. Finally, after this busiest of seasons in the garden, snow blanketed the yard with the promise of rest for me as well as the earth.

Alas, in a fin de saison lust for tidiness, Gretchen announced, "You've got just four days to pick up your study before I come in and clean it up thoroughly."

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2008

DILL: A QUINTUPLE DUTY HERB

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D.

The reassuring thing about dill for high country gardeners is that it can be grown near the Arctic Circle. Although native to Eurasia and the Mediterranean basin, as a hardy herb it wandered north to Norway where it found its name, dill coming from the Old Norse word dylle, meaning to soothe or lull. Not only that, as gravlaks it became one of the great triumphs of Norwegian culinary arts, in addition to cod fish balls, lutefisk, and akevitt. Lutefisk is fish cured in lye, and akevitt is an 80 proof alcoholic drink, distilled from potatoes or grain often with dill seeds. It's about as subtle as a jack-hammer.

Gravlaks, the triumph, is salmon cured with salt, sugar, and dill weed. A weight is placed on the salmon, gradually squeezing out the water and allowing the spices to seep into the salmon. The Vikings originally buried the salmon and spices in sand above the waterline where it fermented. Neither fermented nor smoked, gravlaks is cured.

A close variety is lox, a gift of the Ashkenazic Jews of Central Europe which when served on bagels with cream cheese, onion, and capers is a gastronomic delight close in ecstasy to eggs sardou.

But back to dill (Anethum graveolens) which does quintuple duty in the garden. In the spring its leaves are herbs, and in the autumn its seeds are spices. When dried, the leaves are called dill weed. Medicinally, it helps ease the stomach and quells flatulence, hence the Old Norse dylle. The seeds are more strongly flavored than the leaves, both of them having a sweet, grassy, tea-like aroma and flavor.

As a graceful addition to a flower and vegetable garden, towering elegantly and delicately above the garden, when picked it can be used in flower arrangements as well as the kitchen. Bespangled with dew after an evening's rain, an elegantly graceful dill plant is an epiphany. Reaching a height of three feet, it should be planted to the rear of a rock garden or scattered in clumps randomly throughout a garden. If planted singly, it should be supported.

Finally, it helps vanquish aphids by hosting beneficial insects whose larvae feast on the aphids.

Betraying its origin, dill likes a well-drained, light, rich soil and lots of sun. Dill should be planted in sunny locations where it's protected from the winds. A big plus for dill is that it’s easy to grow, and year after year dill, as a volunteer, will keep popping up all over the garden. Dill shouldn't be grown near fennel because they will hybridize in a kind of botanical incest.

A cool season herb, dill can be planted a couple of weeks before the last frost. Since it is so easy to grow, it can be seeded early, and if it is allowed to seed itself in the fall, dill will pop up in the garden when ready. A light feeder, all it needs is a little 5-10-5 organic fertilizer.

Used with fish and shellfish, cottage and cream cheese, and tomato juice, dill weed is a favorite in the cuisine of the Middle East where it is used to season meats, especially lamb, and vegetables, such as spinach, hence eggs sardou. Germans use dill in potato soup, and the Greeks season grape leaves with dill weed. Dill is also used in rice pilaf. Needless to say, the seeds are used in dill pickles and in curing corned beef. Also, a sprig of dill can perk up soups, salads, and main dishes otherwise threatened with tedium.

Dill seeds have been found in the tomb of Amenhotep II. The ancient Hebrews used it for tithing. During the Middle Ages, dill was used to ward off witches, and nowadays a sprig worn on the label would do quite well while listening to politicians, television commercials, and corporate pitchmen in the employ of oil, insurance, and drug companies.

A recipe: chop dill leaves and mince garlic, mix in a paste of olive oil, salt, and pepper, rub over fillets of salmon, and bake for fifteen minutes. 'Tis a rich feast that won't coagulate the blood.
Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2008

BEETS: THE NEW SPINACH

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (8/10/08)

As a 17 year old soldier attached to the Headquarters of the Army's Alaskan Department, I belonged to a unit that amongst other things tracked criminals and saboteurs in the unmapped Alaskan wilderness long before it became a state. On patrol we always used the legendary "Alaskan Scouts" as mushers because only they knew the lay of the land.

As an 18 year old buck sergeant in charge of a squad, we once tracked a soldier whose sobriquet was "Mad Dog Romanov" because he'd beheaded his wife with an ulu knife and sabotaged a remote military installation. After five days, we brought him back to Fort Richardson.

Our swagger stick lieutenant, hallucinating in the whiteout of a sub-artic winter's night, in a panic shot off a flare. A shard landed on my back, beginning a string of operations throughout the years to remove recurring benign tumors, leaving a hole in my lower left back the size of a saucer, causing me to tilt to the left. On our return the lieutenant was dispatched to Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco, later becoming a corporate attorney.

Wanting to give us a treat, the cooks made cherry jello laced with
canned beets. The shock to my nervous system still lingers, a pity because beets are a marvelous vegetable.

Some misguided souls consider beets plebian, believing that things grown underground are Cro-Magnon. Of course, so are the patrician truffles which aren't even roots, but fungi.

The simplest way to eat this nutritious vegetable is to roast it, like a potato, only cover it with aluminum foil in the oven. After that it's easy. Pierce it with a fork, slip off its skin with a paper towel, and slice it. Some dash it with combination of butter or olive oil and salt and relish a savory vegetable. Jam-packed with powerfully nutritious compounds, vitamin C, beta-carotene, folic acid, and two different anti-oxidants, beets have received the imprimatur of the New York Times with the imprint: "The New Spinach."

The slick thing about beets is that their leaves are tasty and nutritious, too, with vitamin A, folic acid, potassium, and iron. As for the sniffy crowd who disdain beets, they might be displeased to discover that the fancy bagged salads in the market contain beet greens which are actually various shades of red.

The beet world has expanded from the old, reliable Detroit Red,
which is actually from Canada across the river from Detroit. For all those who love beets, the bestest beet of all is the English bull's blood beet. Dark red, it's leaves are great in salads, and its roots, especially when young, are a delight with a sweet depth of flavor.

In addition to the bull's blood, the fancy Italian beet, chiaogga, is also an heirloom. With its concentric rings of pink and red, it's a great treat to the eyes and tongue sliced in salads and as a side dish.

For those who want a milder, sweeter flavor with a different color there is Burpee's Golden beet. In addition to the bull's blood, Detroit Red, chiaogga, and Burpee's Golden, there are many heirloom and hybrid varieties. Almost all of them can be harvested within 50 to 60 days which makes them useful in Flagstaff's short growing season. As a cool season vegetable, the seeds can be planted about a month prior to the last spring frost.

As beets have become more fashionable, most commercial nurseries now stock seeds of many varieties, one popular package includes bull's blood, chiaogga, and Burpee's Golden.

Beets don't require a green thumb. Black and brown thumbs do well if they follow directions. The first direction is good humus, compost enriched, well-aerated soil, the kind of soil that flows through a gardener's fingers. A balanced fertilizer rich in nitrogen does best. Finally, hand weed and water regularly. Resembling Grape-Nuts, beet seeds aren't actually seeds, but fruit containing several seeds so several plants may come from one fruit which means thinning.

With the New York Times' imprimatur, beets are no longer plebian, but are now patrician, savored by both the cognoscenti and those who like good eats.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2008