I just came in from 10 minutes of sitting with the dawn chorus and a cup of coffee. I want to want to stay there for hours but the truth is my monkey mind starts to jump around soon after putting my bum on the cold stone steps where I like to perch. The crescendo of twittering birds was marvelous though. Not like an English dawn chorus, with blackbird and thrush melodies intertwined. But lovely.
I want to immerse myself right here for years, so that one day instead of undifferentiated twittering I'll hear the individual voices of the birds and know who they are and why they are speaking. I can pick out just a few - dark eyed juncos and wrentits, chattering jays, cheeping chickadees, and a screaming red tailed hawk - with the odd rooster thrown in (and a Harley on highway 17, just a couple miles to the north).
Lester Rowntree would sit for days observing California native plants in their habitat. I want to be like her. But, and here's the thing (as Bill Bryson would say). She was there to ferret out cold-tolerant, gardenworthy plants that she could sell to East Coast gardeners. Hence the name of her book, Hardy Californians. That's the paradox of Lester. She wasn't like "us" - our generation of native plant gardeners with our ecological concerns for fostering local flora and fauna. She wanted to mix it up:
Regardless, my dream now has a domain name:
growsrighthere.com.
One day maybe it will have a web site, too, and a nursery of local natives for local gardeners to go with it. And maybe one say I'll become a "plantsman" with the deep knowledge I admire in Jeffrey Caldwell (local native flora and fauna expert) -- and in Lester Rowntree.
I want to immerse myself right here for years, so that one day instead of undifferentiated twittering I'll hear the individual voices of the birds and know who they are and why they are speaking. I can pick out just a few - dark eyed juncos and wrentits, chattering jays, cheeping chickadees, and a screaming red tailed hawk - with the odd rooster thrown in (and a Harley on highway 17, just a couple miles to the north).
Lester Rowntree would sit for days observing California native plants in their habitat. I want to be like her. But, and here's the thing (as Bill Bryson would say). She was there to ferret out cold-tolerant, gardenworthy plants that she could sell to East Coast gardeners. Hence the name of her book, Hardy Californians. That's the paradox of Lester. She wasn't like "us" - our generation of native plant gardeners with our ecological concerns for fostering local flora and fauna. She wanted to mix it up:
American horticulture would take longer strides if plantsmen in the East knew the Pacific Coast material better and if we on the Pacific Coast were more familiar with the plants and growing conditions in the East. Kipling's 'East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet' need not apply to gardeners and plants. (Hardy Californians lxxx)Now - I don't know if she had any concerns about invasiveness of California natives in Eastern gardens. I'd have to unearth more of her writings. I don't want to vilify the woman. And maybe we who obsess over ecological purity are just fiddling while Rome burns. I hope not, though as spring ends, and the weeds I didn't get to go to seed, I wonder.
Regardless, my dream now has a domain name:
growsrighthere.com.
One day maybe it will have a web site, too, and a nursery of local natives for local gardeners to go with it. And maybe one say I'll become a "plantsman" with the deep knowledge I admire in Jeffrey Caldwell (local native flora and fauna expert) -- and in Lester Rowntree.
Comments
Lester sounds like she was of her time in her interests to find salable plants in the landscape. I'll admit that I often wonder "How would that plant do in my garden?" when I'm out hiking, so I don't know that I've come that far in how I look at gardens and nature. Still, I wonder what the next generation will have to say about all of us.