Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Respect and Reverence

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Respect and reverence make us human. Our struggle for food, shelter and clothing has no respite. War, famine, plague are widespread. Urban gardeners light candles, our containers, ingenious sidewalk strips, backyard plots, community gardens, and farm shares are beacons. Optimism and love are their strongest attributes. We are not hopeless. Each tended plant manifests life’s glorious best, their silence is no distance. Fibers unworn on pavement, those parts of us less valued in the marketplace, crave expression. Close at hand are many approaches for all of us. We need only turn to the green places. Another world is unknown to lunch breaks, commutes, ubiquitous cells, or social networks. Sometimes our horizon is strictly human. Lift up from pursuits, take precious time to look over the edge, beyond to the life around us. Enter Eden, our origin, its candle sunshine. Here is peace and abundance. Rejoice, hold hands, pluck those strings seldom heard, behold the summer garden.

Near me is a neighborhood once the ultimate in Victorian prosperity. Much is left paused in some 19th century decade and many recall the days of giant elms and chestnuts. In one backyard is a large apricot tree. Concrete surrounds it. A rusted iron pipe grape arbor covers the short driveway and much of the yard, underneath are chairs and table. Is there any sight more beautiful than a tree full of fruit? An old man came from under the shady tree and told me, “My Italian grandfather sold fruit from a handcart kept here”. I knew I was in for a story and accepted a drink. “One night the family ate left over apricots and stuck the pits between cobblestones. They came before WWI and I have the wood box the apricots came in, they kept it to remember the American name. “Elberta”. The tree has overlooked love, marriage, birth and death for generations. I had to have one and four years ago I planted 3 apricot trees.

Apricots support entire cultures in the tumultuous mountain regions held by the Taliban. Brought west by Alexander’s march in classical times, the apricot is a small tree available in dwarf sizes. Apricots are essential in Mid-eastern cuisine and are especially beloved by Greeks for liquors and syrups. Apricots are delicious and have given their name to a color. The trees form lovely shapes and offer small white to pink blooms in April, a month famous for fickle choices, will it snow or go into the 60’s is the daily common variation.

The USPS delivered little more than broomsticks with minute hints of roots, mine were promptly planted in holes filled with bonemeal, compost, peat, seaweed, the wet stems dusted with Rootone, a root hormone that stimulates root development. Firmly planted in sunny spots, staked to reduce wind’s root stressing power and loosely wrapped in re-purposed “Grown in Honduras” burlap bags, I watered. Grow? Oh yes. Fruit? Hesitant.

Mine are now vigorous trees. Stakes long gone. Strawberries crowd around their feet, tree bark separate from a permanent mulch beneath the drip line. Strawberries colonize thick mulches to my joy, the best yielding strawberries are from runners sent out during the summer from mother plants. The 8 inch high, thick triple leafed, serrated edges of strawberry leaves form pleasing dense mats under the fruit trees. Delicious strawberries and an endless supply of new plants thrive in the light shade under the apricots. Although ordered as dwarves, the apricots grew far larger, much more like my Italian friends. It’s ok, urban gardeners carefully dole out space but I do not resist fate nor question success. Spring and fall I prune back spurious growth and hope.

I hand pollinate apricots, Korean and Bartlett pears, and 3 types of peaches, an early, mid-season and late season sequence. My garden has never known pesticides or herbicides. Insects pollinate flowering plants and are in general decline elsewhere. Within my garden is a fascinating world of native bees, wasps, Bumblebees and fluctuating populations of honeybees. In horror I watched Asian pear farmers forced to hand pollinate their crops after hard hitting insecticides have eliminated most insects. Yet this ancient technique is neither tedious nor as desperate as we transition older urban neighborhoods into greener, did more life fill spaces. Rather, I find the handiwork supremely satisfying. The 29 cent water color brush dusts pollen from small bloom to bloom without script or directions. Wind may assist pollination, a short ladder for a small man like me helps get up to the blooms. Chilly April is a lifetime from hot July. The random exercise in attention quiets the mind. I hand pollinated to avoid environmental devastation, I continue to pollinate for less chemical, personal reasons.

The results are best expressed in hordes of fruit. Countless immature apricots and peaches spontaneously fall to ground, each a lump in the nearby turf. Squirrels are a nuisance. Once sunny spaces shrank into semi-shade. Pruning more ruthless. One apricot is not much weight, hundreds bend supple branches downward, thinning fruit is advised yet time is so precious and it takes much more fortitude than mine to remove possibility from the table.

Lightening cracked and a breath later, thunder. Rain poured down. Childhood happiness flooded every inch of skin, bare feet on the turf, oblivious to anything but the moment. Sooner than expected, warm sunshine, diamond lights glistened upon every leaf, and another crack, more thunder, darker, I sought shelter another downpour. I striped and showered, recalling all the kids who came home salty and gritty from the beach to soap up in swim suits and sprayed with the hose, soap suds foaming on the lawn. Gleeful squeals replaced inadequate words, cold water charged us with health and vigor. My practical father, “wash the car too”, his ark sized Plymouth Fury III station wagon just about squeezed the clan and dogs back and forth to the beach. The station wagon was my mother’s idea, sons, daughters, cousins, friends, neighbors, clam rakes, wire baskets, towels, dogs, rafts, all preferred the back of Dad’s truck to get down the street to the cove. “Everyone bring back a quahog” the only restriction. Gallons of RI style chowder fed us, our regional chowder being simple indeed, clear and rich with quahogs, potatoes, butter, parsley salt and pepper.

I found the apricot tree in mute splendor. A large branch lay athwart French hollyhocks and onto the grassy lanes that surround the central bed. Apricots spun outwards, most however remained on the branch, a touch of glow on their shoulders. I bit into one, “hmm, tart”. “only if, almost” briefly crossed my tongue. The branch hung broken through but connected to the truck by a thick piece of bark. A saw and loppers would clean up the debris and dozens of fruit tossed into the beebalm and lilacs would soon disappear. Yet, hopeful I wait. Two days later and the branch’s leaves are bright green, the apricots more golden. The hollyhocks? Bright and in bloom, down but undefeated. The apricot has much more fruit, today the glorious summer garden testifies to life’s unquenchable thirst for expression, to grow and bring another generation into being. This is a world apart from our search for food clothing and shelter. The world independent and greater than all of us maybe silent but is far from mute. Gardeners are grateful to be part of it, whole trees or broken branches, we are fruitful and multiply. Behold the glorious summer garden.

Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.