Kimberly Steele

A nasty fog has descended upon Illinois over the last few days because of the Canadian forest fires, and the local news media has worked itself up into a hysterical lather, declaring the air as nearly unbreathable and issuing ominous warnings about it being as bad as smoking eight cigarettes.  Like with most slow-moving disasters, I have adopted an attitude of LOL shrug move on.  The evil mist that is on Illinois like white on rice seems an appropriate metaphor for the state of the astral plane right now, for what it's worth.

When the collective astral is bad, and I believe it is as bad as I have ever known it to be in my fifty year lifetime with no end in sight, there is no other recourse except being the change you want to see in the world.  Fighting it outside of defensive practices like a banishing ritual is pointless.  Which head of the hydra do you fight today?  For me, being the change means learning how to garden.  I am grateful for the home I bought eight short years ago, which was a blank slate with no trees save two dying elms.  It has come a long way since then, I think, and it is only this nice because of the help of my family and my neighbors.

Despite my neighborhood being a little sketchy, with the hanging question "was that noise gunshots or fireworks?" being a thing especially when we're nowhere near a holiday, I have not invested in a round-the-yard fence as many of my neighbors have done.  Though we've had annoying incidents of people running through and sometimes even loitering in the yard, I am not a fan of fences because they prevent people from seeing my gardens.  I love seeing other people's gardens and it's possible someday I will make myself a bumper sticker that reads "I NOTICE YOUR GARDENING".  It's true.  No matter how small the effort, I notice people's gardens.  I notice gardens around office buildings and gas stations.  I notice the plantings around the Olive Garden (arbor vitae and catmint) and the bank (tall grass and daylilies).  I hate lawns.  When I see a lawn or an ugly, overlarge house, it seems to have a pall of sadness around it not unlike a Canadian fire fog.  When there is a beautiful garden, it slows people down.  Not all of them, but when there is a lovely garden, there's always a few who will take a stroll who would not have done so otherwise.  If they have a home in the area, it's possible the sight of a lovely garden will get them outside to work on their garden and a healthy, win-win competition will arise.  

The herb garden.  Top left corner is pink and white yarrow.  Top right has catmint, red sorrel, ubiquitous milkweeds (Asclepias syriaca from seed foraged from the forest preserve) and a new lemon balm.  Bottom right is sage and wild monarda/bee balm.  Bottom left is mint.  Stella d'Oro daylilies in the middle: every single Stella in my yard is from plants I divided from the overcrowded plants in the front of my old music studio commercial space. The raised beds were originally from Walmart, I believe.  They're cedar but they've seen better days.  The 2 story cat condo/feeding area attached to the shed features heated cubbyholes that we stuff with straw for additional insulation.  The heat comes from dog warming pads inside the cubbies.  Obviously we only turn the heat on in winter.  The cats also have a heated water bowl that gets a lot of traction from raccoons, squirrels, bugs, the occasional woodchuck and coyote, etc.

 

The pear tree finally produced more than a few fruits this year.  Last year the squirrels ate what few fruits were on the tree, so we will see what happens.  I have been giving the feral cats some food near the tree in hopes of chasing the squirrels away.  I recently planted a peach-colored climbing rose you can see by the fence.  I'm hoping the rose will climb and deter squirrels from using the arbor to get up to the pears.  That said, I'm not one of those people who truly gives a damn if the squirrels eat my pears.  I have better things to do with my time.

The front yard.  Mostly this is daylilies, some boxwoods, an elm shrub that is actually the leftover of the elms that used to be in front of the house, spirea bushes in the middle of each planting area, and Autumn Joy sedums, which is what is in the fake copper urns.  I started putting perennials in containers this year and I may never go back to buying annuals again.  Perennials don't require anywhere near as much water as annuals, even when they are in containers.  The Autumn Joy sedums are another plant I don't buy: most of them are divisions from one or two donated plants.  Sedums are extremely easy to start: just snip off a cutting and stick it in the ground!

My baby oak tree, Mr. Oakinawa, surrounded by Echinacea purpurea.  He is about three or four years old.  I found him growing in one of my garden beds and transplanted him and kept him watered for a few years.  Now he's more of a sapling.  Yes, you guessed it, the E. purpurea (also known as coneflower) are from seeds collected from my neighborhood.  I don't buy coneflowers.  

In the beds, besides Tommy the feral cat, I'm growing brussels sprouts (left nearest), cucumber, tomato accompanied by some renegade borage and dill, and Jerusalem artichokes.  The Jerusalem artichokes are a perennial but they've been very disappointing, so I am thinking I will pull all of them out this fall.

On this side of the beds, the nearest are some early bush tomatoes, buckwheat (not sure what to do with it, it was a free seed from Baker's Creek), another tomato growing with some calendula and dill, and elecampane.

Asiatic lilies are blooming but my larger daylilies are not.  The big plant in the background is a Russian sage I bought from a fellow gardener who sells seedlings on Facebook.

Tommy the feral cat -- he's a funny guy.  He likes to greet my students.  Irises in the front are sadly bloomed out.  They were pretty.  They were from a local plant swap last year.  The front garden has a bit of everything.  Hostas, catmint, daylily, roses, bugbane, spurge, catmint, English ivy, vinca, ferns, coneflowers, some yew bushes I started from cuttings, hydrangea, and grasses kindly given to me by my parents' neighbor.  I am working on extending the perennial garden across what is left of the front lawn.  

Please feel free to comment on anything and everything but keep in mind I delete profanity worse than the b word.

Baby oak is getting larger!  I planted coneflowers and borage around him.

Rose of Sharon -- I pruned both of mine very hard this year and multiple times.  It has lots of buds.  Hopefully next month's photos will feature blooms.

The work in progress... I meant to do more plantings in the front.  As I mentioned in my Spring Garden post, the boxwood experiment is over (they hate the front yard) unless they're in containers.  My plans are to put more hardy perennials in the front that can take crappy conditions.  The front garden you see here has got the worst soil in my entire yard.

This is one of the few shady spots in the yard.  It's my favorite spot because it's the most established.  The hostas come in thickly enough to keep weeding to a minimum.  The pear tree hasn't fruited yet but it provides some nice shade.  In this garden, there is a Rose of Sharon, many varieties of hosta, ferns, a black cohosh, catmint, borage, and purple coneflower.




Raspberry bushes -- they are producing the sweetest berries I've ever tasted right now!  Also various daylilies, rudibeckias sown from seed, and a butterfly bush that is about to bloom.

Borage growing alongside the tomatoes.

One of our many ferals in the sea of herbs and Stella D'Oro daylilies that is the Celtic Cross garden.  I never bought a single Stella daylily, by the way, these are 100% divisions from the plants from the front of the office building where I rent space.


Milkweed is blooming!  This milkweed was started from seeds a few years ago.  I gathered the seeds at the local forest preserve sometime around the autumn of 2017.  I just let it grow in the beds.  Butterflies and bees love it.  

The state of my Northern Illinois garden as of Spring 2021... we moved to this house 5 years ago and it was a blank slate. The house was formerly owned the house was tiny, old, and in terrible shape and so was the yard. Upon moving in, we had no other choice than to remove two mostly dead Siberian elms that threatened to fall down on the house. Once the elms were gone, the yard had nothing in it except grass and a large pile of junk in the back.

The first tree to go in was a Home Depot pear tree that is pretty enough, but has yet to bloom. The second was a pussy willow that started as a handful of twigs from my neighbor's bush. Her name is Saille. We almost thought Saille wasn't going to make it for a few windy city years, but she has survived and is now thriving. The next tree was a maple seedling, one of thousands deposited by the old pair of maples on the parkway. After that came Cedric, the rescued sapling from the area behind my work. Finally, there was the baby oak, the one I've asked for prayers for at JMG's Ecosophia Magic Monday.

The rest of the garden is a learning curve, for sure. We are in Zone 5, which means hard winters that arrive in January and last until early March, unless it is a rough winter year, and then the winter lasts from late October until early April.

Ms. Piggy is one of our feral cats who you can see in the background at the edge of the fence on the ground if you look closely. She is the mother of Tommy, the white-orange feral who lets me pet him.
The Celtic cross garden. It's laid out in gravel. Can't say I am a fan of gravel: it likes to travel, specifically indoors. Plus it is a pain to keep weeded. The brick my husband laid in the front is much easier, especially when we need to get the leaves or snow off the walk.



My friend Ted gave me this gorgeous division of his grandpa's heirloom rhubarb a few years ago. It makes for great rhubarb cobbler!



Yarrow in the Celtic garden. There is some lavender in that quadrant as well and a big hyssop. I'm most likely going to dry or tincture most of the herbs in the Celtic garden this year. I love how yarrow spreads!



This spinach survived the hard Illinois winter! I threw an old window over the bed to keep the worst of the frosts off. My friend's Russian kale survived too, so I'm hardly unique.



Wild monarda, a regional native that I include in my Northern Illinois Prairie Ogham. There's also a sage I bought last year and oregano.



Side garden area with a volunteer spurge (the dark brown purple thing) and hostas. All of the hostas were divisions from my parent's garden... we don't buy hostas!



Boxwoods were a disaster this year. Every single one that was touched by snow-melting salt got blighted beyond recognition. I lost about half of them. I propagated a few of them from cuttings and those are the ones you see in the pots. Nevertheless, aside from propagating the ones I have, I think I'm done with boxwoods. They just don't do well in northern Illinois.



I thought my black cohosh had died last year... it was a division from my parents' garden. Black Cohosh is a Midwestern native and its root is good for treating hot flashes and other women's hormonal ailments. I was absolutely delighted when it came back!



More of the side yard. There are ferns, hostas, spurge, catmint, a pink phlox (though it may have died) ivy, the aforementioned black cohosh, and lily of the valley.



Cedric is doing great! I made sure I watered him (he might be a she, actually, and if it is, I'll call her Cedrica) all throughout the dry summer last year. He/she got a bit taller just in the last few weeks.



The baby oak! I found this oak sapling in my garden -- there is a great big oak in the neighbor's yard I believe it descended from. My hopes are that it will become huge and live long after I die!

True confession: I talk to trees. Better yet, they answer back and we have conversations. I'm aware that this isn't "normal". I believe I'm far less crazy these days -- talking to trees, my car, the gods, thanking my food -- than I was when I didn't believe nature could answer back if you talked to it.

People (freaks) like me who talk to trees don't discriminate. I talk to trees in the forest preserve. I talk to trees I pass driving to my office. During breaks, I talk to a tree who is growing against the back end of the building where I work. I'm so fond of chatting with trees, I made a video about how I do it in an effort to encourage others to strike up conversations with the trees in their lives:



Let's call the tree in the back of my work Mama. She is the same tree I was leaning against in the video. Mama is an Eastern cedar. She's had half her upper bulk sheared to accommodate the building. Mama isn't a particularly happy tree and she's also by power lines. I knew this when I entered the relationship. Unfortunately, both Mama and I foresee a high probability that the building will be torn down (it's a rickety piece of crap) along with Mama, prematurely ending her life. The town where I work is infamous for its ruthless appetite for demolishing independent, beloved small businesses in order to install mega-chains. That's why Mama and I suspect it's only a matter of time.

After I made my video, I came back to visit Mama and she sent me a jolt of panic. Only then did I see a small version of Mama about ten feet away from her growing in the crack between the building and the ground. I'm not sure how, but Mama reproduced. Her little baby grew along with a bunch of weeds in the unkempt area between the decrepit wooden steps and the parking lot.

"He's in trouble!" She said, and I don't mean aloud. I heard her say this to whatever part of my head is able to perceive feelings from others. I suspect it's the exact same part of the brain that can tell someone is mad at me or pleased with me before they speak; that is to say clairaudience of this nature is a talent I believe every human being possesses.

"You have to save him!" Said Mama.

Of course Mama was right. Modern city dwellers would never dream of seeing a tree growing in the crotch of a city commercial property and its parking lot as a being worthy of a second thought, let alone respect. The small tree was destined for removal as a nuisance. How dare anything wild grow where Man's sacred concrete has been erected! To most modernites, communicating with trees is a relic of childhood at best and an omen of schizophrenia at worst. But I digress.

My inner thoughts were something akin to "Ugh..." The little tree was close enough to underground wires to be dangerous if dug with a metal spade.

I just happened to have a small plastic garden shovel, so I fetched it and began carefully and laboriously digging through the gravel and weeds with no promises to Mama. Fifteen solid minutes of struggling and sweating later, I somehow managed to finesse the baby cedar out of the corner, landing square on my behind several times as I jockeyed for the right position and shimmied to avoid potential electrocution.

Once the literally dirty deed was done, Mama sent me a feeling of relief so palpable I can still mentally conjure it months later. This overwhelming rush of emotion was tinged with bittersweet melancholy. Her child was free and safe but she would never again be physically with him. As a result, I felt tired and wired. The little tree was unearthed and temporarily housed in a busted popcorn bowl serving as an impromptu pot.



I was mentally and physically drained. I could feel Mama's gratitude and sadness reverberating through me in alternate waves, and I knew I had to get home as fast as possible to plant Cedric in his new forever home, my front yard.

The neighborhood's cedars whispered across blocks and the great oaks, elms, plentiful maples, and copious elms and black walnuts bore witness as I dug a hole for Cedric the Unplanned. I placed him into the soil as a light spring evening rain began to patter on my receding hairline of a lawn. I said a silent Druid prayer as I watered him in.

A few months later, I am happy to report Cedric is doing swell. He seems to have taken root and sports lively chartreuse on the tips of his branches. After work, I talked to Mama today to let her know he is OK. She thanked me again and said that she has already been updated through the "tree grapevine", whatever that may be.