My Favorite Plants (Annabelle Hydrangea)

Hydrangeas are really hot the last few years. Breeding cold heartiness into colored hydrangeas is one of the biggest money-makers in plant breeding. Endless Summer hydrangea has made millions for nurseries and garden centers since its introduction early last decade. It's still a big seller.

But for my money the hydrangea to cherish is old fashioned Annabelle with her many good-sized white flower heads that turn bronze in the fall. Annabelle is not a fuss-budget like Endless Summer, dying back to the root unless the winter is both snowy and mild. Annabelle will survive and thrive following the most miserable winter Minnesota can have, a dry, cold, windy winter. All hydrangeas are water lovers, but Annabelle will survive dry summers much better than even PeeGee, let alone Endless Summer. And while all hydrandeas will appreciate acidic (low Ph) soils, Annabelle will still bloom profusely in higher Ph, alkaline soil, producing lovely white flower heads sometimes as much as six inches in diameter.

Annabelle makes a fine accent plant on its own, a spectacular hedge, and a lovely addition to a mixed border with perennials such as heucheras, digitalis (foxglove), hostas, hemerocallis (daylilies) and alchemilla. In fact, I've always treated hydrangeas the same as perennials, cutting them to the ground either in the fall after a killing frost or in spring once the ground stops being spongy, just as I cut back perennials.

If you are the kind of gardener who likes to mess around, you should know that Annabelle can be propagated quite easily too. Propagation is a subject for a different day, but frugal gardeners and those who enjoy a little extra work will further value Annabelle hydrangeas. Endless Summer is still under patent making it illegal to propagate, though how anyone would know you had is beyond me. But since both the mother plant and the babies will probably not make it through a hard winter, the feeling of accomplishment will be short-lived, and the money spent to acquire the mother plant will be wasted too. That's one of the reasons that Endless Summer has been such a money-maker, unlike the more economical and egalitarian Annabelle.

Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer

For the last decade I have said that Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver's 2000 novel, is my favorite book. I read it in 2001 when the paperback edition came out. I loaned that copy to someone who failed to return it and bought another which I also loaned out. I loaned both copies to people who returned the book to me too. Everyone who said anything to me, that is, the people who did return the book, said, "I see why you like it," a comment that seemed to be more about me than the book. The book has an "ardent commitment to the supremacy of nature," to quote a San Francisco Chronical review cited on the back cover of my paperback volume, and so do I, in the eyes of many of my acquaintances.

But nine years is a long time, and many changes have taken place in my life over those years. Is Prodigal Summer still my favorite book? I decided I should reread it. Of course, I had to obtain a copy first so I went to Half Price Books to get one.

And I was amazed by how little of the book I remembered.

The book has three distinct story lines: Predators about Deanna the forest ranger and her love affair with Eddie Bondo and coyotes; Moth Love which is the story of Lusa, her in-laws and goats; and Old Chestnuts about the battle between Garnett and Nannie. I remembered Deanna and Eddie pretty well but had almost no recollection of Lusa's story, and remembered only that Garnett and Nannie served as comic relief.

This reading, while I found Deanna to be interesting, it was Lusa with whom I identified, her story I found the most interesting. She is the one who gets rocks and makes them into diamonds. And while Garnett and Nannie, especially Garnett, are humorous, they are also the uniting forces, pulling the three stories into one.

The over all story is about inheiritance, handing forward land, knowledge and a life's work. The life's work in Nannie's case is breeding apple trees and in Garnett's case trying to restore the almost extinct chestnut tree to North America. Usually such work is perceived to take place with government grants in top Universities. Garnett is a retired high school science teacher and Nannie is a woman with a little piece of land. They are neighbors, surrounded by hard-scratch tobacco farmers, in the mountains on the Virginia-Tennessee border. They have no grants or formal trianing and have taught themselves how to cross-breed trees, not for commercial success but from love of the trees themselves.

Lusa is a city kid who falls in love with a farmer and then must run his farm while staying true to her own values. She finds solutions using heart and ingenuity more than formal education too.

It isn't book-learning the people from Prodigal Summer hand forward. It isn't knowledge that can be condensed into a resume or that will impress much of anybody. It's practical and very specific knowledge: where in the forest a chestnut tree still struggles to survive, the husbandry of goats, how to track a coyote, which apples make the best pies. Since these are the things I most prize knowing, I still love Prodigal Summer. And now I've got a copy of the book again, I can loan it to someone again. Maybe it will be someone who loves it as much as I do!

My Diet (update 1)

First, the good news: I did lose my two pound weekly goal. Thirteen pounds, seven weeks to go!

The bad news is that I was hungry a large part of the week. I know I won't stick with a diet that means I'm hungry. When I'm hungry, I start fantasizing about donuts and chocolate sundaes and 16 ounce slabs of well-marbled beef steak. I do not think about getting out the hand weights or going for a swim. Pretty soon, I won't think about self control and a tidy, disciplined life either.

Worst of all about night hunger is sleep irregularity. I wake up after a couple hours, toss and turn, sleep briefly, awaken to toss and turn, sleep briefly and it's time to get up. Poor sleep undercuts all efforts to accomplish anything.

So I'm going to raise the amount of protein I eat, even if that slows the weight loss. I've actually got thirteen weeks until spring arrives in Minnesota. Maybe I've got fifteen. But I hope not.

New Years Resolutions - 2

The second part of losing weight is exercise, which can be problematical in the winter in Minnesota. My preferred manner of exercising is gardening, followed by walking my dog, Larkyn. At the moment, we have about a foot of snow where we don't have eight foot high piles of snow from sidewalks, streets and parking lots. Gardening is out of the question. In the winter, Larkyn doesn't like to walk outside any farther than he must to relieve himself, so walking him is less arduous than walking to my garage to get in my car.

I can do exercises, though. The two parts of my body I want to improve are my abs and my upper arms. A good abs exercise, suggested by Self, consists of pressing a playground ball between my knees while lying on my back with knees bent. I then raise my butt and lower it. Try it. I definitely feel the pull where I want to. Handily, I have a playground ball for playing foursquare and kickball with Abigail.

I also have three pound hand weights, excellent tools for toning upper arms. There is an exercise called a curl that many people are already familiar with, and any number of other possibilities for using the hand weights.

I also have an indoor swimming pool in my apartment building. While I most enjoy the pool when playing there with Abigail, a half hour to forty-five minutes of swimming and marching in the water each day should tone my body as well as burning off unwanted weight.

As an added benefit, maybe I'll be in such good shape by the time gardening season rolls around that I won't suffer first week in the garden aches and stiffness. I wish I could take Larkyn to the swimming pool to get him in shape for the walking season.

New Years Resolutions - 1

I have to lose fifteen pounds. I have to get back down around 130 pounds. I have to change my eating habits. I guess that's called going on a diet. That's my New Years Resolution: lose 15 pounds. I'm giving myself until spring to do it because Minnesotans look fat all winter from dressing in layers regardless of their weight.

I plan to lose the weight by eating much less meat and cheese. I'm going to drink much more water. I'm not going to eat very much bread. I'm not going to drink any beer and I'll drink very little wine. I will not eat cookies or ice cream or doughnuts or cake or pie or...

Chocolate is allowed as long as it's dark and one half inch square at a time. Fruits of all kinds are a mainstay--fresh mostly, but dried and frozen, especially in my oatmeal. Oatmeal, vegetables, beans and lentils, rice, nuts, yogurt, pasta, honey and maple syrup.

A typical day would start with a breakfast of Irish oatmeal with raisins, honey, almonds, some ground flax seed, and milk. For lunch I'll have a pasta salad made with lots of vegetables and an apple. For supper I'll make a soup, perhaps spicy red lentil, and a green salad dressed with a fruity vinaigrette.

Larkyn loves vegetables, fruit and yogurt too, so he'll be perfectly happy to share the diet with me.

I suspect it'll be a cost saving manner of eating too, with splurges being marinated artichokes rather than a slab of meat, or pomegranate juice instead of a roasting chicken.

I'm excited to find out whether I'm happy eating a largely vegetarian diet. I'm excited to start losing belly fat. I'm curious whether lower weight translates into a higher energy level. I'm curious whether I'll stick with my new diet or be one of the majority of resolution makers who stays with the new behavior a week or less. I want to be one of the minority who succeeds. Wish me luck!