Twittering

140 characters, including spaces. That's what you get with a Twitter. It's like writing a haiku. What can you say in 140 characters? What can you say in a haiku?

I usualy tweet in the morning, after I've read the online NY Times and whatever email I've gotten over night. I'm looking out my slider to the east where the sun is rising or risen or the clouds are so heavy I can't tell if there's a sun or not. Regardless of cloud cover, birds are feeding at my tube feeder. I may be going to work or not. I'm usually eating yogurt with fruit and nuts. Sometimes the Times has irritated me. Other times the CBS Morning Show, on TV, is annoying me. Often Larkyn is sitting with me but sometimes, especially the dark mornings, he has burrowed himself into his blanket and gone back to sleep.

Sometimes I read a lot of the twitters I'm following, some political, some educational, some weather reports, a dachshund twitterer, crafters and New Agers, would-be gurus of the social media, some celebrities, a couple baby-boomers, many gardeners and landscapers, and Twin Cities eateries. There's someone who is obsessed with Robert Goren, or Vincent D'onofrio, of Law and Order Criminal Intent, but I can't find Vincent himself twittering, which would be more fun. There's someone who makes and sells birdhouses but doesn't twitter very often.

These are the twitterers who follow me too. I give them an update on my weather, birds, dog and mood. Once in a while I say something ascerbic about political logjams. I never threaten violence against congresspeople, though I sometimes feel like threatening. But threatening always reminds me of feeling helpless as a parent and yelling something about cleaning your room at one of the kids. Like they were going to grab some rags and a bucket of hot, soapy water? Like congress is actually going to deal with a problem?

Those are my twitters. I apparently got one guy from Michigan to check out my blog. He kindly told me about a pink-blooming Annabelle hydrangea. Fun. And so are 140 characters, including spaces.

My Favorite Plants - Littleleaf Linden

When I was a little kid, there was what I thought of as a basswood tree on the boulevard of the house next door to mine. The tree didn't interest me much, not like the maple on my own house's boulevard, or the oaks around the corner. But the seeds--quarter inch, perfectly round, dark brown balls--fascinated me. Like little beads, they rolled into the cracks between sidewalk blocks and into the street's gutters, millions of them, apparently. I didn't think they were messy, I thought they were cool. The tree was messy because of the suckers the neighbors never pruned.

When I started working in the garden and landscape trade, and selling trees, I became aware of lindens as a tree that grew at approximately the same rate as maple, important for potential tree purchasers who already had six or seven maples and couldn't be talked into a Kentucky coffeetree or an oak, trees most people think their great-grandchildren might get to enjoy. I hadn't fallen in love with trees at that point. I liked trees, but I didn't know them very well, thinking of myself as a perennialist, which was actually my job title too.

So it came as an epiphany (one of the only true epiphanies like in James Joyce that I've ever experienced) when I realized that the lindens in ten gallon pots that I blathered about to customers were, a few years on, those wonderful emerald green trees with the spade-shaped canopes. Littleleaf lindens, that is. Not American lindens, the basswood of my childhood. American lindens are huge and sprawling trees while its more civilized cousin, the littleleaf or European linden, doesn't begin to sprawl until it is almost in old age.

Lindens also bloom, and when they do, they produce a marvelous aroma that I associate with early summer. The blooms attach to those round, bead-like seeds that I got such enjoyment from as a kid. Definitely millions of them. I don't mind sweeping any more than I mind weeding, so once all the seeds are down, sweep them up and go on with life. It's not like weeping willows that drop whips every day so you can never keep up with them. If you prune the suckers a couple times in the growing season, you have a beautiful and shapely tree suitable to even a small yard.

Diet Update - 2

I stopped getting on a scale when I was able to get into my favorite dark blue jeans and wear them comfortably all day. That made me think that I look thinner and I don't want a scale to tell me it's all in my head.

I've been eating a lot of barley. I'm basically making fried rice only with barley instead of rice. I like the nutty flavor. I think barley combines really well with a wide variety of vegetables, whether onions and garlic or carrots, broccoli and various greens.

I'm also eating a lot of fruit, mostly citrus this time of year, but also bananas and blueberries.

Finally, I'm eating a lot of beans and lentils which are warming and filling.

What I'm missing the most are potatoes. I love potatoes, fixed any way it's possible to fix them. My favorite though is the simple baked potato, the lazy cook's best friend. I can't even write about them this briefly without longing for one.

I think I'll go eat a handful of pecans.

My Favorite Plants (Autumn Joy Sedum)

I love most sedums. Among trouble-free plants, sedums must top the list. Autumn Joy tops my list of sedums because it tolerates any soil, has low moisture requirements, combines beautifully with a multitude of other plants, is extremely hardy, is easily propagated, stands up straight in full sun unless overwatered and has a new character for every season, including winter.

The last point is the most significant because, while most perennials look great when they are blooming, and many provide excellent foliage interest much of the growing season, Autumn Joy looks great even in the winter landscape. Turning a pretty brick red in later fall, Autumn Joy stands out spectacularily againt snow in winter.

In spring, Autumn Joy emerges from tightly furled buds into a seafoam green plant, setting buds in early summer. The buds turn pale pink which brightens through the summer. In late August the buds open to glowing magenta flowers. Then the whole plant--flowers, leaves and stems-- turn the magnificent brick red that pursists through winter.

In very early spring the plant's stems are hollow and can be pulled out just before the soil warms enough for the plant to reemerge into a new season.

The new "improved" Autumn Joy cultivars, with names like Autumn Brilliance, look like Autumn Joy on steroids. If you like that Amazing Hulk quality, maybe you'll like the improved upright sedums. I question why such a fine plant needs improvement. I'm all for improving the resistance to rust of phlox, or to apple scab of crabapple trees. Improvement that merely puffs up an already excellent plant seems to me unnecessary, at best a marketing ploy. How about Japanese Beetle-resistant roses?