Happy 2nd anniversary...

The golden, silky petals of a double Icelandic poppy, Papaver nudicaule, almost ready to be carried away by the wind.

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After a couple of hectic weeks of driving my girls to their summer camps and then having our house full of friends, I almost missed the second anniversary of my blog. I was trying to remember the reason for starting it, but could not come up with nothing more exotic than a pinch of loneliness caused by moving into a new country, and maybe a dash of curiosity about getting something out there... It felt a bit like I was sending my own tiny messenger satellite out to the boundless space of connected gardeners and other like-minded souls and waiting if there would be any signals back.

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The name of my blog, The Intercontinental Gardener, was something of a joke from the beginning, referring to the relatively nomadic gardening life I've led so far (both Nomad and Nomadic Gardener were in use those days, even if they both now have disappeared from the blogging universe). At times, I've felt tempted to change it to something more relaxed... I mean, some days I've definitely felt more like "Garden Punk" or "Heavy Petal" than the proper "Intercontinental Gardener". But somehow the name stuck, and now it would feel strange to see anything else on the top of the page.

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Looks like this guy is sticking its tongue out...
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During these two years, I've connected with many talented, writing garden people. Karen (Greenwalks) was one of my earliest commenting visitors. Being a natural connector, she organized Seattle area bloggers to meet at irregular intervals, which is how I came to know Daniel (Daniel Mount Gardens), Jean (Jean Bradbury) and many others here. In the early days, Tina (the Garden Design Chronicle) from New Zealand was living in Melbourne, and her beautiful blog felt like a wonderful greeting from the town where I had spent four wonderful years. Nilla (then the Reluctant Gardener, now Utanpunkt), won my heart with her insightful writing and exquisite photos, and not surprisingly, she is now working on a collection of novels. I can't wait to get to read them in print. Alice Joyce's amazingly energetic travel blog Bay Area Tendrils gave ideas for gardens to be visited on my trips to California. Ruben (Rubens Rabatter) always manages to make me glad with his sympathetic posts, and James Golden's (View from Federal Twist) quite philosophic posts about his wonderfully sensitive, naturalistic garden are a constant inspiration, that I will keep in mind when I start working with my own garden in Sweden again.

*A dark maroon, speckled and nameless lily from Marian's garden.

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Of many visitors I will never know more than the country and city address they leave on the tracker of my blog. Many of them land on my blog by searching for "Fergus Garret", "Villa Mairea" or "Daniel Hinkley, Windcliff" (all three top key words for finding this blog - amazingly, the word "stumpery" also get many hits...). Some come from faraway, exotic places that I sometimes search myself to see where they are. Some come from places that I have a personal connection to. For example, I would love to know who visited from Iittala, a small town in Finland where both my mother and the famous Savoy vase by Alvar Aalto come from. Or, who visited from the tiny, dusty village of Birregurra in the rainless countryside of Victoria. It felt like a distant, eucalyptus-scented greeting from an unknown friend. While living in Australia, we often stopped at this sleepy village on our way from Melbourne to Apollo Bay, bought a cup of coffee from the old ladies at the local coffee shop and let the girls have romp at the playground before entering the last, winding miles that lead to the beaches of the Great Ocean Road. The improbable name of Birregurra brought vivid memories back, and I would dearly have wanted to ask how things were back there, and if the drought had loosened its grip.

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So what now, after two years and 126 posts? I'm not sure. I sometimes ask myself if I should be blogging at all, as it can be extremely time consuming. But at the same time, it feels like keeping a living log about my thoughts of all things related to gardens and gardening. I love the spontaneity and directness of posting my little writings; it is so completely different from the long and laborious process of getting something out in print. So I guess I will just keep writing, one post at a time, and see where this blogging life is going to take me.

Delicious thugs

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As a sad outcome of the recent housing bubble, there are a couple of empty, unfinished houses in my neighborhood, waiting for the good times (and builders) to return in some distant future. I find it fascinating to see how fast the lush, abundant nature of the Pacific Northwest has claimed the land back, and filled it with such a rampant tangle of blackberries that they make the roses covering Sleeping Beauty's castle seem lethargic.

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In my innocence, I thought that these vigorous plants were native - they surely look like they are having a ball here - until I found them on the list of noxious weeds in this state. Only the tiny, trailing dewberry, Rubus ursinus, is native to the Pacific Northwest. The thugs in my pictures are Himalayan blackberries, one of the two non-native species of blackberries that were introduced here by two unsuspecting Europeans, eager to find new berry varieties to grow in the fertile soil of the Northwest.

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Dr. Laurea was the first to try his luck with blackberries, and imported the evergreen blackberry, R. laciniatus, from Hawaii some time in the 1850s. Some thirty years later, horticulturalist Luther Burbank acquired a package of seeds of the Himalayan blackberry, R. procerus, from an seed exchange in India. The seeds proved to be more than the success Burbank had hoped on. Proud of his novelty, Burbank wrote in his catalogue that "the Himalayas would produce buckets of berries on wines that could grow 100-200 feet in only one season." Obviously, he didn't think this would be any kind of a risk, and definitely did not foresee having just introduced one of the area's most notorious weeds ever, capable of covering countless acres of land with impenetrable, thorny thickets.

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I guess that in the horticultural hall of fame, these guys score only a bit above the Englishman who imported rabbits to Australia, even if it has said in their defence that those days nobody quite knew about the huge risks of importing new species to new continents. And at least they were trying to grow something edible, instead of just wanting to introduce the ancient sport of fox hunting to their newly established society...

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Anyway, being an eager scavenger of all things edible, I'm already looking forward to the blackberry season ahead. It seems to become a good one: the wines are full of flowers and tiny, green berry babies. Almost no-one bothers to pick them in my neighborhood, which means that all the more are left to me and a couple of old ladies of Asian heritage, all of us probably the only ones eccentric (or greedy?) enough to do this. In two months time, we'll all be standing amongst the thorny wines again, picking the sweet, juicy berries with our sticky fingertips stained dark purple.
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Gossip in the garden

Ohhh... do you really mean...? Are you quite sure?

Only a moment ago, I stole a picture of these bursting little ladies,

eagerly sharing the latest tattle of the rain-drenched garden.

I think I heard something about Mrs. Papaver's dress looking already quite ragged, but I might just as well be wrong.

Quietly, I left the scene, careful not to disturb their discussion.

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I don't think they noticed me.

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Listening to a greenfinch

Hilding Linnqvist: Song of the heart, 1920. Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
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As I was younger, I loved studying the sumptuous flower still-lives painted by the Dutch artists of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Their lavish and colorful bouquets, containing flowers from all four seasons in one single picture and complemented by carefully selected memento mori, could hold my attention for a long time. I loved to trace the delicate, skillful brushstrokes that formed the silky petals and see-through drops of water that still, after centuries, carried a message of our earthly mortality and a promise of an eternal life in paradise.

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Gradually, my fascination with those magnificent paintings cooled down, and even if I continue to love gardens and flowers, only a few artists who depict them seem to be able to capture my interest. One of them is Hilding Linnqvist, whose naivist painting 'Song of the heart' has been one of my favorites for years. It is tiny, only 37x24 cm (or 16x9 inches), and in it, a little green bird seems to be singing its heart out on the top of a bunch of French marigolds. A dove sits besides the glossy iron urn, gazing aimlessly at something outside the frame.

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The whole painting is a lyrical poem of symbolic meanings. The dove represents love and peace (or the holy spirit), and lemons stand for fidelity in love. Peaches are the fruit of salvation and cherries the fruit of paradise. The blue color of the background can depict sadness, or remind of Virgin Mary, whose mantel is most often painted in rich, deep blue tones. The forget-me-not stands for remembrance and the tiny white aster is sometimes told to stand for after-thought.

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What has always intrigued me though is the French marigold, Tagetes patula, that shares the main stage with the little greenfinch. I've often wondered why Linnqvist put such an ordinary kitchen garden plant in the center of his painting; Tagetes might be great for fighting nematodes in the soil, but with its plain little flowers and unpleasant smell, poetic it is not (even if here it visually forms a great contrast to the blue background of the painting - this is probably the most beautiful portrait of a Tagetes ever...).

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Tagetes as a symbol leaves many openings for an interpretation. In English speaking countries, it has been said to symbolize Virgin Mary, coming from the common name marigold - Mary's gold. Sometimes I've read that marigolds symbolize grief, but it is difficult to know if Tagetes or Calendula is meant in the texts, as both have been called marigolds in the English language. Marigolds were a sacred flower for the Aztecs in Mexico, and they've been held as a symbol for the Spanish conquest, with the red and and yellow colors standing for the Aztec blood spilled by the Spanish conquistadors over the gold of the Aztecs. Marigolds have also been called flor del muerto, and they are often used when celebrating the Day of the death in beginning of November in Mexico and other countries. Linnqvist was well-traveled and -educated, so he most probably knew a lot about the symbolism of flowers. But did he refer to Virgin Mary, to grief or the flower of the death?

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And the little greenfich then? Or is it even a greenfich, with its little head touched with red and black feathered wings with their distinct white spots? What does it want to say? I don't know. The painting leaves so many open questions. But after so many years of looking, the dainty little bird still touches my heart, and I keep listening to its passionate song.