Dirt By Amy Stewart

Bloom Day

Among garden bloggers (a small but mighty force in the blogosphere) there is a tradition of posting a photo of whatever happens to be blooming in your garden on the fifteenth of each month. It's a useful practice for a gardener; if you keep it up for a couple of years, you will be able to look back and notice that your pear tree has been blooming earlier than usual, or that the poppies that used to fill your front yard have disappeared, prompting you to—well, remark upon the fact that your pear tree is blooming earlier, which is exactly the sort of conversation-starter that makes you so much fun at parties. Or maybe you’ll remember how much you liked all those poppies in the first place and re-seed the flower beds. Something like that.

In December, Bloom Day landed just before the first big winter storm hit. I thought my garden was looking desolate and downtrodden. I thought there was nothing in bloom. I envied all the people I'd run into around town who told me they were retreating to Mexico or Hawaii or San Diego for a tropical holiday. Deck the halls with bougainvillea, I could imagine them singing around their outdoor fire pit, which would be more for ambience than heat, while back in Eureka I looked around among the slugs and dead twigs in my backyard for a flower to photograph.

But in fact, my Bloom Day survey was pretty impressive. There was an exceedingly ambitious red brugmansia, also known in some circles as angel’s trumpet, which was producing enormous, tropical, trumpet-shaped flowers well after Thanksgiving for reasons known only to it. The giant old fuchsia that I threaten to kill every couple of years was blooming as if its life depended on it, which it does. Bright orange calendula, which used to bloom in abundance in winter until the chickens developed a taste for the seeds, had managed to come back in a few spots. There were a lot of fennel blossoms, and I know that fennel is practically a weed but nobody said weeds don't count on Bloom Day. I even found one bedraggled and confused Shasta daisy with its head bent mournfully to the ground. I yanked it up and forced it to smile at the camera, then let it sink back into despondency.

Garden Gifts, 2008

It used to be such a simple, innocent question. What do you want for Christmas? Tell me and it will save me the trouble of buying the wrong thing. Tell me and you'll probably get it.

It's a question we've heard from our spouses, parents, children, friends--what do you want?

And just like that, you could name it. Some sparkly little thing that caught your eye. As long as it was modest and perhaps scalable (you'd be just as happy with the paperback; you'll take a dozen bulbs or a hundred), you'd probably get it.

But this year it is so not okay to want stuff. In response to the "What do you want?" question, I find myself giving answers like, "I want you to hold onto your money and stay out of foreclosure"---and I actually mean it.

However. Just for the moment. Let us hearken back to those simpler times when it was okay to want stuff. Let's pretend your loved one has decided that virtue has its place, but so does buying something pretty for the person who has agreed to wake up next to you every single day, no matter how old and weird you get.

Let us celebrate stuff.

In the name of research, I took a little trip around the county and checked out all the stuff for sale at garden centers, bookstores, and garden gift shops. I also asked a few friends around town, all dedicated gardeners, what they wanted. Here’s what we came up with:

'Houston Deli & Grocery'

6 x 8 oil on linen panel.  Click here to bid. More eBay paintings here, and Etsy here.

If I lived here, I 'd be home by now.  I don't know what it is about the idea of living in a little apartment above a store that appeals to me so much.  It's like an Anne Tyler novel imprinted on me at an impressionable age.  I took this photo in Manhattan one time when we were staying in an apartment just down the street from this corner grocery.  I wasn't sure I'd be able to do justice to the mood--rainy, dusky New York--but I'm happy with how it turned out. 

And I want one of those apartments upstairs.

Pomegranate

6 x 6 oil on board.  Click here to bid, and go here to see more paintings on eBay or Etsy.

This is the fourth in a little series of square paintings done from photos I took at the last farmers market of the season.  It's also on the thicker, 1/2 inch masonite board with grooves in the back so it's ready to hang.

These were so much fun to do.  I have another four images in mind; maybe I'll do another set this month.  Meanwhile, I'm on to cityscapes.  Stay tuned.

'Winter Squash'

6 x 6 oil on board.  Click here to bid.  Go here to see more paintings on eBay or Etsy.

This is the third of four farmers market paintings--the other two are below and I'll put one more up tomorrow.  They're all on this nice thick masonite board--really fun to paint on and easy to hang.   I might do another batch of four later on--the farmers market is over for the year, but I've got a lot more photos to work from.

What I'm Thankful For: Dirt

Last week I posted a survey on GardenRant asking gardeners if the economic downturn had put a dent in their horticultural shopping habits. Of the 85 people who voted, a third are going to the garden center a lot less than they used to in order to avoid temptation, and another twenty percent have brought spending to a complete halt.

Not good news for garden centers. But there were some bright spots among the comments people posted: Several people said their spending habits hadn’t changed, and they admonished the rest of us to patronize garden centers now if we want them to be there for us later.

And plenty of people said they might not be buying plants now, but they’d be back in the spring when it was time to ramp up their vegetable garden. That’s what many garden centers are counting on: a desire to eat locally, combined with a need to cut grocery bills, will get everybody growing their own food again. Seed companies saw their sales go through the roof this year—some of the larger suppliers actually ran out of vegetable seed—so the prediction is that 2009 will be even better for the seed companies, and we will all be growing our own green beans next summer. Works for me.

But no matter how much you’ve reined in your own spending this year, there is one horticultural indulgence you can definitely justify: Dirt.

Persimmons--SOLD

6 x 6 inch oil on board.  Click here to bid.  Go here to see more paintings on eBay, and here to see paintings on Etsy.

Another little square painting, also on this 1/2 thick masonite board with grooves in the back so it can hang right on the wall.