Peach, sun, Spanish wine

The last day of August is not the last day of summer, far from it. But the date, even in writing, has a sort of ripe and conclusive feel, doesn't it? The angle of the summer sunlight at around five o'clock in the afternoon on this day is just the same. Conclusive. Not too much longer .... A ripe Michigan peach casts a shadow, just so.

To accompany our peach we are sipping 2013 Oro de Castilla Verdejo, a fragrant white wine from Spain. We do mean fragrant. The aromas of cream and flowers waft right up from the bottle, and settle happily in the top of the glass. (So important to leave room.) The taste is at once crisp and lusty. Verdejo is the grape, the region of Spain, Rueda D.O. Why then the name, Oro de Castilla, "gold of Castille"? Because Rueda lies within the larger region of Castille. Conclusive.

That book you glimpse, beside the glass, the peach, and the rather tired nasturtium plant, is an old copy of The Greeks by H.D.F. Kitto (1951). Someday, when my scathing and funny divorce novel/memoir is a runaway bestseller and editors beg me to do whatever I want, I plan to write a brief history of all those mid-twentieth century English classicists and historians whose names we encounter on the title pages of dog-eared Penguin books. For some reason they all only went by their first initials, and there were plenty of them. H.D.F. Kitto, E.V. Rieu, A. R. Burn, C. Day Lewis, S. A. Handford. Of course I am assuming that behind the initials and the long years spent translating Greek and Latin, they also had scathing and maybe funny lives. Possibly not. Still, they interest me because they strike me as perhaps one last cohort of modern men who were soaked in the wisdom of antiquity, and made judgements, about it and life and everything, before the progressive mania set about forbidding impure thoughts. (Before it set about forbidding classical education at all. David West, translator of The Aeneid in prose in 1990, "notes with sorrow that his career would not now be possible, since the departments of Classics at Aberdeen and Sheffield are now defunct.") What scholar today, for example, is going to so far forget himself -- or forget what fiercely open-minded martinets are in charge of tenure -- as to write of the "resigned immobility of the steppe-mind"? H.D.F. Kitto did.

City life, where it developed, was always conscious of its background of country, mountains and sea, and country life knew the usages of the city. This encouraged a sane and balanced outlook; Classical Greece did not know at all the resigned immobility of the steppe-mind, and very little the short-sighted follies of the urban mob.

H.D.F. Kitto also wrote a travel book, "highly praised and little read," as the title page here allows, called In the Mountains of Greece (1933). Since I think he is a fine writer I would like to unearth this one. Oddly enough this is a bit of a challenge even in our information age. Will posterity hear warning bells? It probably has, long since. Both my Kindles are shall we say defunct, the local library no longer keeps old books, though to be fair this one is quite old, and even Amazon struggles. "Out of print -- limited availability."

Meantime, I forgot to show you the attractive porcelain dish that holds the peach. As luck would have it, the stamp on the back bears a classical reference. "Homer Laughlin, Genesee."

Shaker lemon bread

Now my fatheads, you mustn't imagine I have abandoned you. It's just that tearing up the carpet exposes one, not only to all that wood-floor craftsmanship circa 1893, but to unexpected necessities. One mops a lot, and rearranges furniture, and goes shopping for little things that have been on a "to do" list for ages, but never taken care of actually. For example I am looking forward to getting my first "Brown Betty" teapot in a few days. And then if one has to go out and buy a new router for the old exhausted computer, why, there's a day spent hooking up machinery and telephoning the Geek Squad for assistance. What luck that a new computer arrived in the mail, a hand me down from (wait for it) the ex-husband's ex-girlfriend's young son. (Thereby hangs a tale.) If only one could get the kid's picture off the home screen. It's a Mac. They were all artsy and everything.

So I haven't abandoned you. And you may have some lemon bread.

From The Best of Shaker Cooking, 1970.

1/2 cup shortening
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 and 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
Grated rind, and the juice, of one lemon

Preheat oven to 350 F. Beat together shortening and 1 cup of the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Sift the dry ingredients together and add alternately with milk to the sugar mixture, beating well after each addition. Add nuts and lemon rind.

Turn batter into greased 8 and 1/2 inch bread pan. Bake 50 to 60 minutes. Blend remaining sugar and the lemon juice. Pour over bread as soon as it comes from oven. Makes 1 loaf.

2010 James Mitchell cabernet, and craftsmanship

Measure twice, cut once. Take a look at the craftsmanship of a hardwood floor built, as far as I know, circa 1893.

Somehow I think the men who laid this out are resting easier, beyond the veil, now that their work is no longer covered by the barbarism of wall-to-wall carpeting. My next task is to wash it up and keep it up to what must have been their standards. And their women, too. Imagine the long skirts of farmers' wives, trailing over this floor as they set out Christmas dinners, or rocked the baby by the sunny east bay windows. 

I hope they all had a glass of wine, too. 2010 James Mitchell cabernet would have been nice.

Retail, $16, or about $11 on sale.

The Tudor year: July

My fatheads know that I sometimes like to import posts from other places -- my own, usually. 

Theme: survival



Lady Jane Grey's prayerbook, believed to be the one she carried to the scaffold. The pale writing at the bottom is a farewell message in her own hand to the lieutenant of the Tower, adjuring him to obey God's laws. (Image from the British Library online gallery.)

July 6: execution of Thomas More, 1535; death of Edward VI, 1553
July 10: proclamation of Jane Grey queen, 1553
July 12: Divorce of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, 1540; marriage of Henry to Catherine Parr, 1543
July 19: Proclamation of Mary Tudor queen, 1553
July 26: Marriage of Queen Mary to King Philip of Spain, 1554
July 29: Defeat of the Spanish armada, 1588

Political events moved quickly in an age when royalty -- and its henchmen -- still governed by divine right. Lady Jane Grey's famous nine days as Queen (she was a scion of the Tudor family through her descent from one of Henry VIII's sisters) sped by in mid-July, 1553, after the death of the teenaged king, Henry's long sought son, Edward. In quieter times July would be a month for the royal court to begin its summer progresses to freshly cleaned rural mansions. Smallpox, the plague, and the mysterious "Sweat" were the scourges of the season, especially in London. Filth, sickness, vermin, and bad teeth were a part of all people's lives to an extent that we can hardly imagine. So was hunger and the fear of hunger. In the country, a supply of beef and mutton would already have been slaughtered at midsummer, and would have to last, salted, till winter. St. Swithin's Day, July 15th, was a day for the farmer to look at the sky with apprehension: rain on this day was thought to mean a rainy summer and possibly a spoiled harvest.

Sources:

Emmison, F.G. Tudor Secretary: Sir William Petre at Court and Home. London and Chichester: Phillimore & Co. Ltd., 1970 (first published by Longmans, Green, and Co., 1961) p. 239

Ibid, p. 253

Fussell, George Edwin. The English Rural Labourer: His Home, Furniture, Clothing, and Food from Tudor to Victorian Times. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975 (originally published by the Batchworth Press, London, 1949), p. 27.

Cressy, David. Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989, p. 28.

Summer: grilled chipotle chicken burgers, vodka marinara, pinot grigio

Ah, my fatheads. Summer. Need we say more? It is one of those wonderful words which apparently means, wonderfully, only itself. "From the Middle English sumer and the Old English sumor, akin to the Greek sommer and the Indo European base sem-, meaning summertime; whence Sanskrit sama, half year, season." Since we at Pluot like culinary things, we will mention that the word cinnamon also leaps to mind as the same type of word. Derive it how you will, it means only itself: "from the Hebrew qinnamon, cinnamon."

Somer is the time for us to cook something very easy for dinner, and to drink a refreshing and surprisingly assertive pinot grigio to accompany our meal. We say surprisingly assertive because we have long since described the pinot grigio (aping Winston Churchill's dismissal of some tepid politician), as "not a grape to go tiger-shooting with." This one at least did well beside a grilled chicken burger. Graffigna Reserve pinot grigio, 2012.

The chicken burgers are very easy to prepare. In a large bowl, combine: 2 pounds ground chicken, about a half teaspoon dried thyme, a half teaspoon dried tarragon -- more of these to taste, if you like, or any different herbs you like -- salt and pepper to taste also, and about a half teaspoon chipotle chili pepper. We picked this up in the spice aisle at the grocery store because we finally ran out of that delicious merquen, or Chilean smoked chili pepper flakes.

Combine the meat and spices thoroughly, and shape all into 8 patties. Brush them with olive oil. Let them rest on a plate while you ready your charcoal grill, using that divine chimney starter which is so convenient and such a saving of briquettes, and which obviates the need for lighter fluid. 

When the coals are hot, dump them carefully into your grill, place the rack over them, and lay on your chicken burgers, arranging them nicely over the evenly piled coals. Place the lid over the grill, with the vents on the lid slightly open. Check your burgers in about ten to fifteen minutes, after which time they should have baked through. All that remains is for you to flip them over and let them sear to golden brown, since now you will leave the lid off and allow the flames to leap up a little.

In the meantime, you can put together a vodka-tomato sauce, following the recipe in The La Bonne Soupe Cookbook (Jean-Paul Picot and Doris Tobias, 1997), or you can open a jar of Mezzeta's "Napa Valley Bistro" Creamy Vodka Marinara Sauce, which if you do that, I won't tell a soul.

From whence-ever you derive your vodka-tomato sauce, you will have it simmering gently just for ten minutes or so while your burgers finish on the grill, and then you will bring them in and slip them into the bubbling sauce. Once everything is heated through and smothered and juicy, you may dish up. Serve your burgers open faced, with toasted buns and a salad, or over rice or noodles with perhaps a side of some zucchini or mushrooms you have slathered in olive oil and grilled over the dying coals. Pour the pinot grigio.

And lastly for the purists among you, here is the recipe for Penne à la Vodka, Pasta Quills with Vodka Sauce, from La Bonne Soupe. It takes about half an hour to make. Experienced cooks may enjoy streamlining this to suit their own convenience, simply noting that the four necessary ingredients are tomato, vodka, cream, and herbs. Since in the middle of the recipe we all find out that we are required to have a cup of tomato sauce already on hand, I grant everyone the dispensation of being allowed to open a can of stewed tomatoes to stand in for the pre-prep "sauce."

La Bonne Soupe's Penne à la Vodka

2 Tbsp. olive oil
4 cloves garlic, diced
3 cups plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, chopped
1/2 cup vodka
1 cup tomato sauce
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil or 1/2 teaspoon dried
1 cup heavy cream
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

 Heat the oil in a 2 quart heavy pot. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until softened but not browned, about 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring, until they have softened, about 5 minutes. Add the vodka, raise the heat, and cook until the vodka is absorbed, about 10 minutes. Reduce the heat and add the tomato sauce, basil, cream, and salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, until everything is reduced to 3 cups, about 12 minutes. Remove from heat and serve ladled over pasta.

New cocktail -- the Michigan Sky

It's a simple affair. Muddle a small handful of blueberries (Michigan blueberries, of course) in the bottom of a highball glass, then mix the juice of half a lemon, a dash of sugar or sugar syrup (half a teaspoon, no more), and a jigger of rum in a separate mixing glass. Stir with ice, then strain over the muddled blueberries in the first glass. Stir this up and serve, perhaps garnished with a floating fresh blueberry or two. Here at Pluot we like our cocktails very pure, with no carbonated beverages added -- unless it might be champagne -- no shaking in an ice-filled shaker to anaesthetize flavor, and certainly no ice added afterward, to melt and dilute the spirit.

We name this one after the blue of the berry and the blue of the Michigan sky. Do rum and blueberries go together? Why not, if rum is what you packed in your suitcase for your little trip? 

Cheers. I'm thinking I might redecorate my office in the style of the palace at ancient Knossos. Remember those frescoes pictured in your college art history textbooks, showing very pleased-looking griffons relaxing among tall waving lilies, blue dolphins cavorting in white tile seas, happy side-view (Egyptian style) people fishing or diving or carrying jars, and the black-haired lass with the enormous eyes called "La Parisienne"? Wouldn't that be nice to look at, to enter into every day? I don't know what put the idea of Knossos into my head; maybe it came from reading Peter Green's The Laughter of Aphrodite (1965) on the pontoon. Anyway I came home thinking this place needs furbishing up and what better start to make than with the simple fresh colors and pure lines abundant in the decor of King Minos' palace? I could even name the house Knossos. My fatheads know I like the fancy of naming where you live, even if where you live is most emphatically not some sort of estate.   

Ancient Crete was overrun and the civilization of the griffons destroyed, it seems, by the warlike Mycenaeans from mainland Greece sometime around the year 1400 BC. I wonder if the king at Knossos opened the ports to them, because he felt it his divine charge to fundamentally transform the nation? And all his court and most of the nobility agreed?

My fatheads! I cannot tell you how marvelous

How marvelous it is, that is, to suddenly learn that one's favorite, one's only vacation spot is available precisely when one has taken a week's vacation from work already. Of course, one says Yes, and books the cottage. One awakens to the dawn coming up like thunder, as Kipling would say, or at any rate to the dawn coming up like a really bright light outside a cottage bedroom window. The bedroom is done in pale cream with softly flowered curtains, and has artworks and Modge-podged puzzles of swans on the walls. Look carefully out the right-hand window and you will spy the lake and the greenery beckoning.

One awakens to the water lilies floating,

 

and to the timeless look of that ancient summer porch. It may sound trite, but when I first revisited this place as an adult two years ago, during an election year, I thought what a pity it was that Barack Obama never had a childhood that included so basic an American experience as a week or two at a summer cottage. It would have gone far, I should hope, toward inoculating him against some of the hate. In fact I wonder how he would cope now, if some political event required him to speak as though he knew what a summer cottage was. He can't throw a baseball and he doesn't know rudimentary poker language -- remember his gaffe-threat "don't call my bluff"? I think even if he were well-buttressed by his friendly teleprompter, he couldn't help but rush to reveal the holes in his soul. Probably mispronounce bluegill. A pity.

Anyway, I think also I will have to start writing a series of mysteries, featuring the detective Robin Michigan, who solves crimes, usually murders of course, in the brutal and dog-eat-dog world of ... southwest Michigan wine and tourism country.

Let us set the scene. The detective's parents, or rather no, perhaps grandparents (tempus does fugit, you know) will have been hippies who came to Michigan in the '60s after having grown disenchanted with the rigors of law school across the great Lake, at the University of Chicago. (Maybe they had a bellyful of Bill Ayers. But no. Being hippies, they might have liked him.) They decided to rebel against society's strictures, among other ways, by changing their name from whatever you like -- Brizzolara, let's say, or Porter -- to Michigan, the name of their adopted state. Robin was named for her mother Mudgeon's favorite bird. Ah, but was Robin a boy or a girl? Is the detective a man or a woman? Could we attempt to leave the reader always guessing? That might be a good "hook" for our series, provided we don't slip and start using pronouns right away. Be it known we want nothing to do with any LGBT nonsense, although I may have pre-killed any chances for publication in the lefty-wefty book industry simply by asserting so. 

Now, what crimes can we expect Detective Robin Michigan to be faced with, in bucolic, blueberry-strewn Van Buren and Allegan counties? I seem to see (as Lucia would say dreamily) possibilities in that gorgeous yacht slowly prowling up the Black River into South Haven on a soaring blue summer day. It's the white one, with the elegant broad black strip along its side, discreetly masking its lower deck windows. Perhaps it is piloted by a winery tycoon pulling into his berth to investigate malfeasance in the account books. Or, what about the big discount store just off I-196, amid the hotels and the gas stations? I seem to see a stock clerk pulling an empty pallet back to the receiving dock, and discovering the body of the much-loathed store manager lying facedown, who had been alive and well and holding court five minutes before. Then there are possibilities in the little shacks and trailers all around the inland lakes, Saddle Lake and Little Bear and Clear and Magician, any one of which could be meth labs and all of which look like they are. Or, perhaps a famed horticulturalist could discover an entirely new species of orchid on a hike in the woods, and then when she got back to her cottage she might find all her specimens had been stolen except that one. Incidentally, below please find not an orchid but, I think, a Turk's cap lily.  

So you see, my fatheads, it is all too marvelous. Look what a few days' relaxing will do for the brain. And, one hopes, for the soul.  

Oh by the way. The wine is good, too. 2013 Fenn Valley "Cabaret Rosé." Retail, about $13.

2012 La Crema Sonoma Coast pinot noir, 2011 Hob Nob -- and other notes

This is many customers' go-to, special-occasion-but-still-below-$30 pinot noir. From the good people at Gallo. Retail, around $18 on sale.

It struck me recently how uniformly good pinot noirs are, at practically any price point, despite the gag in the movie Sideways about the grape's delicacy, finickiness, and difficulty of cultivation, and the implication that therefore good pinot noirs are so rare. Not at all. Perhaps things have improved in the vineyard since the novel was written and the movie made, or perhaps author and film overstated the case. Of course it is still up to you to decide whether you like your pinots done in a California style, all fruit and chummy red lusciousness, or whether you like a thin, horsey, barnyard funk running through them and right up your nose, à la New Zealand's Oyster Bay (for example). My customer base shies away from the "earthy" and interesting weirdness of Oyster Bay. And I mention Sideways because I recently had auricular proof that that movie did have real power in the industry: a fine winemaker attested to me, not two weeks ago, that his merlot business is only now beginning to recover from the character Miles' famed refusal to "drink any f ------  merlot!"

Now, for notes on other things. Below, these are pluots. 

And, below again, this is the spectacular sunset we saw the night we returned from the movies. We went to see Maleficent. Did you agree it was nihilist? I didn't. The moviemakers may have wanted us to believe that the "hero was also a villain" -- ergo, we mustn't judge anybody -- but the movie itself proves otherwise: Maleficent regretted her action, sought redemption, and ended fighting true, if pasteboard, evil. That makes her heroic. Open-minded, terribly daring Western artistes are still more steeped in their own civilization than they know. As for true love's kiss being metamorphosed, curdled, into mother's love's kiss, well yes. Growing up and going out into the world to seek union with the Other is a keystone of Western maturity. Perhaps Angelina Jolie shouldn't have made a film which shows her philosophical ignorance in thrusting that aside. Still, mother's love is a love. On the whole I found the thing harmless if a bit dull. Then again, full disclosure: I have always been quite slow to pick up on metaphors. I was the kid in sophomore year high school American Lit. who didn't find any meaning in the billboard of the giant eyes in The Great Gatsby. When I was told about it, I lost all interest in Gatsby and in most novels. Watching Maleficent, I was the middle-aged mom who didn't understand that Angelina Jolie had had her wings cut off. ("Why is she screaming?" Upon which query, young adult children do face palm and eye roll.) It certainly did not occur to me that this was a metaphor for girls in general "having their wings clipped." If spotting subverted metaphors is the key to seeing nihilsm in today's Disney oeuvres, I'm not your man.

 On that same night we saw a rainbow, unusually high in the eastern sky, after very little rain.

 It's June. Time not only for light, slightly barnyard-y pinot noirs, but for solstices, Asiatic lilies,

wallflowers (orange, scented), and candytuft (purple).

Humid days and cool nights have given us a run of extraordinary sunsets. They look like the paintings in books of fairy tales.

And, would you believe it, we have discovered something new, the linden tree. Walking to the grocery store the other day, along a route I used to traipse with three small children in tow, in a very quiet secluded neighborhood dark with cool shadow, I smelled the most delicious, soft orange-like scent. In a few steps I came under the shade of a huge, darkly foliaged tree, frothed all over with the spent remains of little tufted yellow blossoms. Leaves and branches were interspersed as well with neat pale green pairs of what looked like drooping insect wings, or a maple tree's "helicopters." I consulted the internet and then my tree book, and found what I had found and smelled. It was a linden tree, also called "lime" though having no relation to the citrus fruit and tree. (It seems that once upon a time the words lind, line, and lime all sounded alike in medieval languages.) Lind had to do with ideas of flexibility or litheness, descriptive of the tree's soft, easily worked wood. Wikipedia tells us linden wood has been used for all kinds of things, from Viking shields to medieval German altarpieces to marionettes to modern day bass guitars. The tree is also called basswood. The flowers make herbal teas in themselves, and help bees make a prized honey.
  

Near Midsummer Day it seems only appropriate to open A Midsummer Night's Dream, and look for apposite lines. "Flower of this purple dye," the fairy king Oberon begins the chant of a spell. June also is the season of cherries, as Shakespeare knew. Helena complains: 

We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key'
....                      So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
Buy yet an union in partition --
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; 

People often throw cherry about as a descriptor when talking of pinot noirs, so now you may have another one. This is Hob Nob, so very good; full indeed of cherries and other California fruit, it also has the tiniest streak of horsiness -- sufficient at least to banish it to the closeout rack of a rival grocery store. Retail, therefore, $8.99. Worth more.

2012 Jacob's Creek Reserve chardonnay

This, my fatheads, is a souvenir from the days when At First Glass was moderately well known, well enough known at least to earn sample offerings from wineries' public relations firms. The Jacob's Creek reserve was very good; my fatheads know that I rarely do tasting notes or winemaker biographies, since wine always shows notes of peach and lychee, and every maker has passion, integrity, and respect for the land. I do stories instead. Somewhere in one of his great books Hugh Johnson himself said that was a better approach anyway. 

Sometimes I prefer just the notes to stories. If I jot -- "glorious summer. Picnic; laughter. Deer -- herons -- tern -- gulls -- swallows -- ducks -- pipers. World chaos. Strange giant snapdragon in a ghetto backyard," would that be enough for you to form a story of your own? 

By the way, the strange giant snapdragon in the ghetto backyard was actually a young catalpa tree. My friend who fishes was much struck when I told him I had looked it up and learned that. He said he knew of these trees as a source for the "catalpa worm," excellent as bait. Wikipedia confirms him: "The tree is the sole source of food for the catalpa sphinx moth (Ceratomia catalpae), the leaves being eaten by the caterpillars. When caterpillars are numerous, infested trees may be completely defoliated. Defoliated catalpas produce new leaves readily, but with multiple generations occurring, new foliage may be consumed by subsequent broods. Severe defoliation over several consecutive years can cause death of trees. Because the caterpillars are an excellent live bait for fishing, some dedicated anglers plant catalpa mini-orchards for their own private source of "catawba-worms", particularly in the Southern states."

My, my. It's a big world out there. 

2011 Maryhill Moscato di Canelli, and Elizabeth's German garden

 I want you to have a glass of this sweet and slightly tangy (that's "acidic" to professionals) moscato on a fine summer afternoon, perhaps this weekend, and then I want you to read a book on gardening.

The introduction to this book, Elizabeth and her German Garden (by Elizabeth von Arnim, or Marie Annette Beauchamp) is almost as interesting as the book itself, for it explains, briefly and lucidly, the life and works of our authoress, and why she happened to have two names. The lady was born in Australia Marie Annette Beauchamp, and was a cousin of the more famous, New Zealand born writer Katharine Mansfield (nee Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp). Reared in England, where she "was always called Elizabeth," she married, or "was persuaded to marry" a German count, and so became a rather young countess Elizabeth von Arnim. For the publication of her first book, Elizabeth and her German Garden, the former Miss Beauchamp acquired in 1898 a third name: for in the gentle but surely expiring tradition of lady writers even then, she was at first Anonymous.

The book was a huge success, so that for subsequent editions her name, or at any rate her German name, was permitted to grace the cover. The Garden was followed in later years by more books, a few of which we might know better. She wrote Mr. Skeffington, made into that great movie of the same name in the early 1940s with Bette Davis and Claude Rains; she wrote Enchanted April, made into a movie in the early 1990s starring actors not quite so well known.

All this we have from one R. McGowan, writing in San Jose on April 11, 1998. Apparently he or she is the one responsible for getting Elizabeth and her German Garden scanned into the files of Project Gutenberg as long ago as that. Indeed he closes with, "In the centennial year of this book's first publication, I hope that its availability through Project Gutenberg will stir some renewed interest in Elizabeth and her delightful work. She is, I would venture, my favorite author ...."

I don't think I'll count Elizabeth as my favorite author quite yet. Her rough diary of a year at her country estate is certainly a unique view into a strange and vanished world -- faint praise; any good book should be that -- but there is also something unpleasantly dreamlike in these cool, guarded, yet outlandish portrayals of family, guests, servants, routine, holidays, chores, and weird excursions. There is warmth in the garden, but only there. And even there, the reader who is also a gardener will not be able to follow her too far in her hobby, even in sympathy, unfortunately. Though she began as an absolute amateur, still she was the wife of a count, and had the means -- the pin money -- to order things like a hundred rose bushes at a time, and to speak of stream and woods. Like so many garden writers, where she says "garden," she means property, the estate. There is a big difference, even if one tries to rejoice for her.

The rough diary, set down from the beginning of May to the end of the next April, is one half given over to the garden, and one half to a chronicle of indoor domesticities, chief among them a long midwinter visit from Irais and Minora. These are two women whom Elizabeth would far rather not have left on her hands, especially Minora, who is merely a young relation of a friend, taken in as a favor because she is alone in Germany and requires chaperoning. The girl also has literary pretensions. She is gathering material for a book on Germany. Elizabeth and Irais find her ignorant, credulous, and yet absurdly timid when it comes to any chance for an authentic German adventure.

Such as, for instance, a sleigh ride to the Baltic coast in the depths of winter. Minora starts out happily enough with her two companions, but after six hours of the cold and a cold picnic and then the swiftly gathering darkness, and pop-eyed, faux innocent assurances from Elizabeth that the elderly coachman doesn't fall asleep and overturn the carriage too often, she turns desperate and drops broad hints that they ought to stop at a neighbor's house for the night and continue home in the morning. Upon that she is treated to a long, sumptuously composed speech from Irais about how vulgar and pushing such a visit would be, and how even if they all were such rubes as to dare it, she herself would promptly be seated in the most uncomfortable chair in the house, in the spot preordained for unexpected visitors who are also virgins of no rank. Granted Minora's idea was a little awkward, still the reader wonders if indeed German etiquette at this time was so atrocious, or if Irais was indulging in deviltry, or if Elizabeth was making the entire scene up for the sheer joy of invention.

Regardless, it makes one sympathize with Minora, even though perhaps she was sometimes an annoying chit. And, to be fair to Elizabeth, long country house visits must have worn on the hostess' nerves in any society or era where they were once commonly made. Elizabeth wanted to get back to her garden and her family privacy. Still, in setting the stage for this long and not very funny story, Elizabeth had told us that she also likes to take her truly wearisome summer guests to these same Baltic beaches. The great joke there is that the seacoast in summer swarms with mosquitoes, which spoil the expectations of visitors who had thrilled to the suggestion of refreshing ocean breezes. After that, they tend to pack their bags and go home. So, I think, would I. I think also I do not make Elizabeth one of my favorite writers, not just yet.

A couple of scenes, if they are not much warmer than any others, nevertheless ring with a likable and unmistakable truth. In one, the young wife, mother and gardener tells us what it was like, not only to have servants to do your work, but to be forbidden to do your own work -- even if it was work you loved:

I did one warm Sunday in last year's April during the servants' dinner hour, doubly secure from the gardener by the day and the dinner, slink out with a spade and a rake and feverishly dig a little piece of ground and break it up and sow surreptitious ipomaea [morning glory], and run back very hot and guilty into the house, and get into a chair and behind a book and look languid just in time to save my reputation.

This was the mistress of the estate, and she could not garden. In another scene, that same young mistress proves her mettle when it is time to sack one of those servants. One day a door to a parlor swings open and the governess, Miss Jones, is accidentally overheard criticizing her employers in a private talk with our Minora. She pronounces, in a general way, that most parents "are not wise," that most pious husbands including the present master were probably rakes as bachelors, and that it's a sore trial for the governess to have to be polite and "even humble" to such pompous fools. Elizabeth walks in to the parlor, icily invites Minora to tea, and tells the governess she "wants the children for a little while." The next day, Miss Jones is gone, flung out into the great world with no good references, we may be sure. No mention of consulting the husband, "the Man of Wrath," in all this. No need to, it seems.

R. McGowan's introduction tells us that in time, Elizabeth had to leave this idyllic home -- we never quite know where it is, except that it is fifteen miles from the Baltic -- and go on to a probably much more urban second half of life. (Back in England? We don't know.) After the Man of Wrath died, she circulated among people fine enough to introduce her to friends like H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell, whose brother she married. Somehow, one doesn't see men like that mucking about in the compost days from any town, and knowing the names of a hundred roses, too.

The second marriage ended in divorce. With the outbreak of World War II, she fled to America, where she died in 1941.

Now of course the Garden is not all unpleasantly dreamlike, and mosquitoes and sacked servants. There is humor in it, and it would be unfair to leave you with no idea of it.

"I really think, Elizabeth," said Irais to me later, when the click of Minora's typewriter was heard hesitating from the next room, "that you and I are writing her book for her. She takes down everything we say. Why does she copy all that about the baby? I wonder why mothers' knees are supposed to be touching? I never learned anything at them, did you? But then in my case they were only stepmother's, and nobody ever sings their praises."

"My mother was always at parties," I said; "and the nurse made me say my prayers in French."

And there is the garden and the flowers, "which I have loved so much." (Even on the last page we hear a hint of a goodbye.)

"I love tulips better than any other spring flower; they are the embodiment of alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth look like a wholesome, freshly tubbed young girl beside a stout lady whose every movement weighs down the air with patchouli."

I'm curious to know what Elizabeth's last novel, Mr. Skeffington, is like. Of course I have seen the movie, but I'd like to know if Skeffington shows some kind of arcing journey of the woman and the writer. I think it must, unless Hollywood transformed it sight unseen. From idyllic and adored German garden, the titled young mother, thirty, becomes a seventy-year-old telling the tale of a Jewish banker who barely escapes with his life from a Germany that now occupies another universe.

House proud?

I ask you. Is it possible to be "house proud" of a place you have merely rented for twenty-five years? I have investigated the process of home buying lately and it is daunting given my income.Perhaps I was not meant for that kind of burden anyway, -- all that talk about sump pumps and closing costs. Perhaps I take after my near-legendary great grandmother who was "too busy rolling bandages for the Red Cross" to bother about lesser projects. Besides, when I say house proud what I really mean is garden proud, and even my garden would likely make true aficionados wince. Close up photos of flowers are all very well, but they are a bit like close up photos, indoors, of apples or cats: one doesn't see the weeds in one, nor the dusty bookshelves or abandoned socks on the floor in the other. And one carries on, renting.

Below, a "Wasabi" coleus. New in the market, I take it. 

Luckily I rent a place where a garden is possible. This year, I wanted four things: foxglove and hollyhocks again, and for the first time, cleome and cosmos. Would you believe it, I found them all. And not in artsy, orchid-stuffed garden centers or huge home improvement warehouses, but in a small local fruit and vegetable stand, and in the poky back room of a neighborhood hardware store.

Below, foxglove, Digitalis. Now we can pretend we're in a Miss Marple novel, and that someone is going to "accidentally" toss foxglove leaves into the salad. (They resemble very large sage.) You mustn't, they're poisonous.

In spring it is enjoyable to garden in the blazing sun and heat, just one afternoon or two. The winter was so long. After that, one will take care to dig and weed at cooler times of the day. The thunderstorm, just after I planted my foxglove, hollyhocks, cleome, and cosmos, was impressive. 

Below, cosmos, Cosmos bipinnatus. Gardeners can make themselves sound good by carefully quoting the Latin names of their plants, but it doesn't take any brains at all to do so. Just look at the tags that come with your poky-hardware-store purchase, and copy what they say correctly. Trust that no one's switched tags. A little cross-referencing in books with pictures helps.
  

And yet there can be brains in garden writing. I'm not quite sure what defines them. To recite Latin names and describe what one has done in one's own bit of earth is not a formula for an interesting book. It's downright annoying in the case of people who casually allow that they bought a two-hundred-acre farm in upstate New York just before setting out for that two year assignment in Algeria, so they had plenty of time to consult Hortus Third about the best spots for Anemone lesseri, and so on. See Elisabeth Sheldon's A Proper Garden (1989), which, despite annoyances, is a good book -- brainy.

Below, some type of peony, Paeonia.  The utterly ethereal pink of its outer petals is something no photo can do justice to. 

 

What sets interesting garden writers apart from the simple here's-what-I-do variety seems to be an instinct for noticing and appreciating small things -- ordinary things -- or perhaps (the other side of the coin) large patterns. My favorite piece of garden writing is an anonymous essay on a very small thing, the geranium. It was originally published in Scribner's Magazine's "Point of View" column in July 1914, and was reproduced in the excellent anthology The Once and Future Gardener (ed. Virginia Tuttle Clayton, 2000). Here, the Anonymous lays out the case that the geranium, the potted one, Pelargonium, is exactly what the garden needs in midsummer when the glorious procession of spring-flowering bulbs (daffodils, tulips) and perennials (foxgloves, hollyhocks) is over. Pelargonium, the writer says,

is too wise to want to interfere with the repose which must follow a period of great activity. She would only fain prevent an entire collapse, and would gently keep the garden's head above water until such time as it feels like swimming again. She can do this as no one else can, blooming brightly and quietly here and there among the discouraged plants, keeping up general appearances .... The exhausted garden  ... needs to be laughed at a little; and this function the geranium can perform for it amiably, not hurting its feelings but rallying it: "Come now! You are tired, but that does not mean the rest of the universe is undone." 

And as for good garden writers noticing larger patterns, we consult again our Finger Lakes-by-way-of-Algeria transplant, E. Sheldon of A Proper Garden. In Chapter 4, "Who should design your garden?" she asserts first that everyone really should cultivate whatever greenery they enjoy. Then she describes the unpleasantness that tends to result. She is commendably honest.  

In plumping for homemade gardens I must admit my intolerance of other people's ideas on what constitutes a proper garden. That it's homemade doesn't cause me to temper my cries of pain at the sight of raised beds made of cement blocks, of planted tires, of top-heavy, overfed and overbred dahlias, lashed like felons to rows of stakes, of marigolds marching around a fake wishing well, of large circles of flaming cannas edged with mournful wax begonias in the middle of a pocket handkerchief lawn ....

I stand witness to just those gardens, only sometimes people replace planted tires with planted bed frames, or eschew pink flamingos in favor of plaster statues of kissing Dutch children, or matching wooden cutouts of farmer-clad Ma-and-Pa buttocks, bent over. As if gardening.
 
  

Garden however you will, the thing about renting forever is you really can't name your house, which is what everybody does in Miss Marple and other delightful English novels. And it's not just the rich who do it; Miss Marple is by no means well to do but lives in "Danemead" anyway, and of course we can easily recite the house names from Mapp and Lucia. There is Wasters and The Hurst and Taormina and Mallards. Plenty of these householders are of quite ordinary circumstances. Perhaps then all the names are meant to be a joke, one which we anxious Americans don't get, just as we stand perplexed over English gardening instructions only applicable to mild English weather. Elizabeth Sheldon notices this too and complains about it, but still her two hundred acre farm grates on me and I feel she hasn't got a leg to stand on.

Can I name a first floor apartment in a century-old farmhouse? Perhaps, "Tresco" after the famed gardens of Tresco Abbey on the Scilly Islands (off the coast of Cornwall)? Or shall I open Elizabeth Sheldon's A Proper Garden, and choose as a name the first word my finger points to?

It's "couldn't."