It's April 2nd, my Mom's Birthday. She would have been 91 today. She died at much too young an age, only 50, and just months after her first grandchild was born. She loved flowers, especially daisies. My favorite story was when she told me that she stopped to pick daisies when she was in labor with me. My Mom, the cool, elegant, mathematician and chemist stopped to pick flowers! Amazed me when she told me then, still blows my circuits when I think about it now.
Every year since her death I've planted wild flowers, even in the thin years when we could hardly breath for lack of funds, I went out and found wildflowers along the ditches and harvested seeds. I carried them to another location and planted them. It's like reading my two favorite books (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and A WRINKLE IN TIME) every year. It's become a habit and my way of remembering her in a happy way, something that carries her memories onward and makes me smile when I go back and see flowers blooming where nothing but weeds or mud and gravel covered the earth. And I smile too. Guerrilla Gardening suits the fading hippy in me, the one who went out of my way to roll on, dance across and do flips on lawns that had DO NOT WALK signs on them.
This year is no exception. In fact, I've ordered two pounds of wildflower seeds and another two pounds of marigolds and zinnias, flowering herbs and may order more too. Our bee populations all over the world and especially here in the USA are in trouble. Hives are collapsing and dying, most likely because of herbicides, pesticides, GMO crops and a general destruction of our wild areas. Without bees the world is probably in trouble too. They are responsible for pollination of a majority of our crops including nuts, fruit, grains and vegetables.
Each year I've seen fewer bees. When we first moved out here the Russian Olive trees would start buzzing early, as soon as the tiny, sweet smelling flowers began to appear. And the Forsythia that I've planted as hedges would be covered in early bees, out foraging in the Spring. I've only seen two bees this year...TWO ! Even with all of the flowers we've planted and no chemicals on this land for twenty years, there are no bees.
And then there are butterflies. We have so many butterflies out here that people come out to do counts, take photos and just enjoy. When they ask me how we attract so many I tell them to go home and throw away, taking them to hazardous recycling centers, ALL chemicals. Don't even clean your house with chemicals. Use vinegar and baking soda...cheap, easy, smells clean, all natural. NO chemicals in your lawns. Let the dandelions grow. Throw out handfuls of wild flower seeds in the blank areas of your gardens. Surround all of those boring bushes with wildflowers and flowering vines. And make sure that some of the seeds you plant are for milkweed plants too. Butterflies and monarchs need food sources. If you put out water sources for birds, put out smaller, more shallow water sources for your butterflies.
In other words, go Au Natural! Stop planting all of those over fed exotic flowers and plant hollyhocks, marigolds, zinnias, black eyed susans, heirloom vegetables, fruits and flowers. And for heavens sake make it all organic! And never spray for ants or other bugs you consider a pest. There is, or there was, a balance in Nature. We are the culprits here folks, with our overfed, over watered un-natural emerald green lawns. NO MORE CHEMICALS. It's all pretty simple.
I'm including a link to a video about how to make seed bombs. It's super easy, cheap and make great gifts. Kids would have fun making these too. If you don't have easy access to the clay, make paper mache with old newspapers by tearing them up in to small pieces, putting them in to a blender with a cup or two of hot water, let the paper water mixture sit for ten minutes then blend. It makes a nice thick mush that you can pour through an old kitchen towel to get excess water out of the mache by squeezing and draining, then you add the seeds and a bit of soil, mix with your hands and roll in to balls. Let them dry and VOILA!, seed bombs.
Throw them out your car windows while driving down country roads and yell, " Make love, not war!" Well, OK, that's the old hippy talking again. But it does kind of make it fun when you do it. And when you drive down those country roads later in the Summer and see flowers blooming you can get out and take a selfie of yourself with your guerrilla sewn flowers and post it to Facebook and instagram. Kind of a 21st Century version of a Be In from the sixties, oh yeah!
And me? I'm throwing seeds everywhere this year to celebrate having a grandson and a granddaughter as well as two step grandchildren in this world. I'm making my own seed bombs to send to them too, or at least their parents if they're more likely to eat the bombs than throw them.
The flowers to the left here, just ready to bloom earlier last week? Those are from jonquils my Grandmother had in her gardens. I've been carrying some of them with me and planting them everywhere we've lived since John and I were married. I even planted some in Berlin, Germany when we lived there in 1972 and 1973. I snuck down to a local park early in the morning in the autumn of 1972, planted them close up to some bushes and walked back that Spring to see them flower. Ha! How many people do you know who did guerrilla gardening during the cold war in Berlin, Germany while living surrounded by a wall?!
I am, ever yours, Nancy, dissident Guerrilla Gardener, thumbing my nose at DO NOT WALK signs, laughing at the way things go.
Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you, always. I wish you'd been here to sneak out and plant our seed bombs together. We would have had so much fun!
Each year I've seen fewer bees. When we first moved out here the Russian Olive trees would start buzzing early, as soon as the tiny, sweet smelling flowers began to appear. And the Forsythia that I've planted as hedges would be covered in early bees, out foraging in the Spring. I've only seen two bees this year...TWO ! Even with all of the flowers we've planted and no chemicals on this land for twenty years, there are no bees.
And then there are butterflies. We have so many butterflies out here that people come out to do counts, take photos and just enjoy. When they ask me how we attract so many I tell them to go home and throw away, taking them to hazardous recycling centers, ALL chemicals. Don't even clean your house with chemicals. Use vinegar and baking soda...cheap, easy, smells clean, all natural. NO chemicals in your lawns. Let the dandelions grow. Throw out handfuls of wild flower seeds in the blank areas of your gardens. Surround all of those boring bushes with wildflowers and flowering vines. And make sure that some of the seeds you plant are for milkweed plants too. Butterflies and monarchs need food sources. If you put out water sources for birds, put out smaller, more shallow water sources for your butterflies.
In other words, go Au Natural! Stop planting all of those over fed exotic flowers and plant hollyhocks, marigolds, zinnias, black eyed susans, heirloom vegetables, fruits and flowers. And for heavens sake make it all organic! And never spray for ants or other bugs you consider a pest. There is, or there was, a balance in Nature. We are the culprits here folks, with our overfed, over watered un-natural emerald green lawns. NO MORE CHEMICALS. It's all pretty simple.
I'm including a link to a video about how to make seed bombs. It's super easy, cheap and make great gifts. Kids would have fun making these too. If you don't have easy access to the clay, make paper mache with old newspapers by tearing them up in to small pieces, putting them in to a blender with a cup or two of hot water, let the paper water mixture sit for ten minutes then blend. It makes a nice thick mush that you can pour through an old kitchen towel to get excess water out of the mache by squeezing and draining, then you add the seeds and a bit of soil, mix with your hands and roll in to balls. Let them dry and VOILA!, seed bombs.
Throw them out your car windows while driving down country roads and yell, " Make love, not war!" Well, OK, that's the old hippy talking again. But it does kind of make it fun when you do it. And when you drive down those country roads later in the Summer and see flowers blooming you can get out and take a selfie of yourself with your guerrilla sewn flowers and post it to Facebook and instagram. Kind of a 21st Century version of a Be In from the sixties, oh yeah!
The flowers to the left here, just ready to bloom earlier last week? Those are from jonquils my Grandmother had in her gardens. I've been carrying some of them with me and planting them everywhere we've lived since John and I were married. I even planted some in Berlin, Germany when we lived there in 1972 and 1973. I snuck down to a local park early in the morning in the autumn of 1972, planted them close up to some bushes and walked back that Spring to see them flower. Ha! How many people do you know who did guerrilla gardening during the cold war in Berlin, Germany while living surrounded by a wall?!
I am, ever yours, Nancy, dissident Guerrilla Gardener, thumbing my nose at DO NOT WALK signs, laughing at the way things go.
Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you, always. I wish you'd been here to sneak out and plant our seed bombs together. We would have had so much fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment