Existential Musings on Business and Law

1. Anyone who's willingly alive wants to survive (by definition).

2. There's surviving, and then there's surviving.

3. To get a softer berth, you have to take some responsibility. Make promises. Promise and perform repeatedly.

4. The softer the berth, the bigger the promises you have to make.

5. To reap the benefits, you need people who will keep their promises to you.

6. You own things and you have income. Income from work and income from letting others use what you own.

7. Some of the things people own are businesses. Businesses own other things, make promises, and pay people to perform those promises.

8. Someone who owns a business may want to sell it. Maybe he made income from the business by working at it, but now he's decided to make all his income from letting others use his money. He wants to swap his business for money.

9. In selling a business, there are two forces to be controlled: uncertainty about price and exposure to liability. Uncertainty about price: I want to be sure of coming away from the deal with this much money. Exposure to liability: I want to leave the promises of the business behind; keeping those promises is not my problem anymore.

Re-Weeding

The speed with which Bermuda grass clumps grow in our rose bed amazes me. It seems as if, in two or three weeks, the bed goes from clean to splotched with lush, dense, 12-inch-across crowns of this grass. The biggest crowns, moreover, invariably appear in the center of the bed or in among the canes of the roses. In either place, they are hard to reach without damaging the rose plants and getting scratched up.

Joined with the Bermuda grass are two weeds I haven't identified. One is bushy with leathery, dark-green leaves like jigsaw-puzzle pieces. It seems to come out readily. The other is our common low-growing weed, each of its round, dark-green leaves bearing in its center a dark brown spot. That one wants to snap off at ground level.

Weeding between Pavers

In previous summers, we've used Roundup to kill the weeds between the brick-sized pavers in our front walk. I've never been crazy about that method, however, both because I'm concerned about its possible effect on the toads, birds, and beneficial insects we'd like to see in the garden, and because we need to be very careful not to get any spray on the perennials that crowd much of the walk.

This year, I decided to try pulling the weeds by hand. It was not as bad as I would have expected. The entire task took about five hours. Most of the weeds came up with a good amount of root; it helped, I'm sure, that they were growing in sand rather than soil.

Not surprisingly, it's easier to bring up the root of some species than that of others. I would rate the weeds in our walk as follows, starting with the easiest to pull root-and-all and working up to the most difficult:

1. Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon) -- the trick with bermuda grass is to gather all the leaves of the plant into your hand before you start to pull; it also helps in some cases to shift your hand lower once the first sixteenth inch or so has come up.

2. Wood sorrel (Oxalis corniculata) -- wood sorrel is easy to grab, since it grows upright, but the stem will snap if you don't pull slowly and steadily.

3. Carpetweed (Mollugo verticillata)

4. A weed I haven't identified yet. It clings to the ground and spreads in all directions. The numerous leaves are almost round, medium to dark green, and each leaf has a brown spot in the center. We have a lot of it.

5. Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) -- I've found that the stem of purslane snaps readily when it's growing in anything other than mulch.

A Grand Day Out

Today was the first temperate, clear weekend day we've had in ages. It's not unbearably hot and humid, as the previous weekends have been. At the moment (2:30 pm), the sun is quite intense. But until about noon, we could work in the sun comfortably.

Kay took the time to deadhead her dahlias and hoop some that had begun to lean. She also helped me to pull trumpet vine that had worked its way among the perennials alongside the garage. I spent most of the morning pulling weeds in the front walk (managing to clear about half of it before lunch).

Homemade Nocino

Nocino is a liqueur flavored with walnuts. Last summer, my oldest brother harvested 30 nuts from our black walnut trees and made his own nocino, by soaking the quartered nuts in grain alcohol and adding spices and simple syrup.

In northern Italy, as I understand, the nuts for nocino are traditionally harvested on Saint John's eve (June 24), and the finished liqueur is consumed at Christmas. Here in southeastern Pennsylvania, we have nothing close to nuts on our trees by June 24. We don't have sizable nuts until early-to-mid July.

My brother came to visit this week, and yesterday evening we harvested about 100 nuts. He is going to make several batches (for gifts). He talked me into making my own as well.



There are a lot of nocino recipes available on the Web. The nuts need to be immature (ours were a little too developed -- some of them were very hard to cut). Cut them into quarters and put them in a pitcher with the alcohol. You should have about 30 nuts for a liter of alcohol.

Add to the pitcher one stick of cinnamon, 3-6 whole cloves, and the peel of one lemon. Cover the pitcher tightly with plastic wrap held by rubber bands and place it in a warm place, preferably where it can get some sun. Once a day, shake or swirl the contents. After about eight weeks, strain the contents of the pitcher, through cheesecloth, into a bottle with a stopper; add a cup of simple syrup (2 parts sugar dissolved in 1 part water); put the stopper in the bottle and store in a dark place for 60 days. Then it should be ready.

Where Are the Toads?

For some reason, we seem to have far fewer toads this year than in previous summers. In earlier years, if I went outside after dark, several toads would almost always be sitting under the light in front of the garage, waiting for bugs. But this year, while I've seen a few toads off and on, there are none in front of the garage.

I have no idea why. There seems to be precious little information about garden toads on the web; Amazon doesn't offer much in the way of books on toads. I'd love to know what happened to them and whether we can get them back.

Favorite New Tools

In a previous post, I mentioned one of my favorite new tools, the CobraHead Weeder. Another favorite new tool is the Smith & Hawken Garden Tool Caddy. I first saw this in Horticulture magazine last year and finally bought one a few months ago. It's wonderful. It holds all the tools we tend to need in one compact, portable stand. It has a ring about three feet off the ground to hold long-handled tools (we keep our small-bladed shovel and narrow spring rake there) and a bucket with a canvas liner whose pockets hold small tools (for us, the CobraHead, two hand spades, pruning shears, a long serrated knife, a dandelion tool, edging shears, and a few other things I'm probably forgetting). The back of the caddy has a removable waste-basket, which we toss weeds into while working.

The caddy saves us the trouble of gathering together our usual tools whenever we go into the garden to work (or leaving them in the big garden cart, which then needs to be unloaded when we want to use it for something it's more suited to). I can just grab the caddy and be sure I'll have the tools I'm most likely to need.

Journal

Yesterday was very humid and hot (up to 90 degrees), though not murderously hot like last weekend. Yesterday evening, thunderstorms blew through, accompanied by about an inch of rain. Today, it's partly sunny, hot, and humid. Fortunately, an intermittent breeze makes the humidity bearable.

I was able to spare only an hour for garden work yesterday. I continued my project of clearing the back rose bed of weeds. I'm in the home stretch now, down to the southern end where the bed curves toward the house. This is also one of the weediest areas, almost indistinguishable from the lawn.

This morning, I worked on our as-yet-vacant dahlia bed. Early in the spring, we paid someone to remove the sod from two kidney-shaped areas in the front yard. Kay's plan was to make both of them dahlia beds. I spaded one of the beds soon after the sod was removed, we mixed in several bags of Black Forest, and then we planted new dahlia bulbs plus those Kay had saved from last year and from her mother's garden.

By the time we had finished preparing and planting the first bed, I didn't have the energy to prepare the other. It has sat all these weeks, growing weeds. Today, I finally covered it with wet newspaper and spread mulch on top of that.

Cowbird Serenade

Early yesterday morning, while I was weeding before the sun got too high, a brown-headed cowbird on the peak of the roof behind me sang over and over its "water song" and cheep. I had never heard the water song so clearly before. It was if anything louder than the long cheep that followed it. I had also never seen a cowbird while it was in the act of singing its characteristic song -- it's always an intellectual thrill when you can make a direct connection between the bird and the song.

The water song consists of bubbling, babbling noises, like a brook running over stones or water being poured into a puddle. Starlings can make a similar noise, but theirs has a random, undisciplined feel, wandering all over in pitch and incorporating pops and clicks.

Peony Time

Over the past few days, our peony flowers have opened. I believe the variety we have is 'Judy Garland,' but I can't seem to confirm that anywhere on the Net. The flowers are white with a very slight pinkish blush.

Unfortunately, the flowers are also the size and weight of grapefruit. A stem of oak would be needed to support them once they blossom. Peonies, of course, don't have stems of oak; they have stems of al dente pasta. Without artificial support, ours simply collapse onto the ground.

Each year we get better at supporting the peony. We've tried a plastic-coated metal peony ring -- too flimsy. Stakes and string work better. You can add as many stakes and bands of string as you want, and you can make the encircled area as large or small as you want. The plastic-coated metal stakes (rebar, I think) are my favorites. They blend in well and are stout enough to be pounded with a sledge hammer.

This year, we made sure to start early. We had four stakes in and the first belt of string tied by the time the plant was 18" high. As the plant got taller, I added a second and a third belt of string. When the buds had expanded enough to show the white petals within, I was confident that this year the peony flowers would be held high for all to enjoy. And I didn't do too badly. I could have used yet one more circle of string, just below the level of the blooms. (As it is, one stem has simply folded in half over the topmost string, aiming its bloom like a spotlight at the ground.) Also, I could have used strings crisscrossing through the center of the plant, to keep the blooms from piling together on one side of the encircled area.

EDIT: The peony isn't 'Judy Garland.' Kay informs me that we had a rose called 'Judy Garland' that didn't make it through a previous winter. The peony is supposedly 'Sarah Bernhardt,' although it seems to be lot paler than the pictures on line.

"Rommel, You Magnificent Bastard, I Read Your Book!"

That is, of course, a line from the movie Patton, exclaimed by General Patton (George C. Scott) as he realizes that he has outmaneuvered Rommel in a battle in North Africa. The line occurred to me the other day while weeding. I felt -- even if only briefly -- that I had an advantage over the weeds because I've been reading "their" book.

The book is My Weeds, by Sara Stein. Stein gives her subject the same dedication that other gardener-writers have shown toward clematis, perennial borders, ornamental grasses, or rhododendrons. In a way, her dedication is even greater, because she seeks to understand weeds the way a conscientious general seeks to understand his opponent. She appreciates what they can do; she looks at their strong points realistically. She acknowledges that overconfidence in the face of weeds will cost you.

Her advice on how to deal with weeds mostly takes the form of highly entertaining war stories. She describes how she manages particular weeds in particular settings and occasionally how her acquaintances or relatives have succeeded with different techniques. These anecdotes inspire me. Stein's writing lends a certain glory to the unpleasant, underappreciated, yet indispensable task of weeding.

Good Weeding Weekend

The elements combined to make this weekend nearly perfect for heavy-duty, two-fisted weeding. Yesterday was cloudy in the morning, letting me get in two hours of work before thunder showers moved in around noon. In the late afternoon, the sun came out and began to dry the grass while I put in another two hours. Today it's sunny, but it's clearly not summer yet. Just when the sun starts to be too hot on my back, a high cloud passes in front of it or a breeze rises up. The soil, meanwhile, is still soft from yesterday's rain.

I've started at the eastern end of the back rose bed and have worked westward, mulching at the end of each day's work. I alternate between kneeling and sitting cross-legged, depending on how my back and legs feel. The Cobra Head, which I scoffed at when Kay brought it home from a flower show, is now my preferred weeding tool. It has the perfect angle and shape for loosening the dirt, it's long enough to give you a foot of extra reach into the interior of beds, and flipped on its side, it combs through loosened dirt and uncovers missed weeds better than my hands can do.

Why I Hate Roses

Yes, roses can be seductive. They have gorgeous flowers, they often smell quite nice, they can have strong historical and private associations for many people, and their names are just great (Mr. Lincoln, Julia Child, Maria Callas, Queen Elizabeth, Johann Strauss, . . . ).

But my perspective on roses allows me to see past their charms. Kay has a smallish collection of rose bushes. (For me, far too many; for most rosarians, far too few.) I help dig the holes for planting them, pull the weeds under them, water them, stake them, and pull Japanese beetles off them. And I try to comfort Kay while she agonizes over their illnesses, which is practically all the time.

I see roses' ugly side. Here, in sum, is the brief against them:

1. They need a lot of preparation. Roses are bushes. They need big holes. A normal perennial-sized hole won't cut it. In our yard, where the soil is basically dry mortar holding together a vast jumble of grape-sized to fist-sized rocks, digging a rose hole means using a heavy crowbar-like tool more often than a shovel.

2. They don't shade out weeds. Roses are fussy. They don't like to be crowded, and they don't like to share their beds with non-roses. Their beds consequently have a lot of sunny, open space that is perfect for weeds. Mulching helps somewhat, but you still need to get down on your knees and reach under and around their thorny branches to keep the weeds down.

3. They're always in trouble. Roses seem to be sick all the time. The leaves are turning yellow and dropping; the buds are bending over and dying; they're loaded with aphids and Japanese beetles. Sometimes they just seem to have general malaise, like a widow who's lost her husband and her will to live. Roses never become "established." They're always on the brink of disaster. Worst of all, some of their problems seem to be curable only by soaking the ground around them with chemicals so bad that they can't be sold anymore.

Are roses so wonderful that we should put ourselves through this, when we could have a bright, exuberant perennial bed for a small fraction of the toil and worry?

Refreshment

Maybe it's just my imagination, but a little overnight rain seems to enliven the plants in a way hand-watering can't seem to match. Some fast-moving thunderstorms came through our area between dusk and midnight yesterday. This morning, everything looked perkier. The slight droops were gone. The leaves and stems had an optimistic air, like a man with a spring in his step.

If You Want Something Done Right . . .

Gardening is one endeavor that gives truth to the adage, If you want something done right, you should do it yourself. Last spring, we doubled the length of the rose bed in the front yard, from about ten feet to twenty feet. Time, however, got away from me, and I neglected to weed and mulch the new bed after we put in Kay's additional roses. By August, when the bed finally seized my lapels and demanded my attention, the space between the roses was like a vacant lot. Hard as concrete and veined with Bermuda grass, clover, portulaca, maple seedlings, dandelions, plantain, and who knows what else. Every evening for over a week, I then spent two hours with a hand spade digging out each weed, cum roots if possible, and then blanketing the day's recovered area with mulch.

Our rose bed in the back yard really needed the same treatment. But by the time I was done with the front bed, I just could not face the same job with the even longer back bed. So we hired someone to weed it for us. The woman we hired is a fine garden designer (she laid out the perennial bed along the front of the house) but not such a great weeder. I think what she did was essentially hoe off the tops of the weeds and then mulch.

Now it's the following season, and the difference between my hand weeding in the front and the weeding-for-hire in the back is apparent. The front bed (which I freshened up yesterday) had just a handful of weeds. The back bed, meanwhile, has a green mat of clover, tufts of grass, and a weed I haven't identified yet but is common in our yard. I need to do to the back rose bed what I did last year in the front: laborious hand weeding, inch by inch, until the bed is clear.

Our Ferns So Far

Bit by bit, we've been adding ferns to the garden. Two springs ago, we planted one tiny Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum 'Pictum'), in an open spot under one of the garage windows. It's since become somewhat crowded and blocked by neighboring perennials, but I'm not ready to move it just yet.

Last year, we planted three ferns, all at the back of the annual bed near the back door: another Japanese painted fern (which started out much larger than our first one and is now a big splash of silver when you come up the hill), a Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), and a variegated holly fern (Arachniodes simplicior var. variegata). The Christmas fern seems to be in good shape, but we're waiting to see how the holly fern will do. John Mickel, in Ferns for American Gardens (Timber Press 2003), says that his variegated holly fern doesn't awaken until early June in New York. Ours currently has only two small fronds, still not completely uncurled, and three crosiers. We also have a maidenhair fern that was planted by the woman who laid out the bed along the back of the house; I think it's Adiantum capillus-veneris.

So far this year, we've added six ferns: In front of the gnome on the east side of the back yard, an Athyrium filix-femina (lady in red) flanked by two Polystichum polyblepharum (Japanese tassel ferns). An autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora) in an empty spot under the dogwood in the front yard. An Athyrium 'Ghost' fern that Kay fell in love with, by the gate into the front yard. And another athyrium, 'Branford Beauty,' at the western end of the bed along the back of the house. The label of the Branford Beauty fern says that it's "a perfect cross between Lady Fern and Japanese Painted Fern!" I'm not sure if I wouldn't really rather have something more robust in that spot, but we'll see how it develops.

Memorial Day Weekend 2008

Today is the third of three glorious days of gardening. On Saturday, we dug the spent tulips out of the annual bed by the back door and put in impatiens. (We ran out of impatiens and need to buy more today.) We also planted heliotrope in the bed in front of the livingroom window, replaced several sickly-looking wave petunias in the bed by the dogwood, and planted a few leftover marigolds, deadnettle, and another groundcover in an open spot along the back of the house (I need to check the name on that last one). Kay trimmed the big taxus beyond the annual bed, opening up the path between that bed and the taxus again, and we used the truck to haul those trimmings plus some large fallen pine branches out to the mulch pile.

Yesterday, I continued my project of reclaiming the neglected bed between the forsythia and the big taxus. I cut down and raked out the violets, lily-of-the-valley, and assorted weeds, and then spread water-logged newspaper over the bed and covered the newspaper with mulch. (A little brown toad came along with the mulch.) I still have half the bed to be tamed. I also planted a false sunflower in the front, in the corner by the holly; sawed off the less comely side of our split redbud; and weeded and mulched half of the front rose bed.

In a few moments, before it gets any warmer, we're going to put marigolds, petunias, and ageratum in the bed around the mailbox, and after that it's another trip to the nursery.