This is one example of the kind of plant we need on this crowded planet: producing greens, grain, and flowers that the Victorians called “Love Lies Bleeding.” Here’s an article about amaranth’s value in developing countries.

They reseed themselves freely, as do the many other native and hardy species we’ve been planting, so weeding is important–and we have to learn to identify the tiny seedlings so we know what to keep. I was startled this year to find a purple morning glory coming back on its own. These plants–known as bindweed–can be invasive in warmer climates, but I had no idea the seeds would survive a New England winter.

Perhaps by the time I get home from China the pale yellow solidago, or goldenrod, will be blooming in the terrace bed. I’ve never seen so many tiny bees or flies or whatever they are as this plant attracts. This is all to the good: we need to create habitat for myriad small creatures, because they are part of a healthy local ecosystem. Ideally, you should find a local or regional nursery to get your native plants from. My favorite in our area is the Catskill Native Nursery. And for common plants, just collect seeds or small plants in the wild, from the roadside or a vacant lot. (It’s funny to find that plants we consider roadside weeds are grown for their beauty in other countries: English gardens often have goldenrod and sumac, and the bouquet a colleague left for me here at my Beijing hotel has goldenrod in it.)

I’m not a zealot though, as you can see from the photo: I love my hybrid lilies, too!

Technorati : milkweed, monarch butterfly, native plants

“Aren’t they already?” people ask, thinking that because I’ve written several books about eco living I must do things perfectly myself. But I’m a working mother and an American to boot, and definitely not perfect. I don’t do much driving, but I fly a good deal and that’s about as energy-intensive as you can get. I’m an adept vegetarian cook, but I don’t cook very much these days–especially in the last month, because I’ve had a severely sprained ankle.

Our first focus, with Tom here doing some of the preaching (what a nice change!), is the garden. We’ve put in an immense amount of stuff–tomatoes, beans, peas and potatoes, peppers and squash, and much more–and summer heat is here at last. The key challenge is going to be weeding, and then harvesting. Harvesting takes more time than people realize, and it’s easy to lose control with plants that need regular attention in order to be most prolific. There are a few peas now, and we need to pick daily in order to keep the plants flowering and producing.

I have to admit that I am better about picking flowers than about keeping up with the squash. Last year I had huge quantities of sweet peas and I was out every morning picking bouquets. That’s where mindset comes in: I cannot buy vasefuls of sweet peas, but it’s relatively easy and cheap to buy vegetables. Not, however, the heirloom varieties we’re growing. We are also increasingly conscious of the need to develop more self-sufficient ways, for what Tom likes to refer to as the post-oil world.

This doesn’t solve the problem of getting rainwater to the rest of the garden, but it’s a great concept and a place to start.

Tom, home from college for two weeks, has become a gardener, and Rachel is full of enthusiasm for seed planting. We were all out this weekend raking and scraping, filling in holes, and pulling out bittersweet (the most beautiful rampant vine we know). I tend to let stalks and leaves lie in the autumn, providing some protection in the flower beds and forming a thick mulch. But in the spring sunlight this can look messy. There is a bag of buckwheat hulls in the barn, which make a civilized and almost ladylike mulch, but I feel guilty about using so much of this bought-in garden material. David and Tom got the little chipping machine out and made mulch of lots of leaves right on the spot where it is needed, and I pulled apart a bale of hay to mulch my shade beds (mulch, by the way, holds moisture in the soil and keeps weeds from sprouting–it’s good year round).

As I was tossing the silky clumps of hay I was thinking about garden supplies and global warming: how we can use wonderful natural materials, made from the waste of food processing (like the buckwheat hulls), but there is probably a high energy price tag. Local hay, I thought, isn’t as attractive but it is cheap and available right here. Then I caught a whiff of ocean brine and it occurred to me that the silky hay I was spreading was something out of the ordinary. I checked with David, who had bought it to insulate the back of the house (it keeps our downstairs bathroom pipes from freezing). Yes, it’s salt hay, something I’d heard of but never seen. Very nice to use, but not exactly the ecological choice I’d imagined, having travelled from the sea coast to the Berkshire Hills.

Inside, I have yellow flowers, too: branches of forsythia that I cut in the snow and brought inside. So-called “forced” branches are beautiful, cheap, and far more ecologically sound than florist shop flowers. There’s still plenty of time to cut them. Anything that blooms will probably work: crab apple branches make a lovely Easter tree, forsythia’s grand (choose branches with plenty of buds), and I’m thinking of trying pussy willow, too.

I am a lover of lawns, in moderation. There’s nothing like the green sweep of a cricket ground, and to lie on my back watching the clouds swim gently across the sky was one of the great pleasures of childhood. And you’re right: there’s no reason I shouldn’t still be doing this. But not today. It’s raining gently and steadily in Great Barrington. The tomato and cauliflower plants are especially grateful.

And the lawn is grateful, too, I think, because it depends entirely on rain; we wouldn’t dream of watering it, as my parents used to water the lawn in front of their California home. It’s a mix of crabgrass and clover, with plenty of dandelions and plantain. I’m not sure if it really should count as lawn–it’s just a mowed hillside–but it does look quite nice and does just as well as manicured turf for picnics and cloudgazing.

Here’s a good book to turn to for advice: Natural Lawn Care, by Dick Raymond. Storey Communications, 1993.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how many things we have to dry, and we’ll be pleased next winter when we’re using our own herbs instead of buying them in bottles. We have thyme, two kinds of mint, lemon balm, and oregano. There’s also a lot of cilantro and dill, which reseed themselves and turn up everywhere in the flower beds now. But cilantro and dill, like basil, don’t retain much flavor when they are dried, so I freeze them instead (not nearly so energy efficient).

If you grow herbs, this is the time to pick them, before they flower. Pick the leaves, or tips of branches, early in the morning after the dew has dried. For specifics, here are tips from the University of Illinois Extension (which, by the way, contradict some of the advice I gave above–we don’t have any problem drying lemon balm, and I don’t like dried dill!).

But there is one thing that no longer troubles us about rain. Our basement stays dry these days, ever since we did some major landscaping that took account of our land’s history. We’re on a hill, a gentle slope from the top corner behind the barn down to the corner, and water used to flood across the lawn. Then we discovered, both from talking to an old resident and looking at maps, that there was once a stream. Like many developed areas, streams have been moved underground (London has underground rivers flowing into the Thames), but their sources, springs and rainfall both, continue to spill water in the old channels.

With the help of a landscaper who specializes in native plants and stone, we recreated the stream, a grassy channel edged with boulders and planted with water-loving plants like yellow flags (irises) and ferns. We also planted shrubs on the higher ground. The result is both beautiful and practical. Instead of worrying about flooding, we’re thrilled to see water in the streambed.

But I’m still hoping the sun will come out today!