June 28–July 11, 2021
MOUNT WASHINGTON — Every evening when we gather at the dinner table facing floor-to-ceiling windows, a ruby-throated hummingbird wings in to sip from an expanse of purple sage blossoms. A pair of robins hops over to pull earthworms out of the patch of cut grass and clover just below the windows. Then, a chipmunk lopes into view, also to forage. On occasion, a second ruby-throat arrives. Tonight, the gray catbird, the latest arrival to our garden community, briefly touched down at the edge where sage meets thyme. Meanwhile, above a window on the other side of the kitchen, a pair of eastern phoebes quietly attends to their nestlings. By a water spigot beside our entryway, a spider eats its freshly wrapped inchworm.
Drifts of white, five-petaled blossoms burst like stars from black raspberry canes two weeks ago. They are now transformed into many-celled green berries, or aggregate fruits, that, when ripe, are alternately named “thimbleberry” or “blackcap.” Like a thimble or cap, black raspberries are hollow-cored when picked from their stems, whereas blackberries show a white center. Black raspberries excite the tongue with one of nature’s most perfect flavors – perfume for the palate. They are viable in zones 4–8, whereas blackberries are grown in zones 5–8. Vigorous canes arch over my head and over the narrow path, their thorns catching my sleeve to slow me down.
Also grabbing my attention, the handsome gray catbird sings from the top of one fencepost or another overlooking my garden’s berry “room.” Singing from his libretto of copycat songs, when not mewing like a house cat, the cheeky summer resident is, at this moment, concerned with clusters of ripening red currants. The catbird acts like the guardian of the glistening, pale green to orange to red berries. He would have the black currants, gooseberries, and black raspberries, too.
Frozen last summer, cubes of red currant puree flavor our table water and are melted into maple syrup for topping pancakes. Also frozen last year, we are eating black raspberries that possess all the flavors of the delicious fresh berries. To secure our harvest, we will mount bird netting and flashing aluminum pie pans. The catbird has free access to the garden’s abundance of insects, wild strawberries, and surrounding wildlands.
Gardeners and those who would be gardeners are keenly attuned to the tension between inviting wild plants and animals into the garden and fencing them out. Increasing biodiversity in places we steward is a calling that enlivens our time working the land and when at rest in our environment. In his recently published book, “The Ecological Gardener: How to Create Beauty and Biodiversity from the Soil Up,” UK gardener-designer Matt Rees-Warren states, “In my opinion, the greatest gift a garden can give is that it regenerates us as much as we regenerate it.” The book is a compendium of low environmental impact, low-cost techniques for developing robust living communities — meadows, hedgerows, water and discovery niches and composting strategies – not a guide specifically for the vegetable or flower gardener.
Rees-Warren exemplifies maximizing natural resources throughout the book, summing up his viewpoint in this sentence: “In a circular, closed-loop system, there is no such thing as waste — only resources that are currently under utilized and poorly understood.” Two important examples in my landscape include harvesting rainwater and grey-water so as not to tax a rather shallow well and raking autumn leaves for use as mulch to conserve water and contribute to soil health in the garden.
