Garden Dictionary 3rd Edition

It's been just over two years since I've done a post on Dictionary.com's Word of the Day words that relate to gardening.  I aim to change that today.  Without further ado, here are some of the new words I’ve learned:

quincunx \KWING-kuhngks, KWIN-\, noun:

1. an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
2. Botany. an overlapping arrangement of five petals or leaves, in which two are interior, two are exterior, and one is partly interior and partly exterior.

bedraggle \bih-DRAG-uhl\, verb:

to make limp and soiled, as with rain or dirt.

serotinal \si-ROT-n-l, ser-uh-TAHYN-l\, adjective:

pertaining to or occurring in late summer.

albedo \al-BEE-doh\, noun:

1. the white, inner rind of a citrus fruit.
2. Astronomy. the ratio of the light reflected by a planet or satellite to that received by it.
3. Meteorology. such a ratio for any part of the earth's surface or atmosphere.

commissure \KOM-uh-shoor, -shur\, noun:

1. a joint; seam; suture.
2. Botany. the joint or face by which one carpel coheres with another.
3. Anatomy, Zoology. a connecting band of nerve fiber, especially one joining the right and left sides of the brain or spinal cord.

lea \lee, ley\, noun:

1. a tract of open ground, especially grassland; meadow.
2. land used for a few years for pasture or for growing hay, then plowed over and replaced by another crop.
3. a crop of hay on tillable land.

bosky \BOS-kee\, adjective:

1. covered with bushes, shrubs, and small trees; woody.
2. shady.

sessile \SES-il, -ahyl\, adjective:

1. Zoology. permanently attached; not freely moving.
2. Botany. attached by the base, or without any distinct projecting support, as a leaf issuing directly from the stem.

albumen \al-BYOO-muhn\, noun:

1. the white of an egg.
2. Botany. the nutritive matter around the embryo in a seed.

pluvial \PLOO-vee-uhl\, adjective:

1. of or pertaining to rain; rainy.
2. Geology. occurring through the action of rain.

But what good is learning new words if you can’t put them into a sentence?  Here’s my attempt to use all these new words in one very short story:

The Gambling Gardener

Deep in the serotinal era of his life, the bedraggled gambler had a flash of clarity.  He had been waiting for the new card dealer to get set up when he realized that his ever-expanding butt and the stool at the blackjack table had formed a veritable sessile.  If he didn’t move soon, he’d never do anything else with his life.  In that moment, like the moment before we die, he recalled his entire youth and experienced, if only briefly, the unbridled joy he used to feel while exploring the bosky acreage around the home he grew up in.  The memory triggered in him an unquenchable desire to seek out his own lea in a pluvial land.  He could buy it with what was left of his gambling winnings if he walked away from the table now.  The land would be a blank slate upon which he could impress a new set of ideals, his own will, and a new system of taking chances against all odds.  He decided he would buy plants that were on the very edge of his USDA Hardiness Zone.  He would put full sun plants in part shade.  He would not pay much attention to spacing requirements either.  He was, after all, a gambler at heart.

And in return, the land would nurture him as the albumen does the unborn chick.  He would emerge from his shell and, in time, he would peel off the remaining albedo of his old life like a child before eating an orange and what was left would be exquisite.  He would become a gardener.  He would sink roots into the land.  His shovel would be a commissure between him and the soil.  And every time he planted something, he would arrange it in a quincunx to remind himself of the dice he used to roll and how he could now enjoy rolling the dice on a new life.      

He swore to himself that he would do all of this and more . . . after one more hand. 

There's No Terroir There

At some point in my garden blog reading, I began to encounter a fancy French word, terroir.  I quickly realized that “terroir” is what the smart gardeners call what the rest of us explain as “what’s it like where I live”.  Less sardonically, terroir means a sense of place. 

Being a connoisseur of fancy words, I quickly filed this one away.  It went under: Words I Like but Will Never Use in Casual Conversation. 

This is no casual conversation though.  I know that if you’re reading my blog it’s because you are esoteric in your own way, right?  So allow me, if you will, to write about what it’s like where I live.  Allow me to explore the terroir. 

I don’t want to tell you too much about the weather (historically dry until the last week) although that plays a significant role.  And I don’t want to write too much about my neighborhood (old with lots of character). 

My neighborhood is filled with turkeys.

I want to write more about my sense of the place.  I have lived in my house for less than a year.  In fact, it’s been just about a year since I first saw the listing for our house online.  I have probably written several times before, or at least I’ve thought about writing several times, that one of the main draws to this house was the lot itself.  All I saw was potential.  I was so excited to get started with a new garden, a garden that had room to grow, where I could plant more than one tree and not worry that it was the only thing I’d have room for in the entire yard. 

But then I got here, moved my family’s stuff and my personal junk into the house, worked on some projects, and did the unthinkable and hired people to mow my own lawn.  And after some nine or ten months I feel like I don’t have any real understanding of the terroir of my lot. 

My yard is still largely a blank slate.  I have certainly done things since I’ve been here.  I planted most of the Japanese maples that had lived in pots at my old place.  I have created one new garden bed, cut down lots of poorly planted and placed trees, and added some boxwood hedges, patches of ferns, and tackled my vegetable garden.  But it still just feels like small pieces of a larger puzzle - only this puzzle is lacking the box with the big picture on it. 

These pieces (the chair, the potted Japanese maple, the wood lantern) all had a place at my old house.
Now they are grouped together on the island of misfit elements.

The other morning as I drove through the neighborhood and looked at other people’s yards, it struck me how differently people landscape their yards.  I don’t know most of my new neighbors yet, but I can’t help but derive a sense of who they are based on what I sense of their place. 

That got me to thinking about how other people might perceive my landscape and what that says about me.  Can they tell just from looking that I’m still feeling directionless?  Can they sense the influence of too many different voices the way I do?  Do they experience the terroir of my yard the same way I do?   

In the realm of all things that are much less important than life-and-death, one of the worst things to feel is discouragement caused by your lack of progress in an endeavor like art, writing, or gardening.  But I am not as discouraged as I could be.  Although I sense that the terroir of my garden is as muddled as a slow-moving stream with too many kids playing in it, I also know that Spring is just a few warm days away here (the ornamental pear trees in the neighborhood have already bloomed!).  And when the Spring rains come through, this muddy water will be revived and I will have my chance to do a little bit more to fill this place with my voice.

This pincushion flower is already blooming in my front yard.

I am curious to hear from you on this topic if you have a moment.  I would love to hear how long it took you before you started to feel like your garden or yard or home started to feel like something you wanted it to feel like.  Did you have a good sense for the garden right away or did you have to live with it and listen to it for some time before it became clear to you?

Garden Dictionary 2nd Edition

It's been a while since I've done a gardening-related "Word of the Day" post and I wasn't planning on doing one for a while, but I just received the e-mail from Dictionary.com with this word and I just had to share:

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 3, 2012

zeitgeber \TSAHYT-gey-ber\, noun:

An environmental cue, as the length of daylight, that helps to regulate the cycles of an organism's biological clock.

The light–dark transition Zeitgeber is widely used by plants to set internal clocks not just for leaf movement but for many other activities as well.
-- John King, Reaching for the Sun

The most prominent zeitgeber in humans is the light/dark cycle.
-- Harold R. Smith, Cynthia Comella, Birgit Högl, Sleep Medicine

Zeitgeber comes directly from the German word which literally means "time-giver." It entered into English in the 1970s.

And here are a few more from the first quarter of 2012 accompanied by my own version of the "use it in a sentence" bit.

Tellurian \te-LOOR-ee-uhn\, adjective:

1. Of or characteristic of the earth or its inhabitants.

noun:
1. An inhabitant of the earth.

The dirt in my backyard has a Tellurian smell to it.


esculent \ES-kyuh-luhnt\, noun:

1. Something edible, especially a vegetable.

adjective:
1. Suitable for use as food; edible.

Sometimes I think that we have too many words.  The fact that esculent and edible, which are similar sounding words that have identicle meanings, leaves a bad, in-esculant taste in my mouth.

I don't care what the French say, these garden pests are not esculent escargot.

vernal \VUR-nl\, adjective:

1. Appearing or occurring in spring.
2. Of or pertaining to spring.
3. Appropriate to or suggesting spring; springlike.
4. Belonging to or characteristic of youth.

If it weren't for the vernal equinox, no one would know that vernal pertains to spring. 

furcate \FUR-keyt\, verb:

1. To form a fork; branch.

My sad little Dwarf Alberta Spruce

adjective:
1. Forked; branching.

During the summer months, I can often be found yelling at the TV to put a furcate in the pitcher because he's done. 

spruce \sproos\, verb:

1. To make neat or dapper (often followed by up).
2. To make oneself spruce (usually followed by up).

adjective:
1. Trim in dress or appearance; neat; smart; dapper.

I don't know why Dictionary.com missed this one.  Everyone knows a spruce is a tree. 

cordate \KAWR-deyt\, adjective:

1. Heart-shaped.
2. (Of leaves) heart-shaped, with the attachment at the notched end.

There's a cordate-shaped hole in my chest that only my love can fill.

burled \burld\, adjective:

Having small knots that produce a distorted grain in wood.

I was cruising along with these sentences pretty nicely until I ran into this burled word which threw me off course. 

pied \pahyd\, adjective:

1. Having patches of two or more colors, as various birds and other animals.
2. Wearing pied clothing.

I had no idea this is what pied meant.  I've never heard it used apart from pied piper.  I do have a pied tulip growing in my yard today. I just didn't know it was pied. 

viscid \VIS-id\, adjective:

1. Having a glutinous consistency; sticky; adhesive.
2. Botany. Covered by a sticky substance.

I've been reading Winnie-the-Pooh to my daughter lately.  She often wonders how Pooh can put his head in a jar of honey and then go out and talk with his friends without taking a bath first.  I think she's got a point.  His fur would be quite viscid after doing that.  

Monomaniacal

Last month I mentioned that I was reading “Moby Dick” and I tried to draw a comparison between Captain Ahab’s desire to seek out and kill the white whale that had maliciously devoured his leg and my personal issues with the grey squirrels that maliciously devour my seeds.    

Common flowers? Yes.  But colorful? Aye!

Well, I have now finished Moby Dick (finally) and in so doing, my head has been filled with a couple things: a nearly-encyclopedic and worthless knowledge of the anatomy of a sperm whale and a new lexicon of nautical and American romantic terms like “avast”,“hast”, and “doubloon.”  But the word that really got stuck in the riggings of my mind is “monomaniacal”.  It was the one adjective that Melville used to describe Ahab.      

My new Acer palmatum 'Murasaki Kiyohime' under
planted with dwarf mondo grass and a fern. 
The fern might have to be removed if it gets much bigger.

Now, monomaniacal is not a word you hear every day but it’s pretty easy to figure out what it means.  We don’t hear it every day because it is “no longer in technical use” as a way to describe a “psychosis characterized by thoughts confined to one idea or group of ideas.”

Close up of the Murasaki Kiyohime's spring leaves.  It's a dainty dwarf that does not take afternoon sun at all.

These days we probably just hear the word “obsessed.”  Obsessed is fine, but monomaniacal is more fun to say out loud.  Go ahead and say it. 

I’ll wait.  See?

Mexican Feather Grass, or Stipa tenuissima if you speak botanical.

Anyhow, given that it has been raining here in Sacramento all week and the gutters are filling up like it was the fourth day of Noah’s flood, a little fun is what I needed since I have not been able to do anything related to my monomaniacal desire to putter around the garden.    

The peach blossoms are getting ready to paddle off into memory.

I don't have a lot of pinks or reds in the yard.  These blossoms always make me second guess that decision.

Until today.  There was a brief reprieve in the typhoon this afternoon, okay, it's really just a light rain, so I went out and took these pictures in my back yard.  It might just have been enough to tide me over (nautical pun intended) until the next time the sun breaks through.  And when it does, I might have to fight back the urge to hail the sun with a hearty “Thar she glows!”  

I'm leaving the bird feeder empty for now.  It attracts too many of those damn squirrels.

Same picture but with a different focal point.

If you hate bad puns, I’m very very sorry for this post.  Please don’t make me walk the plank.    



I purchased these columbines this weekend.  I've never grown them before. 

I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet

I heard Carole King's voice singing "I feel the earth move under my feet" when I saw today that the USDA had finally released an update to their US Plant Hardiness Zone chart.

Somehow, without moving to a new house my garden has become a zone warmer.  What was once just a Zone 9A garden is now a wonderful 9B garden.  What does this mean for me personally?  It means that I now have access to 2,023 plants at Annie's Annuals that will grow in my backyard.  Yesterday there were only 1,925 plants I could grow.  So there's that. 

This change has been a long time coming (22 years since the last update).  In the meantime, most people who care about this sort of thing had already adjusted their zones in their own mind or switched over to a different system such as the Sunset Western Garden zones which looks at your location's overall climate including summer highs, length of the growing season, rainfall and humidity and not just winter lows like the USDA chart does.   

I don't really see this making a huge difference in the way I garden.  To me, it's more of an acknowledgement on the part of the USDA that their previous map was so 90's and was overdue for a makeover.  It might also say something about global climate change . . . but I'll let the USDA speak for itself on that "hot" button topic. 

I'd love to hear if anyone had a more signficant change in their official zone rating and what that means to them as a gardener, if anything.

A "Regular" 2012

Doesn't it seem like we are all making resolutions and telling people about them or we’re telling people why we don’t make resolutions?  I do make resolutions but I try to be creative with them.  One year I thought it would be fun to learn something new every month and I stuck with it for a while.  One month I learned how to juggle, another month I learned to roll over in a kayak, and then I tried to learn how to return phone calls.  The last one was the most difficult and is something I still struggle with today.  I really dislike answering the phone.

 

This year I resolved to at least try to go “Number 2” every single day.  Yeah, I know.  That’s not really the sort of thing people should announce to the world.  I just figured I’d be happier and healthier if I was more regular, colonicly speaking.  It’s just a little ironic that the resolution itself isn’t exactly, you know, regular.





I’m going to stick with that resolution but I’m adding to my plans for 2012.  Cat, who blogs as “The Whimsical Gardener”, wrote about centering her resolutions around a single word.  For 2011 that word was “espy” and this year it is “stretch.”  You should read both posts in which she explains why she chose the words and what they meant to her.  They have the ring of wisdom to them and are just a few thousand rungs higher up on the evolutionary ladder than my resolution to go poop every day. 

Inspired by what I read, I decided that I would spend 2012 with the word “cultivate” in mind.  I recognize that my life on January 4, 2012 has a perspective unique to today and I also know that life on December 31, 2012 will feel in many ways like a completely different life.  That is why I like Cat’s idea to choose a word rather than a specific goal.  By having just a single word to keep in mind we are free to grow, change, and strive for things throughout the year that we can't possibly conceive of in January. 

And that is great for me because I don’t know how my life is going to change in the coming year.  But I do know that if I work to cultivate relationships with my family and friends that my life will be richer for it.  I know that if I cultivate better habits for how I spend my time I will feel more satisfied with myself.  If I cultivate parts of my character I can improve the course of my future.  And if I cultivate a real vegetable garden for the first time ever I will be better fed and hopefully get more fiber in my diet which will have the added benefit of helping me with that other resolution.  So here's to 2012 and all that it will bring! 


*As a postscript, my ADD led me away from blogging long enough to click on over to Botanical Interests and place an order for some vegetable seeds so I can get started cultivating that new vegetable garden.  I have ordered from them in the past and I was very pleased with my success with the seeds and their packets are like little pieces of informative art. 

Each packet has an illustrated picture of the vegetable, common and botanical names, a plant tag, and information on when to plant and harvest.  As a hidden bonus, the insides of the packets include tips, recipes, pest control ideas, and a little history.  All for about $2.00 a packet. 

Garden Dictionary

I am a nerd.  That doesn't mean I think I'm a genius like those guys on The Big Bang Theory, but I like nerdy things.  I know, I know, those of you who read this blog and who know me in person will beg to differ.  I can hear you all saying, "But Chad, you're so cool and everything you say or write is so urbane and witty.  You aren't a nerd." 

Thank you for that, by the way, but I really am.  Allow me to convince you with this confession: I subscribe to and read Dictionary.com's Word of the Day e-mails.  If that isn't sufficiently nerdy for you, how about this?  I keep those e-mails and I organize them within my Outlook folder based on subject matter, i.e. great German words (of which there are many), words related to drinking alcohol, words that could describe my friends, and words I'll never have the cojones to use in conversation. 

How is any of this relevant to a gardening blog?  It isn't.  Except, in this case, the content of the Word of the Days has been heavily doused with gardening/nature words lately and I thought I'd share some of them with you to see if we could find some clever ways to work them into our gardening "lexicon" (a former Word of the Day, I'm sure).  Leave me a comment if you know some other great but underused gardening words!

boscage \BOS-kij\, noun:

A mass of trees or shrubs.

In places the park and the site itself were edged right up to its rubble and boscage by the rear of buildings...
-- China Miéville, The City & the City

Plunging along a narrow path thick-set on each side with leafy boscage, Paul caught sight of the two retreating figures a few yards only in front of him.
-- John R. Carling, The Shadow of the Czar

Boscage comes from the Middle French word boscage, from the roots bosk meaning “a small wood or thicket” and -age, a suffix that denotes a general noun, like voyage and courage.

weald \weeld\, noun:

1. Wooded or uncultivated country.
2. A region in SE England, in Kent, Surrey, and Essex counties: once a forest area; now an agricultural region.

I am tempted to give one other case, the well-known one of the denudation of the Weald.
-- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

And your advertisements must refer to the other, which is Great Willingden or Willingden Abbots, and lies seven miles on the other side of Battle. Quite down in the weald.
-- Jane Austen, Sanditon

Related to the word wild, weald comes from the Old English word weald meaning “forest.”

copse \kops\, noun:

A thicket of small trees or bushes; a small wood.

The sun was setting behind a thick forest, and in the glow of sunset the birch trees, dotted about in the aspen copse, stood out clearly with their hanging twigs, and their buds swollen almost to bursting.
-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Despite the December afternoon sunlight, the interior of the copse looked dark and impenetrable. The fact that none of the trees were covered in snow appeared to him to be improbable but welcome.
-- John Berger, Once in Europa

Copse is derived from the Old French word copeiz meaning “a cut-over forest” which originates in the Latin word colpaticum meaning “having been cut.”

frondescence \fron-DES-uhns\, noun:

1. Leafage; foliage.
2. The process or period of putting forth leaves, as a tree, plant, or the like.

What we found were three hundred pristine, mostly level acres with a forty-five-acre pond, completely undeveloped, covered with exquisite wildflowers and frondescence.
-- Paul Newman, In Pursuit of the Common Good

I now become aware of the sound of rumbling water, emanating from somewhere inside the rain forest next to my tropical rest stop. I approach the wet and abundant frondescence of the forest.
-- Richard Wyatt, Fathers of Myth

Frondescence is from the Latin root frondēre meaning “to have leaves.” It is clearly related to frond meaning “leaves.”

braird \BRAIRD\, verb:

1. To sprout; appear above the ground.

noun:
1. The first sprouts or shoots of grass, corn, or other crops; new growth.

Oats require about a fortnight to braird in ordinary weather.
-- Henry Stephens, The book of the farm

And yet, in puny, distorted, phantasmal shapes albeit,/It will braird again; it will force its way up/Through unexpectable fissures.
-- Hugh MacDiarmid, On a Raised Beach

Braird derives from the Old English brerd, "edge, top."

bough \bou\, noun:

A branch of a tree, especially one of the larger or main branches.

In the background, behind the pool and beneath the dramatic sidereal display, there is a little tree with a bird perched in its uppermost bough, exactly as there is on the Star card.
-- Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

He ran up the creeper as easily as though it had been a ladder, walked upright along the broad bough, and brought the pigeon to the ground. He put it limp and warm in Elizabeth's hand.
-- George Orwell, The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage

Bough can be traced back to the Sanskrit word bāhu, meaning “shoulder.”

willowwacks \WIL-oh-waks\, noun:

A wooded, uninhabited area.

There aren't many airports in Eastern Canada; you look at one like Upper Blackville, out there in the spruce-and-fir willowwacks, and wonder what it's doing there.
-- The AOPA pilot: Voice of General Aviation, Volume 37

Sure there were difficult moments, like an awkward fall below Texas Pass that twisted my previously broken ankle the wrong way, or 30 minutes lost on a wrong turn due to trail that disappeared in a stream, or a willowwacks that just wouldn't end; but overall today was a great day.
-- Mike DiLorenzo, "Yellowstone, 2005." D-Low.com

Willowwacks is of uncertain origin.

amaranthine \am-uh-RAN-thin\, adjective:

1. Unfading; everlasting.
2. Of or like the amaranth flower.
3. Of purplish-red color.

Though she had been made an amaranthine immortal when she was twelve years of age, she'd had to wait for her extraordinary abilities until her body matured to its most perfect state before fully transforming.
-- Kim Lenox, Darker Than Night

It made him jealous to imagine them lost in this amaranthine profundity.
-- Sir Compton Mackenzie, Sinister Street

Amaranthine is a form of the Greek amarantos, "everlasting," ascribed to an imaginary flower that never fades.