The Cultivated Life

Tag: horticulture

• An Excerpt from “The Scent of a Daphne”

  Posted at 12:38 am by Karen, on April 6, 2017

  I’m pleased to share a sneak peek of my piece, “The Scent of a Daphne,” that appears in Rooted: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction. It’s about my time in horticulture school, my husband’s cancer treatment, and the unexpected gift I received.

  “It was early September, my second semester of horticulture school, and class was about to begin. I stood outside the door on the narrow sidewalk that ran along the building. The day was warm and the door propped open with a wedge. Flies buzzed in and out. Students chatted and shuffled through notebooks while friends hugged at seeing each other again. I hadn’t made any friends yet, but that didn’t bother me. I had other things on my mind. Like the situation I had to explain to Tim, my professor.

  He was an outdoorsy 50-something with wavy, gray hair dressed in boots and a canvas jacket. “What’s up?” he asked.

  It was actually what was down. Down in my life. As in down and out, or beaten down, or in a downward spiral. My husband, Ethan, had just had an operation, not to remove an organ or clean out dangerous tissue or repair a ligament. The surgeon had installed a port in his chest, a small flat disc with a little tube connected to his artery so chemotherapy drugs could be injected into his bloodstream. He was about to be poked with a lot of needles a lot of the time and surgically inserting a port was easier on his body than poking the same veins again and again.”

  Thanks for reading! There are so many amazing pieces in Rooted. When our editor sent me the galleys, I fell in love with the collection right off the bat at the first essay. It’s now available at Amazon and through the publisher, Outpost19. Cheers…

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  Posted in Writing | 0 Comments | Tagged cancer, Daphne, horticulture, writing

• Lab Girl: My Favorite Christmas Gift to Give

  Posted at 11:08 pm by Karen, on December 7, 2016

  

  We were in the car.

  “Plants are the only living beings in the world that can make their own food,” I said.

  My daughter sat in silence. Stared out the window. “But people grow their own food,” she said.

  Good answer. “Yeah, but literally, like with my body. I can’t hold out my hand, let rain hit it, and then turn the rain into hummus or something I can eat.”

  She thought about that. Silence. “Huh.”

  She was mildly interested at best. Such is life with kids, but also such is life with an inarticulate horticulturalist. I should be able to explain photosynthesis better, I mean, downright inspire my kids to be as in awe and wonder of plants as I am. And though I’ve had scattered success over the years, I’ve found that their elementary school teachers sometime inspire them more than I do. Months later, my daughter would come home and recite that very fact with bold excitement to me. I shrugged. Because the fact didn’t come from me, it was more precious. Go figure.

  When I read Hope Jahren’s “Lab Girl” this summer, I realized I’d found that inspiring teacher in a book. She talks about plants with a scientist’s eye but a poet’s heart, making for a magnetic memoir. As she says, she wanted to know what “it’s like to be a plant,” a curiosity that led to over 20 years of work in environmental sciences, telling stories of her first job “shooting bags” of medicine and later more rewarding endeavors as a university researcher, investigating whether trees have memories, how roots communicate, and other cool, green behaviors.

  Though Jahren has vast experience in science, it’s her personal stories that really shine in the book. She honestly speaks of her emotionally distant, Scandinavian family and her mother’s harshness. She describes manic-depressive episodes in details that will make your nerves tingle. Less wild but even richer are the tales of her excursions, both physical and psychological, into her experiments with longtime lab assistant, Bill Hagopian. They’ve worked together since the mid-1990s when the eccentric showed up to her class, essentially homeless, and through his insights on soil, convinced Jahren he was brilliant in a way other students weren’t. Bill’s bold-talking, day-old-pizza-eating, smart-as-a-whip personality offers a humble, funny foil to Jahren’s straightforward ambition and steadiness that I couldn’t get enough of.

  What also amazes me about this book is Jahren’s ability to articulate complex scientific concepts in simple ways. Note her comparison of baby leaflets to the “small and insufficient” spare tire that only gets you to the nearest gas station. She makes science sound exciting and useful, which, of course, any scientist would tell you, it is, but it’s Jahren’s ease with profundity that makes this book stand out. She waxes on about the struggle of a seed or pollinating wasps, biological processes that often must be overlooked by mainstream gardening experts. Finally, her eloquence spills in a most touching way into her relationships with her husband and son. That she brought home a “potion” for her son to drink so he can transform into a tiger before explaining the slow evolution of a tiger makes me think she’s just showing off. What “a brain.” And I mean that as a compliment.

  My daughter is still a bit young to read “Lab Girl,” but it surely would entertain any adult out there like me. Not necessarily ornamental horticulturalists but simply people who respect science and love plants. All we gardeners do in dormant winter is dream about plants anyway. Reading “Lab Girl” is an excellent way to dream.

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  Posted in Garden, Writing | 0 Comments | Tagged book review, environmental science, evolution, experiments, family, food, gardening, Hope Jahren, horticulture, inspiration, lab, Lab Girl, leaflets, photosynthesis, Plants, pollination, science, seeds, soil, wasps

• 2016: The Year of “Why Not You?”

  Posted at 11:20 pm by Karen, on January 5, 2016

  

  This is the first time I’ve looked back on a year and thought it was a good year. In 2015, I worked hard at getting a novel I’m proud of ready for the world. My gardening business was happily busy. My older daughter got more serious about her studies, my younger one relaxed a bit despite her disability. My son did great academically and became the best trumpet player at his school. My husband, as always, never stopped impressing me with his patience for our kids and love for me. Oh, and I finally started sleeping well. Maybe because these other things fell into place, go figure.

  Because 2015 was a good year, I’m inspired to accomplish even more in 2016. God, I sound like such a Polyanna. This year’s going to be the best ever! But it’s true. I’m actually ready to get down to the business of being more successful. One of the ways I’m planning on doing that is publishing my novel. While I’ve published fiction and non-fiction short pieces, I haven’t published a book yet. And that’s probably because I’ve never tried very hard. With an earlier novel I had several near-misses. But this year I’m resolved to try harder. And try again. And again in different ways like publishing more short pieces, etc.

  I was inspired by the story of Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson and his dad. When he was about to go into college and wanted to play football, he was told (probably by coaches or recruiters) he wouldn’t make it as a pro player because he was only 5’11”. Most quarterbacks are over six feet tall. Being able to see over the players and to where you need to throw or move is considered a huge advantage. Wilson didn’t have this advantage. But his father encouraged him to try anyway. Wilson has said his father often said to him, “Rus, why not you? Why not you?” He wanted Wilson to believe in himself despite his disadvantage.

  My disadvantage is I haven’t published a full-length novel. But this year I believe I can. I’ve written a compelling story with interesting characters. It’s set in Paris. It’s about horticulture. It touches on modern day issues of religious fanaticism and natural medicines. It could be the first in a series of books of what I call “horti-thrillers.” I’m researching agents and ready to knock on doors. So why not me? I’m just as hard-working, creative, and professional as published book authors.

  If you’re a hard-working, professional writer, I encourage you to also name 2016 as your year of “Why Not You?” Because in the end, why not?

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  Posted in Writing | 5 Comments | Tagged author, gardening, horticulture, novel, Paris, publishing, Russell Wilson, Seahawks

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