Flickers of Hope

Flickers love to hammer on things. They have tough beaks and (apparently) remarkable cranial resiliency, and they will hammer away on things like there’s no tomorrow.

In this regard flickers absolutely adore human civilization. They love us because we build stuff, and in so doing present Colaptes all manner of resonant items on which to hammer: arbor posts, telephone poles, garbage cans, and a species favorite—metal chimney pipes.

Flickers typically beat on trees—tall, standing dead conifers are natural choices—at a rapid-fire 25 strikes per second. Trees are all fine and good, but flickerwise nothing can compare to the rich acoustics of a nice telephone pole.

Drumming is a requisite part of flickerness. The birds use drumming to attract mates and to defend nesting sites by warning away competitors—the biggest, baddest beat rules the hood. Flickers also have more normal bird-like vocals—staccato bursts of singsong yelps—but that’s like saying Picasso was also a decent bicycle mechanic. These birds are percussive virtuosos.

The flicker is in the woodpecker family. It’s a good-looking bird, bigger than a robin, with dappled plumage and, depending on the species, various ornamental dashes of color. There are butt-loads of flicker species and dozens of common names, including clape, gaffer, heigh-ho, wake-up, walk-up, wick-up, yarrup, gawker, and my personal favorite, harry-wicket.

A male Colaptes auratus mucking about in the dirt looking for insects. Photo by David Pederson.

Speaking of no tomorrow (refer to paragraph 1), I’m finally starting to feel better, as if there actually will be a tomorrow. The further that suckhole of 2020 recedes in the rearview mirror, the better. Sure, the craziness isn’t over yet. There’s still bad juju floating around in the air and we still have to do all sorts of annoying things like not sneezing on each other, but regardless I can now see a squidgeon of light at the end of the tunnel, the glass is turning from half empty to half full (even though some of that may be backwash), and I thankfully watch less televised news. I’m more inclined to—as Monty Python encouraged—look on the bright side of life.

Prime catalysts of this percolating optimism happens to be our neighborhood flickers. It’s like this: In the morning at this time of year, I’ll settle into a big old stuffed living room chair with a first-thing cup of coffee, still baggy-eyed and floppy jammied. A this point if I have any thoughts at all they’re almost certainly about coffee. I’ll guarantee I’m not thinking about harry-wickets.

But then, unexpectedly, I’ll hear it. The thrumming beat. It’s there and gone in a brief moment. I pause, Iistening, waiting, waiting. And there it is again, that bold, rapid-fire rapping: Finely feathered northern flicker seeks companion for fun and frolics. Another flicker answers from a distance: Hey, check the size of my metal chimney!

For me, something about that sound is transportive. To where, I’m not exactly sure, but somewhere pleasant and satisfying. It’s a remembrance of something familiar yet new. That burst of sound cracks open the doldrums of winter with its insistence of spring. Riding that sound I’m carried to a place where the daylight gets longer and the air warmer and the coffee is always thumbs-up good. It’s a new year and green stuff is starting to poke up through the mulch. What are those things, anyway? Who cares? No matter what they are, I have a feeling this might be the year of our Schiddiest garden ever!

Camellia, We Feel Ya

How to grow incredible camellias without even trying. At all.

I wanted to share my prized gardening achievement. There are two enormous camellia bushes flanking our front entryway, and this time of year—winter—they begin to develop the most gorgeous blossoms imaginable. By the time these two behemoths are done blossoming out for the season, they will have produced hundreds of delicate, pale pink flowers.

I used my favorite gardening technique to produce such healthy plants and luscious blossoms, which was to buy a house with the camellias already established. From that point on, I have done absolutely nothing in the way of pruning, watering or applying nutrients of any kind, a well-considered hands-off approach which our two camellias have gratefully rewarded with an abundance of charm and beauty, especially during the drearier times of the year.

Camellias are evergreen shrubs, with tough, waxy green leaves that add to their winter appeal. They can grow up to 15 feet plus tall and as wide. They were first cultivated in Asia and were essentially unknown to the rest of the world until an intrepid British explorer (naturally) brought some back to England in the early 1700s. This is the beginning of the period when the English went absolutely bonkers for new plant species, and if you sailed home with a handful of never-before-seen seeds you were likely to be knighted and spend the rest of your life on a tony estate with hunting dogs (English setters) and—you guessed it—full-time gardeners.

Camellia is the genus of the family Theaceae. The true total of Camellia species is unknown, it’s somewhere between 100 and 300 not counting hybrids. Wikipedia notes that “there is some controversy over the exact number.” With that in mind I can easily envision heated arguments between Camellia Emeritus botanists as they debate the numerical possibilities. In fact, I’ve written a fantastically dramatic play about it, set in the late 1800s:

Fobbington: Billingsworth, you spotted dick! The fact that there are exactly two-hundred and four identified species of Camellia is astounding in its factuality!

Billingsworth: My dear addled Fobbington, you have plum pudding for a brain! You do the Royal Society of Casual Camellia Aficionados an enourmous (<<British spelling, I think) injustice of historic proportions! With my very life I shall defend the honour (<<ditto) and integrity of our two-hundred and twenty-one confirmed species!

Fobbington: Are you challenging me to a duel, sir?

Billingsworth: I am!

Fobbington: Then the encounter is thus charged! (<< meaning he’s down with it). What are the weapons of choice?

Billingsworth: Fronds, sir! It shall be fronds!

Okay, the rest of the plot isn’t fully developed. I think an argument ensues over what frond species to use, which doubles down on the entire premise and heightens the tension. And I need to insert some kind of love interest in there, possibly a scullery maid, which sadly makes a marriage impossible because of the differing social strata.

Meanwhile, the American Camellia Society (yes, it’s real) suggests a number of ways to care for camellias (with a few helpful notes from me):

• Fertilizers should be applied in an economic but methodical process (I think the proper word form would be “economical.” Just sayin'—JR). Higher nitrogen rates are best applied in spring, then changing to moderate nitrogen and phosphate, and to higher potassium in September.

• Water is not only essential for normal growth but a continuous supply ensures constant mineral uptake. (Well, I haven’t watered our beauties for years, so take this under advisement—JR)

• The ultimate pruning plan will reflect one's interests in camellia culture. Growers primarily interested in producing show flowers generally thin out more branches than those grown for landscape use. (I think this implies there are stages of pruning plans, starting with my personal favorite—Nonexistent—moving to Thinking About Pruning, then Hacking Aimlessly (Deb’s favorite), and finally to Ultimate).

Maybe the best Ultimate Plan plan is to do what we did, which was to buy a house with established camellias. True, this plan ultimately cost a few hundred thousand dollars, but the results have been so worth it!

Ivy Be-leaguer-ed

I like it.

She doesn’t. At all.

I’m talking about ivy, Hedera helix, that green creeping thing that covers stuff whether you want it to or not.

Our conversations about the ivy that persists in our side yard go something like this:

Me: “Wow, that ivy looks great, so green and everything. And healthy! I mean, it hasn’t rained for like three years and everything else is parched to where it looks like a junk yard devoted exclusively to discarded barbed wire except for that ivy which looks as fresh as…um…a daisy.”

To which she replies, “Schnarfffss!” which, through years of diligent (if sometimes unfortunately belated) decoding, I have come to understand means, “No frecking way, you must devote hours of your time in the immediate future to removing most if not all of it.”

[Lawerence Weslowski/Dreamstime]

To which I rejoin: ”But ivy is more than a plant, it’s an institution! An icon! It swaths the hallowed facades of Princeton University! It adorns the sacred walls of Wrigley Field! If it weren’t for ivy, the entire British Kingdom would collapse in a heap of bricks and cobbles!”

(Quick aside here: I think we can all agree that “bricks and cobbles” would be an excellent name for a pub. I was so intrigued I searched for such an establishment but couldn’t find one. But I can hear it: I say old chap, let’s retire to the Bricks & Cobbles for a pint. There is, however, a quilt pattern called “bricks and cobblestones.” It’s not necessarily my favorite pattern.)

I continue: “Ivy is God’s gift to gardeners! It just grows and grows and you never have to water or fertilize it ever!”

Deb: “Schnarfffssssss!” (note the extra esses).

Left: bricks and cobblestones quilt Right: I'd name this pub The Bricks & Cobbles [Anizza/Dreamstime]

I understand the argument against ivy. Given rein, it will absolutely take over—it’s an indefatigable autocrat. It roots itself to the ground and climbs trees and walls by means of little sticky disks, the tenacity of which can dislodge siding during attempts to remove it.

Personally, I’m all for it. It grows in our side yard, sending tentacles in all directions, searching, always searching, for something to grab onto which, in my Dreams of Gardening Bliss, would be my neighbor’s fence. It’s a fine fence—don’t get me wrong—and I know he spent a pretty penny on it. It separates our properties with neighborly dignity. But in my DoGB I envision a living wall of green, a testament to (my) horticultural competency and a verdant reminder of the relentless urge of Nature to cover the planet with ivy.

Anyway, my neighbor doesn’t like ivy either, in fact he attacks it with certain chemical agents when it peeks out from under the fence because he has a neighbor who has eschewed certain responsibilities and let things get out of hand.

So facing formidable opposition, it is my yearly duty to ferret the ivy out of the side yard. This is a job I have learned to undertake during the winter, when most living things in our yard have endured another year of haphazard stewardship and have gratefully eased into dormancy. The ivy, however, is bright and lively and is easily hunted down.

To do this I get down on my hands and knees. I crawl among the various bushes to pull out the ivy. (Don’t tell anybody, but I will deliberately leave a few ivy plants here and there.)

In the chill I wear my flannel-lined, one-piece overalls. The air is cool and damp. There are robins and wrens and juncos twittering in the trees and bushes. The rain-softened soils yield the roots easily, releasing the smell of fresh earth. To gather the loose ivy, I wind long strings around my hands and wrists.

Next year I’ll be back, in the damp, in my overalls, on my hands in knees, moving among the bushes, serenaded by birds. I am a gardener. I am a garden.