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The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community

Today's Show Notes

Mid-April has a pulse to it.

Not full bloom.

Not abundance.

But momentum.

The soil isn't cold anymore.

Just cool enough to make you hesitate for half a second before kneeling.

The forecasts are checked more than once.

You tell yourself you're only stepping outside to "see how things look."

And then something catches your eye.

A bud that wasn't there yesterday.

A bit of green pushing through last year's stems.

You crouch.

You brush something back.

And the next thing you know an hour has disappeared.

Mid-April does that.

It pulls you forward without quite delivering anything yet.

Boots stay by the door.

Tools don't quite get put away.

You're not finished with winter.

But you're no longer standing still either.

Something has begun.

Not loudly.

But unmistakably.

Today's Garden History

1895 Roxana Stinchfield Ferris was born.

Roxana grew up on a farm in Sycamore, California.

A small town in the Central Valley.

She audited classes at the University of California, Berkeley.

Then found her way to Stanford's Dudley Herbarium.

A working collection of pressed plants.

She would spend forty-seven years there.

Specimens from dry hillsides and distant valleys.

Mounted.

Labeled.

And carefully kept.

Creating order among thousands of lives flattened into paper.

But Roxana didn't stay indoors.

She traveled into Mexico.

Collecting plants from deserts and coastal bluffs.

Pressing them between sheets of newspaper.

Carrying them home by hand.

Over a lifetime, she collected more than fourteen thousand specimens herself.

And cared for tens of thousands more.

She co-edited The Illustrated Flora of the Pacific States.

Four volumes that named what grew across the American West.

Later, in her seventies, she wrote field guides.

To Death Valley wildflowers.

And the blooms of Point Reyes.

Books that made remote places feel reachable.

Roxana pressed plants until the end.

A woman who saw deserts not as empty.

But as full of names waiting to be known.

1838 John Dando Sedding was born.

John grew up in a naval town called Devonport on England's southwest coast.

As an adult, he fell in love with gardening.

At the end of each workday, he would step off the train and run straight to his garden.

Coat off.

Wife Rose at the door.

Four children inside.

Spade quickly in hand.

John was a happy warrior.

Famously cheerful.

Quick with a joke.

More cottage than cathedral in spirit.

Even when designing massive churches, he never lost that homely, simple air of an English country gardener.

To John, gardens and houses were like old friends.

Each shaping the other.

As a young man, he trained as an architect.

Specializing in churches.

But also designing homes with deep respect for craftsmanship.

Where nature was his muse.

As it was for his friend William Morris.

John drew careful sketches of ivy, poppies, and lilies from his own garden beds.

And used them for his work with stone and wood.

Carvings so lifelike they seemed to breathe.

His masterpiece, Holy Trinity Church on Sloane Street in London, still stands.

In 1891, while working on a church restoration in Somerset, John died suddenly.

He was fifty-two.

Heartbroken, his wife fell ill and followed him within a week.

John and his Rose are buried together in the churchyard at West Wickham.

Near the garden he ran to after a long day's work.

Unearthed Words

In today's Unearthed Words, we hear an excerpt from the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, born on this day in 1939.

Heaney grew up on a farm in County Derry.

A place of bogs, potato drills, and late-summer fruit.

Here's an excerpt from his poem, Digging, from his collection Death of a Naturalist:

Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging.

By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.

--- But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it.

Some hands garden.

Some hands write.

Book Recommendation

Home Herbalist by Pip Waller

It's time to Grow That Garden Library, with today's book: Home Herbalist, by Pip Waller.

It's Herbs & Kitchen Gardens Week here on The Daily Gardener.

And that means all of this week's Book Recommendations are devoted to gardens that feed us.

Heal us.

And bring what grows outside into the kitchen.

Pip Waller is a medical herbalist from North Wales.

And for years, Pip worked in clinics.

Sitting with people whose bodies were tired.

Inflamed.

Or out of balance.

Home Herbalist grows out of that work.

This is not a book about exotic cures.

Or hard-to-find ingredients.

It begins close to home.

Herbs in the garden beds.

Herbs along the hedgerow.

Herbs in pots by the back door.

Pip writes like someone who has stood at a kitchen counter late at night.

Measuring dried leaves into hot water.

Waiting.

Teas made slowly for unsettled stomachs.

Salves for bruises and tired hands.

Cordials and soups arriving with the season.

Elderflower in June.

Nettles in early spring.

Calendula gathered at midsummer.

She is practical.

Steady.

Unhurried.

The work she describes is small.

Repeatable.

Close at hand.

Herbs ask to be gathered at the right moment.

Dried in the right light.

Stored carefully.

Used when needed.

This is a book for anyone who keeps a basket by the back door for what the garden offers.

And who likes to carry that offering a little further.

Onto the stove.

Into a jar.

Onto a spoon.

Botanic Spark

And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart.

1880 Robert Fortune died.

He was sixty-seven.

Robert did not collect plants the polite way.

He slipped into China.

A country closed to the outside world.

He learned the language.

Moved carefully.

Bluffed when he had to.

He was gruff.

Impatient.

Convincing.

More than once, his confidence was the only thing that kept him alive.

Robert went looking for tea on behalf of England.

And proved that green tea and black tea came from the same plant.

The difference was all in the processing of the leaves.

He carried seedlings.

He carried seeds.

He even carried growers who knew the craft.

And while many plant hunters are remembered for one great introduction, Robert returned with armfuls.

Wisteria.

Winter jasmine.

Tree peonies.

Azaleas.

Bleeding heart.

Kumquat.

And many more.

After all the disguises.

After all the danger.

After the moments that could have ended him.

Robert did something few of his peers managed.

He came home.

On that April day in London, he was no longer an explorer or a spy or a legend.

He was simply a husband.

A father.

And a gardener.

A fortunate man.

At last.

At rest.

Final Thoughts

There's a particular kind of energy that lives in mid-April.

Not bloom.

Not payoff.

Just commitment.

Errands get shorter.

Sleeves roll up.

Dinner waits a little longer than it should.

You walk out to check one thing.

And end up staying until the light thins.

...