It is with sad hearts that we share the news of Michael’s recent passing. He was a dear friend, talented writer, faithful Christian and consummate gardener. For 10 years, we have been writing this blog together to celebrate the Midwest’s seasons of gardening. Along the way, we shared wonderful visits, traveled to gardens and attended garden conferences together. We also saw Michael courageously fight and win his battle with cancer.
Many times, we sat on Michael’s back porch and brainstormed our next round of blog topics. He would make us tea to enjoy as we looked out into his backyard paradise. And he often sent us home with plants or cuttings from his garden. He was our editor and thoughtfully edited our pieces while keeping our voice. He only made our writing better and always encouraged us to write more descriptively.
As a tribute to Michael, we thought we might share a few gems from his inspiring blog posts and essays.
His Love of Daffodils: He wrote, “they may lack the regal elegance of lilies and voluptuousness of roses and peonies, but daffodils are the flowers that make my heart leap highest.” While in his early 40s, they came to symbolize hope for him. He shared during a dark valley time of life, a friend gave him a bag of bulbs as a birthday gift. After a tough day of work as an office temp, he came home and planted the bulbs. He wrote, “while digging holes, I thought, ‘these symbols of spring will be blooming in a few months. When they do, my life will be as different as the pastel spring scene is from the gray, gloom of late November.’” That April, his daffodils and spirits blossomed together, and he continued planting a couple more dozen each fall.
His Vegetable Gardening Struggles: Michael planted vegetable crops each year and loved the challenge of extending the season with cold frames to jump start spring seedlings and row covers to grow kale late into the winter. One year, he even resolved to give up vegetable gardening, but friends and family who enjoyed the harvests he shared are thankful he persisted.
His Garden Wit: We appreciated Michael’s snarky take on rainy days and winter snows. In Spare Me the ‘S’ Word, he makes fun of forecasters who “can’t wait until the world becomes a floured mess.” He described Daylight Savings as “the black expanse as vast and forbidding as Siberia.” He also made fun of Groundhog Day and suggested “gardeners apparently weren’t consulted when groundhogs were chosen as prognosticators of winter’s duration,” since the creatures chew up his barn floors and wrecked havoc amongst his vegetables. He even laughed at himself in Garden Downsizing as he wondered how to bid farewell to a jealous lover, his clever metaphor for a beautiful but demanding garden.
His Favorite Tool: One season, we decided to write about our favorite gardening tools, and Michael chose the edging iron. He wrote, “edging is the landscape equivalent of tucking in a shirttail, pinning back stray hairs and putting scattered papers into a straight stack.”
His Grateful Heart: One Thanksgiving, Michael wrote about Growing Gratitude and encouraged readers to be thankful for those who introduced you to gardening and nurtured you along the way. He specifically remembered his Grandpa Leach with his “furrows straight as laser beams” and his grandmother who had “a higgledy-piggledy collection” of plants in her small backyard. He also expressed his appreciation for nature’s beauty and its Maker.
His Last Post: In late March, Michael wrote Garden Party for Native Plants and encouraged readers to add more native plants to their carts when plant shopping this spring. Michael’s own yard was filled with redbud trees, dogwoods and sugar maples. We encourage you to plant one of these trees or a handful of daffodils to remember Michael. In a Memorial Day post, he wrote “such plants make me smile. Perhaps because I remember the donors in their gardening years, active, yet at peace, working in their little Edens.”
Trilliums are among Ohio’s many spring wildflowers.
By Michael Leach
While garden shopping this spring, plan on adding plants that evolved in your part of the world. Besides being decorative, they may have historic connections to local ancient peoples as food, building supplies, clothing material and medications. More amazing, some of these plants fill specialized places in the local food web that flora from afar may not do as well if at all.
If you haven’t guessed, we’re talking native plants. In the past 25 years or so, natives went from being the newest trend to vital players in combating climate change and the decline of birds and other animals.
Because of their importance, not to mention the aesthetic appeal of many, such as asters and redbud trees, Ohio designated April as Ohio Native Plant Month. The event debuted two weeks after the state’s pandemic lockdown last year. Planned activities were canceled but not enthusiasm.
Redbud trees dazzle in spring and add beauty year round.
For instance it failed to slow the group’s initiative to plant 100,000 Ohio native trees and shrubs. Turns out 200,000 trees and shrubs were planted last year. The 2021 goal is 200,000 as well.
Because there are many new gardeners among us and some seasoned growers who may be new to natives, caveats are warranted about these plants.
Pink dogwood are a jewel of spring.
Natives aren’t magic. If your site doesn’t offer the soil, light, moisture and such they need to flourish, they won’t grow well, if at all. Neither will plants from any place else. Study your site and the needs of whatever plants you may want to grow. It’s estimated that 80 percent of all plant problems are eliminated if the plant has what it needs to grow successfully.
Native plants may not supply eye candy when you want it. In my part of the Midwest, there isn’t a native to rival the brilliance (or bee appeal) of snow crocus in early spring. If I’m doing all the work, I see nothing wrong with flowers on well-behaved plants from elsewhere, especially if they break the evil spell of Midwest winter.
Sugar maples make Ohio autumn glorious.
Natives don’t always behave as heroes. Some natives, such as Virginia creeper, can take over in minutes if left on their own. Others, such as my beloved redbuds and sugar maples, can be prolific seeders whose progeny appear in unwanted places making them weeds to pull. Black walnut, among the Borgias of the plant world, poisons rivals with a soil borne chemical.
Even after careful research you may be surprised by nature. As a wise gardener once observed, “Plants can’t read so they don’t know what they’re supposed to do.”
Jerusalem artichoke adds color to the late summer scene.
Multiple approaches
Along with plant sources and details on the tree-and-shrub challenge, the site offers:
Great Healthy Yard Project — Take the Healthy Yard Pledge and avoid using synthetic pesticides, weedkillers and fertilizers except on rare occasions to resolve an infestation or improve habitat for native plants and wildlife.
Pocket Pollinator Gardens — Take a small but deliberate step in changing the environment by replacing a sunny part of your lawn with an array of native plants that benefit bees, butterflies, birds and insects. Directions and plant lists are given. Plus you can register your site with different organizations keeping tallies of such activities.
Backyard power — Learn why your yard needs native plants by viewing Dr. Doug Tallamy’s hour talk. It was part of the Ohio State University Chadwick Arboretum’s Living Landscape Speaker series during the past winter. Tallamy is a professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Delaware. Heartland Gardening’s Debra Knapke was one of the series’ quartet of experts who shared advice and insights.
The National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder has advice based on Zip Code for the flowers, shrubs and trees offering the most benefits for local fauna.
As the incredible NASA rover seeks signs of extinct life on Mars, I don jacket, gloves and boots to discover life in the garden.
My quest lacks any scientific or other significance, but it’s exciting for me. To behold snowdrop blossoms, crocus shoots and swelling magnolia buds fires hope.
In this part of the Midwest, winter sets no records (so far). Still it’s been a trial. Months of always cold, mostly gray weather preceding a snowy mostly subfreezing February. As the snow pack melts away, daily excursions across the backyard wasteland produce a harvest of sightings.
Just as NASA chose a landing site rich in potential for discovery, I too, know where to search. My eyes carefully scan little warm places, microclimates where the scant winter sun strikes longest and protected areas near the house.
In mid-January the snowdrops beside the walk near the backdoor were opening. As the piles of snow melted in late February, there they stood as if nothing happened. Deliberately planting such tiny wonders in places easily seen from the warmth of indoors enhances the show (no jacket, gloves and boots are needed to see them). I also plant clumps of these early birds elsewhere in the garden to enliven forays into the brown world of wintery death and dormancy.
More than green awaits. Sound is back.
Water trickles into the roof gutters overhead as the snow mass melts. Occasionally crystal icicles shatter as they plunge from rooftop glaciers. Little streams, once muted by an ice slab, babble again.
The resident male cardinal, who began singing pretty regularly about Valentine’s Day, is joined by other birds almost every morning.
Even before melting commenced and birds chirped, I brushed snow from the glass top of the tiny cold frame to speed warming. I cleared weeds and debris from this solar-heated grow box in January, and have been looking for weed seeds sprouting at least once a week since. Germinating weed seeds will indicate it’s warm enough under glass to plant cold tolerant greens for a jump on the growing season.
Gardeners apparently weren’t consulted when groundhogs were chosen as prognosticators of winter’s duration. At least not this gardener.
Personal experience with these creatures is all negative. From chewing up the floor in the old tool barn (woodchuck is a well earned common name), to wrecking havoc amongst the vegetables, this member of the rodent family is unwelcome in my yard. It doesn’t help that the Encyclopedia Britannica defines these pests as one of 14 types of large ground squirrels. Don’t let me get started on squirrels.
Regardless of opinion, there’s a wonderful certainty in Feb. 2. It’s the midpoint between the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and the spring equinox, when day and night are equal. Days are getting longer, nights shorter.
Soon birds, most of whom are always welcome, will begin singing in the early light, which comes a bit sooner each morning until the longest day on the summer solstice in June.
While several animals were associated with Feb. 2 by ancient Europeans, Germans believed the cute hedgehog predicted winter’s end. If it saw its shadow on Feb. 2, a second winter of six weeks lay ahead, clouds meant an early end.
Lacking hedgehogs, German immigrants in the United States used the groundhog. Definitely a choice lacking in cuteness. This is underscored by Hollywood’s inability to turn groundhogs into appealing animated rodents, such as mice and squirrels. Groundhogs are also called marmots, which almost rhymes with varmints — and that pretty well sums up the situation. Annual rodent family damage totals in the millions of dollars. Food is a prime target, but they sometimes ignite house fires after gnawing on wiring.
Despite the negatives, the celebrated ground squirrels have one trait I envy — hibernation. What a brilliant way to avoid seemingly endless Midwest winter. Just pork out on people’s gardens and snooze till green returns.
At least one groundhog, however, suffers a sleep problem. Since 1887 the western Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney has brightened winter by rousing a groundhog for a long-term weather prediction and an excuse for a festive time.
After such a rude awakening, it’s little wonder the animal’s accuracy is only about 40 percent. Without my first sip of morning coffee, I’m exceedingly fortunate to spell my name correctly, much less predict the weather for even the next six hours.
A $4 bunch of alstroemeria, plus a few green branches of kerria japonica and evergreen Japanese yew, combine to make a breath of fresh air in midwinter.
By Micheal Leach
It’s that time of winter when cheap thrills are necessary to survive until planting time. Otherwise, I could succumb to the fuzzy headless and inertia caused by Midwest winter gloom made worse this year by an overload of virtual, isolation and Zoom.
Even before the pandemic, we Midwesterners relied on winter substitutes for gardening. Seminars, classes, books, magazines and catalogs — the bigger and more colorful the photos the better — were treasured go-tos. We chatted and commiserated with others during the coffee breaks and box lunches of those learning sessions.
Generations of gardeners have relied on catalogs to survive winter.
Whether virtual or physical, surrogates are valuable, but they can do only so much. Long before spring arrives I’ve got to recharge with living plants and physical tools.
Here are some thoroughly tested winter-survival tricks. Perhaps you have some of your own to share. If so, please do.
Quick fixes — Buy a bunch of inexpensive flowers from the florist or supermarket. Buy sprigs of florist greenery if you lack evergreen shrubs or houseplants that can handle light pruning.
After gathering your materials, put aside worries about winning a blue ribbon with your design. Fresh flowers have all sorts of positive effects, according to the Society of American Florists. And even better, there’s the chance to play with real flowers.
Weather permitting, you can expand this into winter pruning for a healthy dose of outdoor exercise.
Chase winter blahs with a bit of pruning.
Those with cold frames or other protected plantings of winter-tolerant vegetables can harvest a few and bring them indoors for a fresh-from-the-garden meal.
Cold-tolerant greens, such as this Joi Choi Chinese cabbage, can be grown in winter under row covers or other protection to provide fresh from the garden harvests in January.
Cleanup — Gather debris from the lawn and search for those beautiful green tips of daffodils and other spring bloomers. Snowdrops and hellebores may be budding or blooming. Hope is inspired — a must for making it through winter and these troubled times.
Travel — If you feel safe enough to visit garden centers, florist shops and conservatories – go! Living, colorful plants are tonics. If you’re tempted to bring home a newbie or two – do!
Nature, even winter, provides a boost, so head to a park or hiking trail for open air therapy. America In Bloom offers research to prove this helps .
Repot — This may be the winter I’m desperate enough to repot, a chore I find disagreeable in summer’s warmth. The many others of you who enjoy repotting needn’t wait for summer either. Try to hold off on this until late winter, so plants don’t get the urge to start growing too soon.
Harvest hope — Tired of poinsettias or those fading rescued summer plants languishing on dim windowsills? Go out and gather a preview of spring by cutting a few branches of forsythia, quince, witch hazel and other early bloomers to force into flowering indoors. Watching buds swell and open is an elixir. I do this every year as part of seasonal pruning and send a bundle of branches to my sister in Florida. She relishes this token of remembered springs.
Witch hazel’s winter blooms
Focus — We must never forget that spring always comes no matter how bitter and long the winter. Spring is a glorious constant that remains untouched and unchanged by human affairs.
