An Artist in the Orchard

Usually I carry a spade, loppers, clippers, a weeding tool, a basket with rubber ties, and wire into the orchard. But like a plein air painter who leaves the studio and brings paints and brushes to the subject, I bring a notebook and pen, and sit in a patch of purple violets under a Golden Delicious apple tree.

Along with the violets, two varieties of clover are growing—mammoth red and white Dutch. I love clover under my apple trees—and daffodils and dandelions, mountain mint and comfrey, iron weed, valerian, St. John’s wort, bee balm, even stinging nettles. The more companion plants, the richer the soil.

Notebook page 5/16/20

Most people don’t realize that one apple bud opens to become a cluster of five or six flower buds. The king blossom is in the center; it’s the first to grow and the first to open. It’s surrounded by the harem waiting to take over if anything should happen to the king.

In a stellar pollination year, most of the secondary blossoms will be pollinated and the tree becomes a cloud of delicate wings. The downside is too many children. The apples will be small, with more disease and pest pressure, and less air circulation and sunlight, not beneficial for the crop. 

On this particular Golden Delicious tree, I see only a few blossoms. Golden Delicious have a propensity to be biennial—a riot of blossoms one year, and the next only a scattering. Orchardists can control this tendency by “thinning” the trees, removing a portion of the young fruit. As an organic grower, I don’t have an array of chemical thinners to choose from, but I can hand thin. On our youngest trees, we pluck off all the blossoms, discouraging such precocious behavior; these trees need to focus on growth, not reproduction! On the younger trees, we remove some of the fruitlets, leaving a few inches between apples. But on the mature trees, when the fruit set is crazy-good, our feeble efforts to thin hardly make a difference. One tree alone could occupy an afternoon, and we don't have a month to devote to thinning. I leave the Golden Delicious to do as they are inclined. Other trees, like the newer varieties of Liberty and Honey Crisp, are bred to discourage this trait.

The upside of this off-year is all energy goes into growing large and shiny leaves—optimal photosynthesis. A time of repose, a sabbatical to recharge. As I sit in its shade, I think about what the tree offers other than fruit. Maybe nutritive support to other trees and to the soil around its roots? Maybe sequestering more carbon? Maybe that strange notion, self-care?

This Golden Delicious tree is over 45 years old, and some orchard experts say it should be replaced because it’s old and leaning too far south. But I’m enthralled by its wayward slant, its zig-zag desire to find equipoise. In the photo below you can see the young branch I’m training to become a new central leader if necessary. 

Being both orchardist and artist is at times contradictory. Should I spray a particularly nasty, but approved organic material like lime sulfur to thin the Golden Delicious so they don’t fall into biennial production? After all, we have 28 mature Golden Delicious trees with no fruit, and that’s a lot of real estate in a small orchard. The truth is I appreciate the gnarly old trees and the young slender spindles, the trees with no apples and the trees loaded with fruit.

I finish taking notes and gather violets to put in a jar of olive oil for next fall when we will make salves and balms. A pair of cedar waxwings are courting in one of the Gala trees, and two orioles sing from high in a Summer Sweet. The woodchuck peeks out of a nearby hole, and upon seeing me, ducks back down. The geese hiss. On my walk back to the house, I snap off two fat purple asparagus no doubt planted by some robin scratching for worms near the trunk of a Cortland in the first row. Today I’m an artist in the orchard. Tomorrow I’ll return with other tools.

Apple Tree, Watercolor and Pencil, 2020, Linda Hoffman

Aerial Bruststrokes

Rain, watercolor, LH

Yet another cold, rainy morning and I sit at my studio window watching tree swallows circle and loop, skim the water, and splash. They could be practicing touch-and-goes as if taking part in some aviation exhibition, but I prefer seeing them as painters dipping their brushes to color the pond and trees.

            I first met swallows soon after I met Blase, my husband. We were sitting on the front step of the farmhouse and I asked, “If you were to be reincarnated as an animal, what would it be?”

            Blase didn’t pause for very long before he said, “A swallow.”

            “A swallow? Why?”

Blase has a deep voice that resonates in his broad chest. He played football during high school and college. He’s physical and strong, so I imagined he would say, a lion, or some impressive creature.

            Blase answered my bewildered look, “Because they are so playful.”

            I didn't know a swallow from a wren but took in his comment as something significant.

Then he turned to me and asked what animal I would choose.

            I replied, “Maybe a lion.” I needed to be strong and able to fight for what I needed not only for myself but for my pride of three children.

            I have completely come around to Blase’s point of view. For the swallows, regardless of the lack of warmth and sunshine, do their thing, eat insects, and dazzle us ground walkers. The secret of the swallows’ contentment seems to be their willingness to fly in any weather, to be a complete expression of joy no matter the circumstances. I know how hard that is to do, especially when strong emotions come up, especially when the suffering and grief I feel increases with every bit of news from around the globe.

Navigating the currents of difficulties that arise is our daily practice. The storms will never disappear, but we learn to be better fliers. Like the swallows, we practice our take-offs and landings, until one sunny day, involuntarily we grab a brush, paint the pond pink, the trees purple, and the sky an emerald green, even when it is raining.

Pink Pond, watercolor, LH

Simple Pleasures

“I nurture simplicity among the gardens and fields”
                         —Chinese farmer and poet, T’ao Chien, 365-427 C.E.

These days, many of us have no choice but to bring simplicity into our lives. Many of our favorite activities have been taken away whether this means no gym workouts, no visiting with friends and family, or no shopping at a favorite store. We scrounge through the pantry shelves for something to cook, making do with what is on hand. Or go outside like I did the other night to gather parsley and a bit of coriander that overwintered, new shoots of spearmint, and a large bowl of stinging nettles, to add to some sad looking basil leaves in the back of the fridge. The greens, smushed into the Cuisinart, along with oil, garlic, lemon juice, and pecans made a hearty pesto. Our creative meals can bring us great delight.

Simplicity can also mean living more intentionally, with more discipline and purpose. It can be unburdening our lives as well as decluttering our minds. Usually our minds flit from one thought to the next, from one sensation to another, moving quickly and erratically, but there is the silence when all distractions and desires fade. In many spiritual traditions, one sits in meditation to calm thoughts in order to experience deep silence. Sitting still, not moving, is the aid to find the stability of simplicity that allows for an opening to that great Silence.

For me, the concentration required by sculpting, painting, and writing creates the fertile ground for merging with the work, and within that merging, I find stillness. A musical score gives structure to mark periods of sounds and rests. The German-born pianist, Artur Schnabel (1882–1951) wrote,

“The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides.”

The great jazz musician Miles Davis said it this way:

“Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there.”

Lao Tzu, the Chinese sage advises, “Become empty of yourself and realize inner silence.” It sounds straightforward, but who knows how to empty themselves. I can’t sit myself down on a meditation cushion and say, I’m going to find silence: I only find myself in the midst of a great amount of activity. That’s why cultivating the earth always feels like cheating, the back door: the simple act of weeding as the antidote for the anxiety of our present times. But even weeding can be a challenge. I was talking to a friend yesterday and said,

“You know, weeding is not always that easy. It’s not just pulling the long white weed thread. Some weeds like vetch are impossible, impenetrable. It’s exhausting to dig through their density of roots. And when it’s that difficult, there’s no quieting the mind.”

Meister Eckhart, the Christian contemplative wrote,

“It’s not what we do that makes us holy, but we should make holy what we do.”

Ariel, grafting Olympic Asian pear scion wood onto rootstock in the Asian pear orchard.

So I return to the words of T’ao Chien: “I nurture simplicity among the gardens and fields.” I remind myself that he is surely weeding the gardens and plowing the fields, and he is nurturing simplicity. When I only concern myself with getting the work finished, checked off the to-do list, I take no pleasure in it. When I forget the to-do list, then the merging that I so love takes place. We can make holy everything we do. We can nurture simplicity everywhere.

Baby snapper turtle Ariel found when we were moving a pear tree to plant new peaches. The turtle stretched and then we quickly dug it back into the soil.

Forest Tales

Our quartet, my stepfather Bill, daughter Ariel, and partner Blase, returned one week ago from our trip to Tibet. However, condensing two intense weeks of pilgrimage into a brief blog, like making a few jugs of sweet juice from bushels of ripe apples, takes time. The apples need to sweat, I need to distill the experience.

Meanwhile the Catalpa tree with its large heart-shaped leaves outside my studio window is no longer green and leafy, but is sending brown flying carpets everywhere. And in the woods, the sight-lines are clear as tree branches lay bare the sky, and the spiced air welcomes the forest walker.

Next Sunday morning, November 17th at 11 am, I invite you to join me for a forest walk in one of Stow, Massachusetts’ conservation areas, The Leggett Woods. Here along a meandering trail, I installed thirteen sculptures, a world of acorn-capped acrobatics, a mother and child, a boy and a turtle, a frog, each one fixed onto a forest stone. The storyteller sits near the beginning reading to three acorn-capped children.

Caps for Sale

The paths are cleared and covered with wood chips so discovering each one is not difficult. The Stow Conservation Trust, the private land preservation organization in Stow, hopes to attract more families to explore their trails by creating special places to visit and enjoy. 

The genesis of this project began along Old Frog Pond Farm’s woods trails where a series of bronze meditating figures are permanently installed. They are small, and you would think go unnoticed, and perhaps do for some people, but most others notice one sculpture, and then another, and another, and are delighted by the shift in scale, the quietness, and simplicity of these bronze figures on rocks.

Vita Matisse sitting with sculptures.

My granddaughter enjoys sitting on the large rock among them. Other children add acorn caps, a perfect fit for the bowed bronze heads. We don’t encourage interaction with the sculpture on exhibit at the farm, but I thought these acorns caps were a charming addition and have since cast a few figures topped with them. The wood burns out in the lost wax process.

When I was considering a possible sculpture for the Leggett Woods, I thought about a village of sculptures that might encourage children to get down on their hands and knees, and play. Perhaps add some more acorn caps, or build a little house of twigs, or add stones and leaves—an artwork to encourage interaction with the forest life.

The Stow Conservation Trust worked hard to find volunteers to help with the land clearing and creation of the trails. I am especially grateful to the committee I worked with directly, Janet Kresi Moffat, Ann Carley, and Carol Gumbart, and to the Alice Eaton Grant Funds for supporting the commission.

Another person I have worked with for many years is poet, Susan Edwards Richmond. In the first issue of Wild Apples, the journal of nature, art, and inquiry we founded and edited with two other friends in 2006, Susan wrote poetry for a series of my bronze boat sculptures. When I told her about this commission, I hesitantly asked if she might like to write a poem—I knew her creative focus was now on children’s books (Bird Count published by Peachtree Publishing Company came out last month!). As the date for installation got closer, Susan wrote, “Where are you installing the sculptures in Stow?  Could you use another hand? I can meet on the 11th as long as it's after 1:45 pm.”

It was a kind offer, but among Susan’s many talents is not operating a hammer drill or epoxy gun. I didn’t reply. She wrote again a few days later, “What time? Would you like some local help? :)”.  This time I answered, “Sure! Maybe around 11? You follow the trail then take the left fork. Can’t miss.”

Susan arrived when John Lowe, my assistant, and I were well into the installation. We’d been there since 9 am. Of course, Susan and I both knew she wasn’t coming to help with the install, but with notebook in hand she immediately knelt down in front of a sculpture.

Susan will be reading the Forest Tales poems at the opening next Sunday. There will be kids’ activities, refreshments, art, nature, and poetry. Hope to see some of you on Sunday, November 17 at 11 am. And I promise a Tibet blog soon!

Directions: Leggett Woods is on Whitman Street just off of Gleasondale Road (Route 62). If you are driving South on Route 62 from the intersection of Route 117 in Stow, go about a mile, turn left at the fork with signs for Honey Pot Orchards , and the Leggett Woods parking area is on your right.

The Storyteller