The Olympic Bell (Part One)

This year for our tenth annual outdoor Sculpture Walk, we are excited to welcome the installation of a new sculpture, the Olympic Bell by Paul Matisse. First installed in Athens, Greece, in 2004 at the Summer Olympic Games, the bell then came home to Groton, Massachusetts, and has since been quietly awaiting its next home.

A few pulls on the heavy rope provides the momentum to lift the hammer and strike the bell, producing a deep, harmonious tone that can be heard for several minutes. My beloved partner, Blase, is doing the work of digging and preparing the ground for pouring the concrete foundation. We are all clearing the forested area of branches and fallen trees to let the stalwart white pines come forward with their presence creating, not the Parthenon, but nature’s own temple.

Paul Matisse is my former husband and the father of our three children. When we separated, I moved to the farm and created a new life here. We rarely saw each other, only speaking briefly on the phone when it involved the children. But over the years I think we both felt that our relationship continued, albeit in another form. The arrival of the bell feels like a reunion of the creativity and beauty that we both believe in and shared during our married time together. I look forward to its first rings echoing out over the pond.  

I am reminded of Mary Oliver’s poem, The Journey.

 One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save. 

This bell for me echoes the powerful directive in this journey. How challenging it can be to make a decision to change one’s life. How painful for those connected to you. But when we feel we need to act and we do, we create karma from this action. But the karma is also influenced by how we do it and what intention we hold afterwards. Equally, I believe, what came before also influences the future.

Paul and I shared an apple when we first met in Japan. We were on a long bus ride through the Wakayama Prefecture south of Kyoto when I brought out an apple to eat. Paul asked for it, took out his pocketknife, and cut it into two sections. But the two pieces were not halves like you would imagine; they formed an interlocking puzzle with the halves fitting mysteriously back together, seeds intact, stem still attached, a mysterious marvel. I took the section with the stem and perhaps emboldened by his creativity, I ate my entire half of the apple, seeds and all, then held up the stem. Paul took it from me. 

Paul still has that stem in a tiny jar. He also has many sculptures in cloth I made for him over the twenty years we were together. And we share the continuing lives of our three children. Now, the Olympic Bell will share its deep sonorous prayers with visitors to the farm and stand as a symbol that love takes many forms.

Around the Mulberry Bush

We may not have many apples this year, but we do have mulberries. Our white mulberry tree (morus alba) is our official bird watching tree for the month of June. If we sit on the back porch for twenty minutes, we count twenty species of birds feasting. Yesterday’s early morning bird count included cedar waxwing, red poll, cardinal, yellow finch, catbird, starling, bluebird, kingbird, English house sparrow, Baltimore oriole, and mourning dove. A few days ago I saw a flame in the tree — it was a scarlet tanager! And the tree grows in the flyway of the prehistoric blue herons, diving kingfishers, and the occasional osprey traveling between Old Frog Pond and Delaney Conservation area wetlands for fish.

The tree doesn’t require spraying, care, or attention – and every year its branches are filled with fruit.

White Mulberries

The seeds are scattered freely by the birds and once they take root, they grow. We have small mulberry trees popping up along the pond and even under the great canopy of the catalpa outside my studio.  This one doesn’t fruit, however; too much shade.

In the herbal apothecary, white mulberry is an important herb. The leaves, dried and made into a powder, are used to treat diabetes, as well as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, even the achiness from the common cold. The Chinese use the leaves, root bark, branches, and fruit as medicine and it is an official drug of the British Herbal Pharmacopoeia.

In America, the white mulberry is considered to be an invasive plant. The early colonists imported the tree when they tried to establish a silkworm industry.  Only the tree took root and spread its branches across the country. However, the red mulberry (morus rubra) is a native tree, but now quite rare in Massachusetts. American Indians used the red mulberry for food and medicine. Choctaw women made cloaks by spinning the threads from the fibrous bark of young mulberry shoots. I am always amazed at the abundant offerings of plants. Not only food and shelter, but clothing, nets, fencing, and art!

Willow Sculpture Rises from the Earth by Trevor Leat

We have two red mulberry trees growing on the farm. They were Arbor Day giveaway seedlings for the Town of Groton’s Arbor Day celebration a few years ago. We planted the small saplings in the open where they could grow to full size, but they have struggled with competition from field grasses. One was mowed down when someone didn’t recognize the small shoot among the weeds. Fortunately the trees are tenacious. This year, the unmowed one has fruit for the first time. The fruit is smaller than the white mulberry and ripens to deep red. It’s sweeter than white mulberries and would make a tastier and more colorful wine.

Red Mulberry

Small mammals also feed on mulberries, I often see a chipmunk munching along with the birds, but I’m told that fox, opossums, raccoons, skunks, and squirrels like them too.  And of course, why not the weasel?

All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel,

The weasel thought 'twas all in fun, pop goes the weasel.

And just what does this popular ditty mean? It was a dance hall tune in mid 19th century England. I read that in cockney Pop refers to pawn and a weasel to a coat. It is about pawning your dress coat on Monday to get it back on Friday so you could be well dressed on Sunday. Sounds far-fetched to me. I also learned that in cloth making, the weasel was the machine that would wind yarn, and there was a pop sound every 1000 yards. This sounds more to the point especially given a later verse.

My mother taught me how to sew,

And how to thread the needle,

Every time my finger slips,

Pop! goes the weasel.

There’s something about that ‘pop’ that is appealing like the surprise of a Jack-in-the-Box toy. It’s a little scary because we never know when the pop will come, but we love the anticipation. 

Perhaps the song originally came from all the activity around a mulberry tree with ripe fruit; a children’s game of feasting birds and hungry animals leaping around the tree, chasing each other to get to the fruit.  And there does seem to be that ‘pop’ when the fruit is plucked off the tree. Sometimes I see a bird tug, the leaves and wings all a-flutter, and then ‘pop’ — off flies the bird with the fruit in its beak.

Mulberries are easy to grow and you can make pies, sorbets, ice cream, even smoothies with these small fruits that are loaded with antioxidants; even dry them for granola. The trees are most generous; they give and give.  I appreciate discovering some of the lesser-known fruits that can grow in Massachusetts. This spring I planted aronia and goji berries, goumi, and two kiwi vines.  It will take several years, but I look forward to tasting these fruits, and of course sharing it with the birds!

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Avoiding Apples

Last week I got an email from our local Harvard weekly newspaper asking about the crop this year.

Hi Linda,

I’m doing a piece this week on this year’s apple crop damage. Frank Carlson is estimating a crop that will be about 50 to 75 percent of an average year’s crop. Are you seeing that kind of damage to your crop? He said his Cortlands were hit the hardest, but Macs are also off. 

Are your raspberries ok?

Let me know, sad year for the orchards, especially those who grow peaches.

Thanks,

 Joan

Frank Carlson is the patriarch of the orchard world in Harvard. When I first decided to bring back our trees, I called him. I felt shy about disturbing the man who was running the largest orchard in town, but I needed to make a connection with someone who knew about apples. Frank told me to come by, but when I arrived, I wasn’t really sure why I was there. It was harvest time, and there were towers of wooden crates filled with freshly picked apples. Frank was a mini-cyclone, answering his pager, cell phone, and loudspeaker calls, but he still took the time to chat with me in between answering questions that came at him from all sides.

Nodding, he said, “I’m familiar with A & M Orchards.” I told him that its new name was Old Frog Pond Farm and that I wanted to grow organic apples. “A small operation that is organic might work,” he continued. I sensed a sympathetic familiarity among anyone growing apples. I appreciated Frank’s openness and drove away with a glimmer of hope.  This year is a different story.

 I wrote back to the Harvard Press reporter,

 Dear Joan,

Yes - a sad year!

Our apples are certainly down 50 percent. It is variety dependent. The late flowering ones are all right, but varieties that flowered early were killed off by the frost.

Raspberries are doing well and it seems like a bumper crop of blueberries.

We have a few peaches…enough for us to eat; but indeed a very sad year for peach growers.

I think climate change is wreaking havoc with our perennial fruit crops. They suffer from these wild temperature fluctuations early in the season when the buds and blossoms are so vulnerable.

Linda

Climate change is the biggest factor affecting all of us. Plants don’t evolve as quickly as climate change is happening. Some good news is that one approach to lowering the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to store more carbon in the soil. The soil benefits, the plants benefit, and the earth becomes healthier. 

Much of the carbon originally came from the soil and was released into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. We have agreed that we need to reduce the carbon in the atmosphere but where can it go? Water covers 70 percent of our planet and when carbon combines with water it forms carbonic acid raising the acidity of the water and killing off plant life. Soil can take back and store carbon if we change our approach to industrial agriculture and land use.

One of the most important practices is to cover every square foot of soil with plants. Erosion is a number one cause of the loss of carbon. The second practice is to avoid tilling the soiling or minimally till. Tilling exposes soil to the air and releases carbon. Plants do the opposite through photosynthesis. Even if our fruit trees aren’t producing peaches and apples, they are removing carbon from the atmosphere.

The French government recently put forward an initiative, 4p1000.org with the goal of mitigating climate change effects through agriculture. Already 28 countries have signed on including France, Mexico, Japan — no, not the United States. The benefit of carbon rich soils is that the plants become more resilient. When we eat the food produced by these healthier plants, human health also improves.

While this year we may not have a good apple crop, hopefully by continuing to support our trees and encouraging their growth, they will become stronger and be able to adjust better to the fluctuations in temperatures that are certainly going to be part of our lives for the next decades. Climate Change Boston has just released their projections for Boston that include 90 days of summer over 90 degrees, which is essentially all of summer.  

Still, it’s a sad year for fruit growers and the reason I have been avoiding writing about apples. The trees may be luscious with leaves, but there is really very little fruit. Truthfully, my estimate is far less than 50 percent, but I hate to say it.  It’s so disappointing, and then I think that maybe I did something wrong, or that I could have done something differently.

Frank Carlson said that people are already calling for peaches. Their annual peach festival attracts a large following every year. It won’t happen this year, but they will be celebrating their 80th anniversary this summer. When the fruit is not as plentiful, your orchards need your support even more. Even if our apples aren’t plentiful, we hope you will come for raspberry picking, vegetables, workshops, our Plein Air Poetry Walk, and Outdoor Sculpture exhibits. This year we  celebrate our 15th anniversary!

Fructus

I am sitting with a bowl of cherries beside me and am reminded of the little-known painter, Giovanna Garzoni (1600 -1670). Garzoni spent most of her life in Rome painting vibrant still life paintings which were collected by her many patrons who appreciated her earthy sensuality and botanical realism. The fruits she painted are not idealized specimens, but real fruit, perhaps picked from trees nearby, with blemishes and crinkled leaves, even an occasional insect hovering. Her choice of watercolor and tempera rather than oils gives spontaneity to her paintings.

Bowl of Cherries, Giovanna Garzoni

Garzoni clearly loved to paint fruit. In common usage, the word fruit refers to the sweet and fleshy product of a tree or plant that contains seeds and is eaten as food. An apple, as well as mango or pear all fit this description. The botanical explanation is a little more specific — any part of a seed-bearing plant that contains the fertilized seeds that will produce a new plant. But I like the definition of fruit that comes from the derivation of the word — from Middle English, via Old French, from the Latin fructus meaning enjoyment.  

Giovanna Garzoni was also known as the chaste Giovanna. Though she married briefly, her marriage was annulled (you couldn’t divorce back then) because it had never been consummated. Her male biographer wrote that she took a vow of chastity; also, that her father thought her husband was practicing witchcraft and urged her to divorce him.

These explanations seem a little confusing. It’s men, after all, who have written her biography. She was one of the few women in the 17th century who received an education and was financially independent. She worked in Venice, Florence, Turin, Naples, and finally settled in Rome. She traveled to Paris and London. Apparently her paintings were in so much demand that she could charge whatever she wanted. 

From my perspective, because of her dedication to her art, she knew that she needed to create a life where she could be free. Had she had children, she would not have been able to work full-time as a painter, traveling from city to city, often staying for weeks or months with patrons.  

Who can determine whether someone is chaste or not and what exactly does this mean? Who knows, maybe the chaste Giovanna was concocted so she could annul that marriage. Maybe she had women lovers — and they didn't count in those days. How do we know that she didn’t have secret trysts? After all, her subjects were rarely allegorical or religious, heady stuff, but fruit and nature, the tactile tangible world.  And remember, the derivation of fructus is enjoyment!

Her rapturous paintings certainly suggest that she experienced intimate connection with the 'other', with the world, and knew love and desire, betrayal and beauty. Unlike Cezanne’s art, her work did not influence the direction of modern art, but I think of her life and art as an inspiration, especially to other women artists.

Looking at Garzoni’s paintings reminded me of a friend, Cita Scott, I hadn’t been in contact with for 15 years, also a woman painter of exuberant still lifes. She responded immediately to my email saying, “I have always loved this fig painting — without paying any attention to who painted it. In fact, I still have some postcards of it in my desk.”  

Plums and Fig Leaves, Giovanna Garzoni

My email prompted her to look through more of Garzoni’s work.  She described scrolling through her paintings as a decadent indulgence  .  .  .

Her pears are frequently ripe to spoiling, their curvilinear shapes, abstractions; her peas become beauty queens; her hazelnuts are visited and revisited, frocked and defrocked…her asparagus kick their pink heels sideways in a cancan at the Folies Bergère, with carnations in their hair… these are dreams and fantasies... delightful, highly personalized poems and messages, which leave me wondering about Giovanna herself. remarkable!  (what do you think she was like? what drove her?…)

Stillscape, Cita Scott

Cita’s Scott’s still life paintings of flowers and fruit make me think that they are revelers at a wild bacchanalia. In the painting above the apples tantalizingly touch each other, the pepper desires the eggplant, and the grapes are about to burst with juice. (You can see more of her work at citascott.com.) I don’t’ know if Scott would agree that Garzoni influenced her painting, but I certainly see a connection. And I am grateful that Garzoni’s art helped to reconnect us.

When you next pick up an apple or cherry or grape, take a good look at it, it’s color, shape, substance, light — and, be a painter for a moment, appreciate its ecstatic presence. Then enjoy.