Milkweed in the Orchard

Milkweed under an Apple Tree

In the last few years, milkweed has spread exponentially throughout the orchard. We don’t mow it down, but we don’t plant it either. It is as if the earth herself has decided that we need more of it; that nature wants to help the monarch butterflies who depend on this plant for their survival. Every summer, monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed. The emerging black-, white-, and yellow-striped caterpillars begin eating around the edges of the leaves, and even absorb a substance from their host that provides a defense against predators.

But where are the monarchs? Their numbers have been decreasing steadily for the last twenty years. In fact, the Endangered Species Coalition reports that North American monarchs have declined by ninety percent since the mid 90’s. During the first few years of tending the orchard, I would see monarchs daily when the milkweed was in bloom. This year I have yet to see one.

One reason for their decline is the loss of milkweed habitat. Much of this acreage is now planted with corn and soybeans, and the fields are sprayed with Monsanto’s Roundup. (In 1995, 10 million pounds of Roundup was used on corn and soybeans, and, by 2013, the total pounds rose to 204 million.) Roundup destroys all weeds – including milkweed! I’ve known about the horrors of Roundup, but I didn’t realize that genetically modified corn seed, like Bt corn, produces pollen that kills monarch caterpillars and other insects. I am familiar with Bacillus thuringiensis, Bt, a bacteria-based organic pesticide that is approved for use in organic production. An organic grower uses it sparingly and for target pests. But in the case of Bt corn, the plant itself sends out this pesticide to all insects, pollinators as well as pests such as the corn borer.

When the first findings came out that Bt corn was killing off the monarchs, the agricultural giants who control the fate of millions of acres of farmland (as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture) denied them. If you want to read further, Orion Magazine published a great article aptly titled, The Canary in the Cornfield.

In recent years, monarch butterfly decline also correlates with unprecedented fluctuations of temperatures caused by global warming. For example, in 2013, a cold period in May delayed the Monarch departure from their wintering grounds, so they arrived late and didn’t breed as well. Their numbers upon their return the following winter were the lowest ever. In early March this year, a sleet storm with high winds at their wintering ground in Mexico felled trees and buried large numbers of monarchs under sheets of ice. 

It’s good we have milkweed growing throughout our orchard, and it is wonderful to read about all of the projects to encourage the survival of the monarch, like the Fresh Pond Monarch Watch in Cambridge, MA, who are planting milkweed, pulling out the invasive black swallow-wort vines, and breeding and releasing caterpillars. However, it will ultimately be the millions of acres in the Midwest that will make the most difference in monarch numbers.

Milkweed belongs to the Asclepiadaceae family, derived from Asclepius, the Greek god (actually demi-god because his father was Apollo but his mother was mortal) of medicine and healing. Athena gave Asclepius the gift to save mortals and even bring them back from the dead. Zeus was jealous when he saw his foes coming back from Hades and supposedly killed Asclepius with a thunderbolt. No one knows for sure since Asclepius became a living god. In ancient Greece there were 320 Asclepions, healing sanctuaries, actually the first hospitals in the world. Last year a 2,400-year-old temple dedicated to him was excavated. I hope he continues to use his healing powers through the proliferation of milkweed and helps to insure the survival of the Monarch butterfly.

Asclepius and his daughter Hygieia, goddess of health.

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Some People See a Turtle

My son, Nick, was young when he fell in love with turtles. He had a pet box turtle, Pebble, and she would eat every night in our kitchen sink. Nick offered her greens, vegetables, and cottage cheese on a small cutting board he put in the shallow water next to her — and we all watched amazed as her snakelike neck extended, she cracked open her sharp beak, and ate surprisingly quickly. Then Nick would take her back to her box in his room with a lamp for heat, and she would root around through the newspapers until she was nicely hidden.

When we traveled, Nick started collecting small turtles made from stone and wood. Friends and family would send him turtle mementos from Russia, Guatemala, and Thailand, in ebony, teak, alabaster, jade, cloth, and corn husk. Nick’s dad made him small shelves in his bedroom to hold this growing collection.

When Nick was a little older, he started making turtles with stones and leaving them in the landscape: a flat large stone for the body, one stone for her head, a narrow one for the tail, and four stones for each leg. We made some together on the sandy beaches of Cape Cod and even on the summit of Mt. Washington after a harrowing climb together.

When I first came to see the farm and walked around the lower pond, I stopped in my tracks. In the middle of the pond was a turtle—a round boulder the size of a Volkswagen bug, with a smaller rock for its head.  This monumental rock formation was gazing east toward the rising sun. When I spoke with the owners later, they said they had never seen it. 

Stone Turtle in Lower Pond, August 2016

In the creation stories of the Oneida and Iroquois, Skywoman fell through a hole in the sky, pirouetting down towards the dark water below. Geese saw this falling woman with long dark hair, and quickly flew up to break her fall. They caught her in their soft feathers and held her safely. But they couldn't hold her for long, and they didn’t know what to do. They gathered all the other water animals together in council — otters, fish, swans, beavers, and a large turtle. The turtle offered his back for her to stand on. But what to do next? The animals knew she wasn’t a water creature and needed solid ground, so they decided to dive deeply and bring up mud from the bottom of the water. It was far for them to dive, and they each in turn returned empty handed. At last, muskrat, the weakest diver among them said, “I will go.” They waited anxiously for muskrat’s return. Finally, they saw a few bubbles, and then his small, limp body surfaced. He had died on the return, but in his paw he still clutched a bit of mud from the bottom. “This mud,” Turtle said, “spread it on my back.” They spread the mud over Turtle’s shell, and Skywoman danced and the land grew.

That’s how we came to live on Turtle Island. It’s a creation myth of sacrifice and caring, of recognizing that the earth sustains us all. It acknowledges that we humans are all immigrants, that the animals were here before us. It is a creation story that affirms life, that recognizes death; one in which there is communication between all species.

Finding the large stone turtle on my first visit to the farm was a good omen. I see this turtle almost every day. The Turtle Island creation myth is in stark contrast to the Western creation myth of the Garden of Eden with its story of banishment, guilt, and wrongdoing. Fratricide follows in the next generation, and Snake gets a really bad rap.

Perhaps the West needs a new creation story, one that is earth centered. We can learn from this Native American legend of the earth as a giant turtle, and be reminded that we are still precariously standing on Turtle’s back. Maybe we also need to dance more to celebrate and heal our earth. Maybe, like Nick, we can all make stone turtle and leave it as a marker in the landscape of our recognition of the precariousness of where we stand. 

LH making a stone turtle in 2006 for Garden in the Woods, Framingham, MA

Arborshaping

In the forested Delaney Conservation Area behind the farm, I saw a white pine growing with what looked like a large clenched fist halfway up the trunk. When I looked more closely I saw that it was a twisted knot. Then I saw other pines growing with similarly knotted trunks. Intrigued and baffled, I wondered what had happened in these woods.

Further along the trail, a young sapling’s central leader was not growing straight, but circled around itself. That was the aha moment. Someone was going around and looping the tops of these young pines. Then, as the tree grew, the loose loop tightened into a knot. I noticed a few young trees missing the top of their trunks, their central leaders. Unable to submit to the pressure of this forced bending, they had sadly snapped off. I continued along the trail, unraveling any looped tree I found. Later I learned that one of my neighbors had knotted the trees when he was a young child; and he continues to do it haphazardly even now.

In the 16th century painting The Lament of Nature to the Wandering Alchemist by the French artist, Jean Perréal, a scantily clad angel with arms crossed below her breasts sits in a regal seat, which when you look closely, is really a tree with a trellised back of sinuous trunks. Why the naked angel, the well-dressed alchemist, the fire under her seat? The angel appears to be either defending herself or rebuking the alchemist. However, what interests me most is her chair. The upright branches have been twisted to grow and touch; they have grafted themselves to each other creating this fantastical throne chair. I wondered if this was the wildly imaginative idea of the painter or whether he had seen such a tree chair. 

If you had been driving along the California coast near Santa Cruz in the 1940’s you could have seen even more fantastical tree creations. Axel Erlandson, a farmer, created what he called a Tree Circus — eccentric, fanciful, and bizarre shapes created by training trees to grow in particular shapes. One of his trees has a heart right in the center of the main trunk. Another had two trunks that spiral around each other as they both support the large tree canopy. His ‘Basket’ tree is made from several trees planted in a circle, then he grafted overlapping limbs together to form a basket weave pattern.

Image from Wikipedia article on Axel Erlandson.

Today, a tree shaper in Oregon, Richard Reames, calls his work arbor sculpture. He makes living trees into furniture. Chairs, he says, are relatively easy to grow, but he has also created arbors, a spiral staircase, and even a boat. In Germany, Konstantin Kirsch and Herman Block have created several living tree houses. For one house, they planted 1,300 ash saplings, seven every foot, and wove them together to make the walls to form an interior court surrounded by six rooms.  

Arborshaping is grafting carried to its limits; we humans do seem to be wired to go to extremes. When I look at these images of arborshaping, I have simultaneous reactions of awe and horror. There is something ghastly about forcing nature to grow in such unnatural ways, and yet the growth patterns are astonishing. I do, however, love the idea of incorporating a living tree into the building of a house. One of my favorite examples is from Homer’s Odyssey. (Though I can’t quite tell if the tree continued to live.) 

There was the bole of an olive tree with long leaves growing strongly in the courtyard, and it was thick, like a column. I laid down my chamber around this … Then I cut away the foliage of the long-leaved olive, and trimmed the trunk from the roots up, planning it with a brazen adze, well and expertly, and trued it straight to a chalkline, making a bedpost of it, and bored all hones with an auger. (23.190-288).

When Odysseus returned home in the guise of a beggar after ten years of wandering, Penelope tested him by saying she had moved their bed. From Odysseus’ reaction of indignation, she was certain that she was speaking to her husband.

And that angel representing Nature? I think she is saying, “I don’t need your alchemy, your thick red robes, your ivory tower of mysterious pursuits. Look what magic I can do on my own. Nature has plenty of mystery, just embrace her!  

Joseph Wheelwright: Sculptor of Stones and Trees

A few days ago my partner Blase and I went to visit the artist, Joseph Wheelwright, to choose some work for the fall outdoor sculpture exhibit. Entering a high-ceilinged warehouse space in Dorchester, I immediately felt the presence of stone – stone dust, stone chunks, and many finished stone heads — decades of carved work on the floor, and on tables and carts. Machines and air compressors to run the stone-carving power tools crammed one area, a large work table occupied the central space, and in the back were stairs to a small office and gallery.

Photo from Joseph Wheelwright Website.

I saw a few of Joe’s tree figures, ones he constructed out of bifurcated tree trunks turned upside down, the trees found in the woods near his summer studio in Vermont. Before cutting down a tree, Wheelwright first checks the root area to make sure it would provide a good set of “shoulders.” A few years ago, an assembly of his giant tree creatures strode across the landscape at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard.

“Choose,” he said, gesturing to the entire studio. “Anything you want.” 

“Wow!” I thought. It’s interesting to have the freedom to choose. Just how does one begin to make a choice when there is such richness? Some of the stone heads must have weighed a few thousand pounds — far too big for us to move in Blase’s pickup truck. Some older pieces made with bones and other fragile material would not be fitting for an outdoor exhibit. One recent sculpture was a small figure standing on a tall rectangular stone. It reminded me of the small figures I cast into bronze and place on rocks or inside wood sections. I recognized that attraction to what I know and feel comfortable with, and turned away to take in the range of really different work. There were so many stone faces, each with a unique expression – it was difficult to decide on one.

Joe asked if we wanted to go upstairs. “Of course, yes, let’s see everything,” I answered. There, in the middle of a small gallery, my eyes alighted on a tower of branch figures. I was familiar with Joe’s wonderful small bronze figures created from delicate tree branches, most of them less than a foot high. They are immediately likable, posed so energetically in sprightly postures. But this sculpture was a three-dimensional ladder, a tower of figure after figure welded together at the point where a leg rests on a knee or a foot on an arm – all interdependent and interconnected. Like a circus act where the performers create a human pyramid with the stronger ensemble members on the bottom, the bronze figures at the base of the sculpture had thicker branches. Then these branch personages became progressively thinner as together they supported the smallest figure, atop them all.

“How about this one?” I asked.

“Well it’s a little fragile to transport,” he said, then paused. “It has one side, I think it’s this one,” he said, pointing, “where you can lay it down.”

“Has it been outside?” Blase asked.

Joe didn’t answer. I’m not sure if he remembered.

I was riveted by this sculpture and did not want to move on. “Could we have it?” My enthusiasm gave me the audacity to ask. 

“Blase, I think you and I can carry it down the stairs,” Joe responded.

As they carried it out to the truck, his wife, Susan, said, “That’s one of my favorites.”

Joseph Wheelwright's Tower of Figures (partial view with visiting dragonfly)

All these figures mutually support each other. If one moves, many will tumble. It’s a sublime balancing act. I look at Joe’s sculpture and think how we are all in this world supporting each other and connected, though not in such a physically obvious way.  

Once we loaded the sculpture into the truck on a thick blanket and tied it in so it wouldn’t roll, Joe asked if we wanted some stones. Blase chose one with a small bird perched on its head; I selected one that seemed to be peering around a corner.

Joe was so generous — the pieces will be for sale — but he declined to give me prices. I think he knew the price tag would be shocking. There’s a lot more work than meets the eye in all of Joe’s work. He has a long lifetime of dedication to his art. We’re so honored to have his sculpture at the farm this fall. Opening Day will be Saturday, September 3rd and the exhibit will be open through Columbus Day.