Tag: Chronicler

Holistic Orcharding: Michael Phillips

The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way, by Michael Phillips

For several years I’ve been absorbing holistic orcharding and gardening wisdom from Michael Phillips. I no longer recall how I came across the pied piper of organic, non-toxic fruit tree propagation, but it’s quite possible that my first introduction was an article in Mother Earth News titled, “Organic Apple Growing: Advice From Michael Phillips“.

If you’re uninitiated, Michael Phillips is the owner (along with his wife, Nancy, and their daughter, Gracie), steward, and chronicler of Lost Nation Orchard in New Hampshire. His book, The Holistic Orchard, is the bible for organic apple growers. Here’s a trailer for the companion DVD, Holistic Orcharding.

The book is outstanding. As is The Apple Grower: A Guide for the Organic Orchardist. And I’d also recommend this YouTube playlist of Michael Phillips’ organic orcharding videos.

Holistic Orcharding Tips

Whether or not “Organic Apple Growing: Advice From Michael Phillips“, the article in Mother Earth News, was my introduction to Michael Phillips’ ideas about holistic orcharding, there are some great takeaways that I’ll highlight here:

Q: How big of a hole do I need to dig for planting a tree?
A: The size of the tree hole needs to be large enough to accommodate the roots without bending them. A 3-foot diameter hole generally fits the bill. (Source: MOTHER EARTH NEWS)

Q: A friend told me I should buy a mycorrhizal product to boost the growth of my trees. Does such a product have any worth?
A: Plants have developed an incredible symbiotic relationship with certain fungi to help get nutrients from the soil, as well as to ward off pathogenic organisms. An apple tree has specific mycorrhizae that interact with its roots in the humus layer in these ways. You can inoculate your soil by finding a healthy wild tree and then bringing a few scoops of the soil beneath its branches back to your ground. Ecosystems adapt to the needs at hand without our necessarily having to buy a packaged product. (Source: MOTHER EARTH NEWS)

Q: Some bug is tunneling into a lot of my fruit when it’s just the size of a nickel. What’s up?
A: We deal with two “petal-fall pests” in the eastern half of the United States that easily could be your culprits. Plum curculio larvae get their start in a crescent-like scar the female weevil makes to prevent the growing fruitlet from crushing her egg; European apple sawfly larvae first scratch the surface of a pea-sized fruitlet, and then go on to eat the seeds in another three or four fruitlets. (Source: MOTHER EARTH NEWS)

Q: What’s up with the new kaolin clay spray?
A: Those petal-fall pests identified above can be held effectively in check with a nontoxic white clay covering applied over the entire surface of the tree. The kaolin clay panicles confuse the insect adults and prove incredibly irritating… Application begins as the blossoms start to fall and needs to be thorough. It takes two or three initial sprays to build up a thick enough base to repel these insects. Renew the clay weekly for the next month. (Source: MOTHER EARTH NEWS)

Q: Why did my grandparents hang open jugs of vinegar and molasses out in the orchard?
A: Such homegrown traps usually target adult fruit moths such as the codling moth. Unfortunately, all sons of bugs end up drowning in this brew, some of which might have been beneficial allies. I prefer to control codlings moths with well-timed sprays of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a biological pesticide stomach-specific to caterpillars. Others have had some success wrapping corrugated cardboard around the trunk of the tree, where the larvae crawl to continue their development. Then at the end of the summer, the cardboard is removed and burned. (Source: MOTHER EARTH NEWS)

Q: When do I hang those red sticky ball traps?
A: Apple maggot flies (AMF) are the culprits drawn to these effective traps. The new generation emerges from the soil beginning in late June, with females seeking fruit in which to lay eggs throughout July and August. The sticky balls mimic the best apple to be found in the orchard. The female alights on the trap and stays put because of a layer of sticky goo called “Tangletrap” covering the red sphere… Two to four traps per tree generally suffice to keep AMF larvae from ruining a good harvest. I set out traps on early maturing varieties by the first of July, then scrape off the dead flies and renew the sticky material when moving the traps to later-maturing varieties in early August. (Source: MOTHER EARTH NEWS)

Books by Michael Phillips

The Holistic Orchard, by Michael Phillips

The Apple Grower by Michael Phillips

The Herbalist’s Way, by Nancy and Michael Phillips

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July 14, 2016
Chronicler or Artist

Chronicler or Artist I: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

I really *should* post an update on our loft flooring “research”, copper flashing (aka drip edge) installation, east elevation gable window framing, revised drawings from Tiho that address a few outstanding items like column, stairway, railing, and other trim details (plus lighting, electric, and mechanicals),… But I’m going to postpone these already postponed updates a little longer to talk instead about a recurring subplot in recent months.

Okay, maybe it’s unfair to dub it a subplot since so far it’s defied definition. At heart it’s a grappling with mission. And permission. As I pour over sixteen years’ worth of memories and plans and artifacts and notes and photos and stories and poems and intertwined lives and ephemera there’s an inner struggle at work. Am I simply gathering the strings of a vast collection, curating its diverse snippets into a sort of chronicle, a history, a retrospective map? Or am I creating from these fragments something new and unique? Am I more of an historian or a mosaic maker? Am I chronicler or artist?

Chronicler or Artist II: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

“He chooses; he synthesizes; in short, he has ceased to be the chronicler; he has become an artist.” — Virginia Woolf (Source: The Art of Biography)

There’s an inevitable tensions between the duty of stewardship and the affinity for storytelling and poetic truth. Between the responsibility to document important details for future Rosslyn homeowners and the creative freedom to explore textures and layers, melodies and harmonies, whimsical what-ifs and errant adventures.

But it’s more than this. It’s verisimilitude. Veracity…

I believe that there are different kinds of accuracy. I am a storyteller, not an historian, and though I strive for verisimilitude, some truths are more effectively preserved and conveyed through stories than history or vaults. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

And so I pendulum between two muses, each jealous of the other, both second guessing, both casting aspersions.

Some days I toil like an archeologist amidst a midden heap of artifacts, rewinding time’s mysteries, deciphering the prior summer’s garden vegetables from this season’s rich, dark compost. Other days I seduce and charm and coerce the artifacts to share longer forgotten truths. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Chronicler or Artist III: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

And there’s the not too subtle complication of recollection. My memory muddles — more of the composting variety than the austere archival variety — appreciating the possibilities of parallax, and grafting whimsical paisley’s onto sturdier scions to ensure that they survive the tempestuous toils of time.

I am startled to discover that these precise, unambiguous reference points frequently contradict my recollection. Dramatic events indelibly etched into my brain at the time have already blurred despite the brief lapse of time. I curse my mischievous mind and then accept that 100% accuracy will inevitably elude me. My mind’s imperfect cataloging at once humbles and liberates me. Though an unreliable historian, I am a chronicler and curator of stories, not facts. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

So there it is. I’ve flirted with this truth before, and I double down today. Caveat emptor. Ask not of me the court stenographer’s unblinking authority. And I’ll not ask of you the jury’s verdict or the judges conviction.

According to Garcia Marquez life is not only the experiences, the moments lived. Life is also the rendering of those experiences into stories, the recollecting, the filtering, the imagining, the sharing. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Recollecting, filtering, imagining, choosing, curating, synthesizing, sharing,… This is the map I use. Chronicler or artist? Yes, but mostly the latter.

Perhaps even with history we become overconfident that the facts are irrefutable… Absent an omnipresent video camera that documents my life as I bump along, capturing every minute detail precisely, permanently, Garcia Marquez’s perspective offers reassuring guidance. Though I frequently daydream about a collaborative memoir comprised of the recollections of everyone who participated in the rebirth of Rosslyn, my story is an eclectic nexus of personal experiences, filtered, aggregated and cobbled into narrative cohesion by me. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Chronicler or Artist IV: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)

And yet the challenge of a dual mission permeates this 16-year exercise. There’s an inevitable tendency, a responsibility even, to document. To archive. To showcase. And there’s the omnipresent siren song of wonder and whimsy. While I still endeavor to provide a responsible accounting of our life, love, and toil at/with Rosslyn, I’m succumbing to the beguiling song of the sirens.

My quest for permission needn’t require such wayward roving. It is first and foremost my own consent I’m questing after. And part of accepting this is granting myself permission to embrace art above chronicle. I’ve suspected this. Dithered. Wondered. Worried. But this morning a confident confluence is flowing. And I’m ready… (Source: Quest for Permission)

Fair warning, then, while I dive into the reflective waters simultaneously mirroring the misty morning and revealing the pebbly depths. I’ll be back. Soon.

December 11, 2022
Quest for Permission
Quest for Permission (Photo: Geo Davis)

I am on a quest for permission. Permission from Susan, from Rosslyn, even from family and friends. Most of all I am on a quest for permission from myself. This morning a serendipitous swirl of accidental-coincidental happenings helped me realize this. Chief among them (and the rightful recipients my profound gratitude) in the order they fluttered across my morning:
- newly arrived “intense black” (actually deep green) fountain pen ink from Wordsworth & Black;
- a joy-filled (cheerful words and jolly doodles) letter from my mother, Melissa Davis;
- timely, astute, perspective bending counsel from Virginia Woolf; and
- even more timely but equally astute, epiphanic insight from Nick Bantock.
In the photograph above, a few artifacts hint at the serendipitous series of events that, to my arguably esoteric way of thinking, fall into a phenomenon I refer to as rhyming. Sometimes the universe rhymes, or as poet Jeffrey Harrison might offer, if you’re receptive to it, you might hear “The Singing Underneath“. I’d best stand aside and let him guide us.

“just beneath the world we see,
there is a silent singing that breaks out
at moments, in flickering points of light.”
— Jeffrey Harrison, “The Singing Underneath”

The fountain pen, clogged with dry ink, awaiting new ink, had been a metaphorical reminder that I was stuck. Clogged. I wasn’t flowing as I needed to be. But new ink arrived just in time. The crusty piston pulled clean water in and pushed it out again. Unclogging with each plunge of the piston. Anticipation as I drew up the new ink. And then lines on paper. Perfect. Flowing again.

My mother’s 2-page note, complete with her unique illustrations, was an attentive parade of grateful acknowledgments gathered during a recent adventure together. Unselfconscious. Whimsical. Honest.

Virginia Woolf’s words needn’t be explained, only shared.

“He chooses; he synthesizes; in short, he has ceased to be a chronicler; he has become an artist.” — Virginia Woolf

I don’t know where I came across these words, and I’m failing now to find them. Perhaps I’ve misattributed this quotation? This morning at least, it doesn’t matter. The shift in perspective is precisely what I needed to consider. to prepare me for the keystone concept that gathered it all together.

Artist and author, Nick Bantock, shared a reflection on Griffin & Sabine that resonated right for me.

THE idea of writing a love letter to oneself sounds both indulgent and cheesy, and yet done in the name of self-acceptance rather than narcissism, I feel there’s much merit to the act.

I think when I wrote the following passage, from Sabine to Griffin, I was doing exactly that, I was articulating an inner need to bringing together and unite my opposite selves, my logical and intuitive personas:

“I have loved you in every manner that my imagination could contrive. I have wanted you so deeply that my body sang with pain and pleasure. You have been my obsession, my passion, my philosophers stone of fantasy. You are my desire, my longing, my spirit. I love you unconditionally. Do you hear me, Griffin? Do you see that I cherish you beyond question, that you have nothing to prove to me? You are making your journey to secure yourself. I am already tethered to your side. If you can love yourself, as I love you, there will be no dislocation — you will be whole. Bring yourself home to me and I will immerse you in every ounce of tenderness I possess. Sabine.”

Looking back, I can see that whilst the tale of G and S was certainly an expression of romantic longing, it was also a quest for permission. I was trying to give myself, and others, the encouragement to be both opposite and whole. — Nick Bantock (Source: Facebook, November 14, 2022)

Eureka! In revealing what he’s come to understand about what compelled him to create the Griffin & Sabine books, his words struck that ineffable something that Susan and I are grappling with and that I’ve been exploring in Rosslyn Redux — wondering, yearning, exploring, growing toward, backsliding and second guessing, and then venturing tentatively out again — over the last couple of years. I genuinely believe that he has captured succinctly and lucidly our journey: it’s “a quest for permission.”

I’ve referenced frequently, perhaps too frequently, an ongoing transformation in our relationship with Rosslyn, an evolution in our scheming and prognosticating and brainstorming. I’ve acknowledged liminality and the sometimes bittersweet, sometimes conflicted emotions that manifest suddenly and unpredictably as we attempt to navigate from comfort and stability toward the unfamiliar, unknown. At last I’ve stumbled on what I’ve needed to know. My quest for permission needn’t require such wayward roving. It is first and foremost my own consent I’m questing after. And part of accepting this is granting myself permission to embrace art above chronicle. I’ve suspected this. Dithered. Wondered. Worried. But this morning a confident confluence is flowing. And I’m ready…
November 15, 2022
Remembering and Recounting

“Life is not what one lives, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” — Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale

As I organize multiple pieces of Rosslyn’s renovation, our littoral Adirondack existence, and my still-young marriage into some sort of coherent storyline I wrestle consciously with occasional incongruities between my story and my life.

The narrative landscape is vast. Too vast, it often seems, to fit into a tidy memoir beginning with the crisp crack of a book spine opening for the first time, and the contented-sigh closure compelling stories demand.

Day after day, week after week I reread and rewrite, sort and distill and sort again, hunting for the essential story lurking amidst a mosaic of daily munge entries; four year’s worth of to-do lists; over fifteen thousand photographs; boxes of technical drawings and hasty sketches; hours of dictation; recorded meetings; and emails. Properly assembled, these miscellaneous artifacts form a multidimensional map of what took place between the spring of 2006 and the present, but they fail to tell the story, they fail to recount the adventure lived.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Image via Wikipedia)

In fact, I am startled to discover that these precise, unambiguous reference points frequently contradict my recollection. Dramatic events indelibly etched into my brain at the time have already blurred despite the brief lapse of time.

I curse my mischievous mind and then accept that 100% accuracy will inevitably elude me. My mind’s imperfect cataloging at once humbles and liberates me. Though an unreliable historian, I am a chronicler and curator of stories, not facts.

Even when my data is unequivocal, I inevitably distort history, omitting and abbreviating and emphasizing, distilling the vast landscape of data into vignettes. These accrete gradually, revealing the narrative design of my story.

I am unlike my father and my brother who posses iron vaulted minds where information is deposited, preserved and safeguarded for later use. When the time comes to retrieve the information, they withdraw it from their vaults unaltered, uncontaminated, reliable, accurate. Or so it has always seemed to me.

I believe that there are different kinds of accuracy. I am a storyteller, not an historian, and though I strive for verisimilitude, some truths are more effectively preserved and conveyed through stories than history or vaults.

Some days I toil like an archeologist amidst a midden heap of artifacts, rewinding time’s mysteries, deciphering the prior summer’s garden vegetables from this season’s rich, dark compost.

Other days I seduce and charm and coerce the artifacts to share longer forgotten truths. I plant French Breakfast Radishes and bush beans in the compost-enriched garden and several unlikely seedlings emerge among the radish and bean sprouts. I skip them while weeding, and soon enough I am rewarded with yellow cherry tomatoes, wart covered gourds and a curly garlic scape! Although I’ve grown yellow cherry tomatoes in the past, I’ve never grown gourds or garlic.

I remember that we were given several multicolored gourds to decorate my bride’s annual Halloween birthday party last year. But they were smooth skinned. Perhaps they were discarded in the compost, and a recessive wart gene found its way into the germination process resulting in the exotic adaptation growing amidst the fattening radishes.

And the garlic? We eat plenty from Full and By Farm, our local CSA, but to date I have never planted garlic. I vaguely remember several bulbs that we left out while traveling last winter. When we returned home, the kitchen was ripe with the pungent odor of rotten garlic. The bulbs were discolored, sitting in a pool of their own brown fluid. Several garlic cloves had begun to germinate, pale green shoots emerging from the cloves and arching upward.

I imagine planting them in a terra-cotta pot and placing it on a windowsill in my study. Each morning I inspect their progress. One shoot yellows and grows limp, then wrinkles across the moist soil. The other three grow taller quickly, changing from pale to dark green. Soon they will twist into elegant scapes which I can cut just above the soil level. I will chop them up and sauté them with olive oil, salt and pepper. I will serve them to my bride as a dinner side with mashed potatoes and swordfish, and she’ll smile ear-to-ear, marveling that something so succulent could have grown by accident.

According to Garcia Marquez life is not only the experiences, the moments lived. Life is also the rendering of those experiences into stories, the recollecting, the filtering, the imagining, the sharing. To fully live we must share our stories. That’s an interesting notion in a world that more often favors accuracy, facts, history.

Perhaps even with history we become overconfident that the facts are irrefutable. Only in recent decades have scholars we begun to look critically at history’s biases, often tainted by ideology, objectives or favoring the victors to the vanquished.

Absent an omnipresent video camera that documents my life as I bump along, capturing every minute detail precisely, permanently, Garcia Marquez’s perspective offers reassuring guidance. Though I frequently daydream about a collaborative memoir comprised of the recollections of everyone who participated in the rebirth of Rosslyn, my story is an eclectic nexus of personal experiences, filtered, aggregated and cobbled into narrative cohesion by me.

I write these affirmative lines now, and yet I struggle with it each time my bride asks if she can participate more actively in the revising and editing. Yes, I tell her; when I am done. Which is not to say that I have neglected her input. I have sought it again and again. But her story is different from my own, as are the still unwritten memoirs of many creative and hardworking people who invested their time and energy into renovating our home. I hope to showcase many of their impressions and memories on the Rosslyn Redux blog. And I am optimistic that my memoir will serve as an invitation to dig into their memories and to recount their own versions of Rosslyn Redux.

Thank you, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for your guidance.

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November 18, 2011