Landscapes and Life

This site is devoted to the landscape and gardening articles, poetry and musings of award-winning landscape designer and critically acclaimed author Jeff Hutton.

As an author, Jeff has penned two recently published books, Perfect Silence, a novel and Inside Out: The Art & Craft of Landscape Design.

Gardener’s Muse: reflections on landscapes and life and Third Dog: a serial muse inspired by his golden retriever, will be updated periodically. Please take a few moments to browse through the site and read some of Jeff’s thoughtful and informative writing. For more information about Jeff Hutton and his work please see his biography.

Well she doesn’t howl at the moon. Dogs don’t partake in this nocturnal endeavor. In fact, either do wolves. They simply howl at night to signal each other when hunting. At least this is how I understand it. Dogs on the other hand, sleep through most nights. And most of the day for that matter. And they rarely howl. They do bark though. And Third Dog barks more regularly than either first or second dog ever did. Although with both of those dogs we may have been too caught up with our two kids to recognize a howling dog. Quite often one of the kids was howling. And if I remember correctly the dogs slept well and deep through all of it. Moon or no moon. Kids or no kids. Howl or no howl.

Dogs seem to bark most often at the presence of people. And in many cases the presence of other animals of any kind. Which leads me to believe that since the United States is abandoning our lunar space travel program, there’s little chance that any more moon-howling will be going on. Third Dog will have to be content to howl at kids riding by on bicycles; at skate boarders…and squirrels. I don’t know if there has ever been a dog that actually caught a squirrel or a rabbit, but as a witness to my own dog’s attempts to catch the critters I have to believe that fat chance is the appropriate analysis of the situation. The fact that a dog will bark first is a small but vivid insight into their character as I doubt there are many dogs that really want to catch these little woodland creatures and the best way to assure themselves that they won’t is to bark crazily in warning before they begin a frantic and fruitless trace. I think in the history of “dogdom”, dogs were once fierce and fearless hunters. But then so were men. And our evolution has been inexorably bound. Although dogs are still trained to hunt, they give over their catch, rather gently in most cases, to the hands of men.

But Third Dog bounds with startling determination after small prey. The amazing thing about Third Dog is that as soon as the chase is over, after a moment or two of sniffing the ground and looking, quite bewildered up into the canopy of the trees in which the hunted creature has vanished; the chase is over and I doubt that the pup has much memory of what it was that brought her hurtling across the yard with such strange and primitive abandon. The animal having vanished, why not lie upside down on the grass and scratch her back. The chase itself was executed with complete commitment and purpose. She just can’t remember what they might have been. And they’ll always be something else to chase.

The barking can be a good thing. Howling at the moon certainly has its place in the living of any life. And the chase…well, the chase is the thing isn’t it. And the catching is rarely as important as we thought it would be. Half the time we all forget exactly what it was we thought we were after. I think perhaps admiring the good ground, enjoying the canopy of the trees and moving on to the next pursuit with inspired determination may be the thing.

Howl or no howl.

There’s still plenty of snow pack up north and the local rivers are swelling with record rainfall. In between we’ve had record high temperatures followed by bone-chilling cold. No wonder we don’t know exactly what to do in the gardens of early April. It reached 18 degrees last weekend. It may hit 80 degrees this coming weekend. If you think you’re confused, so are the plants in your garden.

Fortunately soil temperatures are less fickle than air temperature.  The depths moderate the extreme fluctuations of the air and spring is a little more predictable subterrainially (that should be a word if it isn’t) speaking. Ground temperatures are what control things like the sprouting of bulbs, the breaking of dormancy and the emergence of weeds at least in a rooted seedling form. For those of you who want to discourage weed growth, the recent heavy rains may help. Crabgrass, for instance, is shallow rooted and the development of thick early spring roots in the lawn help choke it out. I’ll be experimenting with organic control of crabgrass this spring, applying corn gluten which discourages its development. I will say that everyone I talk to about this, nods reassuringly but I can’t help but think they shake their heads as I leave.  I actually think, without chemicals, it will take several years to rid my own lawn of crabgrass without chemicals. There is that dog that roams the backyard and eats and rolls in anything that has a strange odor.  I’m sure chemicals would qualify. The treatment I choose will include corn gluten and a sharp instrument in the ground digging at the ragged clumps of crabgrass in early summer. This will keep it from re-seeding. The roots are shallow so they dig out fairly easy and you might achieve a degree of machismo in the process. Good thick, healthy grass is the best way to control most lawn weeds.  Later in the year dandelions will offer a similar challenge.  But their even easier to spot with their blatant yellow and coarse leaves.  In the right circumstances dandelions can be quite attractive. In an otherwise green span of lawn they can be downright obnoxious in their pleasant  persistence; sort of like the census interviewer who is too nice to hang up on.

Shrubs and trees are awakening. There are magnolias already in bloom in Connecticut and along the shore. Forsythia is about to break through its tightened buds and offer that dependable, albeit often tiresome, signal of spring. Shrubs are showing the first signs of new growth. The sap is finished dripping and the syrup is bottled and labeled. The buds of the trees are swollen and seem to give off a strange energy; some subtle excitement of expectancy.  The trucks are on the highway hauling plants and trees from near and far. Easter will bring us forced azaleas and lilies that we’ll no doubt tire from before they finish forced bloom.  The ground is thawing and warming so that soon the rhododendrons and azaleas will begin a long sequence of extraordinary bloom. Remember when they’re done…to dead head and prune them back. They’ll be anxious to grow and I can almost assure you their final size will be too big for the spot you have in the garden for them. Prune new growth regularly.

Divide and conquer. It’s prime time to cultivate the soil in your perennial gardens.  It’s prime time to divide the abundant and overzealous perennials. If you’re not sure what to do with them tuck them in the corner of a vegetable garden.  It’ll be a few weeks in New England before you’re ready to introduce any hot weather crops. The open space of that good soil is a perfect place to tuck things away for proper consideration. Impulsive gardening usually fails, at least in overall composition.  Growing them on this way as divided clumps, and then transferring them to the garden after some consideration, makes a lot of sense.

But much of this is academic. As I look out of my window in northeastern Connecticut the streets are flooded and the low areas of my yard ware forming miniature ponds. The water pours in sheets across the windows of my sunroom. The dog sleeps at my feet. The gray clouds are buffered by even darker ones in the distance. She goes out only with great reluctance. The Connecticut River is at flood stage and the surrounding forests and farm land are saturated and shimmering with the swollen river… The gardens I cultivated on Sunday run with rivers of soil and mulch. It’s supposed to snow up north. The temperatures tonight are expected in the thirties. Much colder up north. Tomorrow is another day of rain and steel gray skies. But the sky is layered with the weather of other seasons. We will see three of them this week alone.

And the weekend promises…

…well, that spring, in all its contradictions, is finally here. And in a strange perfection the air will be gloriously warm while the ground stays cool for the moderate growth… the quiet stirring…the slow procession of season to season as if, about the entire phenomenon, nothing at all was new.

As the snow recedes and the frost oozes from the ground like a bad memory and we walk around the yard in March we have to remember to remove our boots when we return to the house or else we’ll truly bring the outside in. Our gardens may not be quite as neat as we remembered them in late fall; in those last warm November weekend days when we, not without some embarrassing frenzy, spent the last hours of the year in the garden before the deep frost gathered and the snow and ice of a New England winter embraced the landscape. I remember being out here in December… the temperature still hanging strangely onto 50 degrees… pruning hemlock and pine branches to string a twenty-five foot garland around the entrance porch. My enthusiasm at the time is evidenced by the not quite so selective pruning job I did in the spirit of the holiday. My early spring inspection of the yard reminds me that I’ll have some corrective pruning to do to make things right with my old Continue reading Bless This Mess: The Spring Yard

I’m not sure what the clinical definition of obsessive might be. But surely this dog’s behavior in some instances can be described as this. Maybe it’s a characteristic of the species or maybe humanity has inbred this trait in our dogs through our own obsession with tricks and commands; the need to declare alpha dominance over our canine companions. But besides the flirting with obsession, there is, at the same time, something admirable about the behavior as well. A certain clarity of purpose – a singularity of intent.

Focus and single-mindedness, traits I sorely lack, have never been better exemplified than by Third Dog. Besides doing her best to get our attention at any time of the day, her primary focus is a blue and yellow plastic circle known as a Frisbee. Frisbee is a word not dared uttered in our quiet home without a readiness for immediate action. The word inspires the frantic search and ends with the longing eyes over a mouth full of plastic cylinder which can turn our beautiful dog -– a saucer clenched in her jaws – into a cartoon character. I don’t think there is anything our puppy would rather do than to plunge headlong across our rear lawn in pursuit of the cylinder, suspended in its own innate and frenzied circular flight. The Frisbee is an important center of her life; her unrelenting focus admirable. But unless my wife or I are ready to indulge her in her passion, the word can’t be uttered. We have to spell it…F….R…I…

Once indulged, nothing stands in the way. Gardens are gone in the blink of the eye as she dashes across everything in her hot pursuit. And then once gathered in her jaw, she bounds back to us across the landscape and delivers it for another launch. She is, after all, a Retriever. In these moments, exclusively so.

Our second Golden would retrieve nothing. She would chase an item; examine it; and then leave it lying where it fell. She had no interest in the pickup and delivery of anything, however fascinating they might be. Second dog could fit four of five balls in her jaws, but she had no interest in depositing them anywhere specific. For Third Dog, on the other hand, the pickup and delivery are integral to the satisfaction of the task: a kind of canine Federal Express. Continue reading Third Dog – Frisbee