The mint’s taken over
and we just watched it,
eating sandwiches, piled
with fresh tomatoes picked
from the garden.
Love is letting a plant take
over a meticulously tended
bed for a child’s whim.
The tomatoes are gone,
and the mint reminds me
that things used to be
full of everything good.
Written 15 February 2020
Brian Fuchs, “Cakewalk” from Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Scissortail Press, 2020)
I left Tulsa when my friends had died
and we were all set adrift, angry and lost,
wondering if staying meant more of us would die.
I tried to go to Dallas, to a life I wanted.
They boys swarm thickly there,
and I still wonder if my days would have been
spent in the beds of strangers if I’d gone there.
I’ve always longed for the beds of strangers,
to feel taken for granted and awkward.
In moving, I detoured, finding myself in Anchorage,
near the place where my dad spent his youth,
carried on winds I rode for too long, or just long enough.
I was not qualified for life in Alaska,
not qualified for the men who had gone there.
But I was determined to find myself,
or to find Dad in the places where his friends still lived.
His youth was left in an Alaska that no longer exists,
so my mind found new reasons to keep me there.
I found the spaces I understood,
the pockets of the city that seemed familiar,
bookstores filled with other refugees,
of lives that had started to drift.
My mind invented the things I didn’t know
and the people around me became gods.
I didn’t question that, and I formed a religion.
Their lives were spent being perfect
in ways I could never spend my own life.
They are still gods; I pray to them in darkness,
my soul crying out to be acknowledged.
On cold mornings, I liked to price books,
scanning their barcodes and attaching a sticker.
I would think about my friends,
wonder about the shapes of their bodies,
and worry that they could hear my thoughts.
I’d worry that I was saying the thoughts aloud,
and I’d wait for Kevin to go upstairs to inject his insulin
so I could stop thinking about his waist.
I’m still thinking about his waist.
The decade I’ve had to reflect has made me more curious
and sometimes I worry that he can still hear my thoughts.
I have been dissecting butterflies,
stained glass wings pulled apart
by unwieldy spinning steel fingers
as I think about beauty and conformity,
praying to my gods, mindlessly offering
the insects as a tribute.
I didn’t intend this massacre
and in the lawn lie the tiny lifeless parts.
In the hot sun of the places of my youth,
I don’t have new shapes to fill my mind,
new boys to think about.
I dwell on the boys of my past.
I’m reaching back, feeling myself grasping
for people I can’t always recognize,
the names apparitions in my mind.
Some of the gods’ faces have merged & morphed.
I’m taking the ones I wanted the most,
or the ones I wanted to be the most,
and placing their pieces where I can sort them
and try to hold onto them in my mind.
I’m still thinking about waists and hips and shoulders,
still wondering about the firmness of skin.
They haven’t seen me wondering,
their lives have pulled them toward much happier places,
some growing beautifully in Alaska,
others found scattered by the winds
that had first deposited them near me.
The butterflies are whispering secrets,
understandably warning each other about me.
In new cities and states, in their new lives,
they think about the times we spent together
and I go on thinking about their bodies.
Written 12 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.
Brian Fuchs, “Pieces of Dissected Butterflies” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
Happy Birthday To Me! Today is my 39th birthday, and while it has been a mostly peaceful day, I have found myself avoiding a lot of memories and feelings that are just under the surface. I just wasn’t in a place to deal.
I spent the first half of the day listening to episodes of the podcast Frangela: The Final Word. TOO FUNNY! I love these two, and have for a long time on The Stephanie Miller Show. I don’t know why it took me so long to get into their podcast. I’m glad I did though. After a bit of that, I took a nice nap on the front porch, where I discovered one of the kittens had returned. I don’t have faith in the survival of the others, but his return offered at least a glimmer of hope. My nap was followed by going up to spend time with my dad, brother, nephew, and roommate. Justin made vegan chicken burgers and fries and the rest of us gave Conner a hard time. I know he was getting frustrated, but it was kinda fun anyway.
The gathering was fairly brief, a little chaotic, but okay. I do find myself needing to manage my expectations of others in these situations. I have a tendency to want people to put their own issues away for a few hours, and at least give the appearance that they care to spend time with me. But they don’t. I should know better. I don’t mean to sound accusatory at all; they are just living their lives as normal. It’s me who is expecting too much.
I’ve had a wonderfully productive week. I got the shelving assembled and put in that goes along the east wall of my bedroom. I’m putting things together slowly with it in; I don’t want it to just feel like a pile of stuff, so I’m going through things and purging a little as I go… very little. I did identify some books on ikebana that I intend to find a new home for… if I don’t change my mind. Those books are so thin that it will hardly make a difference in the end! I finally put some books on the shelves in the living room as well; I’ve had three shelves empty for the past year or so, which is silly really since I had books in boxes waiting to be put out.
Justin helped me put in a row of junipers that will hopefully mature into a nice hedge to break up the front yard, and we also put in another chaste tree up at the house. Things seem to be coming together slowly in the yards. I need to spend some time cleaning up the flowerbeds at the house; they are covered in weeds, need mulch, and the plants could be pruned.
Plants showed up! I’m not sure why they were sent so early, but part of the order that was supposed to arrive in November showed up in the mail. It isn’t a good time for planting. I might look at how to hold them until fall; they are bare root plants. If I can’t easily wait, I’ll need to get those in the ground or at least in planters in the next couple of days. I’m not sure how well things will do if they are planted in August, but it does look like we will have a rather mild week and that will help.
The orange rose, which had put on very pink blooms before, has changed and the newer blooms are much more orange. Maybe it needs to mature before the roses will be their true color, and maybe they will be pale. Either way, I’m really liking the look of these and I’m glad I put them near the porch. In time they will be tall enough to tie to the side of the porch and they can be enjoyed like the ‘Fourth of July’ or ‘Golden Showers’ roses are.
So this next week’s plans are all about figuring out those plants that arrived early. I do need to mow and get started on the flowerbeds as well, but I will also spend some time uploading more blog posts. It’s nice to be ahead of the game. I usually stay three or four weeks ahead, but I’m only a few days ahead at the moment and need to manage things better to make sure the blog is always active. On that note, I’m looking for feedback on what is working and what isn’t. Leave me comments on this post or on any post you want so I know what people are thinking.
Artists Featured This Week
Crepemyrtle (Lagerstroemia)
When I moved to Alaska in 2005 I was struck by those things that were different from my life in Oklahoma. After getting through that first winter, it became apparent that it wasn’t just the conifer trees that provided a striking contrast to the landscapes of the places I consider home. The perennials that popped up in the gardens of the area were exotic to me. They were plants I had known about, but had no experience with. Columbine, dahlia, lobelia, rhubarb, bleeding hearts, raspberries, wild roses, poppies. It was a fascinating experience to be surrounded by these new plants, as well as by the old familiar dandelions and lilacs.
I was in Alaska for a number of years and loved those summer months and the beautiful flowers of the area. What I didn’t expect was how much I would fall in love with the plants of Oklahoma when I returned for vacation.
I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on 5 August 1979 and I lived in the state until 2005 when I left for Alaska. My uncle is a landscape architect, my grandpa was a professor of agronomy and a consultant on soils. He spent hours daily working on his flowerbeds and vegetable garden on his one acre lot, an oasis of green in the middle of ordinary yards. Plants were a part of our DNA. All parts of my family had been farmers, growing broom corn and cotton. It had never been my world and I barely paid attention to the things growing around me. I was aware of the various plants in the landscape, but I didn’t know much about those plants.
What I was most struck with on coming back to Oklahoma on a vacation in 2007 was how amazing crepemyrtles are. They’ve long been a favorite, especially of my grandpa who had them planted heavily around his house and as a backdrop/transition between the trees and flowers in the flowerbeds. It felt like I was discovering these plants for the first time.
In 2013, I loved back to Oklahoma and these crepemyrtles felt like a focus of my thoughts when I was
at my parents house or at a business. They are one of the most commonly used plants in Oklahoma, and it’s pretty easy to see why.
Crepemyrtles are native to southeast Asia, with some hybrids being crossed with a taller species from Japan. They have been a common ornamental plant in America since before the revolution, with both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s gardens having at least one specimen plant. They quickly became a staple in the South, but as they are not generally cold hardy past zone 6 or 7, they were not a part of the gardens of the North and as a result they do not feature in very many of the early seed or nursery catalogs. When they do start popping up, it is clear that several cultivars have been established from the original pink flowering tree. You see white, pink, purple, and red listed in those early catalogs. The purples were what we now refer to as lavender and the red were dark pink. It took a long time to achieve a true red crepemyrtle.
The cultivars did not change significantly for a long time, with sporadic new plants being introduced a couple each decade until the 1950s. It was then that hybridization started in more earnest, and the numbers of plants available really exploded. By the 1970s, new plants were being released at a rate of six to twelve per year, a speed that has only been matched in recent years. These plants had all started off as trees that grow 20-25 feet, filled from June to September with large panicles of pink flowers. Now there were bright reds, fuchsias, deep purples, blush pinks, and picotees of white and pink. Some of them still reached 20 feet or more, while other varieties had been selected to weep only 1-2 feet off the ground.
Crepemyrtles have a couple of drawbacks. The most obvious is that they don’t put on new leaves until late May or June. It’s glaring when the rest of the trees have woken up, many of which have gone through their flowering and are now greening out for the summer and the crepemyrtles still are just a cluster of sticks. It almost feels like nothing will ever happen with them, and then over the course of a few days leaves start popping up from branches that seemed dead for sure. They grow fast and in less than a month, the plant has put on so much growth that it’s easy to forget that it had waited for so long. And then it flowers and that wait was worth it, most of them covering themselves in blooms. Many will stay in bloom until frost, so it’s a showy plant.
They other problem is not so much with crepemyrtles themselves as it is with people who don’t know how to take care of them. It is very common for crepemyrtles to be cut back heavily by landscapers, often dramatically. The result is thickly trunked trees with thin branches, often referred to as a witch’s broom effect. There are two goals these people are trying to accomplish. One, it keeps the plant small and contained. Many varieties can grow to 15-25 feet. Business don’t always want that. The other thing this does is increase the new growth branches, which is where the flowering occurs on crepemyrtles. The do not bloom on last years growth. First, the size of a crepemyrtle can be maintained by planting the correct variety. Choose the one that fits your space. Secondly, new growth and blooming can be encouraged by pruning a crepemyrtle by removing old branches that aren’t growing, dead heading panicles, and cutting back weak growth. Nobody needs to engage in “crapemurders”.
Crepemyrtles may not be native to Oklahoma, or indeed anywhere in zones 7, 8, or 9, but they might as well be. These flowering trees and shrubs are a part of us now, and I am so glad to have rediscovered them and appreciate them immensely.
Please note also that there are different spellings. The plant is botanically known as Lagerstroemia, but is commonly known as crepemyrtle, crepe myrtle, crapemyrtle, or crape myrtle. I used the one I prefer above.
Southern Living: Grumpy Gardener’s Crepe Murders 2018
I do not know where this week has gone! I got more cleanup of my yard done, but this is a lot of land here and I really need everyone pitching in to make sure things can get done. I probably should’ve taken pictures to show my progress, but I’m feeling really positive about it.
I feel like my “Sunshine Garden,” as I’ve taken to calling it, is coming together nicely. It’s going to be a little bit conceptual, but the plants I’ve picked out are nice. I need to plant the junipers this week & then probably mark out the areas for trees arriving this fall. Smaller plants will be in next Spring, but I am working toward getting that area the way I have it in my head.
Saturday was Justin’s birthday. It was a quiet and uneventful day at his request, although he did end up mowing in the evening. Justin is a good friend and I know everyone takes him for granted. I’m blessed to have such a nice person in my life. (These photos are from 2 years ago)
Avery spent part of the week out here, which was nice. She’s so easy-natured and doesn’t get bent out of shape about things.
I’ve got so many things to get done; the yardwork seems endless, but this upcoming week is going to be pretty hot, so I’ll be only working outside until about 10 everyday. That should give me time to work on some of the other things I’ve got going on — art and whatnot.
Art featured this week
I’ve continued being obsessed with gardening. I’ve been watching a lot of several YouTube channels on gardening. While I never see anything exactly like what I would like to do, it is so nice to see so many ideas and tips from people who have been doing this for a long time.
We had a hot week, which is pretty typical. I wish I’d gotten more accomplished, but everything was feeling difficult. So many of my days anymore are like that.
It seems like gardening is the way I’m dealing with things. I’ve mentioned it, but it just keeps coming up. I’m surprised, but maybe shouldn’t be really. It was my grandpa’s death that first got me interested in growing plants. I became briefly obsessed with houseplants. I was living in an apartment at the time, so I couldn’t go crazy with plants of my own, but that turned into an attempt at a vegetable garden the following Spring and planting some roses for Mom in the summer. But that was a terrible summer for growing anything and it was really discouraging. I decided not to try again. When Dale Combs, the man who I was named after, passed away, I was drawn to go sit and think beneath some beautiful big trees and to spend time in a wooded park. It felt natural to be surrounded by nature. Mary Combs passed in 2017, and once again I felt drawn to nature and natural things. It was Winter, but I wanted to be outside.
If spent my Summer so far wanting to be outside as much as possible. I have been incredibly worried about what I should be doing, about my health, and about my future. Some days I feel like I’m going to explode, but being in my yard seems to be helping. I’ve babied my roses, planned for new beds, created a new bed, and generally enjoyed being in my garden. I even enjoy it when it’s too hot. It just feels right, and I guess that’s okay. I don’t want to spin out of control too much, but I do want to just keep getting things done. It just feels right.
I’m sadder now than I ever have been, but I’m feeling tired of being tired. I’m tired of crying and tired of sleeping. I feel sadder than I ever imagined a person could feel, and I also feel calmer than I would have expected. I just want to sit quietly in a beautiful garden and not stress out about things. Of course, I have to create the garden I want, but it just feels right, and I’m going to try to let myself be.
One of the things I’m doing later this year is to get a bunch of people a flowering tree to plant in Mom’s memory. I got my trees ordered this week, and they will arrive around Thanksgiving. It’ll be a nice time to plant. I hope that goes down well for everyone.
I don’t know what will happen next week. I feel lost today, but I hope each day surprises me by being better than I expected.
Planting season is pretty much over for most of us, and now we enjoy the gardens we put together for the summer. I have been giving some thought to which steps to take next on my landscape plan. I’ll definitely want to plant trees and bulbs in the fall, and I want to start thinking about specific varieties of anything I might want for Spring 2019. I like having a plan. While I’ve been looking this year, I’ve kept thinking about how fun it would be to have a themed flowerbed or garden.
I worry about America’s future at the moment. I love this country, and it seems like those who do not are successfully usurping authority and trying to reshape this into an authoritarian country. So, I feel compelled to wax nostalgic about my love of this country in various ways. So, in that spirit, here are some suggestions for a patriotic flowerbed.
Go easy on the decor and ornaments. A few things are good, but you don’t need flags & pinwheels & bows covering everything. Just try some accents. What I love about the wood flag is that it allows the flowers to do the work, while still giving that Americana vibe. One garden gnome, a bird house, a few stepping stones, or even an eagle for your porch is enough to convey the idea without beating the theme to death.
Here are some plant suggestions. I’ve tried to include things that allow for color throughout the year, and obviously not all plants work in all places. These are just my own suggestions.
Not into the red, white, & blue color scheme? Try creating a First Lady Rose garden. Here are some of my favorites:
Adding a military gnome or classic monument can help personalize the garden. A Statue of Liberty or Mt Rushmore souvenir added to the right spot in a garden would be fun.
Here are some more America themed flowers that I love
Ambitious indoor gardeners might even want to try a First Lady Orchid or two. Here are two I really like
Want to do something fun, but you already have a garden, why not paint some stars on the lawn for the summer. Use building site spray paints. As the grass grows and is mowed, they will disappear, but they will be fun for the 4th of July, Memorial Day, or for an event.
I have never been very much into gardening. I love having things growing around me, but the process of actually putting those things in the ground and taking care of them… no. But I’ve found myself with a lot of need for distraction lately. So, I have turned to gardening. In the heat. It;s keeping my brain occupied, but I also keep remembering something my brother talks about all the time: managing one’s expectations.
For years, I’ve watched my parents return from nurseries and garden centers with car loads of beautiful plants for the flowerbeds, but with no idea where they will go or who will plant them. Inevitably, most of the plants would end up underwatered, unplanted, neglected, or planted in the wrong spots. The whole ordeal that had started off as fun would end up a disappointment, and a source of frustration. The expectations did not meet the reality. The way they managed that was to try to change the reality around them, but that never worked. Brent’s point was always that it was the expectations that were the problem.
I lived for many years in Alaska. I love the climate that promotes lots of beautiful growth, but with lots of shade and very little heat. I would love to have a garden full of cypress trees draped above head, ferns popping out along the bases of the trees, and fuchsias in hanging pots lining the porch. Moss would grown on the roof of the shed and everyday a light rain would keep the soils moist and the plants would grow up around me and there would be flowers in bloom all summer. I want a beautiful deck to enjoy the cool evenings and have people over. Unfortunately, that is not the situation I find myself in. If I was constantly trying to make that happen, I would spend a lot of my time disappointed and convinced that gardening doesn’t work. What I have to do is work within the framework available to me.
I want tall shade plants: Junipers and crapemyrtles are excellent plants that grown to 10-14 feet and provide a great amount of shade. They have the added benefit of attracting birds and butterflies. So, I am planning a landscape that depends on these two plants primarily as shade plants.
I want lots of flowers: Roses. Roses in Oklahoma, well in my part of Oklahoma, require little care and bloom almost all year. Climbing roses tied against the house give a nice shade to the inside and allow for the appreciation of blooms. I also cannot think of a flower that comes in a greater variety of shapes and sizes. I’ve had a lot of luck with roses, so I’ve popped them in strategically around the house.
I want plants growing on the ground that aren’t grasses: Grasses are a pretty common xeriscape option, especially as I live on the border of two grass prairies. I don’t care for them though. What I do love is vinca, or periwinkle. Vinca keeps my flowerbeds full of green leaves without having them be full of weeds and grasses. It also helps keep my soils moist, which the other plants appreciate.
Moss growing on the roof??? Okay, I admit this one is harder to substitute. So, I’ve decided to try Virginia Creeper. It does grow wild here, but usually deep in the wooded areas. If I can provide the right amount of moisture, I’m hoping I can get this creeping vine to grow up the side of the metal shed or vinyl siding on the house. This one is going to require more effort, and I plan to start it next Spring.
Daily rain? Now I’ve gone too far! Brent and I have talked a lot about irrigation systems. I’m going to invest in the right things so that next year I can have both irrigation and misting available around the house.
I want a new deck: My back porch is rotting. It’s time for it to go, and with Brent’s help I’d like to add on a ground level deck with steps down from the house. It’d be a nice place to spend evenings, as the back yard gets all the evening shade. That project is happening this fall.
When I look at my plans, they seems overly ambitious. I worry I’ve gone too far with what I want to do. Maybe I have. I’m trying to keep it simple, space out my work, and achieve something more than I have now. And I have probably set my expectations too high.
So, I’m not going to be creating a replica of the gardens of Versailles, and I won’t be building a living sculpture. There won’t be any sidewalks with flowers arched above to take a stroll through or fountains with flamingos. That’s okay. It doesn’t need to be outlandish to be beautiful. My plan will probably get pared down over time, or I will wait another year to complete parts of it. It will be mine, and that is what I’m excited about. I never really cared about gardening until I started getting my hands dirty. It’s fun to transform a landscape and to see the plants take shape over time.
Here are the plants I’m interested in ADDING to my landscape:
Here are some of the plants I already have that I wouldn’t mind having more of:
I still feel like I’m in slow motion; the world is rushing around me. I’m feeling more at peace, but I’m definitely still frustrated and confused. I suspect I will feel like this for a long time.
Mom and I had ordered a whole bunch of roses to plant around her house and mine. With the help of Conner and Justin, I got all of those planted. We planted 17 total new roses. I’m also attempting to propagate from one of my existing climbing roses, which is going well so far. The roses were planted on Monday, and one has new leaves already. I’ve also got honeysuckle started, but only one of six plants is showing new growth so far. I’ll keep being patient with them. Here are some of the roses I planted. I also planted 6 Rosa Rugosas & 1 Lady Banks Climbing Rose, not pictured. (Rose Bushes Pictured: Copper, JFK, Pink Fairy Cushion, Oranges N Lemons; Climbing Roses Pictured: Lemon Butter, Zephirine Drouhin, White Dawn, Orange Velvet)
I’ve also got things around the house planned for times when it is too hot. I’m trying to fill my time up with projects, and that seems to be helping a little bit at least.
The porch cats now have 5 kittens. Last year only 1 kitten survived (of 2), so they are already having a more successful year. Most of the time I wish they’d all just disappear, but I do like when their are kittens to play with. That almost makes all these cats worth having!
I got started on thank you cards. It’s a job; a much bigger job than I expected. I’m not falling apart writing them, and that makes me feel a little better about things.
Next week I’m hoping to finish up the thank you cards and get a few more things planted. I’m also hoping the lawn mower returns home; it’s been in the shop for 3 weeks now. I have grass turning into a forest out there!
Artists featured on the site this week:
The Oklahoma Family Tumblr is going well. People, mostly family, seem to be enjoying the photos!