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Planting a Sequoia Dana Gioia

Guest poem submitted by Filip Comley:

 All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the orchard,
 Digging this hole, laying you into it, carefully packing the soil.
 Rain blackened the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific,
 And the sky above us stayed the dull gray
 Of an old year coming to an end.

 In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son's birth-
 An olive or a fig tree-a sign that the earth has one more life to bear.
 I would have done the same, proudly laying new stock into my father's
orchard,
 A green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs,
 A promise of new fruit in other autumns.

 But today we kneel in the cold planting you, our native giant,
 Defying the practical custom of our fathers,
 Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair, a piece of an infant's birth cord,
 All that remains above earth of a first-born son,
 A few stray atoms brought back to the elements.

 We will give you what we can-our labor and our soil,
 Water drawn from the earth when the skies fail,
 Nights scented with the ocean fog, days softened by the circuit of bees.
 We plant you in the corner of the grove, bathed in western light,
 A slender shoot against the sunset.

 And when our family is no more, all of his unborn brothers dead,
 Every niece and nephew scattered, the house torn down,
 His mother's beauty ashes in the air,
 I want you to stand among strangers, all young and ephemeral to you,
 Silently keeping the secret of your birth.

To me, this is so moving. You can sense the grief in the rythym of the
lines. I like the way Gioia uses the customs of a new birth to contrast
with their remembrance of their child. The use of weather is evocative,
too. It is cold winds that hold off the blackness. The other thing which
strikes me is the how the solidity and age of the Sequoia is set against the
very short life of their son.

It suprised me to find that any of Gioia's poems haven't been included
already. I discovered him when listening to 'Money' on the BBC Radio 4
program "Poetry Please", a great program based entirely on viewers
recommendations.

Fil.

Available link for download

Planting and Growing Musk Mallows

• Mallow plants can be purchased from a nursery in spring and planted in almost any kind of soil. A sunny location and rich soils are preferable but hardy mallows will grow almost anywhere.
• Mallow seeds can be purchased in seed packets. Seeds should be planted in fall.
• Dried seed pods can be collected in fall from established mallow plants and scattered or direct-sowed where desired.

Mallow Planting Suggestions

• Mallows are viewed as an invasive plant but this characteristic makes them a perfect choice if you prefer easy-to-grow flowers and want to curb grass or weeds.Musk mallows can be planted to line concrete walls or house foundations and make good background plants to check weeds in the flower garden.
• Mallows are showy when planted in groupings. These hardy plants can used be to line driveways and are suitable for borders.
• If you have a large yard and want to cut down on mowing, musk mallows offer a solution: they self-seed, which means that problem areas soon become filled with attractive blooming mallow flowers. The plants grow densely so they help to eliminate troublesome grass.
• Musk mallows are a great addition to wildflower meadows. Mallow plants in the wild tend to grow in open places such as pastures or fields.
• Mallows can be planted in front of a hedgerow or in stands of trees. Their delicate beauty can add a whimsical quality to forest groves.

• Musk Mallows are perennials that have fan-shaped petals.
• Flower colors range from white to pink to lavender.
• Mallow comes in 3 main varieties: Malva moschata, Malva alcea, and Malva tournefortiana.
  

Mallow Planting Tip
Pink mallows are especially attractive planted on either side of blue delphiniums. The higher delphiniums take center stage, accented on either side by mallows. The contrast between the blue and pink flower hues is eye-catching. Both of these flowering plants show impressive growth, and are an excellent choice for a colorful garden display.
Musk mallows are an all round good choice for gardeners who like carefree plants that bloom their hearts out, growing with relative ease in a number of locations.

Available link for download