Asian Pears

Last week I mixed up a yogurt container full of powdered clay, ground carbonatite (volcanic soil that is rich in minerals), and aloe vera juice. I wanted to make a poultice for a three-year-old Asian pear tree with a nasty crack along its trunk.

Nashi is the Japanese word for Asian pears. I first ate Nashi when I lived in Japan in the early 80’s and was studying the Noh Theater. Round and with a sharp crunch like an apple, they have the light color and texture of a pear. What is most remarkable about this fruit is the amount of sweet juice that you get with every bite. Most Asian pears you buy in the grocery store are overripe and the taste has already started to sour. But taste them fresh, and they sparkle.

I knew once I started to grow apples that I wanted to also grow Asian pears. We planted the first twelve trees in the orchard among the apple trees. Their fourth year, I watched them flower and then waited anxiously for the fruit. Lovely golf ball-size Asian pears dangled from the branches.

Then early one July morning, when I was walking out to the meditation hut behind the orchard, I saw only the swaying stems. I felt like my mind was deceiving me. What happened to the pears? There was not one fruit left on any of the trees. The deer had been thorough!

The following spring, I moved these trees to an area near the house with the hopes that they would be protected by proximity to the household’s activity. The trees grew and produced fruit, and the deer left them alone. We had five years of bountiful harvests and decided to grow more of these delicious fruits. I knew deer protection would be mandatory.

We put a fence around the old potato field across from the orchard and planted 32 trees — 8 different varieties on a diagonal grid in order of ripening date. Here, we don’t mow, and I plant every kind of native wildflower I find growing on the farm or that friends offer.

In high summer when I check on the trees I wend my way through 5 foot tall (and I’m only 5’ 2”) purple asters, red and purple bee balm, feverfew, mugwort, mint, comfrey—a dense abundance of texture and color. It’s here that I also planted the goumi, aronia, and goji berries. And there’s a blueberry bush with fruit hidden from the birds, which I am tending for a friend who moved and didn’t want to lose his plant. I love seeing the diversity and discovering what grows well together and what doesn’t.

July 16, 2016 - Red and Purple Monarda Bee Balm with Asian Pear Tree (right).

I’m most interested in seeing if growing the pears in a natural environment will help them be healthier and have fewer pest issues. Some people say that the trees will be stunted because of the competition from other plants, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe the competition actually means that the trees have to grow strong roots to compete with the other plants for nutrients and water—or maybe they all live together – supporting each other like trees and plants in a forest.

I love being inside this fertile environment. It’s not completely wild; it still needs care and attention. I pull the wild plants that I don’t want, the ones that could take over. Last spring, we had a sudden flush of velvetleaf, a weed that can be toxic to some plants by inhibiting their water uptake. I simply pulled all of it, and it hasn’t come back, though its seeds can incubate in the ground for decades. Vetch also wends its way through among the pears. Vetch is a nitrogen fixer, but it is invasive and cloying and will take over—so vetch also gets pulled and removed. It’s selective chaos, but the beauty is that there is no right or wrong, no hard and fast rules.

But even a Garden of Eden has problems. The tree that I poulticed a week ago has not improved; in fact, it has worsened. Its leaves are drying up. And the few other pear trees that I noticed had smaller, but similar cracks also have some drying leaves. I am concerned that it is fire blight, a bacterial disease that can rapidly travel from tree to tree. But usually fire blight shows up first in a few branches. I’ve had some in the orchard and can usually prune out those branches. But this is in the middle of the main trunk. I have spent hours reading and researching and still don’t know for sure. 

Each day I walk by, and it is getting worse. I can’t bear the thought of losing this tree. I’ve lost so many trees over the years, and I feel like I've been too lax. I’ve accepted their deaths knowing I would transplant another. But I no longer feel that way. I’ve become more aware of the preciousness of each one, and my older, more casual attitude is shifting. It’s not that I want to be melodramatic – but I want to do all that I can to save this tree.

Research is getting me nowhere, so I am going to stop further reading and go out there and use every iota of intuition I have to see if there is anything else I can do to help this tree. To begin with I scratched away the weeds that were very close to its trunk, dug away some of the soil and replaced it with more carbonatite. I carried it a 5-gallon bucket of water to the tree and gave it a juicy drink. I know this hot weather isn’t helping any of our perennial plants flourish.

I remembered a spiritual teacher’s suggestion. “Intention equals outcome,” he said. “Keep these words plastered over your eyes.”  I fully recognize the challenge of really staying with my intention — not drifting off, becoming distracted, or somehow rationalizing that this one pear tree’s life isn’t that important.

I also see how I create boundaries of what I think I can and cannot do.  What if we each really committed to helping the person or creature we happened to meet next?  I think we would change our world. Perhaps we are actually afraid of our true power. In response to last week's blog on creativity, a friend wrote, “We shrink from our own magnificence . . . .” When I read, magnificence, I felt a tremor through my body. “No, not me.” But maybe that’s the catch — we have to own our power and be humble. Despite my efforts the pear tree might not survive. But given the recent tragedies in the world, we have to gather every particle of our magnificence to counter with good.

Gold Leaf, Grief, and the Creative Process

There is a tree section in my studio that has been leaning against a post for several years. I removed the bark and sanded the wood, but have not been able to transform it into a sculpture. At the bottom of the trunk is a large inset oval. It is the sign of an old wound indicating that the tree suffered an accident. Or it could have been the site of the removal of a large limb. I will never know, since I can’t go back in time to when this tree was alive growing by the side of the road or on the edge of the woods.

Perhaps this tree’s wound is similar to my own. There are times when grief covers me like a sealskin and I don’t know how to remove it. I may think I know the cause, but more often, I have only assigned a reason. There are so many experiences that layer themselves in memory, and then a new experience, like a magnet, attracts indiscriminately so many others. Who can know where one begins and another ends? These are the times I find it hard to motivate myself to go into my studio.

In the studio there are no distractions, no comfortable chair or sofa, no bookshelves, just work tables with all sorts of projects in various stages, materials, and tools. But if I get myself down there and tentatively start working, not knowing where I am going or what I am doing, the grief and the inertia disappear. Where did it go? Did something take its place? We can be so affected by our emotions, and yet they are so changeable — not solid objects.

For some time I have wanted to gold leaf that wounded area on the tree trunk. “Why?” I would ask myself and didn’t have a good answer. Then last week, I decided I would just do it. I bought some wood filler to fill the small insect holes, sanded it down, and painted the surface a light yellow so any imperfections in the gold leafing would not be dark, but yellow. Then I sealed the surface with varnish, and after it had set, applied the gold.

Gold leaf is mysterious. The foil is only .12 microns thick. (One sheet of printer paper equals 1000 microns.) After applying the sizing, the glue, and letting it dry enough to become a tacky surface, I carefully float the leaf over it. The size and leaf unite and become a strong, solid surface. Afterwards, a light burnishing with a cotton ball, and the gold leaf is there for the foreseeable future. It’s the same technique a steeplejack uses to gold leaf a dome on a church or palace.

The joy I feel when working on a sculpture transcends all other emotions. Concentration floods my mind, and there is no room for anything else except for the step-by-step activity of the process of creating. I am baffled that I resist doing this work that I love--this work that transforms old wounds into art.

The Olympic Bell (Part One)

This year for our tenth annual outdoor Sculpture Walk, we are excited to welcome the installation of a new sculpture, the Olympic Bell by Paul Matisse. First installed in Athens, Greece, in 2004 at the Summer Olympic Games, the bell then came home to Groton, Massachusetts, and has since been quietly awaiting its next home.

A few pulls on the heavy rope provides the momentum to lift the hammer and strike the bell, producing a deep, harmonious tone that can be heard for several minutes. My beloved partner, Blase, is doing the work of digging and preparing the ground for pouring the concrete foundation. We are all clearing the forested area of branches and fallen trees to let the stalwart white pines come forward with their presence creating, not the Parthenon, but nature’s own temple.

Paul Matisse is my former husband and the father of our three children. When we separated, I moved to the farm and created a new life here. We rarely saw each other, only speaking briefly on the phone when it involved the children. But over the years I think we both felt that our relationship continued, albeit in another form. The arrival of the bell feels like a reunion of the creativity and beauty that we both believe in and shared during our married time together. I look forward to its first rings echoing out over the pond.  

I am reminded of Mary Oliver’s poem, The Journey.

 One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save. 

This bell for me echoes the powerful directive in this journey. How challenging it can be to make a decision to change one’s life. How painful for those connected to you. But when we feel we need to act and we do, we create karma from this action. But the karma is also influenced by how we do it and what intention we hold afterwards. Equally, I believe, what came before also influences the future.

Paul and I shared an apple when we first met in Japan. We were on a long bus ride through the Wakayama Prefecture south of Kyoto when I brought out an apple to eat. Paul asked for it, took out his pocketknife, and cut it into two sections. But the two pieces were not halves like you would imagine; they formed an interlocking puzzle with the halves fitting mysteriously back together, seeds intact, stem still attached, a mysterious marvel. I took the section with the stem and perhaps emboldened by his creativity, I ate my entire half of the apple, seeds and all, then held up the stem. Paul took it from me. 

Paul still has that stem in a tiny jar. He also has many sculptures in cloth I made for him over the twenty years we were together. And we share the continuing lives of our three children. Now, the Olympic Bell will share its deep sonorous prayers with visitors to the farm and stand as a symbol that love takes many forms.

Around the Mulberry Bush

We may not have many apples this year, but we do have mulberries. Our white mulberry tree (morus alba) is our official bird watching tree for the month of June. If we sit on the back porch for twenty minutes, we count twenty species of birds feasting. Yesterday’s early morning bird count included cedar waxwing, red poll, cardinal, yellow finch, catbird, starling, bluebird, kingbird, English house sparrow, Baltimore oriole, and mourning dove. A few days ago I saw a flame in the tree — it was a scarlet tanager! And the tree grows in the flyway of the prehistoric blue herons, diving kingfishers, and the occasional osprey traveling between Old Frog Pond and Delaney Conservation area wetlands for fish.

The tree doesn’t require spraying, care, or attention – and every year its branches are filled with fruit.

White Mulberries

The seeds are scattered freely by the birds and once they take root, they grow. We have small mulberry trees popping up along the pond and even under the great canopy of the catalpa outside my studio.  This one doesn’t fruit, however; too much shade.

In the herbal apothecary, white mulberry is an important herb. The leaves, dried and made into a powder, are used to treat diabetes, as well as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, even the achiness from the common cold. The Chinese use the leaves, root bark, branches, and fruit as medicine and it is an official drug of the British Herbal Pharmacopoeia.

In America, the white mulberry is considered to be an invasive plant. The early colonists imported the tree when they tried to establish a silkworm industry.  Only the tree took root and spread its branches across the country. However, the red mulberry (morus rubra) is a native tree, but now quite rare in Massachusetts. American Indians used the red mulberry for food and medicine. Choctaw women made cloaks by spinning the threads from the fibrous bark of young mulberry shoots. I am always amazed at the abundant offerings of plants. Not only food and shelter, but clothing, nets, fencing, and art!

Willow Sculpture Rises from the Earth by Trevor Leat

We have two red mulberry trees growing on the farm. They were Arbor Day giveaway seedlings for the Town of Groton’s Arbor Day celebration a few years ago. We planted the small saplings in the open where they could grow to full size, but they have struggled with competition from field grasses. One was mowed down when someone didn’t recognize the small shoot among the weeds. Fortunately the trees are tenacious. This year, the unmowed one has fruit for the first time. The fruit is smaller than the white mulberry and ripens to deep red. It’s sweeter than white mulberries and would make a tastier and more colorful wine.

Red Mulberry

Small mammals also feed on mulberries, I often see a chipmunk munching along with the birds, but I’m told that fox, opossums, raccoons, skunks, and squirrels like them too.  And of course, why not the weasel?

All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel,

The weasel thought 'twas all in fun, pop goes the weasel.

And just what does this popular ditty mean? It was a dance hall tune in mid 19th century England. I read that in cockney Pop refers to pawn and a weasel to a coat. It is about pawning your dress coat on Monday to get it back on Friday so you could be well dressed on Sunday. Sounds far-fetched to me. I also learned that in cloth making, the weasel was the machine that would wind yarn, and there was a pop sound every 1000 yards. This sounds more to the point especially given a later verse.

My mother taught me how to sew,

And how to thread the needle,

Every time my finger slips,

Pop! goes the weasel.

There’s something about that ‘pop’ that is appealing like the surprise of a Jack-in-the-Box toy. It’s a little scary because we never know when the pop will come, but we love the anticipation. 

Perhaps the song originally came from all the activity around a mulberry tree with ripe fruit; a children’s game of feasting birds and hungry animals leaping around the tree, chasing each other to get to the fruit.  And there does seem to be that ‘pop’ when the fruit is plucked off the tree. Sometimes I see a bird tug, the leaves and wings all a-flutter, and then ‘pop’ — off flies the bird with the fruit in its beak.

Mulberries are easy to grow and you can make pies, sorbets, ice cream, even smoothies with these small fruits that are loaded with antioxidants; even dry them for granola. The trees are most generous; they give and give.  I appreciate discovering some of the lesser-known fruits that can grow in Massachusetts. This spring I planted aronia and goji berries, goumi, and two kiwi vines.  It will take several years, but I look forward to tasting these fruits, and of course sharing it with the birds!

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