I could relate to this comic strip--the sound of bumblebees in the garden.....Always a welcome and nice sound. Even though I like the different seasons, I wish winter was shorter so that we could get back to gardening sooner, all of us, including the bees.
Fred Basset by Alex Graham |
On my recent trip to New York in September, I visited Untermyer Gardens (Untermyer Gardens Conservancy - Home) with Jean and the New York Botanical Garden (Home » New York Botanical Garden (nybg.org) with Jola. Both Jean and Jola enjoy gardening and visiting gardens of interest, so it's always enjoyable to visit different gardens with them.
I've written about Untermyer Gardens in this blog before (A New Yorker in Oslo: Untermyer park and gardens (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com); if you'd like to read more about the history of this garden I suggest Wikipedia and the Untermyer Gardens Conservancy websites. I visited Untermyer together with Stef and John in 2019 (pre-pandemic). A lot has changed in the space of three years; all of the changes are for the better, as they usually are in a garden. During the pandemic, the garden conservancy board planned and hosted different webinars that updated us on some of the changes occurring in the garden--new plantings, new areas dedicated to specific plantings, and renovation/repair of existing structures. The gardens are the venue for different music and dance concerts (carefully chosen) throughout the summer months. The dance concerts especially interest me since I used to dance modern dance many years ago; perhaps one summer I will be able to attend one.
The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) has been in existence for a long time, similar to Untermyer Gardens that started development in 1916. The NYBG was established in 1891 and is the largest botanical garden (250 acres) in the USA. It is a national historic landmark that in addition to exhibiting a large diversity of beautiful plants (annuals and perennials), offers programs in horticulture, education, and science. Basic and applied botanical research are also conducted at the NYBG. I've written about this garden before as well in this blog (A New Yorker in Oslo: Beautiful New York State (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com) when I visited NY in 2011. In the early 1980s, I lived in the Bronx and was able to walk to the garden from my apartment on 205th street near the Grand Concourse. Visiting the garden was always a pleasure during the spring, summer and fall months. I remember that I took a daylong course in the use of herbs for medicinal purposes at the NYBG during one of the winters I lived there. Nowadays the garden offers online and in-person courses for people of all ages. I have already registered for one of them: Put Your Garden to Bed, a two-hour course that will provide advice on how to prep your garden for winter. There are also courses in soil science (soil chemistry) that I hope to investigate next semester.
Here are some photos taken at Untermyer Gardens!
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| The Walled Garden |
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| one of the pools (canals) in the Walled Garden |
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| The Vista, which descends to the Overlook |
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| closer view of the Overlook, facing west toward the Palisades |
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| a view of the lovely Hudson River from the Temple of Love area And here are some photos taken at the New York Botanical Garden, of flowers in the tropical water lily pond, of a mosaic plant in the same pond, of the perennial garden, and of a beautiful ceramic urn standing in the vicinity of the perennial garden.     |
Who has not felt the fleeting sorrow for living things that are wiped out or destroyed in the name of progress (however necessary)?
VIOLETS by Mary Oliver
Down by the rumbling creek and the tall trees— where I went truant from school three days a week and therefore broke the record—
there were violets as easy in their lives as anything you have ever seen or leaned down to intake the sweet breath of.
Later, when the necessary houses were built they were gone, and who would give significance to their absence.
Oh, violets, you did signify, and what shall take your place?
(from Devotions--Penguin Publishing Group)
Almost a Conversation by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is fast becoming one of my favorite poets. I love pretty much everything she writes.
Mysteries, Yes
by Mary Oliver
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
My latest book, available on Amazon in three formats: e-book, hardcover, and paperback.
The Gifts of a Garden: De Angelis, Paula Mary: 9798435180572: Amazon.com: Books
(front and back covers shown; design by Paloma Ayala)
As promised, some recent photos of my garden (August and September). Autumn is approaching here in Oslo, and gardening season is winding down. I went to my garden today after having been traveling for almost two weeks. The summer asters are in full bloom, the climbing rose bushes have bloomed for the second time this summer, the coneflowers look beautiful (see photos), likewise (some of) the gladiolas (see photos). The giant sunflowers grew very tall while I was away; their height is impressive, at least eight feet (see photos). The other photos were taken during mid- to late-August, when gooseberries, red currants, black currants and raspberries were harvested. The Folva potatoes were harvested at the beginning of September.
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| yellow coneflowers |
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| coneflowers and gladioli |
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| giant sunflowers |
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| the (mostly) perennial garden |
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| garden project for this year--assembling and painting a garden bench |
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| a lot of zucchinis (as usual)--they're easy to grow |
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| a good year for gooseberries |
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| pumpkins |
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| a lot of potatoes (one type--Folva) |
Maybe I'm paying way too much attention to the analyses of the current political situation in the USA. It seems to me that no matter what the orange-haired man says or does, it has null effect on his supporters, who believe just about everything he says and continue to defend him. How is that possible? I wish someone would give me an answer, stat. In the meantime, he continues on his merry way, doing what he does best--double-talking and behaving exactly as he wants. But the rest of us should just do as he says, because of course he knows what's best for the country. Anyone who disagrees with him is out to get him.
My closest friends and I attended Catholic grammar and high schools. We were taught that hard work pays off, that doing your best leads to a job well-done and satisfaction all around. We learned to tell the truth, that lying was bad and counterproductive, likewise cheating on exams. We learned that honesty was the best policy and that having personal integrity was important. We were taught to honor our parents and older people generally. We learned to respect authority. We were taught not to pick fights, and bullying was frowned upon. Our parents told us to try and make peace with the bullies, and if that didn't work, to ignore them. It usually worked out.
Over a long lifetime, I've witnessed many different kinds of behavior, both good and bad. My work experiences during the past forty years have shown me that doing your best does lead to personal satisfaction for a job well-done, but it is no guarantee that management will be satisfied. Management plays by its own rules. Giving your all is not necessary (or even desired) in order to get noticed or promoted; cutting your efforts to fifty percent can guarantee the same results as one hundred percent effort (I have tried this once or twice and it's true). Why is that? The answer is politics. Who you know is more important than what you know or how much effort you put into something. That is what Catholic schools and parents should have taught us, but didn't. Because they wanted us to make a difference in the world. I understand that. Take cheating on exams, for example. Cheating is anathema to those of us who grew up under Catholic educators, but in the modern world, many students would tell you there is nothing wrong with cheating on an exam in order to get good grades. Because good grades will give you leverage. Good grades will guarantee that someone will check off the box 'does well in school' and that opens doors for the cheaters down the road. But in the end, getting into some ivy league colleges (if that's your thing) also comes down to how much money daddy and mommy donated to the university of choice. Something else we weren't taught in school. Think of some of the recent college scandals where celebrity parents tried to buy off universities and individuals so their children could get into good schools. Thankfully they went to prison (albeit short prison sentences) for their unlawful behavior, but what kind of example does this set for their children? I'd wager that the only thing that bothers some of these parents is that they got caught. Nothing else. Because again, who you know and what college you went to trumps most everything else.
Why do I bring these issues up now? Because it appalls me that we as a nation are going down the road toward re-electing a man whose amorality knows no bounds. It scares me to think that the potential end of democracy as we know it lies in the hands of a reality television persona and his family. It appalls me that everything in the world comes down to greed and grifting. Lying and dissembling are rampant--in politics, in the media, in churches, in schools. We don't react as a society anymore to bad behavior. We accept it almost apathetically as long as it doesn't impact us personally. But when we don't stand up to politicians like Trump and his cronies, we tell our children that it's ok to behave like he does. When we don't stand up for what's right, for how we were taught, we hand over power to the bullies. The entire GOP can't manage to find their collective balls in order to stand up to him. It's a sad commentary on what our society has come to, how low we have fallen. It's even sadder when the Catholic church defends and promotes a man like Trump, a man that fifty years ago they would have vilified. The priests preach from the pulpit about the importance of voting for a man who presents himself as anti-abortion. Whether or not he is against lying, cheating, grifting, and bullying is unimportant to his constituents and supporters. Anti-abortion trumps all, and Trump trumps everything and everyone. How low we have sunk.
As promised in my recent post (A New Yorker in Oslo: Oslo-Dalen-Utne-Rjukan-Oslo (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com), I'm posting some photos from our recent trip around Norway, with overnight stays at Dalen Hotel (one night), Utne Hotel (two nights), and Rjukan Admini Hotel (one night), with a one-day trip to Rosendal.
Unfortunately, since Freya the walrus was killed by Norwegian authorities, I am ambivalent about promoting tourism in Norway. It's a beautiful country, yes, but not one that is friendly to visiting wildlife.
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| Dalen Hotel |
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| The grounds of the Dalen Hotel, facing the Telemark Canal |
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| The Haukelifjell mountain area |
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| Haukelifjell mountain area |
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| Utne Hotel from 1722 |
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| The picturesque town of Utne |
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| Hardangerfjord |
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| Hardangerfjord |
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| Baroniet Rosendal Manor House and Gardens |
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| The grounds of the Baroniet Rosendal |
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| Leaving Utne by car ferry |
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| Rjukan Admini Hotel |
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| The lovely town of Rjukan |
Much has been written about the murder of Freya, the young female walrus who made the fatal mistake of entering Norwegian waters. It has been uplifting to read that many Norwegians absolutely do not support the needless and cruel shooting of an animal that brought joy to so many. The authorities who made the decision to shoot her are callous and should be held accountable. But they won't be. Because this is Norway anno 2022, where no one is held accountable for anything they do. I saw and experienced that often in my former workplace. If you try to get the name of a person 'responsible' for a particular policy, action, or statement, you won't get it. You'll get the names of people in the department that made the decision, yes, but you'll never get to know who actually made the decision to do this or that, in this case, to kill Freya. This is done to 'protect' the person who made the decision from hate mail, threats, and so on. Understandable? Unfortunately, yes, because in our day and age there are so many nutcases that walk the streets looking for someone on whom they can vent their aggression and craziness. But it never had to come to the point of killing Freya, and someone should be held responsible. There were so many other alternatives available, and the authorities settled on the easiest one--pick up a gun and kill the animal(s) causing the problem. That is often the alternative that is chosen in Norway. It is not a nation that opts to learn how to coexist peacefully with wildlife.
My husband calls me 'dyrenes venn', which translated to English means 'friend of the animals'. He says it affectionately when I tell him about the bumblebees that died in the garden flowers, or the cat that takes a nap in my greenhouse, or the birds that take a communal bath in the birdbath. He knows that my interests lie in preserving life of all kinds to the best of my ability. I am not their literal friend, rather a protector of some sort. I sometimes feel like I am channeling my mother, because she used to behave the same way. That doesn't mean that I am able to prevent them being killed all of the time. I do step on (and kill) ants and other insects, but I don't do it intentionally. Every time I see an ant on a city sidewalk scurrying across the pavement, I step around it because I know that it's on its way home to the anthill after a busy day. Not so different from us humans. My garden has revealed the connection to all life that exists, no matter how small and insignificant, from the tiny ants to the larger brown slugs (which the garden board would like us to kill but which I cannot bring myself to do any longer), to the large crows and magpies that frequent the garden. I have a particular fondness for the light brown spiders that scurry around on the greenhouse floor when I disturb them in my hunt for a rake or other tool. They are harmless, more afraid of me than I ever could be of them (I'm not afraid of them). My husband likes spiders as well; he does not kill them and actually welcomes them in his boat because they do the job they were put here on earth to do and don't bother anyone. Even yellow jackets, as annoying as they are, have a job to do. I'm not always sure what it is, but I am not interested in killing them for no reason. And that is the crux of the matter--killing any living thing for no reason is just plain wrong. Doing so places you in the realm of the psychopaths.
Reverence for life. I have that reverence and perhaps have always had it, but it is full-on now, I think because I am getting older. Our lives and the lives around us--human and animal alike--are short. It makes no sense to end lives needlessly. It's just cruel and shows that we lack empathy for living beings of all kinds. In that respect, I am beginning to consider the use of animals for food. We still eat meat, but much less than we used to, because I see that animals suffer at our hands in the meat industry. I saw that last summer when we stayed at a historic hotel that also raised chickens 'humanely', as the owners proclaimed. I didn't think the conditions for the little chicks were so humane; thousands of them were packed into a huge sunless garage with small windows, and fed and watered there. They never roamed outdoors, never felt the sun on their bodies, never foraged for insects and food on their own. I thought that if this was humane treatment, what does inhumane treatment look like? Perhaps I don't want to know.
I want to live in a world that doesn't kill beings like Freya, who seemed to like being around humans. Whenever we establish any sort of bond with animals, birds, and insects, we are responsible for how we treat them. That means that we should not pursue those bonds if we are not willing to step up to the plate to protect the beings in question. It means that we don't encourage dangerous wildlife to become human-friendly. It means that we do not kill them unless our lives are actually threatened by them in a one-on-one confrontation as sometimes happens. I am not advocating for the anthropomorphization of animals (attributing human characteristics or behavior to an animal). I am simply saying that learning to coexist with them is the best policy. Let them go about their business as we go about ours.
Freya's needless death, her murder, has been news now for the past few days. The media will move on from her and her death will be forgotten or relegated to the back burner in the relentless quest for more important stories. But I will not forget her, nor will I forget how Norway treated her. The way a country treats animals has a lot to say about the country. The lack of empathy for Freya tells me all I need to know.
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I'm adding a postscript to this article, an update as to what the authorities have done with the body of Freya. They transported her body from Sandvika harbor to Ås, where the veterinary institute on the Ås university campus autopsied her. The distance from Sandvika to Ås is about 26 miles. God knows when and how they transported her; no one even knows at what time they shot her. Transport probably happened at night when no one was around to protest. That would be appropriately cowardly for these types of authorities. So to be completely clear: they had the money to move her dead body 26 miles so that she could be autopsied, but not the money to sedate her and to move her further out to sea, which probably would have cost far less. They took the easy way out as I wrote in my previous post about Freya. I hope their consciences plague them for the rest of their lives.
