The mullein is blooming and so am I
garden & life successes, failures, updates, etc.
The Mullein is finally finally blooming in the garden. That might sound odd if you know much about mullein, which is weedy and tends to grow in the scrappiest of soils, basically on rocks, and usually blooms with ease and without fanfare (again, a weed) BUT this mullein, oh boy oh boy oh boy, it’s been a dream and a project and an exercise in patience and it deserves all the pomp and circumstance. So here’s the brief, but riveting story of the mullein:
I started these mullein plants from seed 4 years ago and planted them in my old herb garden right next to our house. They are not your typical roadside mullein species, Verbascum thapsus, with the single flower stem, a small blossom here and there at peak, but rather the Greek or Olympic variety, Verbascum olympicum, which produces instead a massive candelabra-esque inflorescence teeming with small yellow flowers all at once. In my early twenties I worked at a couple of farms with prolific Greek mullein patches and they are astoundingly beautiful and I have always longed for my own.
The same season I planted the mullein I transitioned much of that old garden to the new, bigger space where I grow now and, by some thought process or other, the mullein I left behind. Mullein is typically a biennial plant, meaning that it has a 2-year life cycle, doesn’t bloom the first year and usually does the second, which then culminates its life. The fallen seeds then sprout again and the plants seemingly live on in a perennial fashion, but they are actually brand new. Burdock is the same way, as is the Mullein’s close relative, Foxglove—also in the Figwort family or Scrophulariaceae. Plant once and, theoretically, you’ll have them from then on.
One of the big reasons I abandoned the old garden spot was that it was too shady—we live both on a hillside and on the edge of the forest, so sunlight and space are minimal and the garden just wasn’t growing that well. After a season of neglect and weed takeover, the next spring, I decided to move the mullein too. Interestingly, I chose to move them to the little sunny area in front of our porch where the daffodils and daylilies come up, and after another season, they still looked small and, you guessed it, they did not bloom. The next spring I took a chance and moved them again, this time to the new garden. I tucked them in an open corner in the back where, unsurprisingly, it’s also pretty shady—even though this new garden is much sunnier than the old spot, it is surrounded by a sea of walnut trees and doesn’t get the full cast of sunlight throughout the day. Here they also did not bloom, but, intent on seeing these dinky plants to fruition, I left them alone, ignored them completely as many suggested to me online, for, I believe, another 2 seasons, and occasionally gazed hopefully in their direction, dreaming of the day when the torches would light up like I’d always envisioned.
That day is today, people!!!! A garden success after literal years of trial and error. May they bloom every July forevermore.
The garden generally has been a busy place since I last wrote to you about it, a slew of successes, failures, and pivots that typically make up a growing season. The pea trellis, my great accomplishment in the early spring, was better than I could have imagined and yet, the sudden heat wave we got last week—4 days of 100 degree weather after weeks of rain and temps in the upper 60s—caught me off guard and I didn't have my watering system set up and the snap pea plants fried a little in the hot sun. I did get a few decent loads of them and they are still producing, plus a large basketful of shelling peas, which I spent an evening alone plucking open on the porch in my nightgown while the fireflies danced around me. Are shelling peas worth it? It depends on your perspective, but a couple good meals with fresh peas is a delight to me enough to go through all that finger effort.
This year I also have my first annoying garden pest: Peter the rabbit, so named by my daughter who can’t help but draw the similarities between my plight and one of her favourite stories. I guess that makes me Mr. McGregor! Little Peter has chomped his way through the beet tops and all my lettuce heads, in particular the radicchio, which, if you know me, is a real blow. I love my radicchio. I live for my radicchio. I have yet to catch my furry friend and vow to cover everything next year at the outset. Radicchio flop. But another lesson learned.
I did cover the brassicas this year, in hopes of minimizing cabbage looper damage. It made me feel like a real farmer again, setting up hoops and unrolling the remay and it was worth it—everything looks beautiful beneath:
Gardening is never a practice in perfection. I find myself reckoning with this often, the pressure to have everything just right every year, another vehicle of proving my worth to others or myself, perhaps? But worth is inherent and the greatness of a garden is actually measured in just continuing on, recognizing that every year throws a different kind of challenge your way to dance and make peace with.
In the throes of trying to salvage my onions in late May, which I had planted in brand new purchased soil and were not thriving, I went to my friend Madeleine’s spring garden work party where we made massive hugelkultur beds with sticks and leaves and compost and she reminded me that you won’t necessarily reap the rewards right away for the efforts you put in now. Some things you do this season are for next season or maybe a few seasons down the line—like building new beds or increasing soil fertility, like the story of my mullein. I look at my garden and see many years of past hard work and taking chances and improvement after failure and I also see many years to come of “ok this is what I’ll do better next time.” Honestly, for me that’s really thrilling. I got home from that work party and determinedly hoed those last few wan little onions down and planted potatoes in their place instead.
In other news, I am 35 weeks pregnant today and it feels like new baby arrival is racing toward me! My days are filled with various work bits and other volunteer projects—I’ve taken over communications and social media for the music festival/nonprofit my partner co-runs, Oldtone (September 4th-7th!), which has been really fun, and I’m on our town’s Conservation Advisory Council where I’ve been heading up the process of getting a Natural Resource Inventory for Pine Plains. Plus preparing for birth, which mostly means harvesting and freezing a lot of berries and making sure our house is clean and organized and cozy for a postpartum autumn. Nesting, if you will. And of course swimming as much as I can because my large aching sweaty body feels best in the water…
Pregnancy is such a threshold, birth a portal into a brand new way of life. All this year I’ve felt on the cusp of massive change that I can’t really predict and it’s really truly been a powerful exercise in letting go, protecting my peace, and being present with what is vs. anticipating what will be. I am not sure what I will be capable of after or what my business will look like or even whether I want it to look any particular way anymore at all. I am naturally a massive planner—it typically stresses me out *intensely* to not have a precise vision and objective for what happens next. And yet, currently I am the happiest I’ve ever been, floating around in a limbo state, finding solace in the tangible moments and tasks and people of the here and now, visioning, yes, but not making any sort of solid plan. You could say that, like the mullein, it’s taken a while but I’m blooming too.
xx hannah
p.s. if you know and love me and this newsletter and would like to support this next phase of life and motherhood, please consider becoming a paid subscriber! It’s $5/month (less than a fancy coffee, as they say) or $50/year. There may be a moment of waning connection in August & September, but I do plan to keep writing through it all. OR, if you’d like, you could contribute to my postpartum care/maternity leave fund—Venmo: @foliagebotanics —any and all of this would mean the world :)
I’m so glad your mullein bloomed!! I remember you posting about the mullein struggles a while ago, and am totally with you on loving a multi-season garden puzzle and the immense satisfaction in feeling like you solved something—at least for this season.
I hope your nesting time continues to be really cozy and fun, full of summer fruit and swims!!
Holy cow that mullein!