Eco-gardening is at its best in The Monday Garden
July 11, 2004, Issue 120
Stamford, CT, is made up of several hills (five or seven, I think). The hill on which I live is called "Strawberry Hill'. It's steep and rocky, with the well-drained soil and sunny slopes prefect for wild strawberries. I imagine that they once flourished here to the delight of the local squirrels and birds; not to mention a bear or two, and the Native American tribes who lived here.
picture: view from the front steps of my condo building
The strawberry patches and bears slowly gave away to farms, then Victorian mansions. These stately homes, in turn, were replaced by the high school and several high-rise condo and apartment buildings. The high-rises are OK by me because a lot of people can live on just a bit of land, leaving more open space for all. The squirrels are still here, using the overhead electric lines as their private highways. Some of the tribes have casinos. I often wonder, though, if there really were strawberries.
This past week, a Jamaican immigrant told me how when she first came here she was amazed that we wasted our yards by planting "imitation" trees instead of "real" ones that bore edible fruit and nuts. Her comment reminded me of hearing an NPR radio interview of a Chinese immigrant who was mystified by the squirrels in our parks; where he came from impoverished humans would have eaten them all long ago. I guess we do live in unimaginable luxury, compared to most.
Meanwhile, our shrinking woods are full of starving deer, their numbers artificially increased by the lack of predators (i.e. human hunters), and then squeezed out of their habitat by low-rise condos and single family dwellings. Then there’s the mallard ducks trying to raise their families in plastic wadding pools because of the McMansions along the shore in what used to be the mallards’ wet lands. Yet many homeowners’ attitude toward the deer, squirrels, rabbits and the like is “not in my yard”.
So I was walking around the neighborhood checking out the local flora, to see what the fauna had to eat, thinking about all this and the time the high school hired a professional trapper in a futile (and cruel) attempt to reduce their squirrel population. Then, lo and behold, what did I find at the foot of Strawberry Hill in an untended patch on North Street, but genuine, bona fide wild strawberries!
picture: wild strawberries on North Street, Stamford CT, July 2004; the purple is the native heal-all (Prunella vulgaris).
There they were, growing amongst an amazing assortment of alien invaders, noxious weeds and human-enhanced species. How? In what secret place could a tiny band of refugee strawberries have hidden these many years so that their seeds would be carried by birds or squirrels to this scruffy plot in the shadow of our (brand new) courthouse?
picture: the strawberries’ patch.
I went looking for a squirrel to see if he or she would care to enlighten me. It was around noon, so most were sleeping in the heat of the day. I did meet one, in the Hoyt Street Alley , from whence come so many photos for “The Monday Garden”. The alley has a wild border along one side, 25 vertical parking spaces long, and about 4 car widths across, that boasts an incredible array of fruitful foreign and domestic plants. You can think of this as the birds’ and squirrels’ garden because, aside from the Norway maples, everything here is bird or squirrel planted. What grows in their garden? Red oaks, shag-bark hickories, choke cherries, crab apples, elms, aspen, catalpa, ailanthus, and mulberries tower over wineberries, wild grape, rosa mulitflora, porcelainberry, poison ivy, woodbine, Asian bittersweet, and loosestrife.
The squirrel refused to be photographed or interviewed. He or she told me, on no uncertain terms, that my presence near the family nest was not appreciated, and that I could leave now. Guess that squirrels feel the same as most other Americans about having the press on their front porch.
Picture: a squirrel hugging the big red oak along Hoyt Street Alley December 2003
Photo credits: Sue Sweeney
© Sue Sweeney 2005