April in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia

(In front of our farm-house)

You are likely to find me out in the garden, because the garden is where life is. Everything is green, growing, flowering, or with the promise of blooms and fruit to come.  The garden is a vibrant place, and yet, deeply peaceful, too, and ever-changing. No two days in the garden are the same.  Each day holds new discoveries. Spring is a giddy time, with so much to do at once.

Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there. ~Thomas Fuller 1732 (This is very true)

While much of the country is still buried under winter, those of us fortunate enough to dwell in the Shenandoah Valley, or 'The Shire' as I call it,  are blessed with spring loveliness. Not that the weather doesn't waffle here, because it has and does, dipping back into frigid temps after luring everything into bloom. But most plants are hardy enough to withstand this whimsy. We are well accustomed to the annual dance. I cover my gullible lilies and pray for the blossoming trees.

A new project has opened up in my gardening world with the redoing of our farm pond--digging out years of accumulating silt--and the expansion of the surrounding fence.  This gives us much more room to grow our dreams, safe from munching cows, and a lot of tree planting has ensued. Yesterday, daughter Elise and I planted thirty additional trees and bushes on the pond banks, after a long planting session this past Saturday with the enthusiastic help of my three oldest grandsons. While we labored, we were surrounded by birdsong from meadowlarks, red-winged black birds, the song sparrow, killdeer, cardinals... It's hard work, but the pond will be glorious. Our aim is to plant for the birds, water fowl, fish, pollinators, and people. I'm envisioning magic.

(One end of our Pond)

(Elise, Me, and my three grandsons after a long tree planting day)

As for my writing, admittedly it has sagged as planting and gardening take priority, but I have a new story idea buzzing around in my head. Outside time gives me the opportunity to ponder my emerging plot. How can I not be inspired while enveloped in all this spring beauty?

(Virginia Bluebells in front of our house)

"Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day." ~W. Earl Hall

"April is a promise that May is bound to keep." ~Hal Borland

"The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun’s kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze."
~Julian Grenfell

"In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours." ~Mark Twain

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
~Robert Frost

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

"It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!" ~Mark Twain

***Images by daughter Elise Trissel

The Darling Buds of May

A soft spring day in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia is scented with the sweetest blossoms. Many of our best loved flowers bloom in spring. Perhaps because they come after a long, cold winter, and are nature's reward. Or God's. Either way, I thought you might enjoy seeing some images my talented daughter Elise took of our garden(s) recently. I say gardens, plural, because we have many beds. Beyond the yard and gardens, we gaze down to the green meadow surrounding the pond like a gem from the Emerald Isles. And up above the glistening grass and green rye fields, are the wooded hills. Tender new leaves flushed with rose blend in with the many shades of green coloring the trees. Beyond the hills are the Allegheny Mountains. On a clear day, we can see the ridges tinged in green rising in the distance. Spring comes later in the mountains, but it comes in all its wealth and beauty. But back to the farm.

Below are some lovely quotes to accompany these images, with insightful commentary.

"I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden." ~Ruth Stout

I totally agree with Ruth Stout, and have her gardening book. A real treasure.

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." ~Anne Bradstreet

Amen, Anne Bradstreet. 

"Our spring has come at last with the soft laughter of April suns and shadow of April showers." ~Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate Stephens

What a beautiful romantic thing to write.

"The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven -
All’s right with the world!"
~Robert Browning

Robert Browning is quite the optimist, which one can better aspire to be if one spends a great deal of time in a garden. The world has run mad, but love still shines brightly. And he was deeply in love with the talented poet who became his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

"And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest."
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant"

I do love the English Romantic Poets. Now, we must have some Keats.

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing." ~John Keats

Why did Keats value quiet breathing? Because he died young of consumption. But he knew love, and was in love with a wonderful woman. He also deeply loved nature and flowers.

"Every spring is the only spring — a perpetual astonishment." ~Ellis Peters

This is so true. I never weary of the delights of spring.


"The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun’s kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze."
~Julian Grenfell

I can't say it any better than this.

Flowers in order are bleeding heart, tulips in front of the old red barn, Virginia bluebells, violets arranged in an old bottle we found on the farm that turned lavender in the kitchen window, cherry blossoms, and a bouquet of lilac beside the large potted geraniums on our sunspace. Elise made the arrangements and took all of the images herself.

For more on me, please visit my blog at:  https://bethtrissel.wordpress.com/

Easter's Past

I've always loved Easter, a joyous season when the earth is reborn in a swell of new life washed with vibrant color, a time of spiritual and physical renewal. I can't imagine Christ's resurrection taking place at any other time of year. This is most fitting. As a six year old recently returned from an early childhood spent in Taiwan, I delighted in my first egg hunt in a neighbor's yard filled with blooming crocus and daffodils. Tucked in the green grass and among those shining blossoms were the many-colored eggs, like hidden jewels. Magical. And chocolate rabbits. I was in awe of an American Easter.

Of course, in those days little girls wore hats and gloves and crinolines under their Easter dresses. Yes, I was born in the 1800's. I also received my first white Bible on Easter, which is still my favorite one. It had this new book smell and books were quite special back then because my father was an underpaid English professor and we were poor. I just liked smelling my new Bible, but did eventually read much of it. The names of my favorite Sunday School teachers are inked in the front under the section entitled Friends at Church. I must have been a real nerd not to have any children listed. Actually, I know I was.

Another early Easter memory is our family returning home from church and me climbing from the car to bury my face in a golden clump of daffodils by the back doorstep, beaded with rain. Their sweet scent said spring to me. And new life. I always imagined the tomb where Christ was buried and rose again surrounded by daffodils and crocus.

"For I remember it is Easter morn,
And life and love and peace are all new born."  ~Alice Freeman Palmer

"Let the resurrection joy lift us from loneliness and weakness and despair to strength and beauty and happiness."  ~Floyd W. Tomkins

"It is the hour to rend thy chains,
The blossom time of souls."  ~Katherine Lee Bates

Gardening and Country Life in Glorious Color!

I’ve labored away adding lovely images to Shenandoah Watercolors, my nonfiction book about life on our small family farm in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Given my love of gardening, this includes a strong focus on my gardens and love of nature. The book is already out in print with images, but now that kindle and nook E-Readers support colored photographs, I’ve added heaps more. Shenandoah Watercolors in available in  eBook and print format at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  I will also get it up on Kobo soon. If someone is dying for me to have it somewhere else, let me know.

Book description: Author/farm wife Beth Trissel shares the joys and challenges of rural life on her family’s small farm in the scenic Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Journey with her through the seasons on the farm, owned by the family since the 1930′s, and savor the richness of her cherished gardens and beloved valley. This journal, with images of her farm and valley, is a poignant, often humorous, sometimes sad glimpse into country life. Recommended for anyone who loves the country, and even those who don’t. ***Shenandoah Watercolors is a 2012 EPPIC eBOOK FINALIST.

Excerpt:  The heavy rain has given way to a misting drizzle, but streams of water pour down from the hills and make new ponds and creeks. It’s chilly with that raw wet feel. This spring is awash in moisture and amazing after last summer’s searing drought. I’m struck by the intense beauty around me, and I thought I was already seeing it, but it’s so much more somehow. The grass seems to shimmer, yet there’s no sun out today, and the meadow is so richly green it’s like seeing heaven. Our barnyard geese are enraptured, as much as geese can be, with all the grass. If there’s a lovelier place to revel in spring than the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains, I don’t know it. Narnia, maybe.I’ve been thinking about my favorite places.

The pool I like best lies in the woods near a place called Rip Rap Hollow in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A splendid falls cascades up above, but I like the pool far more. We always meant to go back, but never have. The cold water ripped through me like liquid ice and is as clear as melted crystal. I could see the rocks on the bottom, some slick with moss, others brown-gold in the light where the sun broke through the leafy canopy overhead. Trout hid beneath big rounded stones or ones that formed a cleft, but the men tickled them out to flash over the flat rocks strewn across the bottom like a path. Drifts of hay-scented fern rose around the edges of the pool, warming the air with the fragrance of new mown hay, and made the shady places a rich green.Now, that’s a good place to go in my mind when I’m troubled. The problem with cities is that people don’t learn what really matters. Don’t really feel or know the rhythms of the earth. When we are separated from that vital center place, we grow lost. Sadly, most people will never know what they are lost from, or where they can be found.~

***Images of the Shenandoah Valley in early spring and Dark Hollow Falls in the Blue Ridge.

For the Loveliness of it All

I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.  ~Ruth Stout

Why, some of you may ask, am I so drawn to gardening? Granted, toiling in the earth has its downsides, like the aching back I will soon be complaining of, the chewing bugs, and inevitable weather affronts, but nothing is more uplifting to the spirit than a fair day in and among growing things. The joyous sights of new life returning to our beautiful valley after a long winter, the delectable scents and sounds…the trill of a meadowlark, the song sparrow singing overhead as I plant seeds in the crumbly brown ground…the swoop and soaring of the first butterfly…the pussy willow bursting with fuzzy catkins…the glowing crocus. Snow still obscures the landscape and cold wind nips my face, but the forecast promises better days and I shall soon be out sniffing the air with profound appreciation. The barnyard geese are fussy. Egg laying shall commence.

The delights of spring are almost upon us. There’s always a moment that catches and holds me transfixed, and in that moment, all is perfect. All is lovely. My piece of heaven on earth.~

***Images of crocus from last year and spring in the valley taken by my mom in past years.

"As Rosemary is to the Spirit, so Lavender is to the Soul."

‘Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun,
and with him rise weeping.’ ~Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale

If you set it,
the cats will eat it,
If you sow it,
the cats don’t know it.
~Philip Miller, The Gardener’s Dictionary, Referring to Catnip

Salt is a preservative. It really holds flavor. For example, if you chop up some fresh herbs, or even just garlic, the salt will extract the moisture and preserve the flavor. ~ Sally Schneider

The Herbs ought to be distilled when they are in their greatest vigor, and so ought the Flowers also. ~Nicholas Culpeper

The intense perfumes of the wild herbs as we trod them underfoot made us feel almost drunk. ~Jacqueline du Pre

I plant rosemary all over the garden, so pleasant is it to know that at every few steps one may draw the kindly branchlets through one’s hand, and have the enjoyment of their incomparable incense; and I grow it against walls, so that the sun may draw out its inexhaustible sweetness to greet me as I pass ….
-  Gertrude Jekyll

“There’s fennel for you, and columbines; there’s rue for you: and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O! you must wear your rue with a difference.  There’s a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.” ~Shakespeare, Hamlet

Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook. ~William C. Bryant

Waters are distilled out of Herbs, Flowers, Fruits, and Roots.
~Nicholas Culpeper

“We have finally started to notice that there is real curative value in local herbs and remedies. In fact, we are also becoming aware that there are little or no side effects to most natural remedies, and that they are often more effective than Western medicine.”  ~Anne Wilson Schaef

The basil tuft, that waves
Its fragrant blossom over graves.
~Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookhm, Light of the Harem

“The herb that can’t be got is the one that heals.” ~ Irish Saying

See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air: Get up, sweet-slug-a-bed, and see The dew-bespangling herb and tree. ~ Herrick, Robert ~Corinna’s Going a Maying

As for rosemary, I let it run all over my garden walls, not
only because my bees love it but because it is the herb
sacred to remembrance and to friendship, whence a
sprig of it hath a dumb language.
-  Sir Thomas Moore

Eat leeks in oile and ramsines in May,
And all the year after physicians may play.
(Ramsines were old-fashioned broad-leafed leeks.)

My gardens sweet, enclosed with walles strong, embarked with benches to sytt and take my rest. The Knotts so enknotted, it cannot be exprest. With arbours and alys so pleasant and so dulce, the pestylant ayers with flavours to repulse. ~Thomas Cavendish, 1532.

When daisies pied and violets blue, and lady-smocks all silver white. And Cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, do paint the meadows with delight. ~William Shakespeare, 1595.

Women with child that eat quinces will bear wise children. ~Dodoens, 1578.

Gardening with herbs, which is becoming increasingly popular, is indulged in by those who like subtlety in their plants in preference to brilliance.
-   Helen Morgenthau Fox

And because the Breath of Flowers is farre Sweeter in the Aire (where it comes and Gose, like the Warbling of Musick) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for delight, than to know what be the Flowers and the Plants that doe best perfume the Aire. ~ Francis Bacon, 1625

Caesar….saith, that all the Britons do colour themselves with Woad, which giveth a blew colour… John Gerard, 1597

You have got to own your days and live them, each one of them, every one of them, or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you. ~Herb Gardner

Once you get people laughing, they’re listening and you can tell them almost anything. ~ Herb Gardner

(***These last two quotes snuck in here because his name is Herb Gardner, so he came up on my search and I liked them.)

Would You Marry Me?
“According to old wives’ tales, borage was sometimes
smuggled into the drink of  prospective husbands
to give them the courage to propose marriage.”
-  Mary Campbell, A Basket of Herbs

As Rosemary is to the Spirit, so Lavender is to the Soul.
-  Anonymous

As for the garden of mint, the very smell of it alone recovers and refreshes our spirits, as the taste stirs up our appetite for meat. ~   Pliny the Elder

How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?
-  Andrew Marvel

How I would love to be transported into a scented
Elizabethan garden with herbs and honeysuckles,  a knot garden and roses clambering over a simple arbor …. ~Rosemary Verey

With holly and ivy,
So green and so gay,
We deck up our houses
As fresh as the day,
With bays, and rosemary,
And laurel complete;
And every one now
Is a king in conceit. ~Poor Robins Almanac, 1695

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance;
pray, love, remember; and there is pansies,
that’s for thoughts.
-    Shakespeare, Hamlet

The first gatherings of the garden in May of salads, radishes and herbs made me feel like a mother about her baby – how could anything so beautiful be mine.  And this emotion of wonder filled me for each vegetable as it was gathered every year.  There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown.
~  Alice B. Toklas

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. ~George Bernard Shaw

“I believe that gardens themselves are very healing. To be surrounded by the exquisite beauty of nature is to experience a healing of the soul.” — Author unknown

It’s gorgeous in the Shenandoah Valley now, and today a soft April shower is making everything even that much greener. The jonquils are in bloom and tulips just beginning to flower with the promise of many more buds. I’ve ordered several new David Austin roses to add to the roses that survived the winter (mostly Austin varieties so I’m sticking with those from now on), and the greenhouse is filled with seedlings for the vegetable, herb, and flower gardens. What wealth, if you count your riches in the bounties of the earth, and I do. I particularly love seeds. Each one holds such potential.

There is much symbolism in seeds. Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” And mustard seeds are tiny. I ought to be able to manage that much faith…

Daughter Elise and I save seed, and get carried away ordering more, but use them all sooner or later. And we share. A  box of filled with ziplock bags laden with various kinds of seeds (I endeavored to  organize them into categories) sits under my coffee table by the couch as I write. That way, I can sort through them at any time, know what I have and need. And I just like having them nearby. The table itself is laden with gardening and herbal   books and seed catalogues…I’m seeing a pattern here.

“How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.” ~Benjamin Disraeli

“Almost any garden, if you see it at just the right moment, can be confused with paradise.” — Henry Mitchell

“Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden.”  ~Robert Brault

“The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.”
~Dorothy Frances Gurney, “Garden Thoughts”

An Adventure in Planting Pussy Willows--Beth Trissel

Last evening as the sun dipped behind the trees on the wooded hills above our farm, I set off with my trusty wheelbarrow heaped with pussy willows we’d rooted last year and wintered over in the garden–where they could not possibly remain–and a shovel. My aim, the farm pond in the meadow. Highly curious heifers with no regard for personal space followed at my heels like pet dogs. If I turned around, they were breathing down my neck. A little disconcerting, so I waved them back. Repeatedly. I was also slightly concerned about chancing upon a coyote, but decided with this lot keeping me company that wasn’t likely. Might not have been anyway, but coyotes do visit the meadow when making their rounds late in the evening or at night. Rarely in the day.

My two farm dogs chose not to go with me on this particular venture. Wise. I had to toss the pussy willows, contained in feed sacks after I dug them out of the garden, and my shovel over not one, but two, electric fences and then roll beneath the wire to reach the grassy edge of the water. For those of you who think it’s easy to dig in wet muck sucking at your shovel and your boots, I can assure you that it’s not. Already worn out after a day of overdoing it in the garden, this final endeavor took the last of my reserves. And I sank in the squelchy mud up to my boot tops.  Then my knees. Digging and clawing my way along, I shifted clumps of saturated grass and oook to get my plants into place. Then heaved myself back up the bank to the meadow and pushed my barrow home. A task I desired to accomplish before dark so I could still see the electric fences, installed, btw, to keep the cows out of the pond.

If the pussy willows are happy there, we will have lovely catkins next spring. Supposedly, they prefer swampy places and the edges of streams, so this spot ought to suit them. But I reserved one to plant someplace else, just in case.

As ever, I am in pursuit of Eden on earth. My own bit of heaven. And I have the aching back to prove it.

(***Images of Lance in the muddy creek near the pond, and daughter Elise on a different outing. And our oh so friendly cows. To be expected, really, as they were hand raised and bottle fed, etc).

I did a search on pussy willow quotes and found this rather unusual one: ““Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it.”
― Margaret Wise Brown

I have no idea how that relates to pussy willows, but liked the quote. I hope to find my willows where I planted them, growing happily. I shall report back.

March in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” ~Charles Dickens,  To this famous quote I add, ‘and then it snowed.’

“It’s spring fever.  That is what the name of it is.  And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”  ~Mark Twain

I heartily agree, and so I worked in my gardens on Saturday, quite mild out really, and daughter Elise  helped, which was greatly appreciated by this weary gardener. We got the peas and early greens…lettuce, bright lights Swiss chard, spinach, pok choy…plus radishes and assorted kinds of beets planted. *All heirloom seed. I added three Crimson rhubarb roots to the patch of red rhubarb. Only the traditional ‘been here forever’ green variety is reliably robust, but we keep trying. And then Sunday, Palm Sunday, (the little children were so precious at church waving their palms) it began to snow about mid afternoon. Same thing happened last Sunday. By this morning we have at least ten inches of the white stuff covering everything.

Elise went out yesterday with her camera at the start of the snow and took some lovely shots. Our old red barn with pussy willow in foreground.

“Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
~Thomas Blackburn, “An Easter Hym

I hope the snow clears out by next weekend, which is Easter. Too early this year for me, but there it is. And I do love Easter whenever it comes.

“I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.” ~Ruth Stout

This is one of my most favorite spring quotes. I fully agree with Ruth Stout and have done so. I am also attempting to practice her no till gardening method. Image below of the seeds (packets are on the stakes) I planted on Saturday before Sunday’s snow with the pussy willow, wheelbarrow, and barn in the pic.

“No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.” ~Proverb

“Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.”  ~Doug Larson

“Every spring is the only spring – a perpetual astonishment.”  ~Ellis Peters

“In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.”  ~Mark Twain (And so say all of us!)

“I think that no matter how old or infirm I may become, I will always plant a large garden in the spring.  Who can resist the feelings of hope and joy that one gets from participating in nature’s rebirth?”  ~Edward Giobbi

To this I add, I hope I will have help with my gardens. Image of our rescue farm dog, Luca, at the start of the snow. We have two rescue farm dogs.

“The front door to springtime is a photographer’s best friend.” ~Terri Guillemets

Amen to that!

We rooted pussy willow shoots in the garden last spring and were amazed that they all took off, and now we have a dozen blooming willows to move and give away to good homes. Some we will plant by the farm pond, but they cannot remain where they are because pussy willows grow far too large, even when pruned to keep in a garden.

Oh look, it’s snowing again.

“Yesterday the twig was brown and bare;
To-day the glint of green is there;
Tomorrow will be leaflets spare;
I know no thing so wondrous fair,
No miracle so strangely rare.
I wonder what will next be there!”
~L.H. Bailey

“First a howling blizzard woke us,
Then the rain came down to soak us,
And now before the eye can focus —
Crocus.”  ~Lilja Rogers