My Adoptive Garden

I remember times when I was forced to take a rake and rake the apple tree leaves in the fall in our garden which was the most hated activity ever in my early teens. But I also remember times when I used to spend all day long at my cousin’s garden with her and my sister until late in the night. It was usually in the summer when we stayed at my grandma’s for holidays. Throughout the summer we would satisfy our hunger during the day by picking whatever fruit was available from cherries through red currant, black currant, goose berries and apples and pears late in the summer and in the fall. Maybe the childhood and a grandchild’s affection to a grandmother and a grandfather have led to plant a seed of a need of a garden in me. Interestingly enough I have never build a good relationship with our or rather my parent’s garden. But to go further into this topic I would really digress from the gardens of my life. After several years I have again found a garden which I call an adoptive garden.


My adoptive garden lives its life in a different town and so every time we meet it always starts with the most welcoming stroll and greeting. Even before I greet my potentially future in law family, I have to greet the garden. When I arrive the dogs come running with a wagging tales, but the dog that deserves my attention the most is the neighbour’s dog. I will never comprehend why the family has bought the dog because they totally ignore him. He spends all days long in the garden alone and even when they come out of the house they do not respond to his happy face and look past him. At that moment the sadness in his eyes is so deep that I could drown myself in it. Whenever I arrive or walk in the garden we have a minute to ourselves. Then I continue to walk past the house. As I pass a corner of the house the whole garden opens in front of me and I can immediately tell what is new. One time, it is the cherries that acquire the purple colour of the blossom of Nonea pulla, other times the strawberries peek at me from behind the carpet of green leaves or the red currant no longer screws my face with verjouice. I make a round trip, walking past and under the cherry tree to the end of the garden where the hen house which is guarded by an old pear tree and a walnut tree is. If the fowls are outside I say hello to the girls and respectfully greet the self-important cock. Then I cross the patches and have a look how the vegetables are doing and slowly return stroking each of the apple trees on the way back to the house.



The garden does not only provide the most delicious vegetables, does not only make us happy when we run there bare feet in the summer and pick strawberries. It is more than that. It is a friend I look forward to whenever I travel there. It speaks to me. It speaks to me not in words but in smells and touches. Sometimes when the branches of the red current bush are bend under the weight of the fruit the beg me to pick the fruit and save them from breaking. Sometimes the rhubarbs catch my attention when the leaves are big enough to be collected. They remind me of how delicious they are on a cake and force me to hurriedly walk upstairs and bake a cake. When I have to leave, usually after a weekend I always say goodbye to the garden. When it is dark I simply stand close to the house and smell the fragrance of blossoms or the soil resting over the winter. When the garden feels satisfied with my visit, it even rustles its leaves in goodbye. If the neighbour’s dog is around I never forget to tell him what a good dog he is and assure him that I will come again soon.


My adoptive garden is resting these days. It seems to be asleep most of the time, but it deserves its rest. When I feel lonely I open a jar of red current jam or apricot jam and chase away my loneliness with the smell and taste of my adoptive garden.

Summer Pheasant's Eye on Pouzdranská step

This spring I went for a walk to the Pouzdranska steppe which is a very special place south of Brno I discovered only this spring. It was april or may and the surrounding decidous forests were shining with the sharp leafy green that enlivens the landscape after the monotonous grey-white-bluish colour of winter. When walking among the wineyards which spread on the surrounding hills and below the steppe I spotted this red blossom on the south side of a small hill warming itself, gracing an edge of a field. Thanks to my early spring enthusiasm about plants and flowers, I was carrying with me an encyclopaedia called Nase kvetiny by Milos Deyl and Kvetoslav Hisek which I consuled upont discovering the plant. Summer pheasant's eye (Adonis aestivalis L., Hlavacek letni - the red plant in the right top corner of the blog) is an annual weed growing on calcareous soil in warm areas. In the Czech republic it is a critically endangered species.

If you wish to see this beautiful plant before it disappears for good (that's rather a pesimistic approach) I highly recommend you make a trip to the Pouzdranska steppe. The steppe is a unique place for various reasons. V Grulich, one of the authors of a chapter 9 called "Significant Localities" in a publication called Pannonian Steppe Grasslands In Moravia (http://steppe.at/downloads/Tschechien_nurText.pdf) describes the steppe in these words:

Pouzdřany Steppe (Pouzdřanská step)
One of the most famous localities of thermophilic steppe vegetation extends on the slopes of the Strážná hill above Pouzdřany. The dominant vegetation type here is the continuous cover of the Stipa pulcherrima feather grass, with numerous populations of Tatarian sea kale (Crambe tataria). The core of Pouzdřany Steppe is probably created by a primary non-forest land, which was, however, extended to its present area in the past, after the adjacent thermophilic oak woods were cut down. Until the half of the 20th century the area was used for grazing and growing fruit trees, grape-vine and licorice cultures, the upper edge was traditionally occupied by fields. Significant factors influencing this locality in the long-term were fires and the periodically growing and shrinking colonies of wild rabbits. Due to its accessibility, the locality was a favourite of naturalists from Brno, thus it was thoroughly researched both botanically and entomologically. From the point of view of botany, there seem to be no qualitative changes, but the entomologists report species losses. Management here is, however, still experimental - some time ago, a radical action against acacias was necessary, at present sheep grazing has been under way for a number of seasons. Its influence on the biotopes will have to be regularly evaluated.
The Pouzdřany Steppe National Nature Reserve has been protected since 1956 and its area is 47 ha.

Interestingly enough, a famous Czech poet and one of my favourites, Jan Skacel, wrote a poem about the Pouzdranska steppe. It is called Třmeny. It reads:

Třmeny

V září, když kořen v zemi uhnije
a podzim píská na psí kost,
po stepi vítr žene katránový keř.

Uťatá hlava letí po větru
a je mi úzko, je mi skoro k pláči,
najednou nevím,
jestli k smrti stačí
odhodit křivou šavli,
volat: Neudeř!

V září a v podzimním větru
po stepi běží,
běží na obzoru
kutálen větrem katránový keř.

Blízko je k vraždám, k stínání a zlu,
je blízko k tatarskému koni,
tma roste z trav a z osin kavylu,
mosazné plíšky na postroji zvoní,
udidlo koňskou tlamu rve...

V září a v podzimním větru
po stepi beží,
po pouzdřanské stepi,
kutálen větrem katránový keř.

If you wonder what a Katranovy ker is - the proper name in Czech is Katran tatarsky (Crambe aspera) - and how it can roll on the steppe, the explanation is very simple. This plant is used in some parts of the wrold as a vegetable, in other parts, it is the root that can be found on a plate. But once the plant is past blossoming the part of the plant that is above the ground dries, breaks off and is carried away by the wind on the steppe. Thanks to is shape it really is rolling and uses this movement for spreading seeds (www.botany.cz).

The pouzdranska steppe belongs to one of the many gardens of my life. It's going to be one of the first places I visit in the spring, and I will again lie down under the beech tree warming myself on the spring sun like a lizard reading Jan Skacel, listening to the birds singing. I will follow Jan Skacel's steps and the steps of many other people who have fallen in love with the place....

Elderberry Blossom Sirup

Not only is the elderberry blossom sirup the most delicious drink ever (along with cherry sirup, elderberry sirup, etc.) but it is also very healthy. Partly because elderbery blossom is one of the herbs used as a flu treatment in the liquid form of a tea, parly because it is void of artifical aditives and therefore organic. On top of that, preparing it with your own hands is fun. After a nice walk in nature, where the elderberry bushes are in abundance, and picking around 30 blossoms, shake off all the insects and put the blossoms into a 4l jar. Wash lemons and/or limes, squeez the juice over the blossoms, and put the lemons cut in pieces into the jar as well so that the jar is nearly full. Pour water over the contents, cover it to prevent the air from getting in. Leave it for 24 hours to soak. It is supposed to look this way...

Quite a pretty decoration for a kitchen or a livig room. :) After a day, take a cotton cloth, which is used for seiving the juice. When pouring the blossoms into the cloth, squeeze the jusice out of them properly. Measure how much juice you squezze out of it and for 1l add 1kg of brown sugar. It seems to me redundant to use so much suggar. I use only half of the recommended amount. Boil the juice with suggar until it thickens. Then pour into bottles.

The outcome is yellow, sticky, yummy. Besides, when winter comes, the nice fragrance of lemons, elerberry blossoms and spring coming from the glass is like a first snowdrop pushing itself through the melting snow.

Squid Embryo

Dr. Rachel Fink

Squid embryo (Loligo peali) releasing ink into surrounding seawater. Rachel Fink, Mount Holyoke College, Department of Biological Sciences, South Hadley, Mass., U.S.A.

http://www.scientificamerican.com