I am immersed these days in the language of botany. It is just as though I have signed up for one of those immersion programs used to learn a foreign language. Which I guess is what I am really doing, after all. I had Latin in high-school, but can’t remember much of that.  But David knows the language well.  And in the classes we teach on Plant Identification, we talk about the features of plant flowers that tell us its name.

Botanical Illustrations show the technical features botanists use to identify plants. Here are some for you to enjoy:

Our fingers are stiff with cold. It is winter here in the Northwest. David picks up his end of the measuring tape, and a hundred feet away, I pick up mine. We walk ten feet downslope and lay the tape on the ground again. Steamy clouds of our breath hang in the air. Dry leaves and twigs crunch underfoot. David turns on his recorder and walks across the slope toward me. He records the name and size of every plant the tape touches.

“How’s it look?” the landowner asks. She stands beside me and is concerned. A year ago, the bluff on which her home sits started sliding toward the beach. Saturated by heavy winter rains the glacial till became unstable and slumped. Afraid her house might fall into Hood Canal she called on us to help her manage runoff, re-establish appropriate native vegetation and stabilize the slope. Today, we conduct line-intercept transects along permanent monitoring points to see if any movement has occurred in the last year. If the land is moving, then the plants will have shifted position.

“So far, so good,” David responds. “Nothing has moved.”

The woman smiles in relief.

David slowly rewinds the meter tape onto the yellow spool. “The beach strawberry is doing a great job of stabilizing the slope. The mix of other perennials and shrubs we selected are providing good cover.” He bends over to examine the small plants at his feet. “And I see a dozen new starts of your alumroot. Looks like volunteer seedlings.”

A colony of our native small-flowered alumroot, Heuchera micrantha, occupied the slope prior to its collapse. Now the new seedlings’ bright green leaves spread across the brown leaf litter on the ground.

“Great. I love them.” The woman stamps her feet and flaps her arms to get her blood moving. But she grins with pleasure and relief at David’s news and at the appearance of a favorite plant.

The tail end of the tape-measure slips home. “All done. I still have to transcribe the data but it’s clear that this slope is no longer moving. Your new French drains collect and redistribute the up-slope runoff. And the new plants control the erosion.”

We walk back to her house through the garden. As part of her effort to control the erosion that threatened her home, she has removed the lawn, put in berms, and planted low maintenance perennials and shrubs that she doesn’t have to water. Closer to the house, she has placed plants that need slightly more water. She stops and points to her Heuchera hybrids. “Look at them. Mid-winter and colorful as ever.”

“Isn’t this one ‘Amber Waves’?” David touches the golden leaves of one variety. “Did you know that one of its parents is the native species growing on your bluff?” He points to another with nearly black foliage and another with brilliant chartreuse leaves. “This must be ‘Obsidian’, and this one, ‘Key Lime Pie.”

She nods, delighted to talk plant with another aficionado. “I love all the color you get from these, all year long, and they’re totally trouble free.”

Many Heuchera hybrids have achieved celebrity status in recent years and have become glamorous stars of the perennial garden. Like Academy Award winning actors, these new hybrids appear on television, in magazines, and win “Oscars” in perennial trials across the country.

Our native Heuchera micrantha is a humble denizen of the floor of the emerald forest on the Olympic peninsula. Like any parent of a child star, our native alumroot stays in the background, allowing her celebrity children to take the spotlight.

The common name, alumroot, suggests medical uses, and Native Americans pounded the dried roots to make a poultice to stop bleeding and promote healing of cuts and sores. This medicinal usage followed the plants from America to Europe where Linnaeus gave the name Heuchera to the genus in order to honor Johann Heinrich von Heucher, Professor of Medicine at Wittenberg (1677-1747).  Modern pharmacopeias included Heuchera in their texts well into the twentieth century.

The second part of the name (the specific epithet), micrantha, means small-flowered, and gives rise to her common name, the small-flowered alumroot. While individual flowers are small, white, and not very showy, they are borne in great numbers on long, one-and-a-half-foot tall many flowered stalks.

David Douglas (1798 – 1834) named Heuchera micrantha based on his collection of the plants from the Columbia gorge in 1823. Haenke, the botanist on the Malaspina expedition from Spain collected specimens of this species on Vancouver Island in 1791. However, Douglas published first, so the plant gets Douglas’s scientific name, despite the fact that Haenke was the first European botanist to collect it.

All fifty-five species of alumroots are members of the Saxifrage family and all are native to North America. H. americana, whose native range is from New England to the Midwest states, traveled first to Europe and is another important parent of modern hybrids. A third  parent, H. villosa, comes from Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee. All three of these species, H. micrantha, H. americana, and H. villosa, figure prominently in the genetic background of all the modern Heuchera hybrids.

The bright red flowers of another species, H. sanguinea, attract both hummingbirds and humans. Coral Bells, as it is commonly known, comes from New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico. It contributes genes for larger, brightly colored coral-red flowers to numerous hybrids in the genus.

We gratefully enter the warmth of the home-owner’s country kitchen. Sipping chai spice tea beside the fire, David relishes more conversation about plants. Whenever genuine garden devotees gather they seem to spout lists of names. Scientific names, cultivar names, obscure botanists from the past. Their pleasure brings me a smile as I leaf through plant catalogues, winter inspiration to the avid gardener.

Beyond the window snow flurries swirl. My companions are lost in their discourse. Outside, a cobalt blue pot, stuffed with the many-colored Heuchera, sits on the patio. The glowing leaves, ignoring the cold, provide all the colorful inspiration we need.

Today is Christmas day and I thought I’d share with you a few photos of some of my favorite native plants of the Northwest. All of the plants featured here are evergreen shrubs or trees. All of them produce berries that attract birds to your garden. All the fruits are edible by us humans too and are quite tasty.

David and I went out for a walk on Christmas eve and took these photos to share with you. We walked along the shores of Hood Canal on the Kitsap Peninsula up in Washington State. Winters are mild here and there is no snow on the ground. Plants that keep their leaves all winter are especially valued in the landscape in the Northwest.

White puffs of breath hang in the cold air. Snow dusts our heads and shoulders as we brush back the limbs of conifers that crowd the trail. David and I hike the Larch Mountain Trail near the Columbia River, east of Portland. We’re not going far on this wintry day, hoping only to catch a glimpse of noble fir, Abies procera, in its native habitat.

As we near the holiday season, we’re seeking a “wild Christmas tree.” David decided we should look for the “perfect” wild Christmas tree, the noble fir. “The most elegant of Christmas trees,” he says. “It holds its branches symmetrically, the boughs sturdy and level.” He extends his arms straight out, away from his body.

“It twists its needles upward, exposing the lower surface of the stem. A perfect place to hang ornaments. The needles have a bluish cast and the tree does not shed them as they dry. Yep, just about perfect.” He continues with long strides up the path.

Larch Mountain, where noble fir is abundant, is the best location for our wild tree safari. We might even find a 200 foot specimen of this peerless winter holiday tree. Despite the mountain’s misleading name, it harbors no larch. Both mountain and trail get their names from timber men who harvested and sold the noble fir as larch. No one would buy fir in those days.

David leads the way to the right micro-climate: mid-elevation, a moist habitat, and rich deep soil.
“Here’s one,” I cry out in order to get his attention.

He stops and shakes snow from the bough. “Almost,” he says. “This is a Douglas fir, not a true fir.” He turns a branchlet over to expose the growth habit of the needles on the underside. “In noble fir, the needles look like little hockey sticks. See, these needles grow straight out from the stem all the way around, like a bottle-brush. But, on noble fir, the needles bend, right at the base.”

“Why?” I find these details endlessly fascinating.

“An adaptation to garner more light. So, it makes more food, can out-compete its neighbors,” David says. “Also, look at the bud at the tip of the branch. It’s pointed. On true firs the bud is round.”

“Well, this tree is pretty too.” I head up the trail.
“Sure it is. And, at least, you recognized the differences among firs, pines and spruce.” David catches up, then retakes the lead.
Earlier he explained distinctions in the world of conifers. Pine needles occur in bundles of two, three, or five. Fir needles are solitary and spruce needles bite. In other words, they’re sharp and, well . . . needle-like. But that tidbit of information is irrelevant; there is no spruce up here.

“Whose idea was this?” I grumble, rubbing my hands together. I’m not used to this weather despite living in the Pacific Northwest for some years.

David laughs. “C’mon, where’s your Christmas spirit?”

I laugh along with him. But I am thinking about the idea of bringing trees into the house in mid-winter. I mean, whose idea was this? I know the Egyptians were the first. They brought date palm fronds inside during winter solstice celebrations. But does that count?

All the mid-winter festivals celebrate the shortest day of the year in some way. It marks the return of the light. The point when the sun begins to climb back up, higher in the sky, bringing longer days. That’s the moment when you know that the long dark months are over. It’s the return of hope.

Still, who started the tradition of bringing an evergreen tree into the house? I know the earliest written record comes from Alsace. A forest ordinance of 1561 reads, ‘No burgher shall have for Christmas more than one bush of no more than eight shoe lengths’. That sounds like the first environmental regulation to me.

A Hessian mercenary soldier fighting with the British probably put up the first Christmas tree in North America in 1777. Yet the tradition of having a decorated tree inside most certainly came to this country with German immigrants. Matthew Zahn of Lancaster, Pennsylvania wrote about his family’s excursion to cut a Christmas tree on December 20, 1821. The tree was decorated with nuts, dried fruits, and seeds.

The English colonists actually outlawed Christmas trees. The idea really wasn’t acceptable until Queen Victoria and Prince Albert popularized it in the 1840s. In fact, Massachusetts banned their use until 1857.

In my musing I have lost sight of David, but soon hear his whistle and I hurry to catch up. Two more bends in the trail and I find him examining the silvery-blue foliage of a young noble fir.

“See the hockey sticks?” David holds a bough in a gloved hand. He hands it to me. “Feel the weight of it. Smell it.”

“It’s heavy.” I hold it to my nose and take a long, deep breath. “It smells like the deep forest.”

“And like Christmas,” David adds.

When I was a kid my mother grew an enormous poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) in a dormer window in my bedroom. She had received it one Christmas as a small potted plant to decorate the dinner table. We always gathered as a very large extended “family” that included close friends of my parents and their children. My siblings and I are still friends with the children of these families and consider them hanai brothers and sisters. Hanai is a Hawaiian word that loosely equates to “adopted”. Holiday gatherings of our hanai family brought many celebratory traditions together: Jewish, Egyptian, German, and Celtic. I’m not sure who brought the little poinsettia as a gift, because all those cultures embrace the practice of bringing greenery and plants into our homes in winter, especially during the winter feasts.
Most of the time, the plant lived in a giant yellow pot in the bay window of my bedroom. There, it soaked up plenty of sunlight, just enough water, and not too many nutrients. To tell the truth, I never really paid attention to how my mother cared for it. But she must have babied that plant, because by the time I was a teenager, the poinsettia was lush, robust, and six feet tall.
Every autumn my mother came to my bedroom each evening and dragged that heavy pot and plant into my closet. Shoving the shrub among my clothes, she’d pull on the sting to turn out the light, shut the closet door, and forbid me to open it until morning. And by Christmas every year bright red “flowers” festooned the branches. I didn’t know then what I know now – that these are not really flowers, but modified leaves that change colors through the lengthening dark nights of early winter. Before the solstice and the return of the light.

The English common name comes from Joel Roberts Poinsett, who introduced the plant to the U.S. in 1825, when he served as the first U.S. Minister to Mexico. Poinsettias are large shrubs or small trees and are native to dry topical forests in Mexico, but now grow wild nearly everywhere in the tropics. Indigenous peoples have used their bracts to make red dye and their milky sap for medicine to reduce fevers.
I vividly recall the day I first saw a poinsettia in the wild. I was nineteen and had traveled to Belize and Guatemala with two college chums. We hitch-hiked from Belize City to Tikal and Guatemala City; we cadged a ride on a sail boat to the barrier islands off the coast; and we traipsed through the forest in search of adventure.
One night we camped in a clearing at the foot of one of the excavated pyramids at Tikal. In utter darkness, surrounded by the shuffling, calling, scurrying sounds of nocturnal animals, we threw our sleeping bags on the ground and slept the sleep of complete ignorance. The kind of ignorance that brings forth the guardian angels. Next morning we rose early and encouraged each other to climb to the top of the tallest pyramid. The real reason we were up at dawn is because the ants had emerged from their burrows and swarmed over us. They had a wicked bite.
We headed down the jungle trail, quickly leaving the clearing behind. In just a few feet we crossed paths with a long line of harvester ants – ones that cut leaves into little pieces and transport them over well-worn trails to feed their cultivated mushrooms. None of us knew much ecology then, so after watching them for a bit,  we dubbed them umbrella ants, and set off on our way again.
A troop of howler monkeys soon spotted us, and remaining at a safe distance, paralleled our track. Hooting and howling, they taunted us with their calls. One, who seemed to be an adolescent like us, swung aggressively close overhead, and tried to nail us with a torrent of his urine. That will teach us to trespass in his territory. Luckily he missed.

Just as we reached the base of the towering monument, I spotted a vaguely familiar shrub – leggy, and scraggly, yet similar to my old room-mate. A few reddish-pink bracts adorned its branches. I was completely taken aback. It was like running into an old acquaintance from elementary school – you know you know them, but haven’t been in touch for a long time. Suddenly I saw, really saw the plants of the jungle around me. Wasn’t that vine climbing up the trunk of that big tree just like the plant in my mother’s sun room? And what about the tree itself – wasn’t it a huge specimen of the small potted “fig” tree my mom had?
This was my first conscious encounter with a wild houseplant. Oh, to be nineteen again. To discover the world as if you are the first person to ever see such sights.

Orchid Obsession

David has turned his attention to the tropical plants that live in our houses, in particular one of his true loves – orchids.
My first day in Hawaii, many years ago, was filled with orchids. I had stopped to visit David on my way from Australia where I had been leading an eco-tour of the Great Barrier Reef. He lived in a tiny cabin deep in the jungle of the west Maui Mountains, where he headed up a research project in biomass production from tropical trees. A shimmering green light bathed the interior of his dilapidated shack. One of the three or four intact buildings of an abandoned poi factory complex. Of course, I loved it on sight. Surrounded by huge trees — mango, grapefruit, avocado, and monkey-pod — each with its own community of epiphytic orchids and ferns clinging to each massive limb. While I knew none of these plants were native, I was still enchanted.

We dropped off my luggage and rushed straight back to town to buy me an appropriate dress for the annual banquet of the Lahaina Orchid Society. In his spare time, David had become an orchid judge and breeder. Hundreds of guests mingled and merged, ebbing and flowing around me. Long tables filled the ballroom, each table festooned with orchid plants – all in magnificent bloom. The heady scent of orchid blossoms filled the air. I listened to bizarre conversations around me.
“Did you see that Ports of Paradise ‘Glenyries Green Giant’?’
“Oh yes, he da kine li’ dat.”
“I no know. What about that Ida Fukumura?”
“Yeah, she really da kine.”
Later I would learn that the first is an intergeneric cattleya hybrid and the second a phalaenopsis, but that night I sat stupefied as the mix of pidgin and orchid-speak assailed my ears. It was like listening to aliens from another planet trying to include me in the conversation. I smiled a lot.

Many remarkable events took place over the next few weeks of my visit. David took me to orchid shows and orchid ranges (what the rest of us might call nurseries). We visited other judges and experts, all of whom were smitten with orchids, afflicted with orchid obsession.

I gradually learned to distinguish between a cattleya and a phalaenopsis. Slowly I could recognize a dendrobium, a vanda, and a paphiopedilum. The orchid maniacs I met were mostly big men with arms covered in tattoos. Men who could easily be mistaken for the goons that gangsters send to break kneecaps. They showed me how to gently remove pollen from the “father” (pollen parent) and place it on the stigma of the “mother” flower (pod parent). With a toothpick!

David showed me his research – volumes of notebooks with orchid genealogies going back centuries in some cases. Research designed to support the breeding program he intended to start. We began touring orchid ranges in earnest with the goal of purchasing “stud” plants – those perfect plants, with the perfect genetic composition for David to use to create award-winning plants. Yes, David had it bad – a serious case of orchid fever. Yet, it never seemed extraordinary to me. It seemed perfectly normal, in fact.

We grew orchids in pots, on benches or on the ground beneath the towering trees surrounding the cabin. We borrowed a friend’s laboratory to sow orchid seeds in a sterile environment in specially prepared media inside glass flasks and baby-food jars. I read every orchid book, magazine and research paper David handed me. And the few weeks visit turned into months.
Without quite realizing it, the orchid obsession took over. We moved to the Big Island of Hawaii. We started our own orchid range. Built our own laboratory. Amassed a stunning collection of “stud” plants. We filled every inch of our lives with the incredible beauty of these exotic, luscious plants. Oh, and while we were at it, we got married.
Even though we no longer grow orchids, our love for these plants remains. I do not know why some people succumb – as we did – to orchid fever, but I highly recommend it. I guess for me orchids embody an incredible, wild, effortless ride into joy.

At this time of year David and I put the garden to bed. He writes about keeping it healthy for next season, and concentrates on sanitizing – cleaning out unhealthy plant tissue where disease may lurk until spring. For me the garden season is over. In our cold climate, I find myself more and more reluctant to go outdoors, much less garden. It’s time to concentrate on indoor activities.
The other day David and I watched the local news that carried a story about the dangers of falling leaves in the coming storm. Trees had just begun to turn colors, and had not yet had an opportunity to drop their autumn leaves. The newscaster warned that these leaves posed a terrible threat. OMG – the wind could bring them down all at once! They could cause flooding!! We could almost hear the sound track to Hitchcock’s Psycho in the background, as the menacing leaves crawled toward us. What fierce creatures deciduous trees are. “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Although this is part of the fear mongering so common on television today, it is also a clear illustration of a significant loss we modern, urban dwellers have suffered. The loss of connection to and intimacy with the natural world.
Right now, as David and I launch into writing our second book for Timber Press (Troubleshooting the Vegetable Garden), I am reading lots and lots of books about vegetables, about organic gardening practices, and about plants in general. I find myself  exploring many different topics, including ecology and natural history. The more I understand the natural processes going on outside, the more fun I have in the garden.  I glean some books for information, and some for inspiration.
In these explorations I uncovered a book that articulates a major theme of my life and of David’s and my work. In The Lost Language of Plants (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2002) Stephen Harrod Buhner describes an encounter with a puppy, an encounter that many of us have experienced. “… [a] moment [when] something passes between you and the puppy. It is as if something leaves your body and enters the puppy, as if something leaves the puppy and enters you.” At this moment you want to pet the puppy, and he wants you to pet him. Bruhner continues: “This is an experience that nearly all people know, yet we have no word for it in our language.”
He goes on: “Once, people experienced this exchange with everything on earth. The experience was understood, expected, a natural part of human life – this deep interaction with the non-human world . . .”
I am interested in understanding how we lost this ability, this perception, this desire, even.  And I want to know how to regain it. While I agree with Edward O. Wilson that we humans experience “Biophilia” — the love of life itself — I still see lots of evidence of this fundamental disconnect with other life forms.  Much of the work David and I do is an attempt to understand the loss and to regain the ability.
Early in our marriage David and I walked through the Foster Botanical Gardens on the Island of Oahu. We came upon a gigantic Kapok (Ceiba pentandra) whose great buttress roots stabilized its enormous trunk and made caverns in which to hide. I slipped into one and felt embraced and safe. I invited David in and made a comment about this magnificent tree. David agreed, but told me that his favorite tree was the mighty oak. I was surprised, because I knew how much he loved tropical flora. He stepped out of the tree’s embrace and stood in the middle of the grass. He held his arms out to the side, like a kid pretending to be an airplane. He swayed and dipped, as if wind buffeted the mighty oak he mimicked. “Imagine,” he said, “holding your arms out like this for an eternity. Oak trees are essentially immortal, you know. They stand forever with their arms outstretched. Imagine the strength that takes.”

I was stupefied. So much information wrapped up in those simple words. Trees are immortal. They are powerful. Could we not benefit from this power if we only understood it better? Can we not learn important lessons from an immortal being if only we know how to listen?  I hope so.

David’s blog told us about composting – such a useful pastime in the winter months. It keeps us active in the garden, provides us with a valuable asset come spring, and allows us to participate in the earth’s life cycles even while the garden lies dormant.
I don’t know about you, but I thought I’d like to read about soil. I loved playing in the dirt as a child, making mud pies, and planting seeds to see what they did. But I never thought about what soil actually is. David and I have lived in many places and, since we garden avidly, I have learned most emphatically that soil is different all over the world. Sandy, with an underlying layer of dense clay (aka caliche) in New Mexico; rich and loamy in a very thin layer over glacial till in Western Washington; and non-existent in Hawaii (Big Island lava has not had enough time to erode into soil).
And yet it is also the same everywhere you go. It’s made of rock; rock that wears away and becomes smaller and smaller particles of sand or silt or clay. Dead plants decompose and provide organic material that feeds billions of tiny animals, fungi, and bacteria. David’s definition is this: Soil is a living ecosystem of organisms in a medium composed of organic debris, mineral fragments, water, and air. Works for me.
I set out to learn more. I have to admit that soil scientists tend to get so enthusiastic, and have such a depth of knowledge of their subject, that my eyes glaze over. But, the notion that an entire complex civilization lies beneath my feet intrigues me.
I love miniature worlds. Maybe because I never had a doll-house as a kid. Maybe because I was a tom-boy and spent many happy hours constructing an entire village in the empty lot next door. I made tiny houses from sticks and mud, and carved roads around rocks on the banks of a steep slope that angled down to an alley. In my world, the alley was the mighty Mississippi and the town was Hannibal, MO (I was greatly enamored with Mark Twain at the time).  My town was inhabited by farmers, grocers, bakers, and bankers, and it prospered over many years.
Miniature worlds make sense to me. And the vast ecosystem that prospers in healthy soil fascinates. Soil is very much alive. And who lives in this habitat? To list them all would take the rest of my life, for there are literally billions of individuals belonging to countless species. Bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, nematodes, protozoa, mites, sow bugs, millipedes, and earthworms, all thrive there. See what I mean – I have barely scratched the surface with that list.
All are important members of a decomposer community that helps keep plants healthy by outcompeting destructive, pathogenic members of their tribe. This community also helps gather water and nutrients from the mineral elements of the soil. In just one example of this complex ecosystem, fungi form what is called “myco’ (which means fungus) “rhizal” (which means roots) partnerships with plants. In this “mycorhizal” association, fungi absorb sugar and other nutrients from the plants, and water and mineral nutrients from the soil and give them to the plant. A win-win situation.
This all seems like magic to me. Mysterious and elegant. The kind of world – evolving over billions of years – where I would want to live and work. Oh, I do live in this magical, beautiful world. How lucky am I?

David has been talking about Storing Summer Bulbs. It got me thinking about all the things we who live in cold climates do to prepare for winter. As gardeners we store bulbs, corms, tubers, and tuberous roots. These plant structures store the net photosynthate that the plant produced during the growing season. Which means: plants store food to survive the winter and grow again in spring.
Somewhere in our pre-history we learned a lesson from plants and started storing these same plant parts for our own food. We “lift” tubers like potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) from the ground, shake dirt free and, in former times, placed them in root cellars. Today we might store them in cardboard boxes or burlap sacks in our garages. We also gather tuberous roots like sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) and bulbs like onions and garlic, and store them through the long months of cold when we cannot grow food outside.
As November proceeds in the northern hemisphere, we prepare for festivals at which we gather and share our stored bounty from the garden. Storing food is all about coziness, feelings of safety, belonging, and abundance. Despite the hardships of the season – driving rain, cold, and snow – we enjoy our winter feasts.
David’s family cherishes traditional winter feasts. Mashed potatoes are a must. Close relatives of tomatoes, eggplants, chili, and bell peppers, potatoes come from high in the Andes of Peru, and have been grown for over 6,000 years. Breeders have mixed the gene pool to create the multitude of varieties we have now.
We all have favorite potatoes, but I particularly love the ones with tender skins and flavorful flesh, such as Yukon golds. I also like to mix it up with the newest – or oldest, depending on how you look at it – Peruvian blue and purple potatoes. But tradition often dictates the good old russet. No matter which potato we choose, I use a recipe I learned long ago:
Simple Mashed Potatoes
Potatoes: 2 lbs
Milk: enough to barely cover potatoes
Salt, pepper, butter to taste
Scrub the potatoes and leave skins on. Cut them in half-inch cubes.  Boil them in milk until tender. Leave them in the pan with the milk, and start mashing, or pour the potatoes and milk into a bowl and mash. As you mash, add butter, salt and pepper to taste.
Sweet Potatoes come from lowlands throughout the Caribbean and South America, and people have been mixing genes from these gems of the earth for a long time to create many tasty cultivars. Some of these cultivars are also called yams by grocers in many areas of the U.S.
Still, our favorite bounty from the root cellar through the winter is:
Root Cellar Bounty
Bulbs: Onions, Garlic
Tubers:  Potatoes
Roots: Sweet potatoes, Beets, Carrots, Parsnips
Olive oil: enough to drizzle the vegetables in a thin coating
Favorite herbs:  such as thyme, rosemary, and sage.
Cut all the vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Lay them in a single layer in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Drizzle them with the olive oil until thinly coated. Roast them in a 350 degree (F) oven until fork tender.
Yum. Oh, you should probably let them cool for a bit before you bite them.

David has already addressed the in’s and out’s of spring-blooming bulbs – those harbingers of bounty from the earth – and given us some great tips about selecting and planting them, but right now it’s fall, and autumn always has funereal overtones for me. The weather gets cranky. Clouds hide the sun and darken my days. The temperatures drop, and I shiver all too often.  I am a lover of the sun, of beaches, of slouching around in T-shirt and shorts. When leaves begin to turn and drop to the ground, revealing the skeletal structure of trees; and when bright annual flowers have disappeared; and perennial plants wilt and die back – I feel a sense of loss.
To cheer myself up, I look to the promise of what lies ahead.
Bulbs that we plant in autumn embody that promise. They are full of life. Hibernating like bears, they wait for that first hint of renewal, a slight rise in the temperature, and a few more moments of light from the sun.
Most of the bulbs we plant in North America for their spring show come from far away – the sunny shores of the Mediterranean – Turkey, Italy, Spain, and North Africa. I know these places are cold in winter. (I lived in Spain for a time). In fact, this is why bulbs need at least six weeks of cold – to mimic the conditions of their homelands. But all these places are drenched by the sun – in other words, my native habitat (despite winter cold).
I am encouraged when David renews our bulbs. He makes sure they are healthy. He selects new ones to add to the mix of flowers, vegetables, and fruit we grow each year. And he plants some in pots, “forcing” them to brighten the house in winter. Though this last sounds cruel, it is actually the garden jargon term for bringing any plant into flower when we want them to, rather than letting them flower naturally outdoors. When these forced plants flower mid-winter, they bring a bit of sun-drenched spring into our home.
Already I look forward to that moment when tiny leaf-tips poke from the ground outside and peek through snow. The first signs of sunny days to come. This moment often signals the way to unexpected treasures. The tiny stamens of crocus flowers become that herb, saffron, a taste I grew quite fond while roaming those Mediterranean shores. Indeed, after witnessing the women grow the crocus– nurturing, harvesting, and drying these delicate threads of flavor – I never questioned their price again.
Even as autumn’s gloom closes around me, I feel cheered as bulbs lie dormant, waiting to proclaim the exuberance of spring.