ONTARIO ROCK GARDEN SOCIETY
	JOURNAL NOVEMBER, 2000

Poland '99 -Part 2 By David Barham

Walking in the Garden by Rosmary Pauer

Next Meeting Sunday, November 12, 2000 12 noon to 5 p.m. Civic Garden Centre 777 Lawrence Ave. E. Don Mills 12 noon: Picnic and socializing; bring your own food, meet other members. 1.30 p.m. Marion Jarvie Spring in South Africa This is Beaujolais Jarvie, immediately after the harvest of hundreds of slides from a month long trip, twinkling with zillions of enthusiastic bubles. Don't presume that you will only see ungrowable items - guess who grows them locally? And anyway, painter or not, don't you go art gallaries. Coffee break: Goodies by S-Z members Local Heros: Seedex Preview Bring slides of your donations December 10, 2000 Barrie Porteous Muskoka Weeds - a tale of horror

Poland '99 Part 2 by David Barham

People and Plants With the exception of the walk described in Part 1, and one valley walk, the mountain walks tended to begin at the top of the two stage gondola lift. On the valley walk we saw limestone hoodoos, similar to those found near Drumheller in Alberta, and I got my first look at wild Digitalis grandiflora, a beautiful yellow foxglove with maroon spots inside the tubular flowers. At the end of this particular walk, little Ken gave a local shepherd lady a hug and was invited into her summer mountain cabin to sample soured sheep milk. He was persuaded to buy several grenade shaped sheep milk cheeses which had been cured by sinning them in the rafters over a smoky pine fire. Ken convinced himself that he was helping the poor soul survive; however, I'm sure that she and her shepherd husband had a 4x4 parked out of sight which they used to commute to their real home! Close to the top of the gondola lift there were great drifts of buttercup yellow Alpine Avens, Geum montanum, and it was here that I got my first look at Campanula alpina, which looked, when only in bud, for all the world like a group of miniature, hairy ghosts hugging each other in order to keep warm. Eventually I found four variants of this plant; the normal lavender blue form, a dark blue form, a light blue/ dark blue bicolour form and, what I consider the most exciting, a pure white form. In some of the meadows at about 1750 m there were up to twenty of these plants per square metre. The massive presence of this campanula made up for the lack of gentians in flower. I did see one patch of five Gentiana verna flowers; however, I was soon 'gentianed out' by the many swaths of half metre tall Gentiana punctata, the yellow spotted gentian, which flowed in the damp areas down the alpine meadows. These meadow weeps also provided a home for patches of Soldanella alpina, whose fringed, lilac coloured flowers were surely meant to be worn as sun bonnets by the alpine faeries.

The poisonous Veratrum album, which had yellow-green, not white, flowers grew in the same general area, as did a few patches of Primula integrifolia. Several varieties of purple/pink flowered orchids, which I was unable to identify, also grew in these alpine meadows, as did what I think was the small, white flowered buttercup, Ranunculus alpestris; or was it R. seguieri? It was strange to find both acid and lime loving plants on a single walk, since both granite and limestone occur in this area. It was on one of these mountain walks that M decided to climb an extra 200 m to the fifteen metre cross at the summit of Mount Giewont. Big Ken and D ate their usual pate lunch while watching M, big John and little David haul themselves hand over hand up a chain on a very steep rock face, then scramble down the other side after having stood for a couple of minutes with twenty or so other nuts at the base of the cross. It was in this general area that we were almost trampled by a horde of school children who were being closely followed by two supervising nuns,both in full habit plus a large backpack and hiking boots.

Campanula alpina  It turns out that Zakopane is a summer camp area for children from all over Poland. Zakopane was also home to many street musicians; however, an astonishing sight on one ridge walk was a group of musicians carrying their instruments, including a double bass, along a mountain path at about 1750 m! The spectacular mountain ridges were easy to walk since they had paved paths along the top. On one occasion looking to the left one could see for many miles, while looking to the right the view was completely obscured by clouds rolling up the mountain. The division between cloudy and clear air looked as though it had been drawn with a ruler. On such a walk I saw edelweiss, Leontopodium alpinum, growing in the wild for the first time; it was growing in a crevice in a vertical limestone rock-face. I could not believe how short and brilliantly white it was; I think I'll stop trying to grow it in the garden as a result.

There were many patches of what I think was Campanula rotundifolia (I'm not very good at identifying most campanulas), a few patches of !ate flowering Dryas octopetala, many Sempervivum montanum? with bright pink flowers, and some out of flower but not in seed, Primula auricula.There were lots of encrusted, unidentified saxifrages with copious white flowers, the usual buns of Silene acaulis (drool, drool as usual), but no small dianthus that I could see. I wonder, do they grow in the Tatra mountains? One absolutely stunning flower, about 2x3 centimetres, was a viola, rather like a large Viola tricolour, but in pure buttercup yellow with no black lines. On some plants the 'ears' were rounded, on others they were deeply notched. Were they V.t. subalpina, or V. eugeniae, or V. lutea? Whatever they were, for me they were probably the most beautiful flowers I saw in Poland. Leontopodium alpinum

Some real surprises were found on the climb down from the cloud/no cloud ridge. I was astounded to see a single delphinium plant growing in a shady spot in an alpine valley; I think it was Delphinium dubium from the bril-liant, cobalt blue flowers. In amongst the low growing pines above the tree-line, somewhat out of its usual habitat, grew the blue flowered alpine sow thistle, Cicerbita alpina. Further down, at the edge of the tree line I came across a patch of monkshood, Aconitum napellus, again with true blue coloured flowers. Not far away was an extremely blue flowered geranium, Geranium praterise. I wonder why Mother Nature put most of the blue flowers on the way down and not on the way up! Again, there are many flowers which have been left out; no I will not list them this time. May I suggest that you take a trip to the beautiful, floriferous Tatra mountains in Poland, that way you can compile your own list while having a super holiday. Thank you David for our vicarious travels with you and your 'limey' bunch of hikers. When are you bringing them to a meeting?

Walking in the Garden by Rosemary Pauer

To me one of the most beautiful and evocative sentence in The King James Bible comes very early on: "Adam heard the voice of the Lord God as he walked in the garden in the cool of the day". I am sure that these brief words go right to the heart of gardeners everywhere and what a world the imagination can make of that simple sentence. This is obviously an early evening stroll, describing the cooling off which comes after the sun sets on a hot dry day, rather than the freshness of early morning-"the hour of the pearl" as John Steinbeck calls the dawn time. Then the plants are dew spangled, the bare feet make cool damp trails across the lawn and the rising sun, not yet blazing, lightens the flowers making them bloom anew. In the evening coolness the tired plants revive a little after the heat of the day, a tentative breeze stirs the aspen leaves and the birds drowsily recall their morning songs, murmuring almost to themselves in the bushes. The butterflies slow down their frantic dance of day and the first hesitant moths appear, heading for the fragrant trumpets of the lilies. Now the white flowers start out against the darkening green. Reds and deep blues fade to nothing as the stars of the white clematis burn ever brighter. All is very still and in the hush the sound of water trickling echoes into every corner of the garden. Every gardener takes time to stroll through the garden in the cool of the day, reluctant to leave to go inside. The heavy chores are over, the big tools put away. Now there is just a leaf to adjust here, a flower to deadhead there, a cat to pat as she rubs against your leg. The evening light is kind as it slants through the branches, dappling the lawn with ever deepening shade, and we stand gazing; for once not planning anything new, just content to enjoy all we see around us. We know we have not created this garden, just helped bring it into being, and we realize full well that if we were not there the garden, as we know it, would be gone in less than a year. Everything can man-age perfectly well without us and Nature will take it back to herself. The strong and vigorous will overrun the weak and the fragile and it will be as though we had never existed. Still, I am sure most of us have at one time or another felt the pride of a creator in our most beloved patch of ground, although every twinge of pride is acompanied by a sharp reminder that we are only tolerated there. Nature is in charge, make no mistake about that! As the gardener ages the garden becomes a living memento mori (remember death), as the life cycles run their courses; death and renewal are all around. Nature wastes nothing, nothing is lost, just changed into some other form, even compost. Leaning by the gate on a summer evening with a glass of wine in hand, the thought comes unbidden "When I have to go it should be at a time like this, at the full flood; here in the garden with the evening sun shining through the Japanese maple; quickly, not in a hospital bed attended by all the horrors modern medicine inflicts on the sick and dying." A brief shiver and the thought is banished, for now. Go pick up the rose petals from the grass; the cat wants her ears tickling. A bat swoops from among the trees, the dragonflies start their evening dance across the lawn - was that a nighthawk? Yes, it is pleasant to walk in the garden in the cool of the day when we too, for a brief while, can share the feelings of the Lord God. Rosemary lives and gardens in Brampton, where she should win the ecology award.