Turns out it was poisonous all along

Today, Erev Rosh haShanah no less, I had the chance to fulfill an unusual mitzvah - ולא תשים דמים בביתך "You shall not place blood in your home" (Devarim 22:8), which requires us to eliminate hazards from our homes.

Here's a mug shot of the hazard:

In early spring, I thought I would surprise my wife with new plants and flowers. I went to the nursery and picked up what I thought were some great purchases, including one called "Autumn Monkshood" (aka Wolfsbane, but I didn't know that at the time). It grew beautifully - dark green leaves, a very tall stem, and finally, just a week or two ago, it started to flower. Many buds are yet to open, promising rich, blue-purple flowers for weeks to come. Yes, it flowers in September-October! And into November, I'm told. And it's perennial, and hardy to Zone 2. What's not to like!

So the other day, I thought about buying a bunch more of these beautiful plants. I was in love. And then I Googled it and found out it's toxic. Not a little toxic, either - potentially fatal. Even contact can be hazardous, although there is some debate about the extent.

So out it went this morning. Depressing, but nice to fulfill this unusual mitzvah, going into the new year...

Gardening

At the moment, I'm looking at an orchid that sits on the only windowsill in our home. The plant was given to us when we moved in, and it has bloomed faithfully every several months; judging from the plumpness of three closed flowers currently adorning its branches, it is maybe two or three days away from blooming yet again. It has slim company - a pot of mint and aravah branches I am nursing along for a friend. Not much room on this windowsill.

Elsewhere in the house, a gloxinia is hibernating. A cactus I've owned for 23 years is probably alive, although I must admit it's hard to tell. A terrarium lives in a fog. Outside, the ground of a postage stamp backyard contains more than fifty plants I have buried in the rented soil.

I enjoy gardening, but I'm not sure why. Not that it matters much on a rented plot in a shoehorned development in a cold climate, where the chance to really create a garden is fairly limited, but I still think about the day when I'll have more of an opportunity for this sort of growth.

Part of it, of course, is the aesthetic beauty of the plants as they grow. In our home in Allentown, we created a beautiful perennial garden in front of the house, and we kept all sorts of plants in different parts of the backyard. This wasn't exactly a cultivated beauty - in some sense it resembled what happens when I go the supermarket without a perfectly defined list of items to buy. Some purple here, some red there, grasses here, bulbs there, and a motley arrangement of vegetables. Blueberry bush. Aravah bushes. Mint. Horseradish. Oakleaf hydrangea. Impulse purchases galore. But yes, they were attractive to the eye, or to my eye at any rate. Colors and textures and curving silhouettes...

Part of it was the gratification of seeing a result to my labors. I was never that good about fertilizing the soil, but I did the rest of it, from mulch to weeding to watering, and it paid off. Who wouldn't feel satisfaction at crocuses poking up from the soil, or berries emerging on a branch? Certainly, the plants were doomed to an ultimate death, but as Rabbi Akiva said, we celebrate at the time of celebration, and at that moment the effort is worthwhile, more than justified.

And, of course, one could connect this gardening to Torah sources and the redeeming value of working the soil and producing with one's hands. Adam and Chavah. Kayin and Hevel. Noach. Lemech's kids. The sin of the Tower of Bavel, per Ibn Ezra, was a desire to leave the land and move to the city.

And then those first, wonderfully agrarian Hebrews. Ever since rural Avraham declared his suspicion of those big-city Egyptians, the Jew has not trusted a life apart from the soil. Even in our most urban days, even in the beis medrash and synagogue, we understood where the Jew's true display of emunah [Shabbat 31a] was. We knew that Seder Zeraim was calling us, with its myriad complex laws, its kilayim and tithes and offerings and so on, of which much more should be written here. [Note: The suspicion of city life existed beyond the beis medrash. Many Jews who would never crack open a sefer agreed with the patronizing 18th century Europeans who said the children of Israel could become civilized if only we were trained properly; our blight had come from centuries of enforced urban life. Was this only out of desire to ingratiate ourselves with the Europeans? Or was it ideological, born in a yearning for the land?]

But I suspect the greatest benefit of gardening for me, back when I really did it, was the enforced distraction. You can't properly tend plants if you are constantly looking at your watch. Or, at least, I couldn't. I needed to detach from everything else, and "be the garden". I tend to get caught up in things, and having a cause that pulled me away from those things - and that demanded pulling away at regular intervals - was good for me. Clears the head, clears the heart, not a bad thing after a week of funerals or classes or whatever. One can accomplish the effect with a daf of gemara, of course, and that's another option, but one needs more than one way to do it.

Nothing deeper than that here; I'm just looking at the orchid, waiting for it to bloom.

Jewish Gardening 101: Grow your own Aravot

I taught a series of classes several years ago on “Jewish Gardening” – we covered topics like grafting, neighborly gardening, work on Shabbat and Yom Tov, and בל תשחית (the prohibition against destroying fruitful items). Those were heavy topics, but here’s a light one: Grow your own Aravos!

[Note: "ערבות Aravot" are willow branches, although they come from specific types of willows, not all willows. I'm not enough of a botanist to be able to explain which willows are appropriate in technical terms. In any case: These Aravot are one of the four plants used by Jews as part of a special ritual during the Succot holiday.]

I am a big believer in growing your own aravot, because (1) It’s easy, (2) It can be done in most climates, (3) The bush is attractive, and (4) Even should you keep the aravah bush small, it would still provide replacement aravot for you during Succot.

I did this for the first time 5 or 6 years ago in Allentown (Zone 6-7), and although I cut the bush back in the spring, after a few years I still arrived at Succot with aravot that were 10-15 feet tall.

First, here’s a simple way to root them:

1) Remove dead leaves from the aravah branches. Use more aravot than you plan to put in the ground, in case some don’t take.

2) Select a two-liter bottle, the wide-mouthed kind used for fruit juice. Important: Cut the collar of the bottle now. Otherwise, the mass of roots that develop during the winter may be too dense to fit them through the mouth of the bottle at the end, and cutting the plastic at that point may also damage the aravot themselves. (I didn’t do this – and the result is that my former home in Allentown has three large aravah bushes which are all rooted in the mouth of two-liter bottles. I cut the bottle safely, but couldn’t cut the collar.) Alternatively - just use a wide-mouthed vase you won't need for several months.

3) On Hoshana Rabbah, fill the bottle 2/3 of the way with water, and put the aravot in the bottle. Make sure all leaves are removed below the water line. (We don’t plant in the ground on Hoshana Rabbah, but this halfway planting may be permissible to avoid loss of the branches. Those who don’t wish to do even this on chol hamoed might preserve the branches in damp paper towels in the refrigerator.)

4) Keep the bottle in a sunny location.

I changed the water whenever it got cloudy, and added small pieces of miracle-gro sticks every 4-6 weeks. The miracle-gro is not necessary, though, and it adds to the need to change the water, to avoid mold.

You should see small root hairs develop fairly soon (several days), and real roots after that. Parts of the branches that are above water will develop leaves, too.

In the spring (I did it in April), take the aravot out of their bottles and plant them in the ground. The leaves may fall off; don't worry about it, they will come back. Choose a sunny site, but make sure it’s far from the foundation of your home; the roots can become quite strong.

And that’s it! I cut them back in the spring, in order to encourage the development of branches lower down, and they came back every year, thank Gd.

Hatzlachah, and let me know how it goes!

[Update 10-21: I set up my aravot right after Succot, and already have roots and leaves. How are yours going?]