Garden 2024: Despite it all...

 Sweet Gum Hill

Gardens of 2024: Despite it all...

And here we have "Honeycrisp Hump," the highest point on Sweet Gum Hill, way back there behind the bench.  

Over the past 10 years, that circle of boulders (i.e. "Honeycrisp Hump")  has been filled in with rich loam and composted kitchen waste. Now it is ready for apple trees!  Yesterday we planted several honeycrisp bare root semi-dwarf grafts and will begin a long summer of weekly watering and tender loving care.  At last count we have 9 apple trees of seven varieties on the property.  There are also 4 cherry trees, 25 peach trees, 6 plum trees, 5 pear trees, and a dozen grape vines. So April is a stressful month when many of these have already broken bud and yet there may still be some damaging freezes in store. Fingers crossed!

Despite it all...

Anyone who knows me realizes it has been quite a year. I certainly appreciate all of the support, encouragement, and positive energy flows.  Since our last garden in 2022, there have been many kinds of challenge: from the wonderful opportunities of international travel, to deceased relatives, then, more recently, a host of medical procedures. Now that the "human condition" seems to be beginning to settle down, I look out on the gardens and see mostly work to be caught up.  Some of it will be difficult, but always, it is best to get started.  Truthfully, I am itching to get underway. Who'm I kidding? I am already at it. 

Here are some photographs from late March and the first week of April in 2024:

Cool cycle: great for grapes and fruit trees. We need these long hours of temps between 32 F and 50 F for the buds and fruit to set properly.  Here you can see the grapes have not yet budded.  Underneath the grapes, note the thick bed of tiny iris shoots.  It will be some year for irises!

Five varieties of plum line the northern wall of the asparagus beds. On March 29, bees were already buzzing on the trees! Some of the plums appear to be in bud break, a vulnerable season since we still have the entire month of April to get through. A deep freeze after bud break might destroy the crop for the year.  Here at the end of March, there is still nothing out of the asparagus beds yet. 

Above on April 2:    We're locked in a wonderful cool cycle now, warmish wet days and cool nights. 

What to do with this soggy springtime?  This is the time of year to get our potato beds in shape, to plant some more bare root fruit trees, to do some roto-tilling of what will be this year's bean garden and to wander around marveling at the profusion of flowers that are already beginning to blossom. So far, the crocusses, daffodils, and hyacinths have made their way into blossom.  Next up, the plum and peach trees are bursting bud a bit earlier than we'd hoped. But so far the weather is cooperating.  Promising a banner year in summer perennial flowers, the Irises and Lilies are pushing out of their beds. I'll have to think of a narrative foundation for this year's "Parade," if I have the time. Most important, this will have to be a year of spreading the irises into expanded beds! Perhaps the narrative of a new "Parade" will have to wait for next year. Maybe the _Mahabharata_ ?   One way to look at this might be to think, "work unending." But when you think about it, there are few things a fellow would rather be doing.

A peach orchard in early sprintime is a magical place.  Just thought any reader of this blog might want to see what I mean. The above was taken on an otherwise cold and dreary day, the middle of a flood watch on April 2, 2024. It had been raining all day and the thermometer stood at 42 F. As more of the peach trees break bud, this view will only get better over the next couple of weeks...unless, of course, we have a hard freeze.

Bud break on a peach tree: April 2, 2024. 

Above:    April 2nd bud break on a pear tree...the blossom is not so spectacular. But just wait for these sweet moonglow pears. 

Above:  Most apple trees are still in their dormacy. But April 2 bud break on some of the early apples begins.  Not so dramatic. But in September, a year or two from now,  a nice juicy, sweet, crispy Gala from this tree will be a fantastic second breakfast. 

Above:   Cherries have not yet broken bud on April 2.  Let's give them a few days and the earliest ones will begin to blossom.  

 

                              Potato bed as seen from the south, looking north: seven trenches 30 ft long each. 

Potato beds still being dug.  Our last bean garden occupied this plot. In the late fall we buried a few inches of oak and maple leaves in a rolling trench. Those leaves have now moulded into a rich, black soil supplement, about 2 inches thick and 4 inches below the soil's surface.  Last week we did some light roto-tilling. Today I began shoveling it into 30 foot trenches.  Sometime before mid-April, we'll begin planting the seed potatoes. With two of these larger plots rotating between beans and potatoes each year, coupled with the augmentation of the leaf mould, the soil (which when we started was dry cracked red clay,) and its resulting potato yields, have gotten better with each season. We'll be planting three varieties of potato this year: Yukon Gold, Pontiac Red, and White Kennebec. 

                   Potato beds looking west.  Note some of the pear trees back there, just beginning to bud. 

                                                                      Potato beds still being dug, looking south. 

April 10 Update

The fruit trees continue to buzz with the sounds of at least four kinds of bee, including some honeybees, which must be coming from wild hives in the woods since none of the neighbors raise bees. 

                   Peaches, Cherries, Apples, Pears, Plums all in blossom. Bees in ecstasy. 

April 17 Update:    Around here, about half  our year's gardening efforts are accomplished in cold, wet weather we call Springtime.: numb toes in socks that you can't ever keep dry. But your compensation, if you live here, comes during the rest of the gardening season. By May 15 and afterwards, it will be hot and dry, "too daggone hot" is the local nomenclature for when the sun oppresses and the clay soil bakes into a cracked dry substance that can not be shoveled, rototilled, or otherwise managed. Then, best you can do is to get out a hoe and try to fight back the weeds. 

Still, there are several high points to spring gardening. Most important, you can still imagine that all of what you plant will come up and produce beautiful and bountiful crops.  One of the most satisfying ideas you can contemplate is a crop of potatoes which will feed you and the neighborhood for next winter, spring and summer. And potatoes from the garden really do taste much better than potatoes from the grocery store. 

So we love to grow potatoes.  We usually grow three varieties; "Pontiac," a red potato with a creamy white flesh, "Kennebec," a thin skinned white potato that is apparently vital for authentic German potato salad (a summertime staple here), and "Yukon Gold," a thin skinned potato with buttery flavor and a yellow flesh that we use in mashed, smashed, baked, and fried potato dishes as well as potato dumplings that one MUST have to go alongside any pork roast. 

So join us as we close our eyes and imagine wheelbarrows full of potatoes, dug during the last few days before first frost.  

Behold Potatoes In:  This is what 50 lbs. of seed potatoes look like after most of the work is done. Once they have germinated, we will put down straw, add another layer of soil, and pull some weeds. 

Also April 17:  Most of the blossoming on fruit trees is finished. Cross fingers now and hope for weather that does not dip below freezing. 

                                         The last of the peach blossoms for the year. 

To be continued next week...

Parade of Irises 2021 This time down there in Lorraine Township

 Today we enjoyed the first blossoming of Irises of 2021, so the annual parade continues.  In the past our blooming season was narrated by some of literature's most beloved stories, including J.R.R. Tolkien's, Lord of The Rings and Homer's Iliad.  This year, we'll name our iris varieties after some of our neighbors down here in Lorraine Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. We'll use the blooming progress of the year to introduce some of those people (and animals) and tell some of their stories. 

But if you'd like to read their stories, you can always check out my unpublished yet available for free on PDF novel. It is right here. 

 Because these neighbors are all here in a small, non-descript place you never heard of before, (or to be more accurate they lived here during some part of the past four hundred years, or some will be here in the next fifty years or so) it is the township itself that binds the story. This is not a quest narrative, unless you mean a kind of quest in which all of the characters have already become located right here. More a coming of age type of narrative group, but this time it is the coming of age of a township that believes of itself many ill fitting myths, mythology such as its self perceived lack of diversity and its self image of a place without a history worth uncovering. This is a mosaic of stories about a whole bunch of people who started out or ended up or came through the spaces which we now call Lorraine Township, a very true place even if its reality might be questionable. 

First, let me help untangle what may seem to be a jumble of unconnected stories.  I can assure you, they are all connected. Just as in human life itself, the clue to understanding one event may be contained in a passing conversation which happens in an entirely different time and place; we never learn all about someone or sometime all in one go, it comes to us slowly in dribbles. Also, all of the narrators are also themselves characters. So it is important to understanding the story for a reader to look for clues about who it is that spins that yarn and why they may be doing so. 

First up, The Jordan Roberts Iris.  It bloomed today (May 2) in a small clump between a couple of grape vines, almost never where you would expect to find her.  More photos of The Jordan Roberts will be included here as her blossoms emerge during the next days and weeks. 

May 5

May 11   Jordan Roberts still going strong

So who is this Jordan Roberts?  Imagine a young teenager, waiting tables in a restaurant in a small village that can't even support a diner anymore. She's quiet by nature, not out of any kind of shyness or slowness. But even at a young age Randi (who would grow to become Jordan, but that's a 'whole 'nother story.') understood that she just did not ~get~ the rules most other people play by. So she compensated by paying close attention to the details of what they say and the rationalizations they use. Trained as a historian, Randi/Jordan would one day in some plausible future attain the rank of Brigadier General during the uprising, and she would publish two books, read mostly by specialists. 

 

 The Bethany Reichert blossomed May 5

May 11

Bethany Reichert, born to be a teacher, picked her academic field against the well intentioned advice of almost everyone in her University.  Most told her to select a single field in which to prepare. Several explained the importance of choosing a field that had lots of job openings. "Why study Philosophy," they would ask. "Nationally, Philosophy mints six hundred new PhD's per year with usually only a dozen or so job openings."   Bethany was not dissuaded. She studied Philosophy because she was interested in the architecture of the academic fields themselves. The often arbitrary and usually unnecessary boundaries between one discipline and another were problems best studied, she thought, as a philosophy problem. More concerning, she thought those arbitrary boundaries shaped the curricular expectations used to design the requirements for undergraduate education. The disciplines dictated the majors and the majors offered determined the sustainability of the disciplines. And Bethany's central question was always, "How does this self referential system help a young person in their life?" So she got her PhD in Philosophy. Of course, she had to accomplish extensive reading and coursework in many academic disciplines for such a broad study. Her dissertation took her several years longer than most scholars ever take. But she finished, finally.  To the benefit of many students of American History and American Literature, and yes, even a Philosophy course now and then, "Professor Reichert" became one of the most respected teachers in all of her fields, winning lots of acclaim and teaching awards, but more importantly, she was remembered fondly by countless undergraduate students as one of the hardest and most interesting teachers they ever encountered.  

May 11:   The Jonathan Fost

Jonathan Fost, himself, a study in stark contrasts, held a PhD in History, but his own writing often became poetry instead of prose. He focused his academic studies on Revolutionary France; but got the degree from a German University. Worse, almost all of his post grad school publications focused on the history of American Natives, especially the Sioux speakers of the Northern Plains.  At various times of his life he came across to his neighbors as as too obnoxious to tolerate, a snob of food, drink, literature, history, his vocabulary, and always poetry. But he also struck some as kind, sincere and often something of a hillbilly, a hayseed interested in old Appalachian banjo and fiddle music, livestock, bass fishing, and perennial flowers. A pipe smoker who drank too much, Jonathan made a deal with the devil in his early teaching career. But he realized it in time and spent much of the rest of his life achieving a kind of redemption. Though he makes reference to this rather often, we only learn of this in detail by reading some of the letters he left his heirs and assigns attached to his Last Will and Testament.  In those letters we learn the identity of the devil and the exact terms of the commitment. It may be a surprise.  Born and raised down in Mississippi, a lowlands county called Yoknapatawpha, (maybe you've heard of the place?) he spoke with something of a southern drawl  after spending, by far, most of his life right here in Central Pennsylvania. 

5/13  "The Matilda Ptesan-Wi Fost, or just "Tilde"

A patch of Tilde Fost on May 20: 

Tilde Fost, born in 1977, died of complications from a kind of Childhood Leukemia in 1986, just a few months before her Mother was killed in a suspicious car crash.  Tilde was the adored great-granddaughter of Henry "Pap" Gannister; as such became in her few years here the apple of the eye of Lorraine Township.   In Tilde's memory, her father placed a memorial bench on the Thousand Steps, a nearby foot trail. An astonishing genealogy fact: Tilde was a Great Great Granddaughter of Sitting Bull. 

 The Matilda Trumsdorfer Braun Iris bloomed on May 18

Matilda blooming on May 21: 

  Lorraine Township's founder's own mother and the elder daughter of the first grantee to hold title to thousands of acres purchased from the William Penn Family, Matilda Trumsdorfer's life out here is important to understand if we seek to have any idea about our history.  A small nearby town was named for her; originally named "Fort Matilda," and changed to "Port Matilda" by some enterprising local businessmen interested in spending the least amount of money to change the name while attracting a canal operation; afraid the word Fort would remind folk of the town's role in the French & Indian War. Matilda achieved local fame when she helped prevent a massacre of several Native American families by holding the would be perpetrators in check with two muskets, taken from the murderous raiders, while a son could make a 20 hour round mule trip ride to a garrison to notify an Army outpost. (While her husband spent the night holding a rag to the side of his head, dazed and confused about what he was witnessing.) All night Matilda waited with the remaining loaded weapon pointed at a Presbyterian Preacher who had planned and led the raid on a settlement of so called "praying Indians." Somehow she had discharged the other musket when she thought someone else was stealing her mule, shooting the ear off her own husband by mistake. But that is a story you don't hear much anymore. Many many years later, Jonathan and Margaret Fost would name their daughter after Matilda Braun. Other than this, you'd probably not heard of her. 

The Rudolf Braun bloomed this afternoon (May 18).

You may remember meeting Rudolf, at least you heard a little about him already.  Rudolf wanted to be a scholar. One day as he headed to University on a road near Marburg Germany, he was picked up by a group of soldiers, conscripted against his will, forced to enlist into a unit that would be leased to the British Empire to fight a war in America. He never made it back to school.  One night in America, while the sixteen year old had to sit sentry duty just south of Trenton NJ on the night of Christmas Day in 1777, that bad luck turned good, sorta. He was somehow NOT captured as the sun came up when George Washington crossed the Delaware and marched most of Rudolf's unit into an up-country POW camp.  Instead, Rudolf hit the road and lived by his wits until he almost starved.  By the next Christmas, Rudolf was just a desperate skeleton. Then his luck turned. "Imagine, roast goose and chestnut stuffing in the Pennsylvania Backcountry!"

 Rudolf is a man with a son that is growing to be just too much like him in some ways and too much unlike him in others.   

The Gregor Braun on May 18:    Not to be confused with the similar Rudolf Braun iris, the Gregor is a bit bluer on the purple spectrum and does not have the thin cleft of purple in the white falls. 

Gregor Braun was the youngest son of Rudolf and Matilda. Like most young farmers in the region, he spent his youth plowing, hoeing, cutting and hauling wood, planting beans, picking beans, and tending to animals. One day this young man had had just enough of Rudolf's tyranny and took to his feet. His initial plan was to head west and find some land of his own.  His first night he spent at a nearby settlement of Native Americans where he helped repair a barn roof in turn for a place to sleep.  From that night forward, they jokingly called him "Two Handles," for reasons that have not survived the rising fog of local history. Gregor made good time on his quest; earned his daily bread by doing chores for farmers along the way.  But something happened that made him stop and turn back around. He went  home, learned to speak French, inherited half of his parent's spread, founded the township, and became one of the gentry farmers of Huntingdon County, "Mayor Two Handles."

The Lorraine Braun on May 18

The township was named for her, yet Lorraine was not born here. Still, Jonathan supposed she was instrumental in insuring the township's most important landowner and founder ended up staying instead of leaving. Like "happy ever after" stories?  This one's for you. 

We first meet Lorraine just as Rudolf Braun happens by her front door in a small village called Philipsburg. But Jonathan knew, some two hundred years later, what Rudolf did not know right then on that afternoon: that Rudolf's youngest son had also been in that very front yard, just hours before the old man made an understandable if bad decision. Did Gregor know his old man was right behind him?  I asked that question of Jonathan who lit a pipe and said, "dunno. But the little gift Lorraine gave to Rudolf, intending for it to be handed on to Gregor, is pretty compelling evidence that at least the girl knew Rudolf was Gregor's father. I'd bet they both knew." 

The Germanica Irving Cullpepper first blossom of the season: May 19,2021

The Gemmy

Quite often Jonathan Fost joked that "the whole township turned on the love of Germanica."

Then he'd usually snort and laugh at his own pun that nobody else seemed to ever get. Germanica is the

scientific name of the iris, which is why "Gemmy" was named Germanica. Gemmy's mother was the famed

Bess Irving who finally presented the fire engine red iris to the national society and won both the prize for

the discovery and it was named in her honor. But apparently that variety was only an instable hybrid. Within a few

years the bright red iris morphed back into this rusty red iris with the golden center named after Bess' daughter.

And it was for the love of this Gemmy, the person, that a young man, not from here in many ways, took up the project of

iris breeding, presenting Bess Irving with a "sure 'nuff" fire engine red specimen that could win the national

honors. Several years later this same young man would marry Gemmy, and their children would inherit most of

the most valuable lands in and around Lorraine Township. So it was both the love of Gemmy and for the

love of Germanica that the township would move. If you don't laugh at his little joke, it will be alright. Jonathan

has gotten used to that. Oh, yes. Every once in a long while, something in the genetic make up of this variety

of iris causes a specimen of the Bess Irving to show back up. Nobody has been able to stabilize the bright red cultivar

for long. But when someone is able to do that, it will probably come from Lorraine Township, again.

The Ellen opened on May 20

Our tallest iris, pure white with a golden center. This iris is a reliable variety that can be easily doubled

each year.

Here is a bed of Ellen on May 25:

Thanks to the antics of my real third grade teacher, Mrs. Trailer, teaching in some place called Fyffe Alabama,

I am aware of the importance of watching for allusions in literature. As Mrs. Trailer would spring over

desks, in her full skirts, while pretending to spear Hector or raid the towers of Illium, she would warn us

to pay attention for clues in reading any literature. If there's a woman named Helen in the plot,

or a woman wearing a helmet, or someone throwing lightening bolts, you can bet they will be talking

about The Illiad, she told us.

So here is a story with a Helen, or at least with a name that came from the Greek word for Helen; this one, unlike Homer's Helen, was expressly stolen.

One in a thousand and wait 'till you see her photograph! (It is in the PDF of the Novel. She is standing like Venus, out in the yard wearing nothing but a halter!)

The Alexander Hamilton blossomed on May 23

Alexander Hamilton is probably my most autobiographical of characters. He appears on the scene

at a low point for his family one day when Rudolf looks up from his bean planting and sees the starving

mule colt walking upstream beside the small creek called Yellow Spring Run. His mother, long gone at

that point, was one of those Federal mares, ridden here by a major in the Army assembled to put down

the whisky rebellion. Her breed was Kentucky Mountain Horse, but she was raised near the city;

so she had a particular weakness for that wild backcountry jackass type, like the ones being raised

on Canoe Mountain in Indian Town. Alexander Hamilton's sire lived over on Canoe Mountain, one

of many unnamed donkeys roaming the mountainside there; and he soon passes out of remembered

history. But Alexander goes on to join the Braun family and was famously standing by on the day that

Matilda Braun shot off Rudolf's ear. Year's later, old Hamilton died rather suddenly, pulling a too

heavily loaded wagon full of logs that had become stuck in the wet clay bank of a creek, just a

matter of feet away from where he was found as a colt. The fourteen year old Quaker boy who

had been driving the wagon ran home for help. But when they got back to him, old Hamilton was

already dead, apparently his heart burst while still trying to pull that cart out of the mud.

The Ptesan-Wi blossomed on May 23: 

Ptesan-Wi, later "Tess," almost never talked. While she supposedly spoke with her sons from time to time, this was usually the utterance of one word supported by a long series of gestures. For Tess verbal communications seemed an unnecessary pastime.

At a very young age, as a runaway from federal marshals who were scouring the hillsides for her and two other runaways, she moved into a tumbledown stone hideout of the notorious Simon Gannister. Still in her teenage years when she started giving birth to sons, (first Si and then Henry), Tess's neighbors, those who knew she existed anyway, generously began calling her Simon Gannister's wife. The truth was even a darker secret.  Tommy Talon, one of the two co-runaways had grown to be her lover and common-law husband. That young man fathered both boys, as it turns out, but was himself the target of Simon Gannister's aggressive predation. Simon continued to keep Tess and the boys hidden out at his hideout, just to insure that this other young man, probably the only human on Earth that Simon ever cared for, would stay close to him. Tess was a kind of insurance policy for Simon.  

The story of Simon's capture and death at the hands of the posse has many internal contradictions.  The posse spent the morning shooting from behind rocks on the south side of the river and Simon was found dead, it turned out to be a stab wound, at the top of the hill on the northern bank. This has led many an objective historian to the conclusion that Simon had already evaded the posse by escaping over the hill behind his hideout, up there where he kept his horses. But when he crawled up that hidden path and right at the point where he would have come to the top to take a standing position again, someone planted a knife directly in his chest. That someone would have known to expect Simon and would have known of the escape pathway. I believe that someone was Tess, because her actual lover and the genetic father of her young children she called "Iktomi"  had been taken by the posse earlier in the day and happened to be already in jail, awaiting his hanging in the public Williamsburg square much later that evening. Tommy was accused of being in the Simon Gannister "gang," tried at a bonfire in front of the town hall, and executed sometime around midnight. 

After the inquest, when the local elected judge returned most of Simon's ill gained lands and wealth to his own friends and neighbors that he declared the rightful owners, Tess and sons retained only a small mountain of granite and limestone. At the time this was considered worthless land, a place that could not even grow beans. Tess and her sons would turn that mountain of stone into the township's only goldmine, benefitting from the appetite for trackside firewood and then crushed stone by the growing railroad. Later, the expansion of the national highway system, and its need for an infinite supply of crushed gravel, expanded the business beyond what even its youngest founder could ever have imagined. 

Who was Tess and how did she end up here in Lorraine Township are whole 'nother stories unto themselves. 

 The Asta Beek bloomed on May 24

A survivor. Born in Manhattan, sold to some slave traders while still in her late teens, Asta died on Freedom

Mountain, an outcropping of tumbled stone located at the point where the Little Juniata River is joined

by the Frankstown Branch. She died after almost thirty hours of what she would have called "birthin

labor" after a year long cross wilderness trek with a man she really never knew. Her baby would

be raised by that man in a woodland populated by several villages of Native Americans and one

escaped Irish indentured servant.

The Gretchen Gannister opened on May 24

Gretchen was Tilde Fost's mother, Jonathan Fost's wife, Pap's granddaughter, and the organizing motive

force for the Gannister Brother's Aggregate Company operations. She figured she could wish happiness

into existence by a steadfast determination to be and to remain happy. And she seems to have been

happy; happy right up to the last six months of her life.

The Henry Gannister a/k/a "Pap" blossomed on May 25

The Si Gannister bloomed on May 25:

The Larry Nesbit bloomed on May 25

Larry is my muse of wisdom about whom you will learn as he narrates and is narrated. Born just a few miles away from where Jonathan is from, Larry Nesbit got his professional start on a horse drawn cart with his Grandfather. As they pulled through Baltimore residential neighborhoods, Larry remembers his grandfather singing "Top Soil, Toooop Soil" in one direction and then in the other direction he would sing, "lawn leveling. We level your lawn."  When Larry was eight years old he looked up at his Grandfather and said, "you get that top soil from those lawns, don't you?"  His Grandfather just pulled Larry's hat down over his eyes and laughed.  This lesson Larry never forgot. 

The Mick Berger bloomed on May 25

Note: Mick is the author's favorite character.  Born on December 6, 1959, he plays the role of the muse of TRUTH.  And that role takes courage. It's easy to tell the truth when the world wants to hear what you have to say and when everyone believes you. Courage is required to tell the truth to a world that would rather not have its presently held notions contradicted by new information.   Of course, as we learned from Kant and Hume, what we presently believe about the world will conspire against our human abilities to accept and process any new information. If they are right, how on earth do we ever learn anything new? This problem kept Jonathan Fost awake at night. 

For thousands of years the Greek World believed Hesiod. The Hebrews believed David. The Moslems believe their Prophet. And Christians believe the Gospel writers. One of the greatest story tellers of all time, a holy man named Vyasa, is believed by most Hindus.   Why do some people believe in some explanations for things and yet nobody believes Mick?  Not to be confused with _Theogony_ a poem by a shepherd named Hesiod, here is the first of three chapters of an epic poem as relayed to Jonathan Fost by Mick Berger. 

The Benjamin Talon bloomed on May 25

Benji Talon was the son of a long line of locally prominent lawyers and judges. When he first graduated from Law School he landed a job with a firm in Harrisburg, married a girl whose father was the managing partner and that almost ruined his life. So he got a divorce, quickly took another job, and created a specialty in immigration law while living near Berlin in Germany.  There he met the love of his life one morning as she walked into the room, already engaged to another, in her third trimester of pregnancy. Everything she owned in the world was packed in a too large backpack she had with her in the law office. To hear Jonathan Fost tell the story, Benjamin proposed to her in front of her then intended, while sitting there at the conference table in the law firm's least expensive meeting room.  More amazing than that story is the ending. Supposedly, Lena said yes to Benjamin immediately, with the confused history teacher previous fiancé, yet not the father of her child either, congratulating the two of them before hugging Lena once more, shaking Benjamin's hand, and then departing the law office to catch his train. Watching that history teacher bolt out of the glass walled conference room, you'd almost get the idea that he was much relieved. 

The Ludwig Lukenbach, a/k/a "Simon Gannister" bloomed on May 28:

You've been patiently awaiting The Lena Roscha (my muse of beauty.)   She bloomed May 28: 

The Rajh Ruhr bloomed May 28: 

The Stanislaus Kestutis, "Stencil" and known for a spell as "Baby Devil," but that was a long time ago and far far away. It bloomed on May 28:

The Jaloo-ca Poh-Li blossomed on June 4th. Looks like the end of our parade this year.