“As I drew in my head and was turning around, down the chimney Saint Nicholas came with a bound…”  Clement Clarke Moore

During his life, he is given credit for being a very nice guy:

He gave dowries to three girls who would otherwise have remained husbandless.  The three bags of gold that he dropped through their window (or down their chimney!) can still be seen today as iconic symbols outside any pawn shop door. 

He resurrected three young boys out of a vat of curing spices after they’d been slaughtered by a hungry local butcher.  Our own tradition of serving ham for the holidays might have started with that pork barrel.

He was responsible for taking by deception two years supply of wheat from a ship’s cargo meant for the emperor in Constantinople.  By miraculously replacing the grain, the sailors successfully delivered the measured cargo but the starving people of Myra had not only sustenance but seeds for spring planting.  This is a reason why he has become the patron saint of sailors.

For whatever reason, this man has become the icon of gift giving in a season of darkness.  His named has become synonymous with impulse we have to give until it hurts.  People even collect images of him hoping that more will be deposited on his journey around the world on Christmas Eve.

He lives in a magical world of light and eternal happiness.  His journey is one that we would all emulate.  Whether he is named St. Nick, Sinterklaas, Santa Claus, Pere Noel, or Father Chrismas, he fills the world with joy.  Let us join with his goodness this holiday and welcome in the New Year with good cheer.

“Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter.  Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it!”  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This season is ripe with reasons for celebration.  It is the ancient passage of the sun through its winter solstice.

Their members make up the choir of angelic voices while the parts in the pageant are given out to the children of faculty members.

 

The choir is made up of members of the Viking Lodge. The children of the Santa Lucia Festival are family of Muhlenberg College Faculty.

Her special day is recognized on our current Christian calendar by its proximity to the Winter Solstice on the old Julian date.  You’ll remember that it was Pope Gregory XIII who in 1582 corrected the drift of our annual vernal equinox by dropping 10 days out of that year and adding our celebration of Leap Year.  It’s all about the sun and worshipping its return in time for the spring planting.

The Star Children carry lights into the darkest night during the Santa Lucia pageant

So, Lucy’s lights helped our faithful and/or pagan Swedes to know when they should gather in the sheafs, put away the pigs and cows, and watch out for the spritely Tomte.  These last are the creatures of the forest who come in-doors to taunt and tease with their tricks and trials.  They are always the cutest and most-anticipated of actors because they are portrayed by the youngest members of the family.

The Tomte are always the youngest children participating in the pageant

 

 

After the pageant, all assembled adjourn to a feast that includes a hot spiced toast to the ancient ways.  Glug or Glog or Glub-glub-glub.  It’s the sound that the marinated raisins and almonds make as they are swallowed whole in the partying mix.

 

Carl Linnaeus was present to lecture on this particular festival of light and the reminder it brings all of the reason for the season.

Carl Linnaeus celebrating the Santa Lucia Festival with the Viking Lodge

 

 

On a cold winter’s night, it’s a grand way to stay warm.  A very good and toasty time was had by all!  Gut yul!

“I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman!”  John Adams (to Abigail)

John Bartram interrupts the official duties of the Doorman of the house belonging to the National Society of Colonial Dames of America

I received a request to appear at the home of colonial dames in New York City.  What was I to think?  How should I respond with such a chasm of misinterpretation potentially drawn out before me?  Colonial dames?  Do gentlewomen easily accept such a label?  But, it would seem to present a perfect opportunity for a John of any age to appear.  So I took my heart in my hand as I responded to the contact.

“What does the group want from me?” was my opening gambit.

“Well, some of our members have heard of you and we’d like to know what you could do for us.”

My age sometimes betrays me.  I was slightly confused.  But I gamely pushed on:  “I can do much, Madam.  But who or what specifically do you wish to appear?”

“Is there anyone else you do?”  The confusion multiplied exponentially.  She was good, this woman to whom I was speaking.

Not wanting to give too much away, I hesitated and tried a round-about route:  “Many lives intersect in all of God’s creation.  Each of us play many parts and live in many ages.  I can be many different men to many audiences.”

There was an intake of breath.  I felt myself blushing.  Perhaps I had gone too far.

“Let us begin again,” I said.  “Perhaps it would be better to tell me what group you represent and why your confederation of ladies gather to become enlightened.”

That opened the flood gates of information.  I discovered that I was being asked to present a horticultural lecture to the members of The City Gardens Club of New York City.  Confusion was at an end.  Arrangements were discussed and a date was confirmed.

John in the gracious entry hall of the magnificent Colonial Dames when speaking with members of the City Gardens Club of the City of New York.

Unlike any of my preconceptions, the group was perfectly well-behaved and attentive.  If anything, I was more the fish out of water.  Imagine, a centuries’ old Quaker cavorting with the sophisticated horticultural doyennes of the City Gardens.  I was humbled.

I was even ushered into the event by a man of my own time and dress.  We saw eye to eye about the ease with which the world can be deceived by looks.    Time distorts even the truth of the original intention:  Colonial and Dames are not an abstraction in this marbled hall.  The ghosts of history ask us to attend to the needs of country, family and honour. 

And I am present to speak on the living world of horticulture.  It is a thread of centuries.  And I feel as though I’ve come home.

Then they served tea.  I didn’t note who poured but a great good time was had by all…

Tea was set and served after the horticultural presentation.

“Bibamus, moriendum est.”    Seneca 

For most of my early life, religion forbade me to imbibe.  In age, I’ve turned that corner and reflect on Seneca’s wisdom:  “Let us drink, for we must die.”  Temperance and forbearance aside, there is a newly introduced liqueur crafted from some of my best intentions and surest herbs.

Benjamin Franklin sent me a case of Rhubarb roots in 1770.  I planted them and they thrived.  From my garden, it was introduced to the rest of North America.  Long esteemed for its medicinal properties, Rheum, was traded by its root only.  It was many years before people came to understand that the stalks and leaves could be used for culinary benefit also. 

I was the first to make a tea out of extractions from the leaf.  It was delicious fortified with other steeped herbs and flavoured with sugar or honey.  Now someone has taken my elixir and increased the proof of its benefit.

I take the quotes directly from the manufacturer in Philadelphia (but the photographs are my own!)

“RHUBY is based on a centuries old Pennsylvania recipe and is totally unique in the marketplace. There has never been anything like it…at least not since 1771. This is the year Ben Franklin sent John Bartram America’s first rhubarb seeds. Bartram proceeded to make a delicious garden tea with rhubarb, beets, carrots, lemon, petitgrain, cardamom, pink peppercorn, coriander, vanilla, and pure cane sugar. We took this recipe and turned it into a spirit!  There are as many ways to enjoy Rhuby as there are vegetables in a summer garden.”  http://www.artintheage.com/spirits-products/introducing-rhuby/

The producers have included a wonderful small broadside that they attach to every bottle.  It describes the connection between Franklin, Bartram and Rhubarb.  The purchaser can find my picture in the upper left hand corner of the label.  And my name under it, also!  I thank them for the notice.  Even more, I thank them for this truly enjoyable decoction.  It is noble in its originality and venerable in its history.  Even my cat has a nose for it–as demonstrated above.

At this time of year, it is especially appropriate to think about the creativity we all enjoy in celebrations.  This libation would garner untold and rapturous praise for the crafty host or hostess who served it. 

To your health and good will!

Rhuby enjoys its moment in the spotlight on John Bartram's kitchen counter

“A great many roots may be put in a box…under the Capt’s bed or sett in the cabin.  Nail a few small narrow laths cross it to keep the catts from scratching it.”    Peter Collinson in a letter to John Bartram 1735/36

“A box…20 inches or two feet square and 15 or 16 inches high & a foot in earth to be enough.”  Peter Collinson to J.B. 1735/36.  From which dimensions can be deduced the average size of the space underneath the ship’s Captain’s pillow.

The elements that conspired against the success of our venture were many and maniacal in their insidiousness.  But we persevered and ultimately triumphed. 

John Bartram welcomes all of the captains in the Cope House

A ship’s Captain was always welcome at our table and in a spare bed.  Kindness to him was always repaid with a better berth for the plants we were trusting to his traffic over the seas.   My wife was constantly encouraged to give them hospitality in my absence.  They were the partners in our endeavor who could most quickly ruin the merchandise. 

They could literally “sink our ship!”  

The Cope’s were another Quaker family in Philadelphia.  Their trade was in trade.  They owned and operated one of the most successful shipping enterprises out of the docks.  Their packets were some of the fastest and sleekest to be found in the world of their time.  And with the thriving of their business our trade was enriched.

And money flowed both ways across the Atlantic.  Fortunes were made in the trade that included the horrors of slavery as two legs of the shipping triangle.

Ground plan for the creation of the Cope family compound that was to become Awbury Arboretum

John Bartram stands at a focal point in an English-style landscape at Awbury Arboretum. It is the closest that he's gotten to the actual thing.

 

In other words, MY plants came back to us identified only as select parts of an “English Country Landscape.”  Somewhere, God is laughing.  At the time, my family just continued to sell the same trees.  They just didn’t have to ship them as far.

“I and most of my son Billy’s relations are concerned that he never writes…”     John Bartram to his brother, William about John’s son William in a letter dated December 27, 1761.

With David caring for the technical needs on my last visit, I spoke to the members of the Pinelands Garden Club with visitors attending their annual luncheon from the Haddonfield and Moorestown Garden Clubs.

A large group was gathering as J. David Bartram help John set up his presentation for the day's entertainment.

“The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to its culture…”
– Thomas Jefferson, Memorandum of Services to My Country, after 2 September 1800.

Cypripedium spp. (Lady-Slipper Orchid) is our native North American species. It can be found throughout the northeast on the floor of the forest.

I have added more than 200 plants to the international horticultural inventory.  Although it is wrong for me to state it, I am proud of this accomplishment.  That sense of pride has certainly come at great cost with little chance of repayment.  I have spent months of my life in inconvenient travel through miles of forest trails climbing countless trees and mountains in search of unique and wondrous new species.

My pride is one of the seven deadly sins.  But I consider this transgression less than many that my fellow men easily commit without thinking.

A path along the small-leaf laurel border at Jenkins Arboretum

Nowhere has the pride of my inventory of plant material been more favorably showcased than Jenkins Arboretum!  It is a natural gem in my horticultural crown.  I have been there in many seasons and I will continue to return because there is always some fresh delight waiting to attract my eye.  If there were to be a better designed heaven-on-earth I would not recognize it as greater than this:  http://www.jenkinsarboretum.org/

The sun sets on a small leaf laurel. One of the my personal favorites.

  Although it has a number of magnificent specimens of many trees of my introduction, Jenkins has a large collection of small-leaved laurels and other relatives of the family that has come to be called Rhododendrons.  Jenkins has plants of the genus Kalmia.  And let me say that Peter Kalm, then and since, was a common thief and user.  He took food at my table!  He was sent to my garden by Carl Linnaeus to plunder my treasures, steal my secrets, and accept all of the “free” plants he could stuff into his valise.  He spent three years in North America “discovering” its many horticultural wonders.  He returned in triumph as the founder of dozens of unrecognized and unknown species.  Carl named Kalmia after HIM.  Not me!  It was an astounding rebuke to all of my hard-won knowledge and hard-earned collection of unique plants.  Peter Kalm’s collecting triumphs came mostly by digging them out of my front yard!  Just imagine the supreme audacity of the man! 

When I think of how I treated him as a second son, the wrath builds up within me.  I am at such odds with this person who stooped so low as to willfully accept my hospitality while at the same instant was considering how many of my other children he would steal from under my nose.  There was a time when the wrath of God would not have been equal to my fury.

Wrath.  It is but another deadly sin!  So, I fought against it and overcame it.  And through discussion and prayer with my wife, Anne, the feelings gradually faded.  I am whole again.

Forest floor filled with ephemeral spring blossoms of Aquilegia canadense and Tiarella

On a quieter note, Jenkins Arboretum has a dusting of spring ephemerals sparkling on the floor of the forest in April and May:  Mertensia virginica , Tiarella, Trillium, Aquilegia canadensis.  Everywhere one looks there is a reminder that spring blooms eternally.  Spring is a celebration of rebirth and abundance.  Glorious.  The term ephemeral carries with it a meaning that may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  In man’s haste to clear and root and build and expand, these spring ephemeral plants are threatened with extinction.  Because they disappear during the heat of summer, they many times escape our memory.  In my travels, I always remember where they’ve been.  But many times, once I’ve noted them and wished to collect their seeds in the following season, I’ve returned to find the colony gone without a trace.  They can disappear at our passing.

The Cypripedium or Lady-Slipper Orchid is one more of these delightful spring ephermerals.  It is a true native of North America.  You might remember that within every box of plants that I shipped overseas, I included a root of our native Lady Slipper Orchid.  It was a trademark.  And a challenge.  I dared the English aristocracy to make such a spring as ours that would allow them to bloom.  It took years and the creation of an industry of glass-house manufacture until Peter Collinson was able to duplicate the perfect combination of nature’s cycle.

Mr. Harold Sweetman chats with John Bartram prior to his appearance at the lecture.

Mr. Harold Sweetman, the director of Jenkins Arboretum, has put a clump of these fine Lady’s Slippers at the intersection of the main trail with the lesser path to his front door.  He lives within his domain.  His is a perfectly sustainable life.  How I envy his existence. 

Envy!  That is the third of the deadly sins that I have admitted since the start of this observation.

And with that I should end to tempt God’s forbearance no longer.  I beg your forgiveness.