Heart & Soil. Des Kennedy

by a covered walkway so that firewood can be fetched, or the composting privy visited, during winter without our getting drenched in the process. The pitch on the shed roof is rather slight, something like thirty or thirty-five degrees—not steep enough for cedar shakes but, we calculated, not too steep for a sod roof.

      Never one to do things correctly if an inexpensive alternative is available, I first created a sod roof employing multiple layers of asphalt paper, salvaged metal roofing and plastic sheeting. It was an incontrovertible failure whose initial small leaks gradually swelled into cascading rivulets that completely undermined the raison d’être of a roof. Eventually I tore the whole woeful business off and started afresh. A builder friend advised that we use EPDM, the rubbery fabric sold in garden centres as pond liner. After pawning the silverware, we purchased a single piece large enough to cover the entire roof. Balanced precariously on top of a ladder, trying to push the whole roll up onto the roof, I was almost thrown backwards by its weight and dashed to the ground, which would have put a definitive end to both me and the project.

      Eventually, with the aid of my helpful nephew Greg, we got the EPDM spread out and covered to a depth of about ten centimetres with the soil and sod I’d removed from the previous roof. Then came the practical problem, which arguably should have been addressed before starting, but wasn’t: How does one prevent the entire works from sloughing down and off the roof? I consulted a roofing specialist. As is frequently the case with specialists, the fellow seemed incapable of thinking outside the box, the way we enlightened generalists so often do. His dismissive response plainly implied he thought me mad to be putting sod on a pitched roof. Undaunted, I devised a clever scheme of laying a row of old bricks along the edge of the roof, hoping, rather than knowing, that they would be sufficient to hold the soil once the November monsoons began. Miraculously, they were.

      Having survived the engineering phase, we were now poised for artistry. Across the south-facing half of the roof we planted a variety of creeping sedums—the little Sedum obtusatum whose tiny, fat, succulent leaves turn bronze-red in summer; the yellow stonecrop, S. reflexion, that inveterate spreader with its showy summer lacework of tiny bright-yellow flowers; the white-flowering native S. lanceolatum; ‘Dragon’s Blood’ sedum; and whatever else we had around.

      Next, a planting of the more robust sempervivums, long recognized as worthy rooftop dwellers. Then several clumps of chives from the vegetable patch. A scattering of species tulips: Tulipa linifolia, T. tarda and T. turkestanica. Lastly, dozens and dozens of snow crocuses and Dutch hybrid crocuses. All of these are plants that will thrive in thin, poor soil, are aggressive enough to compete with wild grasses and can withstand extreme drought in summer.

      It’s the crocuses especially that give us our low-tech “jump on spring.” Sheltered from freezing breezes by the house, raised above the cold earth and tilted toward the pale spring sun, the south-sloping roof becomes a jubilant tapestry of new grasses and brilliant crocus blooms weeks before most of the cold garden below has awakened.

      The crocuses and a few of the tulips have held on over the years, while sedums, sempervivums and chives have flourished. Grape hyacinths, Muscari, have found their own way up onto the roof. The aggressive little gold-moss stonecrop, Sedum acre ‘Aureum’, has also fit in well, its froth of tiny yellow flowers spilling charmingly over the edge. By midsummer the whole sloping surface is a lacy cascade of yellow and white sedum blooms among golden grasses. Certain ground dwellers from one floor below are also finding their way up and over the edge of the roof. An ‘Albertine’ rose has proven very adept at scrambling across a back corner, her long arms putting down rootlets as they go. On the other back corner, a rampant honeysuckle smothers the rooftop with fragrant blossoms, a particularly welcome component with the privy immediately beneath. Two other roses, ‘New Dawn’ and ‘Mme. Grégoire Staechelin’, along with a Clematis ‘Nelly Moser’, have also gotten a bit of a rooftop toehold.

      Some plants did not adapt—a ‘Silver King’ artemisia packed it in after a year, and several clumps of rose campion, Lychnis coronaria, decided they weren’t really high-rise dwellers either. The little tufted blue fescue, Festuca glauca, which from its colonizing activities in stony spots below we’d imagined would adjust nicely, failed to acclimatize. But, all in all, unlike its unfortunate predecessor, the roof has been something of a minor triumph. The jewelled carpet of plantings, like a small patch of alpine meadow, is directly at eye level from the kitchen window and you could hardly wish for a more heart-lifting vista while washing the dishes.

      Still, I do take to musing that the roof would be a perfect spot for a bank of solar panels—eminently desirable, although not entirely compatible with the current illusion of a wildflower meadow. Truth to tell, if we were to start over again with building a house from scratch, among the many things I’d do differently would be putting a sod roof over the whole thing, for temperature regulation as well as beauty. And with solar panels, of course. But, for the moment, we shall have to content ourselves with this modest sod roof on a shed and the simple pleasures it gives, as when the snow crocuses are laughing their colourful heads off at the jump they’ve gotten on spring.

      Romantic Gleanings

      An unusually cool and moist spring on the coast might have prolonged the melancholia wrought by a very wet winter had it not been for spring bulbs and perennials exulting in the wet and cool conditions. The winter aconites, snowdrops and crocuses seemed to linger far longer than usual. Lines became hopelessly blurred among early-, mid- and late-flowering bulbs, so that we had crocuses still hanging around while hyacinths and narcissi were in their prime and the early tulips were already blooming. The ecumenical effect was a splendid show that compensated handsomely for seldom ever seeing the sun.

      Plus, the time was right for pondering the myths and legends that attach to the flowers of spring, many of which originate in the fable-rich regions of the Mediterranean. It’s fascinating how so many of these ancient tales concern loss, rejection and death—tragic narratives one wouldn’t readily associate with the exuberance of spring.

      Crocus is a classic example. Greek legend has it that the flower was named for Crocus, a beautiful youth of the plains who was consumed with unrequited love for Smilax, a shepherdess of the hills. The hapless youth pined away and died of a broken heart, whereupon the gods transformed him into the flower that bears his name.

      Rooted in misogyny as it may be, this familiar theme of unrequited love, featuring a cold-hearted maiden and soft-headed swain, echoes an old Persian legend that tells of a young man smitten by a beauty who declined to reciprocate. She may have had her reasons, but being peripheral to the narrative arc, these went unrecorded. The snubbed lover fled to the desert to die a lonely death. As he languished in the wasteland, weeping for a love beyond his reach, each tear falling in the desert sand was transformed into a beautiful tulip in bloom.

      The theme of tragic love is given a slightly more Hollywood spin in a tale about forget-me-nots. Here, the story is of two young lovers meandering together along a riverbank. The gallant youth takes to plucking forget-me-nots for a posy to give his beloved, but he accidentally tumbles into the torrent and is swept away. As he’s being dragged under, he flings the posy onto the bank and cries out to her to “forget me not!” And, indeed, who could after a dating stunt like that?

      A more upbeat version occurred “on a golden morning of the early world” when an angel spied a daughter of Earth sitting on a riverbank twining forget-me-nots in her hair. Enraptured, the angel beseeched the powers of heaven to allow the lovely earthling to accompany him into paradise. But the powers of heaven, working the angles as they usually do, would only grant the damsel immortality after she’d sown forget-me-nots in every corner of the world (something forget-me-nots don’t really need all that much help with). Our girl set about the task, aided each evening by her doting angel. Eventually, the job completed, maiden and angel entered paradise together, since she had gained immortality “without tasting the bitterness of death.”

      Still, the bitterness of death remained a major theme in heavenly springtime goings-on. Consider poor Hyacinthus. This beautiful youth was loved by the sun god Apollo, and also by Zephyrus, the west wind. One fateful day when Hyacinthus and Apollo were playing quoits (a celestial version of pitching horseshoes), Apollo tossed his quoit and jealous Zephyrus blew on it so that the heavy disk struck