Ungardener meet Gardener: Grappling with human instinct in the woodland

Clearweed is native but still an aggressive seeder in garden beds and woodland alike.
Photo by Dee Salomon
After ten days of holiday away, I returned to a jungle where there had been woodland. That my jungle is a proliferation of aggressive natives rather than invasive plants means that my efforts at clearing them off the property is working. But now what? What is the ‘right’ thing to do when native species grow out of control?
I have never seen so much Clearweed, Pilea pumila, on our land but with the amount of rain we have had this summer I am not entirely surprised to have seen a carpet of it spreading over the strawberry groundcover and throughout the woods.
Until I read about this plant several years ago on Margaret Roach’s “Away to Garden” podcast transcript I did not know that Clearweed is a food source to at least four types of caterpillars. With that knowledge I then left a swath of them around. Now I needed to make a quick decision. I began by pulling the bigger ones, cutting off the bottom half of the plant below where the seeds nestle around the stem. There is so much moisture in the translucent stems, it seems to me that leaving the stems could be useful for the soil. As the smaller ones grow I am getting to those as well but there are thousands left.
I find myself in a perplexing situation that is, perhaps, the next level of ungardening — making decisions that are less about restoration and more about ensuring both a diversity of native species and, dare I write it, imposing an aesthetic — my aesthetic — into the woodland. More like a gardener than an ungardener.
Terms like “wilding” and “ungardening” suggest letting nature have its way which, more often than not, becomes synonymous with unruly, out of control and messy. My human instincts fight against that notion; most of the time, in most circumstances, I want control over the visual. When it comes to the woodland, nature’s way is usually good enough for me…most of the time.
Consider the native plants whose seeds are enclosed in nature’s Velcro. Enchanters Nightshade, Circaea lutetiana, has attractive leaves and a rather delicate spray of tiny white flowers above them. But those flowers turn into burrs that attach themselves to animals and, left to their devices, spread profusely. I pick them, knowing that I will never get them all and rationalizing that their riddance will continue to allow me to walk more easily in the woodland.
The burrs on Virginia Stickseed, Hakelia virginiana, are even stickier than those of Enchanters Nightshade. They have ruined several wool hats, many pairs of work gloves and a fleece jacket or two, not to mention the havoc to Scout’s fur. This plant also gets an unsightly mildew on the leaves mid-summer, making for an easier decision on aesthetic grounds. I cut it back when the mildew appears and before the flowers turn into the nasty small burrs. I have read that Native Americans used the roots for medicine but I cannot find any information on whether the seeds are an important food sources for birds. It could change my opinion...
Apropos of seeds — there is a profusion of them this year and my office is lined with paper bags and small jars into which I have collected an abundance: Devil’s Walking Stick, Aralia racemosa; Wild Sarsaparilla, Aralia nudicaulis; Dolls Eye, Actaea pachypoda; Mapleleaf Viburnum, Viburnum acerifolia, Hobblebush, Viburnum lantanoides; Early Meadow-rue, Thalictrum dioicum, Foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia and others. I will plant some in the woods and some in the marsh where we have so far cleared out about half of the stilt grass. (Thank you to Jane for the suggestion of the Mini Dragon weed torch with its pinpoint flame.)
There is enough Penstemon digitalis seed, when it is ready, to send a packet to ten readers. If you would like a seed packet please send your mailing address to me at dee@theungardener.com. First come, first served and I will respond to all of you to let you know if you are one of the ten or not.
Dee Salomon “ungardens” in Litchfield County.
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.