Cabbage is not high on the list of plants that get mentioned in botanical love poems or odes to nature’s beauty. “Beloved, thou hast brought me many cabbages” — not likely. Stand aside and make room for hosts of daffodils (so angelic) or bunches of roses (so red, red).

But Brassica oleracea capitata has its own beauty, in a leafy, humble way.

The plant pictured above is particularly pleasing to my eye because the secret to growing cabbage in Sewanee’s climate has eluded me for many years. The springs are very cold, then suddenly switch to blazing heat; the cabbage looper caterpillars are abundant and bring with them an “all you can eat” attitude; and the late summer droughts are unfriendly to cabbage roots. Cabbage came from the wet, temperate climate of Northern Europe. It is out of place here.

But this year, I found a variety that seems to do well: Johnny’s “Storage No. 4” — evidently named by a modern Wordsworth. I helped the plants along with a little Bt to control to loopers, gave them some extra compost, and kept them moist during the summer heat. For a modest plant, they certainly like being pampered. If you’re looking for a cheap pastoral metaphor, there it is.

So far, they hold well in the chill, even in snow.

Here in Sewanee, we take our dead, bearded patriarchs seriously. Socrates, Shakespeare, Darwin, Muir, God, God Jr., and Santa Claus all have their devotees and proselytes. Never mind that some are more convincingly bearded than others (biologists note with satisfaction that Shakespeare’s ratty bristles are unimpressive next to Darwin’s substantial cloud), the important thing is that these men are dressed right. With the Advent part of the Advent semester upon us, it was time to give Darwin some bling. So, today, on the final Biodiversity Friday of the semester, my Biodiversity class visited Darwin’s Garden one last time and arrayed our Victorian gentleman in seasonal finery.

Darwin’s Garden is located in the atrium at the center of Spencer Hall. It is a celebration of life’s history, with a walkway divided into the various periods in Earth’s history, starting with the Cambrian. Darwin was sculpted by Sewanee Biology graduate Jeanie Stephenson who did a fabulous job of including many of Darwin’s favorite creatures in her sculpture: finches, orchids, Galapagos tortoises, fossils, and even an earthworm on his shoe. Darwin’s bulldog stands close by.

We’ve used the garden throughout the semester to get a sense of how events in life’s history relate to each other and to understand the passage of time. It was fun to cap off the semester with, well, a cap for our guide through this journey, Mr. Darwin, the evolutionary biologists’ Virgil.

Last year I piled all the old squash vines together in a stack the size of a sofa in an attempt to compost them. They decomposed a bit, but by early summer were still mushy. I think they may have been the source of the powdery mildew that affected my early squash plantings. This year, I’m burning the old vines on a bonfire, hopefully incinerating the mildew spores. And, the burn gives a nice sense of finality and closure to the summer garden. Moving on…

I’ve also pulled the tomato plants. The roots on this one show how large and vigorous individual plants will get if given enough room. I plant them about five feet apart, a distance that seems ridiculous in May, but by August, the tree-like plants are enjoying growth unfettered by competition. In this case, less is more: these vines are more productive than those from my previous practice of crowding plants in staked rows.