Well that Sure Escalated…

Aug2

Sometimes I’m stubborn and set in my ways, determined to make something work and prove I’m right. Other times I can turn on dot, easily distracted and influenced, and just one idea can derail an entire plan. About three weeks ago I went to a daylily farm, and even talked to a daylily breeder. I bought one. I went to another farm. suddenly I found myself going back to the first farm and getting a few more and now suddenly I like daylilies. Hmmmm… did not see that coming…

Some Brookside daylilies which have been added to the garden. It’s nice to have something green in the yard.

My mother might point out that at one point, maybe thirty years ago, someone planted dozens of daylilies alongside the garage and some of those clumps still remain today, but that was a long time ago. I thought we were past that.

The front border still looking a bit fried. Recent rains have greened up some of the lawn weeds, but only the rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) looks completely unbothered by the dry weather.

I guess not. Plenty of good people like daylilies, so what’s the harm in adding a few? With the garden still a depressing shade of sun-faded khaki anything which can shrug off the dry heat can only be a good thing.

Purple gomphrena and angelonia don’t mind the heat, but do need regular watering to keep this fresh and bright. I think it’s worth it.

No one even noticed a few new daylilies, but they did notice the water bill jumping up last month. I admitted that maybe it was the garden causing this, but also pointed out the garden-fresh vegetables were surely worth it. Fifty dollars for a couple zucchini and some lettuce, thankfully there was no cost to benefits analysis done to double check my logic.

Regular watering helped stave off the worst of the baking in this end of the front border, but even without watering I suspect ‘Blue Yonder’ agapanthus would still look unbothered. I’m so glad the bulldozer missed this one, although my seedlings and several other things in this bed were lost.

Triage by watering hose was saving a few things but fortunately I went and scheduled a camping trip for last week, and this brought in a nice storm which actually soaked in a little.

Cestrum is remarkably easy from seed and only grew faster in the heat. At first I was underwhelmed by the small lemony flowers of the first seedling (in my hand), but a couple weeks later, other seedlings began to open up larger orange flowers, similar to their ‘Orange Peel’ mother, and it was all good.

A nice soak, cooler temperatures, and then another surprise shower this past weekend have made all the difference in the garden. No more wilted plants making me feel guilty at every turn and the lawn even has a green haze to it, although it will still be a while before I need to fire up the lawnmower again. I think this just-in-time rain will also help the little tree frog tadpoles immensely. They’re just starting to sprout legs and leave the pond, and I don’t think venturing out into a desert would have been the best thing for my little babies.

There’s a big range to the tadpoles with some already out and about, others well into leg-growing, and a couple still just fat little polliwogs.

I’ve been coming across baby tree frogs in a few spots around the garden. Unlike the gray adults, the babies are a bright green with a dark mask around their eyes.

Baby gray tree frogs (Hyla versicolor) have a leafy green color while the adults take on more of a bark/lichen gray color.

My fingers are crossed that a good number of them make it.

Even the frogs like the new daylilies.

New daylilies, baby frogs, and a decent rain. It’s not perfect but it’s a good position to be in for the first week of August, and as long as no one asks how the construction is going I think it’s still better than a cold day in January.

Have a great week!

Summer Arrives

Jun14

It finally feels like summer here with warm sunny days, an end to school bus traffic, and summer parties running full force. These are those lazy, endless days which you remember from when you were a kid but think you grew out of. Work is a pain, there are all those responsibilities, but I say forget it and take the summer back. Spend a day in the hammock doing nothing and then read half a book somewhere the breeze is blowing. Maybe a good thunderstorm will be enough to wash the car, and hopefully someone gets the hint and orders some pizza. A sick day is not out of the question, and the lawn mowing can wait another couple days 🙂

The fresh new growth of summer always looks great, even if there’s about twice as much growing in this foundation bed than there needs to be. I’m starting to wonder just how big a dwarf blue spruce can get.

I talk a good talk but there is still A LOT I’d like to get done before we click on the automatic watering systems and head to a beach or the mountains. Tulips were dug last weekend, new tomatoes planted, lawns mowed and edged… many other things planted, weeded, mulched, tidied up… it needs it after I was away for a week for work and then completely unmotivated for another week as I nearly overdosed on painkillers while a toothache worked its way out. I’ve recovered from both but surprisingly while the gardener was down for the count, the two teens here didn’t jump in and trim and edge and weed and water like I’d been hoping they would.

I was always luke-warm to the ‘Husker Red’ version of penstemon digitalis, but I really like the pink flowered forms. I believe this is ‘Dark Towers’.

Honestly I’d rather not share my garden. I’m tickled when they show an interest, but other than plant a few beans or pick a few onions I’d rather not give over a whole bed to their experiments. I’m sure I would if asked, but the bad parent in me wants it all to myself.

I think this was Penstemon digitalis ‘Pocahontas’ but I’ve let it seed throughout the bed and may not care 100% about keeping the patch pure anymore!

The kids find enough to keep occupied even without having a vegetable garden to weed. Someday I suspect this general disinterest will change and someone might have a plant question, so to prepare for that day I’ll keep expanding things here so that when the time comes I might have an extra snowdrop or clematis to share 😉

The pergola is one step closer to a cloak of vines. The climbing roses were upset by the cold winter, but the clematis seems just fine. I suspect this is ‘HF Young’ although I didn’t buy it as such.

I have been dabbling in a few things. the kids may not want to experiment but I’m fine with it. One of the best things is that my little Lilium pumilum is alive and flowering. When I looked up the spelling on this thing it was a little insulting to see it referred to as ‘one of the easiest lilies to grow’. Easy I guess if you don’t keep pulling it as a weed or mulching over it or building a raised bed over it and forgetting where it was. That would probably help, but since it keeps coming back and flowered in just two or three years after seeds were sown, I guess you could call it easy.

The coral lily (Lilium pumilum) with its glossy scarlet turks-cap flowers. Seeds would be a nice thing so maybe if I can avoid yanking the plant out after bloom I could raise a whole patch.

Lilies and clematis and penstemon are nice but it’s the little pots of rhodohypoxis which are thrilling me right now. Unlike the monkey poxis of central Africa, the Rhodohypoxis of southern Africa are a small corm which sends up pink or white flowers which look as if they were made of paper by a ten year old. They’ll flower into summer and maybe again here and there late summer, depending on the mood.

I think the hairy leaves are almost as interesting as the exceptionally modest flower. No curvy pistils and turgid stamens on display here.

They’re not hardy enough for the open garden so mine are all potted, but my less than expert ‘throw them all in the cool but not freezing garage and then put them out again in late March’ method of care seemed to work out all right. A few rotted though, and I’m not sure if they were too cool and wet in March or if they dried out too much over the winter. I suspect maybe I put them out too early, but in my defense I thought they were sick of the dry winter and would like the cool rain bringing them out of dormancy… maybe…

Rhodohypoxis baurii ‘Pintado’. I believe this is my favorite.

As you may suspect there are a few other things which came out of the garage these last few weeks. The winter garden plants are slowly finding homes, the pots of caladiums and pineapple lilies and whatever else overwintered in a pot are hopefully resprouting, and the bags of cannas and dahlias have been thrown open and watered as they await planting. My driveway is the definition of a ‘pot ghetto’ and I cringe every time I see Monty pull out a perfectly stored dahlia clump and pot it up in his greenhouse and then contrast that with my trashbags on the concrete. Hmmm.

The driveway probably shouldn’t look like this but give me one more week and maybe there will be noticeable progress.

I could really use some more unsuspecting garden pals who would believe me when I say they need a crate full of dahlias and cannas. I thought better safe than sorry when I dug them, but now I’m wondering how safe I thought I needed to be. Surely there’s plenty of room for them, right?

I don’t need more plants but of course I was exceptionally excited to see a few sprouts in the magnolia seed pots. They’re so small I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to find room for these, and even better that only four seedlings are up. Two would be more than I need.

Only a fool would complain about a lack of planting space and then join a plant society devoted to trees, even if those trees are magnolias and magnolias are super awesome and wait, there’s a seed exchange and I can order bunches of seed? Sadly even I can’t justify more than a year or two of magnolia seed starting…

It was just a little seed…. but five years later Magnolia macrophylla is doing great in a completely inappropriate spot. Largest simple leaf and flower of any native North American plant. Who could resist?

Seriously though, if we could justify building a ridiculous addition onto our already reasonable home, why can’t I also have a few more magnolias than I need? Maybe shade gardening isn’t all that bad.

The tropical garden is looking more Crayola than Caribbean but at least it’s not the disaster it was last week. Besides weeding I finally trimmed out all the dead winter-kill from the ‘Black Forest’ rose and the ‘Golden Sunshine’ willow in back. Both are awesome.

We will see of course. This garden has a 50/50 chance of going completely off the rails at any moment, and I still can’t believe there’s no garden police pulling me over for too many new bulbs or unplanted seedlings. Hmm. I hadn’t even thought of those. Oh well. At least it’s not a garage full of assault rifles, I guess I could have have exercised my American freedoms in that direction just as easily, so too many plants crammed in too few spots is still not the worst thing.

Have a great week! I’m off tomorrow to volunteer at the American Rock Garden Society’s annual general meeting in Ithaca NY. Someone thought it would be a good idea to have me help out at the plant sale and I’m sure they’re right, but personally I think it’s a terrible idea. They might as well of put me in charge of ice cream scooping or m&m counting, or had me test to see if the Nutella is fresh. Whatever. I’ll do my best and make sure my wallet is stuffed full and the back of the car is empty. Any receipts will hopefully blow out the window on the way home and if someone asks they were all leftovers. Wish me luck 😉

May I say Amazing?

May27

As we approach the end of May I’m pretty sure things couldn’t be better. There was a moment (actually quite a few) when I was sitting in the backyard, looked about and thought to myself, ‘wow, this is friggin awesome’. It wasn’t just one thing or another, it was the warm breeze, the scent of iris blooms, birds chirping, the wind rustling fresh foliage, flowers here and there, it was all that and it just feels great after months of seemingly endless cold.

Three warm days and a few rain showers ended tulip season and moved the garden into it’s blue phase with iris and aquilegia.

To be completely honest there were a few days in there when the heat was almost bad enough to say something mildly bad about too much heat, but then a quick sit in the shade fixed things. With enough rain and sun you can almost hear things growing, and I like that.

When they were bulldozing the coal wastelands to build the industrial park behind our house I came across and saved two columbine plants (Aquilegia vulgaris) by digging and bringing them into the garden. Ten years later they’ve self-sown everywhere, creating a nice blue haze.

There used to be a lull in flowers between the last tulips and first iris and roses, but by carefully buying too many plants each year for the last few years I’ve ended up filling that gap. I shall try to keep up that effort and see what else wonderful results from overplanting. Maybe it’s the secret to thicker hair or longer life, you never know, better to err on the side of caution since I think I saw something once about a lack of new plants being linked to excessive weight gain and cognitive decline. Be careful is all I’m saying.

The yellow of King’s Spear (Asphodeline lutea) is back after a couple years of too much rabbit nibbling and columbine crowding. I like the spikes of bloom and will try and give it a little more space again.

This talk of new plants has me a little worried because work and a pile of mulch to spread has kept me too busy for my usual nursery runs. I did manage to finish off the front yard mulching, but after bailing out eight or nine bucket of water out of the basement Saturday I told my contractor he owed me another load of mulch. He agreed. A new roof is nice, but when all the water is now directed to a spot just above the basement door, and the gutter is missing, and you can see water flowing into the house it can be discouraging. Good thing mulch makes me happy.

All the early corydalis and scillas are yellowed and gone and with new mulch spread it looks almost suburbian neat in this garden.

Plenty of other things make me happy as well, and since many of the plenty are things which bloom in May, even the latest round of water in the house can’t dampen my spirits.

Amsonia hubrichtii is care-free in full sun and only needs a wack back to half it’s height in June to keep it from sprawling everywhere.

Even though the rain doesn’t need to fall in downpours of one or two inches it’s still worth it to have a green lawn in May rather than the beginning of drought. Everything seems happier after a good soak, provided there’s some sun and warmth afterwards… rather than endless damp and grey.

With all the other blue a new blue lupine was probably unnecessary, but I wanted something to go with the red one… and of course now the red one’s not flowering…

You may be wondering how the construction is going if all this rain and water is still getting into the house, and I wish I could say we’re almost there, but we’re not. Things are crawling along but with a contractor who is often a one or two man show, crawling is as good as it gets. Good thing we like him and it’s always (eventually) a job well done 🙂

With much of this end of the border bulldozed down, the weeping white spruce (Picea glauca pendula) has a chance to get the space he deserves. Maybe the fresh mulch will keep the bulldozer from coming back!

So bit by bit I try to bring back the parts of the garden ‘touched’ by construction. Areas are looking better but the pond was one spot I’d given up on. There are large rocks and nearly a foot of dirt which have fallen in, but just last week everything changed. I heard frogs singing, and then I heard more. In the muddy, murky waters I see many frog eggs and suspect this corner of PA will soon see a tree frog population explosion. I’m already trying to figure out what I can feed them with since I can’t imagine there’s enough whatever in this pond to feed so many future tadpoles.

There are hundreds of frog eggs in here, and those are just the surface ones which I can easily see!

So if all goes well this summer shall again see an abundance of baby gray tree frogs entering the garden. Perhaps that will make up for the missing garter snakes.

The stone wall is about as good as it gets. In a moment of brilliance all the potted succulents ended up on top of the wall rather than on the deck steps. I think I like it but it’s hard to level a pot on such ramshackle construction.

For all the rocks which came up out of the construction hole, I’m a little disappointed by how short a rock wall I was able to build. People who garden on rocky sites are likely rolling their eyes and saying we have plenty, come get a few, but nearly all my rocks are covered by shale and fill and would require a little quarrying to get to them. Hmmm. I’ve heard of people who have done as much and according to my book, if someone else has tried it maybe it’s not so crazy. Maybe I could start a ‘small backhoe campaign’ and start talking about backhoes enough that eventually someone will say ‘just get the stupid thing if that will shut you up’. That could be fun 🙂

The new wall makes a nice divider between the lawn and the meadow… otherwise known as where I mow regularly and where I don’t…

Having a backhoe BEFORE I moved several tons of rock by hand would have been a smarter move, but if the early settlers were able to clear a field by hand and build miles of wall I think I should be able to handle a few feet.

The succulents will spend all summer out here, unwatered for the most part and maybe here and there a splash of liquid fertilizer will land in their pots. Also maybe I’ll pot up another dozen or so other succulents I happen to have laying around. If 20 pots look nice wouldn’t 30 look nicer?

So what other silliness has been going on around here… the entire winter garden is out of the house but bags of canna roots and pots of caladium corms are still waiting their turn. Many of the deck planters have been planted and overall it’s nearly all overwintered things and not much new. That’s good for the budget but at the moment the repotted mandevilla vine looks like a whole lot of dead, and not quite the highlight of any summer display, so maybe it will still be a few weeks before I share photos of that.

The potager is remarkably under control for May. Garlic and onions are growing, tomatoes have been planted, and I suspect there’s another bunny nest in the tulips. Baby bunnies are too cute to resent. I will tell them to keep away from the lettuce.

In some parts of the garden I think I’m overcompensating for the construction destruction. The guilt of bulldozed and buried plants has me trying to make other areas extra-neat as I try to balance those out with areas I’ve abandoned.

btw chives (Allium schoenoprasum) might be my latest, latest, latest obsession. Here’s pink ‘Forescate’ with white ‘Album’ behind. I might have a lead on a darker variety and when I pair those with the regular lavender sort I think it will be quite nice. Oddly I can’t rememebr the last time I ate a chive, but whatever.

Speaking of abandoned areas, the snowdrop beds are all on that list. Maybe I’ll weed and divide things this summer, or maybe not. These days I can call it a wild garden and don’t think anyone will judge me too harshly, plus it’s always going to be much more interesting than mulchbeds and lawn, even though 90% of my neighbors would much prefer mulchbeds and lawn rather than the excessive plantings which find their home here (the other 10% are undecided).

Weeds amongst the snowdrops. A few nice things but I really need to remove the mugwort and powerwash that birch trunk!

Honestly sometimes I’m undecided if all these questionable plants and sweaty labor are changing things here for the better, but when the tadpoles come I will know they are. Actually every new thing which comes up has me convinced it’s all for the better… except maybe poison ivy seedlings. I can do without those.

Enjoy these last days of May, they pass far too quickly!

The Late Tulips

May13

I don’t think I have to tell anyone this is busy time of year, but I will and with that apologize for a lack of blog browsing (and blog posting which is also slacking but far less noticed) and all the other things I’ve been cutting out of my life as I spend way too much time looking at plants and wondering about plants and thinking about plants and just enjoying nice weather… all while also being required to go to work every day. Golly.

Tulip ‘Green River’ is late and cool and amazing, but also unattractive and not-showy… depending on your eye.

Work plus construction plus a guilty contractor who offered to deliver a load of mulch as a peace offering for delays. Mulch to calm the waters? You bet! It worked, and now I’m entirely distracted by weeding and mulching and staying cool in the sudden warmth and… there’s always so much going on at this time of year it’s like Mother Nature’s manic stage and I’m just as wired trying to keep up.

Not mulched but maybe next week?

I took these pictures yesterday evening and have just a few minutes to post them before heading out for the weekend. Thankfully that may prevent me from going on as much as usual but I just wanted to take one last look at the tulips before the heat and wind send them back to bulbs for another year.

Fresh mulch and tulips. That’s a first, usually mulch isn’t spread until the heat of July and I must admit it looks great -just ignore the barren borderlands where bulldozers and backhoes dwell.

Sad isn’t it? That they pass so quickly? Maybe, but for the slightly off-kilter amongst us there’s still the exciting time when bulbs are dug and the gardener can see just how many more tulips will grace the garden next spring! What’s more fun than sifting through tray after tray of fat tulip bulbs and thinking about next season already? -said no one… or maybe just one person who is currently deep into a tulip obsession…

The curling blooms will drop in the wind tomorrow, and given the forecast the rest might only last another week or so. Still, today they look great.

Obviously if I’m staring at tulips in between spreading mulch there’s not much else getting done. The rains and the heat are bringing on the first tidal wave of weeds.

I did dig and straighten out the boxwood hedge. It looks fine, and even better if a weedy tulip or two somehow find their way in.

Plenty of leaf mulch has kept down a good number of weeds, but this week I noticed potato sprouts and amaranthus and again I’m trying to tell myself to put on the big boy pants and take control of the garden with a little more direction and focus.

The broken tulips of last year are back, but were in a bad spot for tulips and are much smaller and barely multiplied. They’re also still awesome though, and I couldn’t resist including a photo. I believe that’s ‘Absalon’ in the center between ‘Insulinde’ and ‘Black and White’.

Most of the potager beds are ok, but only if you ignore the latest bunny nest amongst the tulips and the one bed where the mulch ran out.

The smoky colored tulip ‘Muvota’ has to sit away from the brighter colors in order to show well. That doesn’t mean it has to suffer the company of weeds, but…

As you may know, some weeds are much appreciated in this “garden”.

The white flowered, variegated money plant (Lunaria annua) is one of my favorite plants. I might need to leave more weedy spots for it to spread into.

Of course not all weeds are appreciated to the same extent. Each year I ask myself if all the bumblebees and hummingbirds are worth the swamp of jewelweed seedlings which I need to pull each spring. So far they are, but my patience does have its limits.

Jewelweed seedlings are nearly overrunning the primrose bed and a few need to come out so that I feel less guilty when I look at the Primula sieboldii patch. They really deserve more respect.

I’m still not sure Primula sieboldii is getting what it wants from me. For some it seems to grow like a weed, but here it seems to want frequent dividing and a little room to spread… both of which will be lacking during this year of construction and garden reclaiming.

I love the variety of flower forms from these American Primrose Society seeds. If things here get bad it’s such a relief to be able to get another packet or two from the society’s seed exchange to replace these little treasures.

Primrose and daffodils. Besides the tulips these two are carrying me through to iris season and then summer. My Qdaff and PHS daffodils purchases might be some of the best squandering of Covid relief money that I’ve seen in the past two years.

‘Magic Step’ in the low afternoon light of a beautiful day.

New daffodils and a stretch of cool weather have really brought out the colors this spring and it’s let me fulfill one little check off the bucket list. Many of my new daffodils are recent hybrids from the breeding work of Dr Reed of Michigan, and are some of his best work in bringing oranges and reds into larger cups and trumpet forms. The other yay is ordering a few bulbs from the work of the late Grant E. Mitsch and his daughter and her husband, the Havens, out of their farm in Oregon. Back in the day I used to put together wish lists from their coffee table quality catalog and then never order. Their catalog was about all I could afford, but of course that was then and this is now 🙂

In my opinion ‘Cherrygardens’ is kinda awesome.

Not all my daffodil experiments were an amazing success though.

‘Little Dorr’ is a huge, heavy, outstanding bloom, but…. has a little bit of a taste for dirt…

The rest are all cool though, and hopefully next year will be just as good.

‘American Classic’ has all the shading and straight cup that I like.

‘Bobbysoxer’ is also the nicest little thing, here attractively paired with my beloved New Zealand dead sedge which I suspect is still alive but you never know.

So that’s it from here. A weekend away and I’m sure the garden will not wait, so I expect summer upon my return. Maybe the mulch will spread itself and the weeds will leave to come looking for me. Or not, either way it doesn’t matter, spring is still awesome.

Have a great weekend!

Bragging Again

May7

The weather has finally warmed up enough here to get things growing, and as usual it’s the tulips and daffodils which are my absolute favorites. They’re not at all subtle and I think that’s needed in order to distract from the raw construction of other parts of the garden.

The border along the street is looking good with a nice show of returning tulips. Some have been in place for over five years and are way overdue for dividing.

Tulips and daffodils are a weakness of mine and it may surprise some that I’ve been on a strict diet for the last two or three years and haven’t allowed myself to buy any new bulbs until I take better care of what’s here. Crowded clumps need dividing in order to show off best and in the case of tulips a string of late freezes and excessively damp springs have brought on some serious plagues of tulip fire botrytis. Fortunately it only takes a few nice flowers in order for me to completely ignore a thousand other issues!

‘Marit’ might be in the top five of favorite tulips. The colors, shape, and size are just amazing to my eye.

This year drier weather has also been helpful in keeping the botrytis down. Between that and some Neem oil spraying last spring things are looking much improved this spring. I’m also ruthlessly ripping out infected shoots and thinning the foliage on still overcrowded clumps. We will see what ‘thinning the foliage’ does to next year’s flowers since obviously the bulbs need the foliage to grow new bulbs, but a few less bulbs might not be the worst thing either.

I’m not sure you can tell that these tulips have been thinned. The one clump of orange was missed, but the others were all dug in late May(?) far earlier than they should have been, and immediately replanted after pulling off and tossing all the smaller bulbs. I’m hoping the show next spring is again solid with color.

I’m pretty sure only the gardener will notice if there are a ‘few less’ bulbs next year. Exponential growth means a hundred tulips can become three hundred in just a year, so better to revel in the luxury of me doing the thinning rather than disease or *gulp* deer or other vermin doing it for me. Thank goodness the deer still avoid my garden.

An overcrowded daffodil patch. Sadly this is a newer replant where I thought I was leaving room, but really wasn’t as I tried to pack too many bulbs into too small a bed…

At least deer don’t eat daffodils. Someday the backup plan might be daffodils and a fenced in potager if worse comes to worst.

An airy little ‘Firebird’.

I don’t know if anyone remembers but ‘The Purge’ took place two springs ago, and daffodils were downsized to just under 150 varieties and that still sounds generous, but I miss them.

‘Tahiti’ will never be downsized. Even as a double in a garden where doubles are under-appreciated, it’s a favorite.

A new bed of daffodils would likely help. I think it’s worth a shot at least 😉

‘Coral Light’ also made the cut and looks excellent with some room to show off. If only I could do more of this planting-with-reasonable-spacing thing I think I’d be alright and things would look much better.

Where would this bed go? Who knows but it would probably involve less lawn and that’s also a good thing… unless someone wants a badminton net strung up and doesn’t want to avoid jumping over daffodil clumps…

The bulbs of ‘Mrs R O Backhouse’ did not look great after the purge, and I was worried, but many of these older varieties bounce back quickly.

‘The Purge’ reached a highpoint two years ago during the potager rebuild, and a couple daffodil plantings had to make way for the construction of raised beds. Sadly since then I’ve found that I don’t like the way the daffodils look in the raised beds, so that’s a new space problem, and even worse I love growing tulips in the raised beds. The digging and replanting seems to really help with controlling the tulip fire botrytis and I can spend hours each week just going back and forth looking to see how much they’ve grown each day, and what new surprise has opened up. Sometimes I really have to wonder where they come from when it’s a flower I don’t remember ever planting or it’s one I haven’t seen in years!

I tried to keep two beds open for tomatoes, beans, and zucchini plantings this month. Next year all bets are off and the whole thing might be tulips.

Actually here’s a confession. Last fall I did add 10 new bulbs of ‘Shirley’ and ‘Pink Impression’, so this bulb diet I’m on isn’t all abstinence and cutting back. Maybe it should have been though, since both varieties were mislabeled.

This is not the tulip ‘Shirley’ but still nice, and for a clearance bulb I can’t complain. The real ‘Shirley’ has more of an inky purple stain that spreads down from the edges as the flower ages, and of course I still need to get that one again… and keep this one now…

A friend with excellent taste in tulips pulls hers each year after bloom and usually I say no thanks, but this year I already put in a save request. I’m also looking through bulb catalogs. I’m also excited about how fat and vigorous this year’s crop of bulbs should be. I fear ‘The Purge’ shall be followed by ‘The Splurge’ and tomatoes will end up in pots on the deck next year… and I’m 100% fine with that! -until someone else here overrules me 😉

The view from my in-potager seating area. When the sun shines and the flowers open wide there’s not much getting done around here.

Usually the saved bulbs end up as mixes since it’s (1) easier and (2) it’s easier. Plus the gardener always misses a bunch of bulbs when digging, stray bulbs get dropped and returned to the wrong box, and the gardener is a little disorganized in general. He tries though. A solid patch of his favorite is always worth marking and digging separately.

I think this streaked orange is ‘Beauty of Apeldoorn’ and I wouldn’t mind a solid bunch of it, as well as the yellow behind which might be ‘Big Smile’ which is plain and yellow, and I have plenty of yellow, but it’s also excellent and I love it.

Don’t worry, there’s a good chance none of that will ever happen. Just getting the bulbs dug will be work enough and trust me the gardener isn’t one to go out looking for extra work.

Most of the tulips here come from generic Darwin Hybrid mixes, and often they turn out to be something else, but I believe the large reddish orange with yellow edges is the Darwin hybrid ‘Apledoorn Elite’ and it makes up a big part of the mix.

I bet a few complementary perennials would also look nice, but all we’ve got is purple deadnettle and a few self-sown clumps of bleeding hearts. There’s much to be said for careful weeding.

One year bleeding heart seed somehow ended up in the compost and they came up all over. Works for me I said!

Enough with the tulips, just one last photo on how much they multiply. I came across this picture from two years ago of all the ones which were dug and saved during the potager upheaval.

The potager tulips all descend from these few saved bunches. A few of the reds were added later as leftovers from the planters out front, but the nerd in me sees the baby pictures of ‘Red Emperor’ and ‘Apledoorn Elite’ just waiting to go back into the ground and explode!

Ok, one last confession. I may have mentioned I did buy a few new daffodils last fall since I had been so good during ‘The Purge’ and made so many adult decisions about how many was enough and how many was too much. They were all one or two bulb purchases from either QDaffs or PHS daffs and were more meant to support small growers and importers, and entirely not because I really needed them… but that sham is now falling apart. I was either sent more bulbs than I ordered or the quality was so obscenely excellent that one bulb really amounted to three normal bulbs, and now there are enough and they’re so awesome that more would be even better. Oh the cruelty of it all.

An older variety, ‘Bernardino’ with a newer variety, ‘Hyperbole’ behind it. Both are outstanding.

Fortunately I haven’t clicked on any new orders. Actually I think it’s downright irresponsible to even allow us to order more daffs while it’s still peak season here, and I kind of feel like I’m being targeted for my weaknesses… but on second thought I may be just fine with that.

‘Red Passion’ in front with ‘Rocoza’ behind. To a daffodilista that’s what red looks like, just like peach is often called pink, but whatever, I always enjoy the enthusiasm of the plant-obsessed.

So we will see if anything new is ordered. I’m leaning towards responsibility and frugality, and more adult decisions which consider available space and appropriate choices, but when you come home from work on a Friday excited for the weekend only to find it’s raining inside the bathroom nearly as much as outside, your resolve weakens. Plus there’s always that gardening budget just bursting with revenue from the new plant tax. Construction is still as expensive as ever but when this genius decided to put a plant tax on all building costs it’s been a huge windfall for my plant budget. This must be how the big oil companies feel when gas prices surge and then stay there… except that’s also my money vanishing… and it’s surely not being spent on plants…

In any case have a great weekend. It’s still raining here (although the extra shower in the bathroom has stopped) but at least the rain has kept me from staring at flowers all morning. Enjoy!

Snowdropping ’22

Mar12

It snowed Wednesday. It’s snowing today. Time to revisit last weekend when winter thought it would be funny to go North for a day and see what happens. Now don’t go thinking that spring exploded around this end of Pennsylvania in just one day. For that to happen it’s going to take a string of warmer days and we’re no there yet (maybe next week?), for this glimpse of spring we needed to crack open the kid’s college fund, fill the tank with gas, and head down South to the outskirts of Philly. Spring is revving up down there and it was the perfect time for Paula and I to celebrate our annual Snowdropping Day!

Snowdrops and winter aconite (Galanthus and Eranthis hyemalis) around the Scott Arboretum

It was a warm forecast with just a trace of rain in the morning, so of course it was pouring when we arrived at our first stop. Rumor had it that Swarthmore College’s Scott Arboretum is rich with early spring bloomers and plenty of Witch Hazel (Hamamelis), and that of course turned out to be true. It also turned out that I was able to cross off a bucket list plant sighting by seeing Leucojum vernum ‘Gertrude Wister’ growing lustily in what is rumored to be its garden of origin, the Wister Garden of the Scott Arb. This double Leucojum (actually a fused flower, not double) still needs to grow in my garden, but for now it is doing very well for itself closer to home.

A fantastic clump of Leucojum ‘Gertrude Wister’ at the Scott Arboretum.

Gertrude Wister by the way is a name it wouldn’t hurt knowing more about. She was an accomplished horticulturalist and author in both the Philly area and nationally and instrumental in promoting plants and horticulture in the mid 1900’s. You can read more >here<.

Winter garden standards surrounding the arboretum headquarters.

So with Leucojum ‘Gertrude Wister’ checked off the list we continued to explore the grounds while enjoying the soft and then hearty drizzle. It seems only right that our snowdrop day would bring on precipitation.

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) filling in amongst the trunks of a Metasequoia allee. Very nice if you ask me.

Actually the rain wasn’t too bad. I had a hat after all, so that at least kept my hair as stylish as usual.

Snowdrops, hellebores, and Rohdea japonica make for a nice groundcover under the dawn redwoods.

The rest of the visit was a ‘but wait, there’s more’ tour as we wandered from one witch hazel to the next. They were perfect and the rain only made their color shine more warmly, even when it stopped for a minute here and there.

hamamelis angelly strawberries and cream westerstede

From left to right, Hamamelis ‘Angelly’, ‘Westerstede’, and ‘Strawberries and Cream’

From pictures and descriptions I did not think ‘Strawberries and Cream’ would be a color I’d enjoy, but with a dark background and complimented by the yellows, it drew me in.

Growers of the spring blooming, Asian, witch hazels are probably aware that one of the more common problems is their tendency to hold onto last year’s dried and browned foliage. Some people claim to not mind but I prefer the leafless look, and have been neurotic about searching out hints as to which ones tend to hold leaves and what cultural conditions encourage leaf drop. I don’t know if I have any answers but we did see a few cultivars which held firm to last year’s leaves.

Actually I didn’t mind the bright orange of Hamamelis ‘Doerak’ against the rich brown of the wet leaves, but dry it out and I’m not sure I’d feel the same. Also there was another reddish cultivar who’s flowers were lost amongst the leaves, so I’m always going to place my vote for leaves-which-drop cultivars, and pass on this one.

Witch hazels are oddly rare in my neck of the woods, I suspect because they bloom prior to ‘go out to the nursery and buy all the plants for my yard’ day and people just don’t know about them, but slowly I’m finding plants and making a witch hazel show happen here. I’ve got reddish, orange, yellow, and need more of all but in the past I’ve been thumbing my nose at the ‘purple’ forms. Stupid me to think they wouldn’t show up in the brown and gritty winter landscape, I saw some awesome examples and of course now I have to do even more searching (Broken Arrow, Forest Farm, and Rare Finds Nursery will lead off the search).

Hamamelis ‘Tsukubana-kurenai’. I’m going out on a limb and suggesting this is a Japanese cultivar, and I believe I need this one.

A purple and another orange are just what I need. The oranges are my favorites, and ‘Chris’ has just enough of an orange tint to thrill me. I suspect it is named after the UK authority, collector and grower of witch hazels, Chris Lane, but I’m only guessing. Like many things today I feel like I can just guess at things and once they’re in writing on the internet that’s valid enough, but I’m digressing now… To sum it up here’s a >more qualified writeup on hamamelis< which you may want to look at. One mislabeled photo does not disqualify all the other excellent information the article contains.

Hamamelis ‘Chris’. Heavy flowering, large flowers, bold color. I loved it.

Hmmm. It seems like this might be a long post since I’m only about an hour or two into our day, but whatever. We’re up to about four inches of new snow here today so it’s off to our second Swarthmore PA stop, Hedgleigh Spring, the gardens of author/horticulturalist Charles Cresson.

I noticed that this is a neighborhood of above average gardeners, but Charles’ front garden states it loudly with a sweep of naturalizing crocus tommasinianus and patches of self-sown snowdrops.

On our last visit to see the fall camellias, Charles made the casual comment that we should see all the spring bulbs filling the meadow along the stream. Absolutely. We set the date but I’m not sure if Charles really expected us to go through with it based on the look he gave us when we showed up. I can’t believe it was the steady rain or our mostly soaked appearance because at least Paula had enough sense to bring an umbrella, I think it was explained later when Charles mentioned two phones suddenly began ringing the minute we pressed the doorbell. All was well though and off we went!

Some of the hellebores scattered throughout the grounds. My favorites are always the yellows.

Charles donates a plethora of special seeds to (among others)the Mid Atlantic Hardy Plant Society seed exchange, and I always have to smile as I see plants here which I have seedlings of in my own garden.

This ‘seafoam’ colored hellebore is one I have a few seedlings of. It has a greenish color with the slightest blue cast and I hope some of mine pick up a similar shade.

Several camellia seedlings also have roots here. Flowering was just starting but it still amazes me to see how vigorous these shrubs grow in this northern edge of their range.

The recent cold had only done a slight bit of damage, but the main show of camellias looked extremely promising.

There were quite a few other ‘wows’. The winter blooming Iris unguicularis was one of them. Perfectly formed flowers of rich colors were quite a surprise out in the open garden.

These Iris unguicularis had been enjoying the shelter of a clear plastic tote over the winter and I shall have to revive my own bucketing efforts because the results are absolutely worth it.

There were many Adonis cultivars as well. Some were just sprouting, some were being troublesome, and some were just excellent. In case you’re not in the know, Adonis amurensis is one of the earliest woodland-edge perennials to push up flowers in shades of yellow to red. Trouble free in a spot it likes, it’s not always easy to find a spot it likes, and at prices which rival snowdrops, the heartbreak of a lost plant is only matched by the sting your wallet feels.

Adonis in full bloom and quite happy. Single yellow is affordable, anything which runs to double or deeper shades of orange will require mortgage refinancing.

But enough on silly expensive perennials. We came to see little bulbs, and they were everywhere. Patches of named forms, drifts of the most common types, and seedlings galore with all kinds of excellent markings to thrill a galanthophile’s heart.

Small early bulbs were throughout the gardens. This is how I love them most, scattered and naturalized into comfortable patches.

Some of the patches were decades old and showed up all over, with the newest and rarest limited to just a few beds. Nearly each bunch had a story to go with it and to hear Charles talk of the forms and where they came from was a who’s who of the local gardening community.

Galanthus ‘White Dream’ was the most special non-special drop I saw. Amazing. Plain and white and perfect.

But what we really came to see was the meadow which lies behind the garden fence. When Paula got her first glimpse she grabbed my shoulder with that crazy look in her eyes which I of course never show and I was afraid she was about to jump the creek to get there.

The creek and meadow outside the garden proper. Mostly native perennials and bulbs. Lots of bulbs, from the earliest days of spring to the last days of fall.

Charles told us about the hours spent on knees digging and dividing and replanting clump after clump to spread snowdrops far and wide. Bulbs from elsewhere were added and over the last forty years seedlings have matured and clumped up and added their own genetics.

Most of the galanthus are G. nivalis, G. elwesii, and hybrids between the two. As usual crocus were everywhere.

We spent quite some time back there, first admiring the overall effect and then finally crouching down to examine anything and everything which looked specialer.

Charles and Paula inspecting the masses of daffodil sprouts and snowdrop blooms.

We found a bunch of cool things. I suggested that we take the three best forms and name them Charles, Paula, and Frank and start spreading them around in honor of the day, but of course they thought I was joking. Hah hah. Of course I was…

Prunus mume, the Japanese Apricot blooming away back in the main garden

We finished the tour and then continued to overstay our welcome. It had stopped raining and after I said how much I loved the Prunus mume and Charles said it self seeds all the time, we were all rooting around through the mulch looking for seedlings. Our visit had really degenerated into what it always does, the schedule goes out the window and we end up dirty.

Eventually it was off to the next garden. Matthew and Jamie Bricker were completely polite about us showing up at 5pm on a Sunday to drag them through the garden. They’re about three years into a new garden and it’s astounding how much they’ve already accomplished in a garden which had to be wrestled back from overgrown neglect…. Plus three kids and plenty of home improvement projects… I was suddenly very insecure about my own questionable progress 🙂

Just a small slice of the Bricker garden. Snowdrops were already spreading into decent clumps all over the garden, all nicely mulched with a plethora of sweet gum balls from the mature sweet gum trees (Liquidambar)

This is where the pictures end. We ran out of light before we ran through our hosts’ patience but it was great seeing how far this garden had already grown and the shape it was taking. We will hopefully be back. The Brickers are putting together an outstanding snowdrop collection and for local gardeners and Gala attendees they’re already a great source for potted extras. Once he gets more settled into the new spot I suspect he won’t mind being listed as a source, but for now… well it never hurts to ask 😉 I’m sure you’ll be able to find him on Facebook.

Snowdrops (‘Brenda Troyle’ actually) in the dark. It was still far too warm (and dry now) to call it a night.

I don’t know if Paula thought I was joking when I said we were still going to get through her garden by flashlight, but we did. It was warm, the drops were open and glowing, and the wind had settled down completely. For the first few minutes the rustling in the garden was a bit eerie but then we realized it was all the nightcrawlers brought up by the rain and active in the warmth and it was slightly less creepy. Even in the dark by flashlight with giant earthworms stalking us it was a perfect end to the day. Her garden looks great as all our gardens did that day, and as usual our snowdropping day was an excellent start to the season. Now if it would just stop snowing…

Thanks to our hosts, enjoy the season, and all the best!

A January Thaw

Feb16

Saturday I put on a sweatshirt and the Christmas lights came down. Of course the job is ten times easier when a couple extra hands join in, but surprisingly both children had much more important things to do so only the dog was there for me. He’s not quite as helpful as you might think. The lights all came down and then the porch got a good hosing off, and once that was done I rewarded myself with a little puttering around. The front foundation bed (the warmest spot in the garden) got a little cleaning up and the sprouting snowdrops are all ready to show off to best effect. Too bad we woke to actual snow the next morning.

Snowdrops up to their ankles in the white stuff again. Most are still just fine, although here and there is some singed foliage and freeze dried scapes.

You could barely call our last warmup a January thaw. First of all it’s February and second of all we barely melted the snow from the last storms and there’s still a good amount of ice in every shady bed and covering most of the lawn. I’m an optimistic early cleaner, but even I left plenty since I know the cold still has another week or so in it. Back inside to the winter garden. I’ve been taking cuttings and repotting amaryllis. Primrose are showing buds. It’s everything the outside garden isn’t.

Look at the cool foliage of this variegated pelargonium. No idea on the name, but I’ll be interested to see how much of the pink remains once the temperatures warm up.

The winter garden can use the attention since once things warm up outside I can barely be bothered with watering anything indoors. The amaryllis will be cool and a few are already showing buds, but overall the indoor gardening space is beginning to get tight with all the new pots I’ve been adding. I was joking with a friend that what I need is a spring garage sale to clear out everything from under the garage lights, but then what would I do if I needed a few dozen pots of succulent cuttings in June? Bet they didn’t think of that.

This red salvia is the perfect color for February. Cestrum nocturnum (night-blooming jasmine) is the taller plant and I really hope I get some blooms on it this summer.

Two pots of Cestrum nocturnum is probably one more than I need, but night-blooming jasmine is one of my latest favorite plants. It was one of those things which followed me home from a late autumn garden visit. “Take this, you’ll want this” was what I was told as branches were lopped off and pushed into my hands. Of course I dutifully added them to the haul and didn’t think much else of it until the sun began to set as I motored home again through the mountains. Slowly as the scenery turned to night I began to take notice of a sweet scent filling the car. Night-blooming jasmine is a real thing and I enjoyed a thoroughly perfumed car ride for the tail end of my trip. I’m already imagining a hot summer night where the deck is filled with a jasmine fragrance, but of course I shouldn’t count my chickens before they’ve hatched since any number of things can go wrong between now and then.

I don’t care though. It’s still February and 2022 will be the most perfect and perfumed gardening year this plot of earth has ever imagined or experienced. Weeds will be non-existent and rainfall will arrive perfectly timed and only at night. Mosquitos and gnats will lose their taste for (my) blood and I’ll practically live in the garden. And it won’t be a dirty, sweaty, often bloody life it will be all cold drinks and white shorts. Absolutely.

And if you believe that you’ll probably also believe I’m not going to mention snowdrops one more time. The forecast looks to be warming and plans are afoot for a Philly snowdropping trip late next week and I’m all ears for new gardens to visit. It will be fun I’m sure so until then enjoy your week 🙂

Winter Interesting

Feb5

A warm day, a storm, and now it’s cold again. That should bring this blog mostly up to date, and I don’t think anyone will be poorer for the summary. There are blogs with much more inspiring garden and snowdrop photos and Paddy’s ‘An Irish Gardener’ comes to mind immediately, and you may wish to pay him a visit before I get started since today’s tale of gloom and doom will not involve even the hardiest winter flowers flowering.

Golly Godfrey, you’ve been through snow and frigid below 0F temperatures, and now it’s an ice storm? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I surprised both myself and the dog when the camera was grabbed and the door was opened and we all headed out for a tour of the sleety garden. It was still all gloom and precipitation but I do like the look of an ice storm so off we went to see how things were holding up.

I’m not much for dead stalks as ‘winter interest’ but a nice bunch of sedum can hold its own all winter.

Overall it looked nice. Not good, because no ice storm is ever a good thing, but as long as we’re not losing power and can stay off the roads and not have to endure the cracking and snapping of falling trees, I can see the beauty in it. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and promises to bring out the sparkle of the ice, but with wind and temperatures maybe barely out of the single digits you won’t see me out there.

Possibly the most photographed Cardoon stalk of all time, this thing still fascinates me. I also love the russet hues of the ‘Dallas Blues’ Panicum as a backdrop.

I really can’t complain about the cold. All the sprouting things are locked up in frozen soil, just like they should be, and will now wait at least until late February. It’s almost a normal winter and of course that has me suspiciously waiting for the next shoe to drop.

‘Midwinter Fire’ is an excellent dogwood for winter color. I wouldn’t mind a few other colors but this one by itself puts on quite the show.

One down side to a ‘normal’ winter is that I’ve been banking on global warming and planted a bunch of stuff which doesn’t appreciate ‘normal’ lows. I guess we’ll see what happens this spring. Maybe the cold hasn’t penetrated too deeply yet. It was a very warm December after all.

A Magnolia grandiflora seedling of a hardier (I hope) sort. The leaves don’t look too bad, but March has a way of bringing out the damage and it’s likely all the leaves will drop by April.

Besides Crinum lilies, Agapanthus, and palmetto palms, there are the “hardy” camellias. I can almost feel them glaring at me as I walk around, and I know they must be thinking winter in Charleston would have been a lot cozier.

This ‘Survivor’ seedling still looks pretty good, in spite of the icing. Let’s hope it looks just a good thawed out again.

As long as it’s cold, I wouldn’t mind a good snowstorm to top off the ski runs and keep me out of the garden a little more. The slopes are all ice right now and that’s not fun. Also not fun is going into the winter garden and chasing boredom with pruners and potting soil. I confess I’m taking cuttings of succulents again, and if February doesn’t warm up soon I’ll be up to my ears in baby plants, none of which this garden needs.

Evergreens on the berm are slowly growing in to cover up the view of our industrial park neighbor.

Speaking of things the garden and gardener didn’t need: (1)the yard is still ripped up with bulldozer ruts and construction debris, (2) The under-construction sewer lines froze up, and sewer lines don’t drain when they’re frozen, and (3) Covid has come to visit our corner of suburbia. Everyone is in recovery and cases were mostly mild, but still it’s something we didn’t want added on the to-do list.

The promise of better days. Blueberry buds which will hopefully bring blueberries and fill a few pancakes this summer.

So now it’s down to reminding myself each evening that I don’t need new plants ordered when half the garden is in need of leveling and cleaning up. I’ve ruthlessly crushed dreams of more caladiums, dahlia gardens, bean fields, onion plantations, tender bulb experiments, begonia collections, mini conifer forests, sunflower fields… and that’s just last week. I’d still drop everything to drive an hour to pull terra cotta pots out of someone’s trash, but as of 11pm Friday, February 4th I have not ordered any new plants or seeds.

Hard to imagine now, but in just three months the dogwoods will be covered in bloom again.

Btw seed exchange seeds don’t count. They’re practically an obligation if you belong to a society and I would be selfish to not support the Rock garden or Hardy Plant or American Primrose or the Magnolia Society’s work. It would be like walking past a church bake sale just because you’re on a diet.

Hope everyone is going into the weekend safe and healthy. The cold won’t last forever and even here the snowdrops will bloom again.

The Winter Garden 2022

Jan14

Monday morning was one of the coldest days of the year and this weekend is also set to drop as low as 1F (-17C), and although we are only 14 days into the year that’s about as cold as Sorta Suburbia has been in a while. The temperatures only last about a night or two and the ground is still barely frozen, but only time will tell how these surprisingly normal lows will work with my new, optimistically mild, global warming planting plan full of autumn blooming snowdrops and zone 7 Crinum lilies.

Happier plantings are sheltered in the garage under fluorescent shoplights. They’re experiencing a few ‘chilly’ nights, but nothing even close to the freezing cold outside.

A better gardener would put this cold-induced break to good use, planning seed orders and organizing planting plans, safe in the knowledge that borderline plantings are well protected, but all this gardener wants to do is eat. Not just hearty stews and roasted potatoes, but more so late night bags of chips and “one more” handful of m&ms followed by a big glass of milk. Then some ice cream. Then maybe another look in the fridge, just in case. Outside just a few witch hazels are fenced, and not a single snowdrop is bucketed, but inside there’s been a lot of attention to sitting around and… eating….

Also safe inside are the plants too precious and too tender to abandon outside. They don’t do much all winter, but they’re something nice to look at while nibbling pretzels.

I can think of no better place to sit (while snacking) than the winter garden. When it’s dark out I can almost convince myself that this array of shoplights in the just-above-freezing back of the garage is actually a greenhouse or uber fancy conservatory. When the weather is cold it’s a room filled with green to hang out in, watering, puttering, pruning, plucking… doing all the stuff that the cold makes uncomfortable outdoors.

My official coffee drinking, seed cleaning, label writing, phone browsing, beer sampling, winter patio seat in the winter garden. I heard a crack last weekend and that’s got me slightly concerned about all the m&m’s, but that’s something to worry about in May.

There have been a few watershed moments in this year’s slightly excessive winter garden adventure. Ooops. I admitted that the winter garden is a little “extravagant”, but I blame it on last winter when I killed off a shameful amount of potted cyclamen. Cyclamen have been the stars of my winter garden for a few years, but then suddenly a winter of lazy, careless watering did in a bunch of them. This fall I needed backup plants. A visit to an open garden and a cutting swap started me off. The Amish country and various nurseries added a few more. Friends helped. Cuttings for overwintering added to it all. It’s all reaching a quite pleasant crescendo in my opinion.

Blue streptocarpella and flower buds on a red salvia. The salvia is being overwintered, and the buds should probably be clipped off… but I do like flowers 😉

Recently on Facebook a friend shared an article about the “dark side” of plant collecting. The home time and isolation of the pandemic had set unprepared gardeners off on a vicious binge of buying and collecting, and people were amassing hoards that amounted to hundreds of plants. “amateurs” my friend commented, and we laughed. I read the article myself and to be honest it made me smile to read about these plant collections and see the smiling faces of such happy gardeners. I think I might have missed the dark in it all.

A cool aloe which I couldn’t resist. ‘Snow Fox’ will join my other potted succulents next summer but for now just sits dry and mostly dormant on the dimmer end of the bench.

Just out of curiosity I counted pots in the winter garden. Normally anything under 6 inches doesn’t count, but this time I just went ahead and easily reached 150 pots back there. Hmmm. Then I took a few more cuttings and made it 152, just to slip a little further into the dark side.

This succulent comes in off the deck and spends the next three months flowering. I love it. Every little bit of leaf off the flower stems will try to root, so of course I made another pot of cuttings with those.

At least taking cuttings keeps my hands busy and out of the chip bag. I joke about not having the garden prepared, but at least my hoarding skills have me ‘winter gardening’ prepared. You can never have too many saved pots, and emergency bags of potting soil on hand. It’s awkward sneaking out into the frigid outdoor lot of the box store to try and wrestle a frozen bag of potting soil into your cart, so have it on hand in August so that you don’t have to make up some lame lie about ‘I don’t know, my wife told me she needed potting soil tonight’ when the cashier asks you what in the heck you’re doing. At least I can plan ahead in one area.

I’m quite pleased with how the cane begonia cuttings are doing. They’ll need bigger pots soon enough, but of course I’m prepared for that when the time comes.

Sometimes a rare ray of good fortune may shine upon you. A friend shocked me last year when she informed me they were officially downsizing and leaving their mature garden behind. “I think there will be a few things you’ll want” she said, and of course I agreed, but it was really all the accumulated trash like leftover pots and soil, bits of twine, scraps of fencing, pottery shards, opened bags of soil conditioners that I really wanted. Of course she knew that already. Only another gardener would want this stuff, and when I picked up a carload a few weeks ago I had to agree that I did want it.

More begonias and a cool Oxalis triangularis (maybe ‘Fanny’) which I was given a couple rhizomes of. I’m halfway tempted to pull out and plant a few of the purple leaved ones stored dormant under the shelf as companions to this one.

She gave me a box of terracotta pots which she may have never used. They’re small and there are a bunch of them and they’re much more trouble to move than lightweight plastic but I’m far more scared of them than I am of hundreds of hoarded houseplants because I really love them. What the *heck* is wrong with me that I’m staring at a box of clay pots thinking they’re so nice. I could understand if they were antique cloches for protecting delicate snowdrops during an ice storm, intricate wire topiary forms, but they’re stupid clay pots. I’m worried about what might happen if I start cruising garage and estate sales. I think I might buy every one I come across.

Clay pots and grandma’s geraniums. Cool people don’t seem to like pelargoniums but such a nice edging of variegation on the leaf, and the flowers are so delicate.

At least clay pots don’t have any calories… that I know of…. and so that must make a few too many of them a harmless distraction. As of today I only use them for succulents and a few potted bulbs, so even these are too many, but I really need more. A birthday is coming up. I wonder if putting ‘old, dirty terracotta pots’ on the birthday list could replace the usual underwear and socks?

Another aloe (‘Blue Elf’) with a few flower buds forming. I hope a lack of water and cool temps can keep them from developing too fast. Although I love winter blooms, I’d rather see them come up strong outside rather than spindly and weak in here.

So as usual I don’t really know how this post ended up where it has with underwear and socks. Let me try and re-focus with African violets. My mother used to grow them and so did my aunt. My grandmother grew them. They used to be Saintpaulia, but now I see they’re Streptocarpus sect. Saintpaulia and I’m not sure how that changed anything but I also know that about a year or so ago I needed to grow them again. I know these urges, I resisted. I almost made it but then cracked last fall and bought one and then I asked a friend for cuttings. I found online sources but only looked. I found one marked down. I guilted a spouse into buying me one at the grocery store after a few ‘admit it, you’re never going to wear that, I can’t buy you anything’ Christmas returns. I now have three violets plus two cuttings and I think I’m ok but then realized this afternoon I volunteered to stop at the store just because I thought they might have more. Hmmmm.

An African violet. This weekend will be cold and maybe I’ll take a cutting. I don’t need more but whatever.

African violets don’t have calories either. As far as I know adding another would be a victimless crime even if I’m lying to myself about picking up milk for the kids when I stumble across it. So what if I end up in a grocery store that’s 35 minutes away, it’s always good to shop around.

Have an excellent weekend, stay warm, and fuel that furnace responsibly… even if some of the fuel is chocolate, beer, and cheese 😉

Nonwinter Continues

Dec29

A few days this month have been average, but nearly every other day has been warmer. From what the forecast shows, early January looks about the same and I guess that’s great if you’re digging foundations and pouring concrete this winter, but I guess it’s also great for fall snowdrops. Surely one of those should make this gardener happy.

Galanthus ‘Potter’s Prelude’ looking as if it’s growing in North Carolina or Virginia or anywhere else where winters are more sweatshirts and sneakers rather than parkas and boots.

I guess foundations and snowdrops both make people happy, but I would like to take a moment and note that none of the construction crews have commented on the wonder of December blooming flowers. Maybe they’re too distracted by the other wonders of the “winter” garden.

The gardener continues to forage the construction site for more and more wonderful stones. Some of the fill has also been moved, but the gardener waits until everyone is gone before using the embarrassingly tiny wheelbarrow and labor-intensive shovel to move ridiculously small amounts of fill.

Other than a group of snowdrops which looks remarkably similar to other groups of snowdrops, the rest of the garden is significantly less inspiring.

The foundation rises. Mortar runoff can only improve the quality of my lawn.

I suspect the bulk of the foundation work will be finished today. Then it sits for a week curing before even more building goes on top. I suspect it will take a while before I’m comfortable with this new massiveness rising in the garden but maybe more closet space is really what’s been missing from my life. All this time I thought it was more snowdrops, so silly me.

A surprise pasque flower rising amongst the trash must mean something.

Who am I kidding? We are entering Temple Nursery snowdrop catalog season and I can absolutely guarantee that I will again try to fill that void in my life with new snowdrops. I already called the bank to make sure our line of credit will be available in time.