A Week of Flowers-Day 1

Dec1

I don’t necessarily mind this time of year, it’s a bit gloomy at times and the garden doesn’t have the day to day surprises and continuous parade of blooms, but it’s a breather, and a chance to refocus before you start dreaming of summer again! With that said I’m still ready for a distraction, and of course that makes me more than happy to jump into the photo files and join in with Cathy’s Week of Flowers, which she is hosting again this year on Words and Herbs. The instructions couldn’t be any simpler, “post a flower a day for a week”, and I think even I can stick with those rules. Obviously I’ll start with snowdrops… far from the most colorful flower, yet they’re the flowers which I obsesses most over.

Last December’s display of ‘Potter’s Prelude’, a fall blooming snowdrop which sneaks in a few blooms before winter gets too serious.

Last March in my most established snowdrop bed. I usually enjoy these all by my lonesome each spring, everyone else struggles to find an excuse to run indoors when I wander off into the cold to admire them.

By the end of March a few other hardy bloomers such as the yellow winter aconite join in the show. This one’s name is ‘Greenish’ for somewhat obvious reasons.

White, green, and occasionally yellow might not qualify as wildly colorful, but during the shortest and coldest days of the year I welcome them. This is a borderline yellow named ‘Bloomer’.

So day one complete. Probably one of the shortest snowdrop related posts you’ll ever see on this blog but I hope you enjoyed it, and I’m sure you’ll find more to enjoy as others check in for Cathy’s week of flowers!

Planned Surprises

Aug23

Saturday I suddenly found myself on the road to Ithaca NY. It’s about a two hour drive from here and of course I have better things to do locally but wanted to see a few friends, and you know… there was a plant sale. Just a small thing done among members of the Adirondack chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society, but they have some pretty cool plants and for just two or three dollars a piece all the plants (donated out of member gardens) find a new home that morning. Of course I was more than happy to help out, and a couple alliums, ferns and a violet are now here in Pa with me and even better, all the extra daffodils I dug this summer are GONE… or at least most of them. Stupid me thinks I should replant some of the smallest ones to give them a chance to grow out so they won’t be too small to give away? Don’t ask. My accounting brilliance is matched only by my business sense.

Cornell Botanic Gardens. It was nice to stop into a garden which I’m guessing has a couple feet of topsoil, annual mulches of compost, and just the right amount of watering to grow sickeningly well. Here’s Hydrangea cumulonimbus mocking the approaching storm clouds.

The plant sale was followed by a luncheon and I just want to say that in between garden talk there was an invite to a garden which I really wanted to see, but I actually opted out of going. Weird, right? I think it was a combo of poor sleep, impending bad weather, and an overall end-of-summer-I’m-sick-of-drought-my-garden-is-a-disaster malaise. In hindsight I wish I’d gone, but at that moment I just wasn’t up to being social any longer so passed. That was an actual unplanned surprise, since on the way up I had a conscious thought of the possibility of being invited somewhere, and how excellent that would be. I hope I’m not actually getting old(er)!

I found this sedge to be far cooler than you would imagine a sedge could be. Carex muskingumensis ‘Little Midge’ I believe, even though the label said ‘Little Midget’ which would also be fitting. Quite the geometry on this little guy.

Apparently I was still young enough to add one side trip to the trip by pulling into the parking lot of the Cornell Botanical Gardens. I did want to see how their tropical plantings were coming along, but then surprised myself by liking the shade plantings even more.

Mukdenia rossii ‘Crimson Fans’. Seeing this was a first for me, and I always thought the red color was an autumnal, perfect storm, enhanced for catalogs, color effect, but here it is in late August doing its bright crimson thing as if it’s no big deal. Very nice!

And then it was back home. I pulled in at a suitably responsible and mature arrival time of 6pm, just in time to enjoy the evening light on the Lycoris. If you want to talk about surprises the fact any of these are blooming would be the premier surprise since they did not look all that happy this spring, and baked-clay dry summers are not supposed to encourage good bloom with these temperamental divas.

The most common surprise lily, or Nekkid lady (Lycoris x squamigera), is blooming more than it’s ever bloomed before. I heard they like derelict, neglected properties so perhaps the random construction debris and bits of trash I’ve thrown here are the secret to a good show.

There’s actually a second magic lily surprising me this year. I thought I was successfully killing off most of my plantings, but suddenly there’s an almost clump of Lycoris x incarnata flower stalks poking up between the squash leaves. If only I knew what went right with this spot I’d repeat it with the other bulbs growing just inches away but worlds apart in flowering-power… as in they’re not flowering at all… Perhaps they’ll also surprise me but I doubt it. Someone might have already poked around and found several have lost their roots to some kind of rot, and even though they’re sometimes called magic lilies, I think a miracle is closer to what we need.

Lycoris x incarnata, aka the peppermint spider lily, is a hybrid of two other Lycoris species. There are other forms, but this striped version is one of the more common garden forms. I think it’s quite awesome this year.

These two Lycoris and a few others are the cold-hardy members of a bigger family of bulbs which do well in the warmer Southern states and aren’t all that uncommon down there. Sadly they’re not hardy enough for this garden, but of course since I’m doing so well with the other ones, I also thought I’d try a few of the more tender types such as L. radiata, the red hurricane lily. With a bar already set so low by their cousins, it’s not hard to imagine that just the fact they’re still alive counts as a fabulous success.

Other not-cold-hardy things filling space on the sand terrace. With a timed drip irrigation system this at least is one part of the garden not miserable for rain.

I’ll take whatever fabulous successes I can get. Today it rained, and although the 0.06″ is not the 0.50″ forecast, it should green up the crabgrass a bit and at least give me a day off from watering… assuming I still even water. This weekend I almost moved from ‘trying to get a few things through’ to ‘maybe save a few perennials and shrubs so they come back next year’. That’s basically giving up for the year, and with school ramping up again, and construction crawling along, and with money evaporating faster than the rain, it’s never sounded better… until you consider the alternatives. Being stuck in front of the tv from now until snowdrop season or taking up a trowel and helping tile, or sitting through an entire football game? I think even a bad day of looking at weeds and wilted plants has its bright spots and I think I can do it for a few more days. Lycoris season is always full of surprises, and even if the surprise is in how disappointing they can be, the colchicums will be here soon and I can always count on them.

Have a great week, and may your garden get all the rain it needs 😉

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 🙂

More Cold

Jan27

It looks like winter will last at least another week. I kind of blame myself since in early January I was a little chilled and pulled out the winter coat for a walk around the garden. Mother Nature must have seen and said “Oh really? Hold on and I’ll show you some real cold” and now here we are. This morning on the ride through the mountains I saw a -6F (-21C) and then on the way home it was already down to 0F. I guess I was glad to have the coat.

The Temple Nursery catalog arrived as well as my NARGS seed exchange goodies. I would say snowdrop ordering and seed sorting was the perfect way to spend a Friday night 🙂

Even in the cold, the ridiculous dog still insisted on running about in the dark, sniffing out rabbits and investigating every suspicious shadow. Again I was happy to have the coat. It wasn’t until I made it to the winter garden that things started to look more promising. Flowers in bloom and growing plants are a nice diversion away from cold and work, and although the dog was annoyed that I would slip out to the garage rather than stand by the door letting him in and out every ten minutes, I though my winter garden time was a nice recharge.

I was able to get my hands on a tiny bulb of Narcissus romieuxii ‘Atlas Gold’ and it’s now in flower under lights. I thought it would be a bolder gold, but instead it’s a fantastic lemony yellow.

Even in the winter garden it’s a little chilly tonight so I didn’t stay long. The Rock Garden Society seeds are sown and ready to get thrown out into the cold, and now I’m entertaining the idea of more seeds. That’s a terrible idea of course, but you know what a couple days of cold can do to a gardener and I’m trying to fight that urge as well as bulb orders and tropical plant pre-sales. And new perennials. And a couple caladiums… just in case…

There’s still February to get through you know? Stay warm 🙂

Bulbs Can’t Freeze

Jan21

Freezing seem like as good enough topic as anything because that’s all we seem to have in the forecast. This is like the third week of real winter temperatures and after a bunch of warm years it seems so…. endless. Realistically three or four months of winter wouldn’t be anything surprising in this zone, so with two more months to go there is no reason to complain. It’s just the warmer years of late had me kind of enjoying witch hazel in January and snowdrops throughout. Toughen up I say! Truthfully I should be grateful for the nice solid cold, and the way it freezes up the soil and tells the bulbs to hold on, don’t be fooled, February and March will be early enough to start your growing plans.

Colchicum x byzantinum bulbs are big, and my soil is shallow, and often they just push themselves up and practically sit on top of the soil. Obviously in this position and with temperatures down to 0F (-18C) the bulb and new growth will freeze

Some of the top spring disasters (off a quite lengthy list) have been the result of warm winters which bring things up way before their time. Hellebores in particular must be an unusually optimistic plant which falls for this fake spring followed by a hard freeze every time, but snowdrops can be fooled as well. Often I’m surprised by how well tender growth can survive brutal freezes but it’s not always a happy ending. Right now a better gardener would be covering some of these goodies to keep the worst of the weather off of them.

We will see how well ‘Godfrey Owen’ tolerates the rest of winter after having already come nearly into bloom. Tonight will be cold, next week looks colder.

I guess that brings me around to the title of this post. I often see claims that hardy bulbs need to be protected from freezing, especially those in pots. I disagree. I used to pot up bulbs and throw them into an unheated shed where they would freeze solid for months without ill effect. I’ve dropped bulbs in the fall and had them root into the surface, survive winter exposed and also do just fine. There’s more to it of course but without exposing my own ignorance I’ll just point out a few ‘excepts’ which I’ve come across. Bulbs need to begin rooting before they freeze. Potted bulbs should be on the dry side before freezing. Exposed pots which freeze and thaw repeatedly will suffer. -and the one which I can’t figure out is that potted bulbs will rot when snow melts and then re-freezes on the surface of a pot of bulbs, especially later in the year. My balcony gardening year was always off to a tragic start when a big pot full of tulip and crocus sprouts would all just stop growing after a cold spell hit with snow or rain freezing on top of the pot. Weeks later I would finally give up and pull the still green and solid sprouts out, leaving a rotted bulb behind. 😦

Well that ended on a sad note. If anyone has some thoughts on this let me know. I find the easiest way around this is to just cover planted pots with autumn leaves and then uncover them as soon as temperatures warm, but you know how greedy I am with my autumn leaves! Maybe a board on top to keep the snow and rain off would be good enough, I just have to remember to try that (again) and make a note of how it works out.

In the meantime stay warm and consider that (here at least) the daylength is getting longer by about two minutes each day and we’ve added about 30 minutes since the shortest day of the year. I’m sure we’ll be in flip flops before you know it 😉

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 😉

Happy 2022

Jan2

Last year’s resolution was quantity over quality and I may have failed in both departments when it came to this blog so why not just recycle the idea for 2022? That was easy! I don’t even have to move on to other topics like losing weight, exercise, eating healthy… I can just reach for the Nutella and grab a spoon and be done with it. Wow, January second and I’m already checking things off the to-do list 🙂

With each December milder than the last, ‘Mrs Macnamara’ has finally found my garden to her liking. Usually the cold cuts her down and beats her up, but now she’s pristine, multiplying, and maybe ready for dividing and spreading around.

Now that we’re through resolutions let me open up on what the rest of the winter will look like. Snowdrops and construction. Maybe more of the former and less of the later but I won’t even try and tone down the snowdrop obsession this year, apologies in advance.

Just a few years ago these bulk buy Galanthus elwesii would come up early but always on the spring end of winter. The last two years they’ve been surprising me in January.

Here’s all I really want to say about construction. Mud. That and the hunt for perfect rocks continues. Given long enough I think I’d have stone walls surrounding the garden, but as fill is moved back into position I’m not as tempted to actually dig rocks back up.

The stoneyard, or snake condo as my friend Kimberly would likely call it.

Temperatures are dropping today and things will freeze up, and maybe the mud won’t be as depressing if you can actually walk over it rather than through it, so to prepare for ‘maybe winter’ here’s a photo from my ‘maybe greenhouse’ aka ‘winter garden’ in the back of the garage.

I knew I killed almost all my cyclamen, so last spring I started a few primula for winter blooms. January first they came inside and under lights and I hope will soon amaze me with fantastic color.

So you’re aware, snowdrops and construction will be dropped as soon as it gets really cold outside. These primrose coming into the garage are only the tip of the winter garden iceberg, and I may be guilty of a few too many cuttings and containers this winter and it’s only barely January. Oh well. It’s not like I’ve started any seeds… yet…

Here’s to a happy and healthy 2022. We could all use it 🙂

That Escalated Quickly

Dec19

You might say escalated, you also might say excavated… Weather permitting turned into actual permission and now there’s a somewhat big hole just out the backside of our house. And a pile of dirt. And bulldozer ruts. And fortunately not a concrete truck stuck in the ruts, but from what I hear it was close. Let’s look at snowdrops first just because it’s a much better place to start.

A fall blooming snowdrop in full flower this week, and enjoying the mild December we have been having. These beauties originate from Nancy Goodwin’s Garden in North Carolina and I’m forever grateful for the friend who made the trip and brought them back.

The fall snowdrops have been putting on a good show this year, and are enjoying the mostly above and sometimes below freezing temperatures we have been having. I like the weather as well. I don’t like how it brings up other snowdrops and bulbs and teases them out of the ground way too early, but… whatever… This year there are bigger fish to fry.

Earlier in the week, excavation for the bedroom addition began. I didn’t expect the hole to look so big… or contain so much dirt.

The bad news is we quickly hit bedrock. Considering how poorly drained the whole yard is and how shallowly I am forced to plant nearly everything, this was no surprise, but the shock was that our foundation guy was able to pry and angle, crack and lift, slab by slab of rock out of the hole. We didn’t have to drill, and that’s a saving of thousands of dollars which sadly I will not be able to put towards plant purchases. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tally up the numbers differently but right now the checkbook is so bloody and punished even I cannot massage magic out of it.

It looks worse than it is… really… Believe it or not I think just a rake and some grass seed will fix almost all of this, and 98% of the real parts of the garden are still safe.

The mess does look considerable though. At first I hoped topsoil could be saved and everything else used as fill somewhere, but it’s all a mess now and it is what it is. Surprisingly the rock had a good amount of sand mixed in so I hope that helps it some day weather down into decent soil, but for now it’s a bit rocky and sterile and might just weather down into stone-filled concrete for all I know.

Mount Suburbia. After the main excavation I raked the rocks out of the lawn and gave it a trim to clean up all the last leaves. I suspect ‘what the heck is he doing, there’s a gaping hole and a mountain of fill, and he’s mowing the lawn?’ was on the minds of some, but again… whatever.

Once the foundation is finished and backfilled, the leftovers will be moved to level off the back of the lot. I’m excited about that, and I’m also overly excited about all the rock. Whenever I get the chance (and enough Tylenol into me) I spend some time hauling rocks and stones away into piles and walls. It’s awesome. I have stepping stones galore and enough big rocks to make my North American Rock Garden Society membership legitimate. I’ve even been pushing for the foundation guy to leave his skidsteer here over the Christmas break so I can move dirt around on my own and find even more excellent rocks. I doubt it will happen though, and it’s probably for the best. He mentioned to my contractor something about ‘what the *heck* is up with the rocks?’, but apparently the reply was ‘you’ve seen the rest of the yard, right?’, so I think that makes it ok…

Regardless I think I’m more excited about the rocks than the actual addition. I’ll try to remember that when I’m writing the next check out.

Heading into the Holidays

Nov23

If pushed I think some people would consider it to be early winter around here, but with my newfound ‘fondness’ for the autumn season I’m going to consider it late fall. Normally even a hard frost is enough to declare the onset of winter, but as of 5:45 pm today I’m still thinking fall is an ok season and not the usual dark, wallowing in self pity, miserable, death to all growing things, slightly depressing time of year that it normal goes by.

The wild enthusiasm of the potager has once again been tamed by cold, and a good portion of the shredded leaves have gone to mulching the cleared out beds.

Even with a good number of chilly mornings and cold nights, there’s still been a lot of gardening going on… well a lot considering how short the days are and how often an employer expects you to be at work each week… the potager took quite some time to rip up tree-like annuals, dig forgotten potatoes, and do all the put-away stuff that growing vegetables requires. We all know that the amount of vegetables here really isn’t an excuse to make a full workload, but I did plant half a bed of garlic this fall and finally put the diseased, frozen tomato vines out of their misery so that’s kind of legitimate. Less legitimate are how many beds were then planted with tulips. They did well last year and I thought I threw away a good amount of smaller bulbs, but I also know I have a weak spot for tulips so if it looked big enough to bloom who am I to deny a plant its destiny?

Only a few tulips were purchased but apparently a few daffodils were purchased as well. As far as I can recall they were not purchased by myself, so I’m not sure how they got here, but they’re here now so I suppose I should plant them.

I gave away a bunch of daffodils two summers ago, so based on that and the promise to give away even more this summer, I allowed a few new ones to be purchased. Only about a dozen, and I swear they were interesting things which sell by the single bulb and never (or only a few times) did I ask for multiple bulbs. Surely you can imagine my disgust when months later a heavy box shows up, filled with bags of three or more bulbs each plus multiple bags of free bulbs. Unconscionable. Then a second box shows up. Ugh. Those bulbs were so big I was downright intimidated, and of course I never cleared out the spots where these new goodies were supposed to go. Nearly 100 new bulbs to plant when I was figuring only maybe two dozen, and then inspiration struck. A sand bed where you only put summer pots can easily take in a few spring bulbs, and they’ll practically disappear by July especially if you plant them along the far edge. It’s brilliant if you ask me and it almost makes me regret not ordering more. What if I really did dig up the overcrowded ones? I shudder to think about the potential gaps in the spring bulb garden which may have been.

The fall blooming Galanthus elwesii ‘Barnes’ seems to be doing well in spite of the beating its foliage takes once winter settles in. Two years ago it was moved around to the East side of the house and he appears to like the spot.

Ok so there’s a snowdrop photo. To be honest I’m not always as thrilled to see snowdrops in the fall as I am in spring, so on a scale of 1 to 10 this might only register an 8.5, but considering the historical average of November hovers in the 2 range that’s pretty friggin exciting. Maybe I need to compliment these fall drops with some late cyclamen, that would probably boost the thrill-meter to 9.0, or come up with another road trip idea. Word is Nancy Goodwin is opening Montrose Gardens this Sunday for tours of her nearly famous fall snowdrop walk, and the idea of seeing rivers of thousands of snowdrops in full bloom is enough to have me mapping the eight hour drive South to Hillsborough North Carolina. That’s crazy though. I’d have to turn off my cell phone tracking and lie about my destination and I suspect that’s a bad sign when you start lying about your plant addictions. Definitely bad, so no. And I’m not even considering it any more…. Not at all…

So look at that, I just cancelled a 986 mile round trip drive to go look at snowdrops, and to distract myself from actually taking the trip anyway I’m going to calculate fuel costs. Giddy-up I just saved $144, plus at least another 20 dollars in tolls and suddenly I have $164 that I can spend elsewhere. Genius, and when I spend it at a small business that happens to sell snowdrops, I’m also supporting the local economy and am practically a social engineer.

Amazing. I hope your week is starting off just as productively 😉

179

Sep26

179 isn’t the default setting for blog titles, it’s the harsh reality of autumn. Saturday afternoon I made a tour of the grounds and counted up 179 pots scattered about. All of these will require some kind of attention before autumn winds down and winter settles in, and all of them seem to have appeared out of nowhere this year. Another frightening statistic is that I didn’t even count any pots smaller than six inches, and I also didn’t count the dozen stewartia seedling which were potted up Saturday evening… just in case, you know? Stewartia are special little things, and now if I need a dozen potted seedlings next year, it’s reassuring to know I’m prepared.

The early autumn show of Heterotheca(aka Chrysopsis) villosa ‘Ruth Baumgardner’. I love it more each year.

But I wish I was mentally prepared to deal with these pots. Maybe buying a box of 100 drip emitters and more tubing for the watering system was not as good an idea as it seemed, but for the moment I’m trying to move on and I’ve started grouping some of the stuff which will get the same treatment.

You turn your back once and suddenly a dozen amaryllis (Hippeastrum) show up. I probably don’t need a dozen, but better safe than sorry is what I said some cold December afternoon…

I’m sure it’s just the caladiums which are making things look bad. They make up around forty of the pots, and yesterday I shut off their water to give them a couple of weeks to dry out and come to terms with the cooler nights. Soon they’ll collapse and go dormant and I can toss them in the furnace room, but instead of things shutting down, lets talk Colchicums!

Some kind of Colchicum speciosum. I don’t know if it’s a cultivar or not, but it’s a favorite regardless.

We are into the middle of Colchicum season now. I’m loving it.

colchicum aggripinum duncecap orostachys iwarenge

A late Colchicum xaggripinum surrounded by the flower stalks of Orostachys iwarenge. The Orystachys really appreciated the mild winter and has never looked like it actually wanted to live let alone thrive like this.

Plenty of other colchicum are popping up here and there. I shouldn’t want more, but I kind of do, if only for mental health reasons as they carry me through to the fall snowdrop season 😉

Another unknown Colchicum speciosum, actually this was my very first one… also not true to the name it was purchased under…

My new colchicum book describes ‘Harlekijn’ as having “little appeal except to those keen to amass a full collection of cultivars”. Oops. I was hoping that wasn’t the direction I was going.

Colchicum ‘The Giant’. Big, robust, floppy, and a scene stealer.

Colchicum speciosum ‘Atrorubens’ on the left, and ‘Album’ on the right. Two of my current favorites.

This one came to me as white… but most will agree it’s not, and eventually the company where I purchased it from also agreed and sent me a refund. I believe it is Colchicum ‘Pink Star’.

‘Lilac Wonder’ has been swamped by the yellow woodland salvia, Salvia Koyamae. Normally the salvia is half dead by the time it blooms since whoever planted it put it in a dry, full sun location, not the the moist woodland which this plant wants.

So autumn, pots, and colchicums. Not a bad week at all. To top it off I’ll wax poetically about the beauty in death of my beloved cardoon plants. The seedheads are ripe, and now they’re opening up to scatter their children across the landscape.

Cardoon seed heads. The bottom of the stalk is quite ugly, but if you focus on the top…

Ugly dead thistles might be one poetic interpretation but I prefer to ignore the possibility of a cardoon superspreader event and think that some goldfinch might fly over and find these to be the motherload of tasty thistle seed. Thats the hope at least, but for now I haven’t seen them give it a try. They’re still focused on the sunflowers so maybe they’re saving these?

I suspect that’s a lot of Cardoon seedlings…

No matter. Cardoons sprouting all over might be just what my garden needed, and as long as they don’t crowd out the snowdrops I’m willing to give it a try!

Enjoy the last days of September 🙂

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

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