White is a Cooling Color

Jun30

A friend of mine seems able to pick a color of the day any day and then post a collage of blooms right out of the garden to celebrate. Me on the other hand, I’m far from there but on a day like today when the garden bakes under a hot sun, anything which might lower the temperature is fair game. They say adding white flowers to a garden can cool a hot palette but as I trudged around the garden in 97F(36C) afternoon sun I’m not sure it mattered. We’ll give it a try though since the only truly cool white would have been snow, and it will take months of heat before I wish that on anyone 😉

**full disclosure I took this photo a week ago and the blooms on the Stewartia are no longer this fresh looking, but to look at it now? Ahhhhhhh 🙂

Heat and cicadas, that would have been a nicely mid-Atlantic June day, but as of yet I haven’t seen more than a few wings and munched torsos. Maybe a road trip is due? The younger child (now nearly a full month into her teens) says yes, and the first flowers of the Regal lily “smell like Longwood”.

These Regal lilies (Lilium regale) were mush from a late frost last year, and sat dormant from April on… but guess who returned from the dead this year!

I’d be happy with just a break from lawn mowing, and this heat should do the trick. My neighbors are looking at mostly brown already since they’re more gung-ho about their grass knowing its place and it’s height, but here I give it a little more freedom as the temperatures rise and the sun beats down. Longer grass withstands both the heat and drought better and recovers faster when the weather breaks, and I’m sure when that break comes and temperature drop with a rain shower or two there will be plenty of time for me to catch up on my love of lawn maintenance.

A flurry of white across the lawn, thanks to the liberal growth of white clover. A good bee plant most will say, but honestly there’s plenty of other stuff around which they also seem quite thrilled over.

I think cooling white counts even if it’s on the gray side.

I believe this is Mammillaria plumosa. Each year it stretches a little further and now another pot will be required. Any bigger and it won’t fit on the porch steps anymore.

I was lukewarm to the dusty miller(Jacobaea maritima) which went in as an annual last summer but I quite like the bushier perennial version which returned this spring. If the summer stays dry and the border doesn’t get too lush and crowded I think it will do well all season.

Unimpressive flowers on the dusty miller.

Gray foliage but on a much less soft and felty side would be the Scotch thistle. This will probably be the last photo of this weed which I subject you to, but fair warning: the Cardoon has yet to bloom, and that’s another weedy thistle which I think is just wonderful and I can’t hide my excitement over 🙂

Scotch thistle against a cloudless sky. I had to point up since this plant is well over my head by now.

Gray foliage doesn’t have much in the way of scent, but the Phlox paniculata is starting and that has an excellent summer fragrance. I will avoid complaining about how ungrateful they seem this year, as they’re growing poorly enough that you wouldn’t suspect I transplanted and fertilized, but sometimes you have to give a favorite plant some leeway… unless of course it gets demoted to a former-favorite plant… that would be something which such an ungrateful plant might deserve but then who knows what July will bring.

‘Midsummer White’ garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) is the garden’s first tall phlox to flower.

Weeds and wildflowers are never ungrateful. Overly enthusiastic maybe but you never have to beg them to grow.

A favorite weed, daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus) can usually be counted on to sprout up when needed.

Sometimes you don’t even have to water them. Actually watering weeds is a crazy idea… unless it’s fleabane or larkspur. Both might be worth a little spray to get them over a hump.

It looks white, but here the larkspurs all tend to be an icy white with a drop of blue or gray in it. Kind of a skim milk shade of white rather than titanium white.

Here I go talking about weeds again. One more though. Common yarrow has shown up in a few spots in the meadow and I wonder how these seeds find their way.

Common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) laughs at heat and drought. I think everything around it will shrivel up and die before you see anything more than a few leaves wilt.

White flowers in a dry meadow won’t cool anyone, but maybe the patch of variegated giant reed grass out front can help. For months I’ve been saying someone ought to chop out some of the clump, since it really is too big, but it appears the message fell on deaf ears and it’s just as big (actually bigger) than last year. Probably too big. Alas.

I’m not saying I judge my neighbors for not asking if I can spare a division, but the giant reed grass (Arundo donax ‘variegata’) is pretty awesome and only gets better as it climbs to 10 feet and more by the end of the season.

It’s way too hot to be out there in the blazing sun hacking inch thick, strong as steel grass rhizomes so that’s one more year for the grass to root in deeper and spread further. Maybe next year, right? Shade is a much better option. White hydrangeas in a dappled shade both looks and sounds cool.

‘Annabelle’ Hydrangea arborescens is the hydrangea to grow if you want a foolproof every-year-its-a-show kind of hydrangea. Newer hybrids? Other species? Help yourself, I’m just fine with this.

Hostas also make the shade even cooler and many people know this. Some go to extremes. I only dabble.

Hosta montana aureomarginata, an oldie but goodie in my opinion.

There’s another kind of foliage plant which I plan on going overboard with this year. Caladiums. I forget how much I’ve already revealed about ‘2021 the year of the caladium’ but it’s going to be big. Not the empty kind of ‘big’ or ‘huge’ or ‘better than you can imagine’ that politicians have promised in the past, but a big five pound box of mixed tubers which was potted up weeks ago and is now soaking up the heat and starting to grow. As you know, it’s not often I get excited about a new plant, but waiting for each leaf to unfurl is like waiting for a new plant to unfurl a new leaf and I just can’t think of anything more exciting than that.

White… with a hint of pink… not that I’m counting but there are 79 caladiums potted up separately and sitting on the driveway waiting to take off into growth. Summer garage access is overrated if you ask me and I’m sure it will be entirely worth it.

So there you have it, the cooling effect of white. I’m all excited about caladiums now but maybe the white helped calm someone else and take the edge off the heat for a minute and that’s a good thing. That and air conditioning. Or ice cream. Or a tub of cool water… whatever it takes to get through this because as you may remember, something called July and August are still on the way and I don’t think you’re going to hear much of ‘boy it’s looking cool next month’ or ‘golly did that temperature drop’ as much as you’re going to hear ‘relentless’ and ‘not a break in sight’.

Or I’m just being pessimistic. Order some caladium bulbs. There’s still plenty of time and at least they love the heat even if you don’t. And even if you’re anti-caladium I hope you have a great week 🙂

Taming the Potager

Jun23

Reading broadens the mind, and I’ve read too many gardening books to remain satisfied with a plain old vegetable garden. I of course have a potager, which (from what I’ve heard) is a vegetable garden but fancier, with vegetables but designed and mixed with flowers and supposedly a nicer place to sit around in than the dirt paths and rows of beans of your common vegetable garden. Plus it’s a French word, and here in America anything with a french name is fancier. Case in point: baguette vs ‘long loaf of bread’… fancier… and now I rest my case with just one argument, since neither my argument nor the fanciness of my potager will likely stand up to any in depth scrutiny 🙂

A stray hollyhock seedling in front of ‘Royal Purple’ smokebush (Cotinus). Normally the bush is cut back but this year was left unpruned in order to smoke (bloom).

Just a few thoughts on Hollyhocks(Alcea) before we go to the potager. I was hoping a few rust-resistant plants might show up as I try to mix in a few “rust-resistant” species, but so far no luck. Rust is not a good look and of course I’m far too lazy to spray.

I thought this might be a yellow Alcea rugosa, and possibly less rusty, but the pink tint in the flowers and all the spotting and rusty lesions says otherwise. I should rip it out now, but…

So I’m 99% sure that starting off with me sharing my disease problems is not the path to fancy, but I’m going to try and save this. The best thing in the potager this week are the larkspur and oxeye daisies.

Larkspur and daisies. Not really fancy, but maybe ‘shabby chic’, and chic is right out of Paris.

Some people might point out that Larkspur and daisies are more abandoned farm field than they are high style, but right now I love them, and I’m not even going to mention they’re actually the result of not weeding rather than any planned style initiative.

I meant to dig the alliums and tulips, but never quite got around to it. Fortunately the largest prickly lettuce and mugwort were weeded out a few weeks ago 🙂

The actual efforts at design are much less impressive. Roses and clematis to climb the ‘structure’ are still two or three years from breathtaking.

I suppose this will be a patriotic design, with the bright red ‘Chevy Chase'(a 1939 rambler rose) joining the misslabeled blue clematis and white daisies. I’m expecting ten feet or more from Chevy, he should be a strong grower but sadly lacks any fragrance.

Any real potager needs a few vegetables, and so far lettuce and cole crops are the only things looking productive since the tomatoes and squash have only just gone in.

I love cabbages and all their kin. Earlier in the year the cabbage worms attacked, but after a little picking off, the worms have stayed away or found other hosts. Un-nibbled leaves really look much better than the usual worm-riddled foliage.

So as usual I have an excuse for being late. Rabbits made their nest in the middle of the tulip patch. Somehow six cottontails had to grow up before I could dig the tulips. I couldn’t transplant the chrysanthemums until the tulips were out, and then dahlias had to go into the bed where the chrysanthemums were. I think following chrysanthemums with a dahlia planting is called crop rotation, and all the fanciest gardeners practice crop rotation.

Nine ‘Bishop’s Children’ dahlia seedlings are all I got out of a packet of thirty seeds. That’s a good thing, what would I do with thirty dahlia seedlings?

Some of the other tulip plantings were followed by tomatoes, and I’ll show them as well but they need a few weeks before they and the rest of the new potager plantings begin to look nice. In the meantime I need pear advice. Last year a late freeze killed off nearly every flower save three, this year every flower made it. I have dozens and dozens of little pears and I need to know if I should drag out the ladder and thin them, or if they will naturally thin themselves. To me the answer is already pretty obvious, but of course I’d love for someone with more experience to tell me I don’t have to thin them.

Little pears. I already thinned the lower branches to just a few fruits.

It doesn’t look like a few French words will fool anyone, and those are pretty much all the highlights of the potager in mid June. With the bubble burst, I might as well take you around the rest of the even less fancy parts of the back garden.

Weeds along the berm. Year 1 was smartweed, year 2 was some mustard, year 3 is birds foot trefoil, daisies, and grass. I think it looks best this year and I think some rose campion seed needs to be sprinkled in as well 🙂

Weeds along the back of the property and now an overgrown snowdrop bed. Finally after years of tinkering this bed is becoming more stable and I think (a little)less weedy.

Snowdrop bed, aka rain garden. The roof runoff washes down the sand path and keeps this bed a little wetter than it used to be. The plants seem to love it.

There’s so little design and zero fancy to this side of the yard. As the years pass it’s becoming more of a snowdrop garden and the other plantings have to take second billing, even if they do occupy the ground for about 11 months compared to the 1 month of white. Of course I cannot explain myself on this addiction.

This year the blueberries will be protected. I have netting, but all the fledgling birds who flock to the bushes are just too clumsy to avoid getting trapped, and I can’t untangle another body. I’ll try some floating row cover material and hope that out of sight will save enough for pancakes at least.

Hopefully this end of the garden gets some attention this weekend. It’s always the last job, and for as ‘finishing’ as that sounds it really only means I go right back to the start and begin it all again, this time with more weeding and less planting…

Even in a thicket of weeds this Japanese iris looks fancy.

Maybe on the next go around things will change. All the weeds will go out, some thoughtful design will go in, some rough edges cleaned up? I think not. It’s firefly season and they love all the rough edges and I love having them light up the evening garden, and for as much as I’m tempted to weed-whack the berm or mow the meadow it’s not happening this month. I’m sure I’ll get over it and it also wouldn’t hurt if I found something better to do 😉

Bonjour, and I hope you have a fancy week!

Enter Summer

Jun17

Well well well. The lull is over and with official summer starting in four more days I’m completely ready for days to last forever and I’m completely ok to never put on a real pair of pants again. Sorry, please forget that visual. I’m thinking shorts and bathing suits and whatever else kind of clothing you would wear to the park, not the gray polyester blend pants you’d wear to meet your lawyer. Lawyers should only be dealt with in the winter in my opinion.

The front border is full of early summer color and a remarkably well-tended assortment of plants.

Following a bump in the road it looks like garden work is back on track around here. Planting weather continues and I almost feel guilty about putting it to good use when so much of the country sits under stifling heat and relentless drought. But trust me, if not doing work would mean relief for the hot and dry, you know I would do my part.

I kind of missed the flowery peak of the roses, but there’s still plenty of color. Also nice is how much those little spruce and juniper twigs have grown. It seems just yesterday I had a four inch pot in hand looking at the spot where today a six foot white spruce (Picea glauca ‘Pendula’) stands.

Roses are still obsession du jour, and the greatest tragedy this summer will surely be that I was not able to get up to Ithaca’s ‘Der Rosenmeister‘ to see hundreds of roses in full bloom, filling beds and covering arbors and wafting their various fragrances across the garden as I secretly inventory all the ones I’d like to cram into my own little yard. I guess there’s next year, but in a strange turn of events I’ve turned into a very not-patient person, and I want it all now. I can still be understanding and wait for things like small children, tree seedlings, and dogs, but the cup of you-go-firstedness has run dry and my filter is breaking down as I age. I guess you can start calling me Karen.

Here’s ‘Westerland’ again. Today it’s my favorite rose.

I’m Karen with a spade, and many of the less inspiring plants in my life are paying the ultimate price. “oh it’s a good doer’ might save it in your garden but here it’s good night and good bye unless I love it or unless it saves me from even more work. I’m thinking groundcovers with that last one, ajuga may not be inspiring but it does fill in between the giant reed grass’s stalks and saves me from crawling through there looking for prickly poppy seedlings.

The giant reed grass (Arundo donax variegata) is on the love list, but the clump looks deceptively small in this photo. I may trade in the spade for an axe on this one, the inch thick roots are not something I’m looking forward to, but the clump needs reducing.

Weeds and plantings I’ve tired of might sound bad, but overall I love the garden right now. A thick wall of weeds won’t win a magazine cover, but honestly I’ve been looking at them (every day of course) and all it takes is one plant doing well in there for me to think ‘wow, that’s #@&^ing awesome’.

A weed I love, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), looking and smelling great this week. Three tips: be prepared for it to spread, chop it down to two feet after bloom, and just yank up all the suckers without worrying about the roots below (you don’t even want to know).

So as usual I’m babbling about nonsense when I should be finishing this up and ferrying kids to a dental appointment. More pictures, less blah.

More strawberry foxglove (Digitalis x mertonensis) appearing out of the mess. These don’t mind the droughts and spider mite attacks which do in the common foxgloves.

More of the foundation plantings. As you can see the blue fescue border has not been divided and replanted, and still has way too much thatch built up, but…

The former rock garden, now the colchicum bed. I’ve resorted to roundup once or twice a year to keep the stone border clean and it’s actually working out very well.

Did I mention I needed more roses? I do, and it might be time for more clematis as well. Finally I have a few spots for them to climb up and show off rather than making them crawl around in the dirt… which is not the kind of treatment they deserve.

Clematis ‘Ruutel’ doesn’t get much taller than this, which normally wouldn’t thrill me, but the dark red color is still a win.

A friend of mine grows more clematis than she should and that’s probably why she’s such a good friend, so I’m sure if I mentioned cuttings… hmmmm. That would sure help cool off the credit card from plant purchases.

Clematis ‘Ville de Lyon’ does get taller, and I always like flowers at eye level or above.

So the rest is just a mix of unconnected things which are interesting this week. We could call it a four on Wednesday but of course that’s got zero ring to it 🙂

Even in an overexposed photo Calycanthus ‘Aphrodite’ looks pretty good. I never expected it to become so showy.

Aralia ‘Sun King’ is still doing well in a cramped, too dry, unfertile, location. Nine out of ten garden designers despise how I left the rose campion nearby.

Further into the shade the martagon lilies are blooming. ‘Sunny Morning’ had a string of bad years with late frosts and swampy soil but then for some reason decided to send up three flower stalks and look amazing. I don’t get it. She’s been dormant by July for at least the last two years so I suspect this is a swan’s song kind of show.

The meadow is developing behind the neighbor’s house. Oddly it’s one of my favorite spots and has gone from pure turf to a mass of bird’s foot trefoil, other clovers, and a few daisies.

So I have to stay focused. I want to go on and on about the butterfly weed and rose campion that needs to be seeded into the meadow, and the merits of adding native penstemons but in a purple foliaged form… but the spring stuff still needs to get planted, beans need to go into the ground, and daffodils dug and a million other things and there will be time to babble on about uncut meadows in August.

Hope you’re enjoying all the too-much as much as I am. Have a great week!

A Bit of a Chill

Apr2

The low last night was 23F (-5C) and tonight promises more of the same, although possibly a little warmer… as if that matters… so I’m going to dwell on the warmer days from earlier this week. To the relief of many snowdrop season here has ended and we are hurtling forward through corydalis season but not yet fully into daffodil season. After the highs of the snowdrops it’s almost a lull, but then I looked at the photos. Not bad at all I thought, although a few more days of snowdrops would have been nicer.

‘Tweety Bird’ is my first daffodil to open making a ‘bold’ contrast to the pinks of the corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’.

Weird how the sun and warmth melted the galanthus yet hasn’t really brought on much of the other stuff yet. I suspect it has something to do with the weeks of snow cover and some things growing up through the snow yet others waiting for the melt to happen first.

Scilla mischtschenkoana picks up right after the snowdrops finish, but even in a good year barely flowers for more than a week or two. One rough week of work sometimes means missing the whole thing!

It might sound like complaining when I lament how short a bloom season might seem but honestly I bore quickly, so this (with the exception of a quick snowdrop season) actually works in my favor. There’s always the excitement of a next wave approaching and as long as a hard freeze doesn’t ruin things… hmmmmm…. maybe I shouldn’t yet discount late hard freezes…

Pasque flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris) is one of the first perennials to bloom, right alongside the hellebores.

Pasque (Pulsatilla vulgaris, formerly Anemone pulsatilla) flowers are a full-sun perennial which I don’t think I’ve ever seen for sale on a nursery bench. Of course they flower too early for Mother’s Day and don’t last long, and in this age of “does it flower all summer?” the answer is no, and some people just don’t want to hear that. Actually many sensible gardeners aren’t crawling around their perennial beds yet, and the pasque flower’s early blooms pass perfection so quickly I don’t blame them for not bothering with this plant, but I of course love their fuzziness and optimism against cold and ice and always end up thrilled to see their blooms catching the springtime sun.

Same pasque flower, other side while a cloud passes.

I bet a few early, miniature daffodils in cooling lemon and white tones would be perfect alongside even more pasque flowers. Other species come in reds and pale yellows and whites, and they’re easy from freshly sown seed and… well I digress again.

Galanthus ‘Peardrop’ is one of the latest to bloom here.

Sorry for throwing in two last snowdrops. -I was doing so good!

‘Galadriel’ is an elegant beauty with a fitting name. I should move it to a more open spot where it can be a focal point… hahaha, as if any of those spots are still empty 😉

That’s it for snowdrops. I hope there’s something equally exciting on the horizon, and I think I have it here with this next sprout.

A plate-sized eruption of foliage means the cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) really is as hardy a sort as promised. Cardoons have always died away over winter here, so this is mega-exciting. I guarantee you’ll hear more about it in a month or two! (please ignore the sea of allium seedlings in the background)

Maybe the promise of a year filled with cardoon photographs wasn’t what you were hoping for, but at least I didn’t sneak in another snowdrop. Here. Corydalis are also not snowdrops, and after a few years here they’re also not as formally named as the latter.

Maybe Corydalis ‘George Baker’. The plant on the left looks rightish, but the other side of the clump looks a little different.

Honestly I can’t keep my corydalis straight. Besides being promiscuous they must somehow resent how I try to pamper named cultivars while overlooking equally attractive stray seedlings. Out of spite the $15 named corm disappears while a sea of seedlings comes up to surround the lonely label.

Last year the final named form in this bed opted out on renewing for another year. Maybe it was the weeds, but everyone else seems relatively happy.

I don’t mind. They come up, flower, seed, and are gone before I even think about the other perennials and annuals which share this same space later in the year. Maybe native plant purists and lovers of bare mulch beds will complain about weediness, but just come here I’d say, and I’ll show you some weeds you can complain about.

Ugh. One has even jumped across into the next bed. When I dig a few of the daffodils I’ll try and remember to weed out this corydalis.

I’d like to move a few of the nicest forms into a bed where they can clump up, but so far my clumsy attempts at moving them in bloom has caused more casualties than it has attractive corydalis plantings, but eventually I think I’ll get it.

Everyone here admires the corydalis. I’ve been informed this little guy lives under the porch and often comes out to sun himself on bits of trash while admiring the flowers. Word is he is really looking forward to meeting my friend Kimberley 🙂

So then this….

Magnolia are well known for how bravely they endure the ups and downs of early spring…

The weather started to “shift” yesterday.

Forsythia ‘Show Off’ which I planted next door. I’d show you mine but it appears the soil on my side of the property line produces more rabbaliscious growth and as a result it hasn’t broken the four inch mark because of its annual pruning.

And now for a few hellebores. I dug up a few as giveaways last week and have to say it’s a much nicer way to clear space for even more hellebores than sending them to the compost pile would be. It would be nice to think I’m “upgrading” but since the new ones are unflowered seedlings, who knows but at least it’s much more exciting to see something new next spring!

I think this was supposed to be ‘Pink Fizz’, a single pink, but sadly I ended up with this very un-single flower 😉

I have a little thing for growing hellebores from seed. A few get planted every fall, and eventually the pipeline is full enough that each spring there are new surprises from the years past.

I believe these were supposed to be a ‘slatey’ mix of seeds. Kind of average, and not really slate-ish, but still nice for a few springs.

Someone was too lazy to separate this pot of seedlings when planting. I like the effect!

I might have too many of these… a double pink hellebore, maybe ‘Nellie’ from seed I ordered 8 years ago from Australia. They’ve finally gotten some room and are looking great, but 6 plants of it!?

The hellebores will be fine with the cold. Most everything will be fine until it’s not, and even then it will likely recover for next year. *yes I’m talking about last year’s lost lily season*

A frozen peony (Paeonia daurica) this morning with other frozen stuff…. all recovered by 2pm.

I just noticed that the melting peony is back to almost normal. Maybe now it’s okay to take a stroll and see how everything else has made out, and briefly consider the wind and how likely it is that I’ll do any gardening today. I actually want to work out there, but with low 20’s tonight maybe I’ll wait one more day before transplanting a few little white bulbs around. They probably wouldn’t care either way, but choosing patience would make me feel a tiny bit better considering tonight’s cold will likely kill most of the flower buds on the wisteria (again).

Oh well. It’s always something and if worse comes to worse I know where the Easter chocolate is.

Have a great holiday weekend!

Snowdropping 2021

Mar18

I’ve heard them say it’s the bad trips, not the good, that you remember best, and over the years they become some of your best memories… so maybe someday this trip will rank more highly, but for now its chilly wetness ranks it closer to the bottom. At one point my snowdropping buddy stated the day reminded her of the windy, frigid visits to upstate NY and the Temple Gardens open day, and she could be right. In my defense our local forecast was decent, but I foolishly assumed it would be even milder and just as dry 100 miles South. Silly me.

I would guess snowdrop adventures in the UK and EU are far less gritty than our adventures. Tea and cake from what I’ve heard. To satisfy that question, we didn’t find either.

As I was driving down my better sense knew this trip was too short-notice and not up to or normal standards, so I dropped the hint that I would be fine doing our traditional park visit alone, and Paula must have looked at the thermometer and thought ‘hallelujah!’

“Yes” she said, “That’s fine, maybe I’ll go next week”.

The yellow of the winter aconite (Eranthis hiemalis) was fading, but the snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) were just coming up.

The park we visit hasn’t changed in years, but this year I noticed some cleanup. Brush removed, new paths, general cleaning up. I’m glad to see some love going in, but also have to admit a little sadness. Paths of bare earth cut through swathes of snowdrops and winter aconite means many bulbs were destroyed. Decades of neglect built the show, I just hope a cleaner and neater future leaves a place for them and remembers the history of this plot.

Bulbs are tenacious though. A tree disaster happens, a scar opens, and still the yellow of winter aconite manages to sprout and bloom amongst the debris.

Ok so I really wasn’t all that sad and I did spend a good hour or so examining hundreds of flowers looking for something special so it was still an excellent visit, but the real star of my trip was Paula’s garden. I swear there were twice as many blooms as I remembered. I love when I pull up somewhere and get that stupid grin and start talking to myself about how cool it looks. Sometimes I even do that with passengers onboard, and probably get concerned looks, but with each passing year I notice less and less, and care? Not even 🙂

The glow of ‘Jelena’ (Hamamelis ‘Jelena’) lights up and perfumes the highs while snowdrops and heucheras fill the lows.

It was so refreshing to see all the color filling a garden. On the ride over I was desperately scanning the neighborhoods looking for anything but it was never much more than desolately neat lawns and mulch, or way more evergreens than even a cemetery would want. Occasionally there were some snowdrops or a hellebore, so I guess there’s hope, but inspiring? No…

Paula has reached the point where nearly all the beds have snowdrops wedged in between the dormant perennials and mix of shrubbery. She complained about too many seedlings. I pretended to understand.

As usual we stood out in the cold examining every drop, commenting on how well it grew and where it was from. There were also witch hazels, winter aconite, and snowflakes to discuss. It’s great seeing a garden which comes alive while the rest of the neighborhood sits brown and dead.

One of many hellebores. The color stood out better in real life, I’m sure I yet again had some camera setting mis-adjusted.

By the time we slowly shuffled around the far end of the garden the icy drizzle had switched over to a rainy drizzle, and when I suggested it might be more polite to skip the other garden we had scheduled, Paula seemed fine with that. We were both ready to warm up and dry out. I even passed on an offer to dig one or two trades… tell me that’s not a sign!

The last couple years of plantings line the side garden, each special variety socially distanced with only the occasional seedling breaking quarantine.

I guess I’m not as feverishly desperate as I used to be. It’s still a thrill to go visiting but it’s more and more about the people, and then coming home is less and less of a let-down. There are still a few (actually plenty) of snowdrop treasures I covet, but give me a sunny winter day with bunches of average white ones surrounding me really makes me feel as if I’ve arrived…. at least in MY mind 🙂

Have a great weekend, and let this be your **last warning** that pictures from my own garden are up next!

Seven Years and Counting

Mar9

Prepare yourselves for the 2021 snowdrop season. They’re starting to come up in earnest and if it’s as warm and rainy this week as they say it will be, all the drops should be open or at least up by this weekend. Of course I’ll photograph nearly every one. Multiple times. I will understand if I don’t hear from a few people while this goes on. Seriously. Please don’t even feel obligated since there are already enough people ignoring the guy who wanders around in the cold mumbling and kneeling and photographing dirt that a few more won’t matter. I’ll be oblivious anyway.

In general snowdrops are nothing much to look at unless you have a couple decades worth of adding and dividing and transplanting under your belt. But small progress can be made. Here’s an un-named Galanthus elwesii which a friend shared with me years ago. It faced death many times before I knew what I was doing, but in 2013 I found a good spot, and in 2014 it finally escaped the muck and cold and narcissus fly attacks which were holding it back, and bloomed beautifully. It even earned a spot on this blog.

A perfectly average no-name Galanthus elwesii. It’s one of my favorite garden treasures.

All my purchased snowdrops start as one bulb. One bulb is nothing much to look at. You tell someone you have ten different varieties and they ask “where?” and then you head back inside to warm up. But eventually one becomes five becomes fifteen and you are on your way, and one year you go outside and say ‘wow, I could almost call that a clump’… and then you look around quickly to see if anyone saw you talking to yourself again…

Seven years and a couple days later. Obviously I’ve done nothing to it in the meantime, just waited.

So I think I have clumps. They didn’t all take seven years, and some are not even close, but it’s fun, and today my mother in law accidentally made eye contact as she drove by and stopped to tell me it wasn’t summer. I said it’s warm enough, and then without any prompting she said ‘oh you do have flowers already. Will they be ok if it gets cold?’ I went on too long. She regretted it.

Have a great week, and to the non-snowdroppers I’ll see you in a couple weeks 😉

February

Feb24

So much for keeping to a regular schedule of blog posts this year. January was off to a good start, but then it got cold and snowy, and I don’t do well when cold and snow separate me from my plants… unless of course it’s to hit a tropical beach or indulgent ski resort… but we all know how that’s been going this year.

Biscuit the Yorkie loves the snow, especially when the foot or so of compacted old snow is covered with a couple inches of delicious new snow.

So February has been a nothing month. Nothing much gets done, there’s not much moving (other than for food), and no one seems to care. We just watch the snow storms roll through and vaguely consider the damage that heaps of snow and ice are doing to the roof, and wonder just how big an icicle needs to be before it rips the gutter off.

Ice dams edge the entire roof. Snow is piled high, it gets wet as the up-roof sections melt a bit, and then freezes to form a solid 10 inch wall of ice atop the gutter. Of course with the gutter blocked the next melt will just run off the edge forming (in this case tiny) icicles.

Sunday actually lived up to its name, with a clear sky and almost above freezing temperatures I made my first trek into the yard in about three weeks. There really wasn’t anything to see (anything good that is) but I did dig out one of buckets covering snowdrops and was thrilled to see them also enjoying the bright change in weather.

Galanthus ‘Three Ships’ still looking great, assuming I’m willing to trudge out and dig her up each time I visit.

Although many will complain about the snow, you won’t hear me gripe about it until March when we get hit by some nasty blizzard or Nor’easter which crushes all the new sprouts and ruins all the earliest spring flowers. Fortunately this year, in spite of a warm January, most everything was still far enough back that all this cold has done is make it wait. When it melts I expect a grand explosion of spring, and that’s always exciting.

A foot or two of compacted snow isn’t all good things. The rabbits can’t get to their food and end up eating just about anything which makes it above the snow line.

Maybe that spring explosion will be enough to save the leafless hollies and camellias, and skeletal spruces which I just bought and planted… thinking they would be just fine and out of reach in the raised beds of the potager… I fenced a bunch of things back in December, but in the past these have been safe, so obviously why would I over do it?

winter sunset

Even with all the clamor over snow and bitter cold and an arctic vortex or two, reality says this winter is still warmer than average, with only seven or eight nights actually below average, and not by much. Even the most impaired statistician will tell you that for an average to be average about half the temps will be above and half below… give or take a few extremes… and we are far from that even if it sure seems like a winter out of the ‘olden’ days.

A quick flashback to my garden journals of the ’80s tells me that we are actually about right in line with the spring of ’87. That might sound reassuring, but these are actually from when I lived on Long Island, which is now considered a balmy zone 7, so… we are actually way ahead.

Reading a thermometer and checking a weather report really only take at most five minutes, so it’s been a struggle to fill the rest of the weekend with nothingness. Even the winter garden is boring me so in a valiant attempt to beat the stupor I checked up on any drip irrigation fittings I might need. Yes I need to order more, maybe 100 1/2 gph emitters will be enough for all the caladium bulbs I ordered. Yes, I need to pot them up individually so that I can separate all the colors and then arrange them and rearrange them through the summer. Yes, I know that’s excessive.

Drip irrigation fittings and parts. For all of ten minutes I considered a post on the subject, but then… the stupor again descended.

One thing I have managed this winter is reading. Three new books top the pile, and they’re all excellent. ‘Some Snowdrops’ is a beautiful dreambook of how I imagine snowdrop season will be like, ‘A Year at Brandywine Cottage’ gets me excited about every plant and every season (and unfortunately every recipe has me wandering into the kitchen hungry), and ‘Colchicum’ has me doubting every label in my little colchicum bed.

Winter reading for the gardener.

A little wandering, a little dreaming, a little reading, that’s actually a pretty banner weekend (or more honestly, month) for me. Even in mid February the sun already seems March strong, and I don’t think I’m the only one thinking that. The best thing I noticed on Sunday was that birdsong is back, and in spite of the snow, birds were vociferously carving up the neighborhood into new territories for spring.

… until Monday, and another six inches of snow…

So it’s not spring yet, but things are looking up. Tomorrow will be warm, Thursday will be warmer. It will take a while for the snow and ice to melt, so I’ve got a few more days to be lazy, but the next few days look promising!

Snow can wear you out.

Have a great week!

Winter Rages?

Jan13

The next three weeks are typically when winter throws its worst at us. The average low dips down to around 18F (-7C) at night, and then climbs to 34F (1C) in the day, depending on all kinds of things of course, and the long nights and short days don’t set the garden up for much of anything. That’s a normal year. Besides all the other more obvious ups and downs, the weather last year was not normal, and in fact was one of our hottest years on record. 12 days in and 2021 isn’t looking to be the culture and climate shift everyone was hoping for. Actually it looks a lot more like December 37, 2020.

This gardener prefers to use stylish and unobtrusive 5 gallon buckets to protect the earliest snowdrops from the coldest winds and heaviest snows of winter. Here’s ‘Potter’s Prelude’ uncovered to enjoy the next few days of mild weather.

For a minute I’ll ignore the past and just enjoy this mild weather which draws these snowdrops up out of the ground. Most of what’s flowering now would be fall bloomers in a milder climate but here they usually dawdle enough that flowering happens in winter, which should be fun, but for many the weather is just too much and the flowers (and foliage) end up destroyed. Viva la global warming! These days I have snowdrops blooming all winter… until we get a plunge in February of course, and then even with buckets galore, things still look like someone named Winter trampled through the beds with some heavy cleated snow boots on.

I moved a fall blooming Galanthus elwesii ssp monostictus hiemelis group ex Montrose (catch breath*) to a warmer spot to hopefully bring on earlier blooming, but it didn’t. Still it seems much happier here and has been in bloom over a month!

I’ve been trying to find a perfect spot to make life easier on these little treasures. It’s worked in a few cases but some still aren’t happy regardless of where I have them growing. When the cold comes the flowers burn and the foliage dies back. Some struggle afterwards, some go to the light, but I do have one who just shrugs it off. ‘Three Ships’ (Galanthus plicatus ‘Three Ships’) has never shown a bit of damage in spite of ice and snow and cold. He’s never made it into bloom for Christmas, which is the trick he’s best known for, but he is a snowdrop who choses to grow and flower just as the weather is at it’s worst and for that holds place as one of my favorites.

Today’s sunshine and just barely above freezing air temperatures have brought out ‘Three Ships’.

For the first few years I assumed the cold would do this little nut in. What sane snowdrop would grow more as the temperatures dropped further? Tender shoots and sub zero weather should not mix, but one shoot became two, two became four, and rather than die, ‘Three Ships’ is becoming a clump.

Not just a hardy snowdrop, but also a beautiful snowdrop. Heavy textured, rounded blooms with soft green inner markings. I love the ridges and the way the flowers puff out in the sun.

So right now the snowdrops are loving it. It’s like winter in the North Carolina mountains, and although some more cold and snow would make for better skiing, I don’t mind mediocre skiing on Monday followed by snowdrops on Tuesday.

Be safe and have a great week!

Winter Arrives?

Jan7

With the calendar turning over for the official start of a new year, I had the opportunity to see my blogging stats as a year end summary. I usually expect a disappointing show but how exciting to see that for the first time since 2016 my visitors and views have actually increased! I’ll still point out that there was far more interest in this blog five years ago than there is today, but I guess any move to the plus side is worth celebrating, and I think my first move will be to show off these numbers to my bank account. It’s been slacking in the numbers department as well, and this might be just the inspiration it’s been waiting for.

A former vegetable bed has filled with hydrangeas and other things more colorful than vegetables. Now a messy mulch of leaves looks suspiciously like the cover for a future snowdrop bed. Hmmmm.

My concerns over declining views are matched only by my race to improve them. In the last four years I’ve done nothing. That could be part of it, but at least the weather was beautiful last Saturday and I was able to do something outside and actually weeded a few spots and spread a little mulch. Not bad for January, and I think I’m as set as I will be for the earliest spring bloomers, some of which have mistaken sunny days in the 50’s for the end of an extremely short winter.

Mrs Macnamara is an early riser, but unfortunately this weather tricks her into being too early. In the five years she’s been here her early blooms have been destroyed five times, and I have yet to see her flowers open and look their best.

History does not bode well for an extremely short winter in this garden. A review of last year shows various things up and nearly in flower the first week of January… and then also shows the wilted, frozen mush of snowdrops and hellebores by the end of February. I doubt there’s a gardener out there who doesn’t know this same story.

I would have removed the hellebore foliage but prefer to mow it all up, and honestly the lawnmower deserves at least a few days off for winter so I’ll wait.

I guess there’s no easy way out. A more mature and sensible gardener would just not grow the plants ill suited to their garden. That’s a good idea, and you of course should do that even if I won’t.

On the advice of a better gardener I’ve started trimming the old foliage off my hellebores at anytime from late December on. Tender, easily damaged shoots seem to show up whether the leaves are removed or not.

I apologize for speaking of warm sun while showing gloomy snow and sleet but one of the blog stats which stood out for me was that this blogger used to post twice as much. Because Saturday was a beautiful, busy day and no photos were taken, I was forced to go out Sunday into the sleet for something to blog about. Quantity over quality is my new mantra and we will see if more frequent posts will be the secret to overwhelming my site counter and bringing on that lucrative movie deal I’m still hoping for.

Or spring. I won’t mind if more frequent posts bring on spring 🙂

Happy Solstice

Dec22

It’s a rare day that snow pictures end up on this blog, but some people seem to be into this kind of stuff so I figured what the heck, they are kind of pretty, sort of like microscopic virus photos or the closeup of a horsefly’s eye… so here they are. As we enter the longest night of the year it’s a taste of cold sunshine from Saturday morning.

I love Pinus densiflora ‘Burke’s Red Variegated’. It’s supposed to resist winter browning, but here it is with some winter browning.

The polished buds of European beech surrounded by the russet glow of Panicum ‘Dallas Blues’ seedheads.

More Panicum virgatum ‘Dallas Blues’, a switch grass who’s bluish summer foliage is followed by a winter long reddish foliage which holds up fairly well to lighter snow loads and winter winds.

Silly rose it’s winter, and you’re deciduous.

We ended up with about a foot of snow. Faced with cyber school the kids didn’t even get a day off.

It’s been a good year for Amsonia hubrichtii. The yellow in autumn was better than ever and now there’s even some color left for the first few weeks of winter.

A gentle snowfall marks off the hedges and beds of the potager.

The bright sunshine and cold clear air brings sparkle to just about everything.

I had been itching to strimmer the stray weeds and wild asters on the berm, who would have thought the juncos would flock in to enjoy the tiny aster seedheads.

It’s always hit or miss as to how the Southern magnolia seedlings make it through the ups and downs of a NEPa winter.

Now it’s a slow wobble back to summer as the days again increase in length and the ground slowly soaks the heat back up. Eventually, towards the end of January, our average temperatures should start to rise again and if this winter is anything like the last couple a few witch hazels and winter aconite might dare open a flower or two. It’s a fun ride.

All the best for a nice, long and cozy solstice night 🙂

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

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