Amaryllis Competition Update

Oh, it was so wonderful - a Christmas Eve miracle! I was busy, tearing around and getting ready for company that day, when I went into the conservatory to get something, and I noticed that both stalks on the green amaryllis had opened fully, were straight and looked glorious. I started that growing Thanksgiving weekend, you'll recall. If I had sat down and tried to calculate a bloom date, I couldn't have done it. Well done, 'LemonLime'! My namesake, on the other hand, still sits - silent and stubbornly refusing to so much as put out a leaf, much less a flower stalk. 'Susan' the amaryllis is even lazier than Susan the gardener can be - and believe me, I can be world-class lazy when I decide to be. In the spirit of tolerance this season, I have not chastised her, but instead have moved her to the east window, next to 'LemonLime', who hopefully will lead by example, or at least shame 'Susan' into putting out, so to speak. If not, she'll officially be on notice!

Mission Accomplished??

Just before Christmas, our quarterly extermination visit occurred. This became necessary many years ago because just after purchasing our house, which had sat vacant for nearly a year, we found that mice from the fields surrounding us had taken up residence. (Just another good reason to own a cat - the premiere Early Warning System!) So from that time to this, we have had our quarterly visit. When the fellow was here, I pointed out the vole problem and asked to have a bait station placed out in the front bed. He obliged. Well - cautious optimism is in order here. We had a few inches of snow last night, and this morning and afternoon, there were no vole tracks anywhere. None. Not any. I am tempted to declare victory, but my Vermont ancestry will not let me be so immoderate. Time, I guess, will tell......

Voles - The Never Ending Story

Well, we have now had our first serious snowfall and what to my wondering eyes did appear? Vole tracks in the flower bed in front of the house! !@#$%^&*!! (Translation: "I am so bloody sick and tired of voles") On the plus side, it's easy to see where the run is. There's only one, and it goes between a dianthus and a lavender. We're due to lose the snow by Monday, so once it's gone, out come the granules again. By God, I am going to win this war no matter what I have to do. Within reasonable limits, of course. For instance, dynamite is generally frowned upon, but there must be other ways that won't get me imprisoned or run out of town on a rail. I think I'll run "control methods for voles" up the Google flagpole, and see who salutes.......

Amaryllis Competition

Now that the outdoors is disposed of, it's time to pot up amaryllis. Which I did over Thanksgiving weekend. After having an average of 5 for the last several years, and at one time 7 (yes, actually), I divested myself last year of all but two. Most of the discards succumbed to my perennial nemesis the mealybug, and a couple just got old and tired, not unlike their owner. The two I potted up recently are 'Lemon Lime' and 'Susan'. The color of the first is self-explanatory. 'Susan' is a lovely coral color, with just a hint of picotee edging. Performance? Ah, well - that's another matter entirely. Within a few days of being repotted, 'Lemon Lime' sprouted not one, but two flower stalks. 'Susan', on the other hand, has shown one tiny hint of a leaf and not much inclination to do anything else. I know neither one of them will be blooming for the holidays, but my namesake has so far been a disappointment to say the least. Will 'Lemon Lime' bloom in time for New Year's? Will Susan bloom at all? Stay tuned....

The Good Times Ain't Rollin Any More

There's a saying here in the Rochester, NY area -"No sun? November!" Well, not this year. It may have reverted to the old, familiar November today (windy and gray), but we have just come off of a record-breaker. We have yet to experience any snowfall, and this is the latest that's happened in nearly half a century! The temperature stats are even more amazing. This is the warmest November here in 70 years. It has been an incredible run - I think we only had clouds and/or rain 4 or 5 days this month, and only one of those days had more than a trace of rain. Nearly every day was sunny, with cloudless blue skies. It was an absolute joy to work outdoors and not freeze my assets doing it. I noticed that a lot of folks took advantage of the weather gods' benevolence and got their outdoor Christmas decorating done. Can't say I blame them. Especially since there was a noticeable lack of wind - and I will state unequivocally that I have never lived anywhere as windy as here. It's an event when it's NOT a windy day. Much to my amusement (and amazement), the natives don't agree with me. Here, winds of 20 mph are considered to be a "light breeze". Which has always made raking leaves a real undertaking. But oh, this year - this November was one to savor; one to keep in memory and relive in years to come, when November reverts to normal again......

A Plague of Mealybugs

I've been spending the last several weeks trying to get the outdoors buttoned up before the winter shuts us down for the next four months, and as a consequence the conservatory has been sadly neglected. Just how neglected was driven home to me this morning. We had an overnight low of 24, with a heavy frost that more resembled a light snowfall and didn't disappear until nearly noon! My feeling is that if it's too cold for the frost to melt, then it's too cold for me to be out there. So I puttered in the conservatory instead. I had a flower arrangement to do for our library's monthly fundraiser, and once that was completed, I decided to take the rubbing alcohol to a couple of plants that I spotted mealybug on. WELL.......there were a great many mealybugs on several plants. The upshot was that I spent an hour and a half swabbing down 5 Christmas cacti and 3 clivias - and tossing out the large, venerable jade plant that had been given to me by a now-deceased dear friend. That really hurt (I did locate a half dozen branches that were clean to make cuttings from), but there was just nothing else for it. It was absolutely polluted with the little bastards, and after looking at it, I'm convinced that it was the source of all the problems. Time will no doubt tell on that score, but it has to help. While I labored away, I began to wonder what it would be like to encounter a mealybug the size of a vole. Natural history is reticent on this point, and for good reason. I guess the moral of the story is, as Roseanne Roseannadanna (Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live) used to say: "It's always somethin'".............

More !@#$% Voles in another !@#$% Garden Bed!

I couldn't believe my eyes. Yesterday morning, I went out to get the back flower bed cleared out and cleaned up. In the interest of full disclosure, it's been overrun with violets, and seriously dry weather in August and September meant that I hadn't been out to try weeding until now (the ground was literally like poured concrete, as I may have mentioned in the previous vole posting). All was well until I got to the middle of the bed, around a lilac. As I pulled away violet leaves, I found tunnels and excavated dirt piles all over the bloody place. Voles!!! Some iris rhizomes were only being held up by the fact that their roots were so intertwined- unbelievable! Unfortunately, rain drove me in for the remainder of the day around 1:30, so tomorrow, it's once more into the breach, granules in hand, to try to get the upper hand in this war. And it isn't just me; at lunchtime, the phone company knocked on the door (we'd had land line problems the day before), and the repairman was also grousing about the havoc the little bastards are wreaking on the pillars that house the phone lines. He said he's been running all over creation the last couple of weeks, clearing out nests and replacing chewed wires. A pox on voles!!!!

October's Bright Blue Weather

Yesterday was one of those old-gold days that only seem to come in October. A flawless, cloudless, cobalt sky with the oranges and yellows flaming against it. A mild day that still had a hint of nip in it, making it the kind of day that I absolutely love for working outdoors in the fall. It feels grand to be out, but equally good to go back in after a few hours of hard labor. As much as I hate winter (it goes on forever up here in western NY; world without end, amen), I've had a lifelong love affair with fall in general and October in particular. It is my birth month, and when I was small, I always thought that nature put this show on just for me. It is in many ways the loveliest month of the year, and there are poems and fitting quotes galore celebrating the spectacle. Helen Hunt Jackson's verse about "October's bright blue weather" (an apt description if ever there was one). A favorite quote from the naturalist John Burroughs: "How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.". Even though this spectacular flame-out leads inevitably to the darkest and dreariest months of the year, I'm irresistibly drawn to it - and I'll revel in it until the day I die. Which may be soon, if I don't stop reveling and start getting serious about fall cleanup........

!@#$% Voles in a !@#$% Raised Bed!

Fall cleanup has begun, and today I was working out front, in the large raised bed by the street. Full disclosure - I hadn't done any weeding or cleanup since early August, as most of that month and all of September were bone-dry, and the ground rapidly became like poured cement. Imagine my shock and dismay, then, when I came to the area around my 'Sungold' buddleia and discovered massive amounts of dirt pushed around. Worse still, I went to yank some deqd iris foliage off of a rhizome and found myself holding the entire rhizome itself! Upon clearing the remaining leaves, I found multiple holes all around the area - voles had gotten in and set up serious housekeeping, I thought. Oh, joy. As I moved over slightly to the right of the buddleia to begin eliminating the out-of-control comfrey that was providing the voles safety, heads began popping out of some of the holes, then popping back in again. Definitely voles; no question about it. By now, I was really honked off - getting every last bit of comfrey out of that bed put me light years behind with everything else that needs to be done. Once I finished that obnoxious chore, I decided that half-measures just wouldn't do - I got my last container of Shake-Away granules and dumped a goodly amount down the largest two holes, filled them in with the excavated dirt, stamped around noisily, then scattered the rest of the granules around the area. All I can say is, this bloody well better work. I don't dare mulch this bed now until the ground starts freezing in earnest and that could mean that I'll be doing it in a snowstorm! Meantime, maybe I'd better buy stock in the Shake-Away company.......

The Remains of the Feast

Well, now that two nights of hard freezes have declared the 2009 gardening season officially dead, I'm wading out tomorrow to begin fall cleanup in earnest. After I remove the black mush formerly known as dahlias, tomatoes and peppers, I will no doubt be puzzing until my puzzler is sore over the small pepper I grew that I believed to be 'Yum Yum Gold'. This was supposed to be, I thought, a miniature sweet pepper, perfectly sized for salads and snacking. Well let me tell you - this pepper had a definite bite and more than a little heat to it. I tried it at various color stages. Just gold - vaguely nippy. Orange - a bit spicier, but still tolerable. So, thought I, let's let one go to red. After all, sweet peppers are at their sweetest when they're red, right? Well, you would think so. And you would be wrong. At red, these particular peppers damn near bit your tongue off and gave you a raspberry. So the possibilities are as follows: I misunderstood/misinterpreted the catalog description; the funky growing conditions this year caused some abnormality or recessive gene or some damn thing to kick in; or (my guess) some hot pepper seeds found their way into that packet. Either way, I believe that 'Yum Yum Gold' is definitely off the menu for 2010!

Success - Epilog

Well, the best beloved 'Moon & Stars' came out of the fridge this afternoon, and went under the knife. The long and short of it is that it wasn't quite completely ripe. I got the ripest parts cut out, and they were fairly sweet, but not what they would have been if I could have squeezed a few more weeks out of the growing season. However, with 2 hard freezes this week followed by daytime temps in the upper 30's and a light dusting of snow this morning, it wasn't to be. Still, I choose to look on the bright side - I got my melon after lo these many years, what little I got from it tasted reasonably good, and now I can move on and quit obsessing about growing a bloody 'Moon & Stars' watermelon!

Success - Don't Know if it's Sweet or Not

Last Saturday afternoon, my garden gave birth to 19 lb., 11 oz. 'Moon & Stars' watermelon - woo hoo!! I have tried for many years to successfully grow one of these melons, so named because the skin, a dark green, is spangled with varying sizes of yellow dots (stars) and the occasional large round yellow dot (moon). I guess it appeals to something childlike in me, or perhaps I'm jsut stubborn, but I became obsessed with growing one. Just one. It's never worked - I've tried starting them early indoors, direct seeding out in the garden, transplanting outdoors under a cloche - you name it, I tried it. And none of it worked. This year wasn't working either at first. I started the plants indoors in early April, put them out in late May - and then we had the coldest, wettest June and July on record. When the vines should have been developing, they just sat there. No flowers at all (I also tried to grow 2 heirloom varieties of musk melons; they just withered up and drowned), and to be honest, by the time August arrived with a near total drought (until the end of September, thank you very much) I had more or less forgotten 'Moon & Stars'. Then one day about the middle of August, I suddenly noticed that speckled vines (the leaves bear the same mottling as the skin) were spreading out far and wide! By September, seeing that there were only one or two flowers, I wrote the crop off, as it would never have enough growing season left to mature. And then, just after our trip to Canada mid-month, I just about fell over when I saw a big, round lump!! My God, I thought, I just may pull this off. I kept checking it daily, fussing over it like a mother hen, and when the time came for us to leave for a few days in Vermont, I dug up my floating row cover and tucked the damn thing in as if it was a newborn infant, for God's sake. But chilly weather was threatening, and I thought "I'll be bloody damned if I've nursed it this far (11.5 lbs. at that point), only to have it get toasted by an unexpected frost". So I left for Vermont, secure in the knowledge that my baby was safe in its swaddling. When I returned last Saturday, the beloved had nearly doubled in size, and with a freeze warning coming Sunday night, I decided that the time had come. In the house came 'Moon & Stars', the swaddling cloth was retired, and Baby Melon will meet its destiny following tomorrow night's dinner. Hopefully, success will be sweet!

Dahlias and Other Diversions

A couple of weeks ago, we were up in Ontario for a car show that we attend every year. We own an LBC (that's Little British Car for the uninitiated), specifically a Triumph Stag, and we come up to British Car Day in Burlington. We're friends with a group of people who also own Stags, and for a couple days prior to the show, we all go tooling around the area to various amusements that they've arranged. One of our field trips was to the Royal Botanical Garden in Hamilton, and it's the first time we've been back there in many years. The other time was during rose season, and that's a sight not to be missed. If you live anywhere in the Northeastern US, you should make it a point to go there. I believe they have the largest collection of lilacs in Canada, and the rose gardens were amazing. At this time of year, there wasn't a great deal blooming, and I was feeling a bit crestfallen as I wandered around - until my eyes fell on a huge bed of dahlias. Nothing but dahlias. Dinnerplates, cactus and zinnia forms, tall ones, short ones, medium ones, all colors, bicolors. You name a dahlia, it was there. I spent so much time prowling around the bed, in a trance of delight, that my husband had to drag me away before we got left behind!

While there, I was reminded of another autumn trip involving dahlias. My husband and I were up in Maine at the beginning of October that year for him to attend a photography workshop. One day we went to Campobello, Franklin Roosevelt's summer home, and lining the driveway to the home was a regiment of dinnerplate dahlias in all the colors of the rainbow. There had been no frost yet, due to the ameliorating effect of the Bay of Fundy, and they were truly magnificent. The few dahlias that I grow here at home are pretty, and invaluable for flower arrangements at this season, but they're only a pale imitation of the dahlias of my Canadian adventures..........

Monarchs On The Move

I've begun seeing monarch butterflies scooting around the yard this last week. It's something I always look for in late summer. To see a monarch swooping and dipping through the flowers on a sunny day puts me in mind of the way little girls will sometimes dance to invisible music - twirling and skipping in total abandon - as if no one was watching (and not giving a rip even if they were). It's pure, wholehearted joy on the wing, and for me, summer just wouldn't be the same without them.

An Embarrassment of Basil

What was I thinking when I started the seeds of 23 (yep, you read that right) different varieties of basil? I guess it was just this year's Big Thing. I got interested when I tried about 3 kinds last summer and made pesto with 'Poppy Joe's" from Seeds of Change. It was the first time I'd ever made pesto, and I was hooked. Well, thought I, if 3 kinds are good, 23 just has to be better. Well, yes and no. First off, I'm completely perplexed. This summer has been what I would consider a less than optimal growing season for basil. June and July were below average temperature and rainy to boot, yet my basil is all flourishing. I have it scattered around my property, in beds and borders, in the vegetable garden and (prudently, I think) in pots on my patio. The potted ones by and large are exuberant to say the least! I'm currently experimenting with both making pesto from different varieties and drying for winter use, to see if there are noticeable flavor differences. The most recent batch of pesto was made from 'Poppy Joe's', a huge, glossy leaved variety with that unmistakeable Italian flavor. The next will be from lettuce leaf basil. Most of the remainder is grown for use in bouquets. Top choice for that purpose is usually purple leaf; it combines beautifully with shades of orange, peach, lighter purple and rose/fuschia. I have a plant of the variegated 'Pesto Perpetuo', but it's a very small-leaved variety, better suited as a specimen plant or a topiary. Still, it literally is an "embarrassment of basil" when you find yourself constantly answering the question of what plant is that with one word: "Basil"!

The Queen of Unfinished Projects Returns

Well, I see it's been nearly 2 months since my last post. Medical problems and other trivia kept me away from the blog all this time, but things finally seem to have settled down. Today, in between thunderstorms, I began an undertaking that I've been wanting to do for some time now - I have begun to catalog my perennial plant collection! Working from memory (and occasionally running outside to peek at various beds), I have counted 110 genera. At some point, I'd like to catalog it by species/cultivar, but I almost think that needs to be done beginning in the spring as things appear.

It may not seem like a particularly Big Thing to a lot of people, but you have to consider that when we purchased the house 17 and a half years ago, almost no landscaping existed. All that was here was: 3 big yews and 3 small azaleas across the front of the house, 1 arborvitae on the west corner of the house, 1 small azalea and 1 euonymus shrub beside the garage, and a large island by the street (this was once the model home for the tract) with barberry and juniper. That was it. In the intervening years, I have planted everything else. I suspect the dollar figure for all this supplementary landscaping would make me blush........

Summertime Blues

Well, it's officially summer now. This is a good thing for many reasons. However, we have now passed the longest day of the year, and this means that the days are now going to begin getting shorter. Last night was glorious - even at a quarter to 10, the sunset hadn't completely faded. But now, as the summer goes on, you suddenly realize about the end of July that you don't hear many birds during the day, and it's dark by 9:00. In August, you notice that all you hear all day long is the hum of insects, and it's getting dark earlier and earlier. Before you know it, it's September. The nights and mornings are cooler and cooler, and it's dark by about 7:30. Yes, I know that we've got a lot of summer to go yet, but as Slim Pickens said in "Blazing Saddles", "I am depressed".

Another Good Reason to be a Locavore (as if you needed one)

We all know that news is currently pretty damn depressing. Sometimes, however, it's downright scary. The other day I heard a news story concerning food safety. Well, the bottom line is that the nation's largest food companies (prepackaged, i.e. Nestle) have frankly admitted that they are absolutely incapable of guaranteeing the safety of their products. Why, you ask? Oh, that would be because of corporate America's addictions to outsourcing and obscene profits. The corporations have outsourced production, which has been in its turn outsourced, and outsourced yet again, ad infinitum, until they literally have no idea what comes from where. All they know for sure is that most everything comes from places that have no idea of the concepts of quality control and safety inspection. And we are the beneficiaries (?) of this misplaced confidence. Which brings me back to my original point - if you've never thought much about the comparative benefits of eating locally (or at least regionally) produced food, think about it now. Your life may depend on it.......

Garden Study

I have determined this year to do a survey of my garden and figure out approximately what kinds of perennial plants I have, and how many of each. I will skip genus for now, begin with species, then (hopefully) document cultivars. It's something of an undertaking, because I am a plant collector, and I have a fearsome quantity of plants here. It's a good summer to do it, because we aren't really going anywhere to speak of, so I'll have the time. Unfortunately, I'll have to work from memory for the early spring/spring plants and bulbs, but since my husband is an inveterate record-keeper (to say nothing of a thoroughgoing packrat), I may be able to cull old plant/bulb orders for assistance. I'll post the list of species when it's done, and then some time in the future I'll come out with the cultivar list. I intend to include any annuals and/or biennials that have found the place to their liking year after year, so purists may scoff. Personally, I don't give a rip - I'm doing it for my own enlightenment and enjoyment, and that's how it is. And now that life has finally (!) settled down from My First Trip Abroad, I'm feeling the need to do some posts concerning garden adventures in the Netherlands. At least, as soon as I figure out how to post the photos..........

A Plethora of Plants

Due to a number of circumstances beyond my control, I have gotten way, way behind in all things gardening. At one point, between plants acquired by catalog, various outings and what I started by seed, I had 8 trays of plants sitting around the patio. I did manage to whittle it down over the last week to two trays (one of sun-lovers and one of shade-lovers). I was finally beginning to feel that the light at the end of the tunnel wasn't an oncoming freight train after all. And what did I do this weekend? Get more planting done and clear off the patio? Hell, no - I went out yesterday and today and - wait for it - bought plants. Yesterday some visiting relatives and I went out to an iris farm near here (dig your own) and came home with 6 (count 'em, 6) different Siberian iris. Couldn't help that. The man does a lot of hybridizing, and he had some beauties. Today, my garden club went on a tour of a small but elegant family nursery, and they had a couple of choice annual salvias and the variety of mockorange that my parents had, which I've been searching for for years. Well, I ask you - what else could I do but come home with them? They were not only speaking to me, they were bloody bellowing at me. All I can say is, stop me before I buy again!!

On the Brighter Side

Yes, I know - my last post was an outpouring of my misery. Grim reading, but just as sunshine follows rain, bright spots emerge in the shadows. I went out to dig some iris I had promised to a friend, when my eye started to wander around the landscape. Almost immediately my attention was grabbed by an unfamiliar splotch of blue in a bed where I didn't recollect having any. Closer inspection (I am beyond nearsighted; if someone hadn't had the foresight to invent the contact lens, I'd be using a dog and a cane by now) revealed the newcomer to be a Dutch iris! I last planted Dutch iris about 3 years ago; I assumed that it had died. What a lovely surprise. Patrolling the other beds turned up more delights - a "bomb' peony named 'Nancy Nora' with a ravishing scent that I've been searching for since my childhood; Penstemon pinifolium, a tiny penstemon from High Country Gardens not more than 3"-4" high that has finally deigned to bloom after 2 years. When I stuck my nose out front, I discovered that all of my roses are blooming lushly. Finding that my peas have finally come in was a big bonus - biting into a round green pearl of a pea is like candy, and such a welcome addition to our dinner salad. So I concede that perhaps Mr. Burroughs was right after all - I have been soothed and healed. My senses are once again in order.

Paging John Burroughs

I thought that after the garden tour, things would quiet down here. I was wrong. Last week we got word that the daughter of friends of our was murdered by her husband of only a few months. I will spare everyone the gruesome details, but suffice it to say that the circumstances were disturbing at best. She was soon to be 29 years old; a lovely girl, a brilliant biomedical researcher at an Ivy League school, working on stem cell research for cancer. Her family is totally devastated - they had known the young man for several years, and neither they, nor his parents, nor anyone who knows him saw anything like this lurking within him. Speaking for myself, I'm completely in turmoil. How could someone suddenly snap like that, and wreak absolute, evil destruction on so many hearts? A part of me clings to the hope that a phone call will say that it was all a terrible mistake, and she's OK. Yet she's gone, and the rational part of my brain knows that. And when it gets to be too enormous to think of, I'm reminded of the naturalist John Burroughs who said, "I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order." Well, it's a noble sentiment, and I'm trying mightily to find that soothing and healing - but at the moment, I'm not having much success.

The Great Garden Tour Bust of '09

Well, the garden tour is now history - and what a waste of my time that was! I damn near killed myself last week, weeding and planting and mulching all day, every day. The grand total of visitors? Fifteen. As in 15. Even more irritating was that I convinced a friend of mine to come over and spend the four hours with me, because I figured I'd need one of us in the front and one in the back to answer questions, etc. We ended up spending the time sitting at the foot of the driveway, chit-chatting. (I made it up to her by giving her a glass of wine on the patio afterward.) One thing that really puzzled me regarding the lack of attendance was the prominent absence of my fellow garden clubbers. They're usually all over garden tours, and I know that this one got announced to the district clubs, but only 3 showed up. I was on a garden tour at this time of year in '04, and I was mobbed. People were still coming even after the official closing time. Despite intermittent showers that day it was still an unqualified success, mainly due to a compliment from an important source. The woman in question is from England, and for many years had a well-respected landscape design service in the area. She's a recognized authority on all things horticultural. At one point, she came over to me and said, "For sheer variety of plant material alone, this is far and away the best garden on the tour." Now that really meant something! Quite a contrast to yesterday's lack of interest; one couple arrived and departed in less than 5 minutes. (I guess they were supporting the institution that put the tour on - they apparently didn't give a rip about the plants.) Oh well, at least I have my memories...........

Green Thoughts (My Version)

I was looking outside after a brief shower this evening, and I was struck as I am every May with how intensely green this month is. And how can there be so many variations on one color? Grass, emerging leaves, open leaves, seedlings - each and every one is different from everything else around it. Sometimes looking at it all, I have the feeling that I've never seen green before until this moment. Do other people, other gardeners think similar thoughts at this time of year, I wonder? Or do I just have an extremely ill-regulated mind?

I'm Hurtin'!

I am to be part of a garden tour this coming Saturday. This would normally be a good thing, because at this time of year my garden is at peak. However, a number of things have thrown a monkey wrench into the works. To begin with, I returned from my trip to the Netherlands with a bronchial infection that caused me to miss the first 10 days of this month; no gardening of any kind was done during that time. Then, just as I was pretty much back to full strength, our best friends arrived for their annual vacation. Sally is my dearest friend of nearly 30 years, so you bet your assets that I wasn't about to do anything but have an inordinate amount of fun for a week. Although I did at least acquire some plants. The four of us went on a winery tour of one of the Finger Lakes - eight wineries participated, and offered tastings, specialty foods, and two plants to each participant (one flower, one herb). Sally and Carl are wine experts, so they had all the wine they wanted and I scored a boatload of plants - a win-win for all concerned! Still, there were several big flower beds that haven't been touched since the beginning of April, and more than one resembles a jungle at this point. So in order to impress the tourists, I have no choice but to kill myself edging and weeding - forget planting any of this stuff. And forget having everything look perfect; I'll have to settle for good enough. Perfect is right off the table. Even at that, the hard physical labor and crawling around on hands and knees is taking a serious toll on my poor fibromyalgia/arthritis afflicted body. I've been at it hard for two straight days, eight hours a day - and when I come in I can hardly move. Normally, I'd work like that for one day, then off the next. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of time at this point. This is pushing me hard, and all I'm doing is cosmetics. Of course, I have to keep reminding myself that the general public will only see the incredible plant diversity and think it's awesome. And anyone (like a fellow Master Gardener) who has more horticultural knowledge than the general public will have the good taste to ignore what didn't get done. Still, I can't wait for Sunday - I intend to sit around and do no physical labor whatsoever. And take copious quantities of Tylenol Arthritis.........

The Plant's In The Mail

It was like Christmas morning today - my plant orders have begun to arrive! Two boxes showed up this afternoon, chock full of treasures, with more to follow. I tried to cut my wish list back this year (with moderate success), but greed will out. Everyone that I buy from always has such neat stuff! I just have to indulge myself a bit.....OK, more than a bit. In my defense, I am slated to be on a garden tour at the end of this month, and I'm billed as a plant collector's garden, so we need to look the part, don't we? Now, if we could only get off the "frost advisory" kick, I could start doing some planting........

Lilac Time!

I've got a really filthy bronchial infection that we brought home from our trip, and reason would dictate that I stay indoors until I start improving.  Well, reason can take a hike.  It was sunny and warm today, and when I looked out and saw my lilacs blooming, I had to go out.  I have 8 different varieties and I buried my nose in every single one.  Going around the property:  'Sensation' out front (purple with white picotee edge), 'George Eastman' on the southwest corner (a smaller-flowered wine color).  'Dappled Dawn' on the northwest corner (blue-violet with gold-variegated leaves), then in the back yard I have single and double-flowered whites; 'Primrose' that opens a butter yellow and matures to cream; the lovely, pale pink 'Beauty of Moscow' and finally, the wine purple of 'Charles Joly'.  Along with all the violets carpeting my flowerbeds, the dominant color at the moment seems to be purple.

TGI - Botanical Latin?!?

I just returned from a long-dreamed of trip to the Netherlands (my first trip abroad), and one of the places my husband and I sought out in Amsterdam was the city's botanical garden.  This was a lovely place in the heart of the old city, small but fascinating.  I enjoyed walking around the parterred beds, checking out what was blooming that day, poking around in the greenhouses, etc. However, not for the first time, I was deeply grateful that I am conversant with botanical Latin.  I have been unfairly tagged as elitist by some; when asked to identify a plant I tend to give the Latin name first.  The only reason for this is that when I was going to school for my hort degree, the Plant Materials class required tons of rote memorization of Latin names.  And thank goodness it did, because naturally the signage at the gardens was all in Dutch, with the Latin following.  If I didn't know the botanical Latin, the Dutch in many cases would have been indecipherable, and I wouldn't have known what the hell a lot of the plants were!

Easter Sunday

The sun is nearly gone now, this cold and very blustery Easter Sunday.  Cold it may be (the temperature tonight is forecast for the low 20's and I fear for my beautiful pink magnolia buds), but spring really is bursting out all over.   Seemingly overnight the hyacinths and daffodils have emerged and flowered perfectly.  To be honest, some of my newest hyacinths look as if they bulked up on steroids over the winter - so fat and clublike, you could hurt someone with them! The sunny daffs are such a welcome sight, and now the specialty narcissus are ready to open up.  The minor bulbs have nearly faded, but the rush to fill in their spots proceeds at a breakneck pace.  Strangely, my forsythia has yet to make an appearance - but that's quibbling. My garden is like an Easter basket today - full of color, light and texture.  All that's missing is chocolate!

Of Things Indoors

As beautiful a day as it was outdoors, my focus necessarily had to be indoors today.  Among my tasks was getting vegetable seeds started, at which I spent a pleasurable afternoon.  Peppers, tomatoes, melons and sorrel (new for me this year; I saw a recipe for sorrel soup that intrigued me) now grace the top tiers of the benches in my little conservatory.  My hope is that while I'm away, they'll spring forth and manage to survive in their plastic-domed prison until I return to liberate them.  It took longer than I expected, mainly because I was frequently distracted by our two cats, Emerson and Calypso.  It seems that an annoyingly persistent robin has determined to build a nest on top of one of our living room windows, and the cats spent long stretches of the day attentively watching the bird's comings and goings.  Sometimes gazing upward out the window in rapt attention, sometimes crouching in attack mode, they wanted to get that birdie in the worst way - and their frustration provided us with some good laughs. When I finally finished up in the late afternoon, I couldn't resist any more - I had to get outside. The arrival of the paper furnished me with a good excuse, so before I went out to the box I took a quick tour of inspection around the yard.  As the crocus and striped squill are fading, the Lenten roses and earliest narcissus are taking their places - and of course the violets just keep coming on.  I was less pleased to see that the newly seeded beds of sweet peas, peas and lettuce are getting dry and crusted, and less pleased still to learn that no rain is expected for at least the next week.  And I won't be here to water.  Guess I should have stayed indoors.......

The Catnip Day

Today was one of those incredibly perfect early spring days; an achingly clear blue sky with temperatures in the mid-50's.  From earliest childhood, being outdoors on a day such as this has been like rolling in catnip for a cat - it simply has to be done.  It's irresistible.  And while I'm done for the next couple weeks with working outside (I'll be traveling), I could no more stay in than fly to the moon.  So out I went.

This morning, I prowled around the yard.  I checked on everyone that was coming up; I looked for any possible plant material that could be used in an arrangement I'm doing for a party this weekend.  Sometimes I simply stood, looking up into the blue, feeling just plain damn good. However, nothing lasts, and in time I had to go in and have lunch before driving to an appointment some 20 miles away.  I was overjoyed to discover when I came out that it had gotten warmer yet, and since I had our sporty little Volkswagen GTI ("arrest me" red and turbocharged to boot, thank you very much) I decided to meander home via the back roads.  It wasn't quite as good as being out digging in a flower bed - but it didn't suck!  And seeing all the daffodils bursting out in grass as green as any emerald as I wound my way homeward just capped off a perfect spring day.  A day in which everything good seems possible, as you contemplate the long, warm months ahead, knowing that there's so much more to come.  In short - a catnip day.

Doing the Right Thing

Today's mail seemed unremarkable at first: ads, catalogs, the usual suspects.  One thing that caught my eye was an offer from a grower in Michigan.  I received this because I'm a member of the Garden Writers of America, and this grower is making us a special offer.  They've partnered with an Israeli herb and vegetable specialist to create a gourmet cherry tomato that can either be eaten out of hand or dried very easily for a sweet yet nutritious snack.  Yet it wasn't the tomato that really attracted my attention - it was the statement that "...starter plants....can be sold only to growers servicing independent garden centers and retailers".  And (drum roll, please), they very explicitly stated that it will not be sold to discount and "big box" retailers.  Well, hot damn and hallelujah!!!!  Finally, someone is trying to give our all-important small growers, nurseries and garden centers a richly deserved break from the stifling effects of the big boxers.  I can't tell you how happy I was to read that.  So many wonderful small garden centers and nurseries around the country (and even some larger, legendary growers as well) have folded over the last decade because they just couldn't compete financially with a Lowe's or a Wal-Fart every 5 miles.  Which means that plantaholics like myself are left with fewer and fewer options for quality material, to say nothing of the loss of plant diversity in general. Perhaps the pendulum is finally beginning to swing back in the direction of sanity and the greater good - perhaps we're finally beginning to realize that "cheaper" often comes with hidden costs...... 

The Time of the Violets Has Come

Working outside yesterday (before winter rears its ugly head yet again!)  I discovered that one of my favorite spring days had arrived - the violets are out!   Not, of course, the long-stemmed blue violets; those will be along by the end of the month.  No, these are the tiny sweet violets, buried in the grass, and putting dabs of color in the flower beds in shades of pink, white and dark and light purple.  They aren't much use for bouquets since the stems are so short, but the charm is in their sweet, distinct violet scent.  A handful of these little beauties gives the loveliest fragrance imaginable, and sometimes I pick a small bunch just for the purpose of giving my nose a treat. Even in an economy that sucks canal water, it's nice to know that some pleasures are still absolutely free.

Houseplant Surprise

Last week I was puttering about in my little conservatory watering everyone, when I tipped the watering can down over my sanseveria plant and saw an astonishing sight.  A flower stalk about a foot or so high was emerging at the bottom of the clump!  This was a revelation to me, for I am primarily a perennial/outdoor gardener, and I readily confess to a certain level of ignorance when it comes to houseplants.  In fact, I only have the sanseveria for sentimental reasons; the original plant was in a dish garden from my mother's funeral.  The nice thing about this plant is that it's really low maintenance, which suits me just fine.  However, not knowing much about it, I had no idea that it could flower.  And a lovely flower it was, too - whorls of lime green flowers all the way up the stalk, and with a light, sweet scent of freesia.  I get the feeling that indoors, this flowering might be a one-off and I'll never see it again.  And that's OK - the important part was being reminded that no matter how old you are or how long you've been gardening, there's always something new to learn.  Always.

The REAL First Day of Spring

Somehow, I can never quite accept the date of the vernal equinox as the official first day of spring. This is probably because, living in upstate NY, the weather generally bounces all around the dial until the end of May.  We have a nasty tendency to go straight from 38 degrees and snow flurries to 80 degrees in a matter of days, thus eliminating the need for spring weather. (I do not exaggerate - I can remember one Mother's Day when we had about 6" of snow on the ground! That was a particularly trying event, because I had called my mom in Ohio, and she chirped on about how it was 70 degrees, and she had her windows open, etc., etc.  All this as I glumly watched snowflakes sift down and cover what should have been flowers.  We were not amused.) Still, ever the optimist, I celebrate the first day of spring on April 1.  Once the calendar says April, I can allow myself to believe that spring really is on the way.   After all, you can always rely on the winter aconites, the snowdrops and glory-of-the-snows no matter what the weather conditions. And if you're patient enough, suddenly the crocus and early daffodils appear.  Then comes the happy day when I look down and see my tiny sweet violets in the beds, and I know there's no stopping it - spring is here, baby!  In your face, winter!