Planting the Seeds for Next Year's Garden

For several weeks now, the seed catalogs have been arriving in the mail. First to show up was old reliable Thompson & Morgan, followed quickly by most of my other standards: Nichols Garden Nursery, Pinetree Garden Seeds, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, just to name a few. Because of the Christmas rush, they've been stacked up in the conservatory. There they sit, speaking softly but persistently, just waiting for the holidays to end so that I have whole days to wallow in them.

And wallow I always have, unfortunately letting what my husband refers to as the "gimme-wants" dictate my purchase lists. There at least, I've been able to exercise some discipline. It's a ridiculous exercise, but eventually it works. I go through each catalog, damn the torpedoes, and put everything that catches my fancy make the initial list. Then, I go through a second time and whittle it down considerably. Once round two is done, I start comparison shopping, making sure to get the best price I can on everything I want. Only then do the orders get placed. Regrettably, my garden record-keeping skills have been lax over the years. However, I finally got tired of wasting time and money buying seeds that a) I didn't need or b) didn't perform as well as I would have liked, so last year I got serious about documentation and now I'll be able to order wisely. In fact, I got so serious last year that I gave my husband a good laugh one morning - he saw a list on the conservatory table that was captioned, "DO NOT PURCHASE THESE SEEDS. NONE. NOT ANY." I told you I was serious.......

Seaon's Greetings!

All I have to say is this:

"Holly and ivy, box and bay
Put in the church on Christmas Day"

-15th century Christmas carol

A Merry and blessed Christmas to all, and a green New Year as well!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Where do I begin? So many things to be thankful for (in no particular order):

I have FINALLY finished all the outside work. All that remains is cutting back and covering the roses.

I rediscovered the healing power of a soaking bath, and I no longer crawl around in pain for days at a time after a marathon gardening session.

I was able to go outside here in zone 5, on Thanksgiving Day, and pick my own lettuce and herbs for our meal.

The voles seem to have vacated the premises, for now at least.

My husband still seems to be crazy about me after 25 years of marriage.

The seed catalogs have begun arriving in the mail. No rest for the wicked.

Have a Happy, everyone!

Winding Down

This has been a most annoying autumn for me. I'm trying desperately to get all the outside cleanup work done before winter finally hits, and I just can't seem to catch a break on this score. Whenever I've had free time to work outside, it's been rainy/freezing/windy/all of the above. Whenever I'm tied up elsewhere, the weather is stunningly beautiful. Like today - we finally had a sunny, windless day with temps in the low 60's, and did I have time to work? Nooooo. If I could have had today, I think I could have gotten most, if not all, the remaining chores done. Now I'll probably have no choice but to freeze my hindquarters off, working outside, in a race to beat winter to the punch. Bitch, bitch, bitch.....

Voles - More Tales from the Dark Side

They're baaaack.......
One day last week we had some very mild weather for the end of September, so I decided to eat my lunch out on the patio with my fountain turned on to provide a soothing background. Well....the minute water started to bubble up in the urn, a really nasty stench permeated the air. I can only compare it to an ad I saw on TV a few years back - I don't remember what the product/service was, but a guy comes out of what's clearly a bathroom, waving a newspaper behind him and saying, "I think we can consider this wing of the house closed!". That kind of odor. The kind that means the voles have returned to use my fountain's catch basin as a toilet. My comments ran along the lines of "!@#$%^&***"!!! I then unplugged the fountain, waited for the aroma to die down, and consumed my lunch in gloomy silence. At this point in the season, I saw no reason to go to the trouble of cleaning out the catch basin for the third time this year; I'll just wait a few more weeks and do it when I dismantle the fountain to put it away for the winter. Sigh.

A Grand Evening Out

I really need to keep up on what's happening at my alma mater! I just arrived home a short while ago, having had the unexpected and tremendous pleasure of hearing Amy Stewart speak. A short sidebar notice in the local paper the other night was how I found out that she was appearing at the college. For those who may not be familiar with her work (and if you like reading and gardening, you need to remedy that), she's written several best-selling books: "Flower Confidential" (a thorough exploration of the cut-flower industry), "From the Ground Up" (a memoir of the first garden she ever made) and her most recent book, "Wicked Plants" (anecdotes and information on poisonous plants). She is also familiar to legions of garden bloggers as part of the great "Garden Rant" blog.

Amy gave an overview of her books, but also discussed writing in general, which was wonderful. She's a natural speaker - energetic, funny, and passionate. She's also one of those fortunate writers who manages to tackle a subject head-on, acquire mountains of data, statistics and interviews - and then manages to distill it down into an informative book that doesn't read like a textbook. I don't know how she does it, but she does it brilliantly. If she wasn't such a nice person, I'm afraid I'd have to be bitterly envious of her! If you ever have the opportunity to hear Amy Stewart speak - do yourself a favor, drop everything and go. Definitely time well spent!

Flower Arranging in the Time of Dahlias

Even though it means that winter is inevitably, inexorably creeping up on us, I do love fall (before frost, anyway) for one particular reason - my dahlias are blooming, and oh, the colors! The shades of dahlias, even the most pastel of them, are at once subtle and intense. I've gotten several new ones this year, and at least a couple of them are heirloom varieties from Old House Gardens in Michigan. Two of them appear in this arrangement I quite literally threw together this morning.

The dark maroon dahlias at the base of the arrangement are a newer cultivar called 'Nuit de Ete'. The larger dark pompom type is called 'Karma Choc'; a luscious dark shade that would work well in a chocolate-themed garden. The multi-colored pompom is one of the Old House Gardens heirlooms, 'Kaiser Wilhelm'; the multiple colors make it very adaptable to different companion flowers as well as containers. The other Old House offering is the hot pink-shaded dahlia 'Winsome', a dahlia I fell in love with a few years ago when visiting Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio. The large, dinner-plate type at the top of the arrangement is another new one for me this year, called 'Vancouver'. It's an indescribable garnet/fuschia shade with vague white edges on the petals - it's a prolific bloomer, and it will be back next season. As an aside, the other flowers appearing here are a couple of small double 'Pamina' Japanese anemones and an aster that I found in a vacant lot in my neighborhood. I have no idea whether it was an escaped garden variety, a chance seedling or what. I just liked the color: petals of a pale blue/violet with a pink center. It plays well with anyone you pair it with, so at this time of year, it's one of my "indispensables".