Setting Up Xanadu

When my sister Micky and I were young, we loved to play Trolls. We had these little folding vinyl lunchbox-like houses for them with a few bits of doll furniture we'd scrounged, augmented with rocks. We'd spend a long time setting everything up just so. And then it was over. Once it was set up, there was nothing to "play." Same deal in the sand patch in the backyard. We'd get our Matchbox cars arranged, make little garages and houses and driveways, and once everything was just like we wanted it, we were done.

I now embrace the reality, that the setting up and arranging and rearranging is actually the whole thing, and when I need a break from whatever I'm doing, I go down to play Greenhouse. Repotting and rearranging and preening my plants is the whole game. Just messing about with plants and soil, pots and pedestals. Do I ever sit there and just drink it in? Sure, in the dead of winter, maybe for a few minutes with a cup of hot tea or a rare pale ale. The rest of the time I'm working away, arranging it all just so. That work is my play. 

Bacon keeps me company. In the dead of winter, though, he demands to be on my lap, because the concrete's too cold. If anyone can make me sit down, it's Baker. Hey, he makes me run, too!

I don't know why my pitcher plants sulk in the pond all summer, with a few green strappy leaves, then send up a mess of spectacular pitchers in October, but that's what they do. Reasoning that they need to digest all the insects they've caught, I bring them into the greenhouse for the winter.

It's pretty chilling to look down in the pitchers. Stuffed FULL of bees, wasps, earwigs, and moths. None of 'em getting out. The pitcher plant slowly digests them alive, until they're just husks. When the pitcher leaf finally croaks, I slit it down the side and have lots of fun trying to identify all the things it's caught. 

Considering that the pitchers are about 2' high, that's a lot of pollinators! I check them daily and use a stick to help bumblebees and honeybees and the odd moth or hapless wasp out. Can't stand to see them suffer--or hear them buzzing in there. Earwigs, you can have!

You can see the pitcher plants on the floor, where they'll stay cool. I keep them wet, because they were submerged in the pond all summer. I've decided this plant is indestructible; doesn't seem to care if it spends the winter encased in ice or in the greenhouse; they still come back in spring and bloom!

Speaking of pollinators, I have a huge Polistes wasp nest in the greenhouse, built over the summer. 

Eek, you say? Yeah, me too. But the thing is, they've never once made a move to attack me, even through all the schlepping of plants in and out as autumn comes on. Every time I go in, I look up to see how many are still hanging in there. It's November! But it's warm in here. I guess I'm curious what they'll do.  They're not hurting anything living in here. There are no capped cells with pupae; they're done breeding. What happens now? In nature, they'd die, I guess. Or overwinter somewhere. Maybe here. 

Update: I accidentally brushed the nest with my hand while hanging twinkly lights tonight. The wasps looked calmly at me. "We know you didn't mean to."

I always remember what my parents told me when I was little and would freak out about a wasp. "Don't bother him and he won't bother you." 

Schlumbergia is not the prettiest Latin name for a plant. I have to say it fits Christmas cacti pretty well when they're not in bloom. But when they're in bloom, they belong to genus Euphoria!!!!!

I picked this little number up at a Kroger grocery store. I still haven't seen one I like better. 

When it's done blooming I'm going to divide it into several pieces. It's rootbound and getting sort of sad (blossoms notwithstanding). People say Christmas cacti thrive on neglect. Hmm. Nothing in my greenhouse gets neglected. I want to see it firm and dark green and happy again. Needs more root room.

Last May I ordered another hibiscus from Logee's Greenhouse. She arrived healthy and happy, about a foot tall. Now she's about 2 1/2' tall and loaded with buds. This is "Creole Lady," in bud. That bud stayed exposed but tightly furled for about a week. I almost burst with anticipation. Had I known what was coming, I WOULD have burst!

You're going to have to wait to see her. Because I had to wait. I had to wait since May!! By the way, that fabulous neon-orange flower in the background is not a fuchsia. It's a dwarf pomegranate! And it's fruiting like mad!

Waiting for Creole Lady, I kept myself happy with the gentle blue beauty of lobelia, that seeded itself into my poet's jasmine pot. Love it when that happens.

I took a cutting of this geranium from a planter outside a natural foods restaurant in Ithaca last October. It was the end of the growing season; she wouldn't miss it.

Now she graces my greenhouse. I think this is "Petals."

This glorious creature is "Happy Thought Red." It has become one of my favorite gerania, despite its easily shattered flowers. "Shattering" is a grower's term for a geranium that easily drops its petals. I used to dislike easily shattered geraniums. 

Older and wiser now, I look at the slow cascade of petals as hearts breaking and falling.

 Let it rain.

This big upright/semi-trailing fuchsia (Trandshen Bonnstadt) is my new fave. I have propagated it out the wazoo. They're everywhere! They're everywhere! Even have one in the master bath, where it's doing fabulously. Although I think, being a German cultivar, its name should be spelled Trandchen Bonnstadt.

You do not see fuchsias like Trandchen Bonnstadt in nurseries. I got it at The Glasshouse Works. This one (below) is a typical big-nursery fuchsia. Very nice, but without the impact of T.B, simply because it never gets much more than 8" tall. I don't know why, but fuchsias like these seem to lack vigor, lose hope easily. Give me big strapping ones like T.B. and Gartenmeister Bonstedt any day.

Yep, there's a party goin' on in Xanadu!

Woot woot!

The Path keeps the salsa music going night and day. Really, she can be a bit much as a roomie.

Some days, she's got her nose pressed up against the back window, hollering and waving, trying to get people to come inside and dance. 

It's hard to upstage a Rex begonia like "Cancun," but she does, oh she does.

Hold on, Miss The Path, because Little Sister's puttin' her makeup on.

I peeled back that unfurling tangerine petal on Creole Lady and saw... deep lavender?? 

 And an aphid, which I squished. 

Stay tuned! 

The Creole Reveal on Thursday!

Spring, and Things Coming Ripe

It's taken awhile to get around to lushness, but spring is finally here. It's about a week late. Maybe more. The trees are still all but leafless in the cooler hollows, but they're catching up fast. Everything's busting out. 

The greenhouse was still crammed with plants as of the morning of May 6. Tomatoes and peppers and hibiscus deeply resent nights in the lower 40's. 

They are waist high. And not only that, but...

the Sungolds have RIPE TOMATOES ON THEM!!!! SQUEEEEE!!! MAY TOMATOES TOMATOES IN MAY. Repeat until it sinks in. Well, why not? The plants are 3 1/2 months old! To them, May is August!

 I grew them. In my greenhouse. And soon they will go out into the garden. And we will eat TOMATOES IN MAY from our own garden. Yes I am SHOUTING.

(I'm reading this over, having written it the day before digging something like 60 holes and planted all those plants,  and I can tell you I'm not shouting now. I'm happy just to be breathing.)

However. If I had it to do over I would NOT plant tomatoes in mid-January. Because I have repotted them not once. Not twice. Three times. All 50 of them, peppers too. I don't have any more pots to bump them up into. I got so desperate for soil that I recycled a bunch of potting soil from last year's planters. I added some Osmocote. The plants didn't miss a beat. Learned something, I did. Learned a lot. You don't have to go out and buy fresh bales of Pro-Mix for repotting. You just recycle the soil and add a little Osmocote. That's what you do.

I also learned that there is a limit to how long you can soak peas before you have to plant them. You have to get them in the ground before the root starts growing, or they rot. They rot fast, and spectacularly. And then you have to soak a whole batch more. So don't think you can soak them for a week or something because it's still too cold and dry to plant them. Get them in the ground. Peas don't mind cold. They do mind being warm and wet...

And if you get them in the ground right before a few days of soaking rain, in the dark of the moon, you come home from working your butt off at a festival to find THIS. THIS!!! EVERY PEA COMING UP!!! promising Peas for Everyone come June!!

EVERY SINGLE ONE!! UP UP UP

and if that is not a sight for sore eyes nothing is. Man. I was energetic when I wrote this. 

Speaking of which, my Christmas cactus (now a spring cactus) just keeps dazzling me. It's like a living prom dress.

From kind of scoffing at Zygocactus, I am now their biggest fan, and I'm rooting pieces like crazy. What a spectacular plant! and all from a tiny grocery store impulse buy. I'm in love. I get it. Sorry it took me so long. Maybe it had to be an electric pink one to flip my switch. Still not mad about the wimpy red ones. This color does it for me. Shocking pink. I'd never wear it, but I like a flower that color.

All right. I think that's probably enough fabulousness for one post. I don't want to overload you. I have a gazillion more Costa Rica posts squawking from the cobwebby recesses of my brain, but spring just barged in the door with both elbows out and demanded her due.