Need Joy? Come on Over!

Not that anyone needs color and light and joy right now...I thought I'd offer up a little virtual stroll through the greenhouse, just to stick our noses into a few flowers. This is what greets me when I open the greenhouse door. Needless to say I find excuses to go down there about five times a day. Hooked on it. It was a rough winter, all rain and no sun, but now that the plants are getting some sun and heat, they're exploding into blossom. 

I find this interesting. When my big hibs froze on Jan. 30, 2019 (heating failure due to frozen gas line), there were a few tiny shoots around the base of The Path's trunk that didn't die back. They have grown a little and are blooming like crazy now. I don't know if it's because they're so close to the fertilizer, but they are much the best blossoms this plant has put out. It's dopey looking but I LOVE IT.

Creole Lady is still bewitching, but she's decided to lay back to let The Path, with her dress around her ankles, take center stage. She'll kick it up a few notches when she finally gets outside in May. 

And there's a Lady in Waiting. Look at this tiny baby Creole Lady that I got in the summer of 2019! She's finally coming into her own. More flower than leaf...

Two blossoms at once is very unusual for a little cutting like this. But so gratifying. My huge Lady slumbers behind her. I absolutely love having an understudy that's small enough to carry into the house should the need arise. Like, drastically plunging temperatures, foretelling another disastrous greenhouse freeze.

This plant...I live for its blossoms.

The Thai Giant crown of thorns is just ridiculous, 3' tall and loaded with peppermint-striped flowers.

Started from a 2" long cutting taken in 2016. I have tried to take cuttings of this one but none have rooted for me. Sometimes it just works. Sometimes it doesn't. 

This little Gartenmeister was a tiny shoot that sulked all winter long, then sprang to life when it got sunny. I like to carry this plant over because I'm never sure if I'll be able to find it in the spring. 

Same for Trandshen Bonstet. That one, far as I know, you can't get anywhere but The Glasshouse Works in Stuart, Ohio. Mine is 4' tall now! Roots really well in plain water!

A volunteer impatiens peeking out from under the foliage of my willow-leaved fig. This is the magnificent tropical bonsai that froze last year, and has somehow come back. It looks like a hairy sea urchin right now, but I have faith it will make some decent branches in time.

The geraniums are just spectacular now.

Black Knight is a volcano of the darkest possible foliage and gleaming coals. 

Can't wait for Happy Thought to open its scarlet tanager-red single flowers.

Due to its interesting start in life, this Happy Thought plant has a ridiculous number of individual trunks. 

Both Happy Thought and Vancouver Centennial (shown below) have a really interesting habit of making baby plants amongst their flower heads, way up there on the end of a long stem. It's so weird. I have observed this for years and always wondered what's going on with it. Two years ago I started experimenting with trying to propagate more plants from these funny little leaf clusters. Vancouver's plantlets always got mildew and rotted away in my rooting chambers (just a clear plastic cup inverted over a pot of damp soil).  But two years ago I managed to root a tiny leaf cluster of Happy Thought, and that's the plant in the photo above. It grew painfully slowly, but it grew, and it's a fine, fine plant now.

Of course, I will keep trying because plant propagation is one of my vices.

April's Gifts

The greenhouse has once again become a place I resort to for comfort. Every plant you see here got the crap frozen out of it on January 31 when the gas well on our land froze solid. And each one came back. It's amazing!

Speaking of gifts, look at Creole Lady!! She froze solid on January 31 (read it and weep here) but look at her now!! I'm told all hibiscus need a severe cutback from time to time....well, maybe. I can tell you neither of us needed a greenhouse freeze at the end of January.

But then again...maybe I had to lose all my beautiful plants, live without them for a few weeks, to make room in my heart to say yes to Curtis on February 19. Maybe everything happens for a reason. Or maybe it's all just mindless, undirected randomosity. Some things feel as if they were guided by a higher intelligence. This thing, for one. From what heavenly cloud did you flutter down, Sugarbean?

Creole Lady, when will you flower again? That's OK. You don't have to answer. Just put out leaves and leaves. Feed yourself first.

The Path looks like a hairy stick. But it's alive, and it will be beautiful again by July, mark my words. 

The red-brown powder is dried blood. I'm trying to keep the chipmunks from chewing the leaves off my hibs INSIDE THE GREENHOUSE as fast as they grow out. Yes. That is what's happening INSIDE the greenhouse.

Thai Giant Crown of Thorns going nuts! Nothing eats a COT. They have nasty milky bitter  Euphorbia sap. I wish more of my plants had that.

Teeny Kenyan Crown of Thorns trying to keep up! I love growing these two extremes of the same species. Oh what humans can do to a plant, a dog, a chicken, a horse.

 

My friend Alan told me to dig up my big lemon verbena and put it in the basement for the winter. Well, that worked! It's delighted to be welcomed into the greenhouse and smells divine. 

Runner's tea a-coming!

My seedling impala lilies, or Adeniums, who never batted an eye at the freeze.  I can't wait to see what color their flowers will be, when they get old enough. It could take years upon years. That's most of the fun.

See the little score marks on the caudex of this one, below? Chipmunk. Climbed up to the top shelf and chewed these helpless little Adenium seedlings.

Erodium reichardii, a little alpine geranium, also weathered the freeze without losing a leaf. (The chipmunks chewed one side off it, but it grew back).

My gardenia sulked a bit after the freeze, but she is going to blow me away when she finally bursts into bloom. Every stem has a fat emerald Christmas bulb at the end.

I counted and there are 24 buds ready to pop on this plant. I keep feeding it, hoping it'll grow some more leaves on those spindly stems. But when it blooms I'll forget all about its looks. This is the plant I got for $10 on clearance last summer. It survived the freeze pretty well.

I was sure my Fuchsia "Gartenmeister Bonstedt" was a goner. But up from the root it comes!

 

As does this incredible hybrid balcony Pelargonium. Already has a flower bud forming!

It just takes time, faith, and care. That's all. 

It hasn't even been two months, and here they all come roaring back!

 A tidy shelf of color. So grateful to have my Vancouver Centennial still with me, and a new dwarf pomegranate seedling in bloom for the first time.

 

Against all expectations, my pink fuchsia Trandshen Bonstedts all came back from the root. This is one I was harboring in my house, my "plant ark." 

And then there's Happy Thought. I've missed you so. Remember my gigantic Happy Thought from last winter?? My pride and joy?? It was almost six feet across.

Well, this cutting that rooted and is blooming for the first time is all that's left of it, and I'm so, so happy I have it. I have to keep it on a pedestal inside the greenhouse or the chipmunks, hungry for anything green, will destroy it. Life is harder than it ought to be sometimes.

 

 Yesterday the chipmunk jumped onto the plant on its pedestal and clipped off some leaves, just to keep me from relaxing and enjoying my plants. Havahart will be set tomorrow. I've caught one and I'll catch this one, too.  Peanuts and peanut butter will get him.

It seems that death and destruction is always waiting when you try to grow things. There's always something trying to get at the things you love, whether it's coons and snakes after your bluebirds or deer chewing down any little tree you try to plant.  Or #$#$%$# chipmunks breaking into your greenhouse, climbing the baker's racks, and annihilating your precious plants. It's always something.  Despite it all, the plants persist, and so do we.

Another lovely thing that keeps me going: nesting bluebirds. They're building, laying, incubating, singing and tussling everywhere. This pair cannot decide which of three different boxes they want. They have spent so much time poking around. Now another pair has shown up to contest them. They could be incubating by now, but they dither instead.

 I've already got baby Carolina wrens piping in the copper bucket under my front eave! Must be a record, such an early hatch! They're trying to beat the rat snakes. If they can pull off a brood before the snakes stir, they're way ahead.

 There are now five eggs in this Carolina wren nest, placed somewhat atypically in a shallow, small slot box along the driveway. They are such clever artisans where nest building is concerned. I love those birds.

I love this little bird, too. He likes to bake his bacon on the porch and on the lawn.

It feels so good to look out the kitchen window and see a dog on the stoop. Even if it has no front legs. Papaw still gets around pretty good wifout his legs.

Figured out why Curtis smells gently of potting soil most of the time. He has dug hisself a couple little setts where he cools off when his bacon is overheated.

There's no sense getting exercised about how dirty he is. As soon as it dries, it just falls off him like rain. I try to make sure that happens outside. On this particular morning, he had an al fresco breakfast because he was raining a fine sprinkling of potting soil. If you click on this photo you can see the fallout.

Just a few things that make me happy, in a roller-coaster spring of wild oscillations in the weather and my heart.

Reader Rendezvous at Our House

I'd been preparing for them all summer, the Bird Watcher's Digest Reader Rendezvous' that would take place on two consecutive weekends only ten days after the American Birding Expo, also hosted by Bird Watcher's Digest.  Why, you ask, were there two in a row? Because more people wanted to come than they could accomodate in one. 

There's something about knowing that 75 subscribers are going to be walking through your yard and house and using your bathrooms that ignites a special sort of...preparedness... in a houseproud person. After the ACKing, I got busy. Coughed up a few grand to renovate that crumbling ca. 1978 upstairs bathroom this summer. The one I'd tried and failed to dress up with sponge painting. Not that it was time...

Bill bought deadly chemicals to try to take the lime scale off the glass in the downstairs bath. I threw out approximately 2.5 tons of unneeded paper in my studio.  Again, wasn't really necessary, but a good thing to have an excuse to do. 

Bill replaced some boards, and painted the rest of the skeezy deck boards with a rubbery brown paint that made them look like new-ish. 

He fixed this and that and got all the cobwebs out of the corners, mowed paths in the meadow...

We finally made a crop netting cover for the deadly kitchen window, and the day before the second Rendezvous, Liam and I put a ladder up and climbed on the roof to apply American Bird Conservancy reflective tape to the little clerestory windows that the cardinals loved to kill themselves on. All those things that we'd been trying to get to, and now had a deadline for. It was good.

I weeded the gardens as if 75 subscribers were going to be tut-tutting over my slothfulness should they spot crabgrass. Which they wouldn't, but still.

I planted flowers that would still, I prayed, be colorful in October. Lots in large planters so I could keep them out of the rabbits' jaws.

Got bold and planted some Trandshen Bonstedt fuchsias in the ground, and the bunnies left them alone! Amazing! I had gone a little crazy propagating them in the greenhouse over the winter, and had some to spare.

I know they made it because the rabbits don't like them, as they mowed my geraniums and lobelias planted right beside the fuchsias down to stubs. Filing that away for future reference...Trandshen Bonstedt fuchsia works! and it makes a 4' tower of pendant pink blossoms all summer long. Hummingbirds like it. They prefer Fuchsia Gartenmeister Bonstedt, however.  (see top photo).

I watered the gardens with slow hoses every few days through the terrible drought of September. 

Imagine if someone said, "We're going to have a garden tour at your house in the second week of October!" Yeah. That. Whose garden looks fantastic in October? 

OK.  Let's do some late-blooming annuals... zinnias and salvia and my fabulous fuchsias...begonias and Achimenes and calendulas and morning glories...we can do this. We got this! It was fun, planning for October bloom. I got to grow a bunch of colorful tropical annuals, and the hummingbirds loved it. 

Oh, and I forgot the main ingredient: three Subaru loads of rotted cow manure. Hee hee hee!

The bonsais were beginning to color up and looked very beautiful.  This one is loving its new planter; it finally grew out of the shallow pot.

They are getting so big (waist high to me) that they're a real challenge to keep watered. I think I'll bump the two in the foreground up to planters for next spring. They're telling me they're feeling crowded and stressed. Mmmhmm. I hear you, dear maples. You look awesome in your little flat pots, but if you're unhappy, it's time to make a change.

So thrilled to have Callicarpa (Beautyberry) fruiting in the yard, thanks to my friend Jen! This native shrub makes the most fabulous purple bluebird bait.

The birches lost almost all their leaves in the drought, so we won't have golden birchlight this year. Nothing I can do about that. Hibiscus "The Path" tries to make up for it.

Geraniums "Happy Thought Red" and "Vesuvius" doin' their thing. These are e-nor-mous plants, and I'm afraid they're not going to be coming in the greenhouse again. 

Nope. I have made understudies. Though I did adore having this huge Happy Thought inside all last winter.  Who doesn't need a huge happy thought? 

Durn Salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue" waited until now to bloom. Why. Why. 

The light this time of year...oh my. See that tent in the front yard? That reminds me that I was writing about Reader Rendezvous'.

Our dear friend Ann from North Dakota came to participate, and to help. As she and I were working in the kitchen, I asked her what percentage of her came to participate, and what percentage came to help. And in my head, I'd come up with 60% help, 40% participate. 

"Oh, about 60% help," she answered, and I gave her a giant hug.

Because that's what dear friends do. They help. We are modeling our Heart and Hand pendants from Scattered Light Jewelry. It is not a coinkydink that we both have one. :) They're really cool. The little heart swings with the hand just above it, moving in concert. Intelligent jewelry. Click the link, check it out.

I would need my sweet friend near this weekend. This is the Saturday night crowd. I provided entertainment in the form of a Keynote talk, and Bill and I played some Rain Crows songs too. Wonderful people!! so warm and engaged. An honor to know them.

 I got up to take this photo of everyone enjoying a delicious catered meal, because I was inwardly freaking out that I would be serving lunch to them the very next day. 

It's probably just as well that I went through the summer cleaning the house, throwing stuff out, and preening and watering the gardens, all the while gaily assuming that a caterer had been engaged for the 59 people gathering at our house on October 2, and 32 coming for lunch on October 9. Five days before the first event, I asked who was catering the midday meal on Sunday, and found out otherwise. By then, it was too late to hire anyone in. The BWD staff was completely tied up with field trips and guiding. I was reeling, fresh off showing my art at the American Birding Expo, which I did fresh off returning from South Africa, but at the same time I couldn't bear the thought that anyone would leave our place hungry on the last day of the four day event. It was time to get to work. 

I picked the garden absolutely clean of Sungold tomatoes, tomatillos, sweet peppers and herbs. Sauteed them up with onions, and made the summer-soaked flavor stuffings for ten Summer Quiches. Made two vats of curried butternut/acorn squash soup. Made four enormous vats of chili, with a total of 15 pounds of ground hamburger and Italian sausage in 'em. I was still worried I wouldn't have enough. I'd never cooked for 59 at once before. As it turned out, the food simply vanished as soon as we put it out, but everyone got enough.  And I was very proud to know it had been wholesome and good.

Something my staunch Iowa aunts wouldn't think twice of doing turned out to be an enormously big deal for me. As I cooked, while scrounging up every piece of silverware and glassware in the house and basement, I thought about them, my aunts Melba and Donna and Marjorie and my grandmothers Frieda and Elnora. I thought about the fact that such gatherings turn out to be almost all about the food for them, and for everyone else, too. Food is life. Food is love, food is necessary and it is front and center. It is the table on which everything else is set. I was filled with gratitude for all the meals they'd served when the Zickefooses and Ruighs would get together in the summers, often in honor of we outliers, we East Coasters coming out to Iowa for our yearly visit, and I felt very small and insignificant as I finally, viscerally understood the service they'd provided. And all without batting an eye. 

 My beautiful friend Harma from Sarasota reconnects with little Chet Baker.

Sofia remembers my necklace from the Expo, and pops it into her little gob again.

I get a much-needed squeeze from my friend Dick from Colorado, in my studio. Imagine that! We're both delighted he's here. He's been to the New River Birding and Nature Festival a couple times; to the Reader Rendezvous ("Birding Valhalla with JZ") at North Bend. We go back.

A couple walks through our meadow, glowing with goldenrod, the sumac just kindling.

Hugs in front of the tent (which is full of happy grazers)

Relaxing in the sunshine.

A big HALOO to the photographers in the tower!

And Zick homecooking in every belly. I'm proud of that. I have never aspired to be a caterer, but it's nice to know what can be done when push comes to shove.

And the frost held off, and the flowers bloomed on

and the next weekend, we'd do it all over again.