Party in the Greenhouse!

It's really coming on here. The forsythia is opening a few tentative blossoms, and the peonies have curled red fingers pointing toward the sky. I've finally gotten all the garden beds cleaned out and the first spring weeding (always the worst) done. I plop down on my butt in my Round House Overalls from Woodward OK and scoot along digging up grass and grass and grass.

I go out and watch the rhubarb grow every morning. It's thrilling, and not as slow as you'd guess. But I have already bought two bunches at the grocery store because I just couldn't wait for that spring tonic, that tangy bite, those soft strings on my tongue.

Note dogbomb above. I am getting creaky enough that I don't want to get down on all fours for every photo, so I am not always sure what I'm getting when I put my iPhone on the ground. I was trying for him...Got eeeem!

So spring is here, in a quiet, hang-on-I'm-coming way. 

But in the greenhouse, there's a party going on. 

This little orange abutilon, saved over from last summer, did the funniest thing. It put out a sport branch that has two all-yellow bells, and one orange bell with a yellow petal. I think I'll keep it.

A "sport" is a mutant shoot that shows up on an otherwise normal plant. Sometimes you cut them off, which is why I said, "I think I'll keep it." Sometimes they're undesirable because they're throwbacks to an earlier form of the plant. Geranium "Frank Headly" will grow along being superdwarf and heavily variegated with white, throwing salmon blossoms, but sometimes from the root will come this shoot that's all green, very vigorous, with red flowers. A parent variety, I guess. Because I like the dwarf variegated type, and I've noticed the plain green sports grow like mad and sap energy from the rest of the rather delicate plant, I usually cut off the sport shoots. I'm not completely sure what's going on there, but I find it fascinating. It's not as if gerania are grown from root grafts, so where does this wild type limb come from? Just a branch reverting back to its original type?

Wikipedia says:

In botany, a sport or bud sport is a part of a plant (usually a woody plant, but sometimes an herb) that shows morphological differences from the rest of the plant. Sports may differ by foliage shape or color, flowers, or branch structure.

Sports with desirable characteristics are often propagated vegetatively to form new cultivars that retain the characteristics of the new morphology.^[1] Such selections are often prone to "reversion", meaning that part or all of the plant reverts to its original form. An example of a bud sport is the nectarine, which developed from a bud sport from a peach. Other common fruits resulting from a sport mutation are the red Anjou pear and the white currant.

So apparently you can propagate sports via cuttings, but not seeds, because they're just a mutant branch of a plant. Ironically, the variegated salmon-flowered Frank Headly geranium was probably originally a sport off the vigorous plain green form that I choose to cut and remove when it arises on my weak-growing but treasured Frank. If you can follow my bizarre thought process. If not, read on...

 Here's another sport, this time off geranium "Wilhelm Langguth." The flower, interestingly, is normally colored, but oh those pure-white leaves! Obviously they have very little chlorophyll in them, so they can't photosynthesize to feed the plant, and don't do it any good. This sport is pretty, and I'll leave it for now because it looks so cool. Generally white sport shoots wither up on their own as the plant realizes it's made a mistake, putting out leaves that can't feed it. I do like the dash of green in the center! We'll see where this one goes. It's all a big experiment for the Science Chimp.

See, if this sport off the white-edged "Wilhelm Langguth," which was probably a sport off a plain green-leaved geranium, had, say, a nice big green patch in the center of the leaf such that it could make enough food to sustain the plant, I could cut it off, root the cutting, propagate it vegetatively, and name it "Zick's Weakling" or something similarly funny. If I cut this sport off right now and tried to root it it would die without delay, because it is entirely dependent on the mother plant for its survival. But given a little more green on the leaf, I could develop a brand new geranium variety. I'd be RICH I tell you RICH!!! Yes. I am crazy. Poor and crazy.

Pallid winter blooms of "Gartenmeister Bonstedt," my favorite garden fuchsia. They'll be deep coral red when I put the plant outside. I'm so happy this one has prospered. I'm about to divide it and get an entire shade garden's worth of expensive fuchsias off this one plant that I successfully carried over the winter. Here's to not driving around looking for it, here's to the fun of dividing it and spending nothing for all the plants I'll get from this one pot. We'll ignore what I spent on the new heater and 10 rolls of Gorilla Tape to hold the Groanhouse together...har. So far so good, though I cowered and covered my head when the March gusts hit 50. High winds now evoke a powerful PTSD in me. I know the boundless joy I get from the Groanhouse is worth it, but the real prospect of losing it all with one strong gust is not a pleasant one. It makes me afraid to go away, afraid a windstorm will blow panes out when it's in the teens and kill everything. It's made me an even worse weather nerd and Intellicast freak, if I weren't already one. Guilty!

A close contender for fave fuchsia: "Trandshen Bonstedt." I'm frantically trying to get cuttings from this marvelous plant to root, because she's losing vitality after blooming hard and fighting aphids for most of the winter. She does not send up new starts from the root like her cousin does--her stems get incredibly long and woody instead. This pot has a fountain of yard-long woody stems blooming like crazy, and no new root shoots I could divide off. Please, cuttings, root. Then I will replicate you many times over. It's your shot at plant immortality. Give thyself over to my care.

My iPhone is unable to capture the deep velvet-curtain maroon red of this geranium. It pumps it up to scarlet. Bah.

It's in contrast to Scarlet Graffiti, which is just the color of a tanager. The maroon flowers in the foreground are sort of close to the right color for the big geranium.

Hibiscus "The Path" is going NUTZ I tell you, BONKERS.  Got buds?

Losing her mind at the prospect of being sent outside for summer vacation, she is. Honey, don't sing "School's Out" just yet. We have some freezing nights to come. But I do adore your enthusiasm.

You keep singing. Does my heart good. 

Autumn Plant Love

Thought you might like a peek into the greenhouse on a rainy late autumn day. 

I lugged a huge Jasminum polyanthemum into the greenhouse this evening. I'd left it out through a light frost, then relented. I found that it had sunk roots right down through the drain holes of its pot, deep into the soil of my shade garden. No wonder it never seemed to fret when I forgot to water it!

That durn plant hasn't bloomed since I bought it as a tiny baby at Trader Joe's two winters ago. It bloomed its head off, then put all further energy for the next two years into foliar growth. It's taller than me now, and it has some tiny hopeful looking buds, but I've been fooled before. I'll give it one more winter. If it doesn't bloom this year, heave HO. Hear that, JP?

This abutilon has no such issues. Man, those things love to blossom. Not only that, they laugh at being dug up and repotted. Fine. Whatever. Get out of my way, I have another dozen flowers to make. Gotta love the Malvaceae. Some amazing plants in that family...see below.

I adore this pink and red Rex begonia. Can't leave it outside.

This truly extraordinary gardenia, sent by reader Diana Hunt via Smith and Hawken last winter after the Big Freeze. It's given and given and given, and it's gloriously healthy and just got its third repot. Still saying CHEER UP!! 

Who can ignore Hibiscus "The Path?" Not me! This, a gift from soul sister Donna in Virginia, also sent as a balm for the Big Freeze last winter. And she's dwarfing the tangerine-orange hibiscus that was my favorite before she flounced onto the scene.

Advance reviews from Logee's Greenhouse website stated that this big dramatic diva of a hibiscus would keel over and die if temperatures dipped below 60. Not so. She's fussy, and a bit of a princess, but she's faced low 50's and proven not prone to die. She's a welcome challenge. 

How could I not accommodate her demands?  A plant that flowers like this is like a singer hitting and holding that impossible high note, the one that raises the hair on your arms. 

Buttercrunch, anyone? It's finally cold enough to bring the "Container Babies" butterhead lettuce into the comforting warmth of the greenhouse. The white heliotrope is delighted to be indoors, too, and is blooming unabated, filling the air with cherry vanilla cinnamon bun scent. 

I asked a stolid and hearty Chet Baker to pose for me next to the best of my bonsais for the annual bonsai family portrait. Good boy, Bacon. You are a patient and long-suffering doggeh.  These not-so- little trees, waist high to me now, are a delight to the eye and heart when they turn. I remember the first fall I had them as tiny seedlings. There was something so magical about these potted seedlings turning color just like the big ones, and right on time. That magic has never faded.

A week later, the maroons and greens went to flame. And when the leaves reach their most brilliant scarlet, they fall. 

I've got the bonsais' overwintering pit all ready--weeded and the soil turned and loosened-- for them, but oh, how I hate to lay them to rest. I miss them all winter. But that's what the greenhouse is for, right?

 Think I'll head down there now.

How Goes the Greenhouse?

I promised I'd let you know how things go in the greenhouse, as it recovers ever so slowly from the devastation of the November 23, 2013 freeze. This photo's pretty symbolic. In the foreground, a budding Christmas cactus. I bought it in bloom in December, when I desperately needed flowers. It obligingly dropped them all, and all its buds. Oh, thank you. But then after sulking for a couple of months, it made  more buds, and these have carried through beautifully. Flowers.

 In the middle, a little rose-pink Abutilon I ordered from Logee's that makes me very happy. And in the rear, the huge vigorous leaves of a theater-curtain red geranium that was killed to the soil by the freeze, but somehow sent up a shoot. Yep, this photo says a lot about what's gone on in the greenhouse since the event I refer to as the Apocalypse.

Pulling back a bit, here they are in context. And there's the scarlet tanager-red stellar geranium that I was sure I'd lost to the freeze. It came back. The blue lobelias volunteered from seed, after the freeze, in the pot of what was once my huge tangerine orange hibiscus. Now represented by one shoot, on the right margin of this photo. But that shoot has some tiny buds on it.

Fireworks!! Color and life and beauty, once again. So hard-won, so longed-for.

The gardenia my sweet reader "Diana" sent, blooming in ones and twos, perfuming the whole place. We've been fighting red spider mite, and we're winning. The top bud opened today. Sooo intoxicating.

As is my dear Jasminum sambac, "Maid of Orleans," who lived through the freeze, sprouting from dead-looking sticks. Ahhhhhh. She's far better than before.

Chetty takes it all in, sniffing the perfumed air. He likes to help me clean the place, sweeping and scrubbing, and rearrange the plants.

I can't believe that this tiny Ruby Red grapefruit tree is doing what it's doing. Because it set too many (about a dozen), it aborted a handful of fruits,  but the four that stayed on are growing by leaps and bounds. Wow!! I imagine it laden with full-sized grapefruit and smile.  And it burst into bloom again, and made some new leaves! I think it likes me. It smells so sweet. I love this tree!

The big lumpy 25-year-old Mammilaria, perking along. I love this hardy old plant, too. 21 degrees ain't nothing to him. Been there, done that. The desert is a tough place. Your greenhouse is a walk in the park, freezes and all.

I was gone for 12 days and this marvelous flame-crested creature, here listening to a favorite tune from "Mulan" on her Macbook Air while she soaks up the sun, watered all my plants and twiddled the heater dials as conditions required. Not only that, but she enlisted sweet Liam to help her bring every last one of them inside before the temperatures dipped below zero again. "I was sick of worrying about what might happen if the gas went off or I couldn't keep them warm enough. So we brought them all inside." 

You can't buy or even wish for kids like that. You have to make them, raise them so they love all the same things you do. It's partly luck, partly magic, all miracle. We're blessed. 

The seedlings thrived under her care: tomatoes, tomatillos, cucamelons, peppers, and Swiss chard.

The tomatillos burst into bloom!! Well, who wouldn't, with Phoebe loving on you?

The greenhouse is back. And I feel each bud bursting into bloom inside me. The sun's heat races through my veins. 

Come on, Spring. Do it.