Never Can Say Goodbye

As I write, there is snain coming down, kind of a sloppy mix of snow and rain, too big to be rain and too wet to be snow. Snain. Chet Baker talks about sneet but I've never seen it. It's 40, going for the mid-30's tonight, and I really don't like it much. What I like is autumn. And summer. 

So what I do is dig summer up and cram it into my little greenhouse. It's the hardest working 64 square feet in Ohio.

The red center support pole is new. The greenhouse had a sag in its spine. The floorjack fixed it. Tools told me what to get. This is the east corner.

 Bill's ancient crown of thorns is in the east corner. I keep trying to cut it back and it has never once stopped blooming since I took it from his office. It's as if it thinks it'll get its multiple heads cut off if it ever stops blooming. I kind of like it tall and lanky, like an ocotillo. It can stay.

 Here's the west corner. Mmm. Looking floriferous.

I absolutely adore Salvia greggii "Desert Blaze." It has such an airy, icy look about it with those white-edged leaves. I know it would die over the winter, being a tender plant to start with. Add variegation and you have a really tender plant. Can't let that happen. Dug two up, brought them in.

I tried something this fall that I've never done. I brought my tuberoses inside. The only reason I did it is that there were about 10 plants just starting to bloom in late October! I think it was the cool, rainy summer we had. I planted them in April, but the plants just kind of lolled around in the wet soil, enjoying making more and more leaves, and they remembered why I planted them a bit too late to make good on their promise to get it done before frost. 

It was really too cold at night for them to put out much in the way of fragrance. What a waste! So I dug them up. Plopped them in planters and put them in the cart and brought them in. 

Now that was a fine sight, tuberoses going to their reward...another month of summer!

The heat of the greenhouse brings out the most exquisite fragrance, and it absolutely fills the little room with heaven when night falls.

They're delighted to keep growing and blooming. I'll have a month more of fragrance and beauty.

Some are still in spike! My darling you will never know 20 degrees.

Joining the tuberoses is my night-blooming jessamine, Cestrum nocturnum. Another jewel of the Solanaceae, or nightshade family. What a family. Potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, tomatillos, Cestrum, to name just a few.

The New Guinea impatiens is so happy to come in out of the cold and unfurl its blazing perfect orange blossoms in welcome heat.

As is the mammilaria cactus, which has bloomed for me for 22 years.

And you have to love a mandevilla that's such a bright red it boggles the camera.

Color. Blazes and bushels of color. That's how we fight old man Winter here on Indigo Hill.

House Update: Moving Into the Red

What a blast, to upload these photos taken morning after morning, in varying light and glorious autumnal skies, to see the transformation of our shabby tired-looking house into a spiffy new barn. Before and After Remodeling was getting busy with it. 

Everybody liked this vining red mandevilla, and Aaron painted primer carefully around her 

as foreman Craig looked on.

I didn't realize I have such a penchant for hot colors until we painted the house red. This tangerine hibiscus makes my heart sing. Against barn red, hm. They're fighting with each other.

Maybe I'll pull her out a little farther from the siding. This is why we love container gardening. It's movable color, movable beauty.

In addition to having the house re-sided and painted, we were replacing nine windows. These windows had been shot for years. The seals were all broken, and they were permanently fogged when we bought the house in 1992. You couldn't see nuffin' out of them. They also had ugly metal dividers down the middle of the view that you couldn't see in the first place, which made it all even more discouraging. 

I countered this by making the inside view as terrific as I could. 

Foggy windows, fabulous orchids.

When time came to put the new windows in, I insisted on being present, to be the one to move the orchid collection out of the way, the one to put the plants back in their precise places. You know, because some like more sun than others, and some like to be cooler and shadier, and only Mother knows those things. Or cares.

Donny and Jessica, if I seem fussy about those orchids, which look like piles of straplike leaves now when they're dormant, this is why. They're well worth getting all fussy about. Obviously, orchids like fussy people like me to fuss over them.

So I moved all the orchids onto the bed to wait for the new windows to go in. One already had--see the window in the right corner?

We hit our only major snag with an inattentive Lowe's employee who somehow managed to turn our order for single-pane crank-out windows into dopey dual pane slot windows. Seven times over. I walked into the bedroom to find this. My view was bisected by a six-inch divider, the window split into two narrow portals. Ummm, no. Nonononono noooo. That's the kind of window you put in an institution where you don't want people crawling out of them and escaping over the fence in their backless gowns. Why would anyone, especially nature freaks, want a huge metal panel smack down the middle of their view? Ack! Send them back! Begone!

This mess-up by Lowe's would result in almost a month's delay in window installation. Rats. But these things happen in any big project. I took it in stride; I think Donny was a lot more worked up about it than I was. And there was plenty for the Before and After crew to do in the meantime. 

There was a hiatus while we worked at the Midwest Birding Symposium in mid-September. A lot happened while we were gone. We drove up the driveway on Sunday afternoon, holding our collective breath, to find this...aieee!!

Wow. Just wow. What a huge difference the horizontal Hardie board makes on the old part of the house. Running it all the way to the ground was definitely the right move. At long last, the two pieces of our intentionally crazy house are pulled together into one.

The other thing that jumped out at me when the house was finally transformed was the golden arbor vitae on the corner near the front door. Man, it looks so beautiful against the red. It looks like we planned it, to set off the house. I just thought it was pretty so I bought it and planted it when it was about six inches tall. But now it's all grown up with a brick-red foil to glow against, and it sings. So does the Japanese maple on the far left, which happens to be a bonsai that I planted out in the yard. It's about 30 years old, just like the ones in my collection, but it's 100 times bigger than they are. That's what a little root room will do for you.

The Bacon approves. More on The Bacon to come. He liked being part of this project!

A Room Crammed with Summer

The Rex begonia "Looking Glass," from Ohio's own Glasshouse Works. Well, I got a plant there about five years ago, and this is probably its great-great-great-great-great grandchild.


It's only 9' across, maybe 12' high, not a lot bigger than a phone booth, but there is no other 9 x 12' space on the planet that brings me as much happiness as the Garden Pod.

I am a sentimental sort and seeing my plant friends die with the frost undoes me, even as I know I cannot haul them all inside for the winter. They wouldn't like it, I wouldn't like it, and the bugs would love it. If you scrutinize the photo above, you will see that I made an exception for the huge pot of Fuchsia "Gartenmeister Bonstedt" on the greenhouse floor. I just could not let it die. Later on in the winter, when it's loaded with whitefly, I'll leave it out in the snow for the polar bears, and nurture the two cuttings, already blooming, I've got going. But for now, it's got a home. This was the only plant I found for sale in 2008, and I found it many miles from my home near Dayton, and carried it over in the greenhouse. I didn't find it in '09, which mystifies me, since it is, in my and the hummingbirds' opinion, the best fuchsia in the universe. I have just finished a painting of it, in fact.

So I take cuttings in August and sometimes I take cuttings in October if the first August batch didn't root. My garden friend Nancy turned me on to vermiculite as a cutting medium and boy, what a difference. Vermiculite is free of the myriad molds and bacteria that plague potting soil, so cuttings have a fighting chance of throwing out roots before they rot. Everything I tried to root in the last October cutting harvest succeeded! Uh oh. I am definitely going to run out of room this winter. Here's one of the geranium cutting groups:
Who needs a 10-foot high red mandevilla, loaded with aphids, when you can start a little cutting like this one?
How dear of it to bloom. The nondescript looking plant in the white pot below it is the world's tiniest fuchsia, which just burst into teeny pink bloom today. Its flowers are no longer than a grain of rice, but perfect and sweet. It is a fussy plant that likes the greenhouse best. It threatens and threatens to die all summer long, as fuchsias will, and burgeons as soon as it gets in the moist heat of the Pod.

Abutilon megapotamicum, a mallow from Africa that I love. All my cuttings rooted, uh oh. Big plant. Better be giving some away.

Geranium "Bolton," developed in a town next door to sister Barbara's in Massachusetts.
One of two variegated bougainvilleas, zany plants that sulk outdoors all summer (not hot enough!) and bloom like crazy all winter in the greenhouse. Just when I need them most!
A new hibiscus, one I saw at the grocery store late this summer and snapped up like a horticultural crocodile. Now I need a big ol' hibiscus like a hole in the head but that COLOR. Please. Tangerine. Never seen it before, hadda have it. I do love my mallows.

It makes me smile and holler. Meanwhile, Mary Alice the hibiscus tree is taller than I am, with a 2" thick trunk, and she's in the living room. A cutting of Mary Alice is blooming for the first time today in the greenhouse. Nancy rooted it for me, in case Mary Alice goes south. And so it goes, on and on. Plants are banks of precious DNA, which you can split off and propagate and downsize and start over indefinitely. That's one of the reasons I find gardening so satisfying.

It's probably illegal to propagate this brand-spanking new tangerine hibiscus. No kidding, plant growers are patenting everything as they bring it out. Pah. I am a notorious scofflaw where plant propagation is concerned. Come and get me, lock me up. A plant this good should be spread around.

Time to water! Gotta go! Nothing like a warm, humid greenhouse on a dreary winter day. If you've even been thinking about getting yourself one, just do it. And you, too, can face the first frost without dread, and cackle when you open the door on your little room crammed full of summer.

Defying Death in the Greenhouse

One of my chief methods of beating Old Man Winter at his depressing game is standing in my Garden Pod, breathing the oxygen created by dozens of potted plants. I just went out and took stock. Seven of them I bought, albeit years ago in some cases. All the rest I've propagated from cuttings or been given by friends. So should it be in a greenhouse. It's full of plants I love, plants that bear association with people and places in my life. For an audio musing on this topic, please listen to my NPR commentary, "Rosemary is for Remembrance."

Some of the Pod denizens are plants I just couldn't say goodbye to in November, when it finally got seriously cold. They were thriving, and I couldn't let them die. I've been pleasantly surprised by the beauty and floriferous nature of this Rebel chocolate-leaved geranium (pale pink blossoms, on the floor in the photo below). I have to admit that selective breeding does produce some real wonders, like this nearly-perfect geranium. The blossoms hold well without shattering; they're nice and full and round; the leaves are gorgeous, and this creature has not stopped blooming since May. I'm so glad I hauled it in. And I made a cutting, just in case, and it's doing well, too.
Early Saturday morning, I awoke to the sound of coughing, miserable children, as I had for the last four nights. Both Phoebe and Liam are dreadful ill with sore throats, congestion, headaches, coughs, and fevers. They're marginally better tonight (Monday), but I'm pretty sure this is a viral illness, as it's not responding to the antibiotic they were prescribed. I dose them twice a night with palliatives. I finished my rounds, blearily measuring ibuprofen and cough syrup, and realized that it was cold. Much too cold for 6 AM. I checked the thermostat, 58 degrees. It had been set to 67. I raced to the cookstove, fully awake, and turned on the gas. The ignitor clicked, but the burner didn't light. Oh, crap, oh crap, oh crap, the gas is off. Must move fast now.

We heat with  natural gas, from a well on our land. It comes through an orange plastic pipe from a welljack out at the end of the meadow. Homegrown natural gas is great when it works, and it's free. Consider that for a moment, free heat...when are you all moving to southern Ohio to be my neighbors??

When it cuts off, though, you have to act fast, and you have to know what to do. Bill hurried out to the regulator, pulled the pin, and with a prayer, listened for the hiss that would mean the gas was operative, but just off thanks to condensation in the line (a hazard when temperatures fluctuate wildly in the winter).

My greenhouse is heated with gas. It's a little plastic pod that does not hold heat in the least.

I have two variegated bougainvilleas in that greenhouse who are right below Charlie and my tankful of emperor tetras on the hierarchy of my favorite creatures. Bill gave me the first one for my birthday three years ago. They remind me of Mexico, where in 2005 we had one of the happiest vacations of our married life. They make me happy. They take me back to a frost-free place and time in my life.

I looked at the thermometer. Twenty-two degrees outside.

I put on a coat and went out to the greenhouse, strangely calm and collected, for what was going on in my poor head. Twenty-two degrees inside the Pod. Breath panting, showing in the black night air. Bougainvilleas, geraniums, basil, fuchsia, ficus, cacti, succulents, gardenias, hibiscus, abutilon, heliotrope, mandevillas. None of them hardy, all of them standing at 22 degrees.
I lit the pilot and cranked the heater up to six. I prayed. Although there was a slight scent of green leaves dying on the air, none of the leaves were crispy, and none were translucent--the kiss of frosty death. I prayed some more, stayed with them, like a priest at their dying bed. But I stayed calm. In previous greenhouse disasters, I've curled up in a fetal position and howled. Not this time. I knew somehow my friends would be all right. I felt as if someone had his hand on my shoulder, though I was alone. Dad? Old Man Winter? God? I don't know. But someone helped me and my beloved plants. It almost felt like all that love defied the frost.Red Satin mandevilla, proudly grown from a tiny cutting last winter. I let the mother plant, 15' high, die in December, clinging to the house in a freezing wind, knowing I had her children inside.I've had this Mammilaria cactus for 16 years. It blooms all year 'round. And it loves living atop the little gas heater in the greenhouse. Can't think of another plant that would appreciate furnace-like heat. Every plant has its niche. Sorry about the photo's orientation. Sumpin' happened in iPhoto. May have to do with the 13,000-plus photos I've dumped there...must delete, must delete, can't delete. Must.

Throughout the morning, I kept checking on my plant friends. One abutilon wilted completely, but by 4 pm it was fine. I lost a couple of leaves on a young Vancouver Centennial geranium; a couple of shoots on a Frank Headley fancy geranium. That, my friends was it. How these tropical plants survived 22 degrees, I will never know, but I trust my thermometer and my eyes and the condensed fog of breath that I saw hanging before my face in that frigid greenhouse in the predawn dark. Tonight, it's supposed to plunge back down to 8 degrees. On just such a night about five years ago, before I converted the Pod to gas heat, I lost everything, including 28 varieties of miniature geraniums, when the electricity cut off. You can be sure I'll wake a few more times tonight, to smooth a brow and give medicine, to arrange covers, and to listen for the whirr of the furnace, doing its job. I look like holy hell these days, hair sticking up like Clay Aiken's, huge dark circles under my eyes, but my poor sick coughing kids are on the mend, and my greenhouse is still growing and thriving, and that's something to keep a hopeful old girl going.

Hummingbird Tracks

Mandevilla sanderi, the red mandevilla featured earlier.

As mandevilla flowers open, I have noticed that they twist clockwise. A petal which was at 6:00 when the flower opened will be at 9:00 by the next day. I don't know why they do this, but I know they do because I scrutinize my mandevilla flowers every morning. I'm looking for something, tiny scratches on the lower petals. They will tell me who's using the plant.

Mandevilla "Alice DuPont" is a fabulous plant, but it has a problem where native American pollinators are concerned. Its brilliant pink color pulls tiger and spicebush swallowtails in from afar, as well as hummingbirds. But it guards its nectar in a very deep throat, and I'm not sure they can access it. The hummingbirds try once or twice and give up--no big deal. But tiger and spicebush swallowtails get stuck trying to reach that throat, and when I've grown this plant, I've had to go around all summer and free struggling butterflies, or remove their carcasses, from the flowers. I'm not saying this is a huge problem, but it does make me sad, and it underscores the importance of planting native plants, or at least ones whose nectar is accessible to native pollinators, in preference to exotics.

By contrast, Mandevilla sanderi is highly attractive to hummingbirds, and they can access the nectar in its shallower throat. And they leave little scratches on the lower petals when they feed.

I first discovered scratches on the petals of an orange daylily in Connecticut, back in the 1980's. I watched a hummingbird feeding at the lily, landing lightly and scrabbling for purchase on the lower petal. When it left, I wondered if it had left tracks, and examined the petal. Tiny scratches. Hummingbird tracks. Tracks, from a bird that flies so well it never walks; that was put in the family Apodiformes (without feet) when the first specimens, with feet conveniently or accidentally removed, were sent to Europe from the New World.

I loved to show these marks to visitors to the Connecticut preserve where I lived for ten years. "Ever seen hummingbird tracks?" I'd ask. People would look puzzled until I showed them the little scratches. A simple thing, a tiny thing, hard to see and harder to photograph. But sometimes the simplest, tiniest things hold the greatest magic.

The Great Red Mandevilla

One of my greatest (and easiest) horticultural triumphs this past winter was the successful rooting, in water no less, of two cuttings of a red mandevilla that I love. Here's how it (and Phoebe!) looked in September 2006. The mandevilla was so beautiful I could not leave it out to freeze. (Brought Phoebe inside, too). I sighed and grunted the plant into the greenhouse for a long winter of cutting back its wild tendrils, spraying it for aphid and whitefly, and dumping two gallons of water on it every other day. Urrrrgggh. I put it in the biggest pot I own (which also happens to be the upper size limit of what I can lift, not coincidentally), and it completely dominated the greenhouse all winter, cutting sun for everyone else. It wound its long tendrils around every plant within six feet of it, and I had to keep slashing it back. I cursed it and wished I had thought to root cuttings in the summer of 2006, so I wouldn't have to house that 60-pound, eight-foot-tall monster in my tiny Garden Pod all winter long. I had found this plant at the Greenbrier Nursery in West Virginia, and I was loath to lose that wonderful genetic material. It was the first red mandevilla I'd seen. By about January, to my great surprise and delight, I had two tiny cuttings throwing out roots, and after a winter in the greenhouse and a summer outdoors, they're just now coming into maturity, putting out delicious red blossoms. Come the first of May 2007, I just about broke my back getting the mother plant out of its pot, and I put it right into an enormous hole I dug in the ground next to the front door, where it is putting on a spectacular show and climbing a trellis up the front of the house. Thank you, darling. You've been an asset, overall.There it lives and thrives, and there it will die come November, because I have these two gorgeous little starts from it, who have promised not to dominate the greenhouse the way their mother did. I love this plant so much that I'm also layering it, burying low-hanging stems in moist soil. Those buried sections should put out roots by fall, and then I can cut them off the mother plant. This is one of the great joys of gardening, and Bill likes to say it's my only vice: plant propagation. What I'm going to do with the starts come October is anybody's guess. Most of the people I'd give it to don't own greenhouses. Given the growth potential of this tropical vine, I'll probably be cursing those cuttings all through the winter of 2007, too.

This plant was formerly in the genus Dipladenia, along with a pink variant which I also grow. Now, though they've put it in the genus Mandevilla, where it's called M. sanderi. The other Mandevilla is M. amabilis, sometimes called Chilean or Brazilian jasmine. The most frequently grown variety of M. amabilis is "Alice Dupont," boasting enormous, fragrant pink flowers and quilted, rugose leaves, unlike the sweet, shiny dark green leaves of M. sanderi. There's no denying that Alice Dupont puts on a spectacular show. I've grown them for years, and always used to plant one for my mother, where people would stop in front of her house to ask her what it was. I give them to my mother-in-law every year, too, and she loves them. This vine loves the cruel humidity and heat of Virginia and Ohio summers, though like mine, it dies at the first frost. It's much more a vine than a shrub, growing in a straight line if you don't cut it back.

Of the two mandevillas, I now prefer to grow the shiny-leaved red-flowered M. sanderi, because it's much less prone to attacks by whitefly and red spider mite. It also has a much more compact growth habit, gorgeous shiny deep forest-green leaves, and dark red flowers that just can't be beat for beauty.

There is one more thing I love about this plant, but I'll tell you about that tomorrow. I seem to have gone on a bit long about mandevillas. It's going to be a long winter in the greenhouse, with three to bring in!