The Enchanted Garden

This is a post I wrote in August, before a lot of other stuff happened. I stuffed it away and saved it for a time when I wouldn't feel like writing. Which turns out to be now. I keep checking: still got nothing.

I took the enchanted basil forest down in early August. 

Best basil I've ever grown. I had little to do with it. It was the rain that made the leaves big and tender. Wow, what beautiful basil. And for once I harvested it in the height of its growth, not in October when most of the leaves have fallen off and the rest are yellowing. Beautiful!!

After the cutting. The plants are still there, and may well send up just that much growth again before frost. Yikes!

All that basil reduced down to this many leaves, which Liam helped me strip off the stems.

And all these leaves, with some pine nuts and parmesan and a lot of olive oil, made 13 jars of delicious pesto. Just finished my dinner, 3 cheese ravioli drenched in fresh pesto. Mmmmm! Good thing I ran today, and am going to rake the yard again.

Amazingly, the manure-fed rhubarb is still going pretty strong, and I've made some bitchin' cobblers lately. Oh I love that stuff sooo  much. Just looking at this photo makes me feel thankful.

I so vastly prefer shopping in my garden to shopping in the produce aisle. I love summer cooking. It's so easy and fast, with all this organic produce flowing into the kitchen.

Speaking of happy, here's the first big crop of golden raspberries we've had. Yes, that's young asparagus curling around, from the seeds I planted in the greenhouse two springs ago. It'll probably be five more years before I can harvest any, but that's OK. I'm waiting anyway.

My dear friend Connie Toops has given me a couple of batches of raspberry plants from her amazing mountainside garden in North Carolina over the last five years or so. Cutting all the trees that were shading them, liberal applications of cow manure, and a rainy summer were apparently what they required to really take off, spread and give us enough to carry some in from the garden. I.E. enough so that they aren't all gut-picked right there in the patch. Ahhhh!! sooo good.

Best of all, there have were still some on the plants for Phoebe. It's been lovely for Phoebe to have a little time here rolling around with me in August's glorious bounty.  She had a beautiful two weeks with Chet Baker. She went back to school August 26, and, goodbye kisses given and received, he very quickly got on with the business of leaving this world. Bless his little soul. A gentleman to the end. As I think about it, it was best that way, a perfect visit, with him feeling pretty good, even able to go on hikes, and Phoebe able to remember him that way. I brought him to her arms when she woke up each morning. 

Sweet puppy kisses and golden raspberries. Life was good for Phoebs. Right next to them, the last naked lady finishes her bloom.

They're softly fragrant and so divine with that ethereal cerulean-violet on their petal ends. Ahhhh. 

Once again, there's South Africa to credit for this wonderful plant, Lycoris squamigera, often called the Surprise Lily for the way its broad strappy leaves come up in spring, wither away by June, and then boom! there are multiple tall spikes of fabulous pink "naked ladies," i.e. without any leaves, popping up as a surprise in August! I'm thrilled that these transplants from an old home site down Dean's Fork have taken hold in my heirloom garden, right in front of the peony I harvested there. Home again. The naked ladies don't bloom in the woods. I should get serious, take a shovel and dig some more of them next spring. 

Buddleia is adding its sweet perfume to the powerful scent of tuberose come evening.

I'm really pleased with this combo, more thought out than most of mine, on the corner of the old garage. I'm breaking the rules by planting 4'  tuberoses in front of shorter things, but they're there to smell! No stepping over other plants to get to them. This is a hedon's garden, after all.

And the tuberoses are almost as tall as I am this year. I don't even have to lean over to bury my nose in them. I made a sweet little bundle this spring selling off most of my tuberose bulbs at two gardening talks I gave here in Ohio. I had too darn many to plant, and no place to put them. Sold a bunch of Achimenes rhizomes, too, which took a little more salesmanship. The tuberoses were snapped up immediately. They were beautiful--enormous bulb clusters, manure-fed, and I sold them for $4 apiece. I hope to rebuild my stocks and offer them in coming years. What I sold was about a decade's worth of propagation. Man, I love being able to produce something people really want and sell it in person (as opposed to online). No postage, no hassle, just grab, gimme some cash, and go. 

I've put in a bed of annuals--Salvia farinosa "Victoria," Angelonia and zinnias--behind the tuberoses. I tried to keep it all purple, pink and white. Succeeded. Sometimes it works out.

What's for Dinner in the Vegetable Garden? Everything!

In the vegetable garden, the first two rows of beans are sighing their last. The second two rows are just kicking in. Oh huzzah! My goal was to have beans all summer long. That's my goal every summer, but it's always too dry to pull it off. Not this year! I'm so excited to pick them tonight. Nothing like a tender snap bean from the garden, steamed, with butter and salt. I'm drooling as I write. 

I plant a mix of Royal Burgundy, Brittle Wax and Blue Lake so it makes a beautiful sight in the garden trug. I got so carried away I soaked and planted two more rows on August 1. Maybe we'll have an extended warm fall like last year, when I was photographing morning glories in November. I can dream. And what's the worst that can happen? They freeze before they bear. I can take a risk like that, give 100 dry beans to the cause of having fresh snap beans to eat in October. 

I learned a valuable lesson last year when I planted four rows of beans at once. Picking became a chore, and we barely were able to eat them all before they got so big they had to be stewed with bacon. And then when they were all done I missed them, but I didn't miss picking them! Good problem to have, but I'm much happier with two rows of about 70 plants total, followed about three weeks later by another two rows coming in. I'm not a canner any more. I believe in gorging when they're in, and giving away what you can't eat yourself. So far, we're keeping up!

Just behind the beans...

I planted too many Sungold tomatoes and not enough slicers this year. I was all fired up about Kumatos, a tasty little brown tomato, so I saved some seed from some I bought in the grocery store. They're a disappointment, splitting with all the rain and not getting much bigger than a squash ball. The Sungolds aren't all that happy with the cool rainy year, but they're putting out gobs of little sugar bombs. Can't complain! Stewed, fresh, in stir-fries, quiches, soups, I love 'em beyond saying. 

That was my big smile. This is my thoughtful, author jacket look. Where is my meershaum pipe?

I broke down and bought a bunch of glads this spring after losing mine to disease and I don't know what all. They've been such a joy! I can't wait to see how big the bulbs grew when I dig them this fall. Some people don't like digging bulbs. I love it. It's like finding buried treasure. And it kind of beats winter back to pull these freely multiplying jewels out of the soil in November and dream about next June, wondering what colors you'll get. "Blue Moon" mix has been spectacular. 

I'm done hearing about how much people hate glads because they remind them of funerals. Bla bla bla. Tell me something new, something I haven't heard a hundred times.  I'll admit this is a hot button for me because I had a landlady once who scoffed at my taste in flowers and told me why she hated glads oh, about twenty times. As I listened silently to her monologue, I resolved to plant two more rows of them the next spring. 

 Remember, they're called glads!

I've never had a violet like this one. 

Still hatin' on 'em?

And the fresh lavender (Paradise Purple, as garden writer Thalassa Cruso called it, because she contended that all the plants in Paradise started out this color) is such a great compliment to the lime-green bean leaves. Growing glads amongst the vegetables is one of my favorite things to do. They take so little room and they make going out to pick such a pleasure.

Mm, mm. Good.  Happy. Anything but funereal. Besides, they're from South Africa, like about 75% of all the coolest plants on the planet.

Love this sunflower covering her face. 

This same blossom is now hanging down like a showerhead, heavy with seed, and the goldfinches and cardinals have started in on it. 

I haven't grown ornamental sunflowers for years. Oh what fun they are!! Here's Velvet Queen.

Now that's a plant that takes as much room as you'll give it, so I'm glad I planted only a few. The rabbits got all the ones I tried to plant in the heirloom garden where I could see them from the studio. The only ones that survived are inside the 9' tall Jurassic Garden enclosure. 

This is Lemon Queen. Well named! Sunflowers take a lot of room, but they make me and the cardinals, house finches and goldfinches so happy. 

August Rocks: Garden Tour 1

The August cooldown is here. A Canadian air mass is holding sway and the air smells of hay and sweet wine. 

I took a garden tour last night after spending much of the day mowing, raking, weeding, and preening my flower beds. I don't do a lot of preening. There's too much of the other stuff to be done. 

I'm celebrating right now because I am no longer in pain. I returned home from New England to find two weeks' worth of grass growing wild on a saturated lawn. It had rained for most of the time I was away. I mowed it into soggy windrows, the mower gagging on the clumps, and Liam and I raked the whole damn yard the next day, after the sodden green wad of clippings had had a chance to not dry overnight. It was like raking wet cow manure. My lower back went into spasm from overuse and stayed that way for almost three weeks. Oddly enough, getting in and out of my car was the most painful thing I had to do. I'd sit and think about how I was going to complete the maneuver for about 30 seconds, then begin the process. I felt 100 years old. Having a complaining back affects almost everything you want to do. I send this message of hope out to back pain sufferers everywhere. It does heal. I mean, an overuse injury does. I also give you this link to Lawrence Gold's simple floor exercises which Liam and I did together. Not surprisingly, he healed a lot faster than I did. These exercises sped the process for both of us, for sure.

Anyway. Pain is boring. I wanted to take you on a little garden tour because the rain that brought the pain has also brought such beautiful flowers to my gardens.  We'll start at the front door.  I'm happy with this hanging basket. Supertunia "Honey" is finally showing some good color after being a bit bleached out for most of the summer. 

I don't think I bought a single lobelia plant this year. They're all seed volunteers from various planters and pots in the greenhouse, carefully picked out and nurtured in separate pots when they volunteer. That's how I roll--scrounging and saving, getting as much as I can for nothing.  I did buy some seeds of multicolored lobelias and was happy to get this one. I was going for the dark amethyst but the rabbits ate most of them to the ground. There's a theme here. If I want to grow rabbit candy, I have to elevate it.

The Achimenes are FINALLY blooming. They got a very late start thanks to freaking chipmunks (I'm looking at YOU, Tilda Sixbuttons!!) 

who climb my bonsai shelves and dig up the rhizomes to eat. Then they chew up the plants just to make sure everything is completely dead. 

I had this beautiful scheme this year to grow Pink Nighty plants for sale at the Marietta Farmer's Market. I had long planters all planted with my best rhizomes, saved back from being sold at my talks (I sold a passel of 'em this spring!). And chipmunks ate all but about 13 rhizomes. I know now I'll have to start them inside next year. I'm thinking about using the glassed in tower room as a sort of auxiliary greenhouse for such tender n' tasty things, when it's gotten too hot and sunny to have them in the greenhouse proper. 

This is "Pink Nighty," and man, oh man is it pink. Shocking Pink Nighty. The iPhone exaggerates, and takes away some of the nicer coral tones, but it is that bright!

I just love this little gesneriad. Adore it. And am so happy to finally have some abloom on the benches. I don't dare put them on the front porch. Tilda will definitely devour them, if Notch the bunny doesn't get there first. 

A chipmunk-planted black-oil sunflower came up amongst the evening primroses in the front bed. It's too tall for the front but it's so charming I let it stay. 

A first for me: Fuchsia magellanica, native to temperate parts of southern South America, and hardy in Ohio, started blooming in July! It usually waits until September. Don't know why, just grateful. And Hosta "June" is incredibly late to bloom, so I have this probably unrepeatable combo going in the front shade bed. Hummer heaven!

I absolutely love having a hardy fuchsia around. So durable, too. And it roots from cuttings in plain  water. What's not to love?

Moving on out from the front door, Chet pauses to make sure he is in the photo. You can see those big beautiful hibiscus thoroughly enjoying their summer at camp. They just love sleeping under the stars.

Creole Lady says YEAH!!

An awful photo of that gorgeous little dwarf pomegranate bonsai which is exceeding all expectations for flowers and fruit!!

It's got at least four garnet-red pommies about the size of cherry tomatoes and a continuing cascade of neon-orange ballerina tutu flowers in leathery calyxes. What an awesome plant!!

Let's head out along the garage sidewalk toward the vegetable garden. Rudbeckia "Goldsturm" is battling with a hardy hibiscus  for supremacy. I've about had it with the hibiscus. So big and leggy and woody and thuggish, and it makes babies everywhere. But the thought of digging it out makes my back twinge. Maybe I can poison it. :D

I'd really rather grow roses, zinnias, cosmos and Rudbeckia. The foliage to flower ratio is much better on those.

Yes. Dig out those hibiscus. I will help you. Well, I will supervise.

Look how his little paw is just striking the sidewalk. 

First Frost, November 12, 2016

look at her wings!!!! Embiggen it by clicking. And look at her wings.

I made this video upon walking out this morning and realizing that the Really Big Show was over. I've been waking up the last few weeks around 5:30, while it's still pitch black, my mind running around like a hamster in a too-small cage, going over and over things, sniffing away at the same old stuff as if some of it might have changed while I was asleep. I count how many times the furnace kicks on, and know it's near freezing outside. I test the air and reach over to feel for Chet Baker and cover him up again (he kicks the kivers off).

As soon as it got light this morning, November 12, I padded out in my ugly but plantar fasciitis friendly Crocs and plushy new sea-blue robe. The frigid air went right up my jammie legs and I could smell that odor of plants cut down in their prime, the one that reminds me of the day my greenhouse froze solid. November 24, 2013, sometime around 2 AM, and that reminds me I'd better bleed the drip valve on the gasline again. Oh man. I don't think I'd survive another greenhouse freeze, not this fall. Nuh-uh. That greenhouse is Necessary. Indispensible and that is Non-Negotiable.

Morning glories go purple and pink when they've been cold all night. Zow!

  I'm glad I had the foresight this morning to set the phone to Video, because it really was remarkable out there, a changed world. Late in coming--it's November 12! My fear that the morning glories would only just be getting going by the time frost came were for naught. We had almost a month of glorious autumn weather with all the flowers going HAM as my son likes to say. It was incredible, splendid, glorious, and I did not waste a day of it; I rolled around in it and took thousands of photos and was thankful for every heaven-blue saucer those vines threw out.

And now it was over. OVER with a big frosty bullet, Zappo! Pow! And that was OK. This is how it is supposed to go. I was ready. I never get my fill of flowers, but I'd come close. I wasn't happy about the freeze, but I wasn't devastated the way I am when it hits in the first couple weeks of October and robs me of weeks of potential floral glory.

I never really knew when peak bloom was, until the morning of November 7. And then I knew. My GOD.

I like this video because it's so simple: a curious primate moving through her environment, touching, smelling, feeling, wondering, noting the changes, the things that are odd, the things that are different, and those that are beautiful and comforting too.

When the morning glories have been dead for awhile and I'm really missing their hues, I may put together a post or two of my best flower photos from this summer and fall. Really, what a gift, from five little black seeds. There is such power in a seed, and there's tremendous power in rotted cow manure, too. And there's power in close observation and checking in every few hours to see what's changed.  Checking and re-checking. The hamster, darting, running on its little wheel. Maybe that's why I have such a fierce love for things that change. Young things, growing things. Baby birds and fast-twining vines, that long tall blonde boy and that lissome red-haired girl.  These things free the spirit.

Welcome to my utterly changed world:


 

Slurping October Down

This time of year, the middle of October, is the exact correlate to when everything blooms and the leaves pop out in late April. It's suddenly all too beautiful and you can't possibly take it all in. But you try.

I love October so much. 

I'm doing this post for Phoebe, as much as for anyone. I miss that girl like I miss the moon when it's cloudy for weeks. I miss her like I miss  the scent of tuberoses in February. And I know she misses this place, but oh! she's having such fun in Panama, learning how to sweat around the clock while

studying abroad, watching birds,  making great new friends in the 15 other girls in the program; learning about forests and agriculture, loving on sloths,  

and sharpening her Spanish to a fine point. Anyway, I figure she and her friends (please bring them all home with you as I want to meet them!)

 would like to see what the place looks like about now. And maybe you would, too. 

Every spring, I come up the deck stairs and say sadly, "Well, it looks like Rio Samba (a rose I planted in 1993) didn't make it through the winter. It's dead."

And Phoebe says, "You say that every year!" Well, I am here to inform her that it has died. Again.

It looks good, I know, but it's dead. Just like I predicted. And that bud coming? Just a final salvo. It's a lot less dead than it was last summer, but it's definitely dead.

The morning glories are FINALLY blooming. I've been hearing from lots of quarters that morning glories waited all summer long, waited into October, to bloom. Whaa? And now, just in time for a balmy week, they are going nuts.

This was my first view this morning.  The low last night was 68, so the ones that opened yesterday morning never closed. And there they were smiling back at me at first light. Fabulous.

The vines around the back deck are monstrous. 

 They make a great pillar of green, studded with sky-blue saucers.

I managed to catch the elusive Liam on his way to class this morning. He's there for scale.  He's over 6' tall now, so let's see. That's about 2.5 Liams of morning glories. 

And a peek of Rio Samba in the lower left corner. 

Yep, still dead.

The pond garden is bursting with life. See the white pitchers emerging from the corner of the pond? My pitcher plants are happy and now grabbing pollinators. Not sure how I feel about that. They're greedy, exuding a honey scent but offering no nectar, only death by digestive fluids. I check every day and let some of the trapped insects go.  I stick a straw down in there and the grateful insects climb out. Hate to see ctenuchid moths and honeybees struggling in there. Those plants can eat houseflies. 

Sheffield Pink, a super-hardy mum (formerly known by me as Suffolk Pink), which legend has was the first mum brought to America by English colonists, is doing its pre-frost thing. Some jaunty orange calendulas I planted are a nice surprise. The zinnias self-sowed, and I fear I may have to bring some seedlings in the greenhouse. What I'll do when they get big I don't know.

A gift from painter Cindy House, who grows it in New Hampshire, Sheffield Pink is one of my favorites, for the cheery burst of new color it lends to the autumn landscape.

I'm planting bits of it all over the yard, filling bare spots, and now have enough to give some away, too, as some happy Reader Rendezvouers found out. Sheffield. Not Suffolk. I think. It's pink, anyway.

It's been a long time since the back gardens looked so pretty. They make me happy. 

And so do the myrtle warblers pouring through right now. Fall warblers and flowers...that's a good combo for a hungry eye. I'm slurping October down.