The Colorful Time

It was such a hot and weird October. Until it wasn't. I've never seen an autumn like this one. I had to get out before it was light to get my run in before it got too hot. The flowers loved it, blooming there was no tomorrow.

 

86 degrees on October 8. The wind was like a blast furnace, the sun’s hand heavy. Yet it was oddly cool in the shade. Meadows and trees go about their business of coloring up, as the shortening days demand. I weary of the sweat that rolls down my back. Nothing seems right in a hot October. It’s grabbing a cold glass of Coke and getting hot coffee. And then this meadow at dusk, with the crickets and katydids going full bore, a screech-owl quavering, the sound of ripe pears clunking to earth.

It's all been so beautiful, so odd, so overwhelming. 

 

  If only we could take a bit of this color and spread it out through the gray months. There's ever so much out there right now. More than anyone needs.

The fuchsias are ringing their coral and pink bells.

Fuchsia Gartenmeister Bonstadt

Fuchsia Trandshen Bonnstadt

  I managed to get a few cuttings rooted of this pink beauty. I'll have it in the greenhouse over the winter. This plant stands 4' high in the garden, and the hummingbirds were all over it until they left October 9.

 The red Knockout rose squeaks a few flowers past the Japanese beetles. I love this rose, and the shell-pink zinnia behind it. Who says pink and red don't work well together?

 The zinnias are almost never without monarchs as the insects feed frantically before flying south.
My Garden Way cart is in constant use this time of year, hauling potted plants to the greenhouse, pots to the garage.

 I go around the yard, seeing things. Morning, Mrs. Neoscona. Is your husband available? Or is he tied up at the moment?

It's a banner year for Neoscona crucifera, the arboreal orbweaver. There are so many of them their webs overlap, and then things like this happen.

I mentioned color. Pineapple sage has been giving up its leaves for my cooling iced tea all summer long. It never blooms until it's sure all the hummingbirds have left. And then it bursts forth with this. Well, joke's on you, sage, because I saw a very late hummingbird sipping from your flowers on October 9.

 

 I love this plant. I just wish it'd get its act together before mid-October. Clearly, it's on Mexico time.

 

Everywhere I turn, I think of my kids lately. I saw something in the back of the mailbox, covered with dust. It was an ancient little foam letter that had been Phoebe's. Who knows how many years it's been in there.

 

  

I walked back to the house thinking about my 5'9" redhead. This zinnia is exactly that tall.

 

 And totally by chance, the next zinnia over is a blonde. And it's wicked tall, too. Phoebe and Liam, growing right in the front garden bed.

 

Wonderfully enough, there are still three stalks of tuberoses sending their perfume out into the bedroom each night. It was a fabulous year for them. They love rain. 

 

 I had to do one more cleaning of the pond before winter, and I had to do it soon, because the Sheffield Pink mums are in bud. Now why would that be? Well, once they start opening, there will be so many honey and bumble bees on those flowers, I won't be able to sprawl around on the rocks as I shovel up the muck. I'll get stang. So I had to clean it now!

Just look at all those buds!

Me, wearing a bell hat, looking at a mountain of glory.

 

My old iPhone 6 captured the blue a lot better than this one. This new 6 makes it too red. It's weird how individual the cameras are on these little miracles. Ah well, it's closer than my film camera ever came.

 Morning shadows.

Strangled by its own ambition.

 And the ungodly thick and strong underpinning of it all, the morning glory vines I started in the greenhouse in early April, and had to protect from the rabbits. These were the only ones that made it. Rabbits got all the others. I fought hard for every one of these flowers. And by gum I'm enjoying the heck out of them now.

 This never happens. Question marks aren't flower fans. They're looking for fermented fruit or coon poop. Total fluke to have one land on any flower, much less a morning glory. Maybe she thought it was beautiful.

In back, my path past the pond to the morning glory altar is completely blocked by flowers. What are you gonna do? Whack blooming crape myrtle back? And what's it doing, blooming now? Isn't it supposed to bloom in July? I'm not arguing with any of it. Y'all can just do what you do. Everything is beautiful. When I tried to right some of the zinnias that had flopped over across the sidewalk, whole sections of them just broke off at the main stem. Don't mess with us! they screeched. And so I haven't. And I can't use the sidewalk at all now. But I  love it, this having too many flowers. This is a wet year. Everything just went haywire.

 Beautifully, crazily, perfectly haywire. Just like I like it.

 Impatiens lava flows in slow motion down the steps, seeding itself all the way. All the seed babies seem to be orange. How does that work, I wonder? I like orange. It's nice to have abundance like this. Soon enough the frost will get it all and I'll wish it back even as the flowers collapse. That's what the greenhouse is all about.

 In a delicious bit of irony, the morning glory is smothering the hardy kiwi to the left of it. Under all that biomass used to be a raised deck. I haven't seen it in some months.

 

The plants are in charge here. I'm just their servant.

 

 

I doted on this standard gardenia since I bought it half-price in August. It bloomed like mad, and then it made a bunch more fat buds that looked like Christmas tree lights, and dropped all of them but one. This one. 

 

 

It was as if that plant wanted to make the perfect flower, and kept throwing away the prototypes. Well, it did. And I thanked it by bringing it into the greenhouse yesterday, where it is perfuming the whole space. There are no more buds on it after this. I just gave it a big load of manure and acid stuff. We'll see what happens. Probably good things.

Thank you for walking around the yard with me. Wish you could see it in person, but this will have to do.

xo jz

Garden Gifts

The birthday post goes on. All this stuff happened on my birthday. I'm counting blessings. I think I hit 14 in the last post, and they were things I saw out my window as I worked. Toward evening, I headed to the garden to pick some dinner, and it hit me how many gifts it's pumping out, at last, after all the weeding and mulching, the staking and coddling and the minimal watering I've done. 

It is truly amazing how fast a tomato can grow when it decides to take off. Remember, they were all frosted to sticks on May 10 and 11. Amazing! Helps to support them well, with cages and heavy-duty stakes. Dang, that's a good plant. The Sungolds are in, and the Cherokee Purples and Mr. Stripeys have already blessed us with about six BLT's. MMMMM. Mmm, mmmm! #15. My favorite sandwich anywhere, ever, is a homegrown tomato BLT.

The peppers didn't like the mid-May frost much, either. I had to go out and buy plants after all my seedlings, tenderly grown in the greenhouse, died. Waah. But here comes a golden Baby Bell! I like Bonnie Plants. They get results fast, and they're well-grown, with a nice selection. All hail Bonnie!especially when frost takes yours. Gift #16.

Tendergreen beans are in and they are sooo delicious. #17.  I had to pick again right before I left for Arizona. I finally got smart and planted only two rows at once this time, with the third row (foreground) planted a couple weeks afterward. That way I'll get more tender young beans just as the first two rows peter out. Last spring I went nuts, planted four rows at the same time. And I remember declaring, "I will be buried in my own beans." A bean is a wonderful thing.

Every year, things volunteer in the garden. Cherry tomatoes, of course, but most of those get pulled up, because none are as good as my Sungold hybrids. I had a mystery plant come up right where my tomatillos were last year. I was suspicious of it, because it looked so much like a nightshade, but I let it grow, as there was something tomatilloey about its leaves and flowers. Still wasn't sure about it...

It got bigger and bigger.  Ye gods! If this isn't a tomatillo, what is it? I kept checking to see if it was fruiting. Nope. I decided to let it continue to eat real estate and cow manure until I figured out what it was. Maybe it was a wild ground cherry, and I hear they're edible, too.

Finally got my answer on my birthday! They're tomatillos!!! Inside that husk is a marble-sized green fruit, and when they get big and burst the papery husk, I'll be throwing those into quiches, stir-fries, salads and soups all summer long. Not to mention eating them right off the plant. A little green tomato with firm flesh and a citrusy tang! Love tomatillos! If you've never tried growing them, you must. Vital ingredient in salsa too. To have one of these hot-weather plants volunteer in my garden seems a very extravagant gift. And it's JUST HUUUUGE. #18!! with a bullet.

In a sweet bit of irony, the most valued volunteers in the garden actually germinated just outside it. I started growing tomatillos and cucamelons in the spring of 2013, when a friend sent me seeds for both. Look at these four cucamelon plants, which took root in the soil at the base of the garden planks. I found them as I was hand-pulling crabgrass along the boards. The tags and terra cotta are to protect them from the occasional weed whacking.  Funny how plants make you remember people. Cucamelons and tomatillos come unbidden, spring up like thoughts, volunteering, popping into my garden just as thoughts of my friend pop into my mind.

Unlike random thoughts, these unbidden visitors bear fruit. A tiny cucamelon forms, its yellow blossom about to drop off. If you're curious about cucamelons, type it into the search box in the upper left corner of this page. You'll get several posts about these tiny crunchy wonders, by far the crunchiest thing I've ever grown. Also called "mouse melon."  #19.

Gift # 20:

Tuberoses!

It's going to be an incredible tuberose year. I've been dividing the bulb clusters and planting them singly in rows for about a decade now, and they've responded by multiplying like bunnies, like my friend Gordon says. He gave them to me ages ago, just a brown paper bag of them, after I swooned when he put some in a vase by my bedside when I visited. And now I give them away.

I have enough to plant absolute windrows of them--this one by the heirloom bed of asparagus, of  rhubarb from North Dakota and golden raspberries from Connie Toops. It looks like every one of these plants is going to spike up and bloom this year. August and September are going to be something, my friends.

This year, we cut a bunch of sumac that was shading the heirloom bed, and I dumped two top-dressings of cow manure on it, and oh my. Stand back! I dug a little trench, put cow manure in it, added tuberoses...

Come August, this lovely member of the agave family will start pumping out the tubular white blossoms and their intoxicating evening scent. One blossom will perfume a bedroom.

More tuberoses, by the garage, and a Thunbergia (black-eyed Susan) vine that couldn't live in a pot any longer. Cow manure, cow manure. It's the new drug in my happy sanctuary.

Another testimony to cow manure: this gardenia. As of late April, this plant had barely a leaf on it, thanks to a non-watering event combined with a red spider mite invasion. I apologized to it, gave it a bigger pot half-filled with aged manure, and am now reaping the rewards.

It's so incredibly beautiful, with four-inch flowers, that I brought it into the studio for perfume, and to escape the 98 degree heat outside. It's thankful, and so am I.  That's Gift #21, and they're still coming.

I'm in Arizona right now, speaking this weekend at the Sedona Hummingbird Festival. Took Shila along, tacked on three days for exploring, and we're having the time of our lives. Needless to say, this "working" trip feels like a great big vacation.  This is one of the most glorious places I've ever seen.  Thankful.

photo by Shila Wilson

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.