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.

Stretchy Beauty

Hibiscus sinensis "Creole Lady," a Logee's "Cajun" hybrid.

After such an extravagantly beautiful fall, I'm trying to land softly. I retreat to the greenhouse a lot, several times a day, to coo to my plants and see who's having a party, or planning one soon. 

Clearly, Jasminum sambac is up for a good time. Buds about to pop!

 There's nothing quite like opening the door to a little greenhouse full of jasmine, in grayest November.

All my geranium cuttings and slips are bursting forth with growth and blossoms.  Happy Thought Red is even sending up flowers! You may remember the enormous plant I had last year.  In this picture, it's at least 4' across. Well, its cutting children are racing to catch up with Mama, who I left to the frost. Too big to haul in again.

From back: Happy Thought Red, Vesuvius and Vancouver Centennial, summer of 2016.

The rightmost geranium is all that's left of my enormous Vancouver Centennial plant, that I grew for three years, summer and winter. (See the summer shot, above). Unlike any other Vancouver Centennial I've had, it bloomed nonstop. But it got old and rickety, then died back to just a couple of shoots in the very center. That's OK. I hacked the dead part off, along with most of the roots, plopped what was still alive in a small pot, and off she goes again. Is it any wonder I adore this plant, and geraniums in general? I'm anxious to keep the genetic material of this individual, though, because it blooms so freely.

Here's an individual I had some years ago. Chestnut leaves, edged chartreuse. But no scarlet flowers. It's borrowed some from a fuchsia. Durn thing never bloomed. I loved it for its foliage, but I love the one I've got now more. 

The tiny green geranium in the foreground, in the smallest pot, is all that's left of the stellar geranium "Grafitti," which I call "Scarlet Tanager." I got it May 1, 2006, a day I'll never forget, and that geranium has lived through two total greenhouse freezes. This is how close I came to losing it--down to one unhealthy cutting. 

 And it's tiny, but it's making buds, and beginning to show a little vigor.  Grafitti, don't fail me now. If you'll just grow, I'll make a bunch of cuttings so I don't lose you, ever.

All this burgeoning joy offsets what's going on outside, which is the natural death and resultant cleanup of my summer gardens. Whap!! I slash the dead morning glory vines off their trellises and throw them on the compost pile. I take joy in the cleanup. Who wants to look at dead flowers? I like 'em alive. And I've got the greenhouse to scurry to when I need it.

I was extremely bummed to find the cause of the sudden death of one of my carefully cultivated birch seedlings--a bronze birch borer. @#$$#@$#@!!! I was able to snap the dead trunk off and found this awful creature inside. Now I'm dreading seeing the adult borers' D-shaped exit holes on my big trees. I'm afraid I'll lose all my birches. I haven't looked, on purpose. Too much loss lately. Either they're gonna die, or they're gonna live. I'll look for the exit holes tomorrow, if I'm feeling strong. And if they're all infested, I'll replant with river birches, which are resistant to the freakin' beetle. I must have birches. 

Ugly little sucker. I put him in the sunflower heart feeder for the titmice to find. At least it's a native insect, unlike the emerald ash borer that's killing all our ash trees.

Chicago Peace's last blossom struggles like hell to open in the cold winds of November. I know just how she feels. Someone suggested I cut it and bring it inside. But that would end its story.  I'd put it in a vase and forget about it. Leaving it on the plant, I love watching it, checking on it every day. It threw out one lower petal since I took this shot. A bud that would open in a couple of days is taking weeks. And I love it. Clearly, she's still alive, but not fully alive. She's hanging in there.

A fox sparrow appeared on Nov. 21, a prince among paupers. And then he was gone. 

And on the 15th, a small juvenile male sharp-shinned hawk came rocketing through the feeder area, landing on the ground under my studio window. I was puzzled to see him hop a few steps, then pounce on a female cardinal who was frozen in terror right in front of him.

I hadn't even seen her in the brown fallen leaves until he nabbed her. 

 God, what a beauty he was, like a raw nerve. I kept shooting. It looked like he wasn't doing much, but I knew he was gripping like hell, slowly squeezing the life out of her. Every once in awhile he'd shift his grip and squeeze someplace else. The idea being to weaken her before he takes off, so she won't struggle free or start flapping and work out of his grip.

 My last shot. Good-bye, cardinal. You're sharpie fuel now.

Yes, there's beauty at every turn, as long as your definition of beauty is stretchy enough to include death, decay, destruction and rebirth. Thank God, mine is. 

Setting Up Xanadu

When my sister Micky and I were young, we loved to play Trolls. We had these little folding vinyl lunchbox-like houses for them with a few bits of doll furniture we'd scrounged, augmented with rocks. We'd spend a long time setting everything up just so. And then it was over. Once it was set up, there was nothing to "play." Same deal in the sand patch in the backyard. We'd get our Matchbox cars arranged, make little garages and houses and driveways, and once everything was just like we wanted it, we were done.

I now embrace the reality, that the setting up and arranging and rearranging is actually the whole thing, and when I need a break from whatever I'm doing, I go down to play Greenhouse. Repotting and rearranging and preening my plants is the whole game. Just messing about with plants and soil, pots and pedestals. Do I ever sit there and just drink it in? Sure, in the dead of winter, maybe for a few minutes with a cup of hot tea or a rare pale ale. The rest of the time I'm working away, arranging it all just so. That work is my play. 

Bacon keeps me company. In the dead of winter, though, he demands to be on my lap, because the concrete's too cold. If anyone can make me sit down, it's Baker. Hey, he makes me run, too!

I don't know why my pitcher plants sulk in the pond all summer, with a few green strappy leaves, then send up a mess of spectacular pitchers in October, but that's what they do. Reasoning that they need to digest all the insects they've caught, I bring them into the greenhouse for the winter.

It's pretty chilling to look down in the pitchers. Stuffed FULL of bees, wasps, earwigs, and moths. None of 'em getting out. The pitcher plant slowly digests them alive, until they're just husks. When the pitcher leaf finally croaks, I slit it down the side and have lots of fun trying to identify all the things it's caught. 

Considering that the pitchers are about 2' high, that's a lot of pollinators! I check them daily and use a stick to help bumblebees and honeybees and the odd moth or hapless wasp out. Can't stand to see them suffer--or hear them buzzing in there. Earwigs, you can have!

You can see the pitcher plants on the floor, where they'll stay cool. I keep them wet, because they were submerged in the pond all summer. I've decided this plant is indestructible; doesn't seem to care if it spends the winter encased in ice or in the greenhouse; they still come back in spring and bloom!

Speaking of pollinators, I have a huge Polistes wasp nest in the greenhouse, built over the summer. 

Eek, you say? Yeah, me too. But the thing is, they've never once made a move to attack me, even through all the schlepping of plants in and out as autumn comes on. Every time I go in, I look up to see how many are still hanging in there. It's November! But it's warm in here. I guess I'm curious what they'll do.  They're not hurting anything living in here. There are no capped cells with pupae; they're done breeding. What happens now? In nature, they'd die, I guess. Or overwinter somewhere. Maybe here. 

Update: I accidentally brushed the nest with my hand while hanging twinkly lights tonight. The wasps looked calmly at me. "We know you didn't mean to."

I always remember what my parents told me when I was little and would freak out about a wasp. "Don't bother him and he won't bother you." 

Schlumbergia is not the prettiest Latin name for a plant. I have to say it fits Christmas cacti pretty well when they're not in bloom. But when they're in bloom, they belong to genus Euphoria!!!!!

I picked this little number up at a Kroger grocery store. I still haven't seen one I like better. 

When it's done blooming I'm going to divide it into several pieces. It's rootbound and getting sort of sad (blossoms notwithstanding). People say Christmas cacti thrive on neglect. Hmm. Nothing in my greenhouse gets neglected. I want to see it firm and dark green and happy again. Needs more root room.

Last May I ordered another hibiscus from Logee's Greenhouse. She arrived healthy and happy, about a foot tall. Now she's about 2 1/2' tall and loaded with buds. This is "Creole Lady," in bud. That bud stayed exposed but tightly furled for about a week. I almost burst with anticipation. Had I known what was coming, I WOULD have burst!

You're going to have to wait to see her. Because I had to wait. I had to wait since May!! By the way, that fabulous neon-orange flower in the background is not a fuchsia. It's a dwarf pomegranate! And it's fruiting like mad!

Waiting for Creole Lady, I kept myself happy with the gentle blue beauty of lobelia, that seeded itself into my poet's jasmine pot. Love it when that happens.

I took a cutting of this geranium from a planter outside a natural foods restaurant in Ithaca last October. It was the end of the growing season; she wouldn't miss it.

Now she graces my greenhouse. I think this is "Petals."

This glorious creature is "Happy Thought Red." It has become one of my favorite gerania, despite its easily shattered flowers. "Shattering" is a grower's term for a geranium that easily drops its petals. I used to dislike easily shattered geraniums. 

Older and wiser now, I look at the slow cascade of petals as hearts breaking and falling.

 Let it rain.

This big upright/semi-trailing fuchsia (Trandshen Bonnstadt) is my new fave. I have propagated it out the wazoo. They're everywhere! They're everywhere! Even have one in the master bath, where it's doing fabulously. Although I think, being a German cultivar, its name should be spelled Trandchen Bonnstadt.

You do not see fuchsias like Trandchen Bonnstadt in nurseries. I got it at The Glasshouse Works. This one (below) is a typical big-nursery fuchsia. Very nice, but without the impact of T.B, simply because it never gets much more than 8" tall. I don't know why, but fuchsias like these seem to lack vigor, lose hope easily. Give me big strapping ones like T.B. and Gartenmeister Bonstedt any day.

Yep, there's a party goin' on in Xanadu!

Woot woot!

The Path keeps the salsa music going night and day. Really, she can be a bit much as a roomie.

Some days, she's got her nose pressed up against the back window, hollering and waving, trying to get people to come inside and dance. 

It's hard to upstage a Rex begonia like "Cancun," but she does, oh she does.

Hold on, Miss The Path, because Little Sister's puttin' her makeup on.

I peeled back that unfurling tangerine petal on Creole Lady and saw... deep lavender?? 

 And an aphid, which I squished. 

Stay tuned! 

The Creole Reveal on Thursday!