In Case You Missed It

photo by Anne Babcock

 

 In Case You Missed It: Which, of course, all but about 60 people did...but let's consider what it's like to have 60 people arrive in your yard on a sprinkly, trying-to-be-fine Saturday noon. It's a trip, that's what it is! I'll confess that I spent several weeks in preparation for the Indigo Hill Garden Tour and Plant Sale, thinking of all the things that need to be thought of when that many people come to visit.
 Things that I'd not paid much attention to before suddenly loomed large. Here, purple coneflowers are struggling to raise their pretty heads above all the sumac in the prairie patch. We can't have that! The Garden Tour is coming!

  Some weeding was effected. I started off clipping the sumac with a pruner, but later figured out that I could pull it and break it off at ground level. It wasn't easy, but it was a lot faster than clipping.

 

Piles of sumac formed all along the borders of the bed. Why, I could do this every year. Maybe I can take the prairie patch back from the sumac. Mowing doesn't do much; just makes the sumac shorter. The spreading roots remain, ready to throw shoots up and keep on walking in their inexorable takeover of the entire bed. If I pull it in midsummer, then mow in March, maybe I can discourage it a bit.

 

I wouldn't say it was fun, but it was satisfying to slow the sumac down and reveal all the marvelous composites that are blooming their heads off in the prairie patch. 

  

The brushpile grows and melts, grows and melts. I dump head-high piles on it and they just go away.

  

Gray sunflower (a prairie native), with tickseed sunflower and ironweed, among many others. There's coneflower, partridge pea and even a little liatris in there. When I was done, I threw about a dozen seed spikes of my garden liatris in like javelins, as a final salute to native takeover.

Back to the event planning: I knew I couldn't lead two garden tours and cook, so Phoebe suggested a 12-5 pm time frame. As an inveterate nurturer, I needed to be released from the obligation of feeding everyone, or catering the event would be all I'd do. Been there, done that. This was going to be different, and a whole lot more fun for me. No food, I declared. Herb tea. And Anne and Phoebe added the cookies.  Perfect!

The day dawned rainy and humid, the tuberoses going wild with fragrance. I still had to set up my plant shop and bookstore, get the kitchen and studio ready to receive, finish some weeding,  make some signs, and get myself clean. An angel had arrived the evening before in my dear friend Anne, shown here marveling at the touch of bluebird feet five years back. This is still my favorite picture of Anne, lost in the magic of being chosen by bluebirds.

Anne arrived like the angel she is, unbidden, but ready to work, and bearing two enormous containers of home-made cookies: Chocolate Crinkle and her grandmother's crispy sugar cookie recipe. They were amazing. And thank goodness, because everyone lit up when they saw the platters, and the ice-cold herb tea I'd made for days in advance. I used the pineapple sage, spearmint and lemon verbena from the Heritage garden, sweetened with leaves from my longsuffering Stevia plant. Just three leaves will sweeten an entire quart. It doesn't have to be a full lunch, but nice refreshments are mandatory. 

Other guests brought gorgeous shortbread and brownies. We all ran on sugar all afternoon. 

Photo by Anne Babcock

The other absolute essential was my beautiful Phoebe, who not only kept me sane, but cleaned the greenhouse, vacuumed the whole house (including the tower), baked a big batch of Italian wedding cookies, then attended to several small children who came, showing them where to get golden raspberries and Stevia and other delicious treats around the gardens. There were two adorable infants among the garden fans, and Phoebe gave them lots of loving attention. She helps where she's needed. She gets my crazy and reels me in when I'm spinning. I love her so.

photo by Anne Babcock

This is what it looked like around 12:30 when the first tour started. My dear friend Dawn Hewitt --managing editor at Bird Watcher's Digest-- volunteered--imagine! to put herself on parking duty, staying out at the end of the driveway. She asked everyone who was able to, to park out on the township road, and walk in the driveway. Those who needed to could park on the lawn. We figured the yard wouldn't be very scenic if it was chock full of automobiles.  It worked great, with a few umbrellas for the noontime showers. Thank you, Dawn!!!

photo by Anne Babcock

We staged at the porch, and I yakked about plants and horticulture and gardening practices, moving from one thing to the next, and it was tons of fun. Here, I'm cradling my dwarf pomegranate, which put on extra flowers and a nice ripe red fruit for the party. I explained how I trained it into a bonsai pot over a series of years and prunings of both root and top.

photo by Anne Babcock

Admiring the scarlet runner bean gifted to me by my friends Carol and Daniel way back on March 9, when I was speaking to the Burroughs Nature Club. Carol handed me these three Jack and the Beanstalk lookin' seedlings in a half-gallon pot. When I expressed my doubt that I could keep them happy for another two months until it was safe to plant them out, she said, "Don't you have a greenhouse?" 

I replied, "Yes, and it's tiny and stuffed full!"

Somehow I managed to keep it going, looping all around the inside of the greenhouse and I'm so glad I did! Planning to take some beans off it and repeat the performance. But next year I'm going to start it in late April! The beans it makes are edible, but they aren't much. But they make more scarlet runners, and that's a good thing.

Photo by Anne Babcock

 On the back patio, where one astute visitor located one of our copperheads in his favorite lair without being told where to look. It was nice to give people what might have been their first look at a wild (but very placid) copperhead.

We love the Faks.

Got a bit carried away with the hot crayon colored zinnias. I do that in early spring--go for the maximum color bombs.  Going to plant some gentler shades next year to balance things out. Tasha Tudor would be appalled at my gardens.

photo by Anne Babcock

A volunteer fancy sunflower in the vegetable garden.

The composites were showing well! Late summer is their domain.

A very cool thing happened while I was discussing bonsai culture. A digger or katydid wasp called Sphex nudus, one I've been watching for several days, came buzzing in with a freshly paralyzed leaf-rolling cricket (Camptonotus carolinensis).

 

I got extremely excited and managed to show the dramatic scene to the group. The wasp stings the cricket, paralyzing it, then drags it deep into a burrow it's dug, lays an egg on it, and lets its larva grow up eating the cricket from the inside out. What I'm wondering is just how many crickets that wasp stuffs into one burrow, because this has been going on for days. It's all I can do not to dig up the burrow to find out. And I wonder how it finds these crickets in their rolled-leaf shelters. It must have a search image for the shelters. I find the whole thing amazing. And the cricket preys on aphids! So. There are stories piled on stories here. I made the video below several days before the garden tour, before I figured out what the cricket was. And she was still stuffing crickets in the same burrow on Tour Day. It's all I can do not to dig it out to see how many crickets are down there!

photo by Anne Babcock. I'm telling the digger wasp story to some very interested young gardeners.

Photo by Debbie Bryant

Part of the fun of the whole day was meeting people I'd only known as names and profile photos on Facebook.
That was really cool. Debbie Bryant took a bunch of  photos that she's graciously allowed me to use.

Photo by Debbie Bryant

 In the hummingbird garden outside the studio.

A particularly nice framing of my Impatiens Stairs. That's a new thing this summer. I think it's going to be an annual event, because rabbits (at least mine) don't seem to eat impatiens! You'd think they'd be delicious. Here's to plants the rabbits don't eat. That includes cardinalflower and tuberoses. I told everyone that what they saw in the gardens is what the rabbits didn't eat.

Photo by Debbie Bryant

Photo by Debbie Bryant

 Debbie said her favorite part was climbing the tower and catching the views from on high. I never made it up there, being too busy flapping my gums, but Annie took it upon herself to be the tower guide, helping folks clamber up the folding tower stairs and get out onto towertop. Thank you, Angel.

Photo by Debbie Bryant



 Part of the fun of the whole event was growing plants for sale. I've always wanted to be a grower of special plants, and that dream came true this summer. I scrounged around the recycling center for just the right pots and got busy, growing dozens of my favorite Achimenes longiflora "Pink Nighty," Chrysanthemum "Sheffield Pink," native Ohio born and bred Cardinalflower, the magical fast-opening evening primrose, and  propagating a bunch of jewel orchids, too. It was pure fun. The Achimenes were a real project.

 
 I started them in April, and they were only just coming into bloom in late August. But they'll bloom hard until it gets cold, and they're worth it! I set up a store in the Groanhouse, which Phoebe had thoroughly cleaned out for me. I'm gonna miss that girl...

Cardinalflower babies, waiting for new homes.

Jewel orchids, ready to enchant.

 

Just inside the house was a bookstore with all the Zick bling you could ask for: books, puzzles, notecards, fine art prints. The 12:30 tour ended there. Those who wanted to climbed the tower. And the 2:00 tour started, a bit late, but I think everybody had a good time. By 5 pm the place was mostly cleared, and I was done crispy.

 I'm happy to say that the event helped defray the cost of buying two Macbooks, one for each kid. They'd been struggling along on 5 and 6-year-old laptops, and it was past time to upgrade. Buying two at once was a financial blow that I'm finding hard to juggle, given that my dual home HVAC system has chosen this summer to go to pot. As I write, I'm looking out the window at my friend Chuck,  an HVAC repairman, who is peering into the guts of an air conditioner. He probably ought to just stay here rather than go back to the shop; they break down that often. Add Liam's tuition bill and a couple of whamtastic car repairs, and writing and illustrating bird books, wonderful as it is, falls a bit short. Time to get creative with income streams.

Lots of folks who had to miss this Indigo Hill Garden Tour and Plant Sale are asking if it will happen again. I'll watch the weather. If we have another fabulous summer with gentle, perfectly spaced rains; if the gardens are looking extra-boffo next August, I may just do it. Most of the work I do toward the event is work I'd be doing anyway, and it sure is fun to share all this beauty with such appreciative people. To all those who made the drive, thank you!! I'm grateful to you for your support, and I hope you had as much fun as I did!

Late-Day Logee's Orgy

I haven't stopped at Logee's Greenhouses in Danielson, Connecticut, for many years. Some things had changed, like the size of the place--the number of greenhouses has been reduced. 

Some things hadn't changed, though--the incredible beauty and quality of the plants. I have to say the display greenhouses are even more beautiful than I remember their being. With less to care for, the staff can doubtless spend more time grooming the plants. I was bowled over by their health and beauty. 

For a phytophile like me, it doesn't get any better than this...descending from the civilized entryway into the humid green heaven of Logee's first display greenhouse.  The chalked sign over the vine-draped entry reads, 

"Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul."   Luther Burbank

No kidding. Some people medicate with booze and pills. I prefer sunshine and flowers. Humidity and the smell of wet soil helps, too. And then there are miles...checking my Fitbit, it shows 7 plus today. No wonder I feel better.

It was afternoon by the time I left White Memorial Conservation Center, though I'd meant to leave in the morning. I just couldn't tear myself away from Gerri and the snow buntings. By the time I made Danielson, the sun was sinking fast. I knew I'd have to race through the greenhouses.

I was stunned by the walls of greenery and flowers.  I couldn't even see how they got in there to water everything. It was a seamless mass of beauty. Their Dichorisandra (Weeping Blue Ginger) looks a whole lot happier than mine. 

Begonia "Looking Glass." I used to grow that one. Loved it.

Saw their new trademarked begonia "Autumn Ember" and plan to get it. Woweee!!

I recognized some things I'd seen in Costa Rica (orange) and South Africa (blue) but I couldn't stop to read tags, if there were any. I was passing through at high speed, racing the dying light.

Turns out this is Blue Skyflower Thunbergia grandiflora. Why, I grow a Thunbergia called Black-eyed Susan Vine every summer! 

I do want to grow this Abutilon "Red Tiger" someday. What a gorgeous little blossom, on a big lanky plant.

Pycnostachys urticifolia Woweee!!! What a blue! It's called "Blue Witches Hat."

Looks like a mint to me. Fabooo!!

Lookit all them baby cacti! I wondered--these must be grown from seed. Amazing.

I was just in time for the big bloom of their Christmas cacti, in early December. I swooned. Look at those colors, those glorious plants. I think I need to start mine over; they used to be nice and shiny green like this but now they're sort of limp and reddish.
They bloom, but they don't look happy at all. I think I'll root some pieces and start over. I want mine to look like these beauties!

As you might imagine, by now the plant collector in me was twitching. I saw so many beautiful plants I wanted. But I was a gypsy, just at the beginning of a ten-day swing through New England, with temperatures predicted in the teens at night. There was absolutely no way I could travel with plants, even if I had had an inch of room in my car. I was going to pick up all my Baby Birds paintings in Canton, MA, and the car would be crammed past capacity. 

So I looked, but didn't touch.

I took equal joy in the things that had been planted 

and the adventitious seedlings that were making their way up the frosted plastic windows of the greenhouses. How cool! This little tropical waif was making a beautiful pattern as its leaves hugged the  bright wall.

I'd seen Showy Medinilla Medinilla magnifica from the Philippines in the Logee's catalogue and wondered if it were as elegant in person as it was in photos. Answer: Oh yes. Show-stopper. Someday...gack. Someday.

Someday, too, on this cheery cherry-red trumpet of a Streptocarpus. I think it's "Full Moon," though it looks a lot bluer in the catalogue. How cuuuute!!! I'd grown the blue ones but oh! and that solid red, I'll take that too, someday. It was truly wonderful to have a chance to ground-truth the catalogues I drool over. To find the plants even more beautiful in real life (IRL for you slang-slingers out there).

Some kind of ginger? Maybe. Weird, cool, think I've seen it in Costa Rica...

Monkey cups! I'd seen a photo of an orang sipping from one in National Geographic when I was a kid. Now I know it was probably a set-up with a zoo animal, but at the time I thought it marvelous. 

It's a carnivorous plant, from the looks of it a wetland species. And look at those lovely anthuriums pointing fingers at the sky behind it. Arrgh. This was almost painful, not to be able to take anything home. But that's OK. I have no business increasing the amount of stuff I need to care for right now.

Nepenthes hybrid "Lady Luck," a Tropical Pitcher Plant, a cross between N. ventricosa and N. ampullaria.

I had two pilgrimages to make. First, I wanted to see the famous Meyer lemon tree I'd admired when I last visited maybe 25 years ago. I figured it'd be even more amazing. The tree grows right up out of Connecticut soil in the floor of the greenhouse. From Logee's website: 

"Logee’s Greenhouses was started by William D. Logee in 1892 in Danielson, Connecticut. He started as a cut flower business and soon became interested in tropical and unusual plants. In 1900, he bought a small Ponderosa Lemon tree from a grower in Philadelphia. It was known as the “American Wonder Lemon” due to the size of the fruit, which could get as large as 5 pounds. The tree was a must for the Logee collection. It was shipped via train, then picked up by horse and buggy and directly planted into the ground in the original greenhouse. The same tree in the same greenhouse (appropriately called the Lemon Tree House) still stands today, and is reliably producing 5-pound lemons every year. Hundreds of thousands of propagations have been harvested from this original tree.”

And there it was. Bigger by far than I remembered it being. It's impossible to get a good photo of this tree because in the cramped confines of the greenhouse, you can't get far enough away from it even to appreciate it properly. But oh. So wonderful. It grows down to the ground, up to the ceiling, and down to the ground umpteen times, and it makes a carefully-pruned Wall o' Lemons along both walkways on either side. They are still propagating from it. So you can buy a clone of this tree. See why I love plant propagation so much? You can grow a piece of history!

Logee's is still owned by the same family who started it. That in itself is a small miracle. Maybe the same highly intelligent magic that has kept Logee's thriving keeps its plants immaculate and pest-free. I believe in magic, especially when driven by the indomitable human spirit.  

My hand and a huge Meyer lemon from this amazing tree. Signs ask that visitors not pick them; they are selling the fruit in the front of the store. So cool.

As one who has tried to grow citrus over the years, and who has harvested exactly two delicious Ruby Red grapefruit from a 1' tall "tree" in my Ohio "greenhouse" before it succumbed to scale and chlorosis and God knows what else, I am most hopelessly, grovellingly impressed that this tree was apparently scale free. I. Do. Not. Understand. How. You. Do. This. For. 116. Years. (much less two or three.)

I had one more pilgrimage to make, and that was to find the hibiscus section, so I could see where my darling hib "The Path" came from.

Healthy cuttings for sale, around a sign touting the many virtues of this great hibiscus. Mine, two days ago:

This is the Understudy I mentioned in my post, "That Which No Longer Serves." I spray her and Creole Lady every day. Every. Day. Now given, I'm using a pretty innocuous homemade soap spray, but still. HOW DO YOU DO IT, LOGEE'S???

I stopped a young woman who works there and asked her just that. I just cannot understand it, and her answer put me no closer. "We find that when the plants are healthy, they're resistant to pests."

Oh. Does my plant look unhealthy?

I mean, there HAS to be a secret here. Seeing the look on my face, she added, "We release beneficial insects..."

Hmmm. But how do you keep scale off a Meyer lemon that's 116 years old and the size of a master bedroom? HOW? HOW.  How. How???

  

I guess that will have to be a mystery. A nice, happy mystery. Logee's has beautiful, no, exquisite plants, and that is something to celebrate. I can't remember walking through a greenhouse with more beautiful plants. Huzzah!!

I just ran down to the greenhouse and sure enough, the bud Creole Lady was unfurling at dusk had burst open. Is there any better way to answer a 26 degree snowy day? Well, going for a walk in it works, too. Planning that.

Creole Lady is never more beautiful than when she first opens. Like a cinnamon roll, best when hot out of the oven. Another Logee's specialty. What beauty you bring to my world, Logee's!!

As the last light of a winter day faded, I raced through the camellia house, found a pale pink one that was fragrant (swoon!) and photographed a fruiting kumquat in Connecticut. 

This one's for Floridacracker.

And it was over. It was dark. It was time for me to go. I found my way back out the door and stopped for a last look at this little piece of Paradise, plopped in a sweet little otherwise sort of ordinary town in wintry Connecticut. I hadn't bought a thing. And that was OK. 

I'd made a pilgrimage to Logee's, and that was enough.