Cycles: February

I'm beginning to understand that there are cycles of thought that should be respected rather than seen as a personal shortcoming.

For example, I used to feel badly about the obsession I would feel in February to research and order new flowers. I realize now that looking at seed catalogues and planning where I could plant new things is a very good coping mechanism for the gray and brown of February. It give me hope that someday soon the grass will once again green up and plants will dare to bloom.

This was yesterday morning:

I've started a wishlist of plants I'd like to buy. I want to try a couple plants that didn't work at all last year: lisianthus and ranunculus. They're beautiful enough that I'll try again. I plan to buy more dahlias even though the ones I overwintered in vermiculite in my garage didn't come back last season.

Hope springs eternal, and that's just fine by me. Hold on. Spring is coming.

Grow What I Love

I make promises to myself at the end of every growing season.

Often it's the same promise I made the year before, such as, "I will not neglect to water the garden in July just because I want to sit on the couch in the air conditioning." I have a somewhat shaky relationship with the rain barrel in July, but I reaffirm my promise each year.

Last year, I promised something new: I promised to plant less vegetables and more flowers. Part of me felt that was really irresponsible. I told that part to shove it. Seeds are cheap. I overwinter dahlias in the garage, so those are free after the first year. A lot of my flowers are perennials.

Plus, buying plants is always better than a crack habit, so there.

Flowers bring me joy. Fresh flowers in the house always make me happy, and fresh flowers in the house that I've grown myself make me doubly so. 

Daisies, zinnia, bachelor button, dahlias

We feed birds, which means we also feed chipmunks, squirrels, and rabbits. Some of those little bastards have gotten into the raised beds this year.

Most of my pepper plants have been destroyed. I don't even care all that much.

Hope

Morning glory vine is beautiful. It has lovely heart-shaped leaves along delicate tendrils of vine.

It will also strangle every plant it gets its tendrils on. To remove it, you need to carefully unwrap it from the plant it's climbing; if you tug you'll pull out the plant you are trying to save as well as the vine.

But, man, it's beautiful. It always makes me think of a Small Potatoes lyric from the song "Hope (Robin's Song):

So I looked around for something hopeful 

that I could send to you--

looked all day and half the night.

And there in the storefronts and the sidewalks

I saw a skinny little vine

climbing a traffic light.

From the pines down to the projects,

life pushes up through the cracks,

and it's always going forward, and it's never going back.

Call Me Savior (of the Occasional Plant)

It comes as no surprise that I am weak in the face of clearance plants. I see a rack of half-dead plants, and I am overcome by twin desires of frugality and a need to bolster my savior complex. 

The plant above is some sort of verbena. I planted it in front of a perennial grass in my front flower bed a few weeks ago and hoped for the best. It's been greening up nicely. Yesterday, it rewarded me with this bloom. There are more clearly on the way.

It's this sort of success that makes it more likely I will buy half-dead plants in the future. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's definitely one of my things.

Of Funk and Poppies

I've been in a funk lately. There's no compelling reason for it, which makes it worse because then I feel guilty about being in a funk for no good reason. Ah, the crazy.

Yesterday I hated everyone and everything, to the extent that a very good friend sent me an article, "How to be less annoyed with everyone." When I got home from work and took Dexter for a walk around the yard, I found this:

A poppy in glorious bloom that was simply a fuzzy, alien-like plant the day before. May we all find beauty when we need it most.

Cutting Garden

Friends of ours are redoing their deck, which meant they had some composite boards that could be repurposed.

Yes, please.

Said friend was so nice he cut them into 4' lengths and screwed them to cedar posts. 

Andrew and I finished screwing them together and placed them behind our veg garden. Our soil is so horrible that we use raised beds and throw compost around every chance we get.

It was harder than I anticipated because the compost was in the way. I'd moved it in a big pile earlier in the season, and it needed to be shifted to get the beds in and somewhat level. Andrew finished shoveling in the compost because he loves me and is a saint.

I planted a couple tomatoes that I didn't have room for in the veg garden*, four zucchini seeds, some dahlias I'd dug up last year and overwintered in the garage, and a bunch of random flower seeds. I have no idea if any of the flower seeds will sprout. (Some of them were quite old.) It's worth a try though, and I'm deeply enamored with the idea of having a cutting garden. A cutting garden feels very English country home to me, which probably says something about how many British mysteries I read more than anything else. Hopefully I'll have some dahlias, sunflowers, wildflowers, and green zinnias to bright up our house this summer!


*I know better than to go with a fellow gardening enthusiast to the garden center. There was no voice of reason present. We both ended up with too many tomato plants... among other things.

Growing

The sweater is an endless sea of purple stockinette, so let's look at flowers!

This is the columbine I dug up from my Grandfather's yard after he passed away.  It's been exceptionally gorgeous the last two years.

Hello, gorgeous.

Alliums amuse me. They're a member of the onion family, and there are a ton of varieties. (They all pretty much look like this to me. This will horrify someone somewhere, I'm sure.) They have great height.

'Bloomerang' Lilac - It's supposed to bloom again in June. We'll see!

I was thrilled to see the Itoh peony come back. It's surprisingly small, but I remain hopeful it will get bigger.

I love heuchera (coral bells) and can't seem to stop buying dark ones like this. File that under Better than a Crack Habit.

A weird plant, Clematis integrifolia, which doesn't act like a clematis at all. It doesn't vine. I love it. I find I love bell-shaped flowers in general, and it gets extra points for being such a gorgeous color.

These are anemone given to me by a friend. They're aggressive spreaders, but so pretty I really don't mind. I planted them next to daisies from another friend and let the two aggressive plants duke it out. It's a botanical cage fight out there.

Armeria maritima (sea thrift), a cute little clumpy plant with round, pink flowers.

Mazus reptans - it's become much more covered with purple flowers since I took this picture. It's a ground cover and a steppable. A friend (the one who gave me the anemone, actually) and I bought them at the same time. I promptly killed mine. Hers did so well that I was convinced to try again, and I'm really glad I did. It's doing great in the second site.

I moved this 'Delaware Valley White' azalea last year to make room for the Itoh peony and the Bloomerang lilac. It is very pleased with its new location. I'm very pleased an azalea is doing well in my yard. I don't have ideal conditions for it. It would like more acidic soil. I do throw some sulfur on it once a year... or when I think of it.

This may be my very favorite plant. It's Asarum europaeum, or European wild ginger. It's an adorable groundcover that likes shade. This variety has glossy leaves. There's also a Canadian version (green leaves, not glossy) and a Chinese version (bicolored leaves). The flowers are nothing to write home about, but the leaves stay green most of the winter, and it is verdant and shiny and beautifully shaped. I love it so much. I've killed a couple of these, so I was thrilled to see it made it this year. (Mine died back in the winter, which doesn't happen to the one at my work. I admit to coveting the one at work. One day I may show up with a shovel and ill intentions.)

Speaking of glad it didn't die, this is our Red Dragon Threadleaf Japanese maple (Acer palmatum var. dissectum 'Red Dragon'). We've wanted one for years and bought one last year when we had the path built. Looking back at that post, I can see how much fuller the tree looks this year. yay!

Here's one of two hellebores that have survived. I have probably planted five or six of them. This one is 'Metallic Blue Lady' which looks neither metallic nor blue this year. I'm not going to complain. It lives and blooms. That's all I can ask for.

The is Brunnera 'Jack Frost', another nice shade plant (pictured here is obviously part-sun. Oh, well.) The leaves are pretty, and it puts up airy stalks of tiny, blue flowers.

We've had a really wet spring, and I think it's been good for the plants. I just hope we have some rain later this summer when we really need it!

IMA's Perennial Premiere: 2016 Edition

Every year, the IMA holds a Perennial Premiere plant sale. I've gone the past several years, and this year I also volunteered to work the plant check table for six hours on Saturday. (Think coat check, but with plants. You can drop off a box of plants and then keep shopping. Volunteers then pull the prices for each so you don't have to juggle them in the checkout line and then other volunteers take them to your car. It's a well-orchestrated event.)

The IMA puts out a list of plants they anticipate being available. Inevitably something I want isn't there (this year it's the Stachys minima [dwarf betony], but the majority are. Last week I spent an evening with the list, the Internet, and a pen and paper.

I made a list of plants I was interested in. (I admit the list got quite a bit longer than what's shown here.)

I took the list with me on Saturday. I go through this process because, if I don't, one of two things will happen:

1. I will get overwhelmed by the options and wander around with my brow furrowed in concentration, not actually buying any plants.
2. I will buy every damn hellebore they have. It is a sickness, and the only cure is avoidance. If it's not on the list, I don't buy it. (This only sort of works, I admit. Still, I didn't come home with another hellebore.)

I was scheduled to work the first two shifts on Saturday, so the selection was really good while I was there. The morning is for IMA members only, with it opening to the public at 1:00. We were slammed on Saturday morning. The amount of plants that were sold is staggering.

I did my part.

Yesterday I mowed and then planted my new plants. This morning on the way to work, I stopped at the drugstore and bought allergy eye drops. Welcome to Spring, my friends!

In Case We Doubted...

In case we doubted the benefits of compost, behold the volunteer tomato plant growing out of my compost bin. I have done nothing but ignore it and whack it back when it looked like it was going to take over the air conditioner.

Compost works!

Fancypants Tomato Cages

Like everyone who has a hobby that is largely seasonal, I resolve to do better at the start of each season. I'm going to fix gardening mistakes of last year. I'm going to be more mindful about watering. I'm going to eat more fresh produce instead of picking peppers and letting them shrivel on my kitchen counter. I'm going to remember to check the tomato plants as they grow so I don't return a week later to find they've abandoned their cages and are trailing across the pepper plants, bent on garden domination, with stems too thick to bend back into their cages.

One goal I made for this year was to (finally) make my own tomato cages. I like indeterminate (vining) tomatoes, and although I have a trellis that we built, it isn't really tall enough. I used this video as a tutorial, and Andrew agreed to give up a weekend afternoon to help me build four of these. He's a good egg, that Andrew.

I meant to take photos of the process, but I was too busy doing to document. I did stick a piece of rusty concrete reinforcement through the bottom of my sneaker at one point. Hooray for up-to-date tetanus vaccines!

The cages we built are taller than the ones from the video because--why not? They look comically tall, so I'll reevaluate at the end of the growing season to see if the plants need all this height or not.

When we finished, I decided to spray paint them. It. Was. Horrible. I painted both sides of one cage, one side of the other, and gave up. You can see, though, that the red looks a heck of a lot better than the rusty.

Anyone who knows me knows what happens next. I spent this past Saturday in the garage with a quart of oil-based red Rustoleum and a little foam brush. 

It, too, was horrible.

I painted the two unpainted cages. I still have one side of cage #4 to paint, and I think I'll try to spray paint it again. I figure that both spraying and foam brushing are terrible, so I'll switch off to keep the horror of both fresh in my mind.

I sincerely hope the tomatoes appreciate this and reward me with delicious beefsteak tomatoes to make veggie sandwiches. 

And I promise to water more and be more vigilant against tomato hornworms. I promise.

Grandfather's Columbine

Dear Grandfather,

Remember that columbine beside your patio? No, I didn't imagine you would. I don't remember it either. The last day I was at your house, getting the final few things I wanted and wondering how the hell I was supposed to live in a world without you, I saw a beautiful blooming columbine. It wasn't obviously part of a flowerbed, and I don't remember ever seeing it before, but there it was, bright and beautiful, slightly scraggly and wild-looking.

I dug it up, put it in a bucket, and brought it home with me.

This is not its first summer at my house, and it has never bloomed like it is blooming now. Maybe it's happy I moved that boxwood that was crowding it. Maybe the weather's been different in some way from past springs (besides the pollen--you would not believe my allergies this year; it's like nature is trying to kill me). I don't know. I just know that it's full of blooms and it is beautiful and I miss you.

I miss you a lot.

Love,
Bonnie

Potential Is Everywhere...

...and I want to play.

Indigodragonfly's "Also, I can kill you with my brain"

 

It's too soon to plant annuals. It's too soon to plant annuals. It's too soon...

Do I need more embroidery floss? No, I do not. Did I buy this pack yesterday? Yes, I did.

Nature Does It Better

I took a walk at lunch today, and there was beauty everywhere. I can't resist the call of the blooming things, even if those blooming things are trying to kill me. I'm living in the land of itchy eyes and Benedryl. 

I was walking in a shady area and found this at the base of a tree. No matter how much landscaping I do in my life, nature is always going to do it better.

Happy spring.

Room to Grow

I took the master gardening course in 2010. One of the things I learned is that you should try to think of your yard in terms of rooms. You have a vegetable garden room, which is separate from the outdoor living room, which may or may not be separate from the outdoor kitchen (in our case, the "kitchen" is just a gas grill on the patio). Separate and hidden from all of this is the utility room. In my case, the utility room has the garden hose, rain barrel, air conditioner, and compost bin.

I also learned that landscaping is personal, and there is no right or wrong. Someone might hate the idea of a yard full of concrete baskets or garden gnomes, but you can't really say it's wrong, not in the same way you can say that it's wrong to spray your azalea with Round-Up to help it grow.

So now our utility room looks like this:

The streaky nature of this photo isn't artfully-captured sunlight; it's a streak on the lens. 

We can pretend it's on purpose if you'd like.

We hired someone (Capehart Landscape and Design, in case someone in Indy is looking for someone) to rototill the area, put in the bluestone path, and spread a bunch of mushroom compost.* I didn't let them plant, because that's the fun part.

We bought a Red Dragon Threadleaf Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum var. dissectum 'Red Dragon'), which will only get to 5' height and spread. Andrew and I have wanted a Japanese maple for a long time, but I never knew where to put it. I was so excited that I talked to it before I planted it, telling it how beautiful it was. I'm hoping the neighbors didn't hear.

I bought a ton of perennials at the IMA Perennial Premiere** and planted them last night. I still have room for lots of groundcover as well as some steppables between the stones.

This morning, I was contemplating that I feel good leaving lots of space between the plants. It's okay that the bed isn't done. It's more than okay--it's good to leave the plants alone and let them grow. They need time to spread and show me how big they're going to get, whether they like where they are located, and if they can get along with their neighbors. If I stuffed the beds full of plants, there would be no room for growth, no chance to make the space better, and I'd run the very real risk of hurting what I've planted.

All of that got me thinking: If room to grow is a sign of a healthy space, then maybe my incompleteness, my flaws and failings, are also signs of health. I tend to be very hard on myself, expecting myself to be perfect and well on the way to spiritual enlightenment. It is good to try to improve and make myself better, but I need to remember that space and room for improvement are not only omnipresent and therefore unavoidable, but also good.

My current state, right where I am with no qualifications, is beautiful. I have room to grow, and I'm at the exact place I need to be.

So say we all.

*Andrew was slightly horrified by the smell, while I just thought it smelled like Grandfather's farm. Apparently mushroom compost smells an awful lot like cow manure. I found it oddly comforting.

**I can tell you what they are, but does anyone care? I have no idea. I'm going to assume you don't. You can tell me if I'm wrong.

Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming

This is why I keep buying hellebores despite the fact that I repeatedly kill them.

Ivory Prince

Metallic Blue Lady

The top one has survived two years. The bottom one was just planted last spring. I'm not saying the danger has passed, but I'm hopeful my bad luck with hellebores has ended.

The Beauty of Growing Things

In a bit of a funk today, so I took a few minutes to take some pictures of some great things happening on the grounds of my work.

This seems like an azalea. It's a really spindly, almost tree shape. Glorious flowers.

You can never go wrong with daffodils. Never, ever.

The ginger is a favorite of mine. I love the shape of the leaves.

Weeping trees are gorgeous for a second before the petals fall, 

but wow--that second is something glorious to behold.

Happy spring, everyone.

Spring Fever

We’ve really only had one warm day, and I wish we hadn’t had it at all. It is currently 44 in the middle of the afternoon, and it was in the 20s when I walked Dexter this morning.  That one day of warmth has created a fit of Spring Fever, and I’m nearly mad with it. 

I always have goals for the garden—“This year will be different. I will…fill in the blank.”

This year will be different. I will make big, sturdy tomato cages.*

This year will be different. I will not ignore the flowers on the front porch and then wonder why they don’t thrive.

This year will be different. I will stake the peony so it will thrive during a gentle spring rain instead of lying devastated on the ground.

And so on.

In this spirit, I decided to grow lettuce this year. The great thing about this, besides the hope that I'll actually harvest a few leaves and not just feed the rabbits in the backyard, is that I can plant those seeds now, even though the ground is still cold, the grass is still brown, and only the daffodils and an occasional daring tulip have started to sprout. I planted baby kale and three varieties of lettuce seeds in the garden and garlic chives in a large pot.**

I stopped at the garden center to look at seeds, and ended up with six pansies as well. The garden center employee and I had the same wild look in our eye, the one born of a desire to get out and dig in the dirt but being unable to do so. He asked me if I knew how busy they are in the spring, a wistfulness in his voice that told me he, too, was at the end of a very long winter and, quite possibly, his rope.

And now we wait.

In the cold.

Right now, he is probably arranging the pansies in various ways, trying to find the one that will please the gods. I alternate between gazing out the window dejectedly and trying (and failing) to keep myself from looking up tomatoes. And coneflowers. And clematis.

I try to take heart in the cyclical nature of the seasons. Winter always leads to Spring. I know this in my head, but my heart is afraid that this will be the year that the cold that doesn't end and I am forced to buy tasteless tomatoes from the grocery. I look forward to being wrong.

*Using this video, if you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsA80jfIyc

**My cousin gave me a start of garlic chives several years ago after making me promise to plant them in a pot. She had them in an herb bed, which rapidly became a garlic chive bed. I believe it took herbicide, flamethrowers, and some creative cursing to finally get rid of it.

BONSAI!!!

I went to a Bonsai for Beginners class a week ago. It was in the greenhouse at the IMA (Indianapolis Museum of Art). The IMA is one of my very favorite places, and the greenhouse is one of my very favorite parts of the campus. Plus, it's January. I need to be in a greenhouse in January.

This is what a bonsai can look like after 20 years.

This is what mine looked like before I started. It's a Barbados Cherry. The instructor had us use tropical plants since they grow more quickly.

Mine had clearly been in its pot for a very long time.

Here's what it looked like once I was finished. Since this time, it's been dropping leaves like crazy. I sat it down after watering it one day last week, and there was the gentle tink, tink, tink sound of leaves falling. It reminded me of the scene in which Charlie Brown thinks he's killed the Christmas tree when its needles all fall off. 

I'm hoping it's just very stressed from having most of its roots whacked off and being transplanted, and that it will pull out of it. Time will tell.

I didn't learn nearly as much as I had hoped in the class, but that's probably the nature of having a hands-on experience when the instructor hasn't figured out how to clone himself. I've requested a book from the library on bonsai. I can do anything with the correct library book.

I don't think I'll become a bonsai enthusiast. I am making a gross generalization, but it seems to me that bonsai is about inflicting my will upon the plant. I had hoped it was much more about releasing the inner beauty of the plant.* Of course, this impression might have something to do with the fact that the person I was sitting next to in the class was a bonsai enthusiast and his plant looked like something out of a horticulture S & M publication when he was finished. Maybe the library book will teach me about beauty and respecting the inner form of the plant and so forth.

Whatever happens, I got to hang out in a greenhouse in January, learn a little bit about a new field, and spend the days between making my reservation and the actual class** randomly shouting, "BONSAI!!!!" in my best Karate Kid fashion.

It's a win.

*Wow. That sounds rather hippie, even to me.
**Okay, FINE. Add, "and several days following" to that sentence.

Happenings in the 'Hood (2014 Part One)

Happenings in the 'Hood updates from 2013 are here and here.

We had a fairly cool and rainy spring, and the summer has not gotten to the unbearably hot stage. I'm not sure why it hasn't, but I'm not going to complain. Neither, apparently, are the plants.

My first ornamental oregano died. I'm really glad I tried again. It's beautiful. After the blooms die back, the plant is still interesting because of its striped leaves. 

Kent Beauty ornamental oregano

I could easily become someone who collects different cultivars of echinacea. Better than a crack habit.

Echinacea (Coneflower) among some purple sweet potato vine

Balloon flower

We have tried to plant sunflowers several times. They never make it, which seems impossible. Who can't grow sunflowers? Apparently, we just needed to have the birds scatter some sunflower seeds from their birdseed. This gorgeous thing showed up in a flower bed.

Crazy pretty, right?

A friend gave me some Japanese anemone. She had finally pulled all hers and pitched it because the plant was very aggressive. I can see it spreading, and I'm excited about watching what happens when it gets to the daisies. It's going to be the floral version of a cage match.

I lost one of the wild gingers I bought this spring, but the Brunnera is still doing well.

Brunnera 'Jack Frost'

The hellebore (Lenten rose) did make it an entire year! I now have two cultivars that have survived. I can't help but love a plant that still has a bloom in July when it started blooming in February.

Hellebore 'Ivory Prince'

My little vegetable garden has been growing like mad.

The peppers are doing well. I rarely have good luck with plain old bell peppers, but so far they look okay. This is one of the poblanos.

These have me thinking about spicy tomatillo soup!

Red tomatoes! I am eagerly awaiting my first veggie sandwich of the season with homegrown beefsteak tomatoes.

Yellow Jelly Bean, Black Cherry, and Sweet 100 small tomatoes

The larger one might be a Marglobe.

I put a few houseplants outside, and they seem to be thriving. I've definitely killed one of these plants before, but this one is producing gorgeous new leaves.

My shamrocks seem thrilled with being outside as well.

Yesterday I pruned a few plants. Emboldened by the heady use of hand pruners, I attacked a hanging basket. It looked awful. It was leggy with brown leaves, and I thought I might have to pitch the whole thing. A friend suggested that perhaps it was just spent for the season. Realizing that perhaps the plant's appearance wasn't my fault as I had assumed, I decided there was no harm in cutting it way, way back to see what happens.

Apparently, there's some healthy lobelia in there. It had been covered by leggy, brown supertunias. I'm excited to see what happens next with it.

I am so grateful for the weather we've had so far this season, and I will try to remember how nice it's been once it does become a more typical Midwestern summer in the humid 90s. I hope my plants will be kind enough to do the same.