Archive for the ‘Flowers’ Category
When I was a (more) novice gardener, I made the mistake…
…of thinking that the tiny butterfly bush I dragged home from my local garden center couldn’t possibly grow to be 12 feet high as the tag described. I though that perhaps other people’s butterfly bushes might get that big, but mine surely wouldn’t. The hardpan Maryland clay, my relative inexperience or a host of potential perils would surely prevent 12 feet of unfettered growth.
Five years have proven me quite wrong.
I have spent three years staring at amazement as the bush that I religiously hack to about three feet of sticks in the fall burst back to life and grow to nearly 12 feet by June. The butterfly bush has been threatening to overtake the two Nikko Blue Hydrangeas planted on either side.
In fact, the butterfly bush has grown so unwieldy that I planned on having Walter, my sometimes handyman, dig up the beast and move it to a more suitable location. Unfortunately, Walter was a little late in arriving this year and the bush was already in full leaf–not a good time for a major move.
We’ll be living with the monster butterfly bush again this year. The beauty of it, though, is that with all the blooms, the bush attracts dozens of butterflies at any time. The don’t call it a butterfly bush without a good reason. I can look out my kitchen window and see butterflies any time of the day.
It’s hard to beat that. And I’ll certainly miss that nature show when the butterfly bush is finally moved to roomier quarters.
Robin
I was never able to measure up in the ’80s when big hair was in.
I have baby fine, straight hair. All my exertions with perms, hot hair dryers, roller brushes and sprays only emphasized my genetic shortcomings when it came to creating big hair.
Fortunately, I don’t have to rely on my shallow gene pool to create an abundant look in the garden. All I need is a good deal of compost, flowers and patience.
Sometimes though, my garden seems to be a black hole. I can’t tell you how many truckloads of compost I had added to this hardpan Maryland clay soil. As for the flowers, I keep planting and planting to achieve the riotous abundant look I adore in the cottage garden magazines and books.
Don’t get me wrong. The plants grow just fine, but there seems to be an endless amount of room for more shoving in of more plants.
The problem is that it’s expensive to buy perennials in huge quantities, so I also try to start from seed, sometimes indoors and sometimes just direct seeding. And I don’t know what will bloom when around here until I live with it for a while. That means that I have to live with a flower for at least a year, maybe two, until I really get a sense of its habits and behaviors. The I have to engage in quite a lot of moving things about.
Still…I think it’s worth it.
Lavender, lamb’s ear and astilbe border
See here. I didn’t mind weeding around the lavender in the cool hours this morning. The scent is glorious. And I rather think it looks as if I had a plan when I put the lavender, astilbe and lamb’s ear together. In truth, I had no idea they would bloom at the same time. It was just serendipity.
You would never know that this very bed used to be a swampy low spot in the yard that collected water after rains. Copious amounts of compost and deep digging solved that problem.
Thyme, pink vinca, rose campion and ice plant
And here. Although I complain about the rose campion, I do think it looks rather at home with the other pink flowers in this border. Serendipity again.
Orange coneflower, red hot poker and ?? (Sheesh, help me with this purple flower someone )
How about the orange cone flower and red hot poker? When I dragged the cone flower home from my local garden center I had no idea where I planned to put it. But the bald spot behind this red hot poker was just crying for a plant. I had no idea they would bloom together.
(By the way, I started these little purple jobs from seed last year. I have purple and white flowers like this EVERYWHERE. I cannot find the seed package. Please, someone enlighten me. I’m quite sure it’s a hideously common flower, so just stop laughing and kindly post me a comment or send me an email with the name.)
So tomorrow I head out to the garden center once again in my quest for the abundant look. Frankly, it’s much more satisfying that all that time dinking around with my hair “back in the day.”
Robin
After the rains that devastated my New Dawn roses, I had nearly given up hope of finding a solution.
But I bought my husband some brand spankin’ new post hole diggers as a Memorial Day gift–I am nothing if not considerate–and he put them to good use.
He managed to ease the roses out of the offending and broken down trellises. He then dug some impressive holes. I installed lag eye hooks and wire to support the dangerously thorned branches.
They don’t look so bountiful right now because I had to do a wee bit of pruning. Okay, it was a mambo pruning session.
I maybe got carried away in making up for neglecting to give these bountiful roses their proper prunings for a while. These are the remains of a single New Dawn pruning. (Please note by the orange paint on the grass that I called Miss Utility to mark where the power and other wires are located. I’m not ready for a new husband.)
Frankly, nothing short of a natural disaster could kill these roses. In fact, as I was paging through Barbara Damrosch’s newly revised Garden Primer the other day I happened to read her section on climbing roses in which she called the New Dawn “indestructible.” Indeed.
I am so buoyed by my husband’s skills with the post hole diggers I am plotting numerous new projects–trellises, outdoor showers, grapes. Don’t tell him. He’s still recovering from his Memorial Day project.
Robin
There is so little time.
I still have about 25 things to do on my weekend list. So there will be few words and more photos.
Thank God winter has finally gone. Things are blooming here at Bumblebee–Foxglove, Peonies, Johnny-Jump-Ups, Henryi Clematis, Cleosa…
The asparagus that I though I had eradicated from the perennial border insists on making an appearance. I have to laugh seeing asparagus shoots coming up among the flowers.
The herb bed is filled with oregano, parsley, cilantro, sages, cone flower, rosemary, dill and more. I decided to add some containers to the wide paths this year–a good decision, I think, since it gives me the opportunity to add more color.
On a whim while sitting on the garden bench last year I plucked out a couple of the hens and chickens from the strawberry pot and nestled them into the ground beneath the bench. They thrived there and I continued to add to the collection from time to time. I figure by the end of summer they will have made a nice little bed.
What is a garden without little dogs? Sarah and Sophie enjoy the outdoors as much as I do. Maybe more.
They are the best of friends–and sometimes the worst of enemies.
On another note, the editors at Examiner.com have asked me to write a regular column as their Gardening Examiner. Examiner.com is the expanding Internet presence of a free daily newspaper distributed in four cities. As they expand their online presence they are adding “Examiners” in many different topics. I’m the national Examiner on garden topics. So stop in from time to time and say “hey.”
Robin
I don’t usually make a habit of publicizing my laziness or gardening errors.
But sometimes something so serendipitous happens that I just have to share it. Here is a spontaneous garden container.
I neglected to clean out and put away this pot that was the home for a beautiful hibiscus last year. I had nothing else planted in the pot. At all. And this spring, some pansies have self-seeded. Then, hot dog and holy moly! A small sunflower seems to have sprouted from among the dead hibiscus stems. I was so intrigued by the whole thing, I have just let it go to see what happened.
And now, I rather like it.
What about that? I have an automatic garden! What if everything were this easy?
Robin
I know that “into every life a little rain must fall…”
But four inches in 24 hours seems a tad excessive. It certainly was for my luxurious New Dawn climbing roses.
Two of the three New Dawns were ravaged by the rains and 30 MPH winds. I would sit down and have a good, long cry, but frankly, I’m more cranky and confounded than sad.
I’m cranky because these trellises cost a pretty penny and weren’t really that sturdy to begin with. (Hear that J&P?) Okay, I’m also crabby that I didn’t have a real plan for these roses when I planted them. I was a novice gardener and didn’t know that New Dawn roses are NOT delicate plants, but are really dagger-spiked behemoths, even if they are pink.
And I’m confounded as to how to support these rampaging roses without unlocking the family vault and hauling out wheelbarrows full of money to throw at the problem.
I had planned to install a fence to support them until the fence experts told me a custom fence would cost me nearly as much as a new car. Then I wanted to build a trellis system until I had to acknowledge that I’m not designed for digging two-foot deep holes in hardpan Maryland clay. I could buy some dynamite, I suppose, but I don’t like fireworks either.
So I went for what I hoped was the easy, if not necessarily cheap, solution. After two years and four inches of rain since yesterday, I concede that the easy solution was not a long-term solution.
So here we are–me and my beautiful, devastated beasts. The rain has meant more than a bit of dampness. Now I have a real dilemma.
Robin
I think trees should pull their own weight in the garden, don’t you?
I mean, it’s all well and good to be tall and green, providing all shorts of cooling shade and places for the bugs and birds. But if you can do tricks, like make berries and flowers to brighten things up a bit, you’re a really special tree, yes?
That’s why I like the Winter King Hawthorn. Many people have never heard of these trees. In fact, two seasons out of the year, in particular, the Fed Ex and UPS drivers, the electric company meter reader and whoever else wanders down our long driveway ask me what kind of trees these are. That’s because in those two seasons, the trees are putting on a show to grab your attention.
They are Winter King Hawthorns.
In the spring, the trees are covered in clusters of white flowers. In the fall, red berries hang on for weeks after the leaves have dropped, looking like tiny Christmas ornaments. They hang there until the birds devour them. This year, it was the Evening Grosbeaks that cleaned off the trees–and made my day!
I had never heard of the Winter King Hawthorn before these trees arrived in my life. Six years ago I was a novice gardener and was hard-pressed to tell you if a tree was an oak or maple. But an enterprising and charming nurseryman convinced me that I needed not one, not two, but TWENTY of these trees, since they only grow to about 20’ to 35’ in height. He showed me a very unimpressive specimen in the nursery but dragged out books filled with pictures of flowering and berried trees to convince me to pull out my checkbook.
The first couple of years they after they were planted I wondered if they would even survive in the not very hospitable environment next to the driveway—hard clay soil, competing trees, a hayfield and a not very careful equipment driver of the hay harvesting equipment were all hazards.
Then we had summers with drought. Since the hoses can’t possibly reach that far and I don’t have a water tank on my farm pickup truck, I have shuttled bucket after bucket after bucket of water up and down the driveway to keep them alive. (I did not go to the gym those days, but checked off both cardio AND weightlifting in my daily diary.)
Now, six years later, only two of the trees have gone to the great forest in the sky. Both were victims of Rudy, our tobacco chewing farmer who harvests the hay.
Now that I know the trees will, indeed, survive, I feel more comfortable clipping a few branches to bring indoors. Today’s arrangement includes a small Southern Magnolia branch that was hanging too low and always got caught in my mower.
As beautiful and useful as these trees are—creating flowers and yummy berries for the birds—they can be dangerous. They put the “thorn” in “Hawthorn.” These thorns are nearly 2” long and are as sharp as needles. Flower arranging with these babies is not a feat for the faint of heart.
But oh, what a sight. It’s truly a king of trees.
Oh by the way…I see that the first two choices in the survey (upper right hand corner of this page)–blaming me for shopping in Switzerland or my men for ineptitude in mowing–have been running neck and neck. Frankly, I’m shocked. The survey closes in a couple of days. I have not starved the men, but the little bit of ribbing has done them good. And, by the way, I was also in Switzerland on business, interviewing humanitarian aid workers from the World Health Organization. So there. It was for a good cause. If you want to change your vote (or vote again), you can. Don’t make me the villain here!
Robin
Some days it’s just tougher than others to transition from the garden back to work. Like today.
Today is a very bad transition day.
The Whining Part…
I had a great gardening weekend, but there are still about 20 things on my “to do” list that did not get accomplished. As a result, I had a fitful night’s sleep. Okay, maybe the raging case of poison ivy on my forearm that vaguely resembles what I imagine leprosy looks like also had something to do with not being able to sleep. But the point is that I didn’t sleep well, so I’m really in no shape to go to work. But my very mean and witchy boss (oh, that would be me!) made me show up anyway.
Then I had a mountain of data to organize and the data file wasn’t cooperating. I hate it when that happens. You know those people who are hooked on Sudoku? Well, if they had to deal with my data file issues, they wouldn’t be fiddling with flippin’ numbers in their free time. They’d be as far away from a computer and numbers as possible–like the far, far side of the garden.
And resting my diseased arm on the desk to mouse around that possessed data file is killing me.
But enough about my whiny little self. (Okay, not really.)
The Flower Show Part…
Last time I told you about how I overcame my flower fears. Several people confessed to similar flower issues and coping strategies. Linda grows orchids inside so she doesn’t have to cut her outdoor flowers. Elizabeth pots up tulips so she doesn’t have to cut the ones outside. Brenda goes flowerless and uses the old cat-will-eat-my-flowers-in-the-house excuse. Well, I thought I would show a little of what you’re missing if you don’t clip and bring in some of the floral bounty.
One of the kitchen arrangements right now is a profusion of tiny yellow roses from one of the two Monster Roses. No, that’s not really the name of the rose. I can’t even remember the name of this rose, but Monster Rose seems to suit.
I only love the Monster Roses in May, when they blooms like mad. They don’t have any scent at all, but the vision of all those yellow roses is a Technicolor dream. But since I have to hack at them eleven months out of the year with hedge clippers (and not gently), I didn’t feel guilty at all clipping off long branches to bring into the house.
As you can see, this Monster Rose bush hardly noticed the flowers were gone.
Although the tulips have now all faded, I managed to salvage a few last white ones to tuck into a small table arrangement with some bamboo sprouts.
Once the tulips and roses are dropping their petals, I’ll be bringing in some long branches from the Winter King Hawthorns that line our driveway. They are now in a profusion of white flowers.
There now, just thinking about the flowers has made me feel better. See what cutting flowers can do for you? Just like that it made my bad night’s sleep, disease-ravaged forearm and data nightmares disappeared. So get clipping!
Robin
I used to be afraid to cut the flowers in my garden to bring indoors. It was a classic case of flower fear.
Other people, I have heard, experience the same phenomenon. It is the fear that if you cut the flowers in your garden, it will take away from the outdoor beauty. Who wants a bald, flower-free garden, right?
For me, the flower fear ran so deep that I would buy flowers every week, even in the summer, to use in the kitchen, family room, bedroom and bathrooms rather than cut the ones right outside my back door.
But I want my own fabulous flowers in the house, darn it. And I also want my garden filled with an abundance of flowers. In short, I WANT IT ALL!
Why can’t I have it all? Martha Stewart has it all. Oprah has it all. Heck, Angelina Jolie has it all. Angelina even has Brad Pitt! Heck, if she can have Brad Pitt, why can’t I at least have indoor/outdoor flowers? Is that asking too much?
Last fall year I decided it face my flower fears.
I added my own little cutting beds so that I could give myself permission to invite some of them indoors. I stocked up on tulip bulbs. Red tulips, purple tulips, white tulips, pink tulips. Tulips, tulips, tulips. I think I must have been a bit single-minded the day I was stocking up on bulbs, because I came away with about six dozen tulip bulbs and very little of anything else.
If my selections lacked in imagination I can’t say that the execution was especially stellar either. I managed to get about half of the tulip bulbs planted in October before freezing rain and demanding clients drove me indoors. The unplanted tulip bulbs languished in a bucket in the garage. Every time I walked past the bucket to my car the little florist in my head would say, “You’re horrid! You’re killing the flowers. You’ll never have flowers in your house. You don’t deserve flowers in your house!”
The little florist in my head is mean. And sometimes she says bad words.
Finally, one warmish day in February I headed outside with the offending bucket of bulbs and dug them all in. I had no expectation that they would grow. After all, fall is the time to plant tulip bulbs, not February. But at least it shut that miserable little florist voice down for a while.
Amazing, but true, all of the tulip bulbs, including the February planted bulbs, grew and bloomed. And I’ve been cutting and cutting to keep the house tulip-filled for about a month now. I have another bunch of summer blooming flowers all planted and will be inviting them indoors as well.
I still don’t have Brad Pitt. And that miserable little florist in my head still nags at me about my arrangements. But I believe you can say I have recovered from my flower fears.
Robin
It was here, but somehow I missed it…
I suppose with all the travel this month I did, in fact, miss two full weeks of April in the garden. I’m seriously behind. I have little seedlings in the family room that I am desperate to take outside. I have blueberry bushes to transplant. Heirloom tomatoes are on their way from California. There is still some tidy-up work to be done.
Nevertheless, those plants seemed to have carried on without me. So here’s my April pictorial update.
The front flower beds are on the north side of the house, so they don’t get much in the way of sun. I’ve been trying to morph them away from traditional landscape plantings toward more of a true garden setting. It’s slow going as I experiment with plants that work…Oh, and find the time.
Solomon’s Seal, Azaleas and Impatiens
The azaleas have finally started to take off, as has the Solomon’s Seal. The hellebores are extremely gorgeous–So much so that I’m thinking of taking advantage of the hellebores sale from Hersonswood Nursery. They have two hellebores called Kingston Cardinal and Gold Finch that would be fabulous planted in a large group, especially since hellebores seem to like living here at Bumblebee.
Hellebores and Foo Dogs
The Dead Nettle (awful name/fabulous plant) around my adorable foo dogs is covered in little pink flowers. Tiny little plantlets are coming up around the plant through the mulch.
Dead Nettle and Hotei
I love the Dead Nettle so much that I planted a mass of it alongside the driveway–another shady spot. The whole area is in dire need of some planning and planting. It’s a very large area, which means a LOT of plants. I’m still scratching my head about how to tackle it.
Side Garden Birdhouse and Foam Flower
A few years ago my then-early-teenage son took it upon himself to whack down a small tree by the driveway with a machete. Typical boy. I left if there as I pondered what to do with the side garden. When I saw this birdhouse from Walpole Woodworkers, the little lightbulb over my head went off.
Unfortunately, the foam flowers that I planted there last year aren’t as robust as I had hoped. Perhaps they are like the hellebores and just need some time to settle in.
Green lawn and hay field at Bumblebee
Then there’s the lawn, which you heard about before. This is the view from the front of the house. Although you read a lot about lawns not being practical, when you have this much room, a lawn is a very practical thing indeed. If we ever need to have an impromptu football game, there’s room to pass the ball. And I can cut it in less than an hour when I have a working riding mower. Since there’s not a chance that I’ll ever be able to garden all this space, a pretty green lawn works quite well and gives us a nice view up the hill.
After the drought last summer the lawn looked hideous. But with aeration and seeding in the fall–and a good amount of rain this spring–it has bounced back quite nicely.
Back in the Colonial garden, the veggies are thriving. I’ve also been cutting tulips and putting them all around the house.
Herb Garden with Columbine
The herb garden is a bit mangy, but it’s still early. The columbine that I started from seed didn’t do much last year. But this year the columbine is EVERYWHERE. I had forgotten that I tucked a couple of little seedlings in the herb bed last year. But this year–here they are!
And last, but not least, the compost bins are currently under a canopy of Dogwood. Yes, that’s my clothes line. And yes, I use it.
Well, so there you have it. There are a couple of other photos of the Colonial theme garden from the last post if you want to see more.
That was a bit of a ramble, but it gave me a chance to spew out all the photos.
And as you can see, April was here because it left behind the evidence. I hope I don’t miss May!
Robin
