Pen 'n Gardener

Merry Everything, and Happy Always

2009-12-20T16:20:00.010-05:00

We harvested the Brussels sprouts just in time – before the big snowstorm came.

And now the garden is blanketed beautifully with the promise of a white Christmas.

As long as I can look at it from beside the fireplace, I can catch the correct spirit. Poor Dave passes it (on the outside) while he muscles the firewood, brings up the boxes of decorations, and carries the ashes down to the compost heap. I like my observation point better!

My Christmas card addressing time felt so, so rich … all those friends! I love counting my blessings, don’t you?

And inside? The burgeoning paperwhites fill the house with joy and promise.

Everything that is sweet about our lives stands out clearly in the snowy time.

Merry Everything ... and Happy Always!

Good Bye, Autumn

2009-11-28T11:04:00.011-05:00

The Autumn has gone by in a flash. First, the spiders were telling the garden to “wrap it up” ...

... then the glory of the leaves decorated the neighborhood ...

... and then came the drop ... both in temperature and in foliage. I have trees on property that drop leaves ... only to reveal a whole new “suit” of stuff beneath ... the redbud with its pods, and the crabapple with its crabs (or apples). Interesting.

The holly has more berries than it has had before ... wonder why.

And now the holidays are upon us. Much in the garden has not yet been cut down. The Brussels Sprouts await a big frost ... as do the callicarpa berries. And the bulbs in their bags call out, “Plant me! Plant me!” ... sigh.

I’ve a whole new box started for the new seed catalogues, and I look forward to introducing three new things to the garden in the spring: Asclepias physocarpa, Centaurea macrocephala, and Leonotis leonurus.

This doesn’t really reflect my thinking, but it’s apt, just the same:

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, 
No comfortable feel in any member - 
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, 
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds - 
November!" - Thomas Hood, No!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T11:18:00.004-05:00

A Gardener's Thanksgiving
Reverend Max Coots
1928-2009

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are;

For generous friends with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the other, plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels Sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem Artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;

For all these we give thanks.

August Aubade

2009-08-12T08:01:00.007-04:00

The Pleides have run through the night skies.
The hawk cries as he criss-crosses the morning sky.
Cicadas open for business with choral practice
for telling temperatures.
August Aubade.

The garden is winding down in many tell-tale ways.
Chinese lanterns give the weeds an orange-y glow.
Annabelles turn green for picking and drying.
Daylily scapes dry hollow.
Reblooming iris join milkweed in setting bud.

The garden has a different feel and sound.
I like it.

To The Garden

2009-08-06T10:54:00.001-04:00

Dave and I went yesterday to visit a friend’s garden. June tends it herself, and it is magnificent to see. She lives outside all growing season – watering, feeding, and just loving her surroundings, and it shows! Words aren’t really necessary: the photos say it all. Enjoy.

Here's To Naked Ladies!

2009-08-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

Basket Flowers

2009-07-30T16:19:00.008-04:00

Don’t you love it when you learn about a new flower? I just add to my knowledge one-flower-at-a-time, but that makes me happy.

In working with a flower farmer outside of Gettysburg in preparation for our Arrangers class this past Monday, I saw some flowers that had “gone by” but were drying in the field. She said they were Basket Flowers. So that’ll be my new addition to the garden this fall.

Centaurea macrocephala. They’re slightly funky … with a yellow head that looks like a safflower head, and the receptacle develops into a basket–like form that is great in dried arrangements. I’ll see if I can “lift” a photo from the internet to show you.

Meanwhile, aren’t the gardens beautiful with all their bounty?! The lilies are towering this year, and the annuals are finally reflecting their delight in all the earlier rain. Our class was lots of fun, and we were up to our elbows in blooms.

We learned in class that even one bloom can lift our spirits … we don’t always NEED many!

So, today my basket flower just exists in my memory, but next year……

A Turtle Named Nigella

2009-06-10T08:38:00.006-04:00

Each year, when the Nigella begins to bloom, our resident snapping turtle wanders up into the garden in search of a place to lay her eggs.

These photos show her up hill about the length of a football field (or more) in search of the perfect place.

When she is lurking in the creek in the spring, she hunkers down and waits for those dear little new-born mallard ducklings to swim over her hunting grounds…alas!

There are hundreds of littler turtles like her, but she is the only one that I spy each spring up this far into the gardens. I usually smell her first and then find her in the vegetation. Maybe by the time her hatchlings find their way back down to the creek, they’ll be too big for whatever the predators for them relish.

Welcome back, Nigella!

Peter Rabbits

2009-06-09T08:29:00.002-04:00

Ah-h-h! Here’s Dave putting finishing touches on our gorgeous new masterpiece of a garden! AND we’ve planted it. AND we already hate those dern bunnies. Oh, but it warms the cockles of our heart!

Wouldn’t you think that the Peter Rabbits of this world would only want to munch on the lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, parsley and beans in this garden? Oh no! They spurn most of these and eat only the chi-chi flowers! Hollyhocks…..gone! Granpa Ott… gone! Oh, well.

Now we have to wait and watch. Although we could create gates and wires and baffles, we’re going to see if we can co-exist with the critters. We need to see if it can quickly become a photographic pleasure. Oh, joy!

Kiss Formal Goodbye

2009-05-15T08:56:00.011-04:00

Who can even imagine my excitement about having a brand new garden to plant! The only thing missing from this garden is the picket fence; that comes next … well, the plants as well. Just look at this beautiful place that Dave created for me …

I’m sure you will have immediate thoughts about how you would plant it, and that those ideas won’t compare in any way to what actually happens here. First of all, it’s a very formal space that we’re going to use to photograph cottage garden growth. So we’ll be treating it informally!

The garden came into being because we couldn’t find good gardens to photograph that had picket fences. So we decided to create an intimate “feel” but it had to be out where we have good sun. We want to grow a mix of flowers for cutting and vegetables too. Even though it’s late in the season to put in peas and potatoes and spinach and such, we’re going to try … along with the regular warm soil stuff.

Talk about mixing metaphors, this will be a formal plan that is planted informally. It will be an intimate space even though it’s smack dab in the middle of an open area. It will be cottage-y, but it will have a Victorian urn in the center.

(Sue me! I own the urn and don’t own the requisite sun dial or birdbath!) So even though every fiber of my being is calling for Box hedges or at least Germander, I’m marching to different drummers this week.

We’re in for some glorious adventures this season – buckle your seatbelts. And take a last look at these good bones.

Thanks, Dave. I love you too.
(…and this time I really mean it! Tee hee!)

And So The Planting Begins!

2009-05-11T08:17:00.004-04:00

This is the week when most all of the garden plants will be installed. I started yesterday by planting some of the “onesies,” as opposed to the groups of plants which will come next. The sages came first. These are the big ones – Mexican Bush Sage (48”) next to the Pineaple Sage (24-36”), and the Perovskia (another 48” baby). Oh, and my big-leaf Salvia Argentea (or as my husband says, “Lambs' Ears on steroids”).

There were some Gaura for that permanent butterfly look, and the perennial Alyssum (Basket of Gold), and Verbena as two spreaders and drapers. A friend, June, gave me a Mammoth German Gold Tomato, so I stuck that in a cutting bed along with some large-leaf Basil and some rainbow Swiss Chard. Lastly, some Asclepias for the b’fliesand some Hollyhock slipped in. I’m known for growing all manner of thugs, and several of these sure qualify. I hope they do well!

Everything in the beds looks so well-behaved and demure right now! Hopefully, though, the big guys will grow faster than our rascally weeds, so there won’t be long sessions of weeding.

So what is concerning me besides weeds? Will things be too crowded? Will the rust that seemed evident on the hollyhocks persist? Are the vegetables going to successfully co-habit with the flowers? We’ll see!

They used to refer to the kinds of gardens I have as being “pleasure gardens.” They sure are for me when I visit them in the early morning hours to see if the deer have found things yet (they haven’t.). The catalogue contemplation in the winter months has now been taken over by the baby-plant cheering. Here’s hoping we can all be happy in situ.

Layering In The Garden

2009-05-04T07:18:00.004-04:00

Our cottage garden is developing daily. As I go out every day to appreciate what I’m seeing, I get more ideas about what I like. Today, I liked the portions of the garden that were in bloom on several layers at once. I think that with heightened awareness about that fact, I can create more of what I’ve just discovered that I like. The photos say it better than my words. See the bleeding heart and the grape hyacinth blooming at the same time? They compliment each other! Separately…beautiful. Together…smashing! Camassia and azalea, too. Interesting textures, varying colors … the learning about how to deal with these pleasures comes one step at a time.

Daffodils

2009-04-24T08:06:00.007-04:00

I judged a flower show the other day that included a show for a Daffodil Society chapter, and it was fun to see all the various kinds of daffodils gathered together. There are thirteen classes of them: Trumpet, Large-Cupped, Small-Cupped, Double, Triandrus, Cyclamineus, Jonquilla, Tazetta, Poeticus, Bulbocodium, Splitcupped, Miscellaneous, and Wild-natural. Imagine! … and then there are miniatures for many of the same classes.

I thought you’d enjoy some photos.

If you want to learn more, go to www.daffodilusa.org/daffodils/div.html

Rain! The crops are saved!!

2009-04-15T20:09:00.002-04:00

Hurry!

2009-04-13T13:46:00.007-04:00

Hurry! It’s lovely up here!

Barbra Streisand sings this on the album "On a Clear Day…” and I sing it to all my garden ephemerals at this time of year. Even though it’s still WAY too cold from my point of view, the garden moves inexorably forward with its parade of blooms. The scilla, chionadoxa, crocus, hellebore, daffs, and aconites are struttin’ their stuff. Spring is happening in spite of itself, and we’re all delighted. It can’t happen fast enough.

Speaking about that song, we sell, on our website store, http://www.fromthecottagegarden.com/, a great album by Ellen Zachos (a garden writer and past Broadway-ite) called “GREEN UP TIME” that contains 20 songs (including “Hurry…”) from what she calls “Botanical Broadway.” It’s one of those great albums to listen to and sing with in your car, where you can be as dramatic a (mental) gardener as you please! Check it out.

AND, speaking of being a mental gardener, we’re digging a new vegetable/herb/cutting garden that has my total mental attention.

Oh, the possibilities! What shall we plant?! The world is our oyster, and being in this position feels really, really rich. Reality will set in soon enough – replete with weeds and bugs and lack of water, but for now I can imagine a “mahvelous” garden with “mahvelous” yield and “mahvelous” Kodak moments … stay tuned to see if it happens!

Plant a Garden Anyone?

2009-03-30T10:27:00.002-04:00

Good Example

2009-03-21T21:16:00.002-04:00

"Twenty-six elementary schoolchildren wielded shovels, rakes, pitchforks and wheelbarrows to help first lady Michelle Obama break ground on the first day of spring for a produce and herb garden on the White House grounds.

Crops to be planted in the coming weeks on the 1,100-square-foot, L-shaped patch near the fountain on the South Lawn include spinach, broccoli, various lettuces, kale and collard greens, assorted herbs and blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.

There will also be a beehive."

Bravo! What a good example to set.

The Gift

2009-01-08T19:01:00.003-05:00

My husband gave me a Christmas gift this year.

Now, that has to stand alone … as a statement … as a paragraph … and as an earth-shaking event!

It’s not that he doesn’t love me. It’s not that he denies me anything that I need or want. It’s just that forced-gifting - just because the date requires it – makes him turn tail and RUN. But this year, he broke precedent, and his gift will ever warm the cockles of my heart.

We had just made a pact to not give each other a gift this year when he saw something he knew I would love … a program to make it easy to identify birds. So – regardless of our pact – he sent for it. (After all, it was only a $5.00 item!)

But when it came, he discovered that it only worked on an ipod. So – regardless of our pact – he sent for it. (Not a $5.00 item!)

And when it came, he discovered that there was a better bird program for $10.00. So – regardless of our pact – he sent for it.

And then, the whole thing burned a hole in his patience pocket! There was NO way that he could wait until the 25th to share it with me. So we had our Christmas “love-feast” in the middle of the night on the 23rd when he couldn’t stand it any longer.

I love it. … and him for knowing that I would!

I’m good when the cardinals and woodpeckers and mourning doves come to the feeder, but all those non-descript grey and brown little-nimno-birds blend together into an identification stew. Now I can begin sorting them all out.

Ain’t love grand?!?

…. and I’ll save his new underwear for Valentine’s Day, unless it burns a hole in my patience pocket a bit early.

In Memorium

2009-01-05T07:47:00.008-05:00

Gasp!
It took less than an hour.
The tree crew drove up,
Lifted up, and cut down.

My neighbor
Whose tree it was
Thought it was “messy”.

(See my Nov. 12 blog.)

Goodbye, old friend.
I’ll try to find one like you
To plant this spring.

An Appreciation of Grasses

2008-12-29T08:24:00.003-05:00

There are terms for collections or groups of animals (see http://www.hintsandthings.co.uk/kennel/collectives.htm) … like a “gaggle of geese,” a “pod of dolphin,” a “clutch of chickens,” and a “swarm of bees.” I’d like to suggest a term for grasses: …an appreciation of grasses.

You start with one clump, and suddenly your garden becomes a collection – an appreciation, if you will – of grasses! That dern sun lights them up late in the day. The wind creates virtual ballets in the garden with them., They fill in, bulk out, and obliterate garden holes.

Here you see our ladies (the Misses Canthus) creating delicious late-afternoon-delight at our place.

Oh, I know … by February these gals will have worn out their welcome as they get beaten up and knocked down by the elements. But for today…. Ah-h-h.

Holiday Wishes

2008-12-24T15:57:00.000-05:00

Hoe ... Hoe ... Hoe!

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - December 2008

2008-12-15T07:49:00.013-05:00

Arum italicum and Sarcococoa Hookeriana are the two plants of interest in our garden right now … oh, and Helleborus foetidus, too.

The Arum is a bulb (or a rhizome … not sure) that takes a bit of time to establish. But it is a nifty addition because its leaves are fresh and green just when everything else is looking ratty. Liking moist, rich soil and part-to all-shade, it looks like our native Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema). It has bloomed in early summer on a “finger-like” spadix, produced berries in late summer, and then it sent up spiffy, new leaves in the autumn. Deer turn up their noses at it (all parts are toxic), but chipmunks carry the fruits around before they figure out that they don’t like Arums either! If it’s a rough winter season, these Arum leaves will take a beating and succomb to the elements. If it’s mild, we win … and will have the leaves to look at all season long. These guys are great to have if you need to enter horticulture in a winter flower show, too.

Sarcococca is a groundcover/shrub that is happiest in shade too, although, once it has established, it will tolerate a dry shade. See the flower buds under the leaves?

In January and February their sweet smell welcomes folks who come to our front door. I’m told that this plant can reach four feet tall, but thusfar in our yard it has only grown outward …. not upward. Sarcocccca in a flower show? Nah, it never wins because the judges never know what it is … their loss.

The “stinking hellebore,” as foetidus is called, started blooming in November, and it will continue into the summer. The bloom is the light green on the top. It adapts to any condition from full sun to deep shade, and it may grow to be a healthy clump in time.

Pomanders

2008-12-12T10:50:00.011-05:00

At this season, the table in front of the fire and the TV always sprouts a bowl that contains oranges/lemons/clementines, cloves, a couple nails (and my awl), and paper towels. I make pomanders while I "veg” at night and watch all the Christmas tear-jerkers on TV. And other family members like to get into the act too … kids aren’t patient, but they can start ‘em and you can finish them. The oranges are the juiciest (thus the towels!) but really satisfy the best. I pick one, grab a nail or an awl, and punch about 10 holes in the orange in some random pattern that strikes me. Then I put a whole clove in each hole.

Then I repeat that again and again until the whole orange is covered … leaving “gentle” room in between clove heads that will disappear as the orange dries out and shrinks. I’ve seen in some magazines that they make pomanders with far fewer cloves and show the clove-head patterns, but in my opinion that’s the lazyman’s way!

So what is a pomander? It’s a smell-good. Yes, I know, I don’t need to fumigate our castle with them, as they did “of yore” in the 1500s, but I still think they add to the whole ambiance of the season. A bowl of completed pomanders is a nice touch (but it’s the doing that is the best part!)

It’s not really the cloves and orange that create the smell, though. It’s what you roll them in while they cure. Today’s pomander will be NEXT year’s decoration, for it needs time to shrink and then be decorated.

Okay… so by the end of the fire and the TV for the night, you may have finished filling your orange with cloves. Your hands are sticky … you’ve had enough for the night. But the next day, you need to roll your pomander in a bowlful of other spices that you have prepared for all the pomanders that this season will produce. In that bowl you have a mixture of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and orris root powder.* I guess ground cloves could be used too. Since the spice companies all say that we should not have OLD spices in our cabinets, this is a good way to sweep away the old.

And what, you ask, is orris root powder? … and where do you get it?!? It’s the ground up root of Iris germanica, and it aids in the curing/drying/preserving process. We’re fortunate to have spice shops near us to buy cloves in bulk and herb shops near us so we can get Orris Root Powder. (I just called Rosemary House** in Pennsylvania -where I get mine – and they have it for $2.80 for an ounce or $5.25 for two ounces.) I seem to recall that some pharmacies carry Orris too.

I not only roll my new pomanders in the preserving potion, I refresh the older ones too … if I can get around the decorations on them. Then the new pomanders get put in a cool, dry place to cure, and the old ones go in a bowl to be admired and smelled. Ah-h-h!

You hostesses out there, take note. The fixin’s for pomander balls are a great gift or favor if some of your friends come over for a holiday luncheon. I mix the orris powder concoction, put an orange, some cloves, and a nail in a box with it, and gift with joy. One year, my friends waited until Christmas morning to open the gift, so warn yours to not wait.

* If you want specific amounts of spices to use, I guess I use equal parts … maybe three tablespoons … of each.

** Click link to www.therosemaryhouse.com

Thanksgiving Centerpiece

2008-12-05T10:53:00.005-05:00

I was just dis-assembling the Thanksgiving centerpiece, and I thought it would be good to pay public tribute to its makers.

Katie (who is 10) and Brittany (who is 8) did a “quickie” while in a race with the gravy-makers to see if they could get something to the center of the table quickly…and they did!

We bought two of those three dollar bunches of flowers at the grocery store, raided the scruffy boxwood under the kitchen window, and soaked a block of Oasis before plopping it in a rectangular “o-bowl.”

Greens went in first … not too tall on top or too wide on the sides, but longer on the ends to fill the space. That defined our shape.

Then, from our bargain bouquets, we picked and poked…chrysanthemums first, then the couple of carnations, and finally some lily buds.

They really did it all, I think it came out great, and they felt good about it. Yea!

A Certain Loveliness

2008-12-01T15:23:00.006-05:00

"The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves.
The ground is hard,
As hard as stone.
The year is old,
The birds are flown.
And yet the world,
In its distress,
Displays a certain
Loveliness"

-- John Updike, A Child's Calendar --

It’s still fun to discover the secrets that hide in trees and on grounds where leaves have masked what’s there. There are bird’s nests, bittersweet, mantis egg sacs …. The world is a new place.

Brown is the new black, and there’s an air of formality to all the grasses and shrubs that carry late Autumn’s themesong through the garden beds. The green of box and rhododendron and hellebore strike a repeating gracenote that lends unity to the scene.

Rain-soaked …, frost-nipped …, clean-raked … world that I love, rest easy. Spring isn’t far away, but rest is good for all.