Hacquetia epipactis

This is a favorite plant. It belongs to that small group of plants whose interest derives not from their flowers but rather from colorful bracts. Flowering dogwood, Cornus florida, is another example. Hacquetia is a member of the botanical family Umbelliferae (also known as the Apiaceae).

The first time I saw Hacquetia epipactis (in a photograph in Anna Griffith’s 1965 A Guide to Rock Garden Plants) I immediately liked it. It reminded me of the winter aconites: there is the same central touch of yellow and the surrounding ruff of green. In the Hacquetia the bracts which surround the central tuft of true flowers are an electric chartreuse green: they really catch the eye.

In the garden the advantage of these plants which are grown for colorful bracts is the long period of seeming bloom. The bracts remain in good condition for weeks, long after the true flowers have faded and fallen.

When not in bloom Hacquetia is a tiny, unobtrusive thing. It’s only a few inches high. It has grown here for years and seems to be doing well. It’s not well known; I know I have found a gardening soul mate when a visitor recognizes it.

Cardiocrinum cordatum

Most of the typical lilies, the members of the genus Lilium, are only now just beginning to poke above ground. The martagons are an exception: Lilium hansonii is already about a foot out of the ground and ‘Preston Yellow’ is not far behind.

The plant in the image above is Cardiocrinum cordatum, shown in late June of 2004 as it was about to bloom. This year the plant seems unusually robust; it already has a salad-plate sized rosette of foliage up. At this stage it looks a bit like skunk cabbage. Will it bloom this year? It has bloomed twice here in the past.

This plant is above ground for a relatively short period of time, generally about three months. Non-blooming plants sometimes die down for the year just when the true lilies are coming into bloom. It last bloomed here in early July of 2004.

The structure of this plant is odd. The leaves are arranged in a false whorl about halfway up the stem. A few scattered leaves appear above the false whorl. At this time of year the foliage appears to be acauline, but later the annual stem will raise the false whorl up to about 12 to 18” above the ground; the flowers will be at the three or four foot level.

Contrary to what one reads in much of the gardening literature, Cardiocrinum are not monocarpic. A friend recently showed me a newspaper article from a major newspaper in which this misunderstanding was repeated.

The image above was made shortly before the plant bloomed in 2004. Let’s hope that there will be new images of blooms in a few months.

Gardening with books

An image posted on the Pacific Bulb Society wiki recently released a flood of memories for me.

Plants are important to me, of course; but so, too, are books. A gardening life led without books is not for me. I enjoy my plants through my books, and books as much as anything help to keep it all together. The image posted shows the daffodil ‘Snipe’, one I’ve known about for nearly fifty years. It was illustrated on plate XVIII of Patrick Synge’s Collins Guide to Bulbs, published in 1961. Back in those days, I never saw it on the daffodil lists from which I bought, although the similar-in-name and somewhat similar-in-appearance ‘Jack Snipe’ eventually became widely available. Both are cyclamineus hybrids and they have a similar color pattern, but the similarity ends there. ‘Snipe’ began to appear on the list of one of the big suppliers recently; maybe this year it will finally find its way into this garden.

On that same plate XVIII is shown Narcissus cantabricus var petunioides. A plant answering to that description is about to flower in one of the cold frames now. My gosh, it’s taken nearly fifty years for this to happen.

I mentioned all of this on the PBS forum today, and also mentioned the daffodil 'Cantatrice' (also illustrated in the Synge work) for which I would like to find a source. I grew 'Cantatrice' long ago, but it disappeared as the garden grew. Within a few minutes someone replied with a lead.

I’m very happy now, happy as only someone who has known such long denial can understand. Never doubt the important role of patience in gardening.

Red Back Salamander

It rained all night the other night; when I went to bed we were under tornado warnings. The rain was heavy at times, and as expected there was seepage in the basement. I had taken up the rugs as a precaution.

That the garden the next morning was full of newly emerged sprouts did not surprise me. But the little one waiting for me on the front porch did. This is Plethodon cinereus, variously called the red back salamander, the red backed wood salamander or combinations thereof. Yes, it has two color phases, and this is the dark gray/black one. But look closely: it really isn’t black: it’s sprinkled with very fine gray speckles.

This is probably one of the more abundant amphibians in our area. But it is above ground only during a brief period in late winter-early spring and again in the fall. It’s very unusual to find one during the summer, and who’s looking during the winter?

If you are standing up and looking down, they look a lot like earthworms. When you take a closer look, you can see the tiny legs and the eyes.

Years ago I had a big collection of bromeliads which spent the frost-free season outside on the patio. During late October and November, it was not unusual to find these little salamanders crawling all over the bromeliads. This was particularly interesting because Plethodon has a Neotropical relative called Dendrotriton which is evidently adapted to life among bromeliads.

Jewel box gardening

Corydalis popovii
Tecophilaea cyanocrocus

Tecophilaea cyanocrocus

Narcissus jonquilla

The vast literature on bulbs covers so much ground that it would be hard to characterize it. But extensive reading soon shows that few writers on bulbs have been able to resist the jewel metaphor. I got to the point where I really disliked it. And then, one day earlier this year, I was opening the protected cold frame after a cold night. I lifted the lid and the perfume of tazetta daffodils enveloped me. And as I peered into the frame, the scattered bits of brilliant color made me feel as if I had opened a jewel box. It came so naturally I didn’t resist it. “Treasures” crept into an earlier blog entry; "gems" will no doubt follow.

Here are some of the jewels in bloom today: Corydalis popovii, which I first saw in my friend Bobbie’s former Fairfax, Virginia garden years ago. I remember her plant as having blooms several times larger than mine, but that’s what the first sighting of an exciting plant will do to some of us. This one has been in the frame since its receipt in 2005. It gets better yearly, but it does not divide.

If you crave blue, there are certain plants which you will want to try sooner or later. The one here is the Chilean blue crocus, Tecophilaea cyanocrocus. It’s not a crocus; currently it’s placed in a family of its own. Many early attempts to grow this plant were failures; and many of those trying were writers who, unfortunately, gave the plant a bad name. As it turns out, it’s not difficult at all to grow. If I can keep it going, anyone can. In the recent past this plant was thought to be extinct in the wild, although recently reports of wild populations have been circulating. Its biggest enemies are collectors and cattle.

Those of you fastidious about pronunciation will perhaps appreciate knowing that the o in crocus is short: thus ky-an-ó-cro-cus. One typically hears sigh-an-no-crow’-cuss, the last syllable of which expresses my sentiments well when I hear it.

If you want to try the Chilean crocus, be prepared to lighten your wallet a bit. A single corm will not cost more than lunch for two at McDonald’s, but that’s still more than most of us are used to paying for one tiny bulb.

If the price bothers you, keep in mind that this same gorgeous color is yours virtually for free. In mid summer, look around for a patch of the weed called Asiatic day flower, Commelina communis; or check the seed catalogs for its relative Commelina coelestis. Not only is the color similar; the texture of the colored petals is also very close.

The little daffodil is a form of Narcissus jonquilla received under the name henriquezii. The name, as with so many daffodil names, is dubious. This plant is very free flowering and seems much easier to grow than some of the bigger forms of Narcissus jonquilla. This species has a strong, characteristic fragrance which I prize as one of the great floral scents.

That’s enough for a first peek. All of these were on the upper tray of the jewel box; there are plenty more to come.

Parkland in low morning sun

Here’s a bit of parkland I enjoy every morning and evening while walking the dog. In these images, the early morning sun catches the undulations in the topography well. It’s not unusual to see deer or an occasional fox passing through this lot. A simple scene such as this one is full of enchantment for some of us.

Meteorological spring

I read the newspaper with a quick and critical eye. Sometimes it’s too quick: this morning I had to back up and read again, because I thought I had read that today was the first day of spring. The re-read provided this annoyance: it’s the first day of meteorological spring. It’s not clear to me why the meteorologists should have their own first day of spring. The equinoctial spring has served us well for centuries: why change it now?

If we’re going to do this, why not have a first day of spring for the cardinals? Several weeks ago the cardinals began to sing in earnest in the morning. That was the first day of cardinal spring. A bit later they were joined on different days by the chickadees, titmice, song sparrows and mourning doves. Each should have its own first day of spring. When the peepers start, that will be a major first day of spring for them and for me.

It really annoys me when people try to rename things by piggybacking onto existing things. Why should public amenities built generations ago be renamed for current celebrities and politicians? If the celebrities and politicians in question had a prominent hand in building something, then let that something be named for them. Otherwise, it's grave robbing, stealing from the dead.

Why try to muddle the age-old date of the beginning of spring? Is Toronto’s “meteorological spring” the same as ours? Is Atlanta’s?

Those of us who observe the natural world don’t need to be told the date of the arrival of spring. That’s one of those things which is meaningful only in a very local sense, and it varies from year to year. A fixed date for the arrival of spring is by its very nature an unnatural thing. We already have one, we don’t need another one.

Cold frame treasures

In addition to bulbs, the cold frame houses a variety of other plants. Most of these are not suited to life in the open garden, and each represents a significant extension of my horticultural horizons in a new direction.

For example, there is a young seedling of Sophora secundiflora. In a very sheltered place, this might be hardy in the open. Mature plants have fragrant flowers which suggest wisteria. It’s a very handsome plant and all but unknown in gardens in this area.

A seemingly thriving plant of Cistus psilosepalus has me hoping that I might soon see a rock rose actually blooming in this garden. I’ve tried others in the open air, and they quickly went from bad to worse. Various cistus have been described as hardy in this area, but it’s not simply a question of hardiness in the sense of cold tolerance. The climate here is all wrong for them. The little seedling I planted into the ground in the cold frame has slowly grown all winter: it looks like it’s ready to take off once the weather moderates. The cistus I really want are the ones with fragrant foliage; if the current experiment proves to be successful, I’ll try one of those.

Several of the asarums are temporarily in the protected cold frame. These are Asarum nobilissimum and A. maximum. Last summer they grew in a spot which got plenty of sunlight and it seemed to do them good. I doubt if their foliage will have a chance in the open air, so they went into the cold frame for the winter.

There are also several rosemary plants; these were rooted from grocery store material sold for culinary purposes. Rosemary is like cistus: it’s not really hardy here in my experience, although an occasional plant might survive for years. Again, it’s not simply a matter of cold: the climate in general here is wrong for it.

Another occupant of the protected cold frame is little Smilax pumila. An earlier trial of this species in the open air was somewhat successful. The plants grew and went on to bloom – but the developing seed was killed by winter cold. I’m hoping that they will be right at home in the protected frame.

Ceratostigma griffithii occupies a corner of the cold frame. I doubt if this plant needs cold frame protection, but at the time the frame was built the Ceratostigma was still in a pot and needed a home. Because it blooms so late in the year, the frame seemed to be a good choice. It has made itself right at home.

Ruscus hypoglossum is also spending the winter in the frame. I expect this to be hardy in the garden, but I have not yet decided where to put it.

There is also a little plant of Calluna vulgaris ‘Mrs. Ronald Gray’: this is there to remind me of my plan to grow a variety of little evergreen shrubs in a cold frame. Heaths, heathers and broadleaf evergreens have never become common in our gardens; I think the main reason for this is that they experience so much foliar damage that they emerge from the winter ugly. Cold frame protection should prevent that.

Smilax smallii

Last week I attended a talk in which Lindie Wilson, who came to own Elizabeth Lawrence’s last home in Charlotte, North Carolina, told us about her efforts to preserve the garden. Those efforts were successful, so much so that the property has been acquired by a trust and will be preserved into the future. For more about this, see:
http://www.elizabethlawrence.org/

There are a number of Elizabeth Lawrence plants in my garden – plants which I first learned about from reading her works or which for other reasons I associate with her memory. One of my favorites is a two-for: a plant I associate with the late Henry Mitchell and with Elizabeth Lawrence. It’s the Jackson vine, Smilax smallii. I regard it and Smilax laurifolia as the most magnificent vines native to North America, yet they are hardly known outside of their natural range in the south-east and south-central states.

Although I had known about Smilax smallii for years, I did not know of a source for it until I happened to mention it in 1987 in the presence of a stranger who not only knew the plant but told me where to obtain it: Woodlanders, of course. Soon several feet of slight vine attached to what looked like bananas arrived in the mail. These were given a prime spot in the garden: on the south side of the house against the chimney. It was a good choice. Now, nearly twenty years later, the vine has run up to the roof of the house and hangs out in graceful evergreen swags of handsome foliage. Each year new sprouts rise from the ground and go right up to the roof and more.

Smilax smallii is thornless (or nearly so) and its flowers are fragrant. It has never matured seed in my garden; presumably the developing seed is killed during the winter. This plant carries its foliage in the most graceful way. Each spray of foliage forms a triangle a yard or two on each side; the leaves are disposed neatly and regularly throughout the area of this triangle. Cut branches retain their form and gloss well; I’ve read that in the old days railroad carloads of cut stems were sent north for the holidays.

Take a careful look at that famous picture of Elizabeth Lawrence welcoming us into her garden. On the arch over the gate grows a robust Clematis armandii. If you look carefully at the lower right side of the gate, you can make out a young Smilax smallii getting started. In fact, if you look very carefully you might be able to make out its stems pushing up into the clematis.

After the talk I asked Lindie Wilson about the smilax: she told me that the smilax was gone from the gate when she arrived – but that it now covers the front of the house. More of us should follow Elizabeth Lawrence's example in this.

Smilax laurifolia also grows in my garden. Raised from seed and now about fifteen years old, the largest of several plants is only about seven feet high. It has the potential to go to the tops of trees. In the wild, mature plants of this species are awesome.

The first of the fritillaries

Fritillaria stenanthera is blooming today in one of the unprotected cold frames. It’s the first of the frits to bloom this year. Others above ground now include F. bucharica, F. raddeana, F. verticillata, F. biflora 'grayana', F. liliacea and F. striata. Although all of these will probably survive repeated freezing and thawing in the open garden, it’s hard to believe that it’s good for them. For now I’m playing it safe and keeping them in the frames.

I’m really happy about the way things are turning out in the frames. For one thing, the frames provide keen interest at a time of year when there is little of comparable interest in the open garden. For another, it makes it possible to grow plants which have never become a part of the local garden scene.

And then there is this: sometimes a familiar plant when grown in the frames reveals qualities I never suspected in the past. Here’s a good example. This year 'Ziva', one of the modern Israeli paper white narcissus, is showing me just what these plants can do under good conditions. When they are grown indoors in bowls of wet gravel, they come into bloom quickly and don’t last long. Out in the frame, they have been blooming for weeks – and show no sign of stopping. The huge clusters of bloom are the size of a big orange. And every time I open the cold frame, there is the intense scent to greet my fragrance-starved winter nose. To think that I used to dismiss these plants as a sort of gimmick suitable only for kids: I know better now, and I envy those who can grow them by the hundreds under garden conditions.

Other common plants can be just as exciting in the frames. Crocus are a good example. There are plenty of uncommon crocus in the frames, but even the commonest sorts give huge pleasure at this time of year. The intensity of the orange-yellow and violet tints is a real marvel early in the year. And again, unlike forced plants in the house, they last in the frames.

And then there are the plants such as Tecophilaea cyanocrocus which are too scarce and expensive to risk in the open garden. This is the third year for the oldest plant: I’m doing something right here. These are not in bloom yet, but they are another of those plants which seem to have been made possible by the cold frames. Although in their Chilean haunts they go through the winter under snow, I doubt that they will ever be common garden plants in our climate. I have a hunch that they need the snow cover. The cold frame provides a good substitute.

Cantabrian daffodils

Daffodils have yet to make an appearance in the open garden, but in the protected cold frame several of the tiny white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils are starting to bloom. The parents of these plants grow wild in Spain and north Africa. The nomenclature in this group is… euphemisms fail me…a mess. Some of the names I’ve seen are ridiculous. For now I’m keeping records of my sources and the “as received” names. And I’m still waiting for someone to sort it all out.

In the meantime, let's just enjoy them.

Algerian iris

The Algerian iris, Iris unguicularis, is being very good to me this year. It’s been in bloom off and on since November. I’m enjoying it while I can: I really don’t expect this sort of performance to be an annual event in our climate.

On the other hand, I have planted two more from other sources just in case our weather in the years ahead remains relatively clement. This beautiful iris is just too good to be true.

Hamamelis 'Jelena'

I’ve spent most of this week tackling various clean-up jobs in the garden. The weather has been perfect for working outside. It always amazes me how much stuff comes down out of our trees. Much of what I should have done last fall never got done because of the odd weather then: it was hot and humid right through October. Then suddenly the weather changed, and we went from hot and dry to much cooler and rainy. The rain went on and on – and outdoor work came to a halt. I’m trying to make up for it now. Accumulations of debris (sticks, leaves) have obliterated pathways; that took plenty of cleaning. A section of wall collapsed last year and was finally rebuilt today. The pergola went down in a pre-Christmas wind storm: I’m still struggling with getting that back in shape. A gift last year of some nice slate slabs finally is being put to use in rebuilding some steps in the garden. Dead stems need to be cut down, and the various beds require a lot of cleaning. So I’ve been busy.

What a day this has been. At 7:30 this morning the temperature was about 50ºF. Throughout the day the temperature dropped slowly to the accompaniment of harsh wind. I worked out in the garden for a few hours: the wind never quit. Trees began to shed dead branches. The forecast for tomorrow morning is for temperatures in the low teens. This sudden drop will catch the garden’s first round of early risers: there are plenty of snowdrops, hellebores, witch hazels and even a crocus or two already in bloom.

It’s now about 4:30 P.M.; the wind is relentless. I’ve closed the cold frames and covered the protected cold frame. There is nothing I can do for the plants in the open garden: they’re on their own. A sudden drop in temperature will damage even tough flowers such as hellebores and snowdrops.

A good garden should keep the interest of visitors for at least a while. But it’s a real event when your own garden gives you a surprise. I had that experience yesterday, when I saw a familiar plant in a way which was both entirely new and very exciting.
Hamamelis ‘Jelena’ is in full bloom now. This cultivar has comparatively big flowers which from a distance seem to be orange. Up close, the flowers look like a mixture of the stringy zest of oranges and lemons. Although the flowers are large and colorful, they do not have the strong scent for which some cultivars are noted.

There are two trees of ‘Jelena’ in the garden. Each is planted very near the back border of the property. As a result, I see them only when I am working at the back of the garden. The better of the two in fact grows on the far side of a substantial clump of camellias and is all but invisible from the rest of the garden.

This afternoon, I was out in back of the garden, at the edge of the woods, enjoying the view down into the valley of Rock Creek. As I turned around to return to the garden, I caught a glimpse of Hamamelis ‘Jelena’. It was beautiful, even glorious, in a way I had never seen before. From that angle, the witch hazel was seen backed by the clump of camellias. The dark green foliage of the camellias formed the perfect background for the brilliant orange blooms of the witch hazel. Never before had they seemed so bright and colorful. The image above gives an idea of what I saw, but it really does not capture the effect because the image was taken later when the camellia foliage was illuminated by the sun and thus did not provide such an effective background.

Of the five witch hazels in the garden, ‘Jelena’ is my favorite. It’s much more effective than the red-flowered sorts ‘Feuerzauber’ and ‘Diane’ and because of its big flowers more effective than the yellow-flowered sorts ‘Pallida’ and ‘Sunburst’.

Asphodelus acaulis

The presence of this plant in my garden is due to the generosity of a friend. It’s a new arrival here; last fall, Alice handed me a tangled clump of roots which seemed big for the size of the plant in question. I had seen it once before in her garden, the rosettes of thin leaves topped with pink stars of bloom. When I first saw it, I did not recognize it. But I have known about this plant for a long time – since 1965 in fact, when I purchased a copy of Anna Griffith’s A Guide to Rock Garden Plants. It is illustrated there, and never did I think I would actually have it blooming in my garden one day.

The image above showing the plant in bloom was made today. The plant shown is in the protected cold frame. In the open ground it would probably bloom later in the year. The flowers have a waxy look, almost as if they were made of pink chocolate. Most members of the genus Asphodelus are several feet tall when in bloom; Asphodelus acaulis thus does not look much like most of its relations.

Sprout season

We’re entering the part of the year that I think of as sprout season. The ground is now erupting here and there with little green points. Some plants, some snowdrops in particular, are already blooming. For the next two months the weather will be up and down, back and forth, unpredictable and mercurial. Although spring itself does not begin until the end of the third week of March, much of what we think of as the spring garden flora will bloom during this period. The locally native flora in general waits until April.

The next two months will see snowdrops, winter aconites, the early squills, glories of the snow, reticulate irises, crocuses, the earliest tulips and lots of odds and ends blooming.

We don’t have a term in English for this season, but Karl Foerster used the German term Vorfrühling to name it. This is the season of hybrid witch hazels. In the garden today, Hamamelis ‘Jelena’ is in full bloom. This was named for Jelena de Belder over a half-century ago; she died as recently as 2003. Also in bloom today is Hamamelis ‘Feuerzauber’. There are others in the garden, and these will come later if they are going to bloom this year. The witch hazels here tend to alternate between years in which they flower very freely and years in which they flower little if at all. For instance, ‘Pallida’ this year has very few flowers; last year every twig bloomed.

Helleborus foetidus is now on the verge of full bloom: the earliest blooms are open, but the best is ahead of us. The inflorescence of this plant is a vivid, tender, pale green which is improbably lively for this time of year. To my way of thinking, of herbaceous plants which bloom at this season it’s the best.

This morning while walking Biscuit I noticed the really handsome effect produced by the low, early sun on the densely budded masses of Magnolia stellata branches. The buds of this species are gray and hairy: they catch the light beautifully. The gently mounded outline formed by these plants really lights up nicely under the right conditions.

The zoysia lawn was mowed about two weeks ago; this was done to keep it tidy looking. I cut it very low, and the dense, neatly cut brown stubble is very handsome now. In some lights it has an unexpected orange-brown tint. Zoysia is an acquired taste, and I’ve definitely acquired it.

Real gardens

This blog in effect duplicates a posting I made today to the PBS (that's Pacific Bulb Society forum).

Another member of the forum had pointed out that many of us seem to be very focused on rare and difficult plants, focused to the point that we might forget what gardens really should be.

Since my recent posts to the PBS forum seem to go on and on about my protected cold frame and its progressively more obscure contents, I wanted to distinguish myself from those who make rarity or difficulty the most important criterion in the selection of garden plants.

I post frequently about the cold frame because that's where the excitement is for me right now. Ten years ago I never thought I would be growing most of the plants in that cold frame. If nothing else, that cold frame provides me with the opportunity to get those plants out of my system.

You might never guess it from my postings to the PBS list, but growing "rare" or "difficult" plants is only a minor aspect of my gardening activities. But two circumstances give it disproportionate importance: for one, during the winter the outdoor garden provides no other source of flowery interest in our climate. And for another, it's a chance to grow plants which in the recent past I assumed were outside my reach. But here's how to put it into perspective: the lot on which I garden is approximately a quarter of an acre in area. The protected cold frame I've been describing has an area of exactly two square yards. That two square yards is the hot spot in the garden from October until sometime in late winter or early spring when clement conditions return.

The rest of the garden is given over to my other horticultural interests.
And since garden design is my paramount interest, my garden is a real garden. You can't imagine how many times I've been taken to see the garden of a "great gardener" and found myself wandering around some backyard plant factory. If they're a dahlia specialist, there are neat rows of dahlias. If they're a (fill in the blank) specialist, there neat rows or paddocks of whatever their specialty is. I've seen whole lots given over to this sort of thing. To my mind, these are not gardens: they are exercises in urban agriculture. And that describes the well organized ones. They seem to be inspired by ever dimmer recollections of farming practice. Has the family really come up in the world because they now plant "gladiolas" instead of cabbages? The disorganized ones are simply an exercise in hoarding.

In my view, it isn't the type of plant grown which separates the sheep from the goats. It's how the plants are grown. All those "gardens" managed with an emphasis on productivity and the demands of the show bench - those are not gardens in my book.

In our time, the word garden has come to mean anything one wants it to mean.
As real gardens have largely disappeared, the word now usually refers to flower beds or borders - in the same way real landscape has come to be supplanted by what is ludicrously called "landscaping". To each his own; I just want to be sure you understand that it's not for me.

Anyone who knows the etymology of the word garden will share my sense of perplexity to see the word applied to a bed of annuals (or if you prefer, orchids). Some of us would insist that there must be some sense of enclosure. Some will retort that the enclosure may be metaphorical. I'm not trying to convert anyone else to my point of view; I know I'm in the minority. But as in so many areas of life, just because we use the same words does not mean that we are saying the same thing.

To my point of view, most American gardens are turned inside-out. The house becomes the centerpiece in an elaborate and expensive attempt at exterior decorating, the resident's primary investment surrounded by his cattle or gold jewelry or whatever it is which says status. I know I'm not the only one who has seen an expensive automobile parked on the front lawn - while space on the street goes begging. And I would not be surprised to hear that someone out there is replacing the plant labels (the ones which identify the plant) with large print price tags - the better to assert their social status.

Real gardens can be achieved with a minimum of plant material. Plant people are apt to poke fun at those professional landscape architects who design gardens using the same repertoire of ten or twenty plants. But those landscape architects are on to something. An abundance of plant material only makes it that much less likely that a real garden will ever emerge.

Boxwood

I think I’ve loved boxwood all my life. At an early age I became aware of the special status it has among gardeners. I was not “to the manner born” with respect to boxwood: we didn’t have it in the garden where I grew up, and such box as existed in the neighborhood was insignificant. But I knew about box from an early age. My father was from Virginia, and my mother (from Philadelphia) often tells the story of her early visits to meet her future in-laws. One of those visits was to the home of Uncle Arthur; he owned the local bank and soft drink bottling plant in the small Northern Neck town in which he lived (Northern Neck is a local term describing the long finger of land bordered by the Potomac River on the north and the Rappahannock River on the south; it’s George Washington and Robert E. Lee country). To hear my mother’s account, Uncle Arthur lived in a home right out of Gone With the Wind. She remembers the boxwood lined driveway, and that no doubt was the source of my earliest introduction to boxwood. Years later I saw the house as an adult: it was nothing like what my mother’s aggrandized description had led me to expect, but still it was a substantial, solid country house of its time. And the boxwood were still there lining the driveway.

A clipped, box-lined walk: that's just too much work. Nor am I particularly fond of anything clipped or trimmed unless the work is done very well and the result fits into the general feel of the garden. I very much like dwarf box in its natural form, i.e. wide, squat, billowing. Trimming them strikes me as idiotic: why not plant common box instead if it has to be box? Or why not plant privet?


My bedtime reading last night was the chapter “Box Edgings” from Alice Morse Earle’s 1901 Old Time Gardens. The one hundred and six year old book is beginning to show its age; and as I read, crumbles of brown binding material fell out into my lap. In this chapter, Mrs. Earle reveals herself to be very much a person of her time. She has something interesting to say, but her expression is hampered by an inability to express things sensibly – and so she resorts to fancy. It’s tempting to dismiss much of what she has to say in this chapter as delusion. She seems to believe things which most educated people today would dismiss as certain fallacy. In particular, modern readers are apt to be put off by her fervent belief that we inherit memories of the past, that we are born with the knowledge of things experienced by our ancestors.

Rather than dismiss Earle, I prefer to translate these things she seems determined to believe into modern form. Today we don’t have any trouble believing that it’s likely that we inherit certain capabilities from our ancestors, and if we share capabilities with our ancestors, then isn’t it all the more likely that we will express those capabilities in ways similar to those of our ancestors? Not everyone finds the scent of box pleasing. If we descend from ancestors who found it pleasing, isn’t it more likely that we will find it pleasing, too?

Well, perhaps it’s not that simple. But Earle was trying to express the deep affection which some of us have for box, and whatever its origin or causation, it’s real.

Just as real for some people is the aversion it evokes. As a child I found the scent of box curious: certainly not floral or sapid, but somehow appealing. It was not until much later in life, as the opportunity to be around big old box with a commanding presence presented itself, that I became aware of the feline quality they have – and which so many people dislike. But I couldn't disagree more about the scent of box. And I should add that I'm not a cat lover (although I don't dislike them, either). In front of the house is an arc of ten now forty year old dwarf box which have never been trimmed. Every ten or fifteen years I moved them to give them room, but otherwise that's it as far as care is concerned. They are now big enough to be a presence in the garden in several senses: obviously in the visual sense, under some atmospheric conditions in the olfactory sense, for those who can't resist "petting" them in a tactile sense and in gentle wind in an auditory sense.

This year they provided another treat. During the late summer and early fall, while it was still unseasonably hot, I slept as often as possible (i.e. when the humidity allowed us to turn off the air conditioner) with my bedroom windows open. The wall outside those windows was at that time covered with blooming Passiflora incarnata. I never thought I liked the scent of that flower, but on the air and in combination with the scent of the box it was oddly hypnotic - I mean that literally because I looked forward to a late afternoon nap as long as this pair kept it up. I had some of the best dreams during those naps! One was particularly vivid: I dreamt that I was somewhere in Persia in a very big room in a wooden building; the walls of the big room were pale pink and crafted of sandalwood. The room was hot and had a dry, dusty summer scent in addition to the scent of the sandalwood. There were roses, the scent of roses...

Today Wayne sent me an article on asparagus (culinary asparagus)and the varying ways it is metabolized by different people. Some people experience strongly scented urine after eating asparagus, some don't. No one seems sure if it's a matter of the asparagus being metabolized differently, or if it is a case of the results being interpreted differently due to varying olfactory capability. Some people don't notice anything, some people find the result noxious, and then there are people like me who find it, well, interesting. To me it's a sort of vulpine, mustelid odor, a lot like the scent of the bulbs of Fritillaria imperialis.

When I was a young gardener I enjoyed the works of Constance Spry: at that time in my life I regarded her as a sort of guide in the ways of horticultural connoisseurship. I remember the first time I read her account of the crown imperial, and I remember the sort of anxiety that reading provoked: as I read on, it was apparent that she was about to hurl an opinion about the scent of the bulbs of that plant. I braced myself for a put down - and then was delighted to read that she counted herself among those who found the scent interesting (not her word; I don't remember right now exactly how she described it, but it was not negative).

The point of all this is that I don't have any trouble understanding why some people find disagreeable things which I enjoy.

Agave the Illustrious

The new Heronswood catalog arrived the other day, and I noticed that they are now offering nicely spotted Agave virginica. I’ve collected this species in a small way for years, always for preference picking out forms with spotted foliage. The plant is also called Manfreda virginica, and it hybridizes readily with Polianthes tuberosa. That they hybridize suggests that the nomenclature needs some adjustment. The three genera Agave, Manfreda and Polianthes evidently are very closely related, so expect some nomenclatural shifting.

We Americans generally pronounce (i.e. mispronounce) this word Agave as ah-GAV-ee or ah-GAHV-ee something like that. Sometimes I hear ah-GAV, too. But those pronunciations don't come close to the original. It’s a classical Greek word which means "noble" or "illustrious" (thank you Liddell and Scott); transliterated it’s agaue or agave. Why the variation between u and v? Whenever there are three vowels in a row, something is likely to give. It’s too hard to articulate three vowels one after another without intervening consonants. In this case, it’s really more a case of one diphthong (the au) followed by a vowel (the u, which it should be pointed out is not the “vowel” we call u in English but rather the sound oo as in moon). What happens in this case? One of the vowels, the “weakest” one, takes on the qualities of a consonant. This typically happens with the vowel i which becomes its consonantal avatar, j, or u which becomes its consonantal avatar v. To understand this, you have to keep in mind that the i, j, u and v sounds in question are not the sounds represented by those symbols in English, but rather the sounds they represent in classical Greek and Latin. The j represents the sound of the y in yellow; the v is the w sound.
Purists will note that the classical Latin alphabet does not have a letter j, nor strictly speaking did it have a letter v for much of its history. Those characters came into use as a shorthand way of indicating that what linguists sometimes call a “glide” occurs where an i or a u is sandwiched between other stronger vowels. Those of you with a love of language should take a look at the previous sentence. It’s a good example of why it’s hard to explain these things in everyday speech. I wrote “where an i or a u is sandwiched”. Should I have written “where an i or an u is sandwiched”? Obviously, when I first wrote it I was thinking in English, and so wrote “a u” rather than “an u”. But after I wrote it I realized that the sounds I was talking about (and this is all about sounds, with the consequences for spelling of secondary importance) are the sounds of Latin. So thinking in Latin this time, and with a tweak to make that clear, the phrase is “ where a Latin i or an u is sandwiched…” That won’t make any sense to you unless you pronounce the u in "an u" as “oo”.

And so how do I pronounce Agave? How about ah-GAH-way?

The image above shows one of the rather ordinary plants now in the garden.

Morning Glories

This is the time of year when I begin to have vivid daydreams about morning glories, nasturtiums and poppies.

Today I collected seed of the small-flowered purple morning glory which has self-sown itself in this garden for years. I don’t know the origin of this plant. It just appeared one year, and since then it has made itself at home here and there in sunny places in the garden. Left to its own devices it’s weedy, but it’s easily controlled.

One of these years I want to plant a wall of this morning glory with cleome in front of it. There was an accidental close approach to this planting in the garden several years ago – the cleome and morning glory were both volunteers. The colors harmonize beautifully.

I don’t know the name of this morning glory, and I can’t match it exactly with pictures in seed catalogs. Among the candidate names are ‘Star of Yelta’, ‘Grandpa Otts’, ‘Kniola’s Black’, ‘Kniola’s Black Knight’, ‘Kniolians Black’

Buds

I'm beginning to wonder if I need an eye exam.

This evening I had some time to kill, so I ducked into the local Borders book store and wandered over to the gardening section. There I found a bewildering array of books, about most of which I knew nothing. My eyes glazed over as I scanned the shelves. I kept looking for something to peek into for a while to help pass the time. And then I saw them, three compact little volumes with mauve pink covers. I thought the title said "bulbs", and so I pulled one out to take a look. As soon as I got it out from the shelf I realized I had made a bit of a mistake. The title didn't say "bulbs", it said "buds" , as in marijuana buds. I sort of furtively looked around to see if anyone was watching, and quickly shoved the book back into its lair. Then I noticed that it had lots of companions: a good foot of shelf space seemed to be devoted to this topic.

Years ago I had a coworker who had heard about my interest in gardening through the grapevine. Every once in a while he would come over to talk gardening. He was interested in only one thing: growing plants under high intensity lights. I think I know what he was trying to grow. Maybe I should go back to Borders and buy that book for him. Come to think of it, maybe I should check that book to see if he wrote it.

The would-be "buds" in the image above were photographed in the parking lot of a national park. Let's reconstruct the crime scene: nearly exhausted or at any rate bored driver pulls into the lot, parks, notes the view, opens the car windows, starts to roll a joint, picks out the seeds, tosses the seeds out the window...Now fast forward several months. I drive into the same lot, equally exhausted and bored. I open the car window. I don't have any joints, so I think of something else to do. I scan the surrounding vegetation for something interesting. My eyes hit on some suspicious looking leaves growing at the very edge of the lot. Can it be...it sure is.

Months later I come back to the same lot and try to find the same parking place and the suspicious plant. It's gone: there's no trace whatever, not even a stump. Evidently I'm not the only field botanist with a well trained eye who uses that parking lot. Actually, I prefer to imagine some poor kid working as a lawn mower for the summer to save money for college hitting some unexpected pay dirt.

Brown Marmorated Stinkbug

For the last several years our house has been selected by brown marmorated stinkbugs, Halyomorpha halys, as an ideal wintering place. These bugs (and they are true bugs) are harmless to humans, although in some areas they are pests of plants grown in agriculture. The stink is not always apparent, and it is not aggressively offensive when it is. But it’s not an odor you would want around food or filling a room.

As explained in the attached links, this is not a native species and has probably been in the area for only about a decade.

http://hgic.cantongroup.com/_media/documents/publications/Stink_Bug_Pest_Alert.pdf

http://www.ento.psu.edu/extension/factsheets/brownMarmoratedstinkbug.htm

Since they’re harmless and we’re not growing soybeans in the garden, I leave them alone. There is something oddly satisfying about having live bugs in the house during the winter. It’s akin to the satisfaction I get from pets and house plants. And it reminds me of Gilbert White's rather detached observations about the crickets and "Blattae molendinariae" which swarmed his hearth. It's interesting that he referred to crickets in English, but used Latin to describe the other; furthermore, he describes the war waged against the latter, but mentions no such activities directed against the crickets. This suggests that our aversion to the "blattae" is an ancient one. Pest species are not welcome, but others such as jumping spiders are. Jumping spiders and stink bugs share a seeming lack of concern for the presence of humans. And they both are apt to position themselves where they can look right at you. They are largely inoffensive as housemates, but that lack of fear is apt to result in close encounters. The jumping spiders seem to specialize in window sills. But the stink bugs get around. One night I was reading while eating a bowl of popcorn; I crunched down on something which was not popcorn, and my mouth filled with the distasteful stink of one of the bugs.

Stink bugs move slowly as a rule and when disturbed fly. They fly at night, too, as I discovered recently as one kept dive bombing my head during the night. Some people will pay hundreds of dollars to fly to Mexico during the winter for the privilege of eating and sleeping where insects are active. We’ve got our own, and they’re free.

Plants of interest on New Year's Day

Crocus ochroleucus

Crocus pallasii

Dryopteris sieboldii



Polystichum polyblepharum

Helleborus cf. torquatus

Arum italicum

Arum italicum

The New Year began pleasantly enough. When I walked Biscuit this morning the sun was warm on my face, and the air had a bit of the scent of fallen leaves. Here and there patches of grass were still brilliant green in the low slanting light. The weather forecast had called for a progressively colder day, but even now at about 3 P.M. the temperature is agreeably above 50º F.

And there are still flowers in this New Year’s Day garden: one of the Camellia sasanqua is still full of shapely, colorful bloom. And in one of the cold frames, Crocus ochroleucus and C. pallasii are blooming. The latter is a surprise. Although I check the cold frame in question daily, I did not see this one coming. Crocus pallasii is not one of the more prepossessing species of Crocus; it’s a member of the saffron group, and as it usually blooms here it has a stringy, skinny look about it. But the plant blooming today has produced a fine, well rounded bloom which has the characteristic fragrance of its group.

In a season such as this one, marked as it has been by relatively mild temperatures, one would expect snowdrops of one sort or another to be in bloom. There is one clump of Galanthus elwesii in advanced bud; but the flowers, already hanging, have not actually opened yet.

Flowers are not the only source of interest today. Several winter green herbaceous plants are worth a look. The very unusual fern Dryopteris sieboldii will generally get the attention of garden visitors. It’s one of those plants which does not look real. First of all, it does not look like what most people expect a fern to look like. Then there is the texture of the plant: it looks as if it might have been made of plastic or rubber. It’s a good garden plant here, and that continues to surprise me. However, it never seems to have more than two or three fronds at a time.

Another fine fern now is Polystichum polyblepharum. This one looks like a typical fern, and has the added advantages of being evergreen and having a seemingly lacquered finish. I’ve seen more than one garden visitor reach down to touch it – to check if it is real?

Many of the hellebores are in fine shape now, too. Shown here is one bought as Helleborus torquatus. Many hellebores are worth collecting entirely for their foliage, and this one and similar forms are good examples. Another hellebore well worth having for its foliage is Helleborus multifidus; the forms I grow here have good foliage but do not seem to stand up to the winter well – and thus no image today.

This is peak season for the Italian arum, Arum italicum: the foliage has not yet reached its maximum development, but it has already reached that most improbably lush phase which makes it hard to believe that it can be a hardy garden plant. This is another plant well worth collecting for the variations in its foliage. Two forms are shown here; there are others in the garden.

The mystery chirper

I've never advanced much beyond the commoner birds in terms of identifying them by sound, and today the garden gave me a real workout.

I was heading out to the N end of the pond to check out some potted bulbs there. As I approached the area, I heard a sprightly chirping. I stopped to listen. I could not make out where it was coming from: was it from the boxwood bush about six feet in front of me? Was it coming from the tangle of roses on the pergola? Was it a bird? And if so, what kind of bird was it? Whatever it was, it kept it up as I got closer. And the sound varied - no two calls were alike exactly. The more I listened, the more confused I got. The sound had the timbre of a grackle or red-winged blackbird sometimes. But the song was so varied that I was convinced that it had to be a mockingbird.

I carefully approached the boxwood: the sound continued, but intermittently. I started to pish to get it to come out - to no avail. The sound died down awhile, and then it started up again. It was surprisingly loud and clear, like a wren's call but without the suave sound quality. Was it a distress chirp? Was it an injured bird which had survived a hawk attack and was now hiding in the boxwood? I moved around to the other side of the boxwood to be near the N end of the pergola, to be able to triangulate in on the sound. From there I realized that the sound was not coming from the boxwood bush. It seemed to be coming from the roses on the pergola. The chirping continued: again, whatever it was it was not at all bothered by my presence. The sound would go on for a while, then stop. Sometimes it was loud and continuous; sometimes it was softer and less frequent.

I carefully scrutinized the roses on the pergola, expecting to see a fat mockingbird gorging on rose hips. But no mockingbird was to be seen.

As I stood there just under the N end of the pergola looking for the mystery chirper, it started up again. This time it was only a foot or two from my right ear. The sound was surprisingly vibrant, an almost melodious assortment of chirps, trills and crude scales.

And then I saw it. At the end of the pergola, where the long beams had come down with their burden of rose canes, one of the long beams had fallen into the grasp of a vine otherwise tightly coiled around one of the pergola piers. And right there was where the sound was coming from. Right from that little tangle of vine, long beam and pergola pier the mystery piper continued to produce sound. Then the wind stopped and the sound stopped. I waited a bit, and then the wind started up again. And a new burst of chirping sound gushed out. I stood there quietly for a few moments, watching it carefully. It was hard to believe that this little nothing could be making so much birdlike sound. There it was, at most two or three inches long: a spot where the long beam cradled in the vine rubbed against the pergola pier and produced this sound every time the wind blew.

Even Biscuit seemed puzzled by it.

The Algerian Iris

The tradition of making lists of plants blooming on Christmas or New Year’s Day is one which has never really caught on in our climate. Winters here have generally been too severe to make it worthwhile. Yet recent winters have more people giving the garden a careful look during the holiday season.

This year the garden has given me an utterly unexpected gift: late this morning I noticed a newly opened flower of Iris unguicularis, the Algerian iris. This particular plant has been blooming since sometime in November. It was obtained in the summer of 2005, planted against the house wall with a SW exposure in the rain shadow of the eaves – and then forgotten. It first bloomed in late November of 2006: that first flower (shown above) was improbably big for something blooming outside at that time of year.

This area is not Algerian iris country. English writers from Gertrude Jekyll a century ago to those of the present have celebrated this beautiful plant, and many American gardeners have tried to grow it. I certainly did several decades ago; but that trial, although it resulted in healthy, robust plants, produced not one mature bloom. There were buds, but never a flower. The buds always froze before they opened. I eventually gave up on the plant.

Then another local gardener had a repeat of my luck: he tried the plant and it never bloomed for him. He dug the plant, divided it up, and offered the pieces at a meeting of our local rock garden group. I was not the only person to take a piece, but as far as I’m aware I’m the only one who has reported success with it. The very mild weather has a lot, maybe everything, to do with it.

Now that I’ve seen what this plant can do, I might make room for it in the protected cold frame. That way, if typical winters return, I’ll still have these amazing blooms to brighten the shortest days of the year.

A small pond in late autumn

I think I enjoy the pond more at this time of year than any other. By now I’ve gotten used to the lack of lively vegetation and flower interest in the garden. The pond has been tidied up a bit, rank growth trimmed back and the various stuff floating on the water surface either removed or much reduced. With the surface clear, the pond now reflects the sky much better. The water in the pond is a warm brown now; it reminds me of tea. This is the perfect background for goldfish, and this time of year is the peak goldfish viewing season. The fish here are so-called feeder fish, fish sold to be fed alive to other animals. They cost about 12 cents each, and every so often I release a few dozen into the pond. Birds (kingfishers and herons are often seen in the neighborhood, but I’ve never seen either at the pond although on two occasions I did see herons in the garden), cats and raccoons take some, maybe most, of them, and eventually they disappear. Then I add more.
The fish are still active, and the ever changing patterns they produce in the pond are an invitation to relax. On a day with sunshine, no wind and air temperatures above freezing, the benches on either end of the pond are very inviting, and it’s surprising how quickly the time passes when you’re absentmindedly watching the schools of goldfish.

A holiday present for the birds

We enjoy lots of light in our small house due to several sets of sliding glass doors. One set of these doors is placed exactly opposite to a large window on the opposite side of the house. You can see right through the house due to the placement of these windows. When the crepe myrtle is in full bloom, the red glow suffuses several rooms. Visitors walk into the front door and get a sliver of a view of the back garden and the light pouring in from that side of the house. Unfortunately, birds also seem to think they can fly right through the house. I’ve often wondered how birds aim themselves when flying. Evidently many simply fly into the light, and thus the great danger to them of a pane of glass between them and a light source.
It’s not unusual to be sitting and reading and to hear the unnerving thump of something hitting the glass door on the back side of the house. I can remember only one occasion when a bird hit the glass and died on the spot. By the time you get to the glass to investigate the thump the bird is gone.
The bird might be gone, but to judge by what they leave behind it’s hard to believe that they are not injured. In the right light one can make out the oily impression of wings and bodies on the glass. Sometimes there are feathers at the scene. Two days ago I was sitting near the glass when a thump much louder than usual interrupted my reading. I looked up to see a big bird making a bee line for the woods. I’m not sure what kind of bird it was – I saw black and white, maybe it was a woodpecker. When I examined the glass I was heart-struck: there was blood on the glass. To be injured is bad enough, but to be injured going into the winter strikes me as a death sentence.
I went out and bought and today hung a 7’ x 20’ piece of a product called Bird-X along the eve of the house. It hangs about two feet from the house wall, so any bird hitting it will almost certainly not crash hard into the glass. Bird-X is made to protect fruit and vegetables from bird damage: this installation will protect the birds from themselves.

Vita Sackville-West Rediviva

More YouTube adventures: last night I stumbled on another incredible voice from the past. This time it isn’t an opera singer, but the voice of someone whose name every gardener knows: Vita Sackville-West. She is reading from her poem The Land.
Here’s a link to the recording:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjXvkRhoXXs

What does the gardener do during the winter?

What does the gardener do during the winter? Even as recently as five years ago, the answer would have been very different for most of us. Now, it's easy to kill hours with email,
Wikipedia, Google, blogging, web site design and You Tube. I spend a lot of time checking out You Tube music videos. Amazing things turn up now and then. For instance, a few months ago I stumbled on a audio/film fragment which had me high as a kite for days: in this brief segment one hears and sees Luisa Tetrazzini singing along with a Caruso recording. Tetrazzini made plenty of acoustic recordings early in the twentieth century, mostly before the First World War. But I was not aware of any electric recordings. When listening to the old acoustic recordings, the question which immediately arises is "what did they really sound like?" Tetrazzini was one of the great vocal miracles of her time, maybe of all time. Who wouldn't want to hear that voice as it really sounded? So this brief fragment is precious. It catches Tetrazzini late in her life, at her "retirement" after a career which was fabulous and flamboyant but ultimately left her a ward of the state.
Years ago in the liner notes to a set of reissues of Tetrazzini's recordings I read the story about some fans who visited her in old age. Curious about the state of her once famous voice, they discovered that it took little prompting to get the once famous singer to go to the piano and sing a scale topped with a rousing high C. Tetrazzini is then reported to have triumphantly proclaimed: "I'm old, I'm fat, I'm ugly, but I'm still La Tetrazzini".
The film clip opens with Tetrazzini, obviously fat, probably old but hardly ugly, listening to a Caruso recording. The first time I heard this I experienced incredibly acute anticipation: Tetrazzini does not sing at first, and you can see her making the sort of movements which singers do before singing. And then suddenly that voice...she still had it in abundance.
Here's the link to the Tetrazzini film clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMXScCik6Jo

Real biscuits

To the extent that frequency of consumption is a criterion, biscuits must be my favorite food. There can not have been many weeks in the last forty years of my life when I have not made biscuits at least once. Although it takes only a few minutes to make them, and you can attend to other morning things while they are cooking, they really are not suitable to work mornings. A good biscuit deserves generous treatment, both in the matter of accompanying spreads and in the time allotted to their enjoyment.
As it turns out, there are several schools of biscuit making. The prevailing school demands soft flour, minimal handling of the dough, buttermilk and baking soda. I’m not an adherent of that school. My biscuits are made with butter, milk, aluminum-free baking powder and unbleached, all purpose flour (a flavorful flour can make a world of difference). They get a lot of handling: they are, in effect, a variation of what is sometimes called rough puff pastry. The dough is kneaded until it is very tight. If I’m preparing them for company, during the last few minutes of kneading the dough is not folded: the rolled dough is cut in half, the resulting halves are neatly stacked, and then the rolling and stacking is continued until I’m satisfied. If I’m making them for myself, I sometimes omit the stacking step. The biscuits in the image were not stacked. In either case, for the final rolling the pastry board is sprinkled with white corn meal. This seemingly minor detail adds an unexpected and delicious element to the finished biscuit. After this final rolling, the block of dough is cut with a knife into squares or rectangles.
The biscuits are then arranged on a baking sheet sprinkled with more white corn meal and cooked in a hot oven (in fact, typically in the gas grill outside at maximum heat) until they begin to smell delicious. Typical recipes call for ten or so minutes: that’s fine if you like raw dough. I’ve been known to cook them until the edges begin to show minute black flecks.
The biscuits in the image show a frequent variation: they were topped with grated cheddar cheese before being baked.
A plate of these biscuits makes a wonderful way to fuel up before a busy day of garden work.

The Tweed Months

It’s not just the shift from daylight savings time which distracts me at this time of year. There is something else going on, something a lot more subtle. Each year at this time my aesthetic sensibilities undergo a change. Sometime in November, when the oaks begin to color, the autumnal perspective begins to prevail: I think of this time of year as the Tweed months. The broad spectrum and varied intensities of summer color and early fall leaf color are replaced by a palate which is much narrower in scope and generally much more subdued in intensity. Summer is an ever changing piano, early fall a harpsichord, and these weeks before the arrival of really brutal weather a clavichord. And each year it surprises me that these diminished means have the power to evoke such intense feelings. This is the beginning of my favorite part of the year. The improbably lush greenness of Italian arum makes such a fitting contrast to the newly fallen oak leaves, especially after a wet period when the leaves not only take on a richer color but also yield their sweet fragrance. All of my life I’ve loved the fragrance of damp, newly fallen oak leaves. If heaven has a fragrance, this is it. It’s a fragrance which is nearly duplicated in the flowers of Camellia sasanqua, and since the camellia blooms when the oak leaves are falling, the comparison is easy to make.
Just those three elements – the Italian arum, the oak leaves and the camellias - work together to form a seasonal garden as deeply moving as any. The appeal of this combination is not merely visual. You can certainly place those three plants so that they fulfill whatever design aspirations you might have. But that’s not the point. The oak leaves and the camellia flowers have the ability to move me on a much deeper level, as fragrances often do. And there is something very uplifting about the camellia and the arum at this time of year: as the days grow shorter and other plants are closing down for the season, they seem to be defying the general trend by surging into growth or bloom. They are doing something when the rest of the garden is dying. It’s this doing something which makes the difference: there are plenty of evergreen plants both herbaceous (such as Rohdea japonica) and woody (Skimmia and Sarcococca are favorites here) or neither one nor the other (Ruscus and Danaë) which are lovely at this time of year. But they are not doing anything right now (unless you count the static fruiting of the Ruscus and Danaë ). If you look around carefully, you’ll see lots of other little odds and ends which are wintergreen and have taken on a renewed glow as the deciduous trees lose their leaves and the light levels, overall dropping quickly, actually increase under the deciduous trees. Suddenly it seems there are tufts of vivid green mosses and liverworts. Surely they weren’t there all summer?
It’s when I begin to notice these things that I realize that I’ve finally made the transition from summer into late fall successfully.

Gardening in the cold

The transition from summer into fall is often an awkward one for me. First of all, there is the need to adjust to the change from daylight savings time to standard time. This throws me for a loop every year: it takes me weeks to get used to this. And there is a double whammy involved with this: the days are rapidly getting shorter at this time of year, and for weeks I wander around the house at 6 P.M. looking out at the surrounding blackness and wondering if it’s time to go to bed. Oh, it’s only 6:30? I guess I’ll force myself to stay up longer. What, it’s only 7? What can I do to stay awake for a few more hours? By 8:30 it hardly matters what I’m doing: I start to nod off. It’s now early December and I’m still struggling with this.
The other challenge at this time of year is to make the daylight hours pay. The mornings are cold, and if the day is cloudy and there is no sun, it takes real will power to get out there and address the cold, damp earth. As long as I’m dressed properly, once I get started I’m usually happy. But getting started is sometimes a problem.
And then there is this: somewhere I read a story in which one character upbraided another character for his decision to hire a sixty-five year old gardener: “he’ll never get anything done” the one said. Well guess what? I’ve hired a sixty-five year old gardener. He’s the only one I can afford. He’s got good intentions, but to tell the truth he works very deliberately, does not take instruction well, is very stubborn and can be a bit cranky when things don’t go well. On the other hand, he’s very versatile, and if the outdoor work gets him down, he simply comes in and starts to write blog entries or waste the day drifting from one You Tube music video to another.

Witch hazel two-for

I was standing in the kitchen the other day absentmindedly looking out over the garden. An unexpected cloud of yellow caught my eye: hundreds of soft yellow witch hazel flowers were blooming. The yellow was unexpected because the witch hazel which grows in that position is the orange-red cultivar ‘Feuerzauber’. What I was seeing were some maturing sprouts from the stock on which the named cultivar had been grafted.

If someone had told me about this happening in their own garden, I probably would have suggested that the yellow flowers were those of Hamamelis virginiana, a species sometimes used as a stock for choice cultivars. But now that I’ve seen these in my own garden, I wonder. Hamamelis virginiana as I know it as an element in the local flora has much smaller flowers than the ones I’m seeing on the plants now in bloom. But what other Hamamelis would be blooming at this time of year with plain yellow flowers?

Aeolian Woes

Last weekend I toured the garden checking for things to do before the ground freezes. The pergola caught my eye, and it occurred to me that the hurricane season had passed for this year without any wind problems. My forty foot pergola is built on the gravity principle: gravity is the only force holding it together. The strong wind yesterday revealed once again the limitations of that system. Today, all of the long runners and cross beams of the pergola are on the ground, blown down one by one in yesterday’s winds. The pergola piers themselves are still upright and wreathed in the collapsed tangle of climbing roses. This happened once before as the tail end of a hurricane passed through. I’ll be working alone as I attempt to put everything right, and past experience has shown me that it’s rough, painful work. As all real gardeners know, gardening is a blood sport. I’ve got enough to keep me busy for the next few weeks without the pergola problem, so the roses might very well spend the winter on the ground. If so, I’ll have to get them up before the buds for vegetative growth start to swell: once that happens, they will be too fragile to successfully withstand the rough work involved in pushing the canes back into position.

What happened to November?

November passed without a single blog entry: what was going on? Part of the explanation is that this year we experienced the most abrupt transition from summer weather to autumnal weather: over a matter of only days the heat and humidity ended and the rains began, rains accompanied by a roughly twenty degree drop in the daily temperature high.
In recent years November has emerged as the busiest and most important month in my gardening year. October used to be the most important, but in recent years October has in effect been a summer month: hot, humid and frost free right through the month. The prolonged heat and drought we experienced this year only exacerbated this trend. I like to wait until daytime temperatures don’t top 70º F before I take on the heavy work. As a result, none of that got done during October of this year.

In fact, it was well into November before I really got in the mood for gardening. Mail order bulbs have been on hand for months, but I had not the least interest in them. Now I’m pushing hard to get everything done before the ground freezes – if it does.

Are we witnessing the Mediterraneanization of our climate?