Cabin fever

While walking Biscuit the other day, I ran into one of my dog-walking gardening friends. I think of her as a friend because although I know little about her, I do know her name. With most of the dog-walkers I encounter, it’s the dog’s name I know and remember.

Susan reminded me that again this year a bus will travel from Brookside Gardens to the Philadelphia Flower Show. I’ve never been to the Philadelphia Flower Show, and this might be the year I do it. A half-century ago there was a respectable winter flower show in Washington, D.C. I remember three things in particular from those days. One is that it was the first time I ever smelled acacia (probably Acacia farnesiana). Another is that after the show was over, many of the exhibitors sold off their plants at reasonable prices. One year I came home with several potted palms which looked big at the show and looked gigantic when I got them into my bedroom. The third memory concerns what was called Dancing Waters. This was a display of fountains whose various gushes, spurts and sprays were coordinated with changing light effects and music being played in the background. I remember in particular being transfixed as the music played “Somewhere a voice is calling..." and the water and light worked their magic.

We gardeners frequently suffer from a particular sub-species of cabin fever: it’s the middle of winter, and we want lush, verdant, fragrant vegetation. We’ll do sometimes unreasonable things to get it. For some people a good flower show is the cure. In my case, this need has recently caused me to break a long standing self-imposed rule: stay away from orchids. I’m intrigued by them, beguiled by them – and I have no place to grow them. When I was a kid, one of the neighbors had some orchids growing (really dying) on a slab of wood hung over the kitchen sink. On the rare occasions when I saw these, I was filled with wonder: how could they survive without dirt? She also had “air plants” – various small nondescript bromeliads (probably Tillandsia plucked from the telephone lines in southern Florida) which reminded me of hard prickly clumps of tiny grasses. The popular horticultural press was full of advertisements which promised that you, too, can grow orchids, and plenty of people were trying. This was about the time that fluorescent lighting became readily available, and in that neighborhood there were plenty of orchids, bromeliads and gesneriads thriving under that miraculous lighting.

The last few weeks have seen the food stores and the big box stores full of inexpensive and gorgeous orchids. I think I’m right to say that $10 a pop is inexpensive. The temptation was too strong: the stunning Phalaenopsis seen above came home with me recently, and so did another charmer, an Oncidium noted for its intense chocolate-vanilla fragrance. Did I mention that I sneaked in a Paphiopedilum earlier last year? Obviously I’ve already got both feet firmly implanted in the quicksand: there is probably no turning back!

Three of the symptoms of my condition are shown above: top to bottom, an unnamed Phalaenopsis, and unnamed Paphiopedilum and and unnamed Oncidium. The Oncidium is the fragrant one, and is almost certainly of the well-known Sharri Baby grex.

Goodbye January 2010

An unexpectedly heavy snowfall yesterday has buried the garden. I was careful to cover the cold frames the day before. The low tonight is predicted to be about 12º F; early this morning it was about 10 º F. The snowfall however is a blessing: scattered here and there around the garden there are snowdrops more or less in bloom. The snow will protect them from the worst of the extreme cold.

I’m inclined to say that the best herbaceous plants for winter effect in our climate are Helleborus foetidus and Arum italicum. The former gives the correct impression that something is actually happening. The latter is so improbably lush whenever the temperature is above freezing that it brings on the very incorrect impression that the garden is not just sprouting but actively burgeoning.

Among woody plants, big plants of wintersweet are not to be scoffed at, but how rarely we see them in local gardens. Most gardeners are not aware that in our climate this is eventually a tree, not a shrub. Years ago I came across an old, neglected planting of Chimonanthus praecox which had been allowed to grow into the natural tree form of the plant: they were so large that I did not recognize them at first. The name wintersweet is very apt: the scent of this plant is very free on the air, much more so than that of the witch hazels. Lucky the gardener whose wintersweet has reached a size which allows free cutting of the branches in the winter.

But among woody plants the best for winter visual effect are the witch hazels. They are hardier than the wintersweet and offer a wider color choice which ranges among various yellows and oranges into rusty, ruby- and garnet-reds. Our appreciation of the flowers is much enhanced when the plants have a suitable background, for instance the foliage of some broad leaf evergreen. Ideally this background should be placed so that the witch hazel can be viewed with the sun to one’s back.

The one in the photos above is the cultivar ‘Feuerzauber’ (say foi-er-tsau-bear) which originated in the early twentieth century in Weener, Lower Saxony, Germany according to the account in Bean (Eighth Edition, fully revised). In modern German the witchhazels are sometimes called Die Zaubernüsse (from the words for magic and nut).

The big view image was made today: later, as the temperature rises, the petals will unfurl more and the overall effect will be better. But I’m not complaining! The close up is from 2006.

Yet another early daffodil

Back in mid-December the first of the hoop-petticoat daffodils began to bloom (and were quickly mutilated by snails). Those flowers came from a plant received as Narcissus albidus foliosus. This week, a look-alike daffodil with a confusingly similar name began to bloom. This one was received as Narcissus cantabricus foliosus. That’s it in the image above.

Whatever they are, they are little charmers. In the several years they have been here they have been erratic about time of bloom. This season I gave the bulb frame a good soak in late September; the little daffodils responded by quickly putting up foliage. Now, one by one, they are coming into bloom. The next to open will probably be one received under the name Narcissus albidus kesticus. These plants received as Narcissus albidus variants are probably better thought of as forms of N. cantabricus. But daffodil nomenclature has roiled in recent years, so all of these names are suspect in my opinion.

For more about the December-flowering one, see:
http://mcwort.blogspot.com/2009/12/daffodil-season-continues.html

In praise of cold frames

The mild weather has had me snooping around in the cold frames this week. I opened the cold frame which contains hundreds of pots of seed sown back in November. It’s always fascinating to see which seeds germinate in cold weather. This time I see various alliums, crucifers, umbellifers, crocuses (Crocus imperati) , fritillaries (Fritillaria tuntasia) and tulips (Tulipa cretica). This is exciting.

Another use for cold frames is the protection of marginally hardy plants or the protection of precocious blooms. For instance, I put a florists’ cyclamen in the cold frame sometime before Christmas, and it really seems to be taking to those conditions. Some Primula acaulis bought as flowering plants have settled right in – I expect them to bloom for weeks at least (unless I forget to open the frames on a sunny day and they get cooked). A rooted piece of Daphne odora is opening flowers now ,too.

Those of us who live in USDA zone 7 and who have read the British gardening literature experience a severe frustration with respect to winter blooming plants. Zone 7 is just a bit too cold to support a British-style winter garden. In some years it works; it works often enough to keep some of us interested in trying. But sooner or later the winter comes which closes the garden firmly for weeks on end. Almost all plants of which I’m aware with winter-blooming potential close down shop. Skunk cabbage is an exception, and isn’t it strange that almost everyone who knows and enjoys this plant is content to enjoy it in the wild: I have never seen it in a garden (there are seedlings here).

But let’s get back to the cold frames. We envy those British growers who tell us about a crocus season which lasts from sometime in September until sometime in March. That simply isn’t possible in the open garden here. But it is possible in a cold frame. And it’s not only possible for crocuses, it’s possible for daffodils and snowdrops, too. There has been a daffodil of one sort or another blooming in my protected cold frame since sometime in September. There have been snowdrops since mid November. Although most of the crocuses were moved to an unprotected bed two years ago, I did leave some corms of the Crocus sieberi cultivar ‘Firefly’ in the protected frame, and they are in bloom today. When grown in cold frames, all of these plants tend to have an extended bloom time – they last much longer (and in better condition) than they would in the open garden. A clump of Galanthus elwesii (the one I call my Christmas snowdrop) dug in bloom from the garden on December 18, 2009 is still in full bloom a month later!

Little rewards like this make the cold frames well worth the bit of bother they entail.

Early blooming Christmas roses

Several of my gardening friends and I have for years shared the pursuit of a sort of holy grail: a Christmas rose which really does bloom at Christmas. One garden we know about has such a plant, but its provenance is not known, and its performance from year to year seems a bit erratic. Hellebores of the Helleborus × hybridus sort are now truly common in local gardens, but few people seem to grow Helleborus niger. In fact, this species has a reputation for being difficult to grow, especially when compared to the easy growth of the members of the Helleborus × hybridus group.

Nurseries used to buy in bareroot Helleborus niger and then pot them up in a peat-based medium. That was a big mistake, and it got the plants off to a bad start. Not knowing any better, most buyers probably attempted to duplicate similar conditions in the garden. Such plants were probably doomed. Every once and a while a plant would take hold, and observant growers often noticed that such plants were near concrete. Eventually the word got around that it was neutral or alkaline soil which Helleborus niger needs.

Years ago I discovered that this species really goes to town in ComPRO (a composted sewage sludge product which contains loads of lime). I once dug a plant and tried to trace the root system: it went on for several feet before I gave up.

Yet even those of us who grow Helleborus niger successfully were still facing one major disappointment: our plants did not bloom until sometime in March.

German nurseries in the early twentieth century grew clones or seed grown strains of Helleborus niger selected for early bloom. But eventually, the emphasis among growers seems to have shifted from selection for bloom time to selection for large flowers. The plant I have had in my garden for decades produces very large flowers, flowers sometimes five inches in diameter – in early March!

The images above show two recent German tissue propagated clones selected for early bloom time. Each of these is said to begin blooming in November! The two cultivars shown are (above) ‘HGC Jacob’ aka ‘HGC Jacob Classic’ and (below) ‘HGC Josef Lemper’. I intend to grow these in a cold frame to give the early flowers every chance of developing well. And, plants growing in the protection of a cold frame are more likely to ripen viable seed.

I'm very excited to have acquired these plants. So excited that after taking the pictures and noticing that the blooms are mud-splashed, I've gone ahead with this entry. I'll try to get better images of cleaner blooms soon.

The daffodil season continues

Many gardeners know about fall and “spring” (really winter) blooming crocuses. Crocus collectors know that it’s possible (with the help of cold frames) to have crocuses of one sort or another blooming from sometime in September right through the end of the crocus season in March.

But hardly anyone, at least anyone in our climate, seems to realize that the daffodil season can be just as long – in fact, a bit longer. To be sure, this won’t happen in the open garden in most years. But with the help of a cold frame (and remember: cold frame means unheated frame), it’s possible to have daffodils blooming from September until the garden daffodils take over.
In the protected cold frame here the fourth daffodil of the season (the season which started in September) is now blooming: it came under the name Narcissus bulbocodium pallidus. That’s it in the image above. The season opened with Narcissus serotinus/miniatus in September, continued with Narcissus cantabricus foliosus, then flowered an unnamed Narcissus tazetta variant (still in full bloom) and now the little hoop petticoat has joined the party.

All of these are small-flowered plants with a wild, unimproved look about them. You probably wouldn’t look twice at them in mid-April during the peak of the daffodil season. But in the middle of January they have just what it takes to keep the flame flickering until the warmth and light return.

Evoking summer

I’m sick of shivering and looking at snow. I’ve had enough of winter; I want summer.

But winter is not all bad; if nothing else, it forces us to face up to all the indoor stuff we’ve been neglecting. Tonight I began to look over images from 2009 to see which if any deserve to be loaded up to the web site. But soon I was wandering and found the images above. The pond scene is from June of 2004. The image foreshortens the distance between the lythrum and the Japanese irises: it’s actually about twenty feet tip to tip.

What the picture does not convey is any sense of the heat and humidity we typically experience when these irises are blooming. And the picture can be enjoyed without the bother of mosquito bites. So winter does have its advantages, doesn’t it?

While I'm at it, here's another view from early summer. This view carries the eye down under the pergola to glimpse the path at the lower end of the garden. This axis is also easily enjoyed from my favorite seat in the fireplace room.

Happy New Year’s Day

The heavy snow which fell in late December is by now only evident in the shadier parts of the garden. For a week and a half the garden was buried under thick snow – in some parts of the garden it seemed to be over a foot and a half deep.

On December 18, after hearing the weather report, I dug the clump of snowdrops shown above and replanted them into one of the cold frames. They have been blooming there since. The snowdrop shown is my “Christmas snowdrop”, a plant selected from a mass planting of Galanthus elwesii in the front lawn.

I didn’t photograph this one until about 4:45 P.M. today – the sky was by then overcast and the sun was setting. So I used a flash; the flash used at close range rarely produces good results, but the image above will at least give you an idea of what this snowdrop is like.

Winter sweet and witch hazels were blooming before the big snowfall, but the snow was so deep that it kept me out of that part of the garden. Tomorrow I’ll check the back garden for signs of bloom on these winter-blooming shrubs.

Pangolins snuggled behind a rock...

Well, they do look a bit like the exposed tails of pangolins which have snuggled themselves behind the rock. They also look like some particularly large-scaled reptile sunning itself on a rock: the Australian pine cone skink Trachydosaurus rugosus comes to mind.

What are they? They are Euphorbia myrsinites, and in this case they are particularly well placed. Rocks set off this plant very well, although it does not require a rocky setting to grow well. This is a cold-hardy and easily grown perennial here in the greater Washington, D.C. area, although it does not seem to be long-lived. If the prospect of moving such a large boulder into the garden is daunting, try planting the plant on the flat with a mulch of crushed blue stone.

Wayne and I were visiting his mom in Bridgewater, Virginia earlier this week and these plants were seen on the grounds of the Bridgewater Home. Inside the Home we saw poinsettias everywhere; I wonder how many people realize that these "pangolin tails" are a close relative.

A thank you visit from a bird?

While working in the kitchen this morning, a flash of color just outside the big glass doors caught my attention. Something avian, relatively big, black, white and red was flapping on the bird netting. As my eyes focused I realized that it was a red-bellied woodpecker. I moved in to take a closer look, expecting the bird to fly away immediately, but it didn’t. Then I realized why: it was on the inner side of the bird netting, in the space between the bird netting and the house. It didn’t seem to realize that either end was wide open, and for a minute or two it thrashed as if it were a large insect in a spider web. Finally it figured out what to do and made a bee line for the woods. I like to think of this as a thank you visit: it was because a bird, probably a red-bellied woodpecker, slammed into the glass doors two years ago and left a bloody mark on the glass that I installed the bird netting. I’m pretty sure it has saved the lives of many birds in the meantime. It’s unlikely, but maybe the bird I saw today was the one which hit the glass years ago. Here’s a link to the original post on the bird netting: http://mcwort.blogspot.com/2007/12/holiday-present-for-birds.html

Death by gardening

Gardening can be dangerous, often in ways which are utterly unanticipated. Modern power tools can be limb or even life threatening in the hands of an exhausted or inattentive worker. Something as simple as a hammer misdirected can mash a finger tip and make the ensuing weeks miserable for the victim.

But even when you think you're being smart and careful, things happen. Here are two stories which recount times when I did something which, had the circumstances been slightly different, might well have cost me my life.

Both stories involve my preoccupation with collecting seeds: evidently I'm part squirrel. No matter where I am, if there are seeds to be gathered, I'm probably stuffing my pockets.

Years ago there was a good harvest of seeds from one of the aconites in the garden. The members of the genus Aconitum have two notable qualities: they produce handsome flowers, usually blue, and they have been used as very effective poisons since ancient times. These form seed capsules like those of columbines or delphiniums, and I had collected lots of these capsules which were full of seed. That evening after dinner I sat down to sort out the seeds and clean them, packed them away, and then went on to make a bowl of popcorn before turning in for the night. I picked out a book to read, got into bed, started to read and munch pop corn. At first I didn't notice anything, but then it became apparent that the pop corn was atypically bitter. And then it dawned on me: I had not washed my hands after handling the aconite seed. Aconites are notorious for their potent poisons. How much does it take to kill an adult human? I lay there experiencing a combination of nervousness and downright terror: was I going to die? The thought of dying itself did not bother me so much as the thought of dying so stupidly: I could see the newspaper article: Montgomery County gardener accidentally poisons self after handling toxic plant materials.

Since you're reading this, you know how the story turned out. In fact, there were no unpleasant aftereffects from ingesting whatever the bitter substance was. But before going to bed that night I had a long, serious talk with myself about some of the stupid things I do.

Here's another one: about thirty years ago, when AIDS was just coming into public consciousness, I was down in Adams Morgan one evening walking somewhere along Columbia Rd. This is a part of the city full of night spots which draw the sort of street activities, legal and illegal, engaged in by people out for a night of pleasure. Although it was dark, the streets were well lit. There were some ginkgo trees, and they were dropping fruit. I wanted some ginkgo seeds, so I decided to look around on the ground to see if I could find them.

The seeds on the sidewalk all seemed to have been crushed, so I decided to look under a low hedge which grew along the sidewalk. Little light penetrated there, and so I was depending on my sense of touch to find the ginkgo seeds. As I ran my hand over the surface of the ground, I suddenly felt a sharp, penetrating prick. My first thought: I had been stuck by a used hypodermic syringe tossed into the bushes by an AIDS infected drug addict.

For a few terrifying, confusing moments I didn't know what to do and wondered if my life was about to take a dramatic turn for the worse. I tried to see if it was in fact a hypodermic syringe, but it was too dark to see.

And then I got a good look at the hedge: even in the dark I could see what they were - they were pyracantha, the shrub aptly named fire thorn. I had been jabbed plenty of times in my life by pyracantha thorns; but this was the first time it was such a relief for it to have happened.

Sedum 'Cape Blanco'

The little plant shown here is a sedum native to the west coast of North America. You will usually find it offered as Sedum spathulifolium 'Cape Blanco', but a Google search also turned up S. spathulifolium ssp. pruinosum 'Cape Blanco' and Gormania spathulifolia. Although sedums as a group are among the easiest plants to grow successfully in local gardens, this one is an exception. I've acquired it more than once over the years, and each time I soon lost it. I've mentioned this to other more experienced local growers, and their experience has been the same. It wasn't until I began to learn how to grow the bulbs from the west coast that I got a clue to what this sedum needs. What it apparently needs is a dryish summer and, probably, a bit of winter protection.

The one shown in the image above was acquired in May of this year. I kept it under the eaves (and thus in the rain shadow of the roof overhang) but in bright light for the summer. It's going to spend the winter in one of the cold frames.

The spirit of William Morris

It was cold last night; the temperature at 7:30 this morning was about 25 º F.

These cold nights bring with them a new responsibility for me: I have to remember to close the cold frames each afternoon. I do this when the sun begins to go down, ideally as soon as the sun no longer directly strikes the cold frames. Cold frames are like a dog: they don’t require much attention, but they do require your attention at least twice a day. And like dogs they are well worth it.

No, the cold frames are not bursting with bloom right now, but they are full of interest. It’s a real pleasure to go out on a cold morning and peer through the glass light and see signs of life. The cold frames here have a primary purpose of housing a wide collection of marginally hardy bulby odds and ends. But each year I slip in various things which provide a nice contrast to the largely grassy foliage of the bulbs. Certain woody plants for instance provide a good change of pace. This year the rooted cutting of Daphne odora already shows flower color. A hardy gardenia, a new Ruscus, several asarums, some Selaginella, rosemary and Cistus psilosepalus all provide foliage interest and, in the case of the flowering plants, the promise of flowers and fragrance eventually.

The cold frame also provides an answer to the question of what to do with the florist’s cyclamen. The house is too warm and the garden is too cold. It turns out that the cold frame is just right: the glass light of the cold frame bears a flourish of frost flowers on cold mornings, but under the glass the bright red flowers of the florist’s cyclamen presents a burst of intense color.

A clump of snowdrops dug from the garden this week now blooms serenely under the glass. Another sort of snow drop is all over the news now: beginning tomorrow night, we are expected to have a 5-12” snow fall.

I opened this piece by writing that there was not much in bloom in the cold frames now. But one of the less protected cold frames offered an unexpected seasonal bouquet yesterday morning. I don't know what I did to deserve such a decorative acanthus-leaf pattern of frost flowers: it's as if the spirit of William Morris himself had worked over the under surface of the light. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Snowdrops of late autumn

The nature of our winters here on the east coast is such that any plant which tries to bloom during the winter is up against huge odds. The winter-flowering plant game is a dicey one here. Winter here almost always eventually takes a big bite out of the garden. And that seems to take a big bite out of local gardeners’ enthusiasm for winter flowering plants. Recent winters have been so mild that new gardeners will be in for a nasty surprise if old-style killer winters ever return.

Decades ago I tried two of the autumn-flowering snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis reginae-olgae (as it was called back then) and something called Galanthus nivalis corcyrensis. Neither persisted for long in the open garden. It was a real bother to acquire these from UK sources (does anyone else remember Mr. Mars of Haselmere?), and I made no rush to replace them.
Now, years later, I have a renewed interest in the snowdrops which flower at this time of year. I've selected two here which I call my Thanksgiving snowdrop and my Christmas snowdrop. They really do flower on or near the dates suggested by their names.

The Thanksgiving snowdrop is a one-spot Galanthus elwesii sort. It has a largish, slender flower but is otherwise not very prepossessing. Its only claim to my attention is its blooming season.
The Christmas snowdrop (it's just beginning to bloom now) is a typical two-spot Galanthus elwesii, with softly rounded ample flowers smaller than those of the Thanksgiving sort but more substantial.

Both of these are clumpers, and with luck there will eventually be a nice patch of each. Each of these grew for decades in the lawn; it was only when I realized that their season of bloom was not an anomaly that I marked them for cosseting. They now grow in the cold frames where their flowers are protected should the weather suddenly turn nasty.

These Galanthus elwesii forms seem to be indifferent to our local weather: plants in full bloom don't seem to suffer when the temperature plunges into the single digits F; mechanical damage is another matter. Flowers are on rare occasions destroyed by severe weather, but the plants themselves seem not to suffer at all. I suspect that in the long run these Galanthus elwesii variants will prove to be much better autumn and early winter flowering garden plants than Galanthus reginae-olgae and similar forms in our climate.
　
I might have another group of late-autumn snowdrops on hand. A friend gave me some plants of Galanthus elwesii sorts which, when I visited her garden a week of so ago, were in full bloom out in the open. It will be interesting to see what these do when they settle down and bloom in my garden.

Laurus nobilis

One other use for the cold frames is to get marginally hardy broad-leaf evergreens off to a good start. Newly rooted cuttings not yet sufficiently well established to spend the winter in the open garden benefit from a winter vacation in the cold frame. And newly cut branches to be rooted during the winter sometimes perform well in the cold frame.

This year I have several such newly cut branches which I hope will find life in the protected cold frame agreeable: my friend Alice gave me some cuttings of her bay tree, Laurus nobilis. The last time I saw her plant it was about head height and apparently very well sited.

Bay is one of those storied plants which any gardener who both reads and cooks must know about and want to grow. Bay is almost unknown as a garden plant in this area. Apparently there are forms of Laurus nobilis which will endure the winters here, but they are not readily available in the nursery trade. What are readily available are plants of uncertain hardiness. They are comparatively expensive, too.

Here and there in the greater Washington, D.C. area are bay trees well established and thriving. Yet as far as I know, no one has ever offered rooted cuttings of these plants commercially. I’ve heard that they are hard to root.

So those bay cuttings now inserted into the ground in the protected cold frame are a small experiment. Will they root during the cold winter months? I hope so: I’ve wanted a bay tree of my own established in the garden for a long time. And if cuttings don't root and instead die, I can always collect the leaves for cooking.

A very good ice cream can be made by infusing the milk and cream to be used for the custard base with bay leaf. It's one of my favorites.

Daphne odora

Last year my friend Hilda gave me a pot of newly rooted cuttings of Daphne odora. For her, this plant grows as if it were Forsythia. She has bushes the size of Volkswagens.

Here in my neighborhood, Daphne odora is a fickle plant: typically it thrives just long enough to beguile the grower – and then it suddenly dies. For that reason, among others, I didn’t really know what to do with the rooted cuttings she gave me. They were in a pot, so I put the pot into the protected cold frame and more or less forgot about it. There were two cuttings, and one of them quickly died. Later I noticed that the remaining cutting had flower buds; and eventually these bloomed and gave me a chance to experience the wonderful fragrance.

It’s now over a year later, and the cutting is still in the same pot. What I thought earlier were buds for leaf growth have swollen enough for me to see that they are flower buds: it’s going to bloom again! Evidently it likes life in the protected cold frame.

Another cold frame

I quickly put together another cold frame today. This one is beside the existing protected cold frame. I put it there to take advantage of the site: it’s sheltered by a thick box hedge, gets the heat reflected from the house wall and the heat which seeps from the building itself, and it gets sun much of the day during the winter. So far, I’m very favorably impressed with what I can grow in the protected cold frame.

This new frame will not be quite so cozy. For one thing, it projects beyond the house wall a couple of feet. And the part which projects does so into a raised bed – the back side of this new frame will not have the house wall to shelter its full length.

Cold frames are a valuable garden amenity at this time of year. I think of them as the ideal substitute for snow cover. In fact, they are better than snow cover because they allow the light to penetrate to the plants freely. I use the cold frames for several main purposes. For one, they house a wide variety of plants which need a cold winter but which are not adapted to the sort of winters we experience here (i.e. no reliable snow cover). Dozens of storied winter growing plants from climates like that of the Mediterranean flourish in my protected cold frame.

Cold frames are also the place to winter newly received nursery stock (i.e. all those impulse purchases you made as the season drew to an end and desperate retailers slashed their prices).

The primary intended use for the one built today is to house the overflow of marginally hardy plants such as members of the genus Arum. These plants take a lot of space; those I planted into the ground of the protected cold frame last year as small plants came back this year as big bruisers. This summer I intend to spread them out in this new frame.

The daffodil season continues...

The daffodil season continues here. The little white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils are blooming. I’m not the only one enjoying them: as soon as the buds begin to swell, little snails move in and feast of the fresh flowers. Next May we will have lived in this house for fifty years. We did not have snails until about three years ago. They probably came in with nursery stock; by now they have made themselves very much at home.

These snails bring back a childhood memory: when I was six or seven years old, I met a neighbor who kept aquarium fish. I told him about the snails I had seen around our doorsteps, and he asked me to collect some for his aquarium fish. When I gave him the snails, he let me watch as he dumped them into the aquarium and the fish (gouramis as I recall) quickly snapped them up. There was another lesson here, too: I learned the association between snails and chalky sites. The snails gathered around the door stoops which were of concrete poured only a year or so previously.

What are these little daffodils? They came under the name Narcissus albidus ver. foliosus, but current usage makes the name albidus a synonym of one of the forms of Narcissus pseudonarcissus, a very different daffodil indeed. The name Narcissus foliosus is currently accepted, and it’s used for those little white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils from northwestern Africa once called Narcissus monophyllus. This is probably what the daffodils blooming now are, although there is a chance that they are forms of the very similar European Narcissus cantabricus. Whatever they are, I’m glad to have them.

Also in bloom is one of the white-flowered Narcissus tazetta. These are noted for their intense, potent fragrance. If they are kept cool, one flower cluster can bloom for weeks. To appreciate what a treasure these are, grow them in a cold frame as cold (but above freezing) as possible. A light freeze will probably not damage them. Then, every time you open the cold frame you will be enveloped in a cloud of fragrance.

Easing one's way into entomophagy

I pity those born into cultures in which highly spiced foods prevail. Once one is accustomed to such foods, the rest of the world’s foods must seem boring indeed. But to someone raised on pabulum, the world has an immense horizon of potentially new tastes. And while it’s true that American food in the early twentieth century had already progressed beyond pabulum for at least important meals, menus of the time reveal that a lot of preparations based on starches softened in various liquids were apt to appear at meals throughout the day.

As a nation we’ve come a long way from the cooking practices which prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century. With certain exceptions, any reasonably sophisticated contemporary palate stands to be utterly unimpressed by the sort of foods our grandparents esteemed. Soft, gray, bland: this is not visually exciting food. But what it lacks in visual appeal it often more than makes up in flavor. Yet those flavors tend to be gentle flavors.

It was probably Italian food, and specifically pizza, which forever changed the American palate. In early twentieth century cookbooks there are recipes for various seemingly Italian preparations, but they read as chilly, dull attempts at imitating the real thing: no sunshine, no sparkle, no wit, no attitude - and no garlic! At first glance, French cooking seems better represented, and perhaps it was. But the translations must have been poor because the results have a distinctly American middle-of-the-road quality. Some of the Indian food we encounter here now is at the same stage: tamed beyond recognition but tamed to sell.

In reading Mrs. Fox, it struck me as odd that when she discussed basil, and went on to describe its culinary uses, there is no mention of pesto. And if the word pizza appears in her work , I have not found it. In other passages it is clear that her palate is very much one of the America of her time. In the discussion of rosemary, no culinary uses are discussed. This brought to mind Elizabeth David’s comment about the unpleasant effect produced when the spiky leaves appear in food. Yet Mrs. Fox goes on later to mention culinary uses of rue of all things: people eat rue? Evidently they do (or did). She even quotes Boulestin and Hill: “chopped leaves and brown bread make good sandwiches.”

Mrs. Fox mentions crême renversée, but either the meaning of that term has changed since her time or she was simply mistaken about its meaning, for of strawberries she writes “But best of all uses is to eat the berries with sugar and the thick, clotted cream of Devonshire, called crême renversée in France.” Here’s a link to a site which discusses crême renversée and shows its similarity to caramel flan:
http://www.latartinegourmande.com/2006/09/26/creme-renversee-of-my-dreams-creme-renversee-de-mes-reves/

Here’s another example of Mrs. Fox’s solidly American palate (and of her solidly early-twentieth century grasp of grammar) : in her discussion of coriander, she wrote frankly “the leaves taste horribly, and since they look very like those of anise, one should be careful not to pick them by mistake for the salads” and in her account of chervil “ when one goes to pick the leaves of the Umbelliferae for the salad, one is apt to mistake the coriander for the leaves of the cumin, or anise, a fatal dampening of ardor for the eating of herbs.”

I wonder what she would have thought of my comparison of the smell of cilantro (coriander leaves) to the smell of brown marmorated stink bugs. Actually, what I really wonder is what she would have made of the current cilantro craze which has swept American cuisine. Are we about to become a nation of bug eaters?

Brown Marmorated Cilantro

My bedtime reading for the last few nights, Helen Morgenthau Fox’s Gardening With Herbs from 1938, was prompted by a sudden recurrence in my interest in culinary herbs. Certain herbs I grow yearly, and they are so much a part of the gardening experience that I’ve long ceased to think of them as “herbs” in a specifically culinary sense. Although I do use them in food preparation, more than that I simply like to have them around to enjoy their scents. Typically, they never even get planted into the garden but instead spend the summer in pots out on the deck. Various basils and thymes, lemon verbena, rose geranium, rosemary, chervil and chives are personal favorites. A gardening friend brought some fresh, locally grown bay cuttings to a recent meeting of our rock gardening group, and the several which came home with me give hope that one day there might be a bay tree established in the ground here.
It makes better sense to buy some herbs than give them space in the garden. Chervil and cilantro are good examples, but try to find a grocer who sells fresh chervil. Cilantro on the other hand is now readily available throughout the year.
What does cilantro taste like? Wayne calls it soap plant, and indeed it is sometimes described as having a soapy taste. But this afternoon, another – and maybe more apt – comparison occurred to me. While preparing some cilantro for a sandwich today, I noticed that cilantro smells the way the brown marmorated stink bug smells! This is not so far-fetched as it seems. Cilantro, which in American usage refers almost exclusively to the leaf, is the plant from which coriander (again, in American usage this word almost exclusively refers to the seed) is obtained. I have a hunch that some translations from European languages into English fail to make this distinction. For instance, somewhere I read that Colette is said to have said that coriander smells like bed bugs. Most accounts say that coriander (the seeds) smell like burnt orange peel. Many people who eschew the fresh leaf of cilantro use and esteem the seeds, coriander, freely. Perhaps Colette was on a first name basis with bedbugs, but the word coriander itself is derived from the classical Greek word coris which means bedbug, and surely she knew that.
Now let’s switch briefly to zoology: bed bugs and marmorated stink bugs are related: both are true bugs. Evidently they share the family body odor problem.