Oak Leaf Hydrangeas (Quercifolia)

Nature can be rough on everyone, but especially on gardeners who expect things, like the plants we put in our gardens looking like the pictures in catalogues. Not enough that we deal with drought one week, deluge the next, wild temperature swings, hard frost just as the peach blossoms come into full bloom, you name it. Nature giveth, and Nature taketh away. As with this summer. Nature gave us more than enough rain – not steady mind you, but in monsoon-then-drought-then-monsoon rotation. I’m not really complaining – it’s VERY bad juju to ever, EVER complain about the rain -- but I watched the farmers struggle to get into the fields when they most needed to, watched the onions drown, the tomato blight grow apace, and the raspberries rot on the canes from rampant fungus.

But there’s usually an upside – like forest fires prompting long-dormant tree seedlings (I think long-leaf pines for example) to germinate then sprout. This year, for the first time the Oak Leaf Hydrangeas (Quercifolia ‘Alba and ‘Ailsa’), the ones I planted years ago in large part for their fall color, the ones that sported dung-colored leaves autumn after autumn, the ones that convinced me that catalogues lied (like they did with the Washington Centennial Azaleas when they said they’d thrive here), this year, they’re gorgeous. The morning sun glints through them, and they glow orange and crimson, saffron and scarlet and gold and burnt sienna and a burnished, purply red.

Likewise the young Autumn Glory Maple (Acer Autumn Glory) in front of my daughter’s house. The little beast is doing its darndest to live up to its name, despite its currently diminutive size. And much of it can be credited to the abundance of rain that helped feed the tomato blight, fungus-up the raspberries and grow mildew over virtually every little thing that didn’t move fast enough. But the leaves. Are. Glorious. Native taketh away, but some years, Nature also giveth.

It just doesn’t seem fair. This is the very best time for the purple Cathedral Bells (Cobaea scandens) that I’ve been waiting all summer for. Yet it’s the end of the blooming year. We’ve had a couple of light frosts. The raspberries, which are still producing bless their little hearts, are looking decidedly peaky, and the basil has about had it. Yet the Cathedral Bells are acting as thought it's high summer --spilling all over the back fence, the bale of straw I left there to spread and didn’t get around to, and the ancient horse-drawn plow that we used to hook to the ancient tractor to plow the garden, something I managed to put a stop to by fencing in the entire space. A few more moments and they’ll be taken with the frost. Meanwhile….

I love the Cobaea, especially the purple ones. Massive, demitasse-sized blooms have flamboyant anthers inside that arc out enticing the bees into the flower’s deep hollows. The calyx, a gorgeous smoky blue-green is like a sculpted Russian orthodox priest’s hat, an art form in itself. Cobaea, whose flat dark seeds are sometimes hard to germinate, is a wonderfully decorative climber that, when it takes off, can cover a pergola – something it’s done here in other summers. But this year was cooler, greyer, as I was trying to get them started, and by the time I had a few little hopeful plants, the moonflowers (Ipomoea alba) had taken their place on the pergola. Instead, I planted the five little burgundy-stemmed vines along the back fence thinking I’d find some more prominent spot once they’d grown. But they took forever. They didn’t look like they’d do anything at all for most of the summer -- I had to keep explaining to my husband in extravagantly descriptive terms why he shouldn’t weed them out -- though I was really not convinced they’d amount to anything. And then, boom! They took off. And it was too late to transplant. Instead, I let them go –up over the fence, across the gap and onto the plow, down along the flat tires, flowing up the all-but-useless composter, into the hay bale. The bees love it. They meander along the vines and into and out of those huge cups as though they had all the time in the world. Of course, soon the heavy frost will take them. It’s all ephemeral in the end. Meanwhile, I go out in the morning, marvel at the silvery frost that covers the calyxes like a spangled veil, and give thanks.

bee cafeteria

THIS is why you plant natives. Even if you didn’t appreciate the fact that native plants are a huge chunk of a healthy, well-oiled ecology, you’d let the natives that spring up uninvited stay. Because of the magic of the wildlife. Native plants bring in all those things you see on the Discovery channel, but thought had been eradicated by DDT and suburban sprawl. You don’t even have to plant it. Just let ‘em go and they will come.

For example, I went out with the black lab early one morning about two weeks ago. Often I use the time to weed a little. But this time, I stopped at the six-foot tall stand of wild white aster (Asteraceae), caught by the sight of a mid-sized bumblebee attached to the underside of one of the topmost flowers. He (she?) was sound asleep. I realized as I looked at the froth of flowers that the plants – volunteers all -- were filled with sleeping bees. And not just one species. There were several different bumble-type bees, a few carpenter bees of which we have an overabundance, honeybees, and some other bees I’m too ignorant to I.D.. (Sadly no blue bees, which I had seen sleeping on the undersides of the raspberry leaves earlier in the season.). I dragged my husband, Gary, out to see.

“I thought bees all went back to their hives, or their tree stumps or the ground or the main support in the garage or whatever for the night,” he said, peering at one small bloom to which two different kinds of bees clung upside down. “It looks like they all fell asleep in the cafeteria.”

The bees’ falling asleep in the cafeteria is apparently not that unusual – there is a lovely picture of about seven sleeping honeybees ringed around the center of a Rudbeckia bloom that is a 2007 Maryland Native Plant Society contest winner. http://www.mdflora.org/gallery/photocontest/photocontest2007/photocontest2007_cc_001.html

Watching the sun slowly warm and gradually wake the mixed-Apis crowd, I was not only delighted in a kind of ‘aw ain’t that cute’ way -- sleeping bees are as cute as sleeping puppies though you’re not tempted to touch them. But I was struck by the democratic clustering of the different species. I’ve seen a pair of same-species bees crawl contentedly over each other on a single bloom, but object or leave in a huff when another species comes in to feed. But these were all ecumenically bedded down together as though at camp. As the sun rose and warmed them, they started to wake and feed. Lovely. I realize that to Master Gardeners this is preaching to the choir, but it’s nice to know we’re all in the same church.

Season's coda

The crickets are deafening. The seed heads of the blackberry lilies (Bellamcanda) --solidly one-third of their charm—are waving above the garden chairs, and the pineapple sage is in bloom. It’s a sad time of year but a gorgeous one in its own way.

One of the things I most appreciate at summer’s end are the moonflowers (Ipomoea alba), which are doing their darndest to make up for the declining garden. Those magnificent crepe-de-chine blooms that swirl open like dancers’ skirts waft perfume all over the place as they open at the cusp of the evening, attracting daytime pollinator and moth alike, a bridge bloom between day and night. I’ve strategically spaced them around the property – crawling over the rusted garden sink, semi-blanketing the pergola and taking the long-limbed volunteer lemon tomatoes with them, at the south entry to the garden where they struggle manfully to latch the fence closed (I keep unwinding them and repositioning but they are of a stubborn bent.). But the two moonflowers I most appreciate are the knot of heart-shaped leaves and blooms that have twined up a telephone pole that used to hold a purple martin condo in the driveway garden, and the ones in the raspberries I have finally figured out how to protect from both weeding husband and weed-whacking lawn guy.

The driveway moonflowers make the place look welcoming and add another dimension to the Anemone and blowsy-looking perennial Ageratum that are the end-of-season staples there. But the ones in the raspberry patch are my favorites because I can stand very close and watch the different bees clamber into the blooms’ centers. I can observe the way two bees of the same species will share a bloom while the arrival of a new species creates a new dynamic. There are decisions to be made: shall I defend my blooms against the alien newcomer? Allow him to crawl over my back to share the pollen? Turn and face him off? It’s tribal, atavistic, and seems almost political. Watching without having to make a judgment is luxurious.

The vines too have their own agendas and personalities. Some wrap sleek stems over and around and through, picking up a cane to carry it straight into the air while they reach for the rustic overhead trapezoid. Others clutch a berry-laden cane or two to the waist-high clothesline that attempts to keep the canes in bounds. But when I go out with the dogs, wandering and inspecting, it get to visit the little dramas that nature creates.
I’ve all but given up picking –too many fungus-plagued berries thanks to this year’s weather, too little time and energy. And I’ve finished canning and freezing (mostly).
It’s a bittersweet time. The crickets, punctuated by the last few cicadas, are outside my office door singing an end-of-summer song, a coda to the growing season.

Got Tomato Blight?

Got Blight? You betcha. I’ve been not so much fighting blight since it began partway though the summer as watching it slowly eat my tomato plants.

Several things in addition to the weird cool and alternately soggy and dry weather have helped promote blight this year. The upsurge in interest in heirloom tomatoes, which, as superb as many are, are also mostly not as resistant to a lot of the things, particularly fungi, that hybrids were bred to resist. Researchers surmise that a few big commercial nurseries that produce great quantities of non-resistant heirlooms this year shipped quantities of possibly-infected plants to big box stores, which in turn supplied them to a lot of economy—conscious new home gardeners eager for that old-fashioned taste.

I have not, as has been suggested by Cornel and a number of other research universities, applied ‘cooper products’ to my blighted tomatoes. As experts admit, these products are of limited protection against both infection and further damage. Champ WG and NuCop 50 are ‘organic’ products registered in Massachusetts, which has, along with other soggy northeastern states, had a devilish time this year with blight. (In fact everyone I spoke with on a quick trip up through New York and the Adirondacks howled about their lost tomato crops.). Both products are OMRI-listed. (OMRI is the Organic Materials Review Institute.).

Advice from Cornel sources is as follows:
Removal of a few infected plants may slow the disease, but has not been successful in doing so thus far. If removed, bury the infected plants completely, or bag and put in the trash. Don’t compost them.
Home gardeners need to act quickly to make sure that your plants don’t become a source of spores that could infect commercial farms, as late blight spores are easily dispersed by wind….This organism is not seedborne (however, it is tuberborne in potato), so that tomato plants started from seed locally would be free of the disease, at least for now. Some regional farm and garden centers did distribute infected plants from the same supplier. It is likely that many infected tomato plants have been planted across the entire [northeast] region if they originated from larger wholesale stores.
2. If you want to try to control late blight with fungicides, you need to begin spraying fungicide before you see symptoms – and you need to continue spraying regularly. Use a product that contains chlorothalonil. Even here, these products are only effective if used before the disease appears and should be reapplied every 7-10 days, or 5-7 days in wet weather. Chlorothalonil is a protectant fungicide, with no systemic movement in the plant, so thorough coverage is necessary. For organic farmers and gardeners, the options are very limited, since only copper fungicides can be used, and copper is not very effective on late blight. It is easily washed off by rainfall.

Instead of doing anything chemical to combat blight, I’ve been picking assiduously and canning like mad – quart after quart of gorgeous Super San Marzano plum tomatoes that fill a jar with about seven fruits. I’ve enjoyed the fresh tomatoes I have. But I’ve been careful not to spread the spores. I pick tomatoes and then go inside, shuck clothes and wash before doing anything else either in the garden or elsewhere. For good or ill, that’s been my modus operandi. Save and use what you can, don’t spread it around, and hope that next year, which is bound to be different – the hope and the plague of gardening -- will be blight-free.

A large number of anything concentrated in one place and then shipped all over the place is a recipe for exponentially spreading a problem. (We can apply this to all kinds of things: fast food joints, ennui, fear). I’ve yanked out half of the plants, and dumped them in plastic in the garbage, which was hauled off this morning. The rest are slated for disposal this weekend.

I will continue to plant heirlooms, started from seed in my little greenhouse. I will also continue to mix in some hybrids as I do every year. Diversity is the best protection.

HARLEQUIN BUGS

I was reading an Op-ed piece in the New York Times this morning,
You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster,(click on article for the link) which made me realize that as Master Gardeners we are in the front lines of the war on such catastrophes. This article was talking about the devastation being caused by the late tomato blight in the Northeast. But, it pointed out that there are pathways to educating the home gardener, who is part of a larger farming system, that could help stem the spread of diseases such as this.

The article is worth reading and thinking about, as you wonder what your role might be in prevention. We are a part of the Smith-Lever Act that created the cooperative extensions. As a land-grant university the University of Maryland is an active participant. I guess it did bring a certain gravitas to my role in the community.

It brought to mind a very neglected portion of my garden and my own inaction. Maybe not as devastating as the blight, but an unchecked plant problem that I let fester in my vegetable garden. It was an infestation of Harlequin Bugs, Murgantia histrionica. I knew that the Brussels Sprouts were doomed, but I just thought I would get to it later. Meanwhile, the bugs were making haste in copulating on this unfettered piece of real estate, laying eggs and reproducing like mad men.

I am happy to report that I have belatedly solved the problem, and have even begun to reconstruct a scenario that I saved the rest of my garden by creating a trap crop, because I planted my brussel sprouts way to early and therefore created an attractant for the little rascals. I just can not quite reconcile the part where I failed to destroy the plants and the invaders before the rampant procreation, I'm working on that part of the story. So, now the plants and the offending bug, nymphs and eggs have been removed and destroyed, I hope the memory of my need for intervention early in my own garden will not similarly be removed and destroyed.

LOST OR SAVED?

I never am quite sure what to do with wildlife that I think may be in danger.  Are they all right? Should I intervene?  Will I make things worse or better?  

I encountered the question again this week, and decided I should give a helping hand.   A baby Ruby-throated Hummingbird was sitting completely lax on the hot blue stones of my patio in the late afternoon sun . Not even lift a wing to try to escape as I came up the walk. Perhaps a maiden flight from the nest gone wrong.  I lifted it up, and decided it was in need of serious and quick intervention.  I took it in and out of the mister a few times to get him cooled off, until I could see a bit of response, with a full body shake.  I then sat him in a small maple tree just out of the range of the mist, but in the shade for a little rest.    There were drops of water on the leaves close by so perhaps there could be a sip of water.  15 minutes or so later, I returned, lifted him up in my hand. There was an attempt at flight, that landed him on the ground, I lifted him again, and this time the flight was strong and high, up over the pear trees that line the pool and out of sight.  I can not know definitively the outcome for this little creature, but I have chosen to think that this time thing turned out well.

After a rainy spring, we’ve had no rain for something like five weeks. Garden’s really dry. I’ve nearly run out all my rain barrels and had to resort to the hose. This year I’ve attached a chlorine filter, though it slows the stream considerably. And I'm mostly watering what we eat rather than what looks beautiful, despite the predatory bindweed that threatens to smother it all. Yet the hyacinth beans (Dolichos lablab), which I’ve been struggling for years to grow, are blooming manfully. I had admired a neighbor’s many moons ago, and had religiously planted seed in my beds each year hoping they’d grow up the fences. No dice. This year, I started some in the green house, and lo and behold, plants! They’ve even survived the rabbits, which are overrunning us this year. So much so that I’ve found fox spore practically next to the house. (It’s an amazing fox year, too). But back to the beans. They’ve been such a help to my outlook. I walk up to the garden, knowing that there are wads and wads of things inside that need tending desperately, a discouragement before I’ve even begun. But when I see those bean blooms, spikes of them standing like decorated soldiers with the glossy burgundy pods hanging beneath, I get inspired. At least, they encourage me to try.

Botanical blessings

The pole beans are up and I’m as pleased with them as though I’d given birth personally. Pole beans are such a pleasure, like a grown child who remembers your birthday. I put them in probably two and a half weeks ago and they’re up six inches, with big bold leaves. The rabbits are already taking notice, the voracious little rodents, and have nipped off the first four Lazy Housewife tops. But others, ying/yang, tiger’s eye and cranberry, are all so far doing well. One of the great pleasures of pole beans is their versatility in both garden and kitchen. They clamber, so you can grow them up whatever trellis or ladder takes your fancy for vertical interest and ease of picking, their blooms are beautiful -- varied in color and size with their variety -- and they can be picked every day for a bountiful crop both fresh and frozen or canned, or left to dry when they’ll be shelled out on a lovely December day. And they fix nitrogen to their roots, so they add good things to the soil. What more could you want? Except fewer rabbits.

The weeds in these pics are evidence of my own lazy housewife tendencies in the garden. It’s all I can do to grow the food, gather the food, cook the food (clean up after cooking the food) and preserve the food. (I know I’m complaining, but I feel the need to excuse my horticultural shortcomings.). I leave perfection, much as I admire and envy it, to others, like my fellow blogger, Janet, and her garden elf. I get to enjoy and rave over other more perfect gardens, a pleasure in itself. The Viceroy butterfly hung out almost the entire time I hauled buckets of water to the beans from the dwindling contents of the rain barrels. There are plenty of garden blessings even for lazy housewives.

JUNE BLOOMS

The humid days of summer have arrived so sitting out in the thick air of evening pleasurable scent is abundant. The closeness of the air holds the smell of the phlox, sweet bay magnolias, and whatever redolent bloom wafts into and lingers in the ether.


The real reason to have a garden is the fresh cut flowers you can bring in almost every day. "If I was a rich man" I would have fresh flowers all over the house, and clean, pressed sheets every night. I will have to settle for fresh cut flowers in the months of bloom. Today it was a big bunch of white phlox, I also could not resist mixing some of the blue and white mop head Hydrangias together. So now as I sit in front of the window wall looking over the garden watching an array of birds coming and going from the feeder and the birdbath, I am surrounded by the sweet scent and beautiful display of these vases.
There is an abundance of blooms open in the garden now.

Janet’s Garden

Ab Fab. That’s what my fellow blogger Janet’s garden is: absolutely fabulous. There is a stone meditation pool that looks like something out of Chanticleer (A Pleasure Garden as it’s billed) in Wayne PA, a stream bed that deals with runoff in a productive, water-wise, and beautiful way, fruit trees and veg patch and xeriscape section with strategically-dripped drip irrigation. And much much more. I had joined Master Gardener, Vida Morley, and a clutch of other curious (no, no, interested, supportive) MG’s to inspect the place while Vida vetted the garden for the Bay Wise program. But as soon as we got there, it was obvious that the careful use of water, bio controls, native interplantings, beneficial bugs, birds, incredibly healthy peas and herbs, water features with natural filters and water re-use, and virtually no lawn let alone chemically-fortified (lawn fertilize? HA!) yadda , yadda, yadda, made the vetting part superfluous. She passed. She got her much-deserved sign.



What put me to shame was the fact that Janet’s garden looks like she has a troop of energetic elves perpetually running around, it’s so beautifully kept. (Well yes, I’m envious.).Vida ran down the long points-based list of Bay Wise specifics as per the vetting process, but mainly we wandered around, snatched snow peas off Janet’s prolific vines, and gawped. I tried to solace myself with the thought that she had nearly killed herself prepping the place for inspection, but the truth is it probably always looks like that. No wonder she gets such great bird and nature pictures from her living room!

Grow it, pick it, eat it

The raspberries are here! And, in part thanks to the advice I got in MG class to add some iron via blood meal before they started, and in part due to the rainy weather, they're gorgeous. I have both summer-bearing, which started about a week ago, and fall-bearing aka primocanes, which are actually twice-bearing if left to their own devices. If you don't mow them down at that end of the season, as some recommend, the fall-bearers offer an early-summer crop on last year's canes. It's not as bountiful as the fall one, which starts in mid-late August and goes til frost. But it's perhaps more welcome being that it's first. The thoroughly rambunctious black raspberries are coming, too. The are incredibly prickered, and almost invasive they're so determined to spread and root -- through both root shoots and tip rooting -- but they add lovely depth of flavor to summer red jam and make great mousse. I've picked about a quart of berries every other day, and made the first raspberry tart (what my daughter calls 'Nature's nearly perfect food) so we ate it for dinner (without anything else) and then again for breakfast. (Ditto). Next is raspberry ice cream.

FOR THE BIRDS

Taking up residence in the garden, because of all the work that needs to be done, has many rewards, not the least of them being bird watching. Many of the young have hatched. All these immature but almost adult sized birds running around the yard begging for the food their parents are still providing. They flap their wings and make cute little calls to the parent, and if the other young spot a parent headed for one of their siblings, they run as fast as they can to see if they can snatch the snack away. I know I saw a Mockingbird parent providing lessons to an adolescent on how to catch his own prey, and that the pupil was sure that if mom or dad would just catch one more worm for him now, he would be able to learn for the next time.
The hummingbirds have arrive. I turned on a mister that I have in the garden, to watch a lovely little Ruby Throat fly in to get sprayed, and to dip his beak into a pool of water being held in a leaf. He would leave the mist, sit on a branch, flap his wings, and then dart back into the shower.
The bug population is under immense pressure right now, as all of these young are being fed the high protein diet that their parents give them at this stage in life. That is the best part of attracting so many birds to the garden, the help they give to keeping bugs under control.

Next Generation Ecology

As part of our first year’s 40 volunteer hours, new master gardeners are required to participate in a series of prescribed projects and tasks. These are meant to whet our gardening appetites as well as learn firsthand what volunteer options are available to contribute the annual 20 hours (or more) to the overall mission required of the Master Gardeners. So last Wednesday, I trundled down to Kennard Elementary in Centreville to help several MG’s help a battalion of fourth graders plant a ditch with Lobelia cardinalis, Asclepias and Rudbeckia. I was fairly clueless when I first got there, trowel in hand, and almost as frustrated as the kids by the thatch of wiregrass they had to hack through to plug in the plants. But as I watched the kids, I was encouraged not only by the general enthusiasm (with only a couple of exceptions) for the grubby hands-on work, but by how many of the group of about 50 kids got both the concept –ecosystem interactions – and the specifics – native plants simultaneously help contain and filter runoff to prevent it polluting the Bay, and they encourage the 3B’s (or 4 depending on how you count) Beneficial Bugs, Birds, and Bullfrogs. The kids knew there was a concrete reason for the effort and could see how the first part of the little swale, planted several years ago, was sustaining wildlife -- the 3 (or 4) B’s already in evidence and noisily swooping, chattering, buzzing, and garrumphing. I was reminded of the old adage: As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. Those elementary school twigs clomping around in the muddy ditch shoving plants in willy-nilly seem to be growing well.

Growing it and eating it

It's amazing how fast things go ( and grow) this time of year. Two weeks ago, the multicolored peas (bottom left) from Cook's Garden were barely through the ground. Now they're like a botanical version of Janis Joplin's coif. All unruly and refusing to be tamed. But lovely. I can hardly keep up with the bindweed (Convolvulus). Little sprouts appear everywhere, climb up a fork left for a day against the pergola, sneak up the stalks of the trumpet lilies and grab hold of the bee balm (Monarda didyma) in an often-successful attempt to wrestle them back down to the dirt as though they resent the Monarda's sturdy character. It's a perpetual battle, not helped by the guilt produced by those glossy pictures of perfect gardens you see in magazines. But I've had lettuce and herbs out of the garden so far, enjoyed the iris and peonies immensely, and have just last night cut my first bok choy, a real beauty. Next week, I'll probably have peas.

Reptile time

I wish I had a picture of our last three snakes, but they caught us unaware. By the time the neighbor had killed one it was too mangled to photo, and when my husband, Gary, caught the second, it was a little too immediate a problem to photo, so you'll just have to take my word for it. The first, we saw slithering under a car headed for the house (one of the dogs, all of whom hate snakes, saw it first). We managed to semi-deter it, shoving it off into the lilies by the well cap, much to the consternation of a chipmunk who blasted out of the lilies as soon as the snake arrived. The following day, Gary found an interesting striped snake who lives in the woodpile. Still no camera and by the time he had one in hand the snake had disappeared. Then later that afternoon our next door neighbor, who is terrified of snakes, was startled in her garden by the one Gary had ushered into the lilies. She killed it, then asked Gary to take it away. Nature may be savage, ( it's a snake-eat-chipmunk world out there) but She cleans up her messes over time, so he pitched it into the back brush where it will gradually feed other things as it decomposes.

An hour later a screech from next door alerted us to the third snake. Our neighbor's daughter-in-law wouldn't let her kill this one and the pair were tracking it in anticipation of the Robson Relocation Unit arriving in answer to t he screech. The snake turned out to be big --5 feet long and as thick as a Kielbasa though as with all the indigenous snakes here on the Eastern Shore, not poisonous. We went over with gloves and a squitch. ( For those of you who remember Horton and Dr. Seuss, you'll need no explanation, for those who don't, it's a kind of extension grabber tool). I ran off to collect The Snake Whisperer, a young friend who LOVES snakes and whom snakes LOVE. But by the time I returned, Gary had the snake in gloved mitts,so we climbed back into the car and drove out to a friend's farm to release him. I only hope the snake doesn't have the homing instincts of a snapping turtle, which houses some kind of internal GPS (which is another story). Life in the country is never dull. I only wish I had pictures.

Norfolk Botanical Garden

From top to bottom: Robinson Crusoe's house in the World of Wonder (WOW) children's garden, path to the NATO Tower, a lovely shaded eagle (and garden) observation tower, and Japanese garden.

Norfolk Botanical Garden

I’d done a bleary-eyed wee-hours drive to Norfolk, VA, so my husband could do his radar recertification on Friday and was looking for something to occupy me for what I thought was going to be 8 hours. Fortunately, the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, smacked up beside Norfolk Airport, was close. And what a surprise! 180+ acres of gardens, including a long statuary allee, acres of rhododendron-and camellia-filled woods, Japanese garden, 3 acres of rose garden, and a wonderfully creative children’s garden that the kids I saw running around obviously loved. The place was, while not packed, surprisingly full. And there's a boat ride available that wends through the gardens. As it turned out, my husband finished his re-cert in 2 hours, not the usual 8 (clever man) and I was out of there before lunch, but could have happily stayed all day exploring then having lunch in their shady picnic grounds by the lake.

Longwood Gardens

This from Ruth Menefee, Master Gardener:
In late-April, I visited Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. My mother-in-law Diana and I walked through some of the many amazing gardens and several rooms in the Conservatory. We grabbed an extra jacket for the outdoor gardens as the chilly winds and periodic sunshine of late-April still did not deter us from a true spring display of Tulips (Tulipa), Snapdragons (Antirrhinum), Foxglove (Digitalis), Larkspur (Delphinium), and lots of Cape Marigold (Osteopermum). The trip was well worth it as visiting the gardens lightened our spirits. Here are some of the pictures we snapped along the way.
Ruth took the four pictures posted above.
http://www.longwoodgardens.org/

Overgrown seedlings

It’s tempting to only write about the successes in our gardens – Look at me! I’m a Master Gardener and everything always goes right since I’m so smart! Well…(sadly) it doesn’t seem to work like that. At least for me. I jumped the gun (I guess) on sowing seeds in the greenhouse, and now I’ve got sprawling, thigh-high tomato plants that needed to go into the ground two weeks (or more) ago. But neither the weather nor the garden was cooperating. (I’m gonna blame them instead of myself). The garden’s problem was a ridiculously healthy crop of bindweed. So I whipped around on the one warm dry day we had a couple of weeks ago with the Roundup. (Down all you purists; it’s the only thing I’ve found in 30 years that does it for the Canada thistle and bindweed. In three days it’s sugar and water.).
I waited three days then planted six tomatoes. And there they sit. I had tucked them into a semi-sheltered bed but neglected, as I have in other years, to protect them with floating row cover supported, so it doesn’t flatten the plants, by the tomato cages turned on their sides. No, the plants were naked. And there they sat, and sit still. The unplanted ones I’m now taking in and out of the greenhouse on a daily basis. They are flopping over in their second pots, dying to go into the ground. That will happen tomorrow WITH row cover.
Meanwhile, have I learned anything? Like when to seed those babies prior to frost? To force myself to keep repotting them when I misguesstimate? To cover them with floating row cover like the feathers of a mother hen? Maybe, but a gardener’s anxious push toward planting time is like a hormonal rush. Tough to hold back. And then life intervenes. You just have to forgive yourself for not being perfect. Mea culpa. Amen.

THUGS

I have been spending a lot of time on my hands and knees weeding(in between rain showers) with lots of time to ponder my gardening mistakes. It seems to me that of the top twenty, at least 15 of them have to do with planting a "weed". A thug that takes over and crowds out all others. Most of these have irresistible charateristics that I adore, so I thought I could overlook their faults. Or, perhaps, I ignored their questionable backgrounds thinking it would not happen to my garden, like the Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue' I planted in the South garden. In the beginning I fretted that I would never get those incredible blue flowers to survive our cold wet winters. I fussed and created a well drained soil, planted them next to the South wall for winter protection, and waited anxiously for them to return. I was ecstatic when they came back the first year, and then the second and oh look, the clump is getting larger. Now I am looking at them spreading across the landscape wondering if I will leave one standing when I am finished ripping those large, black, potato like tubers out of the ground. There is the paprika Yarrow that I put in to add a splash of color. Ugh! I am constantly knocking that back into a respectable patch. Did I mention the Verbena bonariensis? Oh, and what about that Valerian officinalis? I am rushing to extract the seedlings now, because once they start to bloom I know my resolve to eliminate them will fade with their aromatic blooms and my garden will be on its way to becoming a Valerian monoculture.
I am starting my spring plantings, looking at some of the selections I have chosen, I know that I am in the process of repeating my mistakes, but the foxglove shaped flowers of Rehmannia elata are so delightful, I am sure I can prevent them from ruling the world.
I have friends that have a knack for being attracted to the wrong man, for me it is a propensity for plants that just are not right for me and bring me heartache down the road.
I fear I am doomed to continue replicating these transgressions.

Damp but not daunted

Five inches of rain in five days. That’s what my gauge says. The birdbaths are beautifully brimming, hosta leaves are spangled with diamond-droplets and the rain barrels at the corners of the garage and shed are all recharged. The bees must be getting a bit stir-crazy, to say nothing of hungry; they've had few opportunities for forays for pollen and nectar for days. Every time the sun peeks out, they all come zuzzing out to hit whatever blooms they can find then rush back to their hives and holes when the skies open up again. Can't imagine what the ground bees are doing in this swamp of a back yard. The overcast has helped produce a skim of filigree mould on the soil surface of a lot of the plants in the greenhouse that need to go into the ground, but I’m not complaining. Drought seems possible just over the horizon. So I’ll take the rain with thanks.

Native bulbs

I've just gone out in a Scottish mist to survey the spring garden. Some things are already discouraging, like the white campion (Silene alba). It produces a pretty little rosette flower on a long stem, and can act like baby's breath (Gypsophila) in a bouquet, but it's horribly self-seeding and has thick choking roots. Once it gets established, it's hard to get rid of.

One encouraging thing, though, is the abundance of Camassia leichtlinii. A native Maryland bulb, one reputed to be a favorite pot root of the Native Americans, Camassia Leichtlinii sends up lovely progressive sprays of lavender-blue flowers on sturdy stems about two-and-a-half feet tall. (There are other varieties, such as the deep purple and shorter quamash, but this one seems to do best for me). The bluey-green foliage of C. leichtlinii is lovely too, elegantly channeled fronds that taper to points. The bulbs multiply with economical discretion, adding several to the collections in the beds every year without taking over. I enjoy the fact that the camassia also act like barometers of the microclimates in my yard. Against the house on the protected south side, the flowers have already gone to seed (not attractive,but there you are), but the farther out you go, the later they bloom. Today, spangled with rain in the perennial bed on the east side of the vegetable garden where the northwest winds whip through they are right now at their blooming best.

EGGS

There is a new nest in the Cherry tree. It is Robin, I can tell by the mud, messiness, and size. I think for sure it is the construction of the pair that have abandoned their eggs on the deck chair when the human activities exceeded their comfort zone.
The little Killdeer, parked in the gravel pathway has no thoughts of leaving. When threatened, he screeches, flutters his wings, charges, and if it is a code 3 emergency, calls to this mate to come in for reinforcement. Today with the rain things should be more peaceful.

Food and Drink for Roaes

Maxime de la Falaise, fashion model and artists' muse died on Thursday at age 86. " Her mother, Rhoda, an Irish beauty, was considered an eccentric even by the elastic standards of the British Isles. Lady Rhoda often made lobster thermidor, for instance, and then fed it to her roses. "She would make fist stew and sometimes forget that she was making it for the garden," Ms.de la Falaise told The Independent in 2004. "So she would add a bit of cognac, some garlic and spices. The roses would almost cry out with pleasure". "

The above information from today's New York Times. If my roses start looking weak this summer, I think this might be worth a try.

Back from Texas

Just returned from a week in Corpus Christi. They are in the midst of a terrible drought with no rain in the forecast. We visited the South Texas Arboretum and since interest has been expressed in what grows in that part of Texas - here are some pictures, including Plumaria that is just coming into bloom. The variety is not as great as it might be in a normal spring with some rain. The dried up wetland (called Gator Lake) says it all. I was told that a few weeks ago there was still a largish puddle in the middle.

Everything looks wonderfully green back on the
Shore.

GREAT ARTICLE

A New York Times article this morning on Pollinating in the Garden by Anne Raver, was so interesting I thought I should share it with you. Click on the name below to go to the page.

COME HITHER, BUMBLEBEE, AND POLLINATE

5000 WORDS

There doesn't seem to be a happy balance for the weather this year. I decided I had better capture the spring blooms with a camera, before they faded in the extreme heat. Later this week we should get a break returning to more normal spring temperatures. Tulipa 'Angelique', Prunus Serrulata 'Kwanzan', Espalier Malus x Domestica 'Gala' , Tulipa, Tulipa 'flair'