Welcome to Chaos

Balmy Breezes, Shivery Freezes and Rainy Days

2011-03-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

The magnificent flowers of Tulip Magnolia (magnolia soulangeana) are sometimes lost to a late frost--but not this year!

March never can seem to make up it's mind. It starts out in the morning shivering in a winter coat, and by noon it's shorts and a tee shirt. Two hours later and you're drenched in a sudden downpour, mixed with 3 inches of pea-sized hail and wind that litters the ground with thousands of tiny twigs and branches, usually just after you've just picked up all of the debris from the last weather snit.Then the sun peeks out; Mother Nature laughing at her own perverse sense of humor (Not Funny, Mom!) and warms your body and soul , kissing you with fresh breezes and hugging you with the delicious scents of fresh flowers and moist earth.

Miniature daffodils

Tritellia, one of my favorite small spring bulbs

Peppermint stick (clusiana) tulips

The next day, you wake up to a skin of frost all over everything, the daffodils are shivering and the rhododendron leaves are curled up into slim fingers that makes you want to fit them out with mittens! There's a promise of 70 degrees by Sunday, but.....are the promises going to be kept?

Butterbur (petasites) flowers come up before the leaves

Vinca minor atropurpurea with white grape hyacinth

Spores on moss

Woodland walk

Hosta montana aureomarginata

Lots of promises to keep.

"And time remembered is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins."

--Swinburne

Hi, My Name is Sandy and I'm a Hostamaniac

2011-03-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

"There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter.
One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues."
- Hal Borland

I wonder what Mr. Borland would have had to say about the proliferation of catalogs on the internet, which; of course, didn't even exist in his day. I well remember anticipating the mail with Wayside Gardens, Jung, Henry Field's, Gurney's, Park's, Stark Bro's and a handful of others, all arriving in early January when the winter was the bleakest. I don't recall exactly when they started coming in December before the Christmas tree was even up, I just remember piling them on my desk until after the New Year when I could properly give them the attention they deserved, pouring over the riches of plants in them like a kid in a candy store, making lists, dreaming of spring.

These days, I still get Jung, Gurney's, Stark Bro's, Thompson Morgan and a small handful of the same others, scattered from early December until late January, but sadly, print catalogs seem to be vanishing from the gardener's landscape.

My particular addiction (well, one of them, any way) isn't in those wonderful catalogs that try their best to tempt me with beautiful colors and descriptions of new and startling garden wonders; many of which I don't even recognize these days with the proliferation of "designer" plants that have been introduced in the last 20 years or so..........how many echinacea cultivars that somehow all look alike do we really need, anyway?

It starts so small, just one little bed

I confess, I too now turn to the internet for my hosta fix. This year, it started early when the Naylor Creek hosta list arrived in full color print in my mailbox in November (!!!!) to whet my appetite. These ain't Granny's hostas any more! Not so many years ago, there were 300 or so varieties. Now there are thousands, in plural colors and sizes; golds, greens, blues, streaky ones, multi-colored, changeable and a whole language coined just to describe them. They are from barely 2" tall to monster plants over 9' wide, they grow fast, they grow slowly, they "sport", they are "tissue culture", "originator stock". Individual, unique, newly introduced plants have been known to sell for thousands of dollars in their first year of release. Gardeners collect them like Beanie Babies, showcasing their gardens in hosta conventions, competing to have the most, the newest, the best, the biggest, the showiest, the most unique, the streakiest, the reddest. Oh yes, red, the race is on to hybridize the first entirely red-leafed hosta! A red hosta may prove to be the blue rose of the hosta world; always just out of reach, but I'm not taking any bets on that. And I want one. The current rage is for the streakiest, most stable leaf. Gorgeous! And of course, I want those too. As my Dear Husband says, I have wantin' ways!

Plantaganea

There are whole gardens devoted to just these plants; dedicated garden forums on the internet; hosta societies all over the world. An encyclopedia of hostas was published last year, the Hostapedia, which costs more than I've ever spent for a book in my life, and is thousands of pages thick (and no, I don't have it. I would rather spend the money on plants...). There are also thousands of plant nurseries on the internet selling hostas, some exclusively, some with "companion plants" a term that just means shade perennials.

Left, Guacamole: Right, Abiqua Drinking Gourd

And who can blame gardeners for wanting to grow these wonderful plants? They are the ideal shade tolerant garden plants; mostly easy to grow, pretty much trouble free, tolerant of most soil conditions--one variety will even grow in water; and some like the sun--and hardy as weeds except in the south, where they tend to languish in the heat. Even there, they are adaptable to growing in pots.

Brenda's Beauty

It starts small. One catches your eye at the nursery when you're buying perennials. Sure, why not? It would be pretty under the shade tree with the ferns and astilbes. Pretty soon, you have a whole border of them, easy care and beautiful, after all, they don't cost much, $5. or so each, for all the beauty you add to your garden. Maybe a few more. So you dig up some more of your lawn. You didn't much care for that scraggly grass, anyway and you had to mow it. You could divide up the ones you have, but they are just getting so gorgeous...and you heard about a nursery that had some different ones. Maybe one or two of those. Hah! That's where they get you hooked! Before you know it -and you don't even know how it happened- you've found http://www.hostalibrary.org/ (just looking up one or two to see how they grow, how big it might get--yeah, right, there are thousands of pictures on there to feed your addiction) and oh, look, links on there for a catalog or two! Once you've discovered "designer" hostas, there is no going back. No more $5 hostas either, soon $20 doesn't seem too much to pay for a really pretty one. The "want" list grows expotentially.

Cathedral Windows

But not me! I can quit anytime......as soon as I finish my hosta orders for spring. I'll quit then! I think.

Journey's End

Well, it's been nice chatting, but I have to go now. I need to talk with my group of enablers--oops, I mean, fellow hosta gardeners--over there on http://www.forums.gardenweb.com/. Somebody over there might be talking about a hosta that I don't have!

"A garden makes the most hungry who most it satisfies"
--Anon.

A Look Back: What a Difference a Month Makes!

2011-01-26T21:11:00.000-08:00

It's about time for the "January thaw" by the calendar, and by the looks of the weather forecast, too, at least for the Ozarks. Though we have already had a thaw or two; our weather patterns have been swooping up and down like a berserk carnival roller coaster for a couple of months now, one day 50F and two days later 0F then back up into the teens with a few inches of snow. It goes from bleak and cold to chilly and muddy with occasional flashes of some yellow thing in the sky, but that doesn't stay long enough to know for sure just what it is. Crowds of finches, juncos, chickadees, nuthatches, wrens, titmice and siskins flutter in the dogwood tree like so many vari-colored leaves, fighting over space on the sunflower feeders, with occasional punctuation by jays, woodpeckers and cardinals that send the whole flock of smaller birds momentarily scattering to shelter in the forsythia. Birds don't seem to mind what the weather is, as long as there is a full buffet!

On those days when there is a sun-kissed breeze, I love making forays into the winter garden world to see who's awake!

Arum Italicum "Pictum"

I love these green variegated leaves in the winter. Arum Italicam is reputed to be invasive but it has not been proved so in my garden.

Colchicum (autumn crocus) is eager and ready to go, growing leaves to store food for fall's blooms

Early daffodils will be blooming in a couple of weeks, in mid-February

The succulent garden is a rainbow of color!

sedums flaunt bright red

Who's hiding in here? It looks like a tarantula, all curled up under the leaves, but it is a sleeping fern, fronds all coiled to spring with the first balmy April weather!

Bright red heuchera makes a splash against brown oak leaves

Peek-a-boo! A hellebore bud will soon be sticking her pretty head out to greet the February sun. This plant will be crowned with hundreds of mauvy-pink flowers.

Asian ginger, asarum splendens, flashes bright silver in the hosta bed

Columbines are get-ready-set-grow eager

Bright red nandina berries spark up the shrub border.

Who said January was bleak?

Come on, Spring!

"January opens

The box of the year
And brings out days
That are bright and clear
And brings out days
That are cold and grey
And shouts, "Come see
What I brought today!"- Leland B. Jacobs, January

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2011-01-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

Ah, January! That longest of months, when the lengthening of days seems so gradual as to drag on forever, and the cold insinuates icy fingers under the edges of even the most insulating garments, frosting digits and turning noses to icicles. Summer vacation seems a long, long ways back and the heat brings a nostalgic longing..........

It was a long, hot, dry summer in the Ozarks, the heat rising from the city sidewalks like a living thing, wafting up legs, turning skin to dry scaley crepe paper and inciting the pour of perspiration that plastered hair and clothing damply to bodies and skulls, only increasing the feeling of heat instead of coolness. The sharp, hot, acrid smell of dust assailed sinus cavities, carrying with it grains of sweet pollen that caused sneezing fits to add to the general summer discomfort. In the garden, hoses lay like sinuous green snakes along paths, slithering among plants to rear their yellow, cobra-like sprinkler heads that ran non-stop, causing the water meter to whirr at a dizzying pace and dollar bills to fly out of checking accounts.. If there was a bit of shade, it too was hot, just providing a bit of respite from the unrelenting sun that scorched the earth.

Too hot to garden, except for the most necessary weeds and keeping things in pots watered; but even cold beer and good books only entertain just so long before ennui sets in and restlessness goes looking for projects.

Projects are things that never go wanting in a Chaotic Garden. There is always a new one, usually piled on top of other notions, ideas and actual physical objects that have "someday" promises in the gleam of the mind's eye. It began innocently enough, wandering idly and somewhat dispiritedly along the paths, when I noticed that the vintage metal lawn chairs looked as if they could use a sprucing up. Dirty they were, too, and any excuse to fling water around with a hose was a good one. So out came the scrub brushes, the bucket, and a can of car wax, and an hour or so of light labor in the shade later, the "patinaed" finish of chipped paint and rust was softly gleaming. (I wasn't about to paint 14 chairs, I did that once before and it took me a couple of weeks to finish them.) Now I like the weathered look; it goes with the old rock house and my casual garden style. Besides, it's a good excuse not to have to paint them.

And while I was out there fooling around with the chairs, my eye happened to fall on a low vintage metal garden table that I purchased at a yard sale years ago, painted blue, and made plans for a mosaic top. Rummaging around in the basement among my saved "I can do something with this" treasures, I found a bucket of small black and white ceramic tiles that someone who was remodeling a bathroom had given me. Now I had another "no sweat" project that I could do sitting in the shade on the deck! But I had to have more components, so a trip to the big box home improvement store was in order, for tile cement, grout and sealer. Three days later, voila!

Now I was on a roll. An old birdbath pedestal base, a hexagonal concrete stepping stone left over from another project, more of those tiny black and white tiles, the remains of the grout and sealer, and I had a small matching table for a back patio.

Then what? I had been "gifted" with a stack of used bricks that had to go somewhere (and yes, it was a gift that I gladly accepted, one can never have enough bricks!) For years I had been wanting to pave over a 10' circular patio area that had been in gravel, and now I had enough bricks to do it; so that was next.

Since I was dealiing with used, cut and broken bricks of odd shapes and sizes, the pattern kind of fell apart at the center and it became a challenging jigsaw puzzle to make them fit.

A half-century old wire fence that went along the propery line at the edge of the woods needed some definition behind the lower pond, and gathered branches tucked into the ancient rusty wire made a rustic barrier next to a gate we made from an old lichen-covered bench back.

I feel so much warmer now!

Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments,
embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour."- John Boswell

Unsolved Mystery: the Rock That Came From Nowhere

2010-12-14T20:27:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time wandering about the overgrown, honeysuckle cloaked woods that lie past Out Beyond, along the interstate; watching the birds, hunting mosses, making trails, gathering morel mushrooms in the spring, walking meditations, sometimes just being in Mother Nature's's sacred space. I know that woods intimately, every tree, every stone, every groundhog hole, every hawk nest and fox den. So it came as a complete and astonishing surprise one day to find a huge stone, what in this Ozarks mining country is known as a mineral egg, lying on the ground where it was not the day before. A "mineral egg" is a type of geode, often round or egg-shaped, sometimes hollow in the center but when it is solid all the way through, it is called a nodule. Usually they are pretty small. I had never seen one bigger than my head, but this one is some 60 or 70 lbs, and at least a foot and a half thick, maybe 2' tall.

No idea where it came from. I thought at first possibly from the direction of the interstate, maybe it had rolled down hill when the state highway mowers came through with their brush hog, but that was too far away to be realistic, besides there was too much brush in that direction. Down the hill from the back neighbor's property into the shallow ravine where it came to rest? Except there is a fence. Down the hill in the other dirrection from the woods? Noooo, I would have already found a rock that big. There was no sign where it had been settled in the ground, it was perfectly clean all the way around, resting on top of the dry leaves in the ravine. There was no sign where it had rolled down any hill, no crushed plants, no broken limbs, no disturbed ground. It was as if it had materialized from another dimension or floated gently down to earth from the sky.

Having gotten previous permission from my elderly neighbor who owns the neglected woods to collect interesting stones from her property, it just remained to figure out how to get it home. It lay there a couple of weeks (during which time I fully expected it to have disappeared as quickly as it had come) while I thought about the logistics of carrying it, before I had a duh! moment. It's round! Round things roll!

Even as big as it is, it came home pretty easily with me. Being nearly round, it rolled very well up the side of the ravine, up the trail, and halfway home before it got stuck behind a deadfall log that I couldn't lift it over, and Jim came to help get it the rest of the way.

It now has a place next to the gate by the lower pond, where it keeps company with others of its kind, though much smaller; that came from a pile of stones with much less mysterious origins under a tree in my front yard.

When it was formed from the mud millions of eons ago, it rested on scallop shells that left fossil imprints on the tip, like a bow. How cool can that be?

Do you see a face in here? I think it is smiling at me!

I'm certain I will never know how it materialized in the woods like that. But it seems very much at home as guardian of the gate!

                  "If there were no mystery to explore,
                life would get rather dull, wouldn't it?"
                                                 --Sydney Buchanan

What the Heck IS That???????

2010-12-10T20:31:00.000-08:00

The light and the angle were just right the day I climbed the hill Out Beyond with my camera, looking for good shots of birds, late flowers, interesting fungi, anything that would make a good photo, when I looked up towards a deadfall tree that I have seen a hundred times before, to be startled enough to make me jump by the image I saw. even though I knew what that was! There are deer out here, and that was my first thought before I recovered what was left of my mind and burst out laughing at myself! This dead tree really looks....well. not dead!

You lookin' at me?

Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun. ~George Scialabba

Baby It's Cold Outside!

2010-12-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

As is typical for Ozarks weather we went from
70F a couple of weeks ago to 12F forecast for tonight, and tomorrow it's supposed to bounce back up in the 50's, with snow on the slate for this coming weekend. It's no wonder the plants and small denizens of the garden are confused! Most of the more sensible ones have gone dormant, but I look out and still see Japanese maples with most of their leaves, white violets that insist on blooming with the first ray of sunshine, an echinacea with one brave flower, and even a hosta that has a couple of green leaves. A lot of the garden seems to be stuck betwixt and between, and I worry that the low teens are going to do some damage to plants exposed without full dormancy or at least a good snow cover to protect them until they finally give up and go to sleep for their long winter's nap.

None of the violets seem to be ready to give up
yet, and oxalis was even blooming a bit yesterday.
There are still Knockout roses in full leaf with a few flowers. As I was pulling some errant honeysuckle vines down out of a bridal wreath spirea, I noticed buds had formed and were about to open on some branches. Daffodils are poking their leaves up in sunny spots already, and that doesn't usually happen until the end of January. I haven't looked yet, but I have a suspicion I'm going to see a bit of yellow on the forsythia before Christmas!

On sunny days,
this
pretty
garter snake
can be found sunning itself under the crabapple tree by the pond. It must have been cold, because I got this close with my camera: even stroked it with my finger. It raised its head and regarded me with suspicion, but didn't move away. It stayed until the sun began to go down.

I wonder if this huge stick bug will find a warm place to spend the winter? I don't think I have ever seen one this big!

As climate change causes our ocean currents to change, which drive the jet stream, which in turn drives our weather, I expect we will see more and more things in nature that will seem puzzling to us. It has been going on for a several years now, but only lately is it obviously noticeable in temperate regions that have gotten colder, less rainfall in areas that used to get a lot of moisture, hotter summers and definite changes in the winters as natural cycles continue, accelerated in part by human activity. Whether or not we can actually do anything to slow down or reverse climate change, we are probably going to see more drastic swings in the weather for years to come. It didn't start in a day, and it won't end in a day. It promises to be challenging, frustrating, sometimes sad, perhaps exciting, certainly scary but interesting to see what gardening is going to be like in the future. Indeed, life on this planet!

One of the most fun things, a soft furry red kitty belly can be found, soaking up the rays in a sunny spot on the deck! Sooo tempting but a ticklish cat can be a dangerous thing if you dare to touch!

It's worth the risk! I love kitty bellies!

"The time has come, the Walrus said,

To talk of many things:

Of shoes-and ships-and sealing wax-

Of cabbages-and kings-

And why the sea is boiling hot-

And whether pigs have wings."

Lewis Carroll

"Through the Looking Glass"

There are Vegans in the House!

2010-11-23T18:08:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is two days away, and there are vegans to cook for. Now, that thought might strike terror into the heart of a cook that caters to a bunch of hard-core carnivores, but I've been doing this for years, and I think I might have it down pretty well. Other than the turkey, one batch of gravy and the deviled eggs for our family's carnivores, the rest of the dinner will be "vegan". I put that in quotes because that term is often misunderstood by mainstream traditionalists and conjures up thoughts of tofu, salads and tasteless veggies, but that ain't necessarily so.

Just the opposite, in fact. There aren't any rich cheese and sour cream dishes, to be sure, but that isn't healthy, anyway. There are many "mainstream" meals that don't use dairy, eggs, or meat if you think about it. Many recipes can be easily made vegan with just a few adjustments, and also healthier for you at the same time. My daughter makes a bruschetta to die for, and oh what she does with pasta! but that is another story.

It has become second nature to reach for miso soup in place of turkey broth for the dressing, olive oil instead of butter, coconut or palm oil in desserts instead of butter, Veganaise dressing base for the Waldorf salad, and soy or almond milk instead of dairy. And really, it doesn't taste any different, and if we don't mention it to our other guests, they never know they are eating vegan-friendly food that is actually healthy for them; and there is butter on the table for them or they can use olive oil, Mediterranean style.

On the menu at our house this year:

Oven-roasted turkey w/gravy
Sage/nut dressing
Vegan gravy (made with miso)
Cushaw Squash and apple soup garnished with chopped nuts and fried sage leaf garnish
Deviled eggs               Creamed peas w/mint
Some kind of roasted veggie/rice dish by the family vegans, it will be yummy!
Waldorf Salad              Cranberry salad
Winter green onions from my garden
Jellied cranberry sauce
Swedish hardbread (a tradition at our house)
Apple Crisp
Rice Pudding
Pumpkin pie

Iced tea    Hot cider   Coffee

The Cushaw squash soup is scrumptious this year. I made a really big batch so I would have some to put in the freezer for quick and tasty winter meals. Cushaws are an heirloom variety, green and white striped that can weigh up to 20 lbs. It has a fine, grainy yellow flesh that is delicious in soups.

The recipe: It started out as a sweet savory apple squash soup, but of course I had to tweak it, and made it up as I went along.

Squash and Apple Soup

One Cushaw Squash, 8-10 lbs, cut in half lengthwise, seeds removed and scraped.
2 TBS olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
5 lbs; (or 8-10) Jonathon apples (or other hard cooking apple such as Macintosh) peeled, cored, and cut into about 1" chunks
6 cups red miso soup
8 cups water (or enough to cover vegetables)
1 TBS fresh thyme leaves
1 TBS garlic powder
1 tsp ginger
1 TBS chili powder (or other hot pepper, sometimes I use ground Thai pepper but this is very hot so adjust for taste. 1 tsp is enough for the whole batch.)
1/2 cup maple syrup

Preheat oven to 450F. Line 10" x 15" jelly roll pans with foil. Place squash halves, cut side down, in lined pans and roast about 45 min or until very tender when pierced with fork. Cool until easy to handle, scoop squash from skin and place in large bowl. ( I found that the thick, solid neck of the squash took longer to cook than the hollow body, so I cut them in half and let the necks bake longer until done).

Meanwhile, in 5-6 qt saucepan, heat oil on medium heat. When hot, add onion and celery, cover and cook 10 minutes. Add apples, cover and cook 10 minutes longer or until tender. (You don't need to add any water at this stage).

At this point, because I don't have a huge kettle, I divided my apple mix in half and put one half into another 5-6 qt pan and divided the remaining ingredients, half into each pan.

Add miso, water, and squash to saucepot, cover and heat to boiling on high. Reduce heat to low and simmer until everything is really tender and mushy. I stirred them a lot to keep it from sticking. Ladle squash mix into blender with center part removed to allow steam to escape; (I let it cool some first). Blend until pureed. Pour into large bowl. Return all soup to saucepot and heat through. Ladle into soup tureen. Serves a big crowd or freeze in meal-size portions.

Garnish with chopped nuts and fried sage leaves.

To make fried sage leaves: heat about 1/4 inch of oil in a small sacuepan until hot and "shimmering". Add 5 or 6 medium-size sage leaves at a time and stir 5 seconds. With slotted spoon, quickly transfer leaves to paper towels to drain. Cool completely. Leaves will crisp as they cool. You can fry leaves a day ahead and store in airtight container at room temperature.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gentle Inheritance

2010-11-16T12:52:00.000-08:00

Every time I get to thinking of Chaos in the Parrillel Universe that is this garden spot, as MY garden, I get gently reminded that no, I'm just the caretaker here.

A while back in early summer, The Digger decided he didn't like an old Pfitzer juniper that has occupied a corner of the stone wall for the last 25 years, and he was right. It was half dead, besides being a prickly uncomfortable thing, so it had to go. And with it, a thick bed of euonymous ground cover that had taken over the corner, plus some Japanese honeysuckle that had sneaked in and was tangled around an overgrown pyracantha, which had also way outgrown its bounds. A couple of weed trees, a male mulberry and a hackberry, had insinuated themselves next to the wall and gotten tall enough to cast a disrespectable amount of shade, because the corner was a tangled prickly mess no one wanted to deal with.

When all the above was removed, pulled, chopped, and tamed, a Foster holly was set in the corner to provide an evergreen anchor to that corner of the yard, and I planted a flat of mixed periwinkles in front of it for a temporary spot of color until next spring when I can plant perennials there. With all that tall junk gone, it now was a full sun spot and the periwinkles soon reached lush heights and blazed with hot, happy summer pinks, whites and reds, glowing and growing through the August heat and drought without wilting a leaf. It was so pretty I may have to change my mind about perenials and just plant periwinkles there from now on!

July

And here came the surprises. Once upon a time, some 50 years ago, or so my neighbor to the south at the bottom of the hill tells me, the Lady That Planted the Garden grew hollyhocks in that corner that she could see from her porch, 2 doors down, blooming tall over the wall. Apparently, with pulling out all that euonymous and disturbing the soil, hollyhock seeds that had lain fallow for all that time were brought to the surface (they need light to germinate) and, germinate, they did! I first noticed them as I was pulling out pigweed and other undesirables, when to my astonishment, I saw---baby hollyhocks! There were some half dozen of them, tiny and hopeful behind the holly tree! So I left them. And they grew, oh my how they grew!

October

Plants are beginning to fill in, this should be spectacular next year. There are tall phlox, thalictrum, paracanda, echinacea, mums, golden yarrow, a variegated miscanthus, daylilies, a sprinkling of daffodils, irises, and a winter jasmine on the wall. A row of white flowered mondo grass edges the front, hopefully kept in check with a strip of landscape edging which will be invisible as soon as the plants grow a bit. Hardy geraniums are planned where the periwinkles were. All of these plants were divided and moved from somewhere else in the gardens except the chrysanthemums, which will have cuttings taken next year to be planted elsewhere. (Quick tip: can't remember what color of mums are where? Take a picture or two for reference. I always tag them, but tags get lost.)

You can see the hollyhocks in the back.

November

I didn't put anything here for scale, but these plants are huge! They are overtaking daylilies and mums that I actually planted in this corner.

This one is about 5' across in it's first summer. I can only imagine how tall they will be next year!

Another surprise: This bed is also full of volunteer petunias. Since I have never planted petunias here, the seeds must also have been banked up in here for all those years. I love these old petunias that reseed and come up every year with no help from me.

Next spring, I will plant an antique climbing rose on the wall, yet to be decided upon, to spread across the top of the wall. Once there was a Seven Sisters rose here, but long ago it was shaded out by big lilacs that grow to the east. One cane of it rooted on the other side of the wall and now blooms in the neighbors' yard. I may have to go and get a piece of it.

Even though she left long ago, the Lady continues to surprise me in sprit with her gentle inheritances. I'm sure there will be more to come.

"He who shares the joy in what he's grown

Spreads joy abroad and doubles his own."

----Anonymous

Be Careful Of the Little Things

2010-11-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

So easy to get in a hurry with fall cleanup, rush through the leaf-raking chores to get them done. But take care----

This little cutie was hanging out on a brugmansia that I was cutting back

And this little fellow nearly got the business end of the broom when I was sweeping off the deck, as it was sunning, surrounded by acorns. It was so well camoflaged on the grey deck boards that I would have missed it if it hadn't moved a little. It was cold and moving slowly so it was easy to capture and move out of harms way.

This praying mantis egg case almost got tossed on the fire when I cut back hardy ageratum in the fall

cleanup, but luckily I spotted it, 4' above the ground, before I cut off the stem.

I found wooly caterpillars today, assasin bugs, several lizards and a garter snake sunning itself on a rock, as I was cutting back perennials. Fallen leaves are left to protect the plants, and add organic matter to the soil over the winter. In the spring, the top layer of leaves that didn't decompose are taken off to the compost pile. Leaf fall on paths and driveways is raked and shredded on a weekly basis, before anything can take up residence in there (and before it becomes one biiiiggg chore!), then added to garden beds where they break down quickly, nourishing the soil. Lawn leaves are mowed with the mulching blade on the mower to add nutrients to the lawn.

The fall cleanup isn't so pressing that we can't take the time to enjoy the diversity that gives our gardens life, and to take care lest we in our haste, destroy a tiny life.There are many little treasures that live in the leaves and detrius of the garden that largely go unseen except by the most observant gardener, and keeping a spotless garden deprives them of a place to spend a cosy winter. It is so easy to scoop them up unnoticed among the leaves if we clean up all the leaves that fall into the beds, and toss them out with the trash or worse, into the shredder.

So let the leaves lay as they may! There will be plenty of time in the spring to divest the plants of their protective leaf blankets, and when the snow flies, we can content ourselves with the knowledge that in the spring, the butterflies will come again, the frogs will sing, the mantids will pray, and lightning bugs will fill our nights with gentle fireworks.

What's My Name?

2010-07-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

Seems like there are always a few hostas with no labels anymore, and even though I know it doesn't really matter, I am always curious (besides, if there is a mystery I always like to get to the bottom of it!) and when somebody asks, what's that one? I would like to tell them. If anybody recognizes any of these, please let me know!

Whoever I am, I'm sure pretty!

This WAS a mystery, until it began to open its double purple flowers and I discovered that is the biggest Fuji Botan that I have ever seen, scapes fully 5' tall and the plant is nearly 4' across.

Cherry Berry sported and I divided the sport out of it. This is what I got. Does it have a name? Not Maraschino Cherry, I don't think, fat green scapes with pale purple flowers.

This was sold as Sea Thunder. NOT! Crisp, glossy leaves, purple flowers. Pretty, small/medium plant.

Another beauty with a missing label.???????

They always look a little, well, lost if they don't know who they are!

Going Native: Plants of the Prairie

2010-06-28T23:29:00.000-07:00

There is so much talk about growing native plants these days: what is native, what isn't, what are weeds, what can be called "wildflowers", what natives belong in a home garden and what should best be left in the wild, on and on. In my opinion (which I don't think you asked for, but I'm gonna give it to you anyway, I'm shameless) there are many native wildflowers which can be grown in a garden. But! and here's the caveat: some just aren't suitable or even manageable in a small space. Some of them need room, lots of it! Many need the kind of environment most backyard gardeners can't give them, and may just turn up their toes and die in our nice rich garden soil with all the water they could ever possibly want.....or else, on such a rich diet, go absolutely kick-up-their-heels rampant and try to fill every available corner with their offspring or their greedy roots. A firm hand is needed with these characters. They are native plants because they have adapted to survive under specialized, and sometimes harsh conditions that exist in the local environment. A few actually need fire to germinate!

Prairie wildflowers are among those that survive on neglect, producing zillions of seeds, only a small percentage of which will actually find the right conditions to germinate. In spite of being found in full, intense sun on open prairies, a lot of them are actually shade plants, growing in the shade of tall grasses that tower over them as they complete their life cycles.

Those pictured below are all plants of the midwest. Many of them can be found all over the United States, wherever prairie-like accomodations for these hardy plants can be found: in pastures, on roadsides, empty lots, in sidewalk cracks where you would thnk they couldn't get a root-hold.

. They ask for little more than a bit of soil, sun,

and that it rains once in a while.

The last time we went to Roaring River State Park, here in SW Missouri, we went hiking on the Firetower Trail (between trout fishing). It's a beautiful trail, through richly diverse woods, that eventually winds through a restored dolomite glade area with wonderful native wildflowers blooming in glorious abundance. It is a harsh, rocky area in full, blazing sun with competition from grasses, trees and predators to eat them, but somehow, they survive and are beautiful!

A few, like the puffy pink sensitive briar below, have their own defenses--the stems are thorny and hurtful to touch! Prickly pear cactus, also often found on certain types of glades, is very well armed. Some taste terrible, but all are host plants for some form of insect life or provide habitat for Mother Nature's pets, which feed on the insects that feed on the plants.....in the interconnectedness that is life.

Mimosa nuttallii (sensitive briar, cat's claw)

A wild member of the allium family

Prairie Larkspur

Prairie mallow

Echinacea (cone flower)

Asclepias (Butterfly weed)

Coreopsis

Deptford pink

Ruellia

Yarrow

Prairie rose

Yellow clover

daisy fleabane

The wonderful golden seed puff of goatsbeard

Not your average garden! But this is where they all live, and do it so beautifully!

Many of these grow in my garden, and I find that they do very well. (Note: Most of them have come on their own, with no help from me, except to recognize them when I saw them.) Almost too well, in fact. With good soil and plentiful water, the majority of them tend to be a bit invasive, or at the least, extremely aggressive. They have to be tended to with a ruthless hand, pulling them out with no sentiment or there would be no paths or beds, just a sea of wildflowers to wade through! Which, come to think of it, might not be such a bad thing!

"A wildflower is just a weed with a pretty face. If ragweed was beautiful, we wouldn't care if it made us sneeze!"---Anon.

To learn more about the Roaring River Conservation Opportunity Area, please visit their website:

http://mdc4.mdc.mo.gov/Documents/17987.pdf And if you get an opportunity, visit in person!

For All You Hosta Freaks Out There

2010-06-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

You know who you are, all you hosta lovers, freaks and geeks! Obsessive/compulsives, like me, who think there are no bad hostas. And we want all of them we can get! Lucky for us, there are thousands of varieties to choose from! (Oh, and don't be fooled by my knowing their names. I'm only telling you about the ones that haven't lost their labels, or never had any. I'm not that organized!)

Lower hosta bed, looking up. The pink in the middle is astilbe "Heart and Soul". El Nino is the pretty little blue and white in the foreground. Midwest Magic to the right. Two dogwoods, one pink and one white, will eventually shade this bed. We lost a small elm that shaded it, and poor Pizazz got its leaves burned this spring, but it is coming out of it.

On Stage

Of course, there has to be a Sum and Substance!

The big one in front is Regal Splendor. One of my favorites and a beautiful, reliable hosta that seems to be slug-proof. Left of it is Fire Island, Pineapple Upside-down Cake, Sum of all, and in the background, Blue Angel. This is the upper level. Someday, Sum of All, Blue Angel and T Rex (to the left, on the other side of the elephant ears and out of sight) will fill the center of this bed. These hostas were planted in '08 and '09., except Regal Splendor which is about 5 years old.

An assortment, next to the path going down to the lower level

Silver Threads and Golden Needles

Old bed under redbud tree, these hostas have been here for 6 years.

Pizazz at the top. You can see the sun damage. Liberty is in front, left. Next to Liberty was labeled as White Feather, but it is not.

Sun Power

Great Arrival, in the center

Looking down into a new area, dwarf and mini hostas go down there.

Always beautiful and always reliable, Albo Marginata

New bed, just planted this spring (except for the A.M.'s.

Other side of mini-hosta bed. This area is new this summer, last week in fact. The larger hostas were transplanted out of spots where they were being crowded. A very young Big Daddy is in the back center.

Stilletto

Halcyon

Sweet Home Chicago. See the astilbe next to it?

This is when they were planted, in 2008. The astilbe has to come out! It doesn't stand a chance between Chicago and Veronica Lake, on the right! That's Paul's Glory, in the back.

Gold Standard in the back, Antioch in the front. Both old varieties but nice!

From left: Fragrant Summer, First Frost, Guacamole, Abiqua Drinking Gourd, underplanted with Kabitan

Albo Marginata Montana

Saving the best for last, Blue Angel. This plant is about 9 years old.

Hope you have enjoyed this sampling of my hosta collection!

Happy Gardening!

"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magick waiting somewhere behind the morning." ---Jpseph Priest 1753-1804

What's Blooming in the Garden! Just a Bunch of Pretty Flowers

2010-06-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

A sampling of what is going on in Chaos

Bath's Pink Dianthus

Pink Missouri primrose

Astilbe

Regal lily

Common orange daylily

Dwarf yellow daylily

One of my summer favorites, Queen Anne's lace. The flowers are wonderful, pressed. They look like snowflakes.

Yellow lily

Pot of impatiens and pansies on the back steps

wildflower, starry campion

Anacyclis blooming in a bed of sedums

hardy crinum lily

I think this is Catherine Woodberry

big orange daylily (sorry, lost label!)

Enjoy!

"Steep thyself in a bowl of summertime" --Virgil

Go Outside and Play!

2010-06-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

When I wasn't outside, playing in the woods or climbing trees and building treehouses, riding my bike or otherwise being a kid, I was upstairs in my room either sewing doll clothes or sitting on my windowseat, reading. When I could get away with it. Mama would find me and I'd hear it. "Go outside and play!" if it was a nice day. I'd usually drag my book and blanket outside and hide somewhere to read, if it was a good book. (I knew if I didn't get out that door, she would put me to work and I'd be scrubbing woodwork or helping can something, or worse yet, ironing.)

Still today it's a tossup whether I would rather read, or be outdoors, or both. So when I found three good books at the flea market yesterday, all of them about the outdoors, I was in book heaven! They are all from the 1970's, which isn't all that long ago, but classics as the word goes. All "coffee table" size books, full of pictures by lots of text. One is "This Good Earth", a collection of articles from Audubon, and fascinating reading with wonderful photos about the natural world.

Another is "Harvest of a Quiet Eye, the Natural World of John Burroughs", one of the most eloquent nature writers of the 20th century, though now largely unknown by this genration. He was a contemporary of poet Walt Whitman, natural history writer Henry Thoreau, and naturalist explorer John Muir. What distinguished company! He also made a highly publicized tour of Yellowstone with Theodore Roosevelt, which might be familiar from the PBS series on National Parks of this past year; and went camping with Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. His was a quiet fame that lives on in his writings, and hopefully this generation and those to come will rediscover them and come to love them as well. I remember reading his writings as a child, laying with a blanket under my tummy and a forsythia bush for a room, soakiing up his clean, descriptive phrases and getting my grubby fingers all over the pages (much to the dismay of the local librarian, I have no doubt!) of "Wake Robin", in particular, and one about bees and honey and sharp eyes that sticks in my mind still. I'll have to hunt them all down and read them again.

The third, "John Muir's Longest Walk", by John Earl, traces his thousand mile walk to Florida in 1867. For those of you who are familiar with John Muir, you will know that he was the father of conservation, founder of the Sierra Club and explorer of Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Mount Rainier, the Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, and Glacier Bay. There was much coverage of Muir's travels in the PBS National Park series also. There is a California state park in his honor. John Earl, photographer, traced and photographed Muir's thousand mile walk, in 1973, seeing things through the eyes of John Muir himself. Text is by John Muir himself, taken from a book that was published from his own journal. I have just glanced at this one so far, but it looks fascinating and I can't wait to read it thoroughly. "I only went out for a walk," he says, "and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going

"The universe to me is a grand spectacle that fills me
with awe and wonder and joy,
and with intense curiousity."
---John Burroughs

A Walk Out Beyond: The Remaking of a Forest

2010-06-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

Twenty-seven years ago in April when I first set eyes on the acre where I live, with it's blooming tulip magnolia and lawn full of violets and buttercups, I knew I had come home. Didn't much matter what the house was, I wanted that tree!

The stone cottage with seashells embedded in the walls was just a bonus. The woods was a tangle of honeysuckle, euonymous and poison ivy, with a variety of oaks, hackberry and elms, a couple of old apple trees and a small struggling peach, all that remained of a once thriving garden and orchard, along with patches of gooseberries. A jungle of mock oranges was in one corner close to the cottage behind an old frame, one-room house that was falling into disrepair. An ancient smoke tree, a red dogwood and a young hawthorn graced what was a sort of a lawn. It was going to be a lot of work!

But down the street and directly behind my woods, there was a two-acre lot that was kept neatly mowed by absentee owners; with a wet-weather drainage stream in the hollow and huge old oaks towering on the hilly slope above it. It was spring; the grass was studded with a zillion wildflowers; anemones, adder's tongue, violets, buttercups and hundreds more tiny spring flowers. It was heaven!

My neighbor to the south kept his lawn and the acre behind his house, which adjoined the meadow, neatly manicured as well, with more old oaks probiding shade.

And it stayed that way for several years. I loved it, loved to walk through that lovely meadow with the flowers and birds, into the woods beyond that, which had been let grow for many years and had majestic 300 hundred year old oaks, mayapples, mossy creek banks and a huge patch of blackberries, the remnants of a once thriving, pick-your-own berry farm.

But alas, things change and soon disaster befell this little slice of Eden. I was never sure why, though I did ask questions but got no clear answers. It might have been because the owner got tired of keeping it mowed, or sold it, but one day trucks began dumping huge quantities of fill all over the pristine meadow; huge pieces of concrete and rock and clay until in some places it was nearly 3 feet deep, from an excavation which was going on for a new highschool. That was the end of it ever being mowed again. And it was disastrous for the venerable oaks, having their roots buried under tons of debris. It took 4 or 5 years for them to die, but the aged giants began to topple over, one after another, leaving tangled branches and trunks on top of the chunks of concrete and tall grasses that now filled this once serene place. It was painful to watch the honeysuckle and poison ivy take over, smothering everything. The wet-weather drainage was filled with four feet of that crap, damming up the neighborhood drainage to the north. Since we are not in the city, there were no codes in place to stop the dumping, and it went on while we stood by helplessly. After all, it wasn't our property.

Shortly after that, the mature woods on the other side was brutally decimated when the (different) owner decided to build apartment buildings where they stood, and cut down all those wonderful oaks, selling them off to someone who manufactures pallets. (!!!) It too soon became an impossible tangle of honeysuckle and brush, the woods gone. So was part of the noise buffer the trees provided between us and the freeway
half a mile to the south. The apartment house never materialized as neighborhood opinion quickly quashed that. We circulated petitions and showed up en masse before the city council (that property is in the city limits, just barely) on the day the permit hearing was held. The permit was refused, but it was too late for the woods. Then he decided to build a single dwelling there, and began building up part of that land with fill dirt and debris also, until there is now a mound some 50' high. Most of the blackberries are covered up and it is truly an ugly sight. I will spare you that picture. Finally the city put a stop to the dumping because of neighborhood complaints, and nothing more has happened to it. I am sure the owner will never carry out his plans. He just laid the area to ruins.

Soon after, my south neighbor died, and his back acre fell into neglect with no one to care for it. It grew up into tall grass and weeds, the house rented out to a string of tenants, none of whom have been into lawn maintainence. It began to blend with the ruined meadow and now seems to be a part of it.

Life goes on. The land has been lying fallow for the 15 years or so since the first dumping went on behind us, in the area we now call Out Beyond. It is still covered with honeysuckle, and the ice storm of '07 did further damage to the remaining trees, littering huge branches everywhere and felling some more of the weaker trees, which still lie.

What's left of the last big oaks to decline and fall. It took 10 years for this one to die.

Most of the concrete chunks are covered now, the stream has cut a new path and drains the area once again, and there is reforesting going on, with young oaks and hickories growing tall. Some old oaks that didn't get buried still survive, though many are slowly declining, providing woodpecker homes in dead branches.

Wildflowers have sprung up once again, and though the meadow is gone, early spring brings them in huge patches among the red cedars that are popping up by the hundreds. Soon there will be a cedar woods here.

What is most interesting is that there are tree species growing tall that were never there before. Lilacs, both white and purple, bloom in the spring. Everything must have been seed-planted by the birds and animals, or the seed blew in on the wind.

A young sweet gum, tall and beautiful, grows next to the stream.

A sycamore or two, several wild pears, cherries, a cottonwood, lots of elms and hackberries, to be expected, a few young maples, and a young white pine is thrusting its way skyward among a mess of honeysuckle. There was another, but the deer stripped the bark and killed it, which is why we haven't cleared the vines around the survivor; to restrict access to it. It seems to be growing well anyway and is taller than I am.

Blackberry patches have established in the sunny areas where there were oaks, and a huge patch of wild strawberries has come. It is on its way to becoming a beautiful forest once again, although completely different in character from what it once was. One day the sycamore, cottonwoods, pines, oaks and other trees will be mature and shade out some of the rampant undergrowth. Right now it is home to scores of birds; bluebirds, woodpeckers, hawks, creepers, thrushes, robins, jays and more, and teeming with wildlife including the damn raiding deer, groundhogs, foxes, weasels, raccoons, possums, and who knows what all else.

Wonder who lives in here? Groundhog, maybe.

It is beginning to be a wonderful place again. We keep a path mowed through it so we can walk there, and into the woods further Out Beyond. On Earth Day we found a young weeping willow on sale for half price, and planted it directly behind our woods, in the hollow next to the stream. Hopefully it will have a chance to grow.

That is, if it is left alone. The danger is not over to this plot of land. It was sold to someone who was going to build on it, some 10 years ago, and then changed their minds. There is only one small area to build, because the lower area is a natural drain that fills in the spring, and there are no utilities or sewer service there. Not worth a contractor messing with, and the adjacent woods are not for sale, at least while our elderly neighbor still lives. Who knows what her inheriting children will do? Now it is for sale again, and has been for several years, but the asking price is so high as to be laughable, or else we would have purchased it long ago to keep anyone from building there.

I have been slowly moving some of the wildflowers to our own property, in advance of any bulldozers or brush hogs that might suddenly appear, because one never knows and we don't want to lose them completely. We walk the paths with a pair of pruners, and cut honeysuckle out of some of the trees to keep them from being smothered (they do deserve a chance, after all) and spray some of the poison ivy with Roundup to keep it from spreading into our woods as I am severely allergic to it. I intend to keep the biggest patch mowed so it doesn't come back, and that is under the sweet gum tree. And hope everyday that no one buys it, or that the owners should suddenly drop the price to within reason so we can snap it up.

Looking into the woods back of Out Beyond

As for the other woods, with all the fill on one side, the trees are beginning to grow back there somewhat also, though the old sassafrass and some of the remaining oaks are now under tons of dirt and concrete, as well as most of the blackberries. We have weed-whacked a path through about 4 acres of it, behind our elderly neighbor's house (she owns part of it as well as another neighbor down the street), so we can hunt the morel mushrooms that thrive there, and enjoy the wildflowers in that woods also. Hawks nest here, and we found a turkey vulture roost on an old dead tree the last time we were walking One day soon we will go back at dusk for pictures, when they are coming in to settle for the night. Deer live here too, in about a three mile stretch of forest along the interstate.

Which is another story: the state highway department has clear cut and bulldozed an area along the interstate, leaving a huge, scarred, rocky, muddy mess along the outside of the woods, with downed trees like jackstraws left to litter the forest edge, further reducing our tree buffer zone. I assume they did that to deprive the deer of cover from which to jump out in front of cars and trucks on the highway. This area is where I find a lot of the moss to transplant to my woods. I wish I had gotten more before the bulldozers came and plowed it up. But even there, a recent walk found sun loving wildflowers springing up everywhere.

This moss is going home with me on my next woods walk.

Unidentified wildflower (need to look this up)

Nature has a wonderful way of concealing scars.

"Naure is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

These Are the Things to Remember

2010-05-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

This poem was taken from a book of poetry published over a hundred years ago. The author was listed as unknown. It is one of my favorites.

"I know where wild forget-me-nots wade
Along the edge of clear running water
Where a great blue heron stands at sunrise.

I have listened to the first spring peepers
And have counted the varied and tender
Greens of spring, from pale of willow
To dark of pine.

I have walked on pine needle carpets
And on spongy green moss
In sunlight and shade

I know a woodland pool
Hidden from sight by giant ferns
Where mayapples unfurl their green umbrellas
Beneath a stone lantern,
And the small face of the hepatica
Holds a drop of blue sky.

I have uncovered the damp sweetness
Of arbutus
And felt the south wind brush across my face
Bearing a hint of rain and flower gardens.

I have seen the scarlet tanager
In the topmost branches of the tulip tree
And the marsh wren in her house
Beneath the lemon lilies.

I know a pond at evening,
Where ducks trail silver threads in their wake.
Trout jump, and fireflies appear
Above the water.

I have seen the whipporwill
Silhouetted on a dusky sky
And heard his song of summer magic
While standing in bright moonlight
Watching shadows cast by giant pines.

I have felt the mystery of heaven
And the joy of earth--
And I know what I know--
These are the things to remember."

The Best of the Rest: Missouri Botanical Garden

2010-05-28T22:07:00.000-07:00

Life here at the Chaotic Garden seems to have gotten pretty busy these past couple of days, and I have not gotten back to the rest of the Botanical Garden. But here it is!

A new garden has been added since we were here last. Glad to see George Washington Carver has been honored with a place here! A national monument at his homestead is here in SW Missouri not far from us.

On to the Kemper Center for Home Gardening, where we learn about ideas for our home gardens, and get all our garden questions answered!

Wind sculptures

The hosta garden at Kemper

I love the sculptures!

Some of everything is grown here, trials, experiments, new plants

Yummy looking lettuces! Beautiful!

River Birches. Love the peeling bark!

A great way to plant a container! The chard and other veggie greens are so beautiful with the flowers.

The Chinese garden is next, small but lovely.

The walk is embedded with mosaics of all sorts of flowers and bird pebble art.

Pomegranate flower and fruit

The Chinese have reverence for rock

Interesting upright dwarf banana. Musella lasiocarpa

Leaving the Chinese Garden, sculpture of sheep

Rainbow Knockout Roses

The Herb Garden

The dry creek

The DinoQuest exhibit was going on in the Climatron, unfortunately we were out of time and the Garden was nearing closing time so we had to miss this and the temperate house. Next time!

The rock garden outside the Temperate House

Tiny Dutch elm in the rock garden. It wasn't over 4' tall!

Ulmas x Hollandica "Jacqueline Hillier"

Chihouly glass sculpture. The light was behind it so I couldn't capture its brilliant blue. Amazing piece of work!

Goodby Missouri Botanical Gardens! So much had to be left out of these posts because of space and time, wish I could have shared it all with you. I've tried to pick the best representational photos of my favorite spots, and hope you have enjoyed it as much as we did. What a wonderful day! If you would like to learn more, visit

http://www.mobot.org/

The William T Kemper center for Home Gardening is worth a visit for any of your gardening questions. There is also a "plant finder" that will enable you to identify nearly any plant that will grow in the MoBot zone, learn about its characteristics and where to locate it. A very valuable resource!

http://www.mobot.org/hort/gardens/kemper/intro/

http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/Alpha.asp

Thank you for joining us at Missouri Botanical Garden. I hope you will put this garden on your list to personally enjoy one day!

Missouri Botanical Gardens, Japanese Garden

2010-05-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

It was a smooth transition from the woodland garden to the Japanese Garden, my next favorite place at MoBot. (They are all my favorite places, who do I think I'm kidding?!!)

Not going to try to caption all these, just enjoy the wonderful tranquility and let it speak for itself.

The first lantern, guiding us into the garden, set in a gravel stream..

This basin was at the entrance to the Garden.

Moss lawn

Hungry Koi looking for a handout. Some of these were 3-4' long!

The bridge to the teahouse island. It was closed except to special groups.

The last lantern on the way out of the garden. Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Tomorrow, the best of the rest!!

Missouri Botanical Gardens, Woodland Garden

2010-05-23T21:36:00.000-07:00

There is so much to see and enjoy at Missouri Botanical Gardens! But my favorite part of it all has to be the woodland garden. I would have just been glad to wander around in there for hours, but The Person I Was With wanted to see the rest .

You wildflower plant geeks are gonna love this place.

Mayapple, podophyllum"Spotty Dotty"!

I love the red flowers! Do I want this one? Hella yes!

Small pond, statuary "Three Graces". Water is a bit murky but it had been raining for days.

Another mayapple! I love these things! Podophyllum plianthum Dysosma

Wow! What is this, I asked!

Jack in the pulpit, Arisaema ringens. Gorgeous!

This robin was just having the BEST time!

Allspice, sinocalycanthus chinensis I think I have to have this shrub!

Another arum, arisaema serratum

Would you have believed this was an epimedium? epimedium latisepalum

Looks like they have trouble with four-legged critters too! I just did this very thing with a wire basket to protect a hosta that was being attacked by deer, the morning we left for St Louis. Worked, too!

I love this stream winding through the woodland garden

So does this lovely couple!

European beech, fagus sylvatica. A wonderfully picturesque tree.

And onwards to the Japanese Garden.

So many pictures (I took nearly a thousand), so many plants, and so little time! Tomorrow, the Japanese Garden.

I love Missouri Botanical Gardens!

2010-05-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

It was a most gorgeous day when we were at Missouri Botanical Gardens last weekend, and what a wonderful way to spend our anniversary! We took sooo many pictures, and I have decided that there is no way to edit them down into one post, so this is the first of several.

I have tried to think of how to frame these pictures with words, but I just decided to let MoBot speak for itself, with captions. Enjoy the pictures.

Chihouly glass sculpture arch in rose garden

One of many artworks in the Garden

The Queen of the Garden on her throne....yeah that would be me!

I've always loved this sculpture with bells

One of many gorgeous planters

Victorian garden

glass scultures floating in the pond, Climatron in the background

Detail of Victorian garden

If you can stand another iris pic, Edith Woford

The Maze

Tiger's eyes sumac

Very old hackberry tree. I love the huge, old trees of this garden.

The ancient trunk of this tree is truly awesome.

Another ancient tree, a sweetgum (and Himself, my gardening and life partner)

Japanese tree lilac. Never knew they could get so big!

Daylily garden, not blooming much yet.

except for this one: "Apricot"

Tomorrow, the English Woodland garden, where I could have spent days instead of hours. Fascinating plants there!

Mother Nature's Magic Tricks Need a Lot of Patience!

2010-05-16T08:38:00.000-07:00

When you plant something and it gets all yellow and disappears that same summer; and it doesn't come up again the next year, you know it's dead, right? Well apparently not always! I planted a golden seal (hydrastis canadensis) in a woods bed a couple of years ago, and in spite of what I thought of as proper care, it left me and I just assumed it didn't like my conditions. Though what conditions it would like, I could only guess, as I gave it the humus-rich woodland soil it is supposed to want. I was hoping to get a start on a "very large colony", as my Misouri Wildflowers book hints of, but I thought, alas, not to be.

Not so fast! For three years later, as I'm weeding the area, I find this, the original plant tag still right next to it:

And with a bud, no less! It must have been lying dormant, growing a root system all this time. I have read that it demands moist conditions but it doesn't really get that here, so it may be more adaptable than the books say. (The same books also say that Virginia bluebells like moist conditions but I find they grow in most any woodsy soil, and in my gravel paths just fine.) I'm assuming that it may act like many other native woodland plants, which go dormant when the summer gets hot and dry, resting and marshalling their forces, developing root systems underground with no energy output used in keeping leaves alive; until the next growing season. Ginseng (Panax quinquefolium) does the same thing, disappearing in July or August to reappear in spring twice the size it was the previous year.

I am going to be careful to watch for the ripening seeds, and scatter them in a couple of other places in the woods, including one spot that stays a mite damper than others, and see if they come up. The flower blooms a sort of non-distinguished greenish white, fuzzy little ball of stamens and pistils with no petals, that soon turns into a compact cluster of scarlet berries. If harvested, they should be planted fresh, or they will develop a double dormancy that takes 2 winters to break (just like ginseng again), coming up in the second spring.

Goldenseal is one of the valued medicinal herbs that is harvested for its horizontal rhizomes. A long-lived herbaceous perennial of the deep woods, the root resembles a small, crooked finger. The name is derived from the golden yellow color of the rhizome and clearly identifies it from all look-alikes, of which it has many. Goldenseal root contains an antimicrobial constituent which is used in treatment of upper respiratory infections. In small doses it is also said to be a stimulent to digestion and tones the digestive tract.

Goldenseal and ginseng are both often illegally harvested in the wild, which decimates native stands. Raiders risk heavy fines from conservation agencies, and possibly a pants-load of buckshot., as growers of woods patches guard their valuable crops zealously. On the other hand, planting as a cash crop is encouraged and seeds of both are readily available. It does take several years before roots are big enough to harvest, often 7-9 years. Kind of a long time to wait!

Ginseng, in their second year. The tiny plants in the background are first year plants, the seeds having gone through the double dormancy period and come up the second spring, even though they were all planted at the same time. It will be several years yet before these babies are big enough to be harvested.

As for me, I don't plan on getting rich from my tiny patch. I just grow them for fun--and to see if I can!

For more information on growing both these plants, here is a useful link:

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/newcropsnews/94-4-1/ginseng.html

"Nature does nothing in vain."

--Sir Thomas Browne

Nature Does It With Flair! Columbines!

2010-05-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

Hardy orchid Bletilla

Everytime I go out the door I am awestruck by the world outside. Mother Nature never does anything by half, and there is more drama and intrigue out there than ever in anyone's imagination on daytime TV. I could never understand why anybody would want to stay indoors and watch soap operas when there is so much going on just outside the walls of their own houses!

Oh, the columbines this year!

All of these columbines have hybridized into these shapes and colors, and have reseeded in the garden with no help or interference from any human.

But what;s really neat about these plants:

Notice the flower on the right, normal position, new bloom. The one above it is starting to turn up, in horizontal position. The one at left is setting seed, the petals ready to fall, in upright position. See the seed capsule standing upright above the shriveled petals? When it ripens, it splits open and the seeds fly out everywhere! What a great seed delivery system!

I love Mother Nature!

"This life, sae far's I understand,

Is an enchanted fairie-land,

Where pleasure is a magic wand

That, wielded right,

Makes hours like minutes hand in hand

Dance by fir' light."

--Robert Burns

Ah, the darling buds of May!

2010-05-10T16:42:00.000-07:00

Seems like summer has sprung, full blown, from the hopeful days of March and April. Spring has flown by on beautiful gossamer wings, flitting off in such haste that has left me shouting, "Wait! I'm not done with you yet, I didn't get to see.....where are you going so fast?" Already the roses are overnight bursting into full bloom, and the rhododendrons haven't even finished opening up.

Red Knockout Rose!

We have been gone for 4 days, at the Tri-State Gem and Mineral Show here. It was an outdoor show, and it alternately rained, hailed, and gusted windily (is that a word? ha!) except for the last day, and most of it it was absolutely miserable, wet and chilly. So coming back to the garden was truly a marvelous adventure. With the rain and a couple of days of sunshine, everything seems to be twice the size it was a week ago and dramatic changes are everywhere.

And what a year for the irises! I am in love with irises, this time of the year. (Of course I am in love with whatever's blooming, at any given moment!) The newer cultivars are absolutely gorgeous, but I think I love the old varieties best. Some of the new ones don't seem to have much fragrance, which to me is the soul of the flower. Like with roses, all that hybridizing seems to have removed the essence and just left the lovely faces.

One of my favorites, an antique that started blooming again after I divided it and gave it some sun.

A new combination has struck me like a revelation: I am going to save seeds of wild columbine and scatter them in the bed of yellow iris for next year.

Won't these be pretty together?

The wild roses are blooming in the woods, scenting the air for blocks around. Kind of makes up for the scentless Knock-outs, which I love for their beautiful, don't-need-any-coddling ways. Therese Bugnet has buds, but being somewhat shaded by lilacs that have grown to tower over her, is just going to be subtle these days. Plus, I found a caterpillar chomping merrily away at her the other day, and it had already stripped a couple of branches. I removed it to a wild rose where it can chomp to its heart's content and not do any appreciable damage.

Therese Bugnet

The wild roses are multiflora roses, a type of rambler introduced from Asia
to the eastern United States in 1866 as rootstock for ornamental roses. Beginning in the 1930s, the U.S. Soil Conservation Service promoted it for use in erosion control and as "living fences" to confine livestock. State conservation departments recommended multiflora rose as cover for wildlife. More recently, multiflora rose has been planted in highway median strips to serve as crash barriers and to reduce automobile headlight glare. However, because if its tenacious growth and rapid spreading ways, both through seeds and its habit of tip layering its log canes, it has made its way to the noxious plant list and is a scourge of farmers everywhere. I don't think there is anywhere it won't grow; sun, shade, open fields, woods, gardens; and it is lethal to mess with, having prodigious thorns that catch everthing within reach and rip clothing and flesh alike to ribbons if it has a chance. Its saving grace are the wonderfully scented white flower clusters, and the only reason I keep it around. When it is done blooming, I will arm myself with leather rose gloves and a sharp pair of pruners, and reduce it to about a three-foot mound (currently, they are reaching 8 feet and still climbing!) and while I'm at it, I'll dig out its new tip-layered progeny. It will spend the rest of the summer regaining its size, and next spring again be covered with buds. (I'll have to look out for cardinal nests, they like it because it's safe from marauding cats in there!)

A wild pink dog rose grows by the edge of the wood and I've planted a beach rose that I got from a friend who summers in Maine. It too is a thorny, dangerous thing that spreads, but more of a ground cover type. I don't know its botanical name. It needs to be kept in check with a firm hand also but it's single deep pink flowers are wonderful.

Speaking of cardinals, I don't know where they are nesting this year, but last year a silly pair built a nest in the magnolia tree right over the path off the deck, just overhead on a low branch. They spent the entire nesting season scolding and fending off anybody who walked under it, and frantically swooping at the cats everytime they came anywhere near the tree. They did successfully raise their family but are not back in the same tree this year! I think they learned from experience and may be nesting in the euonymous that grows above the stone wall, away from any human and feline threat.

I've added a few more plants to the woods this week. It took some hunting, but I finally found stoloniferous tiarella, hostas and toadlilies to add to the wildflowers. I have plenty of the clumping tiarella wherryi varieties in more disciplined parts of the garden, but in the woods I want them to spread and form colonies.

Tiarella cordifolia should colonize by the dry stream.

The last leaves of adder's tongue (erythronium) have disappeared for the year, and the path is open again. Part of today will be spent moving wild phlox out of it to a spot where it won't get stepped on. Wild ginger and ferns have almost completely covered another path and need to be relocated. It's still not too late in the season, and it's supposed to rain (again!) this weekend so that will be good for them. Butterbur (petastites) and giant solomon's seal that I moved last week are perky and happy already in their new homes with more wild phlox and ginger, surrounding a pussy willow and an old mock orange where only poison ivy and honeysuckle used to grow.

The cursed invasive Virginia waterleaf. Beautiful, isn't it?

Arum Italicum Pictum in bloom. You have to look under the leaves to find this huge flower!

I love the way this fern is opening up!

The woods has changed to summer dress. Some of this ginger has got to go! It will be transplanted to another area or donated to a friend's garden.

The moss along the dry creek is well established, in spite of the robins and brown thrashers. The woods is my favorite place to be. I often put aside my pruners and weeding tools and just sit on the old bench, listening to the birds and enjoying the serenity of this sacred space. It's the first place I go in the morning, savoring my coffee in the dappled sunlight, and the last place I visit at night when the air is cool and dim; listening to Nature speak to me in whispers of soft wind voices telling me deep secrets of the woods.

A visiting neighbor enjoys the garden too! Or maybe he just comes over for the petting.

A local resident out for a stroll among the violets.

Every day is an adventure in the Chaotic garden!

"Nature is a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mother's Day at the Iris Show

2010-05-09T21:48:00.000-07:00

Today is Mother's Day, and for my daughter and I, it always means more irises! We have made a tradition of attending the Tri-State Iris Society show that is held here each year and this year is a great one for irises. Club members show their finest in May, and in August, the club has a sale which we also attend. What a delightful way to spend a morning!

While we were there, a local tv camera crew came to film the show, and we found ourselves on the evening news tonight! Too funny!

It's really hard to pick my favorites of all these beautiful flowers, but here's a few. I always make notes so I will know what to look for at the fall iris sale, and I always lose them. This year I took pictures of both flowers and labels! Now....if I can remember to look at them and make a list to take with me....but that's another story!

Weekend Update

Ring Around Rosie

Copper Bubblebath

Dazzling

Lacy Lynx

Casino Cruiser

Mastery

Jazz Band

Florentine Silk

Gypsy Romance

Nuclear Nancy

Badlands

Ozark Rebounder

Just a few more from my own garden. These are all "modern" varieties, some of which have lost their name tags over the years so I don't remember what they are. But they are no less beautiful without a name!

Gypsy Dancer

Blaney Marlow

Cinnamon Twist

Savanna Sunrise

Pagan Dance

The iris has been named our city flower, so every gardener is encouraged to plant them. Last year there was a city sponsored iris exchange, where gardeners were asked to donate irises to be given away or exchanged for other varieties. I love this idea! I hope it gets to be an annual tradition.

"They come! The merry summer months of beauty, song and flower!

They come!"

---William Motherwell

It's All About the Irises!

2010-05-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

I am in love with irises in May, especially the antiques! They have such delicate colors, and each one has a different scent. I. Pallida smells like grape soda. Some of them are spicy, some sweet. One smells like baby powder.

This one smells like peaches.

Cinnamon buns.

A hint of mint here.

More irises. I don't know the variety names, they were all here when I moved to this garden.

One of my favorites

A delicate little flower

Another favorite

This is I. Pseudocorus, the water iris. Invasive but beautiful.

Iris border along the edge of the woods. This is where extra irises go when I have to move them, or when I get them gifted to me. We have a lot of walkers on our street when the irises are in bloom, some of them come with cameras. I love sharing the garden!

"What gorgeousness, what blazonry, what pomp of colors

bursts upon the ravished sight!"

--William D. Gallagher

All Grown Up! The Air of Spring, More Flowers and Insects

2010-04-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

They grow up so fast! We waited so long, and finally there they were, turning up their cute little faces, so delicate and tiny and full of hope. We were so eager to see them grow, to become everything that they could be. Seems like only yesterday that they were beginning to blossom into their full potential (wait, it was just yesterday!) A little rain and a few hours of sunshine and all those baby plants have shot up to six times their cuteness, had sex, procreated and are now literally tossing their progeny to the winds. And just look at them! Violets a foot tall or more, crested with crowns of seed pods, daffodils two feet tall (or they would be if they hadn't gotten lazy and laid down all over their neighbors)

This was a problem last year, as some clumps have a hundred or more bulbs and cover quite an area with ripening leaves, so I experimented this spring to see if I could control this daffodil habit of sprawling and smothering everything else in the vicinity. I made cages for some of the clumps as they were coming up, using whatever I had on hand: tomato cages cut in half and upended over emerging shoots, pieces of left-over fencing and 2x4 wire, made into circles and poked into the ground. This method helped a lot with the daffodils that were thus contained. They have mostly stayed upright and in check. As the wire I used was somewhat rusty, it is almost invisible under the foliage. Next year I am going to try to cage all the clumps that share beds with other plants!

If you look carefully at the lower part of this clump you can just see the wire tomato cage.

Lunaria is three feet tall, blooming wantonly all over the place, shoving its bed mates over without a thought. I nearly got bumped in the nose by a hesperis shooting up its buds while I was weeding near it. (OK, so I might have made that up.)

And those weeds! Where did those two foot tall wild lettuces come from all of a sudden, and isn't that poke over there in the middle of the hostas? And I do believe all that group of echinaceas are not really all echinaceas! What IS that big thing over there in the herb garden? It wasn't there yesterday. It might not even have been there this morning! I don't dare stand still too close to the honeysuckle, I think it might be aiming to wind me up in its waving tentacles. Tendrils. Whatever. My compost pile is so full, stuff is falling off and I have resorted to tossing clippings and weeds on top of the brush pile, and over the fence Out Beyond.

The garden is lush and beautiful, in spite of the weeds. This is an azalea, one of half a dozen that I got at $2 each from Lowe's early this spring. It is an unnamed variety, but gorgeous! I also have other varieties in white, peach, lavender and red.

False solomon's seal is finally blooming.

Just taking a breath outdoors is wonderful right now. The lilies of the valley are wafting perfume for yards around, a ferny euphorbia is honey-scented as I work near it, and there are still lilacs.. Out in the woods, deciduous holly is has a sweet, musky odor, woodland phlox is heavenly, and I just noticed today that honesty (lunaria) has a delicate aroma that you have to have your nose right into (but look out for bumble bees!) or you'll miss it. Black locust (robinia pseudoacacia) dangles its white clusters over our heads with a tantalizing scent. The pale blue antique irises are beginning to open along the walk to the mailbox and are filling the air with the smell of Grape Nehi soda that takes me back to hot summer days and country stores of my childhood.

Grape Nehi iris.

Honey-scented euphorbia. No wonder the bees love this!

A patch of this wild camassia found growing Out Beyond last year has more than doubled its size this spring. I've successfully transplanted a few of them into the woods and a colony of seedlings has started there.

Japanese roof iris (iris tectorum) is a beautiful spectacle in whites and blues.

Hardy orchid (bletilla) is beautiful! I see this one has been slightly chewed on a couple of petals by something, but who really expects perfection in a garden anyway!

Lamiastrum "Herman's Pride" is a glory in the spring garden, and well-behaved in clump form, unlike its similar but invasive cousin, "Yellow Archangel". Pretty with hostas, ferns and bleeding hearts in the shade garden.

The last daffodils of spring, a delicate white multiflora.

Here's a seedy fellow. On a rainy "bad hair day" a dandelion puff sports a spikey "do".

Looking equally as stylish is a pasque flower (anemone pulsatilla) seed head.

Another spikey fellow, this leopard moth caterpillar was hiding under a rotten log. It curled up into a stuborn ball and wouldn't look at me! It is a good 4 inches long and fat as my thumb. These caterpillars overwinter in rotten logs and under leaf litter and feed in the spring on cherry, dandelion, violets, oak, and plantains, among others. There should be plenty for it to eat around here!

And the last picture of the day, a pretty skipper visits Star of Bethlehem (ornithogalum).

"I was rich in flowers and trees,

Hummingbirds and honeybees."

--Whittier

Just for pretty

2010-04-26T18:47:00.000-07:00

I just can't resist taking photos of pretty flowers. Here's some you might enjoy.

Pink spiderwort

Blue spiderwort

Virginia waterleaf

pretty tulip

Iris tectorum, Japanese roof iris in white

Iris tectorum in blue

Star of Bethlehem (ornithogalum)

Pink azalea

Busy bee in Jacob's ladder

Blue Princess holly

Lewisia

Clusiana tulip

strawberry blossom

Azalea

Ok, I've got that out of my system. Now I can get to thinking about a more interesting post. Thanks for being so patient!

Walk at Wildcat

2010-04-24T22:46:00.000-07:00

It was a cloudy day that looked like rain, but the thought of a little water never detered us! Off we went to Wildcat Park. The site of The Wildcat Glades Conservation & Audubon Center, Joplin, Missouri, is adjacent to some of the last remaining chert glades, a globally unique habitat found only in this area and the biologically rich Shoal Creek; an important place for migratory birds and other wildlife. The park itself has been in existance for many years, with primitive hiking trails and fishing along Shoal Creek, but the chert glades were slowly being destroyed by human misuse. A few years ago, in partnership with Audubon Missouri, the City of Joplin and the Missouri Department of Conservation, spearheaded by a group of concerned citizens, the Center was established. Opened in 2007, the Center itself is, as their brochure states, "a celebration of nature. Innovative "green" technologies create a truly distinctive building in keeping with our mission of appreciating, conserving and understanding our natural world." The local Missouri Department of Conservation offices are also located on site. New trails were built and paved, a bluebird trail was set with bluebird houses, native trees and shrubs were planted and much clearing of trash and restoration of the natural woods was done, largely in part by a group of dedicated volunteers who work tirelessly and ceaselessly to make the center a viable, living thing for all to enjoy.

There is wonderful diversity of life here! From the rocky chert glades to the lush river growth and beautiful wildflowers, it is a wonderful place to spend a day. Trails wind through the park, along the river, across bridges to neighboring McIndoe Park and back, about a 3 mile walk, most of it easy, some of it a bit of a rough hike around and across cliffs and ridges. We only walked about a third of it today, taking our time, lots of photos and enjoying the park. It never did rain! Come walk along with us!

A glimpse of the glades

Just a tiny corner, rich with miniature plant life.

A fine pair of Canada geese

This is the entrance to a cave, one of many in the area. The actual entrance is gated to keep it from being destroyed. Can't you just imagine early Native Americans using this? Perfect location on the river, plenty of chert and flint for arrowheads, game, shelter. Osage was a local tribe but there were others who traveled through here and also there were prehistoric tribes in the Ozarks.

This Canada Goose had a quiet little cove all to itself.

This is wild impatiens, or jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) . You will often find it where you find this:

Poison ivy. Jewelweed is an antidote for the rash.

This is the old Reddings Mill bridge. It was taken out of service and a new one built; it is now part of the trail system.

Baptisia, and a fine fat bumblebee that wouldn't stop and pose for me nicely. He was much too busy.

Picnic tables and benches were donated to make the bridge a rest stop. Here we would cross the river and follow the trail on the other side. Today this is our point to turn back.

Looking downriver

Headed for home.

Blackberry blossoms

Lousewort (Pedicularis lanceolata)

Native viburnum

Camassia

The park will be closing soon so it's time to go home! Thanks for walking with us. We'll share with you another part of our park another day. If you'd like to read more about Wildcat Glades, here's the link:

http://www.audubonmagazine.org/features0905/auduboncenter.html

Random Observations, a Matter of Perspective

2010-04-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

Every time I walk though the garden I see things I've never noticed before. Each new day brings new perspective, and sometimes, brings things that never were before. I always learn something from Mother Nature if I just look.

Seedlings that look alike often seem to hide next to each other. This is bloodroot and wild ginger. Can you tell them apart?

The bloodroot leaves look slightly different in shape, a little thinner, and have a whitish back. But sometimes they look identical at first glance.

The tiniest flowers can have so much beauty if you look closely! These are orchid-like flowers of rosemary.

Look up! Way, way up! Wild cherry blooms 40' in the treetops!

This is why I grow Dutchman's pipe vine. Newly emerged pipevine swallowtail butterflies are so beautiful, and one good reason to watch the earth beneath your feet. They hatch out and rest on the gravel paths until they are ready to fly.

Hidden treasure under the leaves, morel mushrooms! So good, fried in butter.

Love them or hate them, dandelion seed puffs are gossamer spheres that catch the sun. Their seed dispersal system is a miracle of natural engineering.

Interesting little moth. I haven't looked to identify it yet but what a character! Very Stealth bomber styling!

Interesting markings this fly has. Such big red eyes!

This beautiful dwarf comfrey bloom has a curve like the Golden Spiral of the Nautilus seashell.

I thought for a second it was snowing todayI But it was only elm seeds drifting on the wind. They even fell in my coffee as I strolled the woods this morning. I can read the future like tea leaves in my cup; it means that in a few weeks I will be pulling elm seedlings out of every where!

Pretty foliage

Nasty attitude! Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica). See the tiny barbs on the stem? They are also under the leaves. Ouch! Merely touching this plant leaves you stinging and burning like fire for a long while afterwards! Nettles have many pharmaceutical benefits, and can be cooked and eaten as greens after soaking in water to remove the chemical compounds which cause them to sting. They are also an important food for many species of butterflies.

Sometimes you get a whole different perspective if you get down on your knees. I love the layers of the forest; ginger below, phlox and mayapple flowers under a canopy of big mayapple umbrella leaves.

Looking things right in the eye has you noticing things in a different way. You probably think this might be the flower clusters of some kind of a bush--but no, it's candytuft (iberis), only about 5 inches tall!

How does such a rough and tumble looking guy

Get a sleek, sophisticated looking lady like this?

Here's lookin' at you!

"Heart free, hand free,

Blue above, brown under.

All the world to me

Is a place of wonder."

--William Stanley Braithwaite

Ferns, My Fronds

2010-04-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

One of the first memories I have of being a child is walking through tall fronds of bracken almost to my shoulders on a hot summer's day, and the sharp sweet smell of it as I brushed it with my hands. The ferns were a magic place to me, and I would lie on my back underneath them and look at their lacey leaves silhouetted against the blue of the sky, knowing beyond a doubt that there were elves under there with me. I could hear their voices in the rustle of the ferns in the breeze. My love afair with ferns began with that enchanted time, and I am still fascinated beyond joy to find a spring nest of tightly curled fiddleheads looking for all the world like some mythical being ready to be born.

The more ferns I meet, the more I love them. Ferns are an ancient species, older than flowering plants, far older than the dinosaurs, gracing the earth in the dawn of time. They are many in shapes and sizes, from the tiny woodsias and spleenworts to the immense tree ferns of Australia and Tasmania. I have as many in my garden as I can find, always adding a new one or two every year, and all seem to thrive. I have had some for more than 25 years without ever being divided, cultivated or fertilized, and whether they spread out their rhizatomous root and creep about the woods, forming lush green colonies, or happily stay in their own patch of earth, they are all welcome with their grace and beauty. One cannot have too many ferns.

Ebony spleenwort, right

Ostrich fern, left

Don't remember the name of this one, but I love the shape as it unfurls!

Sensitive fern. a wonderful colonizer

Cinnamon fern. Like a moist place where it will get a good 3' tall, but does well in average soil.

Woodsia, with trilliums. This dainty, lovely fresh green fern carpets the woods floor and is one of the first to come up in the spring. It sprung spontaneously in my woods, I didn't plant this one.

Autumn fern is lovely with bronzy new fronds

So many I forget which one this is, but I love it, so fresh and, well, ferny!

Japanese painted fern

Maidenhair fern, one of my favorites. But then, they are all my favorites!

Hart's tongue fern. So cool looking! Very Jurassic park!

I wish I could post pictures of them all, but there are so many. Crested ferns, lady ferns, male ferns, Goldie's ferns, tatting ferns, ostrich ferns, holly ferns, arborvitae ferns (this is realy a selaginella and looks like an evergreen arborvitae) and too many to name, if I could even think of them all. A good source for fern information: http://hardyfernlibrary.com/

The contrast of ferny foliage sets off any plant you put with it, and it is spectacular against rocks. I love the way they stay fresh and green no matter the weather, and besides, there are elves under them!

"The voices of the ferns whisper to me

On cinnamon scented breeze."

-- S.P.

Outwitting a Robin, Hawk Wars and Birds in Concert

2010-04-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday

He' s not much afraid of me, that fat red-breasted fellow strutting along the paths in the woods. He cocks his head and keeps a beady eye on me until I turn my back, and then he promptly flips over every bit of loose moss he can find. I'm not sure if he really thinks there may be a tasty worm under there or if he is just playing a game with me and likes to watch me put it back. After all, he just checked it a few minutes ago, and he knows what's under there.. I'm not much appreciating his sense of humor!

But I'm smart, too. And maybe I can outsmart that feather brained wiseacre. I have an secret weapon. Somewhere, a long time ago, I acquired a box of vintage hairpins, and I am going to pin that moss down!

The pins will just rust away. Ha! Take that, you feathered bandit!

Fade to this morning

Well, there was a lot less moss in the middle of the path and an lot more still fastened down. I missed a few pieces, but of course, Cock Robin didn't and flipped over every one that was loose. By mid afternoon, he had it figured out that he could just shred the moss to pieces and get it out that way. But not all of it! So far, I'm calling it a draw. I've still won some, there is more left pinned down than he has managed to tear up. At least if it's in bits he will just scatter it, and it will take hold where it falls. Then he can't flip it over! I think I have learned that spring might not be a good time to transplant moss. Next time I'll wait until fall when Mr. Redbreast has flown south for the winter! (I have noticed that it isn't the female of the pair that's doing all the mischief, it's the male. She must be too busy with her housework and raising a family to be out there causing trouble!)

More bird drama, this time in the air. Hawks and crows are having a war! Several times a day a hawk comes screaming over the woods, with crows in hot pursuit. Whatever it is that he has done to offend the crows, they are definitely bent on running him out of town! Today there were a pair of hawks, and a whole murder of crows, circling and diving and chasing above the treetops. I think the hawks are nesting in the woods Out Beyond; tomorrow I will walk out there and see if I can find their tree. I'm not sure what kind of hawk it is, just that's big, so it might be a redtail or Cooper's hawk. They are moving too fast when they fly over for an ID!

I haven't seen anybody home here yet! This might be a crow's nest.

A mockingbird has taken up residence in the oak over the house, at least for his sound stage. When he opened his repertoire with a bob-o-link song, and followed it up with a whip-or-will, I knew him for a bird that has been around. His concert lasts a good 30 minutes, and I don't think he repeats anything, including a few cell phone rings in there. He is a dancer too; with every third song or so he leaps a couple of feet into the air and lands launching yet a new riff. Yesterday a robin in the walnut tree joined him and there were bird duets in stereo! What an awesome concert that was!

I guess I forgive him for the Moss Incident.

"Let us be like a bird for a moment perched

On a frail branch while he sings:

Though he feels it bend, yet he sings his song,

Knowing he has wings"

--William Blake

My Haunted Garden

2010-04-17T17:01:00.000-07:00

I used to see her wandering the south lawn, tall and grey headed with her hair pinned back, wearing an old grey pocketed sweater over a print house dress straight out of the 1950's. Although she wasn't young any more, her back was straight and her step firm. The first time I saw her, I thought one of my elderly neighbors had come to see what I was doing to the yard, and I stepped out the back door to say hello. But she wasn't there. I walked all the way around the house, and saw no one in the yard at all, so I just chalked it up to my over-active imagination, thought I was seeing things, shrugged and laughed a bit at myself, and went back inside.

She was back a day or two later. This time I just watched her for a few moments. She walked along the bed in front of the stone wall where I had planted a row of lilacs, stopping now and then as if peering at the ground at her feet. Then I turned my head away for a second; and when I looked back, she was gone.

She came quite frequently at first, every time I did something different to the growing flower beds; or when I cleaned out and weeded one of the old beds. I tried to follow the original rock borders, saving as many of the old perennials as I could find. It seemed as if she was inspecting my work, curious to see what I was doing, if it met with her approval.

She came less and less often as the garden progressed and began to thrive again under my hands. The renewal of her beloved plants must have satisfied her, for I haven't seen her for many years now.

I found out later that this lady who built our stone house, dug the basement single-handedly, and raised several children in the one-room cabin that was still standing when I moved here (later torn down) loved flowers and would spend all of her spare money (which wasn't much) on what new plants she could find for her garden. She raised a big vegetable garden and orchard where our woods now stands, clearing rock on the hill (no mean feat in the Ozarks!) so she could till the soil. Piles of rocks still exist in the woods, as I often discover when trying to plant something; and the fencerow is (now) two feet high, three feet wide and running the length of the back of the property, along what was the garden (about 200') of rocks.

Euphorbia and wild geranium

Back in those days, I spent a lot of time at the library checking out garden books, and I must have been following in her footsteps as she set about to create an English garden. I could see some of the combinations she used, straight out of the pages of those books; a ferny green euphorbia with yellow flowers, planted with wild geraniums; mock orange with lily of the valley.

There is still a hundred feet of powder blue irises that smell of grape Nehi soda, interplanted with orange daylilies, that runs the full width of the front of the yard, a good 10' wide. It is a glorious sight in May! She planted naked ladies (lycoris): (the progeny of which are now in nearly every bed in the garden), probably every variety of iris she could get at the time, daffodils in abundance that bloom from the earliest yellow in February, to doubles, poeticus, and others that don't open until the first week in May. I have no idea of the names of most of them.

Old irises are starting to bloom on the north side of the house

Epimediums, still growing strong in their original spot!

Chrysanthemums, October 2009

There are still epimediums, grape hyacinths, (now in glorious abundance), phlox paniculata, star of Bethlehem and peonies; a chrysanthemum that opens creamy yellow and ages to pink--and spreads agressively! Perennial sweet peas are also part of her legacy. There is some variety of (maybe) Louisiana irises that have an open, flattish purple-blue flower, deep roots and colonize with abandon. A Seven Sisters rose, that has now gotten somewhat out of hand, used to adorn a rock cornerpost in the front yard. Now it clambers up a redbud that has sprung up nearby. Several smoke trees, including one very old and gnarly individual, seem to be original, as well as a hawthorn with some wicked nasty thorns. And not to be forgotten, the tulip magnolia that was so beautiful this spring, a deeply pink dogwood, and white lilacs.

Grandfather American smoke tree (cotinus) March 2010. I expect every year that it won't leaf out, but it always does.

Ancient white and purple lilacs

Blackeyed susans live here too, and coneflowers, columbines (Granny's bonnet doubles), giant toad trilliums, spiderwort, nandinas, scarlet honeysuckle, autumn clematis, forsythia, and crape myrtle "colonize freely" all over the place. I haven't forgiven her for the ground cover euonymous, but I live with some of it. So far. (One huge vine on the stone wall has a trunk the size of a man's leg, so you know how long that has been here!) My neighbor two houses down the street who has lived here since she was born, talks about the tall hollyhocks that used to bloom above the wall. Even though those are no longer there, I still have their descendants growing down along the herb garden fence.

"The panthers of the meadow,tiger-lilies". -Titus Munson Coan

And the tiger lilies! They stand a stately 5' tall when they bloom, hundreds of them! They reseed freely here and there and I never know where to expect another one among the garden beds!

I mourn the loss of some plants that seem to be irreplaceable, expecially a yellow dwarf daylily (hemerocallis) that bloomed in April (it just disappeared one year), I have tried to find a replacement but it may be lost to the nursery trade. I still keep hoping it will show up somewhere in the garden A lovely white Japanese viburnum simply declined and died one spring. There was another pink dogwood that graced the backyard but it succumbed when a black walnut grew into its space, and they disagreed with each other. Dogwoods and black walnuts just can't seem to get along; probably because of the alleopathic chemical juglone produced in the walnut roots.

I know that she traveled, and brought back seeds and plants wherever she went, as well as rocks and seashells that she embedded in the stone walls of her house. She made piles of interesting rocks under trees, perhaps leftovers from the house walls; and used them around her garden beds.

She didn't like dogs, and fenced the whole yard to keep them out, and to keep her cats safe from them. As far as I know, there was not a husband in her life, though there must have been at one time. I don't know what happened to him.

There was a concrete birdbath, embedded with shells, stones and bits of jewelry. I have found most of the broken pieces and used them as a surround for a tub of yellow water iris.

A stone wall runs a hundred and some feet on the south, and all sorts of things are embedded in it--pieces of dolls, more jewelry bits, marbles, pieces of glass and china, and shells.

The original wire arbors over the front and side gates are still here, and most of the fences around the house. There are only remnants of the fence around the woods, most of it having rusted away, though I still find buried pieces of barbed wire from time to time. I've found intact dishes and small perfume bottles in the soil, and once I found a set of wedding rings, deep beneath a tree that had to be cut down. (Now there might be a story!) Other finds include a pair of rusted cap pistols and just yesterday we discovered an old wrench that finally surfaced on a woods path. We usually hang the metal artifacts on the studio and toolshed walls.

The siding on the studio is cut from tongue and groove boards that clad the one-room cabin. Board and batten ceiling from the old structure was made into a cupboard I use on the back porch for garden sundries, boots and gloves.

Sometimes I wish she would come back again for another look. I would like to know what she thinks of her garden now. I miss her, this lady I never had the chance to meet but feel I know so well. I live with her in small ways, every day, for her personality is stamped upon this house and garden as surely as our own. She would have been a good friend.

"Where is heaven? Is it not
Just a friendly garden plot,
Walled with stone and roofed with sun? "
--Bliss Cameron

Spring Surprises, and Stuff and Nonsense

2010-04-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

Lots of things just pop up here. I don't know if birds "plant" some of them, or if they just come in on the wind.. Somewhow the new "stuff" usually manages to plant itself in the right spot. I have a couple of dogwoods and several redbuds that I've acquired that way, a mimosa, a black locust, and a few junipers that I've trimmed to interesting shapes.

Last fall I discovered a small sassafrass growing in the fence row, so we dug it out and put it back in the woods. Since its taproot got slightly mangled in the process, we held out little hope for its survival, but surprise, this spring, the little thing has leaves!

How do those plants move themselves like they do? About 3 years ago, I planted a lime green aquilegia next to a hosta that I thought would complement it with its lovely color. It did fine for two years, and now it is gone out of that bed. I found it, full grown, in the lower hosta bed, a good 20' away, under a dogwood. There also was a lovely white ajuga clump in that same bed. It disappeared also, to be found down a path next to a ground cover of euonuymous. Both of those plants have increased dramatically--but not where I put them! How do they DO that?

The garden club has come and gone, and what an enjoyable evening it was! Perfect weather, good friends and wonderful food! Next month someone else will host a garden party. Oh yes, they all loved the garden!

A pretty happen-stance combination, ajuga flowers through creeping phlox. Pink lily of the valley is in the background.

Lunaria (money plant) in the foreground with woodland phlox divaricata. I love this combination! Lunaria is a biennial that always reseeds itself, and every year there is a different look.

I don't know if I like trilliums better white or when they age to pink. Either way, they are some of the most lovely spring flowers in the woods!

I peeked under the umbrellas of the mayapples, and look what I found!

False Solomon's seal is almost as interesting in bud as it is in flower. I am finding these spreading all through the woods this year. A very welcome surprise!

Dwarf crested iris (iris cristata) just popped into bloom overnight! These actually came from an Arkansas woods, many years ago, a gift from a friend.

Fairy bells (disporum sessile variegatum), is actually a Japanese native wildflower, distantly related to the Solomon's seal family. I got it from the now gone and much missed Rocknoll Nursery, many years ago. It languished in another bed for years until transplanted to the current hosta bed, where it has flourished. This is the first year I've seen blooms! It is quite beautiful, about 12" tall, and not invasive, but spreads stoloniferously very nicely. A wonderful non-native worth seeking out. Very pretty with ferns and hostas.

I just cannot resist a pretty face, any more than I can resist checking out every garden center I pass. I found this charming pink pussytoes (antennaria Rubra) at Lowe's this afternoon. I divided this plant in two, it probably could have been three.

I also loved this little hernaria

"Sea Foam". Just right for my shade garden, likes morning sun only!

We discovered wild plum (Prunus americana) growing in the woods Out Beyond. It looks a lot like wild cherry, bark and all, but the leaves are more round. I would really like this to be growing in our woods; and it might be, if I haven't pulled out all the seedlings thinking they were wild cherry. Now I'll have to look at each one before I pull it! It blooms in the woods usually before serviceberry. Sometimes it has pinkish blooms.

Still lots of spring beauties (claytonia virginica) blooming Out Beyond. I mow a path through it each year, but not yet!

A nice surprise by my recycle bins. Where did you come from, my pretty?

Other stuff: our city had a truckload sale of rain barrels and composters. We picked up two of these rain barrels, and will hook up a soaker hose to water beds on the north and south sides of the house. Now I have to plant something low in front of them to hide those concrete blocks. They should save on our water bills, that is, provided it rains!

And nonsense! This rock creation is in the loosely termed "Japanese garden". Those are Japanese roof irises(iris tectorum) in front of it. The roundish rock on top is a local "mineral egg".

It is in front of a little Japanese maple, Seriyu, which is a green upright lace leaf that only gets about 15' x'10' This is its third year. I carried it home from Wildwood Farm in Kenwood, Ca, on my lap on an airplane! It has grown almost 6" this spring so far.

I love dandelion puffs! I always spray some of these delicate beauties with extra-hold hairspray and they will last for a long time in a vase or a dried flower arrangement.

A little rain turned the yellow oak pollen on the hosta leaves into golden drops!

Another beauty, Aquilegia canadensis, our native columbine.

An update on the bluebird/ woodpecker feud: nobody seems to have claimed the woodpecker hole in the hackberry tree. It is still empty! The bluebirds have gone back to the edge of Out Beyond and I don't know where the woodpeckers are nesting, but I still see them around. There are lots of trees with dead limbs for them to have claimed!

"There is a mockingbird

Singing in the oak tree.

He sounds delirious,

Leaping and catching air with his wings.

Perhaps he is drunk with spring!"

--S.P.