Garden non-sequiturs

Just so we’re on the same page, here’s the definition for non-sequitur.

A conclusion or statement that does not logically follow

 from the previous argument or statement.

Gardening really amplifies my tendency to be illogical (though I will deny it to my dying day) or at least plagued by contradictory ideas. I can go on at a clip completely comfortable in the belief that my garden is set in stone except for minor tweaking. And then a photo here, an article there, and I’m off and running on a… Well, I refuse to use the word. I’ll only say tangent. Houses get this done to them once in a decade or two. Women seem to be getting really repetitive about it when it comes to their faces. But I refuse to keep going down this road with my garden. Will it never end?

Cydney (click it) started it by recommending Paul Zimmerman’s very good article on (click it) moving a mature rose bush. Excellent information that was totally irrelevant to my gardening life. Then she mentioned meeting a writer at the Garden Bloggers Fling in Ashville last week, Lynn Hunt, whose lovely gardening blog is called (click it) The Dirt Diaries. Somehow I had never heard of this blog, so I googled it and read her latest post about her long, long love affair with David Austin roses. That’s all it took. No earthquake, no brain transplant. Two simple, unrelated thoughts that have rocked my world.

Without consulting me, my brain made the instant decision to move ‘Bow Bells’ out of her shady place into the sunny place where ‘Enchantress’ now resides which would move ‘Enchantress’ to the curb. You see, ‘Bow Bells’ is an Austin rose who has been relegated to a rose dungeon, chained to the shade, deprived of her right to be who she is, a bloom machine. And ‘Enchantress’ is an Old Garden Rose, a Tea rose to be exact, to whom I have become very attached. This attachment began back when most of my roses wouldn’t keep leaves on their boney bodies. ‘Enchantress’ on the other hand was as evergreen as any azalea you’ve ever seen, a masterpiece in green. In response to rosarians’ comments that she balled and crisped excessively I sang merrily that I didn’t care about flowers at all. It was her leaves and her petite size with which I was in love. Don’t get me wrong, I would add quickly, I love her tiny, petal-packed magenta flowers, so rare for a Tea rose. There just weren’t that many of them that often. The balling and crisping didn't happen in my garden, so she was a winner for me. 

Alas, time has not been a friend to ‘Enchantress’. This spring the balling and crisping has seemed to be constant. Her size, though by no means large by Tea standards, is no longer petite, and this treacherous gardener has been casting hairy eyeballs her way more and more lately. I would urge myself to be reasonable. The front garden did not need another giant hole in it especially on the same side with the hole that ‘Bermuda’s Anna Olivier’ had left. So sit tight was my plea to myself. She’ll get over it when the heat arrives. It’ll be fine, just watch.



By rights I should not be allowed out of the little world I have made for myself in my little garden. Reading or hearing or lip-reading the ideas of others should not be allowed. They can only cause trouble since my applecart is already far too wobbly. But the milk has in fact been spilt. Perhaps I should look upon this monkey wrench as a blessing in disguise sent to rescue me from having to walk past ‘Enchantress’ with curled lip ever again. Yes, a garden should not be a place where unsatisfying plants continue for very long. There should only be pleasantness and satisfaction in the garden. (She's dreaming again.) It is nothing personal against this rose which in another garden could very well be exquisite, and at the same time it is very personal to this gardener’s peace of mind which is delicate to say the least. Neither is it anything to feel guilt over, though I do feel considerably guilty. Since vowing never to hastily pull out roses again, it is not a thing I do easily, just a bit too often. So maybe in the grand plan for my garden, the one that God alone has control over, maybe this is a step in the right direction along the same lines as omelets and broken eggs.

Maybe ‘Enchantress’ would be happier in a different spot… different than the curb, I mean. I do have a vacancy next to ‘Reve d’Or’ on the east side of the house that gets a bit of shade. Maybe she wouldn’t crisp so much in a less broiler-like location. She might even fit since she’s sort of oblong.

(Heavy sigh)

I think perhaps this semi-hysterical outpouring has given my peace of mind some peace of mind.

~~~~~~~~~~   

Talk about non-sequiturs! A foxglove blooming in the June heat & humidity of Florida?

I'll interject  'Maman Cochet' into any conversation regardless of subject.

And 'Becky Lynn' photos come out like the proverbial pics of the grandkids, no matter how off topic.

I can't believe anyone wouldn't want to follow the progress of 'Full Moon Rising'.

Oh, by the way 'White Maman Cochet' was looking lovely yesterday.

Leave out 'Le Vesuve'? Nah.

Yesterday

Since the garden is pretty much between flushes, almost on the verge of the next flush, there isn’t a lot of blooming, but there are signs, and besides, a garden is more than flowers. A flowerless time in the garden is an opportunity for seeing structure and texture and for eyeballing plant size and willingness to play nice with neighbors. I had walked the garden on Saturday, taking 174 shots, a ton even for me, but yesterday #1 Dear Son arrived with his Canon EOS DSLR camera to let me take it for a “test drive”. With actual glee I walked around again and took 195 more. What a fun camera! What great photographs it produces! (I’ve been on Ebay a lot since then looking for a bargain.) Yesterday also produced a fix for the problem of super bright sunlight blowing out my whites and reds. DS suggested using a polarization filter on the lens, so I got one from DH (seems like he has one of everything), and it worked!! Finally, an answer to glare and distorted colors.

The photos in this post were taken with DS’s camera before I knew about the polarization filter, so I had to adjust the exposure manually – not completely successfully - after the fact with Windows Live Photo. I was so impressed with the detail I could see in them. Not only are leaves sharply defined from twenty and even thirty feet away, but even the veins in the leaves are clearly visible as well. So amazing!

Third-year clematis 'Venosa Violacea' is going great guns, climbing to the top of the 8-ft. arbor in a month and blooming like never before.

Here are the new babies. Left to right: 'Gruss an Teplitz', 'Rosette Delizy' and 'Bermuda's Anna Olivier'. I moved RD & BAO up to 3-gallon pots last Friday. I hope they liked the rain this evening. I did. How convenient that I still had the old markers with their names on them.

'Frilly Bliss'

This is the marker for the daylily just below, but I couldn't resist including this sharp photo. A good name for a garden, too, don't you think?

'Passion District' was definitely a bit redder in her second bloom. This is one I really, really wanted since I started growing daylilies. I don't think I'm going to be disappointed.

What an incredibly deep wine color 'Marietta Dreamer' is. Interestingly, she starts out fairly light and gets very dark, apparently from the sun.

Also in her third year clematis 'Princess Diana' is marvelous. My neighbor just loves her.

'Bowbells', a David Austin rose, sits in the shade all day, awaiting the tree trimmers, but she still manages to put out some very delectable blooms. How's this for pretty?

As the sign says, this is 'Softee'. Last week she was merely green with hardly any flower buds that I noticed, and here she is blooming away. I don't know what she's like in the ground, but she's great in a pot.

Here is 'White Pet'. The camera does a great job showing detail in these white flowers which can sometimes lose definition in the bright sun. It sort of pops, doesn't it?

'Le Vesuve' is just starting to put on buds for the next flush, but I found this lone flower low down on the bush. I just added the Salvia farinacea (by the way, they're 77 cents at Lowe's - get some!!) to this bed a few weeks ago. I had six or seven 4" pots that had survived since February (looking a little rough) that I plopped in wherever there was a space. And today I bought three more. Can't have too much of this 'Victoria Blue' salvia.

Today 'Clotilde Soupert' has even more open flowers. It occurred to me today that 'Iceberg' may hate my garden, but Clotilde loves it! Grow what loves your garden!!!

I don't know what to say about 'Duquesa' except that she's scaring me. It feels like she's grown a foot in every direction in a week, probably more. She used to be quite lopsided, this being only her second spring. This side of her was decidedly empty a few short weeks ago, but not now. She has been adding canes everywhere, and now she's starting to bloom. In a few days she may be quite a sight. She's got to be 7' across and starting to bully her neighbors.

This is the absolute best photo I have ever been able to get of 'Bowbells'. That's why you haven't seen her. She's in the shade, and big green blobs don't photograph well. She's more than six feet tall. Gotta get that tree trimmer!! She needs just a bit more sun. 'Etoile de Mai' sits diminutively to the left.

Gorgeous 'Clotilde Soupert' has also put on some bulk in the last week with the new growth that comes with her flush. She's 6' across, and the 'Joan Senior' daylily (left of the Salvia) is about buried, as I feared she would be. It's incredible how the barren March garden is suddenly filled to overflowing in May. Over-planting in spring can be a trap to the Florida gardener, at least to the ones who grow OGRs. Clotilde went from a 3x3 pruned skeleton to this in two months. I just love her!!

'Pearl Harbor'

Here's the backside of 'Pinkie, Climbing'. She really has put on a show for more than a month.

This is the view along the driveway. You can get your bearings with the rain gauge. In the foreground in 'Clotilde Soupert', then 'Victoria Blue', a bit of 'Peach Drift' down low, 'Madame Abel Chatenay' almost bereft of blooms, and the tall dahlia 'Lucca Johanna' who by the way is not minding the heat and all day sun (yes, it's hot here). I've never grown dahlias before. One plant can be a whole garden's worth of flowers.

That's scary 'Duquesa' on the left, starting to encroach on the sidewalk. She's a whopper! My other 'Clotilde Soupert' is to her right with a 'Red Ruffle' azalea in between and behind the azalea is a whole crop of Purple Coneflowers that I seeded and transplanted into a big empty space. Ha! Those green hulks are about to be out-hulked. 'Duquesa' and 'Clotilde Soupert' are determined to join hands, I think. The front door is to the right up the sidewalk..

Imagine my utter surprise yesterday when I wheeled around to see this duo alongside the garage wall. That's 'Paint The Town Red' daylily and clematis 'Henryi', heading for the roof, I hope. Onward and upward...and outward!

The reaching 'Princess Diana' is casting her vines upon SDLM and Madame Lombard, but she is a gentle thing, easily tamed and guided. I don't think the roses mind.

Nigella damascena - I can never tell if those bulbous things are the pre-bloom buds or the post-bloom seed pods. I'm guessing seed pods. Coreopsis confused me this way, too, but I've figured that one out. I don't know nigella's habit yet.

Front and center is 'Madame Lombard', a young Tea rose but getting bigger and buried in the lacy foliage of the nigellas. I'm kind of thinking she's not being harmed by them, and the heat will soon enough take its toll on the annual flower. I just deadheaded 'Madame Lombard' the other evening, but she does have one flower to the right of all the nigella in a bloom cluster on a new cane in there somewhere.

The lovely 'Madame Lombard'.

I "filled" the vacancy created by the leaving of 'Bermuda's Anna Olivier' with 'Maggie' - a wee, tiny baby 'Maggie'. Until she's quite a bit bigger I'll have to live with a hole in the garden.

One day 'Maggie' will be a big buxom lady but she ain't yet, even though she's way bigger than she was.

Here's another view of the hole. I guess I really do have to haircut that big Liriope 'Evergreen Giant'. Itt's still freeze-ugly. Oh, the back pain!

Not blooming: 'Enchantress' on the fence at left, 'Clotilde Soupert, Climbing' on the front porch, and 'Le Vesuve' in the center. Definitely blooming: 'Pinkie, Climbing' by the garage!

My garden sentries are, of course, Salvia farinacea. The left one was one of the straggling survivors planted a few weeks ago. The right one is a transplant that was moved out of the way of 'Mme Abel Chatenay' and sat ON the ground for a couple of months awaiting my decision. Great plants.

'Red Cascade' is blooming again by the mailbox.

FYI, nothing has ever survived let alone thrived where those salvias are.

Believe it or not, I've never taken a shot of this view before. 'White Pet' is in the pot. Baby daylily bed in the foreground. 'Byzantine Enperor' daylily and the dahlia I mentioned, long lasting flowers and still more buds coming. I deadheaded her and 'Madame Abel Chatenay' on the right yesterday.  And gee, there should be a grand reward for anyone who sat through this entire post which. Whew! Glad you stayed.

Thrips

They’re the teensiest bugs you’ve ever seen with your naked eyes. Of course, you can’t see them if you don’t deliberately go looking for them, but it’s not hard to know where to start looking.



Light colored roses are the prime targets for thrips. I don’t know why. However, I was greatly dismayed today to find that ‘Enchantress’, a magenta Tea Rose, was infested with them. The photos here are of ‘Clotilde Soupert’, but ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ and ‘Duquesa’ were ruined also.



Clotilde has been blooming for a good while but she’s building for her first big flush – or I should say was. I wasn’t going to, but I decided to de-flower them today. I compare this task to picking cotton even though I have no experience picking cotton. I wear a trash bag tied to my waist which gets quite heavy with the many, many ruined blooms that I drop into it, and the required position is bent over at the waist leaning over and into the bush. This is why I wasn’t going to do it, but the thought of having roses that look this awful for weeks and weeks changed my mind and made me choose the pain. You see, the thrips larvae fall to the ground and then mature to fly and lay their eggs in the next crop of flower buds…and the next and the next for several generations through the end of April usually. So my perspective is to end it now by disposing of the flowers and the larvae in them before they can reproduce. Last year the next flush was fine.



Once the sepals have opened even just a little bit it’s obvious that thrips are in the bud because of the stained petals that show, and no amount of wishful thinking will save them at this stage. They have already been infested for a good while. The blooms will most likely ball and never open…



and if perchance they do open, they are as ugly as sin and have to be deadheaded anyway. I figure this flush is lost anyway so why not get rid of it and start the rose moving toward rebloom.

This is ‘White Maman Cochet’, usually an exceptionally beautiful Tea Rose. You can see the buggers by parting the petals open and looking down at the base of the flower. The light-colored creepy-crawly things will be scurrying around, but you’ll have to look hard. They really are tiny.

I’m thinking ‘Chrysler Imperial’ has them by the looks of his crispy outer edges and unusual form. I didn’t think about it being from thrips so I didn’t break it open to check. The removed flowers and buds need to be disposed of in a way that the thrips can’t escape to re-invest. One word of warning...be careful wear you stick your nose this time of year.

‘Hermosa’ was beautifully unscathed. The buds of ‘Madame Abel Chatenay’ are still tightly closed, so I don’t know about her yet. She had them last year, so I’m assuming she will again.



Early in the season there’s a lot to be said for pink roses.

I’m taking my vitamins again.

And I’ve just decided that I can’t let not-done (no matter how wonderful) blog posts prevent me from ever posting again. Over the last few weeks of gardening there have been many events and activities that I was excited to record in this blog only to find myself way too tired to make my brain do its thing. I simply could not. The consequence of so many missed posts is an inertia that grows to huge proportions with all those topics weighing down on me and whispering “Catch up! Go back to the first one and make a start.” Well, that just became more and more impossible. Until the time changed this past weekend there didn’t seem to be any photos, and then when there were photos they were taken in the harsh light of the setting Florida sun and were awful. I can’t seem to write about what you can’t see. So just now the thought came to me to start where I am and work in the omissions where and when I can. A simple plan, and here I am.

I got my first load of composted horse manure of the 2012 season last Saturday. Sunday evening I was two barrows short of having it all spread, covering the driveway bed, all of the right side of the circle, the garage wall bed and half of the ‘Le Vesuve’ bed. Compost duty is unquestionably the most unfeminine gardening job there is in my experience. Dirty, back-breaking work that could only be worse if done in August. I’m pretty sure I need two more truckloads to do the whole garden – maybe three. Oh, vitamins, I need you now!



There have been roses in the garden for about a week. No, make that rose singular. ‘Clotilde Soupert’, bush forms and climber, were the first to fully leaf out and the first to bloom. She is indeed a beauty and at moments like this is my favorite rose. I’m a sucker for her dense foliage not to mention those fat, fragrant flowers.




Today, lo and behold, ‘Le Vesuve’ has an open flower. I guess he was not going to be outdone by Miss Clotilde.



A lot has happened since I last invited you into my garden. Another post will chronicle the disappearance of ‘Bermuda’s Anna Olivier’ from this bed. Today before I could finish dispersing the last of this batch of compost into this area I had to move ‘Full Moon Rising’, a yellow modern climber that had been relegated to a spot under a tree within easy reach of the marauding squirrels. FMR has big flowers, but since it was growing straight up against a trellis, the blooms were only at the top and not many. It would get some black spot, too. So in an effort to give it a real chance to show its stuff, it had to be moved. ‘Red Cascade’s old spot seemed the best place – actually the only place, and the homemade (female-made) picket fence offered the perfect support for horizontal growing. Hopefully, the squirrels will think it died.



The little green sprout growing all too close to ‘Full Moon Rising’ is ‘Maggie’. She will be a big girl full of gorgeous, very fragrant deep pink/red Bourbon flowers and hopefully not full of black spot. I will be gritting my teeth through the first year, being very, very tolerant of her fungal weakness in order to one day see her in all of her healthy glory. One day this bed will be filled with magenta from ‘Maggie’ and ‘Enchantress’ and yellow from ‘Full Moon Rising’ and ‘Sherry Lane Carr’ daylily. Sounds yummy to me.

Below is my potted ‘Borderer’. Healthy, healthy and beautiful, but a tad more salmon that this photo shows.



The Flax Lily got divided in three tonight to fill the void left by ‘Full Moon Rising’.




The arbor at the porch entrance for ‘Clotilde Soupert, Climbing’ is in the same condition as when you last saw it. It was only urgent that weekend, something that DH doesn't quite understand. The composting moved into the urgent slot.



This is the beautiful near-white daylily, ‘Joan Senior’. At pruning time it looked like there would be room for her next to Clotilde, the bush, but I noticed today that all her foliage has suddenly and greatly added to Clotilde’s size. She is definitely pushing on Joan even more than this photo shows and will soon be hovering over her, so it is with regret that I say I need to dig up Joan to move her. Dang! I wish I had done this a month or two ago. Denial is a bad thing.



This is ‘Chrysler Imperial’ who used to grace the back patio with his voluptuous red Hybrid Tea flowers and intense damask scent. What’s that song that Judy Garland sang to Clark Gable's picture? Oh, yeah. “You made me love you; I didn’t wanna do it; I didn’t wanna do it.” I fell in love with ‘Chrysler Imperial’. Then he got too bedraggled-y, and he went bye-bye. This spring Lowe’s had them for $7. Not the prettiest things, all beat up, but gee, $7 is not much so I splurged on two. This one is right on the front sidewalk squeezed in between two lavender pink ‘Hermosa’ roses. Won’t that be gaudy?? But I wanted to put him where DH could easily see him, since they were originally bought for him despite the fact that he has no sense of smell left. Alas, reality smacked me in the face this evening when I noticed a bunch of leaves that were yellow and black spotted in his lower regions. Oh, well, I peacefully stripped them off. I may take to spraying these prima donnas to keep all the leaves looking like these, but I kinda doubt I have it in me to spray.

There is much, much to do in this garden of mine, and all I can do is keep plugging along. I have always been a slow gardener, but I have gotten maddeningly slower with age. Oh, yeah, there’s a plus side to age, and that is that I’m wiser. Ha!