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.

Gravel down

Remodeling has its stages if not quite its finales.  No, mine’s not done – yet, but it will be.  I have hopes for April arriving here, too, but more than anything I’ll just be glad when February is gone.  Quite surprisingly (at least to me) the two nights in the 20’s that we had a week ago did hardly any damage – except to brand new canes. They’re toast, but all the early-spring foliage is fine. That’s a relief.  In fact, looking in the rearview mirror, it was almost much ado about nothing, but then panic and worry is part of the human condition, isn’t it?


The gravel isn’t two colors.  It’s just dry and wet.  I hosed it down to settle the granite dust and compact the gravel, locking the cut stones together and making it less squishy under foot.  ‘Louis Philippe’ at the top left finally got his trimming today. He had gotten wide, and with so many side-shoots coming off thin canes he was hanging so low that you couldn’t see the daylily on his right.  He was also invading the path.  So I trimmed off bottom canes where they came off the older cane, lightening the load and allowing the canes to return to vertical.  Trimming continued, taking off dead stuff and whatever would run head on into the fence.  I did not shorten or thin him, my reasoning being that everywhere you cut Louie three or four new sprouts happen, clogging up his structure bigtime.  So right or wrong I kept the cuts to a minimum.  We’ll see how he does.
  

‘White Pet’ (center bottom)  is leafless still, never having acted like he thought it was spring.  Very smart of him, eh?  To his left is ‘Borderer’, fully leaved out and oblivious to those mid-20’s temperatures.


‘Leonie Lamesch’ at the bottom center is now leafing out, and I’m waiting to see if any basal breaks utilize the camouflage offered by the snapdragons and dianthus planted at her feet which, of course, have to start growing real quick.  The ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ on the left in the island isn’t as well leafed-out as her sisters in the front garden, but she’s pretty large at six feet across (but oblong).  My new shady sitting area by the tree swing came about as a result of dumping rejected crappy soil from the new ‘Mary Rose’ bed and the ‘Mme Abel Chatenay’ renovation.


Here’s the view from the swing area.


And here’s the swing area waiting for another half yard of gravel to complete it.  This is at the top of sloping ground and piling the dirt raised the area, requiring a bulkhead of sorts and a wavy one at that.  I’m really happy with it since it neatens up the garden nicely.  Going to have to invest in a string trimmer though.  That St. Augustine will be a bear to mow up to the edging.


I have visions of a bistro table and chairs over to the left… someday.  The poor, beautiful white camellia was relegated to the pot for lack of suitable camellia-soil in my garden.  It hasn’t grown a millimeter, but at least it’s alive.


The medallion of broken paver blocks is buried. I was going to remove them because the area puddles and then raise the level of the crossroad with extra gravel, but after seeing how un-far a ton of gravel goes, I decided to leave the blocks where they were as filler.  Can you foresee the bed on the left ever being widened?  I sure hope not!

That’s Louie on the left.  The daylilies had become so green and strong in the false spring. Now they’re all  pale and limp like frozen lettuce. I was thinking tomorrow might be the day they all get cut back.

I like this view.  One might get the impression that I live on a huge country estate instead of the postage-stamp sized lot hemmed in with fences.  I’ll have to somehow incorporate this view into the garden more.  I wonder how.  Did you notice that the tree previously designated for removal (extreme right) is still there?  I’m saving my pennies.


This is ‘Arcadia Louisiana Tea’.  She hasn’t really done much since being moved to this spot more than two years ago.  Believe it or not, her first year there leaf-cutter bees deleted so much leaf area that she started to decline, and I thought I would lose her.  Since she was the only one attacked, I attributed the attraction to the wax begonias I had planted all around her.  I have no proof, but I haven’t used them in the garden since and there have not been anymore leaf-cutter bee attacks.  Maybe this year she’ll impress me.  To her right on the arbor is ‘Jaune Desprez’, supposedly a huge Noisette climber but a snail-paced grower.  It’s all of five feet tall after two and a half years.  Again, maybe this year it will begin to do something… and maybe not.


On the inside of the left leg of that arbor is the pink hollyhock that came in a bag from Walmart.  I hope you are duly impressed.  I’m hoping it’s baby pink.


Here’s Louie again in all his slenderness.  I was amazed at the thinness of his canes since he’s been there since February, 2007 – one of my first five roses.  He’s more than six feet tall.


Daylily Point planted with ‘Inherited Wealth’ and ‘Marietta Dancer’.  Across the path is a baby ‘Mary Rose’, a David Austin rose that I am incredibly excited about.  Interestingly, a neighbor gave me a couple of old magazines recently because they had roses in them.  Imagine my glee when there before me was a cluster of luscious blooms of ‘Mary Rose’.  Oh, my goodness!  I can’t wait.


Of course, that’s exactly what I’ll have to do since here is all twelve inches of ‘Mary Rose’.


A postscript:  Recently moved 'Mystic Beauty' is looking really bad - like almost dead. I can't understand what the problem could have been.  'Baronne Prevost' on the other hand is a definite dead.  At the time I moved her into the big pot she had five canes.  Almost immediately they started dying.  Today she had one and a half good canes.  It took almost no strength to pull her from the pot, and she went to the pile of Louie's trimmings.  And now I'm wondering which roses will go into their places.  I've been dreaming of 'Maggie', but she's a big rose bush. (Groan) ... more digging and rose-moving in my future, I guess.

Garden remodel continues

Tis the season, you know, for reinventing the wheel, garden-wise.  It has happened every year so far in my garden.  I guess I’ve given up vowing that it won’t.  What the heck.  We move furniture around. Why not roses and other plants?  Today after work I spent the most productive two and a half hours moving plants.  Don’t you feel thrilled with yourself when things go well and smoothly??  That was me when I came in at dark.

Working in the front garden – as everywhere – certain things must happen before certain other things can happen.  How many times have I walked past certain roses and certain empty spaces in total frustration with the status quo?  Don’t answer that.  Well, today things were moving! 

‘Mary Guthrie’ has been jammed between two ‘Red Ruffles’ azaleas and the Tea rose, ‘Duquesa’, literally buried under these other plants.  The damp ground made the move easy.  She was up and out in seconds and in her new home next to ‘Louis Philippe’ in minutes.  I was amazed by her large size since I’d never been able to see her where she was.  Now those big, bright pink single flowers will be much more visible.

‘Capitaine Dyel de Graville’ and ‘Mystic Beauty’ were in an even more awful situation.  I had planted them very close to each other (two feet apart) as babies, knowing it was probably unwise, er, definitely unwise.  The double whammy was a lack of sun, so they were looking pretty scrawny – if you could see what you were looking at.  When ‘Pink Perpetue’ moved away to Rose Petals Nursery, she left a prime space on the front circle.  The move of ‘Mary Guthrie’ left an opposing space across the path, so these were the destinations of CDdG and MB, both being kin to ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’.  After some bed preparation of MG’s former spot (lots of sand astonishingly close to the surface) I slipped the Capitaine out of the ground. Wow! He was bigger than he looked. Now he’s settled in next to ‘Duquesa’ with room in front for daylilies.

‘Mystic Beauty’ was a bit more reluctant but did submit, and on the way to the new spot, it dawned on me (palm to the forehead!) that I had planned to put MB next to ‘Duquesa’ and CDdG next to SDLM since MB is basically SDLM’s twin – just the opposite of what I had actually done.  Oh, well, move on, right?  So as I dug MB’s hole, it occurred to me that what I will have is a bank of ‘Souv de la Malmaison’ – three bushes next to each other! This could be quite a sight in full bloom!!  And MB will be surrounded by echinacea plants, because seeds have sprouted all over that area, and so many seedlings are growing there that I transplanted several over to CDdG.  This is a prime example of how a garden evolves and grows.

The azaleas got planted elsewhere, and a displaced Ilex crenata ‘Compacta Holly’ was placed in CDdG’s old spot.  And a good time was had by all!


My January hardscaping efforts finished off the edging on this corner and made a place for seven daylilies, using the last of my topsoil pile.  The bare shrub behind the daylilies is ‘Pinky Winky’ hydrangea, and behind that is ‘Mrs B. R. Cant’.  On the right is my new camellia that was potted on to a large pot since my ground is inhospitable to camellias.


The old plastic edging was allowing soil to spill out of this bed, and with more composted horse manure to be added soon I had to make a change in the edging, so I chose the same scalloped concrete blocks that I used in the new bed under the ‘Francois Juranville’ arbor.  It really wasn’t as difficult as you’d think. It took about half an hour. Those invisible bushes behind the newly planted daylilies are ‘Red Ruffles’ azaleas, looking much the worse for having been through the freeze.


As a way to hide new basal shoots from marauding squirrels, I planted snapdragons at the base of ‘Leonie Lamesch’ (above) and ‘Arcadia Louisiana Tea’ (below).  When they get bigger and bushy, I think they will offer some protection to the new cane breaks.  Speaking of squirrels, my plan to rid the garden of them was peanut butter and plaster of paris bonbons.  I read a report that hypercalcemia would result in a heart attack for the squirrel.  Alas, after I made 20 of them and put them out last Saturday I was doing more research and found an actual experiment where someone tested the lethality of these bonbons.  A squirrel was fed nothing but the bonbons for four days and didn’t die. Drat!!  Anyone need a big bucket of plaster of paris?




Lovely new growth on ‘Maman Cochet’ (above).


This is my ‘Quietness’.  Admittedly, at only one year old she has been in a less than total-sun position, so I moved her to a possibly less beneficial position on the west side of the house.  That means no sun until one o’clock in the afternoon.  Have I doomed her?  Well, possibly, but I made room for daylilies, so what’s done is done. Go for it, ‘Quietness’!!  I think it will take me all of one minute to prune her.


A Mophead (Hydrangea Macrophylla) making a break from winter.  Yay!!


‘Foxy’ Foxglove, having survived our summer, is blooming beautifully.


One of the snapdragons that I planted last winter along the front sidewalk next to the garage lasted through the summer and has become quite large this winter, and now it’s blooming beautifully, too.  I’ll have to be more lavish with my care of the new ones I have to plant, so they’ll live long and bloom again.


Remember last summer when I was dropping coneheads around the garden?  Here is one of the results.  I’m still dropping seeds around.  I really think echinacea is my favorite plant and flower.


Volunteers.  A weed at the top of the photo and ‘Victoria Blue’ Salvia seedlings.


Another Echinacea ‘Purple Coneflower’ seedling.


And a sweet viola volunteer.  Teensy, teensy blue flowers.  Love them!


David Austin’s ‘Lilian Austin’, a gift from Carol, is now in a big pot.  Hopefully, the clay pot won’t dry out too much in the heat of summer.


Newly planted daylilies. These are ‘Chinese Scholar’.  My planting plan was to keep plants of the same cultivar grouped together rather than scattering them around willy-nilly, figuring they would have a bigger impact that way.  There’s another cluster like this one nearby.


I also tried to plant the daylilies with roses of a similar color. These Dianthus chinensis (my other most favorite flower) will go under ‘Polonaise’ and some other red roses.

I’m really loving the cut in my job hours though I felt differently when it happened.  One extra hour a day is wonderful for getting a lot done in the garden before dark sets in.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, the rain gauge registered .90 inches.  Happiness is almost an inch of rain!!  

Days of future past

As a gardener, I’m in limbo, because my garden is in limbo.

'Souvenir de la Malmaison' on January 3, 2012

  

I haven’t posted (huge apologies for seeming to abandon my blogging efforts) because the past has been strongly present in my garden. No blooms, roses needing rejuvenation badly, the time for pruning being agonizingly far away, crispy being far more prevalent than green, this in-between time seemed to slip this gardener out of Drive and into Neutral. Breadmaking and dear husband took my attention, and the garden couldn’t have been farther away.

However, the last two weekends I was gardening. Thirty-eight daylilies are now in the ground. Hardscaping in the form of cement block edging in the back garden is in place. A plan to revitalize ‘Mme Abel Chatenay’ and ‘Bermuda’s Anna Olivier’ in the front garden is solidified. Christmas bonus cash has been spent on manure compost, pine bark mulch, dahlia and astilbe tubers, hollyhock roots, potting soil and patio pots for veggie seeds and Yukon Gold potato starts. Seeds have arrived in the mail.

The past is beginning to fade, and the future is definitely within reach now. The days are longer now, enabling me to accomplish stuff after work. Temperatures again are Floridian in nature. The roses’ lack of foliage allows me to see how they’ll need to be trimmed and pruned. Endless googling has delivered a viable weapon against my enemy, the squirrel. (There will be a post on that.) The discovery of non-pH-adjusted sphagnum peat moss at Walmart has offered new hope for my crappy calcareous garden soil. We even had .35 inch of rain this week. Everything is moving in a positive direction, out of the winter doldrums and into the hustle and bustle of spring. The daunting task of rebuilding the garden has morphed into normal spring garden labor, transforming my outlook in the process.

Since my gardening apparently will always be a learning experience, there will be googling and posting “Help!” questions on the Antique Rose Forum about how to shape up ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ and ‘Blush Noisette’. Progress in that area and others will be halted until I know what to do, but since pruning is a month away, that’s not a problem, merely something else to occupy evening computer time. The balancing act of life continues with laundry, housekeeping, breadmaking, work, and husband who is recovering nicely from his back surgery on December 29th. Two weeks off from work (last year’s final week of vacation saved for the surgery had to be taken even though the surgery hadn’t happened yet and the first week of this year’s vacation taken to do absolutely everything that DH could not do for himself) was not spent in the garden, but that’s okay. The garden will get done. Spring will return. The future is on its way.

Progress

The biggest part of my progress is the tidied-up gravel, and I did wind up moving the broken cement pieces that I had intimated was not high on my project list. The gravel paths were such a mess that a semi-total makeover was necessary, so I decided on a medallion of sorts at the intersection of the paths. I like it, but when the granite dust settles deeper and I refresh it with some new gravel, I think it will look better. A good rain will help and some bleach on the cement pieces.



I’m debating with myself about what the featured plant will be in the new bed. At first it was the white hydrangea, but now I’m thinking about David Austin’s ‘Mary Rose’. Sizewise, I think it would be a good fit plus it will get a bit shade from ‘Francois Juranville’ overhead plus I really have no place else to put Mary. I had penciled her into the corner where the pink flags are in the photo below, but the space in real life is smaller than it looked on paper. The only doubt I have is how much room will be left for daylilies.



In the original part of the new bed I turned the soil, dug out the tree roots and divided the beautiful unknown daylily that was growing there. I really hate slamming a shovel through the middle of a daylily clump, but I guess that's how they do it. I also added some organics to the new soil, i.e., Holly-Tone, Milorganite and alfalfa pellets.





The leftovers will go to the "pink flag" corner and to the driveway bed. I used so much composted horse manure in the preparation of that bed that it has sunk, so it will get some replenishment. Maybe Monday I’ll go back to the Dirt Pile for the granite for the new path, but in order to do that I have to move this topsoil and before I can do that I have to dig up the ‘Giant Apostle's Iris’ and some other undesirable plants in that bed. For some reason I’ve been procrastinating on that one. What will I do with all those baby giants??

 

And today is our 34th wedding anniversary. Another good one. Thank you, Dear Husband, for a wonderful life.

A breathtaking surprise

Since #1 Dear Son needs to borrow DH’s truck on Saturday, I was forced to do some quick adjusting of plans this afternoon. Early darkness has pretty much eliminated evening gardening, but today and tomorrow I’ll be having fun past dusk and maybe even into the dark. Saturday was the day I planned to get my load of black garden-grade topsoil, but leaving work fifteen minutes early today enabled me to get to the Dirt Pile before they closed. Today I only got half of the truck emptied since the hole wasn’t quite shovel-ready. Its bottom still needed to be broken up.

Ugh! Such an ugly bottom! The soil looked just like dark gray mortar mix. Unfortunately, I had no composted horse manure, no Black Cow. I hated the thought of preparing this bed insufficiently. Last Saturday I put a big scoop of powdered soil sulfur in the bottom, watered it in and dumped in a bunch of aged pine bark mulch. So tonight I dug that all in, but it was still yucky. I threw in about four cups of Milorganite (the earthworms are on their way!) and then went scrounging. Found some sphagnum peat moss and then spotted the stack of Black Hen bags. They call it fertilizer since its NPK is 3.0-3.0-3.0, but I thought it would make a good amendment in the bottom that will work its way deeper over time (due to the sieve-like properties of this ground), convert the mulch into food for the microbes, and, hopefully, put out the welcome mat for the earthworms that will break up the compaction. Fingers are crossed. That accomplished, I started moving the topsoil. When I raised my gaze after the final dump of the second load, there was ‘Marchesa Boccella’ in all her glory. I ran into the house for my camera, hoping the darkness would wait.



'Marchesa Boccella' aka ‘Jacques Cartier’ was bred in France in 1842. Her blooms were easily twice the diameter of any I had ever seen before. They were magnificent and four inches across or more. The most beautiful pink buttoned flowers.




And there are still several buds left to open.

But in my excitement – you won’t believe this - I never even thought to sample her fragrance which is famously strong and luscious. It hurts now to think about what I missed.



I’ve only had this rose since February, and since she’s a Damask Perpetual which are known for their black spot susceptibility here, I planted her in a pot and have designated her as an experimental rose. She’s been a pleasant surprise as far as black spot goes, and since the cooler weather settled in, she has really been blooming a lot. This is her second flush but the first with these large blooms. Plus her foliage is quite wonderful. I’m very happy with ‘Marchesa Boccella’. I will really have to start pampering her.



And tomorrow I will have to remember to take a whiff!! Isn’t she pretty?