Here's why I intensely dislike squirrels

No, this isn't why I hate squirrels. You'll see why at the end of this post. Before I started shoveling compost today I took some photos. The garden is changing moment by moment, and I have to start paying attention. This is Maman Cochet, Climbing. Her flower is much smaller now due to the cool temps, and the color is deeper than in summer, but she still has lots of petals!

Another flower and more buds. The squirrels did a job on her, chewing off a few inches from 4 new canes that were 6" to 12" long. @#$%#@%!!

This is Reve d'Or. Can you tell I didn't prune her yet? That fact is mostly due to not knowing how, but today I needed to put some compost under her and figured it was either learn to prune her or come out from under her in shreds, so... My method is called "trimming the bangs". I walked along and cut under a new shoot at about head-high, and boing! Up into the air went the suddenly lighter canes. It worked, and I think she'll be fine. It was near dark so no "after" shot. You know, even a good haircut isn't good the same day.

I don't know if this is a good photo, but when I turned around and saw 'Aloha' all covered in shiny new leaves and a few buds, I was stunned. This rose has never been a climber for me - just a tall, thin freestanding bush. And I didn't prune her either. (Apparently, I only got two thirds of the way around the house.) So I'm excited that 'Aloha' is progressing well on her own.

Here's 'Louis Philippe' down to about 5.5' tall and leafing out pretty well.

'E. Veyrat Hermanos' was another non-pruning, but this evening just as it was getting dark I trimmed up his bangs, too, but he wasn't as cooperative as 'Reve d'Or' in that he already has big buds all the way down his long arching canes. I was sentimental about those buds, so he didn't get as short a trim as RdO, and I swung some of the long canes upwards and sideways. He's not a hazard to life and limb anymore.

'Mrs B R Cant is being beautiful now. This flower is 3" across.

This is last spring's snapdragon that lasted through the summer and winter and is now back blooming again. Pretty cool!

I just love 'Leonie Lamesch'.

A China aster grown from seeds sowed in September. The color should be a bit bluer.

'Gruss an Aachen', planted in the ground last fall after languishing in a pot for way too long, has leafed out really well and is showing her stuff. Her coloration is a little unusual. Oh, man, I forgot to smell her.

Now would you risk a blood-letting for this beauty? This is 'Le Vesuve', first bloom of 2011.

The second bloom.

And there are eight more buds in less than half a square foot. He is a bloom machine, that's why I couldn't care less that he is not fragrant.

Two and a half weeks after pruning. Handsome, isn't he?

A China aster in the center and cheerful pansies.

This part of the garden is my pride and joy. That's 'Bermuda's Anna Olivier' on the left and 'Enchantress' on the right next to the daylilies. I only had to cut out the dead stuff on these two. 'Enchantress' never lost her leaves, and BAO was leafing out very early and is now full of red new growth. In the middle is a clump of  'Summer Carnival' hollyhocks, one of my seedlings from last year. It's already got a bloom started, and it looks like it will have several stalks. I'm very excited about it. Notice the beautiful compost?

This is clematis 'Westerplatte', a big bloom on a little post-pruning, second-year plant. Photo color should be a little more like wine.

Now you know why I hate squirrels. If they ate the flowers, I would be slightly less unhappy, but they just chew them off and run, leaving the precious bloom face down in the compost. #%$$@!

Some mathematics you'll like

It occurred to me as I was shoveling manure compost that I have left a gravely wrong impression here. My garden and I are the exception not the norm. Ninety-five roses is far, far from average and so is the work involved. This number of roses and level of effort is my choice, at least for now, but growing beautiful, enjoyable roses need not be so demanding. Divided by ten or twenty, your roses can be just as fulfilling as mine, produce equally thrilling blooms and be the same handsome healthy landscape shrub. Let's keep dividing by ten or twenty. A bag of composted cow manure from Lowe's is all that's needed for each bush. For about $1.50 per bush in the spring along with a bag of Rose-Tone or Holly-Tone and a bag of Milorganite for a feeding while on an evening stroll through your yard every six weeks or so means your effort will also be divided by ten or twenty.

As with everything, hobbies and hobbyists come in all degrees of devotion and intensity. If you want no part of my garden, and if my gardening scares the daylights out of you, I say fear not. Most likely this is not your cup of tea, but a taste of gardening-lite may be right up your alley. After all, azaleas need pruning in the spring, feeding after their bloom is finished, and supplemental feedings throughout the year if they're to stay healthy in our Florida conditions. I don't hear folks talk about how demanding azaleas are.  If you have four or five sunny spots in your yard, you could have four or five Souvenir de la Malmaisons covered repeatedly with incredibly elegant blush pink flowers which I daresay will make your yard elegantly different from your neighbors whether or not they grow roses.

If you're desperate for some variety and beauty in your landscape, by all means investigate these Old Garden Roses (there are many to choose from) that truly do thrive here. Amazingly, our early spring is producing delightful results with my roses, results not to be found on a ligustrum, an Indian Hawthorne or even on a Knock-Out rose. Variety spices up our lives and our landscapes. I know positively that Florida homeowners take pride in their landscape and even put a lot of work in it. Is this something you'd be willing to put that work into? For  5% or 10% of my work you can have 100% of my roses' grace and beauty. Now that's math-made-easy, don't you agree?

Roses!

This is 'Souvenir de la Malmaison, Climbing' (1893). I have her growing on a pillar. Her reputation is that of a stingy bloomer, great in the spring but little through the summer and some in the fall. Since I love my bush forms of SdlM, I had to have the climber regardless of her reputation. How amazing that she is the second rose to bloom in my garden and so early. Just wait till she opens all the way.

Lots of buds, too!

Such a lovely profile.

She's still quite young, planted in September, 2009. Climbers can take a few years to really start producing so I wasn't surprised that she only had a few flowers last year. She's tied to coated wire on this 8' tall 4x4 post, and at her feet just to the right is one of my SdlM bushes. I have Clematis Henryi growing on this pillar, too, to fill in with flowers during the rose's lean times.

'Archduke Charles' (1825) was just moved into the ground last month, I think, out of his big pot where he'd been since August, 2008. He never missed a beat, and he's ready to bloom. I haven't de-leafed him yet, hence the not-so-pretty old leaf.

This baby is my first David Austin rose, 'Bow Bells' (1991). I knew she had buds, but I was totally shocked to see her with a flower today. She's only been in the ground since August.

Here she is again, posing with 'Red Ruffles' azalea.

Not to be outdone by her climbing sport in the back garden, here is the bush, 'Souv de la Malmaison' (1843), in the front garden. I have a third SdlM growing right next to her, a baby barely 12" across and not a foot tall, planted last September, with a bud that's opening, her first. It always amazes me when roses that I have multiples of bloom at the same time. It's really a miraculous thing, like they're programmed.

And, of course, first place winner, 'Hermosa' (1840), is showing her stuff, blooming her head off before she's even started leafing out. She's usually a more lilac pink, and I noticed her first open flower wasn't fragrant. Roses do different things at different times of the year.

Interestingly, December's freezes robbed me of the last roses of 2010, but February is gifting me with early roses in 2011. I guess that's not such a bad deal.

Seeds and seedlings, a semi-success story

Again they have tested my strength and resolve. My city upbringing is fighting me every step of the way. Winter before last I started a bunch of seeds of plants about whom I was clueless since I was venturing into the unknown world of companion plants - on the dining room table and a shelf in my laundry room, I might add. But then winter took so long to go away. I'd put them out on the porch and then bring them into the garage when it was going to freeze - and then forget them. Drat! The sweet part is that out of all the seeds I started I had three plants that survived and flourished in the garden - a baby pink and a rose 'Summer Carnival' hollyhock and 'Early Sunrise' coreopsis put out in March.

The baby pink hollyhock died at the end of summer, but the rose one stayed green all winter and is looking good. I divided the coreopsis into several plants and decided to use it a lot more. The yellow really pops among the pinks of the roses.

I think I already described my September, 2010 sowing escapade, three weekends hunched over peat pots and bags of starter mix, counting out the seeds more precisely than the first time in the sweltering heat on the porch with the big table fan blowing on my back so the seeds wouldn't blow away.

From that batch I got a lot of old fashioned mustard, violas & pansies, several each of double white stock, 'Foxy' foxglove, 'Rocket' larkspur, 'Tutti Fruitti' lupin, echinacea and nigella. A lot of losses. I think two poppies survived. Dianthus and hollyhocks were a total loss. The acquisition of my pop-up greenhouse was a great help, and in late January and early February I started putting them out in the garden which proved that assembly-line work is not for me. Exasperatingly tedious it was to deal with those teensy little plants, fighting the urge to simply stick them in an unamended hole scratched in the dirt with my fingers. The grown-up in me said, "Sherry, you didn't put all this work in so they can fail at the finish line." Only a couple have failed in the ground. The foxglove seeds, however, were almost microscopic and came streaming out of the envelope (chalk that up to exhaustion), and I had seedlings by the dozen in each compartment. At planting time they were so tiny and I was so uncertain about dividing and possibly damaging them that I split the mass in half and planted them as is. Now they are starting to grow (maybe an inch and a half tall), and I think I can divide them. Not sure what losses I will sustain in the process.

I didn't even mention the cost of peat pots and seed starter mix. I was doing the math for what these $3 packets of  25 and 50 seeds were costing me per survivor. It wasn't an encouraging answer, but I was determined to persevere, remembering I wouldn't have to buy any flats of plants in the spring while this little voice whispered in my brain, "Yeah, right."

Then at the end of January I sowed my warm-season seeds. The dilemma was where to put them. The nights were way too chilly on the screened porch where the others had been started under lights. Then a purchase of my darling DH proved to be indispensable - a mini-greenhouse for $16.97 at Harbor Freight which I had thought was unnecessary in light of having the pop-up. So it came into the dining room. I had seen a dear blogger (unknown to me now, so sorry) sowing her seeds in the kitchen in disposable aluminum baking pans. I thought it was a stroke of genius on her part, and I sowed 3 pans in one evening of about 18 varieties, eight or so of each. A beautiful set-up with lights and the zip-on greenhouse cover which made it unnecessary to cover each pan for moisture retention, and I had no losses due to damping-off disease. Everything was going swimmingly (except that 'The Hulk' zinnia never germinated). Then about a week ago the tall seedlings started flopping over. Uh-oh, I thought, this isn't good; maybe they need more light, so I moved the greenhouse outside, but we were having quite a bit of wind at that time, so I took off the cover which served as an announcement to the squirrels that the sandbox was now open. Yesterday emergency measures had to be taken to avert disaster.

But back at the pop-up greenhouse my convolvulus meant for patio pots and a store-bought 6-pack of pink & red dianthus were crispy critters, a testament to our higher temps and the gardener's failure to stay on top of their water needs. Double drat!

OK, back to yesterday's rescue mission. I set up on the patio deck: 3 pans of seedlings, huge bag of potting soil, bags of milorganite & Holly-Tone (it'll work, I said to myself), several of last years patio pots needing renovation & replanting, two giant-sized scoops, watering can, and later as many scrounged 4" pots as I could find - and me in the middle on my little rolling seat. The pain in my back started almost immediately since the seat, even as low as it is, placed me in a hunching position over the plants and accessories. (Is everyone paying attention? Find a better way.) I planted the patio pots first and in the process found two pots with last year's plants ready to burst forth from the soil (can't remember the name. Here it is, the mini-petunia that I loved. I'm so thrilled that it's coming back. It was wonderful. Apparently, the one in the upper right of the photo is the other one that's coming back.

I put five 'Apricot Daisy' calendula seedlings in each of two tallish pots (a good sale purchase months ago), but the little buggers still wouldn't stand up straight no matter what I did. Two pots got a 4" grass plant in the middle with 'Daddy Mix' petunias around the edge. One pot got several Red Plains Dwarf Coreopsis. Then the light dawned. These tiny seedlings must need to be potted up rather than planted, so the hunt for 4" pots ensued. With the knot in my back torturing me each seedling I potted was to be the last I needed of that variety, but it wasn't. My heart wanted to save all of them, precious as they were. Salvia farinacea (tiny, thinned to 3 or 4 in a pot, hating to discard the culled ones), 'White Bride' snapdragon (they had been planned to go along the sidewalk, perfect with the 'Aaron' caladiums (don't you think?) until I saw the pink ones at Lowe's, so big!), 'The Bride' gaura (love the pink version of this plant!), 'Summer Carnival' hollyhock (only three were barely savable, a tragedy; hopefully they're alive today), Rosemary (disappeared, vanished somewhere, maybe I'll sow some in a pot), 'Fairy Wand' Dierama pulcherrimum (good survival rate, absolutely couldn't let any of these be thrown away; can't wait to see them grow), Aladdin yellow petunia (why are these so tiny??), Zinnia 'Purity' (thought these would be lovely standing tall next to the roses), purple coneflower (even though I have 42 seedlings of 'Double Decker' coming from Thompson Morgan, I can not bare to lose any of these. I think I saved 5 or 6). Throughout this activity, the question keeps invading my mind, "Where am I going to plant all these plants?" 'Double Cascade' Orchid Petunia, Coreopsis lanceolata (I hope I like these as much as the 'Early Sunrise'), and 'Dahlberg Daisy' (never saw anything so tiny in my life - they were not saved). I ended up with 45 4" pots that I put in trays of water in the greenhouse after realizing that I could zip the screens shut which would keep it from getting so overheated, hopefully.

Bottom line: I feel so ill equipped for farming, and I have a huge admiration for farmers now, knowing the risks of crop failure and plague that they face everyday yet they courageously carry on. I hope I have a fraction of their courage come August. Maybe time will dull the pain and exhaustion, ya think?

When ideas won't take root

My current labor in the garden pains my muscles and numbs my brain, and by dark when I come in I make my way to the sofa, put a pillow behind my back and wait in hope for the muscles to stop screaming at me. I would normally sit down at this computer and let my gardening consciousness stream forth with little or no effort. But exhaustion (from what I can't say since the heavy digging is done. All I do is walk back and forth countless times for this or that task and roll on my garden seat down the sidewalk, hunching over to plant my gorgeous Antirrhimum majus (tall snapdragons) just purchased at Lowe's), yes, this exhaustion makes it harder for interesting ideas to take root in the late hours. And I know that working all day in an office or carrying kids here and there can be just as exhausting. So let me offer some encouragement just on the off chance there are any frustrated gardeners reading this blog.

It is a known fact that mere human beings can not do everything, and there is another adage about all things in moderation and perhaps another one about just do what you can. If your garden is calling to you like some creature from the black lagoon and you're hiding in your busy schedule in the grip of guilt and fear, try this. Do one thing. Get it done. Feel the achievement. Let it warm your blood and feed your energy. If you're the "all or nothing" type, do a little "all" with the shovel and "nothing" with the vacuum cleaner. Refresh your gardening soul with the pre-spring/spring air outside. Get your fingers and toesies in the dirt. Give a cheer for the returning daylilies and spring bulbs. Let the gardener in you stand up and stretch after the long winter sleep. Ahhh! The here-and-now is yours! Just do it and rejoice that it's done. No longer will the garden's voice be allowed to instill frustration but rather a sense of resting in the peaceful knowledge that you're doing what you can - and enjoying the day.

My dream is that these lovelies will grow to three feet tall, love the heat and push back when the remaining 'Aaron' calladiums start throwing their weight around.

This and that

Here's the finished work of Le Vesuve.

My front yard isn't quite as desolate as it was before the pruning but you'd never know there are roses in this picture.

Poor Clotilde Soupert has been leafless for a few months, and her normally green canes are burgundy-colored. I really was afraid she might be in trouble since my other CS had lots of leaves. While I was pruning her, I looked at the other side of one cane. What a shock to see that it is green on the north side! The poor rose is sunburned. She's showing some new sprouts so hopefully she's OK.

Madame Abel Chatenay is so prickly, but she's sprouting new growth already. We're having some very nice warm temps.

Violas grown from seeds by me.

Last year first bloom went to 'Hermosa', and this year it's 'Hermosa' again. Sorry for the blur. We had a good bit of wind today.

This is the glamorous part of composted horse manure. It's downhill from here and leaves you with stiff muscles. I added topsoil, but the hole took every bit of the load.

Tomorrow I'll finally be planting my three new babies, moving Parade, and planting this "Purple Iris". That's all that was on the label from Lowe's. I've never grown irises before. I hope it survives in my yard, and I hope Lowe's knows what they're doing stocking it in their Ocala store. I just couldn't resist it - even at $12.98. In fact, I want to go back for another one. If anyone has a clue what kind of iris this might be, I'd really appreciate your sharing. It's about 30" tall. I hope it's not a bearded iris. I don't think they do well here.

I was just thinking today that I would be entirely happy if all I ever did was work in my garden.

Never received an award before!

Thank you, Masha!

for thinking my blog deserves an award.

 

Now then, I hope I have the instructions right about what I am supposed to do next.

1. Post a link back to the person who gave you the award (see above).
2. Tell 7 things about myself.

       1. In high school I worked as a telephone operator back when calls were answered by plugging the "front cord" into a hole in the board above the blinking light of the caller and then plugging the "back cord" into a jack that went to the called number. I thought it was a fun job, being the anonymous "Operator 115".

       2. My hometown of Norwalk, CT is right next door to Westport, CT, home of some very famous people. The most exciting call I ever handled was a person-to-person call to Sammy Davis, Jr. This was the coolest call I'd ever handled even though Sammy was not there. I asked the caller if he wanted to leave a message. He said, "Yes, tell him Paul Newman called." Instantly, all breath left my body and no sound would come out of my mouth. Paul kept saying, "Operator, Operator." I think I was finally able to grunt or something.

       3. When going through sorority "rush" at the University of Alabama, the counselor advised all the girls to "tell them something that will make them remember you". Even though I was an extremely shy, introverted girl, I did have my Paul Newman story, and I told it at every sorority house I went to that day. It worked.

       4. I always wanted a yellow Volkswagon beetle.

       5. I've been married 33+ years and have 3 stepsons, 3 DILs, and 7 grandchildren.

       6. Quilting and sewing were my things before roses.

       7. I love to buy books. Unfortunately, I don't have time to read them all.

3. Award from 5 to 15 other new bloggers.

I enjoy these 'newish' blogs immensely. I hope you will, too. 

        Christina's Organic Garden Dreams
        Sandra's Roses, Color and Light
        The Professor's Garden Musings
 And thank you again, Masha.