Out of the Frying Pan

Cutting back the oregano

My favorite summertime snack

Something about Rainier cherries just shouts "SUMMER!" to me. Most of the cherry trees of my growing up years were Bings, which is a perfectly nice variety. But I always favored Rainiers and still do.

This is from the sage plant that envelopes grows near the miniature roses.

Summer garden

The summer garden is beginning to come in: lots of salvia, rudbeckia, and a few Shasta daisies. The Johnson's geraniums are on the run because of the heat, but they'll be back in a month or so when the evenings get a little cooler again.

Butterflies don't read...

See this: Gardening with Binoculars: Royal Catchfly catches a Butterfly

High Country Gardens Sale

I should have mentioned this before, instead of leaving it until the last minute. Anyway. Today is the last day of the High Country Gardens Perennial Sale. I scored Echinops banaticus ‘Blue Glow’ and Eryngium 'Big Blue'. There are still plenty of great bargains to be had.

The world weed uprising

An excellent cartoon commentary on the insurrection with which all gardeners must live.

You cannot miss this

The elegant Amateur Bot-ann-ist has a tour of the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden in Portland, Oregon. It's one of the most beautiful places on the planet, a place that even when bursting with visitors retains its essential peace.

May day in the garden

I'm a sentimental gardener. Among my roses, for instance, I count Joseph's Coat and Griff's Red. Both carry names of priests dear to me. This tulip is Lady Jane, in honor of my best friend from high school and college. It looks delicate, but it's tough: qualities in common with Janie! I think it's beautiful, just like my friend.

In my gardens, muscari haven't needed to be planted. If anything, they've needed weeding out. But Colorado is different. This year I'm trying yet again. As you see, success is far from assured.

Identification

It's a real mess, but once I get it cleaned out, this will be a good year for 'Carnival Glass', a miniature rose I've grown for many years, i.e. before we came to Colorado. The picture is here because I noted the rose leaves which feature in this Girl Sprout NM entry.

And that entry reminded me of the late Oregon rose grower, Fred Edmunds, who was able to identify roses by leaf, alone. Given the thousands and thousands of roses in cultivation, I think that would be an extraordinary skill.

I grant that Fred was most active in the rose growing world before the popularity of English and old garden roses, but I'm not sure much would have thrown him. He was a brilliantly hard worker, erudite and funny, and a fine gentleman.

"Easter" rose

It's actually Helleborus orientalis -- Lenten Rose -- but it's Alleluia season, so I'll briefly rechristen this lovely plant.

Spring + six days

Three dozen iris reticulata must have been planted at the base of the gargoyle last Fall; memory said maybe a dozen. These seem not to naturalize here -- at least they haven't at other places in the garden -- but maybe one show is good enough.

Everything I know about the allelopathy of black sunflower seed hulls is being turned on its head by these daylilies. Perhaps the seeds require moisture to do their damage to the dirt. Moisture there will be once the sprinklers start up in another month or so. Before then, maybe the resident gardener will see to a little homework and attention at the base of the bird feeders.

Listening for Spring?

It has been many years since I've had this much color in the garden in March. Iris reticulata used to show up in January in my Oswego garden, which sort of calibrates where we are in seasons here on the Front Range.

Signs

A sign that a squirrel was busy here, but decided to leave a few things behind.

A sign that, if I'm willing to clear brush a little (but not much: we still have two months of frost), the perennial salvia is sending up new growth.

A day with a couple of good signs is a day to be enjoyed.

The first day of False Spring

"False" Spring because these days of touching 60F can't last, but "Spring" because for a few hours, at least, the heat is off and the windows are open.

The amount of yard debris that collects on this 5000' square lot is impressive -- especially considering that close to 3000' square is covered by the footprint of the house, garage, and driveway. I was outside playing with a little of it and saw...

...a gargoyle that looks hard done by. It was the weather, not a tumble. Behind it is the feed tank we've re-purposed for growing veg. From an aesthetic standpoint, I think I should have left it alone, rather than painting it off-white, but the light color is intended to deal with the effect of hot sun hitting metal.

...a cat hanging out under the dead alchemilla mollis leaves. I like to leave the dead leaves in place until April or so, when the crowns begin to send up new leaves and there's little chance of minus temps.

...my favorite birdbath, through the screen of reprieved berberis.

...these odd twigs. I have a feeling I planted this shrub on purpose, i.e. it is not a gift from the birds. The twigs have a sweet smell. But I have no idea what this is.

Ignition

We caught this pretty thing just as it was about to take care of some business in the neighborhood. We didn't ask; it didn't tell.

Speaking of ignition, my annual and perennial seeds have arrived. I quake at the responsibility, to tell you the truth. There are nine separate packets with more seeds than one could possibly use on an our-sized lot:

• argemone polyanthemos
• berlandiera lyrata
• dianthus x chinensis 'Corona Cherry Magic'
• gaillardia pinnatifida
• heuchera sanguinea 'Vivid'
• ipomoea noctiflora
• linum lewisii
• phacelia campanularia

Mostly, these are plants that do well in our "high and dry" climate. Some, such as the phacelia with its colloquial name of California bluebell, might do all right with more moisture at lower elevations. I really don't know, because every item except the linum is new to me as a gardener. (Yes, I have heucheras, but not this variety.)

This will be interesting.

They speak to me

Some days, my pictures speak to me only of banalities. The best and worst I can say about that is: I'm listening.

Tonight we were headed west, toward home, when an extraordinary blue bill caught DC's eye:

The ruddy duck: two views of the same critter. Just what we saw on the lake was enough to give him plenty of cred as an odd duck, but the 1922 account of one J.C. Phillips in A Natural History of Ducks (164) seems to settle the case:

“Its intimate habits, its stupidity, its curious nesting customs and ludicrous courtship performance place it in a niche by itself.

Got it!

For six years, the identity of...

...has been a mystery to me. A while back, a photo flashed by at Vintage Gardens that made me exclaim, "That's it!" Except I couldn't figure out what IT was until today I noticed that they've identified all the photos that play on their front page.

It's Souvenir de la Malmaison, which makes sense for a number of reasons. Château de Malmaison might be my favorite "famous" house in the world. Joséphine de Beauharnais chose and bought the house herself, decorated it, and aggressively sought out plants -- especially roses (her full name is Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie, but "a rose by any other name...") -- for the gardens.

One year the date on which I visited Malmaison coincided with the anniversary of Joséphine's death. The gardeners had gathered a great variety of roses for a small tribute left in front of Joséphine's "ceremonial" bed (my history-based illustration, right; notice the Redouté botanical -- whee, is THAT a great link -- to the right of the bed), not a great floral installation, but a typically understated, but elegant bunch of roses drooping over the lip of a bowl. Beautiful.

In my ruminations about the mystery, at times it seemed like Souvenir might be the right identification, but so many alternatives were suggested and my mind could not quite get around the idea that I might have forgotten making a small tribute to Joséphine in my garden. There was a long period when I could not remember. For now, that time has passed.

Rambling about roses, etc

The days get a little longer and, sure enough, my mind starts to lead itself down the garden path. right: What @rmstr0ng didn't see.

My forays last year about Front Range viticulture discouraged me; the writer strongly advised against growing Concord grapes, pretty much the only variety that interests me. But another info run pulled up a more hopeful result. Concords are droopers, which means that they really do need an arbor. Even on this small plot, there's a space where it could work.

Truthfully, though, it was an offer from Vintage Gardens (see the owner's entertaining blog, Naked in the Roses) that propelled me down that seductive path. Moonsprite, Little White Pet (a favorite from several of my Oregon gardens), Pâquerette, Marie Pavié: one floribunda and three polyanthas, my favorite varieties of rose. Vintage Garden's home page slide show includes a slide that looks suspiciously like my mystery rose. below: P@t N!x()n'$ rose garden at the Presidential library in Yorba Linda. Yes, roses in January. I do think one would be right at home south of Yorba Linda, say 90 miles or so... My guess, partly informed, is that the yellow rose is Sunsprite, a floribunda.

My plant lust, one of the most pernicious temptations of habitat, does not stop there. A rainy idyll at San Diego Botanic Garden piqued my interest in citrus (not grow-able in Colorado, but don't you agree that Cocktail Grapefruit sounds like a fruit of uncommon panache?), succulents, and cacti. The latter do well enough in Colorado that there's a dedicated plant society here. High Country Gardens, the grande dame of gardening at altitude, has an intriguing selection. Hesperaloe parviflora 'Yellow' certainly is an eyecatcher and Dasylirion wheeleri is more appealing, but the questionable hardiness probably rules it out). Cacti interest me, an interest cooled because one doubts their friendliness to garden visitors. A landscape solution might be hard to find for a garden the size of mine. It's good to admit, however grudgingly, to the limits of one's landscape.

Behold, I shew you a mystery... again

It has been a while since my asking, so does anybody recognize this rose? This is a good example of its flower. In Zone 5b it is a thorny, vigorous shrub (aren't all vigorous shrubs thorny? Seems so) about five feet tall. Because I stand at only 5'4", sometimes this rose seems to have a rather menacing aspect. Little Garden of Horrors, mayhap?

Toward mid-summer in the back garden

It isn't its name, but shouldn't this hemerocallis be called "Butter Lily"?

First half-decent photo I've ever managed of the poor callirhoe, which is not terribly floriferous in this setting, even though it's supposed to be a rocking good plant for the region.

Miniature lavender rose peeks out between sage leaves. I'm trying to figure out WHICH miniature lavender-colored rose it is. I miss my garden notes. Maybe they're on the eMac.

Growing things

One of my all-time favorite plants, which I first saw 16 years or so ago at in the glasshouse at Jardin des serres d'Auteuil, is Alocasia × amazonica. I've seldom seen it, failed once at growing a very expensive specimen, and have since held tight to my pocketbook when plant lust has threatened to overtake common sense.

But there's a new cultivar, Polly, which I gather from googling is becoming more common. Certainly the one I found today at the supermarket was at a very common price, indeed: $12.95. We'll see how I do this time. Perhaps the fact that Polly is the nickname of a good friend will help me be more sensitive to this plant?

The miracle of the re-blooming lilac is reputed to have been achieved in Syringa x Josee. Lilacs are one species that adore our alkaline soil. However, I've lived to regret giving pride of place to Syringa pubescens subsp. patula 'Miss Kim', a stingy bloomer whose few pallid blossoms lean to the lavender-grey of Victorian funeral flowers. We're talking tissue flowers here, folks, and they were a staple of my great-grandmother's. But we digress.

For sale: a brilliant property in South Carolina

It's 20 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Rolling terrain, a pond, pasture; perfect for a horse farm, small estate or short term investment.

Ashdown Roses is relocating around the corner from the above property, so the gorgeous place is on the market.

It happens that I've never been in South Carolina, but can attest to the magnificent roses grown on this property from back in the days when I gardened. The place sounds lovely, so if you're looking, get in touch through the Ashdown site.

Ending the day in the garden

No new roses for me

This time of year, the rose specials roll in from wonderful places like Heirloom Roses and Ashdown, maybe the two best rose purveyors in the United States. But between a postage stamp lot and a different life, I simply bin the emails without even opening them.

The back garden thinks pink

At dusk

The heat has been wicked on the roses but, as always, "a remnant shall remain"...

Too much back garden beautifulness!

At least, it's disproportionate to the effort I've put in :-)

Spring comes to the back garden

Spring returned