You might be a conehead if.......

Out of the heat of summer and the cool sun of fall comes winter. And with winter comes cold and rain, short days and long opportunities to do paperwork. Ugh. I have worked hard to develop antidotes to this short light season that don't involve alcohol, and one of these is an interest in conifers. After years of cultivating this interest, and hanging around others with the same affinity, I think I can call myself a true conehead. So, how would one know this? Here are a few clues:

You might be a conehead if:

1) You stopped caring about flowers years ago, but.....

                                                     2) Your garden is wonderfully colorful all year around.

3) You begin to use words describing the color palette of your conifers that sound more like interior decorator lingo, or possibly wine reviews.

4) The term "stomatal band pattern" becomes a rallying cry, and an invitation to raise a magnifying glass for all those gathered round.

5) You walk up to a conifer, then look, touch and smell all at the same time.

6) In the southeast, if you have conifers (other than pines) with cones, you throw cocktail parties to talk about them.

7) You've started to speak in Latin without really trying.

8) "Dwarf" now means "grows less than 6" a year.

9) The plant you spent the most on is the smallest one you own.

10) You've started to ask complete strangers what they know about   understocks, compatibility, cloning and root pruning.

11) You recruit your friends to join you in your habit, dragging them out on cold, blustery days to one garden or another with good conifer specimens.

Don't knock it till you've tried it. As addictions go, this one is pretty benign, and loads of fun! Friends, heat and insect-free gardening, rich doses of texture, lots to learn and enjoy. Be the most colorful, interesting, enthusiastic gardener on your block, and before you know it, spring will be here!!

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.  ~John Muir

Franky Boy Can't Swim.......or What I Observed in 2013

In the hope of having learned something over the last year, I decided to challenge myself to make a list of things that were new to me, or perhaps just surprising reminders of things I already knew. Here is the list, in no particular order:

1) Get used to drought conditions, and it will start raining. Get used to warm conditions, and you'll freeze your ______ off come winter.

2) Sometimes more plants die from too much water than from not enough. Witness -
Platycladus orientalis 'Franky Boy'.

Platycladus orientalis 'Franky Boy'

He was planted in a lower area for the past three years, and seemed to be happy with a little extra moisture in that spot. After one rainy spring into summer, 'Franky Boy' seems to have drowned in that same spot.

3) You should always tell the truth. You just don't have to tell it so loud.

4) There are advantages and disadvantages in agreeing to be on an industry garden tour. The tour deadline is a good way to get things done, although much sleep is sacrificed as a result. The best part is getting to meet and talk with some icons in the world of horticulture.

With Martin van der Giessen, Margie Jenkins, 

Brie Arthur, and Barry Yinger

I'll take that deal every time.


5) The more you do, the more you can do. The more you think you can't get it all done, the more you can't.

 6) A good employee is worth his weight in gold. (wait a minute, make that MY weight in gold....he's pretty skinny) I sure will miss that boy.

Adam Autry and the bench in the boulder garden

7) Get rid of the negative.

8) Even though you don't have time, get away. See a garden, visit a nursery, catch up with an old friend, take a hike, read a book. They say that when you are standing just outside the Pearly Gates, you never once wish you had stayed later at work. I think they are right.

My best friend Joe

9) Marrying your best friend is ALWAYS the right decision.

10) Your kids are always your kids, and that can make for some very whiny late afternoons. But just put them in the virtual bathtub for an hour or two and you'll see what lovely, smart, and accomplished young ladies they've turned out to be. As one of my very wise friends says, (they are) "what regulates our temperatures"....

11) When deciding what plants to grow for the next year just remember.....they only really want the ones you are sold out of.

12) Don't give up. Just take a break.

13) Pruning is the most important job in the nursery. Too bad I always run out of time before I get to it. I am not talking about plant haircuts. I am talking about trying to uncover the art and elegance of each plant. I did a better job last year, and saw the benefits. I'll be cooking up that extra time I need along with the other dishes for Thanksgiving dinner.

14) Grafting season is coming up. From the look of my list, I sure hope I'll be living another 50-60 years. But just in case I'm not, it's still better to look forward than back.

15) The love of plants can be contagious, and there is nothing more fun than watching someone "catch" that condition. I have happily counted several customers among the newly afflicted, and believe that I served as the vector. I'll be making an effort to spread the passion in the new year.

Accidental Potatoes

“Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.”

 Mary Oliver

 Now that it has turned cold, it was time to spend a little effort on cleaning up my summer vegetable garden beds. Gray watery tomato vines were sprawled out and over the edges of my raised beds. Full unpicked peppers hung limp on ghostly stems. Bleached leaves of broccoli and brussel sprouts showed that they were no match for 25 degrees. So I started pulling things out. The summer vegetables came out easily. Some dried out vines hung on like they had anchors. In fact, they did.

After rooting around in the soil, I came out with roots.....and their attached potatoes. I had forgotten all about them. That is, forgotten them this summer after they came up as volunteers from last spring's incomplete harvest. I quickly mobilized to find other forgotten treasures. By the time I had exhausted myself, I had filled a 7 gallon bucket full of large red skinned potatoes. I proudly washed and dried and presented the bounty to my very impressed husband.

But something about the whole episode is nagging at me. I spend much of my time trying as hard as I can to make things grow. I read. I listen. I talk. I try one recipe after another to make it work, sometimes with success and sometimes with failure. I like the puzzle, and enjoy putting the pieces together to reveal the picture. It makes me feel empowered, like the magician who knows the secret to the trick. Yet this surprise yield thrilled me as much as any other planned crop. This potato harvest had been completely independent of anything I had done, apart from the original planting and the deficient gathering.

Ok.....let's get real here.Who am I kidding? My place here in this big old universe is very special. I am lucky enough to be like the little kid standing on the stool watching Mom cook, or Dad at his workbench. I get to lean up against Mother Nature, and if I am very quiet, and if I pay very close attention, maybe over time I'll learn how she does it. But make no mistake. It is happening with me or without me. Whatever work I am doing all day everyday is just tapping in to the ongoing beauty and brilliance of the cosmos; the essence of the force; the soul of the universe.

It is at once humbling, and exhilarating. It is a revelation that recurs to me in these tiny moments, and yet it is always new. Forgive me if I repeat myself. I just had to tell you.

Whodunit

"Murder is easy, if no one suspects you"- Agatha Christie

 It was barely light, and slightly foggy.  Still, she could see that something was not right. Pots were tossed here and there, soil spilled out, piled up and soggy. Limbs and twigs lay all strewn about, or buried under piles. The still morning belied the violence of the night before. In spite of all efforts, the murders continued.....

 The first plants were found, dug and discarded, one early summer dawn. They were distributed here and there in the cold frames. At first, there was no pattern at all. Later, the murderer seemed to remember easy prey and return night after night to the scene of his crimes.

Of course the community was already on high alert. Neighbors shared their own experiences and precautions. Some erected fences, some put up security lighting, some even went to the extremes of piping in talk radio as a deterrent. As a last resort, traps were set. 

 They'd been used to the odd squirrel here and there digging in pots to distribute the abundant pecan crop. It wouldn't have been a shock to find a little digging, but squirrels usually finish up the job and cover up. Mostly, no one even notices until the pecan seedling overcomes whatever the host pot plant was. Of course there are always rabbits to munch and nibble. When they had their nursery cat, the rabbits were in check. Since she's been gone, Peter and his brothers and sisters have taken over the place. But as suspects, they did not seem to have a motive to dig up the plants that fed them. 

Those in the southeast have seen the rise of the Armadillos- a Mexican gang whose members are growing and whose reputation was one of wanton destruction.

Circumstantial evidence pointed to the the armadillo gang. Several members were seen in the area at night without reliable alibis.
The evidence seemed to indicate that the Armadillo gang was, indeed responsible for the devastation, and the BOLO  was sent out for their capture. Yet the savagery continued even as the gang came under more and more scrutiny.

 Days went on with no relief, and the nighttime slaughter of newly transplanted grafts and cuttings continued.She felt sad, frustrated and more desperate. She spent hours shopping for chicken wire and tie backs and staples to try to set up  her own version of the border fence. Those hideous immigrants would destroy her tender young propagules with their indiscriminate foraging.

As a last resort, the armadillo trap, which had gone empty and useless for weeks, finally caught an unlikely suspect- Rocky...of the Racoons. Turns out, Rocky had been hiding behind the publicity and reputation of the Armadillos, and was just following behind to ravage the same plants that the armadillo gang had already approached.  In fact, Rocky had been swept up in the dragnet weeks before. He was questioned and released because the detectives had not asked the right questions: "Do you travel at night?" Do you eat worms and grubs and insects?" "Do you have the manual dexterity to climb over pots and remove three gallon sized plants from their pots without dumping over the pot itself?" 

But this time, Rocky had made the mistake of leaving a different, and telltale clue at the scene- a pile of small bird feathers. This time, our Miss Marple would do extensive research to lay out the case against Rocky. Racoons do forage at night; have immense manual skills; eat almost anything...including birds! He'd been caught in the trap, along with some of the newly excavated grafts. No matter how innocent those big racoon eyes looked, he was going down for the crime this time. Down to the woods off Marshall Store and off to find a new home.

"The tear rose in Miss Marple's eyes. Succeeding pity, there came anger - anger against a heartless killer. And then, displacing both these emotions, there came a surge of triumph - the triumph some specialist might feel who has successfully reconstructed an extinct animal from a fragment of jawbone and a couple of teeth." Agatha Christie- A Pocket Full of Rye

Closer to Fine

You win some, you lose some.

 Yep.

 Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome. Arthur Ashe

Ok, I can go with that one. Seems like something I have heard all my life, in one way or another. And how about this one:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

Or maybe we could throw in :

Be careful what you wish for.

This has been the summer in my garden that has tested- and proved- many age old adages such as those above. Instead of fierce heat, we've had cool moderation that gently nudged spring into summer. Instead of clear blue and beating sun, we've had a sky filled to overflow with the richest of cloud formations. And we've had RAIN. Rain we've prayed for over radar maps for day after day, year after year. Rain whose half year totals rival a large handful of annual totals. (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/?n=rainfall_scorecard)

What I've grown accustomed to seeing and doing in summer has all changed, and in some ways, I seem to be starting all over again in learning how to think about gardening.

For example, take my vegetable garden. In the last couple of years I have grown increasingly confident in my efforts to grow certain vegetables. In fact, the greatest horticultural accomplishment of my career came just this year, with my first crop of real carrots

(not those orange nubs with all the green fluff I was so good at growing) I had taken an interest in growing heirloom tomatoes, and enjoyed picking out varieties that would suit our climate. This year I chose Tombola Mix

Tombola Mix

New Yorker

New Yorker

Southern Nights

 and Southern Nights . 

It was my guess that Southern Nights would be best suited for the heat overnight; that Tombola would produce many different size, shape and colored tomatoes for salads, and that New Yorker would suffer. WRONG!  As of yesterday, the Tombola Mix has produced absolutely gorgeous, lush plants without a fruit, and only a very few flowers. The New Yorker plants are healthy and loaded down with fruit, some of which has already ripened. And the Southern Nights are all but dead! No doubt the rain has had something to do with all this, but my careful plans had not accounted for this variable.

Plants that have performed beautifully for years and years- especially in the drought- have quickly given up the ghost in the early summer rain. Others that may have been known for drought tolerance but not wet tolerance have surprised and amazed me with their vigor.

What the books say isn't always what happens.
In some ways, I like that. I've always been interested in testing the plants in different situations just to see what they will take. Maybe I can't predict the weather, but I want to try to know how the plants will respond.I also like just watching the progress. Nothing ever grows perfectly evenly. Some years the flowers are early, or small, or profuse. Some seasons the foliage is sumptuous, the fruit is prolific. 
On the one hand, it can be discouraging. So much work goes into gardening that the losses can be disheartening, and even expensive. On the other hand, our great success stories are exhilarating, and worth their carrot weight in gold! It's what draws me to gardening. It's the sun, the rain, the physical labor, the dirt,  the thought, the interaction. It's the challenge against the odds of that game that brings the enjoyment. The ideal garden is an oxymoron- there is no such thing. But the pure pleasure in the capture of a perfect garden moment......now that's priceless.

"....the less I seek my soul in some definitive, closer I am to fine" Amy Ray and Emily Saliers- 
The Indigo Girls     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miqUNlX6ig8

A Simple Life

We've just passed a monumental event in the astronomical calendar - the "Supermoon". The local and national news outlets were all abuzz for days before. I am not sure why, since the majority of their audience is urban, and could not enjoy much of the scene except when the orb was overhead. But as I get older, I seem to fall for these "once in a lifetime" calls, even though the last supermoon was a mere 18 years ago, and maybe I will be alive for the next one. (Wikipedia: The Moon's distance varies each month between approximately 357,000 kilometers (222,000 mi) and 406,000 km (252,000 mi) due to its elliptical orbit around the Earth (distances given are center-to-center).^[4][5][6]
According to NASA, a full moon at perigee is up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than one at its farthest point, or apogee. The full Moon occurring less than one hour away from perigee is a near-perfect coincidence that happens only every 18 years or so.<sup>[7])

Here in the country, we relish each full moon. Any excuse to witness the pull of the lunar face gives us a special occasion. I can count over a dozen special full moon occasions without a blink of an eye. And with Joe we mark some piece of every moon phase via telephone if not closer.

Hopefully, when exhorted to witness such a phenomenon, I will be sufficiently ignorant of the actual timing. That gets me out in time to see the sun go down. Magnificent, in just about any weather, really, but we've had clouds and intermittent rain enough to give us some variety. Look west for a clear glow. East, in search of the moon, leads to a very subtle but enjoyable reflection of colors from the west on those eastern clouds.</sup> 

Then finally I spot it edging above those lovely pink and purple clouds on the horizon. The "find" is exciting on it's own, since the location on the horizon is always a bit of puzzle.  From then on, it's a smile on the rise. Clouds and colors change, sounds in the background mute. If I let go, it seems it is just me and the moon connected in the moment.

And then, with darkness descending, it's all "ahhhh". The rising moon is hypnotic- maybe even an instinctive reaction evolved over millions of years. It takes me out of the present, into the deep expanse of the space between  touch and sight. The very incremental steps from light to dark,and then from dark to moonlight, unveil the slow, steady, constant of a day- nothing remains the same, always.

We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.  Bill Anders

What a difference a rain makes

I am stuck inside today. It is raining now, and they say it plans to rain for the rest of the day, at least. Does that sound like a complaint? Well, ok. Maybe a little. But after years of drought coupled with intense heat, I shouldn't complain. And after time in the last month to visit gardens in the area, I am reminded- finally- of the reasons for this blog title. We've had such an abundance of good soaking rain this winter and spring. And it continues now into summer. 

Gardens are really lush this year; 

flowers are huge and abundant; colors are vibrant and rich. 

If you'll permit me this little mental exercise, I think it's been a good thing to have been so deprived. Hydrangeas, for example, have bloomed every year, even in the worst drought months. I've gotten used to small flower heads, dull colors, and quick fade.

 This year I can hardly believe the difference, and it is so energizing!


Once again I see why this is a favorite of southern gardeners.
I am almost compelled to get my tape measure out to boast about bloom size. I've been so much more attentive to pruning, because this year, the plants are growing instead of just surviving.


Textures and colors grab my attention. Conifers have been particularly robust and statuesque. While they love good drainage, it is easy to see that they love the extra water, too.

Take the time to look at the details. Take the time to share them with your gardening friends. The rain might stop any day now, but we can enjoy the results of yesterday's rain today.

Sometimes it takes rain
To make the flowers grow
Sometimes it takes real pain
Before real joy one knows
Sometimes it takes tomorrows
To understand days gone by
Sometimes before the laughter
There comes heavy sigh
Sometimes it takes the midnight hour
To value morning light
Sometimes it takes the longest mile
Before things come insight
Sometimes you often wonder
Why your heart can get so sore
But its the rocky paths in life
That makes you cherish the smooth roads more!

- Unknown

Fine Tuning

Finally the spring season is slowing down. Of course there is still plenty of work to do, but the pace of the work now bends to the heat, the continued blessing of afternoon showers, and the absence of deadlines. I especially love the leisure time of early light, before the sun comes up. The temperatures are muted then, as well as the colors, the wind, my thoughts, and the length of the "to do" list. I can just look, enjoy, and take some pictures, wherever I am.

 Now I have the time and inclination to step back a bit and let the natural symmetry flow....I've also made the choice to spend my time listening to music I have been missing.

It seems to calm my thinking, to mellow my moods, and to open up new rhythms.  When I can relax and step back as I step out, I see interesting patterns- like musical themes- echoing, modulating, recapitulating.

 A secondary theme includes the rich abundance of buds and their resulting fruits or cones. I am not sure I have noticed how often they line up up like staccato notes.

 Even raindrops will hang in linear unison like eighth notes that alternate and repeat.

Needles appear and expand into flowers; pendulous branches appear to be ghostly reminders of a haunting melody. Round, full , solid notes stand us in the center of the natural recital. Such a rich concert of magical musical phrases and colors deserves our attention from time to time.



T

“The earth has music for those who listen.”

― George Santayana