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

April Fool

Picea abies Crusita

It's 2:30 am and I can't sleep. My plants are waking up and they're keeping me awake. So much to do. So afraid I'll miss something. Like yesterday, when I was cleaning out in the "my special stash" conifer house. I'm pulling weeds. I'm moving pots. I'm raking and sweeping dead leaves. I'm on my hands and knees scooping up the last of the piles and I come nose to nose with Picea abies 'Crusita'. My goodness, what a fabulous plant from my conifer buddy Duane. I've seen plenty of conifers whose new foliage is yellow or chartreuse and they are all great. But this baby has deep maroon little paintbrushes covering it. WOW. But look....now that I'm down here at ground level, there's the first pink cone on my Picea abies 'Acrocona' along with the little lightbulb yellow foliage at the tips.
Juniperus x media 'Holger' Picea abies 'Acrocona' Acer palmatum 'Higasayama'


And this Pinus parviflora 'Iri Fukin'. Little did I know when I ordered it that those cones would be purple! The Juniperus rigida 'Akebono' has candleflame yellow tips covering it's blue-green stiff nedles. The Juniperus x media 'Holger' mirrors the flametips with creamy yellow ones of it's own. And that's just the conifers!!

What about the Japanese maples, whose ranges and combinations of colors surpass all the available color words I know in English. 'Beni Maiko', 'Higasayama','Orange Dream', Koto-No-Ito'.....the words just
go round and round in my head. I'm too excited to sleep. But if I don't sleep, then I'll be too tired when it's light to get everything done. Get up and work.....go back to sleep! April Fool! The joke's on me.

But I sure am smiling.

Hypericum inodorum 'Summer Gold'

Maybe our great American humorist Mark Twain had the best line....
"The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year." 

And apparently I'm going to remember all 24 hours of it.

Nierembergia gracilis 'Starry Eyes'