

THE WEEKLY GARDENER 2018

by Francis Rosenfeld

© 2018 Francis Rosenfeld

Smashwords Edition

WEEK ONE

January 1st - Gracefully Asleep

One Sunny Day

The year started frozen like the arctic landscape, and then the temperatures spiked into the fifties and dropped back below zero again.

During this short period of warm weather I picked a sunny day to take pictures of the winter garden and spend some time with it, since I always miss it during the cold season.

There isn't much to see in the garden in winter, a few resilient evergreens that just won't quit, colorful berries that look even brighter against the snow, a few plumes of grass shivering in the wind, fluffed up cardinal birds perched on naked branches, painted sunsets, and quiet, such quiet.

The weeds had a field day, quite literally, and it's going to be interesting when the weather warms up and I finally get to do the spring cleaning, but that's a worry for another season. For now I'm happy tending to my indoor garden, whose plants are, for the most part, natives of the southern hemisphere, and for this reason are just now starting to bloom.

I haven't begun planning for spring yet, although some of the seed catalogs have already started coming in the mail. I'm just taking a little time, one sunny day, to watch my garden just be, a little languid and untidy during its off season, gracefully asleep.

Memories of Fall

The sedums' color transformation didn't go all the way to dark brown last fall, as it usually does by the end of the season, so they looked almost radiant in the morning sun of an unexpected sunny day in January.

Sedums are staple landscaping plants, and for good reasons: they are extremely hardy, have a generous blooming season, are relatively long lived and can thrive in any soil.

You can grow sedums in the shade, but they really need sunlight to thrive, even if it's only for a few hours a day, or dappled through rare tree foliage.

Their clumps grow very large over the years and eventually hollow in the middle, signaling to the gardener that it's time to divide them. You can do that at any time if you want to propagate them, even though standard gardening practice recommends dividing them in spring, but you don't have to, because they're prolific self-seeders and you will always find babies around the mother plant at the beginning of the season. Don't worry if the new plants look tiny when you plant them, by the time fall rolls around they will be fully grown.

Plant them in shallow beds, that's what they like, and don't fuss around them too much, their stems are sappy and break very easily. Hail, heavy downpours and strong winds are very damaging to sedums for this reason, otherwise they are real troopers: they don't even notice droughts, need very little feeding, and love heavy alkaline soils.

Fuzz

The pampas grasses have overwintered gracefully so far. It's very early, of course, and by the time March rolls around they will be all mopey and wet, but for now they look ok against the snow background.

Gardeners differ on their opinion about when it's best to trim the grasses, fall cleaning or spring cleaning. The professionals do it in the fall. I leave them on until spring, for two reasons: winter interest (which means I don't want to deal with this task in the fall), and winter protection - they offer wildlife some shelter from the cold and the wind and help keep the soil temperature slightly higher to help the surrounding plants.

Last Herb Standing

For those thinking about growing sage, it's the toughest plant in the herb patch and very easy to care for. Like lavender, it doesn't stay green in winter, but it doesn't lose its foliage either, its leaves turn a delicate shade of purple-gray.

Unlike lavender it is comfortable with cold winters and will not skip a beat even after temperatures drop below zero. Sage is not a nice neighbor and will take over the herb patch if you don't prune it regularly, but do so after it finished blooming, it has such pretty flowers.

WEEK TWO

January 8th - Remember Spring

Three More Months

I'm looking out the window at yet another installment of snow, trying to remember spring. The plant catalogs have arrived and they are starting to form a nice little pile on my coffee table. I should start picking seeds, the seed trays are soon to come out of the garage and into the living room.

Every now and then the weather softens a bit and then I get to go out into the garden and it feels like a gift, I can't even tell you how I miss spring. With three more months to go, cabin fever kicked into full gear.

The indoor plants are doing their best to cheer me up, they're all in bloom, even the asparagus fern which blooms randomly throughout the year, I haven't figured out the pattern yet, and whose tiny white flowers are followed by bright red berries, round as beads.

It's hard to remember spring when the light dims to dusky levels in the middle of the day and the frozen dirt is harder than rock. It's January, I guess it's supposed to be cold.

The snow keeps sifting from the colorless sky in a slow steady rhythm, covering the ground with a thin powdery layer; the tree in the front yard projects bare branches, dark as cement, on the milky snow clouds. It shivers in the icy wind every now and then. Even watching this from behind a window feels cold. I'll go back to my burrow and stay there until the magnolias bloom.

March

What a crazy month: you're looking at blue skies, not a cloud in sight, and two hours later you're buried in snow.

March tricked me so many times I'm embarrassed to confess. Every year around the twenty fifth temperatures rise into the mid seventies and you can't even imagine a reason why they would be going back down again. This weather pattern is so predictable it should have its own name. Don't be lured into a false sense of security, winter will bite again, usually on April's Fool, one has to appreciate the irony.

Despite the fact that lately nature got into the habit of changing gears from winter to summer without stopping through spring, there will be frosts in April. In fact, I guarantee right now there will be frosts in April, especially if your enthusiasm gets the better of you and you decide to plant your frost tender seedlings early. Weather is so devious that it will bring frosts in May, just to show you that trying to assess its patterns is a fool's errand. A couple of years ago I planted at the end of April, long after the last day of frost. A week later I was running through the garden putting plastic covers over all the plants.

What I'm trying to say is don't trust March, but there is no reason why you shouldn't enjoy it. The spring bulbs are starting to bloom, the leaf buds are opening on the trees and the perennials start coming out of dormancy. These plants are programmed to withstand a frost or two and will go through them like champs, the delicate tomato and pepper seedlings will not. If you can't wait, plant radishes, spinach, cabbage or snow peas. They'll live.

May

I know May is supposed to belong to spring, but not in this climate. The second they are sure the last frost is gone, the early summer perennials jump into a race to see which one of them is going to bloom first. The "June" roses are already covered in flowers by now, challenging the peonies and lilacs for the title, while flowering onions and aromatic herbs sing harmony.

Shy in the shade, hiding under broad emerald leaves, lily of the valley keeps out of the bustle. If it weren't for its lovely fragrance you'd almost forget it's there. Almost.

April

The beautiful April, with its carpets of violets covering the landscape. The early spring flowers are still in bloom, the late spring flowers are just about to start, the birds are besides themselves with song, the sky is periwinkle blue, the whole world is coming back to life, all at once.

Nature welcomes this with a giant celebration, drunk with excitement at times, ignoring the occasional frost that threatens to kill off its eager but still vulnerable sprouts.

WEEK THREE

January 15th - Winter Landscape

Good Bones

Successful winter garden design relies on color and structure. Winter gardens are minimalist, they need good bones to make up for the missing greenery. Strong trees with well defined shapes and interesting bark, artful topiary, even tall pampas grasses or colorful seed heads can provide that structure.

What nature doesn't offer, garden design can. This is a time for its hard features to shine - beautiful flagstone pathways, statuary, stone benches, decorative planters, even an empty arbor gain prominence and impart sober elegance on an otherwise barren landscape.

When everything is a shade of brown or gray, even the smallest dash of color makes a great impact - the green needles of pine trees, the fiery canes of dogwood, the orange hips of wild roses, the glut of bright red crab apples on otherwise bare branches.

Cheerful bird houses and feeders also make excellent accents, but more than that, they attract a host of colorful friends - red cardinals, blue jays, yellow chickadees, blackbirds, russet breasted robins, the list is extensive.

The most beautiful motifs are still a gift from nature: tiny dried flowers or berries encased in ice, frost edging on still green leaves, the lightest dusting of powdery snow on dark brown seed heads. Also, I have to admit that plush snowflakes falling softly in a quiet garden, or the silvery sheen the moonlight casts on fresh snow are kind of poetic, even though I can't say I ever miss them.

A Garden on the Window Sill

With not even half of the winter behind me I have no choice but to concentrate on the miniature garden on the window sill. Fortunately for me, the indoor plants are generous with their flowers. The African violets, the lovely ruffled cyclamens, the amaryllis, the dark begonia, even the Christmas cactus have started to bloom again.

There is not much control one has over how much the little window sill garden is going to thrive, it all revolves around the light levels, which tend to be stingy in winter, and the tolerance plants have to a conditioned environment that tends to make the air too dry.

Some things are in the caretaker's control however. Water deeply and allow the soil to dry between waterings, perpetually moist soil is a breeding ground for mold and fungus. Don't crowd the plants. Feed them regularly, but heed the instructions on the fertilizer container, too much of a good thing can burn their roots. Keep them neat and tidy, free of dead foliage and spent flowers. Give them as much of a head start as they can get indoors - a south facing window is perfect for winter, but will scorch their leaves when the heat of the summer sun gets trapped behind the glass. A bright place that doesn't get too hot and has good air movement is ideal.

Keep them where they will not be bothered. Plants have evolved to grow undisturbed in the same location, they don't like being moved around the house or constantly handled.

Winter Princess

Amaryllis is the princess of the winter garden. The bulbs are conditioned to give you flowers by Christmas but if you keep them for many years the blooming schedule shifts to get closer to the plant's natural blooming time, or blooming conditions, whichever is convenient.

Amaryllis bulbs scale, just like those of lilies, making them very easy to propagate, however the bulb needs to reach a certain size before it has enough energy to produce flowers. After that it will bloom reliably every year, sometimes twice a year. They are sold as indoor plants, but they love being outside, where they will bloom randomly in the middle of summer.

Guests from the Tropics

Strangely enough, these pretty flowers are not the rhizomatous begonia's best feature. Its leaves are so unusual I wasn't able to resist buying it, even though I'm not normally drawn to foliage plants: deep black, velvety and unfurling around the central stem in a perfect Fibonacci spiral they look almost too perfect to be found in nature.

It is strikingly goth, especially in the shade, and I was so mesmerized by its unusual countenance I couldn't bring myself to leave it outside at the end of the first season, so I dug it up, stuck it in a pot and brought it indoors. Imagine my surprise when I walked downstairs one February morning to find it covered in blossoms.

WEEK FOUR

January 22nd - In Black and White

Snow Flowers

Every now and again my garden surprises me with images that are almost too beautiful to be real, but that usually happens during the warm seasons, when everything is in bloom and sunlight is vibrant and strong.

The rays of the winter sun, filtered through thick clouds, look the same in all directions. They don't cast shadows, they don't add emphasis to anything, they just fill every part of the landscape with an even and subdued amount of lighting. They are to summer glow like fluorescent tubes are to LED lamps.

Everything looks flat in this light, like a tapestry, and strangely enough, this is what made this photo possible.

I heard that one has to be lucky to capture pictures like this, one has to be in precisely the right place, happen upon the perfect light. There is a feeling of grace that comes with having been granted the privilege of that precise moment that made that sight available to you.

It was very cold in the garden today, not even the squirrels ventured out, judging by the fact that the powdery snow cover on the concrete path remained untouched. I begrudgingly came out to take pictures for the blog and I only got to see this incredible pattern of snow flowers because I needed one more image.

The best things happen when we are busy with other stuff. In retrospect, that other stuff usually fades in the brilliance of these moments, don't let them pass you by, the stuff will still be there tomorrow. It always is.

A Few Pots

As I was taking this photo I realized that I don't have anything to put in the pots yet, because, as usual, I'm late buying seeds for starting.

The plant catalogs are here, filled with colorful blooms, in striking contrast with the austere winter landscape that gives them the cold shoulder: candy colored bleeding hearts, giant dahlias, mop hydrangeas displaying three different shades of pink on the same plant, ripe tomatoes, peppers and berries, even miniature peach trees. As always I jump on these catalogs the second they drop in the mail, eager to experience, even in print, the joy of summer.

It rained a lot last year, and most of the new plants never bothered to bloom, so I'm very excited to finally see their flowers.

Every year the number of pots grows, testimony to my constant craving for new plants, and they are slowly taking over the balcony and patio and turning them into miniature container gardens. One can never have too many plants.

I haven't had fuchsias in a long time, and I miss them, so I already added them to the list for this summer. The fragrant petunias were lovely, and the Spanish lavender with its unusual flowers that look like they are always visited by butterflies.

Sigh. Repeat. Browse catalogs again.

Winter Landscape

I could have shot these photos in black and white and they would probably look the same, the winter light drains the color out of the landscape, turning everything to shades of gray. The only dot of color in this monochrome decor was a cardinal who didn't stick around for the photo.

If the winter were mild, hellebores would have started showing buds by now, but, attuned as they are to the subtler cues of nature, not always obvious to the gardener, they are still asleep, cozy under a blanket of snow.

Snow on Magnolias

Last year the magnolia bloomed after a few years with harsh winters which didn't leave it enough energy to develop flowers.

It's a great southern magnolia, used to much kinder weather conditions, but due to its sheltered position in a sunny corner of the garden it was able to withstand what our climate has to offer, a fare not always pleasant in winter. Unfortunately when the cold season is extreme it sheds its foliage all at once and then has to spend all of its energy growing new leaves instead of flowers. Snow doesn't bother it, as long as it doesn't have to put up with frigid temperatures for too long.

WEEK FIVE

January 29th - Cottage Gardens

High Drama

If you want to create drama in your garden, by all means, pick all white flowers. People don't usually crave intensity in a cottage garden, which is a care free collection of gregarious annuals and perennials suited to comfort the spirit rather than stir it up.

Most of the cottage garden staples do come in white however, and you certainly can get the look if you find it appealing. Here is a list of perennials that will carry the white flower theme through all the seasons.

For spring, hyacinths, peonies, lily of the valley, Solomon's Seal, dame's rocket, lilac, crocus, white bleeding heart, sweet woodruff, clematis.

For summer, lilies, daisies, white delphiniums, roses, yarrow, garden phlox, valerian, liatris, white bell flowers, hollyhocks, carnations, veronicas, catmints and hostas.

For fall, wind anemones, snakeroot, garden mums, white turtlehead and obedient plant.

For winter, snowberry, redosier dogwood, mistletoe and snowdrops.

These will ensure continuous bloom at least from spring to fall, and can be supplemented by a host of low maintenance annuals like petunias, impatiens, sweet alyssum, pansies, begonias, verbenas, Persian buttercups, sweet peas, angelonias, nicotianas, love-in-a-mist, larkspur, stock, cosmos, candituft, salvias, moss roses, spider flowers, snapdragons, which will fill the lulls between the perennial flowers with reliable all season bloom.

Charming Tangle

If you want a real cottage garden, don't tame it, it is supposed to be wild, messy and overgrown, sort of jumbled together without too much focus on height hierarchy and perfect color schemes.

Many of its traditional plants are tall, broad and thick and spill over railings, fences, trellises and retaining walls with reckless abandon. Hollyhocks, giant delphiniums, bell flowers, lupines and snakeroot can and frequently do grow taller than six feet.

A cottage garden is a place of whimsy, where hidden artifacts wait to be discovered deep into the thicket of exuberant plant growth, a place where one can get a little lost, even if it's smaller than a room.

In the middle of summer it spoils you with decadent bloom and also gives you a lot of mess to clean up, it will not, for any reason, behave itself or display moderation. If you are an obsessive putterer, don't worry, it will keep you busy non-stop from March till November.

Cottage gardens are the reason why gardeners have gotten used to wearing clogs, gloves, hats, long sleeves and pants in the middle of July, when temperatures make asphalt melt. You can't venture into the depth of their unruly clumps of knotted stems without coming out scratched from head to toe like you've been bested by a clowder of cats.

Wild Flower Meadow

An exuberant July garden image, featuring daisies, flowering sage, bee balms, echinacea and tall bell flowers. It is as close to a wild flower meadow as I ever got, and it happened by accident.

This particular flower bed is not for the faint of heart, no matter how much I try to cut myself a path through its jungle, the vegetation gets the better of me every year. By midsummer it is near impossible to reach the back, which grows unkempt and defies me from behind a very thorny row of barberry bushes.

Giant Delphiniums

I saw these grow seven foot tall. They do a lot better in clumps, where their tall stalks support each other, otherwise they are susceptible to wind damage and will collapse all over the flower bed.

I haven't found tall delphinium plants at the nursery, you have to have the patience to start them from seed and wait a year for them to bloom, but they're definitely worth the effort. The seed packets contain a rainbow mix and the germination rate is relatively low, so it's the luck of the draw what color you are going to end up with.

WEEK SIX

February 5th - Periwinkle Blue

German Iris

A few years ago I used to walk by a bulb border every day. Somebody had planted them in layers on the narrow strip between the sidewalk and the road and left them to their own devices to provide a continuous display of color from early April through the end of July.

I have to confess I was a little jealous of this 'set it and forget it' makeshift garden that switched from daffodils to tulips, irises and day-lilies with an effortless and simply shameless excess of flowers.

The irises most of all got to me. They bloomed in flower carpets and came in almost every color imaginable, absolutely stunning in large displays.

Inspired by this explosion of bloom I went out and got quite a few more iris bulbs for my garden, but so far I haven't seen flowers from them. Maybe they need some time to get established, I'm patient. They have the full sunshine, they have the same impossible clay the miracle bulb patch is growing in, so, any moment now, right?

The beauty in the picture is a much older German iris, a veteran of the garden, which indeed blooms profusely in May, even in part shade, and whose bulb split several times to populate a few other flower beds.

I was looking through a few winter photos of the back yard and lo and behold, there was the iris foliage, spearheading valiantly through the snow and the dried up seed heads from last fall. Who knows, maybe this year is their year.

Perennial Borders

One of the myths of gardening is that once you planted a perennial border it is set in stone and it will come back, year after year, exactly the same. That is not true at all, I look through pictures of my garden through the last few seasons and it is almost unrecognizable from one year to the next.

Just because a plant is labeled perennial it doesn't mean it will be there forever. Some, like delphiniums and columbines, will only live four or five years, even in ideal conditions, while others, like hostas, garden phlox, hellebores and cone flowers will be with you for decades.

It is true that the main features, the 'bones' of the garden, stay the same, maybe an old rose bush, a couple of feature plants or a resilient ground cover, but every year a different bunch dominates the landscape, for reasons known only to them: one year is the violets, one year is nothing but bugle weed and blue eyed Mary, one year is hostas. Last fall the toad lily outperformed the sedums, and that's a tall order.

You are looking at a picture from the year of grape hyacinths; there have been a few years, actually, I don't know what happened to them, I assume they died of old age.

I love grape hyacinths and I replaced the defunct batch, but the new ones don't seem to thrive, at least they didn't last year. I'm hopeful they'll pick up again if the weather suits their tastes this spring, I really miss them.

September Flowers

More September blues - plumbago. Ground covers are low maintenance champions of the perennial garden, whose impact often goes overlooked. This plant, for instance, starts blooming sometimes mid-August and stays in bloom for a month and a half.

At the end of September its intense blue flowers give way to fuzzy burgundy seed heads that are just as beautiful and vibrant against its foliage until the latter turns bright red too.

After the Rain

No matter how scrupulous you are about watering, plants just love rain better, don't take it personally. Everything comes to life after the rain with a giant collective sigh of relief.

Some perennials simply won't tolerate dry summers, delphiniums are a very good example. These short lived perennials need two things to dazzle garden lovers with their spectacular six foot tall display of color: sunshine and a consistently moist growing medium. They are sold as part-shade plants, but they really like full sunshine. It's the dry soil they object to.

WEEK SEVEN

February 12th - Daffodil Gardens

Special Hybrids

I know this is a task for October and not February, but since the weather turned sour and put the excitement for gardening activities on hold again, I thought I'd put together a list of interesting daffodil varieties to consider next fall.

Flower Drift is a double daffodil with pure white petals and a bright coral center, intensely fragrant.

My Story is a light pink variety with an ruffled salmon pink middle. Fragrant.

Apricot Whirl has a split corona which makes it look more like a day lily than a daffodil, including the pure pink color.

Hoop Petticoat is white and trumpet shaped with bright yellow stamens poking out. The outside petals are wispy rays growing around the center.

Rip Van Winkle looks like an exploding star, with countless yellow shards spiking in all directions.

Petit fours are pure pink with no hint of yellow; their double middle is baby pink, slightly darker than the barely blush exterior petals. Also fragrant.

Cassata has a split bright yellow corona overlaid on almost white exterior petals. It matures to pure white.

I am very fond of the classic yellow jonquils, and there is no lack of them in my garden. The older ones have naturalized and formed large clumps that delight me with bloom during the whole month of April.

The Daffodil Garden

I've only seen daffodil gardens in public parks and plant conservatories, gardeners usually grow these lovely spring bulbs in mixed borders, where their fading foliage can be concealed by the fresh growth of the summer perennials after they are done blooming.

The basic layout of a daffodil garden is very simple: in the fall plant bulbs in layers, according to their height, color and blooming time, to ensure continuous sprays of flowers in all shapes and sizes from March till May. There are also very special varieties that bloom during the summer, and even in the fall, for those who love daffodils so much they can't wait for the next spring to come along.

There is no hiding from the fact that daffodil foliage looks very unattractive after their flowers fade, so if there is nothing else growing on the site for the rest of the year you'll have to find another way to distract the view from it, like a natural hedge or a flowering trellis.

Feed the soil the same way you would any other perennial and water regularly, a task that seems absurd in the absence of visible plant parts, but bulbs need plenty of water and will shrivel up to nothing when they don't get it. I learned that the hard way.

White and Fragrant

You can't always grow poet's daffodils in colder climates, they are sensitive to icy winds and need a sheltered environment to thrive, but there are hybrid varieties of early daffodils that blend their pristine white petals and delightful scent with the resilience of winter hardy bulbs.

The photo shows the variety 'Thalia', but there are quite a few other white fragrant cultivars to pick from, like Erlicheer, Sir Winston Churchill, Mound Hood or Green Eyes.

A Rainbow of Colors

Daffodils come in a rainbow of colors and flower shapes now, anything from pure white to butter yellow and salmon pink, but like all hybrids the modified varieties take a little more time to settle in than the natives. I love the pink fragrant ones and planted a lot of them.

Some of the new hybrids don't even look like daffodils anymore, you get anything from double tulips to carnations, wispy stars, even little trumpets.

WEEK EIGHT

February 19th - Any Color Sky

Take Me to Your Leader

Where I to get stranded on an alien planet at some point in the future I don't think I'll find it too difficult to adjust. No matter what amount of scientific explanation you wish to attach to this image, the fundamental fact is that you're staring at a pink-orange sky.

If you thought surely the sky doesn't look pink-orange, not unless some mind altering substance is involved, you would be wrong, because here it is, in color.

The strangest part is that I don't mind, pink, orange, chartreuse, what do I care? When is spring coming, that's what I want to know.

I miss my garden so much in winter, especially towards the end, which seems to drag on forever.

The tomatoes are already two inches tall and I worry I might have planted them a little too soon, but the rest of the seedlings are still taking their time to emerge. It's still cold outside. Again.

Watching the Sunset

Watching the sunset is supposed to offer so many health benefits it's prescribed almost as medicine in areas where sunsets are reliably beautiful: it's supposed to boost energy levels, brighten your outlook on life, lower your blood pressure, improve concentration and memory, one has to wonder why we don't do it every day.

We don't do it every day because we can't, most sunsets are not that spectacular: add a smearing of cloud cover and good bye color. Sure the sky turns dark in the same amount of time, but there is nothing soul inspiring about it.

I think anybody who lives north of the fortieth parallel will agree there is nothing rousing about a late February afternoon with drizzle and low visibility, certainly nothing worth gazing upon, especially when its dull and oppressive ambiance turns darker. Even Phil the celebrity groundhog knows not to come out of his burrow on days like these.

The truth is beautiful sunsets are rare and they never go unnoticed, who could fail to notice the world turning these amazing colors around themselves?

Parhelion

A rare atmospheric phenomenon, the parhelion, or sun dog, is a bright spot that forms on the sun's halo, left or right, due to refraction of the sunlight through ice crystals.

Parhelia often show up in pairs, at the same elevation with the sun, and their inside edges shift towards red. I didn't have enough visibility to verify whether there was another one on the left side.

Easter Egg Colors

Winter doesn't have much to offer, but it does occasionally have spectacular sunrises and sunsets. Scientifically speaking this happens because the air is clearer, the cloud cover is higher and the lower sun path makes sunrises and sunsets last longer. Sure!

The rosy glow is usually reserved for sunrises, sunsets tend to blaze in orange and purple, but not in this particular case. This was in the middle of the afternoon.

WEEK NINE

February 26th - Finally Spring!

Got Flowers?

The perennial flowers have germinated, but their sprouts look tiny and fragile compared to the vegetable seedlings. This year the seed starting pods feature lupines, giant delphiniums and bells of Ireland.

I can't wait to clean the garden of all the debris that has accumulated during the cold season, but this task usually has to wait until the end of March when the weather does a trial run for summer: temperatures rise into the seventies, there isn't a cloud in the sky and all things green go through a sudden growth spurt.

For now the hellebores rule the cold and messy garden, and they will continue to do so for at least another month. I didn't realize when I planted the original four that I'd have a yard full of them in a few years. Their offspring displays every hue of rose and blush, which is very entertaining, because the mother plants' flowers are deep magenta, yellowish white with russet splotches and mint green.

Gardening books mention that hellebores take two to five years to bloom from seed, I think it's closer to two than five, as demonstrated by the plant in the picture, which is very young.

Other than that, I saw tiny flower buds on the hepatica, and there is this yellow crocus, but that's about it. Still too cold.

Soft Rose

This is one of the babies that sprouted around a rather sizable Spotted Lady hellebore. The new plant is a few years old now and looks nothing like its mother, as it is often the case with hybrids, but it's lovely anyway, with soft pink flowers that remind me of wild roses and apple blossoms.

Hellebores are woodland plants, perfect to grow under the canopy of deciduous trees. They prefer alkaline soils - keep them away from pine trees - are adapted to the colder climate zones and are the first flowers in the garden, blooming as early as January during mild winters. They keep their flowers for an amazing four months.

Even though hellebores are evergreen they only put effort into their old foliage until the fresh growth starts to emerge in spring. The old leaves turn brown and quite unattractive after that and you will need to remove them if you want to keep the plants healthy and compact and allow them to show off their glut of flowers.

Many gardeners say hellebores are hard to start from seed, mine can't seem to stop, but since most varieties are hybrids, if you want to propagate them and maintain their characteristics, use root divisions or take cuttings.

Hellebores need plenty of water during the spring and fall, and could use a little fertilizer every now and then, but otherwise they are basically care free and thrive anywhere you plant them, even in dry shade. I haven't had one die on me yet.

Tomato Seedlings

The end of February is the right time to start vegetable seedlings in colder climates. Tomato plants germinate very reliably, one seed per pod will do, they only take a day or two to emerge from the ground and grow like weeds. There is no benefit in starting them early, they turn lanky and pale in pods, and if you have to keep them indoors for more than six weeks they will start to decline.

Once planted in the garden they grow incredibly fast, doubling in size almost overnight and turning a healthy dark green. Expect the first fruits at the beginning of June.

Spring Sunshine

Early spring weather is notoriously unreliable, here is a surprise sunny day between gloomy drizzle and a winter storm. The sun shines brightly in this picture, but it was really cold, lucky that the hellebores are used to it.

The spring bulbs have started coming out of the ground, which usually guilts me into an early spring cleaning, but it's not going to happen this week, not unless the temperature goes up twenty degrees or so. Let's say that the plants could use the additional protection for the time being.

WEEK TEN

March 5th - Starting a Vegetable Garden

Preparing the Soil

Most vegetables are annual, which makes the gardener's work to prepare their beds significantly easier. There are no roots to disturb, no bulbs to accidentally dig up.

Early in spring, preferably before the vegetation starts reemerging, turn the soil to a spade's depth, which is about twelve inches, to aerate the soil and prevent weeds from taking root. This process offers the opportunity to improve the soil by adding well rotted manure, compost, lime, sand, etc. Straw and natural fertilizer continue to decompose in the ground and they generate heat in the process, allowing the gardener to start plants outdoors sooner.

Even out the dirt surface with a rake or a harrow to break down large clods. If you think it's warranted, do a soil test and correct nutrient deficiencies.

Lay out the rows to a width of maximum three feet if they can only be accessed from one side, or five feet if they can be accessed from both sides and don't step on them after that.

Place all the supports before planting anything, and make sure they are sturdy and deep into the ground, so they won't topple over.

The vegetable bed is now ready for planting.

Veggies to Start Outdoors

Some plants don't benefit from being started indoors. There are a few reasons for this: their tender foliage has a hard time adjusting to the change of environment, their roots dislike being disturbed or their growth schedule is so accelerated that they outgrow their starting containers too soon.

Here are the classics.

Cucumbers, melons and squashes. Not only they have to be planted directly outside, but the nets have to be in place and ready for their fast growing foliage and heavy fruit. They like being planted in nests, four or five seeds at the time, not alone.

Any type of beans or peas, seriously, don't waste your time with the growing trays, just throw them on the ground, they'll take over the universe in less than a month in any conditions.

Root vegetables. Radishes are very early plants and like the cold. They go seed to harvest in fifty days, just in time for the warm loving vegetables to take their place. Carrots and beets' tap roots simply can't withstand transplanting.

Onions, garlics and leeks, which are not started from seed anyway.

Leafy vegetables, salad, spinach, chards, grow so fast they're not worth the effort of setting up the starting pods. Plant them indoors if you want to have fresh greens in winter. Same goes for broad leaved herbs.

Speaking of herbs, the ones that like dry sunny climates, like rosemary and lavender, won't do well indoors no matter what you do, they just don't have enough light and can't adjust to the indoor air quality. They're also difficult to grow from seed outdoors. You're better off getting plants or propagating existing ones by cuttings.

Netting and Staking

To make a long story short, tomatoes fare better when staked and cucumbers fare better when they have the possibility to clamber on nets, even though the plants will grow just fine sprawled on the ground if they don't have the option.

Don't underestimate the size of the supports, the tiny plants grow very quickly to an impressive girth and they get quite heavy.

When and How to Move Plants to the Garden

The young plants, which should be at least six inches tall and have several sets of true leaves by then, should be moved to the garden after the last day of frost in your area. I usually wait to transplant mine until the end of April.

That doesn't mean the plants should stay indoors until then. As soon as the daytime temperatures stay consistently in the fifties, move the seedling trays outside for a few hours every day, gradually increasing the amount of time they spend there.

WEEK ELEVEN

March 13th - Green

Gardening Superstitions

When you grow up around gardening activities you're sure to internalize a few old wives tales. Some of them are backed up by science, but most are just taken on faith and passed along from one generation to the next without any reason or explanation. Here are a few.

If you want a plant cutting to root successfully and thrive, especially if it is a rose, you have to steal it.

If a fruit tree has been barren for a few years in a row, bring an ax early in spring and threaten to cut it down. It will see the error of its ways and bear abundantly come harvest time. You're supposed to curse herbs to make them thrive.

Don't bring primroses indoors unless they have more than thirteen flowers, it's supposed to be really bad luck.

If you wash your face with dew, it will render your skin flawless and make you beautiful.

Plant lavender by the garden gate for luck. If sage thrives in your garden, you will be blessed with prosperity. Rain in May portends an abundant corn harvest. Talking to plants will keep them healthy and make them grow faster.

If it rains with sunshine, blackspot is sure to follow. This is a little bit true, because sunshine and a moist environment does encourage the development of the fungus. Also a good reason not to water while the sun is high up in the sky.

Nothing grows under walnut trees. This is actually true; walnut tree roots secrete their own special brand of herbicide to fend off competition for water and nutrients.

Green Flowers

I know, right? Why on earth would a flower enthusiast want a monochrome scheme in green, green flowers never stand out from the foliage. Still, if you want an unusual color scheme, green flowers will certainly create it for you.

You will need to plan the entire growing season in order to maintain it, and here are a few plant suggestions.

For spring, green hellebores, green fritillaria, lady's mantle, green tulips, Jack in the pulpit and some varieties of snowdrops. There are also a few varieties of clematis that boast green flowers.

For summer the list is a bit longer, and the quintessential green flower, Bells of Ireland, is on it. It starts with the green gladioli and goes through many of the summer classics, which do come in green: roses, spurges, dahlias, zinnias, cone flowers, hydrangeas, day lilies, cockscomb, even carnations. Don't forget the herbs, dill and lovage, whose green umbels can create interesting accents in the flower garden.

During the fall use green chrysanthemums, green amaranth and lime green nicotiana.

Green petunias will fill the lulls between perennial bloom.

As far as green flowers go, I'll limit myself to Bells of Ireland; I grew very fond of them and plan to have them in the garden every year from now on.

Shade Perennials

Strangely enough, many shade perennials are more resilient and reliable than their sun counterparts. Even during rainy or excessively dry summers, hellebores, lily of the valley, hostas and coral bells never disappoint.

Shade plants often have colorful and variegated foliage too, which creates interest in awkward garden spots where nothing else seems to thrive. The plant in the picture, a "Guacamole' heuchera, will maintain its avocado green leaves the entire summer.

Spring Shoots

The spring growth is reluctantly emerging, even though we're in for another round of winter weather. It's still too cold to do anything in the garden, but inside the seedlings in the starting trays are growing well, those that germinated, anyway.

I worry that I started the tomatoes too early, they're already tall and a little scraggly and the low light of this tedious winter doesn't suit them. I'm so looking forward to the last frost!

WEEK TWELVE

March 20th - Spring, Sort Of

Cold Start

If the vernal equinox is supposed to mark the official beginning of spring, it certainly didn't look like it this year. Instead of sunshine and tree blossoms it brought with it another snow storm.

A few days of snow and ice put the first signs of spring on pause, and now nature is reluctant to restart.

The garden still holds on to winter, despite the few brave bulbs that already started to emerge. Usually around this time the weather turns unseasonably warm, nudging me to do the spring cleaning and prune the roses, but it looks like that too will have to wait. The thermometer hasn't breached sixty degrees yet and the crisp unfriendly sunshine makes the low temperatures and the nipping wind even more unpleasant. And yes, I do blame the groundhog.

The cold weather lingered so long I almost forgot it is the end of March, and nature seems to have forgotten it too; there are no buds on the trees, no spring flowers and the perennials are slow to come out of the ground.

We're probably have to wait another month to see spring flowers, winters get longer and longer, for crying out loud. What has it been, five months?

A Quick Stroll Through the Garden

I took a quick stroll through the back yard and found a couple of surprises: hepatica is in bloom and the peony shoots are out of the ground. Aside from that it doesn't smell like spring yet and even though I make sure the garden is clean and tidy at the beginning of winter, come spring it always emerges messy and buried under debris.

It takes a good spring cleaning and a few April showers to make the powdery dust settle and bring the vegetation back to life.

There is not much to see right now, other than the fact that the shrub roses have started leafing out before I got a chance to prune them, and the "winter interest" seed heads and dried grasses look dreary.

The weather isn't eager to cooperate; if anything, it's supposed to get colder, at least in the near future. I checked the long range weather forecast and wished I didn't: yet another month of rain and snow, snow, I tell you, and temperatures staying in the same range they are now. We are supposed to have some thunderstorms at the end of April, which hopefully means that the weather will warm up eventually.

More snow? In April? Really?

May Flowers

Usually during the years when the cold season forgets to leave we have no spring. Weather shifts abruptly from winter to summer and skips tree blooming in the process.

Everything explodes into growth at the beginning of May, in ways you can barely keep up with, but the garden tends to prioritize foliage over flowers and sprawls out of control before summer even gets here.

Late Snow

After four named winter storms the last thing one wants to see at the end of March is more snow. The silver lining of this is that despite mother nature's temper tantrums, cold no longer has power so late in the year, and the wet snow melted quickly.

It only lasted a day, enough to make it look wintry and slow down the early magnolias, the only trees which are budding so far. Still, unpleasant.

WEEK THIRTEEN

March 26th - Designing With Color

Monochrome Color Schemes

If you have a cottage garden, like I do, you might as well skip this article because those, by their very nature, are incompatible with the one color design.

Monochrome color schemes are very dramatic, especially if the flower color of choice is intense and unusual. White gardens are a classic because white flowers really pop in the shade and can also be enjoyed at night, provided the garden is well lit.

A single color scheme has to be designed as such from the beginning, you can't force an established perennial border into it, in fact it is easier done with annuals. Among other challenges, the gardener has to match not only the color itself, but also its hue, otherwise the effect will not be achieved.

My garden tends to shift towards the purple range, magenta, to be specific, so I'll include a quick list of perennials that would work for this color scheme as an example: hellebores, garden phlox, dead nettles, cranesbills, clematis, cone flowers, obedient plants, dahlias, alliums, foxgloves, lilacs, butterfly bush, tulips, Sweet Williams, wisterias, turtleheads. I'm sure there are a lot more plants, especially annuals like petunias, geraniums, verbenas and cosmos which can be used to fill the gaps between perennial bloom.

For landscape designers who have reached the pinnacle of sophistication, the green on green monochrome scheme is the ultimate refinement, but I'll leave that to the professionals.

Color Harmonies

The most common harmonies in the garden are derived straight from art color theory: monochrome, complementary, triadic, and analogous.

The monochrome scheme, discussed above, is pretty straight forward. Same color, same hue. Everywhere.

The complementary scheme is one of the most used in professional landscaping, because it is easy to achieve with both perennials and annuals and remains stable for many years. Classic examples include the day lily and Russian sage combination, or tick seed and hostas. It brings together complementary colors: cone flowers and black eyed Susans, plumbago and goldenrod, calendulas and delphiniums. Variations on this theme split one or both of these colors into two different shades.

The triadic scheme uses three colors that are at equal distances on the color wheel: green, orange and purple, yellow-green, red-orange and blue-violet, you get the idea. If your garden seems to be missing something, check the colors you already have in it and pull out the color wheel. You'll be surprised what the color accent should be. You'd never guess, for instance, that what your subdued pink and blue flower garden is missing is phosphorescent yellow green.

The analogous scheme consists of using three of four colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. This is another design that is very popular, because it is easy to create and easy on the eye, if you want something that looks pretty, but will be more of a background and not compete for your attention. Analogous color schemes tend to be very soothing. Rose gardens and public parks often feature analogous schemes. The flowers are planted in drifts, not mixed, to create solid blocks of color. Good combinations are red-orange-yellow, pink-magenta-violet, blue-violet-purple-magenta. The pink-magenta-blue scheme often emerges naturally in cottage gardens, whose flowers tend to sport these colors.

Last, but not least, there is no such thing as incompatible colors in garden design. If the color combination appeals to you, by all means use it, color theory or not.

Repeats

If you use a particular color or texture in your garden it will get lost if it's all by itself. Sprinkle your favorite plants throughout the landscape to reinforce the design intent and pull its components together into a coherent, visually appealing whole.

Remember that repeats have to carry through all the seasons, a task much better suited to perennials than annual plantings.

Accents

For dramatic effect, plant large groupings of bright flowers in complementary colors. They are to garden design what accessories are to fashion: they draw the eye towards a specific area and help balance the overall look.

Create focus points by using large specimen plants like tall colorful grasses, snakeroot, callas, large climbing vines (including roses), yuccas, and topiary.

WEEK FOURTEEN

April 2nd - You Gotta Be Kidding Me!

Yes, That is Snow

There is nothing more distressing to a gardener with cabin fever than to wake up in April to this fairytale winter scene. For a moment there I worried reindeer were going to jump at me from the shrubbery. Sure it didn't last, it couldn't possibly, this late in the year, but what a drag!

On a happier note, on my drive back this morning I noticed that all the tree branches were covered in blossom buds ready to burst open, which, thank goodness, means spring is finally coming.

This fresh late installment of crazy pushed everything related to garden maintenance back a couple of weeks: no spring cleaning, no spring flowers, no planting of the seedlings.

The snow arrived courtesy of unseasonably low temperatures and imposed on eager gardeners' patience repeatedly throughout the week. Though precipitation in frozen form is not supposed to repeat, I can't believe I even have to say that, April is still going to be colder than average and the last day of frost hasn't passed yet.

Some of the spring flowers reluctantly emerged from the ground, but they don't look very enthusiastic.

April Showers

And to think we've always assumed that April showers meant rain!

Anyway, let me summarize the weather this week: Monday - snow, Tuesday - tornado warning, flood watch, Wednesday - freezing rain, Thursday - sunny and cold, Friday - stormy, sleet, Saturday - more snow.

Begone!

Right now I'm just going through my head, trying to remember what the weather is supposed to look like at this time of year. Granted, April had always been a fickle month, but at least snow was safely in the rear view mirror.

The tender plants are languishing in their pots in the living room; they were supposed to be outside by now and don't appreciate being confined indoors so much longer than usual.

I probably started the tomatoes too soon, now they're going to spend at least another three weeks cooped up inside, and they already started looking leggy and pallid.

The good news is that as soon as they are planted in the garden, whenever that may be, they take off like a rocket.

Anyway!

Since there doesn't seem to be anything better to do at this time, gardening wise, maybe another trip to the plant nursery is in order.

I don't expect there will be flowers there yet, they don't bring them out until the weather turns, but there are always some wonderful surprises hidden on the shelves and in the greenhouses, and I could use the morale boost.

Sunrise

Waking up to a beautiful sunrise is always lovely, even when said sunrise belongs to the wrong season, however, all the gardening tasks need to have been done yesterday and the blend of snow and garden debris littering the landscape is not endearing.

I don't even want to think about what's underneath, a blend of fresh growth and weeds. If I don't get to it soon it's going to be completely unmanageable.

WEEK FIFTEEN

April 9th - A Timid Start

Oh, my!

Nature reluctantly agreed to a two day cessation of hostilities at the end of the week, during which I managed to do the spring cleaning. Snow resumed after that, in the middle of April! It's enough to make one cry with words but I decided to take the high road and ignore it.

There was plenty of fresh growth underneath the debris, and, as it happens every year after I clean the flower beds, the perennials filled up immediately, despite the chilly streak. The garden looks good, even the roses, which suffered worse than average winter damage.

It's still unseasonably cold, even with the blue skies and the sunshine, but the trees are in bloom and the shrubs have started to leaf out, which means winter is officially over, thank goodness!

Next week I can finally plant the vegetable seedlings and move the potted plants to the patio, so they can enjoy the fresh air and the sunshine, they really don't like being indoors at all and have started to look sickly. I wish I could move them outside right now, but I checked and it seems we're in for three more nights with temperatures approaching freezing. I can only hope they are the last ones.

It's spring, people! Fresh, green, exuberant, blessed spring! I almost forgot how good it feels.

Hyacinths

Since the other spring bulbs are taking their sweet time to bloom the hyacinths decided to represent and they are all purple. I remember planting a variety of colors, but none other chose to cooperate. Running slightly behind the purple hyacinths are the grape hyacinths, also purple, and the sweet violets, purple still; I'm waiting for the purple clematis. Maybe there is something in the water.

A quick trip to the plant nursery for supplies provided a lovely surprise: the flats of early annuals were already out and the whole greenhouse was covered edge to edge in pansies. They were fragrant too.

My gardening enthusiasm got a fresh jolt of energy in the process, I didn't think the live plant section would be open, considering that it snowed three times in the last four days. One shouldn't expect the greenhouse to be barren in April, there is something fundamentally wrong with the concept.

Sure the pansies and the primroses are cold weather plants, but still, they belong to the temperate climate, not the northern taiga, and if they managed to make it to the display that gives hope a fighting chance.

The last day of frost is fast approaching, as if I'd ever trust it again. Last year we had a freeze in May. I took offense to that.

Spring Green

Better later than never, we're at least three weeks behind, for all practical purposes it's still early March, life is not fair. The early magnolias have just started to bloom, that's how cold it was.

I'm always in awe of the subtle cues the plant world takes from the weather patterns; no thing green and leafy will come up for air until they're absolutely sure they're out of danger and they are never wrong.

Still Purple

Without active intervention my garden tends to shift to purple. I don't know if purple flowers are more resilient or if this surprisingly persistent color theme just happened over time, but the phenomenon is very obvious, especially in spring.

It's not for lack of trying other colors either, for instance of all the roses I planted the only ones that thrived are the mauve and magenta varieties. I gave up after a while.

WEEK SIXTEEN

April 16th - April Schedule

Cherries in Bloom

The one good thing about a cold spring is that the tree bloom lasts long enough to enjoy. The cherries, the dogwoods and the early magnolias covered the whole landscape in pink and white veils for over two weeks, it's very poetic.

Now that good weather is finally here it brought with it the glut of gardening activities that had been postponed due to unfavorable conditions. Another trip to the garden center is in order to find out if more annual flats arrived. The cleaning, weeding and dead-heading schedule needs to get on track. The fall perennials need dividing. Last, but not least, I still have a few seed packets to plant.

The clematis is already covered in buds, the peonies are a foot tall and the roses look very healthy. Life is good, or at least will be in about a month.

For now the flower beds are still dotted by cheerful daffodils; the latter always bloom late because they are planted on the north side. The hybrid ones seem to be thriving, all sporting fully double ruffles in bright tangerine, blush pink and lemon yellow. I forgot to check if they're fragrant.

I'm looking forward to planting lots of annuals this year, they really make a difference, especially in the shade.

The New Vegetable Garden

Someone once said that the gardener is by default an optimist, otherwise they wouldn't be gardening, and in this vein I decided to plant the vegetables on time despite a weather forecast which still anticipates cold nights for a while. Hardship builds character, a teachable moment I'm sure the plants did not appreciate.

Usually their seedlings are very enthusiastic when they finally get moved to the garden, but keeping them in pods indoors has reached the point of diminishing returns and even with the cold weather they're better off outside.

So I have a new kitchen garden now, which features the usuals: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, beans, cucumbers and herbs. Between the heavy rains and the curious squirrels I have to replant the seedlings every morning, the fresh medium is loose and their young roots haven't gotten a good grasp of it yet.

This year I figured it would be nice to pretty up the vegetable garden and planted a few nasturtiums to keep the squash flowers company. Marigolds will follow later.

Happy planting!

Fresh Garden

The garden is all fresh and clean, pending one more good weeding, which is going to happen next week. The flower beds are so pretty in spring, when everything is healthy and bright green, even if there aren't too many flowers right now. We are in the short lull between the spring bulbs and the late spring flowers.

The new perennials I planted last week took to their new home with an enthusiasm that almost made me cry. They're already sprouting foliage.

Wet

It rained for a couple of days and after that the violets sprung into bloom. When they have a good year they produce edge to edge carpets of pale lavender flowers; this year is so-so, but still they are putting up a good show.

With weather still much colder than the average the garden inhabitants are reluctant to go overboard with the blooming. Maybe next week.

WEEK SEVENTEEN

April 23rd - I Know, Right?

Lemon Creams

Superstition has it that daffodils bring good luck, but only when encountered in groups, not as single flowers. I can't imagine this scrumptious lemon puff bringing anything but cheer and happiness in any context.

This is one of the hybrids I planted last fall, when I did some research to find new and unusual cultivars. I believe this is the Ice King double variety.

It is strange to see daffodils in the garden at this time, in the company of late spring flowers. Today I noticed lily of the valley is sprouting flower stems at the same time with the foliage to make up for lost time. We still get the occasional frost warning, and it's almost May.

If you want to plant, move or divide fall blooming perennials, now is the perfect time for it, before the weather warms up so much that it puts stress on the vulnerable new plants. I took the opportunity to add some new turtleheads and ligularias to the shade borders this week.

There is not much else I can do right now other than wait: everything is planted, staked and fed, the borders are cleaned and weeded, but I can't make the weather cooperate if it doesn't want to.

Good Cheer

Another double daffodil, White Lion if I'm not mistaken.

There is not much involved in the care of daffodils. They are traditionally planted in the fall, around mid-October, although they can be planted at any time of year. They will leaf out if the weather is warm, but really need to go through a chilling cycle, a winter, in order to bloom.

Don't forget to water them after the foliage has died down to the ground in the summer; it's easy to forget they are there, but their bulbs need good amounts of moisture, just like any other perennial. I suspect that the main reason why bulbs seem to diminish and disappear from one year to the next is because they dry out.

Their foliage has to be allowed to fade all by itself and it does become very unattractive in the flower border, one more reason to layer the bulbs with later blooming perennials whose fast growing foliage can hide it.

I occasionally move potted daffodils to the garden after they finished blooming indoors and I can confirm that there is no difference between the spring and fall planted ones the following year.

Laying a good handful of bone meal in their planting bed and remembering to feed them early in spring is going to make a big difference in their performance.

The Sweet Classic

There are so many hybrid varieties of daffodils now, one almost forgets to appreciate the classics. I never fail to plant a few every year.

Many of the classic jonquils are early and fragrant, two attributes which in and of themselves should be enough to earn them a place in the garden; they also form large clumps, stay in bloom for a very long time and come back stronger every year. The ones by my front door are over fifteen years old.

Field Patterns

I am grateful for the extended presence of these beautiful spring blossoms in my front yard, despite what garden lore says: until the daffodils have faded, there will be no good weather.

It's almost May and these cheerful beauties are still at the height of their glory. It's been a long, frigid winter followed by an even longer, hostile spring. I am patiently waiting; in the meantime, enjoy the daffodils.

WEEK EIGHTEEN

April 30th - The Beautiful World

My Favorite Spring Bulbs

Their beautiful periwinkle bunches have brightened my back yard for years and I didn't appreciate them enough. I had picked up their small misshapen bulbs at the cash register on my way out of the plant nursery, of half a mind and not holding up much hope for results, and only realized after they died off how much they meant for my spring garden.

I planted lots of them each fall ever since they disappeared, in an attempt to get them reestablished, but they're reluctant to come back. This year they finally bloomed again.

People pass on the grape hyacinths because they can't see their true potential. When displayed in mass their bloom is absolutely spectacular and, unlike their fancier relatives', lasts the entire spring.

They are not too picky about their soil or sun exposure, but don't like weather extremes and will have a very timid showing following harsh winters or scorching summers.

Common gardening practice says that bulbs, and grape hyacinths in particular, don't need care. That was not my experience. Bulbs need the same care you would give any perennial, they just receive it by default because they are usually sprinkled in mixed flower borders.

If they are planted by themselves don't forget to water them in mid and late summer, when they don't show above ground, and feed them early in spring, to encourage them to bloom.

Ground Covers for Part Shade

I don't know about you but whenever I see ground cover easy gardening is not the first thing that comes to mind. I imagine one either had an impossible site, trouble sticking to a garden maintenance schedule or adverse climate conditions. Nobody plants ground covers as their first choice.

That being said, if you encounter any of these conditions ground covers are here to save the day.

When I was a rookie gardener I had an overly optimistic understanding of what part shade meant. Part shade is in fact part sun, which translates as sun loving plants that would like a little bit of shade late in the afternoon. Gardening manuals define part shade as four to six hours of sun exposure every day, which is usually a lot more than people ballpark just by looking at a site.

For this reason part shade ground covers are often full sun ground covers that can tolerate some shade and just don't bloom as much.

Here are a few I've tried successfully over the years:

\- dead nettle, which is in bloom right now and will stay in bloom for a few weeks. The classic varieties come in white or purple, but there is one hybrid cultivar, called "Archangel", that sports yellow flowers.

\- bugleweed, a plant that spreads aggressively and produces an abundance of blue and purple flowers in mid-spring. When grown in sunny locations its foliage turns a beautiful copper shade.

\- lily of the valley. It spreads once it finds favorable conditions, so watch out. The more shade it experiences, the less it blooms.

\- navelwort, featured in the picture, with heart shaped leaves and pretty blue flowers that brighten the garden the whole month of April.

\- plumbago, the plant that never quits. If you don't have it, you don't know what you're missing. Sometime mid-August it produces a carpet of bright blue flowers and its foliage turns bright red. The fuzzy maroon seed heads are beautiful too.

\- moss roses. Easy to start from seed, no fuss bloomers, but the tolerance limit of what constitutes part-shade is rather low.

More Ground Covers for Part Shade

I highly recommend sweet violets if you want to populate a difficult area. Shade, poor soils, they don't care. One word of warning, though, these plants can be invasive. Under favorable conditions they spread out of control and find their way into lawns and flower beds at a speed that will make your head spin. They will grow out of a crack in the pavement if their seeds happen upon it.

What is a nuisance for sunny sights is a blessing for shade. Wouldn't you rather see this in the tree shade than a patch of dried up dirt?

And Full Shade

If you have one of those garden spots in full shade where nothing seems to thrive but your optimism doesn't allow you to give up on flowers, try vinca, sweet woodruff or pachisandra. These evergreen ground covers bloom in spring and handle late summer droughts like champs. Sweet woodruff is blessed with a delicate vanilla fragrance too.

Vinca is the only plant I saw thriving in the shade of walnut trees, whose roots secrete hormones which act like natural herbicides to eliminate the competition.

WEEK NINETEEN

May 7th - The Golden Hour

The Glow of Late Afternoons

Everything looked radiant in the glow of the golden hour, before the sunset dimmed it to violet and blue. This surreal light quality created halos around everything, lighting up the late daffodil blossoms from inside like so many tiny lanterns.

I stayed outside for as long as I could and took many pictures, I didn't want to miss this little slice of heaven that opened fleetingly before my eyes. Every day there is a chance for the golden hour, but the actual occurrence of one is quite rare, especially so early in the year.

Being inside this light, however briefly, makes one realize how beautifully complex life is and how easily it blends together in harmony and peace. Time feels different and makes all the problems in the world subside and everything looks perfect just the way it is. One of the benefits of gardening is that one is outdoors frequently enough not to miss these moments.

As I lifted my eyes in this quasi-dreamlike state I gasped with surprise when I noticed the fragrant white bunches of French lilac swaying gracefully over my head, I kind of stopped expecting it to bloom after so many years.

It bloomed before the dwarf variety too, I didn't expect that either. My garden loves to enchant me every now and then.

Summer's Door

Summer is knocking on the door a month early and it brought with it sweltering temperatures more suitable for the middle of July; it arrived so suddenly it gets difficult for us poor humans to adjust. Everything tripled in size in a matter of days, desperately springing into bloom as if not to miss the narrow window of spring that's closing way ahead of time.

The late spring bloomers have to share the stage with the first summer flowers and they eagerly compete for territory while displaying a noisy mix of colors and textures that seems to be put together haphazardly.

It is so humid already, especially at night, when the air gets infused with a fragrance I can't identify, but whose intensity is amplified by the unseasonably warm temperature. It smells of overheated foliage, myrtle and sea water, like a tropical island on the eve of a storm, a very confusing scent for a heartland dweller in the middle of May.

I'm waiting for the great southern magnolia to bloom; my favorite tree usually looks exotic in this climate with its evergreen leaves, large and shiny, and its giant fleshy flowers, pure white and dripping with perfume, but not this year. This year it fits right in with the rest of the excess and with the hot air doused in the wet scent of the ocean which, for some strange reason, smells like home.

White Tulips

At least some of the tulips I planted last fall made it all the way to bloom. I don't understand how nests of four or five bulbs always yield a singular flower that's almost afraid to wave tall and fragile in the wind, but that's one of the mysteries of life.

I'm glad this one made it, isn't it a sight of beauty? White tulips in particular look so innocent and pure, almost child like.

Trees in Bloom

The crab apple finally bloomed! With the weather being so erratic I worried that it would take a breather, as it occasionally does, and there will be no fruit on the branches come fall.

It did bloom, however, and quite abundantly, so there will be plenty of berries for the birds to feast on. With the accelerated schedule of tree bloom everything is covered in a thin dusting of pollen, the walkways, the patio, the outdoor table, I've never noticed that before.

WEEK TWENTY

May 14th - Tiny Wonders

All Dressed in White

The garden is all dressed in white. As much as the wild honeysuckle bushes drive me to despair during the rest of the year (those suckers will spread like wild fire, grow out of bare rock and once established, good luck trying to pull them), during spring their fast growing shrubs morph into a vision of paradise, with their profusion of white flowers gently flowing towards the flower beds. They are not the fragrant kind, unfortunately.

The ashes and the crab apple trees just started to shed their flowers and covered the garden path in a dusting of tiny white petals. I'm walking through a poet's dream, complete with soft grass and light mists in the morning. It all looks so beautiful I couldn't bring myself to look at the weeds which took great encouragement from the rain and are asserting their dominance over the flower beds.

It's time for the mid spring perennials to bloom, and they all come in white too: pachysandra, sweet woodruff, lily of the valley, Solomon's seal, foam flowers.

I'm stuck on pause because of the rain, waiting for the best time to plant the annuals and happy to notice that the vegetables finally took root and turned the right shade of green. Looking forward to a bountiful year, despite the chill in April.

Charming the Shade

Shade gardening grew on me, literally. I don't know how fast trees grow, but it's fast enough and those lovely giants of the vegetal world can cover a lot of territory, both above ground and below. That's how I ended up with every flavor of shade known to horticulture.

In this situation, if you care about flowers at all you become an expert in shade loving perennials really fast. Shade is tricky, you have to charm it.

Perennials that bloom without full sunshine are few and far between, and for this reason even the most enthusiastic gardener has to resign him or herself to pick from a very small selection of staple plants if they want a thriving border, which makes shade gardens look more or less the same. One can cheat a little bit and plant flowers that bloom before the foliage appears on the branches above or after it falls, but that's about it.

Shade flowers don't boast the brazen display their sun counterparts like to put forth, their blossoms are fleshy and delicate and like to hide from even the occasional ray of sunshine under thick clusters of leaves. They are often white, to stand out from the foliage just in case a rare confused pollinator might get lost in unfriendly territory.

There is one saving grace: in the dog days of summer, when all the sun borders start looking scratchy, dusty, weedy and in bad need of dead heading, the shady spots will still look picture perfect and have flowers to boast.

Perennials for Spring

The glut of spring perennials are getting ready to bloom: the peonies, the lilacs, the sage, the irises, but most of all, the roses. I was pleasantly surprised to notice that Hansa is already in bloom and the rest of the shrub varieties are not too far behind.

The clematis woke up covered in huge purple flowers, right next to the cranesbills, which are just about to open. It looks like the garden chose purple next, at least until the annuals get here.

Annual Groundcovers

Any annual that comes in a flat and can be used for bedding is by definition a ground cover. I still haven't planted my annuals yet, I'm waiting for the late spring flowers and a much wider selection.

I would like fragrant flowers if I can find them. Between the rain and the summer like weather the garden is out of its mind, I have to weed and prune every half hour just to keep it from growing out of control. I think it's already too late for that.

WEEK TWENTY-ONE

May 21st - In the Garden

Sweet Cherry Pie

I have become very fond of vintage cottage garden flowers in the last few years, a sentiment which stemmed from the realization that my idea of a cottage garden is significantly different from my grandmother's.

Sure they share some staple plants, without which neither a modern nor a vintage cottage garden would be complete - roses, daisies, delphiniums, hollyhocks, but the list of similarities only goes so far.

Eager to experience the gardens of old I did some research and found some gems, which are lovely and fit in the perennial border like they've always been there:

\- mignonettes - the flowers don't look like much, but the foliage has an intense fragrance that reminds me of lemon verbena

\- love in a mist - the bright blue flowers spring from a haze of wispy foliage which surrounds them like a Victorian collar.

\- yarrow - it is kept with the herbs at the plant nursery, but boy, does it bloom!

\- Maltese cross - I still can't believe I managed to persuade it to stick around. If you are partial to red flowers, this is the reddest flower in existence. Poppy red.

\- snakeroot - it blooms long wands of fuzzy flowers, wonderfully fragrant, at the end of August

\- red hot poker - haven't seen it this year, maybe it reached the end of its life. If you want a specimen plant that steals the show, this is definitely it.

\- squills - not so commonplace anymore. Lovely shade bulb for the spring garden.

\- valerian - I actually do have one in my herb garden and it's getting ready to bloom as we speak.

\- last, but not least, heliotrope, the cherry pie plant.

It earned its nickname due to the fragrance of its flowers, which some associate with vanilla and cherry. I think it smells more like a blend of licorice and grape soda.

The plant is perennial, but only in areas warmer than zone ten, and, just like geraniums, it loses its vitality if not started fresh from cuttings every year. The flowers are usually purple, but there are hybrids that come in white and pink. I'm partial to the classic.

The Secret Lives of Plants

If you ever watched a time lapse footage of a plant you can't see the botanical world the same again. Nobody questions the fact that plants are living entities, but since their lives unfold at a speed so much slower than our own, one gets it intellectually, but rarely at gut level.

The most surprising fact about plants is how much they actually move. During the daily cycle they follow the sun, during the monthly cycle the phases of the moon, during the yearly cycle they constantly oscillate their metabolic activities between their aerial parts and their underground ones. Just in case you've been wondering what perennials do during the winter, when to a superficial glance they appear dead, please read this article .   
https://www.howplantswork.com/2010/01/07/how-plants-survive-the-cold-or-not

And then there are the wandering plants, snapdragons are a good example, which will pop out in surprising locations each spring and never sprout in the same place for two years in a row. Not only that, but they have a consistent pattern of movement from year to year, and if you're willing to spend your time tracing their movements through the garden you will notice that they follow a logical path.

Trailing plants have no limits regarding how far from the place they've been planted they are willing to go, aggressively spreading runners underground and out of sight. That is a type of plant movement that is not visible to us at all, even if we had the willingness to slow down to plant speed. As far as the aerial parts are concerned, they will flop over and change the location that doesn't agree with them, leaving their roots behind if need be. Climbers have perfected this art to reach the pinnacle of mobility, which for plants is the top of the tallest trees.

What I'm trying to say, next time you look at your tomato plant please remember that you're looking at a living being that is more like your dog or cat and not the pot it's growing in.

May Flowers

The queen of the May garden never disappoints. Between the clematis, the dead nettle and the cranesbills, my garden is only painting with green and purple again.

Last night it rained again, hard, just in time for the newly planted annuals to settle in and make themselves at home. I picked mostly white flowers this year, I figured they go with everything.

Until the Annuals Arrive

People get annuals to get reliable bloom from spring to fall: no pauses, no dead heading, hardly any care other than water, food and weeding.

To be fair to perennials, there are some that come close to this level of performance and I think I'm looking at one of them. I thought salvia was supposed to bloom in July!

WEEK TWENTY-TWO

May 28th - A Week of Rain

Happy Planters

I planted all the patio containers, now it's officially summer. The tuberoses and formosa lilies, which have spent the winter indoors and emerged from it sickly and weakened have since recovered.

Both the flower beds and the containers look like they could do with some weeding and a good amount of fertilizer, in this order.

The number of containers has grown significantly since last year, featuring a mixed planting of vegetables and flowers which promises to look very attractive come summer: I decided to add nasturtiums and marigolds to the kitchen garden, as traditional gardening practice requires.

Keeping the planters happy is a challenge, especially during dry summers. The mixture of peat and hummus dries up too quickly and despite the significant amount of fertilizer mixed in, the nutrients get depleted towards the end of the season. I prefer using regular garden soil in the containers, the plants seem to fare better in it: their root systems are stronger and they don't wilt as easily.

A Veil of Rain

The tail end of the latest tropical storm reached us as just as May ended, holding the dubious distinction of being the hottest one on record. My head still spins from the roller-coaster weather: it snowed at the beginning of the month and now it feels like an equatorial rain forest, rain included.

The week long storm wrung the excessive humidity out of the air and brought the temperatures down to a more seasonable pattern now, but it also sped up the shedding of all the May favorites, which are now officially done blooming: the peonies, the roses, even the clematis.

Next week the weather forecast predicts sunshine, hopefully that will encourage the early summer perennials to bloom. The lilies' buds look like they're ready to burst open.

As always after a long streak of rain the foliage sprung out of control, to the detriment of flowers and fruit and the garden is a mess again from all the broken branches and fallen debris.

Usually around this time I get to see the first fruits on the tomato plants, but with the warm season starting so late this year they haven't even bloomed yet. The plants are tall, though, and finally turned a deep green color, it looked like touch and go there for a while.

Herbs in Bloom

The rain didn't phase the herbs, which seem to be the only plants eager to bloom right now: the sage, the basil, the marjoram, the lavender, the thyme, even the parsley.

If it weren't for last week the sage would be quite a sight, but its flowers took the brunt of the storm and scattered with the rest of the late spring perennials'. I hope it gets its wind back next week, when the weather is supposed to be sunny.

Clay Lovers

If you have clay soil these perennials are a must have: cranesbills, hostas, hellebores, coral bells, cone flowers, asters, they all thrive in its dense, but nutrient rich medium.

After many years I reached the wisdom to appreciate clay's qualities instead of trying to amend it, which is a wasted effort, since a couple of heavy rains wash off the peat and leave it just the way it was before. This year I tried planting ligularia and it seems to be doing very well. I can't wait to see it in bloom.

WEEK TWENTY-THREE

June 4th - Simply Charming

Herbs in the Rain

I checked the long range weather forecast and it seems we're in for a repeat of last year's hot and rainy season. The trend started already, with two full weeks of rain which put the foliage into overdrive and the flowers on pause.

The sunny meadow herbs don't much care for rain, that's probably why yarrow isn't exuberant this summer, but the broad leaved ones are simply going crazy. All the mints are knee high, I haven't seen them like this in a long time.

The potted calendulas which I thought gave up the ghost last month came back from the dead. The sage and the wormwood grew mighty tall, fighting each other for territory and trying to elbow out the smaller herbs, like marjoram and thyme. The latter, sustained by regular feedings and abundant rainfall, stood their ground, poking valiant stems through the smothering foliage of their assailants.

The lemon balm and the lemon verbena are engaged a contest to decide which of them can sprawl farther and grow leafier. Even the dignified rosemary, the poster child for plants who prefer drought to rain, grew another foot.

There is hyssop in there somewhere, and if I ever get a stretch of dry weather long enough to weed and prune the herb border, I might be able to find it. Everything's a mess, but looks healthy enough, in a rain forest sort of way.

I'm just waiting for the monsoon to end so I can finally see some flowers.

Valerian

There is a whole list of plants I feel like I know well because I encountered them in literary works, but most of which I haven't actually seen until recently: hyssop, heliotrope, verbena, wallflower, camellia, primrose, jasmine, heather, wolfsbane. The list is actually much longer, but I'll stop here.

After years of gardening curiosity got the better of me and I started searching for these plants so that I could plant them in my back yard if the climate allows. That's how valerian ended up gracing the herb border.

It is a handsome plant whose delicate scent of green foliage and white flowers betrays no relationship to the notoriously pungent odor of its roots. Some people find the smell of valerian root simply revolting, others say it reminds them of violets; I wouldn't say either. It has a very distinctive palette that can't be mistaken for anything else and which is simply irresistible to cats.

Valerian root tincture is a well known herbal remedy for alleviating depression and anxiety, relieving pain and helping people fall asleep. It is generally considered safe unless your doctor says otherwise, but if you plan on using it, be advised that, just like it happens with garlic, its interesting smell will exude through your skin.

Since I'm not using it medicinally (I'd have to dig up said pungent roots, thus killing the plant), I delved into the symbolic realm and retrieved a bit of lore about valerian: it is said to turn adverse situations around and always bring out positive outcomes from any circumstances. Now I'm fiercely protective of this plant. Who says no to luck?

Lemon Thyme

If you're looking for original ways to dress up a salad, you will be happy to learn that thyme flowers are edible too and they have the same enjoyable spicy-lemony flavor as the rest of the plant's aerial parts.

I can't manage to keep my thyme alive from one year to the next, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. It performs well as an annual, though, and produces enough leaves to use fresh during summer and dry for the winter.

Blooming Basil

I'm going to enjoy the tiny flowers for a little bit, but I'll have to remove them before they go to seed. Annuals are genetically programmed to bloom early and abundantly in order to ensure propagation and once they've gone to seed they put all of their resources behind sustaining potential progeny. Most of the plants will stop blooming altogether; some, like basil, will go as far as dying back after they've fulfilled their mission.

WEEK TWENTY-FOUR

June 11th - Just Roses

Old Garden Varieties

I didn't have much to say about this rose, a sturdy and thorny rugosa called Hansa, but I just had to show off this picture.

Because spring came so late this year the roses went into overdrive, exploding in bloom the second the cold let out. Sadly this display of color wasn't very long lived, because the sudden return of warm weather was followed by two weeks of rain, which made their petals scatter, also in record time.

Lucky for me I had the sense to immortalize this embarrassment of flowers during one of the few days blessed with sunshine. I'm really at a loss for words, however ... brag:)

The thing with roses is that they don't do average. They either overwhelm you with fragrance and beauty or fail you so pitifully they make your soul ache.

Did I mention this variety is fragrant too? I managed to grab a couple of handfuls of petals to dry before the flowers got wet and fell to the ground.

Store dried rose petals in tightly closed containers and their fragrance will keep for a very long time. The scent of those I harvested last year is still strong.

Apple Scented Foliage

If you plant for fragrance, don't forget sweet briar roses, which have the delightful gift of scented foliage. At the end of a summer afternoon, when the fireflies come out and the night flowers are getting ready to open, the apple scented roses fill the air with their spicy, fresh fragrance.

The classic eglantine parented quite a few hybrids, many of which inherited this lovely characteristic. The miniature China in the picture, named Gourmet popcorn for reasons that become obvious once you see its flowers, is one of them.

When I planted the shrubs I didn't know such a thing as roses with scented foliage existed and it took me a while to figure out where the fragrance was coming from, since there were no flowers on them at the time. They smell strongest right before the rain, when their perfume saturates the humid air like an essential oil diffuser.

Sweet briar roses are care free and resilient and can tolerate a very small amount of shade, which in rose world translates as shade tolerant. Hard prune the shrubs in spring to allow for good air movement between the canes and to prevent overcrowding. These roses tend to be susceptible to black spot during rainy summers, but it doesn't seem to affect them long term.

Rosa Damascena

Whenever you think about rose fragrance, be it rose otto, rose water or culinary spice (rose petals are heavily used in cooking throughout the Middle East), you are thinking of the Damask rose, probably Kazanlak, the most popular variety - a heavily scented pink fully double grown as an industrial crop.

All Damasks are fragrant, although not to the same degree. They usually bloom for one month in spring; a few hybrids spread out their bloom over the summer, or at least repeat sporadically in the fall.

Dr. Huey

Most gardeners will recognize this beauty, the root stock of all rose hybrids - Dr. Huey. Breeders have chosen it for a reason: it is resilient and very long lived.

Nobody plants Dr. Huey on purpose: just give your pampered grafted rose a harsh winter and there it is, eager to return to its roots if you'll forgive the pun. To be fair it is a very pretty rose which blooms profusely at the end of May, a lot more than I can say about its fancy descendants. It blooms on old wood (which means at least two year old growth), prune it only to remove dead canes and winter damage.

WEEK TWENTY-FIVE

June 18th - Summer Solstice

A Celebration of the Sun

There are many traditions, myths and folk tales associated with the summer solstice, many of which involve the herbs and plants that bloom around this time and whose medicinal and aromatic properties are said to be enhanced when gathered on the eve or morning of the solstice.

I remember an old childhood fairytale in which St. John's wort, the quintessential flower of Midsummer, got sent around the plant world every year on the feast of the saint to invite all the other herbs and flowers to a giant celebration called the council of the flowers, where their medicinal and aromatic qualities would be strengthened and renewed.

Indeed, the summer solstice seems to breathe new energy into the living world surrounding us; it rekindles memories of more joyful and innocent times, of dancing and celebrating with flowers in our hair, of a simpler appreciation of life that didn't need explaining.

Even the flowers that bloom around this time seem to have borrowed their cheerful colors from the warmth of the sun. It glows in the golden yellows of marigolds, daylilies, black eyed Susans, sunflowers, and of course St. John's wort. On cloudless days, when the light hits their bright yellow flowers just right, they look ablaze.

Not this summer, though, this summer is a rainy one and it rained on the day of the solstice too. It was still the longest day of the year, just not the brightest one.

The Herbs of Summer

People used to grow herbs for their medicinal qualities or for their culinary use, but some of these lovely plants have crossed over into the flower garden where they're standing their ground with the best of the summer perennials. Here are a few examples.

Yarrow, a plant with a long history of use for both medicinal and spiritual practices now fits squarely into the cottage garden design as a counterpoint to the tall cone flowers and the crazy abandon of daisies. Its flowers used to be white, small and rather unimpressive, but yarrow has been hybridized to produce beautiful inflorescences whose colors range from ruby red to bright sunny oranges and yellows and which compete with the stone crops in size and length of bloom.

Lavenders, formerly once blooming medicinal herbs are now producing flowers all summer long, perfect to brighten up a dry spot in full sun.

Sage is no longer just a cooking herb, its interesting foliage and beautiful blue-violet flowers have become a welcome addition to any perennial garden.

Monarda, or fake bergamot, is getting established as a resident of the flower garden, despite its invasive tendencies, because of its beautiful and abundant red, purple and pink flowers.

Thyme now comes in many varieties bred specifically for decorative purposes, and these cultivars are much appreciated in xeriscapes and rock gardens.

My favorites, though, are dill and lovage. They tend to grow very tall and need some protection from the sun, so they are best used for the back of a flower border in partial shade. They provide spectacular umbels, scented foliage, texture, and last but not least, welcoming homes for butterflies.

Fruits and Seeds

Even though according to the calendar summer has just begun, many of the spring bloomers already produced their seeds for next year.

Gardeners have devised shortcuts for plant propagation and prefer some methods over others because they help the offspring retain desirable characteristics, but all plants produce seeds and will spread that way if they need to. Anything can be started from seed - bulbs, roses, ground covers, you name it. I didn't say it was easy, I said it was possible.

The Longest Day

The longest day of the year, fifteen hours and counting, came wrapped in rain this year, so much for celebrating the sun. Despite the doom and gloom the plants collectively got the signal that summer is officially here and started blooming in a hurry, as if worried they'll miss their prime vegetative time.

The garden is getting ready for its second wind, which includes the champions of summer - the daisies, the cone flowers, the garden phlox - whose bloom will delight us from now until frost.

WEEK TWENTY-SIX

June 25th - Brigh Summer Days

Pretty Wild Things

Ok, I didn't actually plant fleabane, but so what! It's here, it's blooming and it blends beautifully with the orange daylilies.

There is a long list of wild flowers that earned their rightful spot into the flower border, many of which have been bequeathed to us as components of the vintage flower garden: dame's rocket, a delicate flower that grows freely in the dappled shade of large clearings, milkweed, a perennial that not only looks great with no care, but is the exclusive breeding ground of monarch butterflies, and yarrow, whose scented and highly textured foliage and large inflorescences have made it a staple of the summer garden.

For more unusual designs, try bird's foot trefoil, a charming plant whose absolutely stunning yellow flowers are the informal harbingers of summer, because they bloom around the time of the solstice, or tall bell flowers, with their unruly spikes of blue flowers sprouting out in all directions.

Many of the inhabitants of the sunny border have their origins in the open prairie, where their ancestors still grow wild - ox-eye daisies, cone flowers, poppies, scabiosa, purple thistles, chamomile.

If you really appreciate drama in the garden, try mullein, a medicinal herb with the bearing of ancient royalty. It stands eight foot tall, displaying tall and slender spikes of yellow flowers over thick mounds of velvety silver foliage like church steeples.

Care Free Bloom

No matter how passionate you are about gardening, there comes a moment when you just want to plant your flower bed and forget it, at least forget about having to tend to it constantly; rest assured there are many plants, both annual and perennials, that would take care of themselves without a lot of fuss.

I resisted them, of course, out of a mistaken sense of pride: once you breached the domain of sedums, daylilies, coneflowers and Russian sage, you have become basically unnecessary. Of course I can't grow the last plant on the list to save my life, but that's beside the point.

In time I learned to give nature its due and use plants that would thrive whether I'm there to dote on them or not. Fortunately the list includes more than the four plants above, so here are a few suggestions, all more or less care free.

Delphiniums - short lived perennials with spectacular flowers which thrive in hot conditions as long as they have plenty of moisture. The tall Pacific variety makes for stunning specimen plantings - some of them grow over seven foot tall.

Daisies and coreopsis - ok, so they do need deadheading, but not much else.

Goldenrod, bee balms, catmint and leadwort, with the caveat that they are invasive.

Hardy geraniums, which love clay soils and tolerate quite a bit of shade. They have a long blooming season in spring and their beautiful foliage in a treat in the fall, when it turns every warm shade from lemon yellow, to bright copper and deep purple, sometimes on the same leaf.

Veronicas - as seen in the picture.

Asters, obedient plant and wind anemones if you want guaranteed bloom in the fall.

Summer bulbs are usually well behaved and require virtually no maintenance, although they tend to dislike alkaline soils. You can have a garden in bloom the entire summer just by planting bulbs like liatris, lilies, lily of the valley, Canna and Calla lilies, dahlias, gladiolus, tuberoses, wind anemones, freesias and crocosmias.

Flowering Trees

Whenever the wind carries a heavenly fragrance but you can't really tell where it's coming from, it probably comes from a flowering tree. Tree flowers can be spectacular, like the giant southern magnolia blossom in the picture, or inconspicuous, like those of the linden tree, but that doesn't mean anything as far as their fragrance is concerned.

I always marveled at the combination of scents that get bunched together to describe a more complex fragrance, like that of magnolia flowers, for instance: people describe it as a mix of citrus and gardenia, honeysuckle or lily of the valley, with a slight hint of vanilla.

The Queen of Summer

Hostas rule summer gardens, especially when they have clay soils and lots of shade. Hosta varieties bloom in stages, starting with the earliest ones, which produce flowers as early as mid June, following with the fragrant plantain lilies, which pretty much have the August shade garden all to themselves, and ending with the tiny landscaping hostas, which start blooming as late as the end of August and linger in the garden well into the fall.

Hostas need light shade to bloom; if they are planted in deep shade they will develop glorious foliage, but hardly any flowers.

WEEK TWENTY-SEVEN

July 2nd - The Essence of Summer

Blazing Orange

It's not summer until the day lilies bloom and they usually do so before the fourth of July in anticipation of the joyous celebration. For a few weeks the whole garden turns blazing orange and after the flowers fade, their foliage slowly dies down to the ground to make room to the late summer bloomers.

Not all day lilies bloom all summer, for instance these, a triploid variety called "Kwanso", do not.

The orange day lily requires so little care it managed to evade the flower border and go wild. You will find it now in wild meadows, light shade clearings and the even on the side of the road, which earned it the awkward nickname ditch lily.

It grows pretty much anywhere you plant it, but if you want it to bloom it needs sunshine, rich soil and an adequate amount of moisture. Be careful about overfeeding them: they will bloom abundantly bu they will also store energy to spread out of control and their thick clumps can and will take over the flower bed, elbowing out their more delicate neighbors.

They are excellent plants to grow in boggy soils or around ponds, where they have an ample supply of water. They won't die during droughts, I don't think anything can kill this plant, but they will grow scraggly, miserable and a far cry from a pretty sight, so make sure they have at least one inch of water a week if you want them to shine.

Beloved and Indulged

There is a lot of work to do in the garden around this time, when every plant tries to get ahead of its companions in search for sunshine and sustenance, and that certainly includes the weeds.

People who believe plants are too slow to warrant attention probably never had to maintain a flower border in the middle of July, when many weeds manage to grow six inches a day from the bare ground you took great pains to clear only the day before.

Nature's abundance is without end and everything grows basically from nothing all the time, if that doesn't feel like a miracle to you, nothing will.

This summer hasn't been as rainy as the previous ones, but there was still plenty of water to make the foliage go into overdrive and create thickets and hedges I now hesitate to challenge. Whenever you try to fight nature, nature usually wins, especially when it presents with thorns.

Meanwhile the summer flowers are in bloom, annuals and perennials alike, pleased with the good weather and the fair amount of space in the sun. As it happens every year I've got a few eager volunteers - cleomes, nicotiana and French mallow - happy to fill any gaps left in the flower border at the end of the summer.

Butterfly Homes

Lovage, dill, fennel and anise make great homes for butterflies, especially if planted in a sunny corner of the garden, protected from wind and close to a source of water. Add nectar rich plants around them and make sure they provide continuous bloom throughout the summer. Lavender, borage, stonecrops, bee balms, phlox, goldenrod and yarrow are good choices. Pick native plants if possible, they are the ones butterflies are instinctively attracted to.

Skip insecticides and pesticides and plant flowers in drifts to help the butterflies find them easier.

My Beautiful

My beautiful just started showing off the mid summer flowers and the borders bask in purple and bright orange hues. This is the season I'm dreaming about each year sometimes in the middle of February, when winter feels like it will never end. There is very little that the summer can do wrong as far as plants are concerned. They'll take whatever she has to give - scorching heat, endless rain, sweltering humidity, anything; I can't say I blame them.

There was never a time when the thermometer pushed a hundred and I said to myself gosh, if only it were winter.

WEEK TWENTY-EIGHT

July 9th - Show Me

Walking through Saint Louis

Saint Louis is farther south than our home, fact made obvious by the significantly warmer weather. For this reason we started our stroll through the city at sunset and stayed well into the night to admire the graceful silhouette of the Old Courthouse, lit from inside and framed by the formal lines of the Jefferson National Memorial Park.

This natural green axis, which connects the arch and the courthouse, continues on the other side of the building with Kiener Plaza Park, a larger city garden filled with fountains and statues. From its perspective you can see the Courthouse nestled inside the huge parenthesis of the arch like the pot of gold at the bottom of a rainbow.

Because of the tight time schedule we had to skip many of the city's attractions, Ulysses S. Grant's Estate, the botanical garden, Chuck Berry's house, the World Chess Hall of Fame and last, but not least, the giant sculpture of Eros Bendato, a hollow metal head in the Citygarden that allows people to walk inside it and peek at the world through its eyes.

The symbolism of watching the world through the eyes of the god of love, especially like that, decapitated and with his face covered in bandages, wasn't lost on me, though in a way that is somewhat dark and mournful. I guess it's true what they say, that art is not meant to make you happy, it is meant to make you think.

The Arch

I felt a bit like a human canon ball as we embarked for our ascent in what basically amounts to a giant strand of ball bearings - Eero Saarinen's take on modern transportation - form follows function to the max.

The windows at the top of the arch, six hundred and thirty feet above ground, regaled us with a panoramic view of the city, of the Mississippi river and, on that particular evening, of a giant full moon.

The most enjoyable thing about this Saint Louis landmark is that it surprises you as you walk through the city, popping in and out of sight when you turn corners and go past tall buildings, a massive shiny peek-a-boo. Its surface glows in the sunshine and shimmers under the light of the moon, catching the slightest glimmer on the surface of its glamorous sequined dress.

For the technically inclined, its shape is a weighted catenary, not a U, not a parabola, but a catenary, a shape used, strangely enough, in the construction of kilns and one that haunted the professional life of another great modern architect, Antonio Gaudi.

When people think of modern architecture they usually envision straight, austere lines, but that's not at all what it is about. It is about finding the most efficient shape that would serve the purpose, geometric, organic or otherwise, and then removing all the extraneous material around it. For all practical purposes the Gateway Arch is a giant wishbone.

Hugging the Moon

There was something surreal about this view of the giant Saint Louis arch framing the full moon in the middle of the day. The rays of the setting sun reflected in the mirror like finish of the stainless steel glowed like small fires against the blue sky.

Scientific wisdom explains that for reasons connected to the relative position of the sun with respect to a full moon you can never see the latter during the day. It looked very much like a full moon to me.

Saint Louis Cathedral

Saint Louis Cathedral, completed in 1914 and designated a basilica by pope John Paul II in 1997, houses one of the largest mosaics in the Western Hemisphere; its eighty thousand square foot installation contains over forty one million pieces of glass in more than seven thousand colors and took over sixty years to complete. At full capacity the neo-Romanesque building can accommodate five thousand people.

WEEK TWENTY-NINE

July 16th - Garden Variety

The Happy Go Lucky

Some plants find their way into your heart just because they look so cheerful and innocent. Who doesn't love daisies? They are the embodiment of simple and wholesome, like milk, child giggles or sunshine. The fact that they are easy going and thrive with a minimum of care doesn't hurt either.

There is a whole bunch of plants like that, the happy go luckies that make your day every time you look at them: the fragrant petunias, with their fluttering corollas that look like butterflies in the wind, the fiery marigolds who challenge the sun for brightness, the yellow daffodils that always bring a smile to your lips, the tiny violets, so sweet they melt your heart, the yellow roses, which seem custom designed to lift your mood, the noisy and unpretentious zinnias which mesh in a rainbow of colors.

They may not be the first choices for the landscape designer of refined sensibility, their everyday charm borders on garish sometimes, especially when they don variegated flowers, but they never fail to lift your spirits, especially in bright sunshine.

They used to be the staple blooms of the cottage garden, a style which revels in the mish-mash of color and texture and is supposed to look a bit overgrown and excessive.

Tall hollyhocks, seven foot tall, towering behind clumps of colorful dahlias, flanked by Persian buttercups and moss roses, with random spikes of goldenrod and sunflowers mixed in.

Good bye garden design, hello happy chaos! Lucky for me I chose the cottage garden style from the beginning, and now I don't have to explain myself, although every year I try, unsuccessfully, to establish a color scheme.

The Delightful Aromatics

Aromatics come in two flavors: kitchen herbs and medicinals. A few herbs cross over from one category to the other, rosemary and lavender would be good examples of that, although using lavender for cooking is a bit of an acquired taste.

Almost everybody has grown kitchen herbs on a sunny kitchen sill or in a pot on the patio at some point: parsley and dill, oregano and marjoram,tarragon and chives, basil and sage.

The tall biennial and perennial herbs - dill, fennel, lovage and caraway \- are in a category apart. They usually fare better in the company of their own kin in a partly shaded corner of the garden where they won't be bothered.

The medicinal herbs are a bit more demanding, they are used to grow in wide open meadows or on limy hills exposed to the wind and the sunshine, and find the conditions of the average suburban lot too different for their taste. They need more elbow room than your garden variety perennial and they're unhappy in cramped situations.

They also have individual idiosyncrasies which make them hard to grow together: lavender likes dry soils in full sunshine, lemon balm and mint need consistent moisture and part shade, yarrow hates being crowded, I don't know what thyme likes, but I don't have it, calendulas are from a different movie and by the time they're coming out of the ground they can't withstand the competition of their aggressive neighbors and chamomile is simply not a garden plant.

Still, with a little tweaking and patience, you can find compatible plant combinations that will come back faithfully year after year and support each other, like hyssop, mint and chives, or rosemary, yarrow and lavender.

If feasible, plants fare much better in the garden than in containers.

The Fragrant

What would a garden be without fragrance? Sadly scent is usually sacrificed for the benefit of showier flowers when hybrids are created, and many of the classic perennials are no longer fragrant.

This is definitely not the case with the garden phlox, especially this white variety, called David. During sultry afternoons its perfume, an intoxicating blend of honey, linden flowers and carnations, gets so intense it can make you dizzy.

The Showstoppers

If you have a shade garden, you can't do better than the tuberous begonias. Their flowers are huge, look like old garden roses and bloom consistently in the shade with very basic care.

Here is a picture to prove it. Not many plants manage to thrive, not to mention bloom, in this planter, which is a bit shallow and tends to dry too quickly. Tuberous begonias bear two type of flowers and the smaller, male ones bloom first. Be patient with them, you won't regret it.

WEEK THIRTY

July 23rd - Touching Sunshine

All Smiles

I don't know what it is about yellow flowers, but you can't look at them and not be happy. Yellow summer flowers in particular seem made entirely out of warmth like little glops of sunshine within the reach of your fingers.

Come August the garden switches to russets, yellows and oranges, in anticipation of the harvest season.

As always at this time of year, happy chaos takes over the flower beds, eager to fill every square inch with as much greenery as it can possibly support. Why does summer always have to go by so fast, when the dreadful winter takes forever to leave?

I never seem to get enough of the warmth and sunshine, I never get enough pictures of my garden to tide me over the barren landscape, the single digit temperatures and the way it gets dark before six.

Everything about the summer is beautiful and fills me with joy, even its moods, even its powerful thunderstorms and its sweltering afternoons. Rolling thunder shook the skies clear last night and this morning I came downstairs to a table covered in splotches of sunshine. I wish I could put them in a jar and save them for winter.

Ripe Grass

I felt kind of guilty to see that the grass had gone to seed on my lawn, but then I saw it ripen in a lot of other places and relaxed, it seems the combination of warmth and plentiful rain gave it the oomph to grow wild this year.

Because we're used to seeing it in its domesticated form - the ubiquitous neatly manicured green carpet - we tend to forget what grass really looks like when left to its own devices. Its largest specimen, the bamboo, can grow over a hundred feet tall.

The broader grass family, the Gramineae, the one that gifted us with the edible grains, covers a third of the dry land on earth and makes up seventy percent of all the agricultural crops.

Grasses are found on every continent, and yes, that does include Antarctica; they are extremely adaptable and will thrive almost anywhere, in forests, wetlands and the perpetually frozen soil of the tundra. Their proliferation is made even more impressive by the fact that they are monocots and each one of their seeds produces a single green blade.

In usefulness, grasses span the gamut from food to construction materials, paper and bio-fuel. They are great oxygen producers and providers of habitat for a broad variety of wildlife, they stabilize the soils and reduce the air temperature.

Of course that doesn't excuse me from having to mow the lawn, the rabbits are running wild in the tall grass and soon they'll be able to hide in it too.

In the Kitchen Garden

Marigolds and nasturtiums are the staple flowers for the kitchen garden. Plant them around the tomatoes and peppers to keep nematodes and whiteflies away. Plant them around the cucumbers and squashes to attract bees and butterflies (cucurbits have separate male and female flowers and can't self pollinate). Plant them anywhere around the yard just because they are pretty little bits of sunshine.

Marigolds are at their best when weather cools down at the end of summer and will stay in bloom until November.

Newcomers

Another happy addition to the new sunny border, tick seed. Abundant rain put the weeds in overdrive again, and those pesky troublemakers have the genetic advantage - they grow in one day as much as flowers do in a week. I can barely see the new flowers from the mess of green foliage, I have no idea what's what anymore.

Sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain, I can't get a clear window to weed the garden and I don't want to end up stuck in mud.

WEEK THIRTY-ONE

July 30th - Summer Heat

Maltese Cross

There is something about this flower that fascinates me, I don't know why. I don't seem to be able to grow the classic four petaled variety that inspired the plant's name either, just the five petal one.

It is one of those perennials you forget you planted, only to have them startle you in the middle of July, when they spring these tiny red stars on you, burning bright in a sea of greenery. The rest of the time it just fades into the background, with sinuous stems quietly winding under the larger foliage, not much bothered by meager sunshine or cold weather, true to its Siberian roots. If you need a plant for zone two, look no further.

This is a very long lived perennial and surprisingly resilient, if you were to judge by its tender stems, which can be easily broken if you don't handle them with care. It does prefer sunshine and it will bloom more abundantly when it has it, so, after growing one of these plants in the shade for many years I decided to plant another one in full sun and see how it does. Here is a picture of it, it's a dwarf variety.

Maltese Cross is an heirloom plant, in fact I grew the first one from seed straight from the historical grounds of Monticello. Some say it can become invasive if allowed to self sow, but I'll have to see that yet. It is shy and well behaved in my garden, where its clump has neither spread nor perished over many years.

Millefleur

Every spring I plan on planting more annuals and every summer I fall short of the desired effect. At least this year I have an excuse: after clearing up the shrubbery from a large portion of the front yard, the design of a new perennial border became a priority.

There seems to be a quiet understanding among the plants that every year a precious few will get to shine while the others considerately fade into the background. It's not something you learn from gardening books, the garden teaches the gardener a thing or two over the years.

This summer was all about petunias, last year I couldn't dig myself out of lantanas, a couple of years ago the marigolds were everywhere. You can sort of guess which annuals are going to run the show that year by observing the tables at the plant nursery in spring, but there is no way to tell a year in advance. It works for vegetables too, for instance this season I've got nothing but eggplant and basil. Not even parsley, no ma'm.

If we were talking about perennial plants, one could bring up the argument that the plants need to have a year of rest every now and then, and they take turns to do that, but that is certainly not the case for annuals.

I guess nature works at a higher level where this staggered pattern makes sense. It keeps the balance and variety of plant life by allowing it to skip years at a time while it runs the thread of genetic continuity above and below ground with the artistry of a master embroider making a millefleur tapestry.

About Planters

Normally around this time I would remind gardeners to water the planters every day, but with the frequent rains I only had to do that once or twice this summer.

The Formosa lily, which I started from seed in a pot in the middle of February decided to bloom, despite having been uprooted twice. This is its second year and I'm thrilled! I wish I could plant some directly in the garden, but I'm afraid the climate is a bit cold for it.

Pretty and Delicious

I'm not going to lie, the pods of Painted Lady, though hefty and delicious, are very, very stringy. This is a productive cultivar too and you'll get consistent crops growing throughout the summer, strings and all.

For this reason I prefer to wait for the pods to dry out and shell them. The beans are lovely, large, round and shiny, in solid dark colors or cowhide patterns, deep brown and white or purple and white.

WEEK THIRTY-TWO

August 6th - Patterns

The Purple Shift

I never tire of watching the patterns of my garden, and after I've got used to noticing them they are impossible to miss. For instance, the purple shift that happens during the summer lull.

This phenomenon is due in part to the persistence of the purple garden phlox, which, for some reason, always outperforms the white one, the second layer of hosta bloom, the stubborn reemergence of French mallow and the concerted bloom of many other plants, large and small, which for some reason come in purple too.

I can't say that my garden has a color scheme, although I tried to establish one, but purple is blended into all the seasons, and sometimes it comes through very loudly.

Almost everything is lavender or purple right now: the petunias, the verbena, the sweet alyssum, the basil, the cleomes, the mallow, the Mexican lavender, the hostas, the tiny catmint blossoms, even the eggplant flowers.

This cool period lasts for about a month, to be followed by earth tones: the reds, peaches and browns of the mums, the warm gold of calendulas, the russets and oranges of the geranium foliage, the velvety browns of grass plumes, the bright yellow of goldenrod.

Container Garden Companions

Finding good companion planting is even more important when the plants are stuck together in a container. I watched the denizens of assorted pots fight for dominance many a time and more often than not one species brazenly asserts its rights over the sun, water and nutrients and ends up owning the planter by the end of the summer.

If you don't want to end up with a monoculture, here are a few compatible flower combinations.

For shade, a mix of impatiens, wax begonias, tuberous begonias and asparagus fern will maintain themselves in balance. For a sunny spot, sweet alyssum won't mind sharing with most low growing annual flowers, like petunias, sweet williams, or stock. Cherry pie plant gets along with verbena and celosia, moss roses with petunias and snapdragons and nasturtiums with marigolds. Wishbone flowers with lobelia and petunias. Impatiens are nice to all the other plants.

I tried the following in mixed containers and they always end up owning the pot alone: lantana, silver miller, coleus, four o'clocks, zinnias and nicotiana.

I cheat. If I like a certain flower combination but I don't want the plants to end up fighting each other to the death I plant them in separate containers and pack the containers tightly together. By the time their foliage starts to assert itself in mid summer it gets kind of hard to tell what grows where.

Purple Spikes

Got cleomes? Permanently! The offspring of the giant purple variety, which was a hybrid, did not exactly come true from seed, they are a little smaller, less flower, more spikes, but they are both spectacular and relentless, so after a short fight I gave up and let them beautify the back of the border, or at least that was my idea.

The cleomes decided otherwise: they needed more space and stretched their heads out for sunshine, which they grabbed from the poor front of the border petunias at their feet.

Perennials, Sort Of

I'm going to go out on a limb: if a plant shows up in the same place every year for ten years, how is it not perennial? Much like the hollyhocks, you only have to plant their wild cousins, the French mallows, once. After that they will self-sow, whether you want them to or not.

Their distinctive zebra striped flowers, that last until November, start blooming right at the beginning of August to provide welcome color and texture during the summer lull and to keep the garden pretty while the early fall perennials are getting ready for their season.

WEEK THIRTY-THREE

August 13th - In Summer, When It Rains

The Bright Light of the Clouds

The skies are very bright in spite of the rain, not with the warm radiance that sunshine brings, but with the cooler, unsaturated range of reflected light.

It stormed a lot lately and during the strong summer storms the clouds descend so close to the ground it feels like dusk in the middle of the day. There is not much to do in the garden when it rains, not unless you want to get soaked, so I resigned myself to watch the grass grow too tall and the weeds get comfortable in the flower beds while I'm writing about gardening instead of doing it.

The perennials are right in the middle of the late summer doldrums and normally that would mean that they look a little dusty and dry, but not this year, when the abundant water pushed the plants' foliage into overdrive to the detriment of flowers.

The garden phlox is the exception. It started blooming sometimes at the end of May and it's still going strong, filling the wet garden with its unmistakable fragrance.

A Breath of Humid Air

The air has been steadily humid for a month now, cool and humid, it reminds me of foggy mornings in the mountains or tropical places in winter, it's almost too cool for August, not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Every now and then I catch a break between raindrops and get out into the garden to breathe in the wet air that coats the lungs like a balm. Add in the green fragrance of flowers and foliage and you got yourself instant aromatherapy.

Vegetation thrives in this constant mist which makes it feel, at least temporarily, like it grows in the middle of a rain forest. The hostas are in plant heaven with their broad leaves perpetually covered in dew, but they put off blooming until the sunshine returns.

I'm hoping that the abundance of water will help the new perennial garden get established, but we won't see results until next year. For now the plants are working on developing their roots and aerial parts.

White Flowers

This year's theme was supposed to be all white flowers, but you can't enforce a color in a cottage garden, because it has history - the purples and oranges of the original design, the pinks and magentas of the roses, the cheerful yellows of the goldenrods and black eyed Susans which I planted as an afterthought a few years ago.

Every now and then the perennials take a breather, and then the garden does shift to white, sort of.

Fragrant

White petunias are like a cold drink of water in summer, especially after the rain. This particular variety is fragrant, a quality wasted right now because they're on display at a good distance from both the street and the house.

I got spoiled by scented petunias and rarely get those which are not anymore, even when they are prettier.

WEEK THIRTY-FOUR

August 20th - Fresh Greens

Produce

Late summer is usually the time for harvest and I wish I had something to brag about, but not this year. What you see in this picture is what you get, the garden has not been kind to me this year, only it knows why.

I planted it, I fed it, I watered it and I weeded it, and it was all for naught. I'm not judging, I'm just saying.

The greenery of the tomato towers is glorious, even though I don't know many people who grow tomato plants for their foliage. Same goes for the peppers and the cucumbers, but not the parsley and the dill, who just decided to skip this year altogether. I don't even know where the squashes are, I think I saw a leaf early in June, but it has gone from me.

I'm not going to lie to you, I felt jilted. How could she, my garden, my precious, after all we've been through over the years. I guess it is during times like this, brought to us by fate itself to test our mettle, that unconditional love is born. It's either that or I'll have to give up gardening altogether and choose collecting stamps for my new hobby.

Four tomatoes, all green, that's all I have to show for a whole summer of doting. Sour ingrates!

Fall Perennials

By the time sedum starts to bloom autumn is not too far behind, and since every year I have the same problem, which is that the fall landscape turns into a sea of mums in every color known to man, I made a list of other perennials to get a little variety during the cooler months.

Between the obedient plant, the goldenrod, the Japanese anemones and the asters there should be plenty of flowers for the fall garden. Monkshood has spectacular purple-blue flowers and blooms in the fall, but it is very toxic, so be careful.

An easy care ground cover, plumbago, has the most beautiful blue flowers, followed by deep maroon seed heads and spectacular fall foliage.

Snakeroot is gorgeous as a specimen plant and would make the garden all by itself, but it doesn't thrive in areas where summers are hot and in my garden it always dies down to the ground in July instead of growing to produce its lovely fuzzy wands that smell like grape soda.

Don't forget the delicate lace of Russian sage for sunny dry sites and ligularia for the shade border. Turtlehead is also supposed to be a great fall blooming perennial for the shade, but I planted it three times already and I have yet to see it in my garden.

Toad lilies are the last flowers in the garden, they start after the equinox and last through the beginning of November. They look like tiny orchids and bloom abundantly, usually long after the leaves have fallen off the trees and all the other perennials have retired for winter.

Charming Thyme

This miraculous herb is packed with vitamins and minerals, blessed with antiseptic properties, bearing the prettiest tiny flowers and quite tasty to boot. Before the advent of antibiotics it was widely used to dress wounds, due to its bactericidal and fungicidal properties.

Thyme tea can soothe your cough, lower your blood pressure, clear your skin and boost your mood. It smells good, too. How many herbs can boast that?

August Lily

Plantain lilies dominate the garden for the entire month of August, a second act following the early June hostas' flush of bloom. Most of the varieties that bloom this month are delightfully scented, keep that in mind when you're picking new plants for your garden.

The most fragrant varieties are Aphrodite, Stained Glass, Guacamole, Fried Bananas and Fragrant Bouquet.

WEEK THIRTY-FIVE

August 27th - Late Summer

Planters

The planters get a little tired and overgrown by the end of the summer, when the ideal combination of colors, heights and textures or their original design gives in to the whims of nature. There is beauty in that disarray, the beauty of the natural hierarchy that establishes itself outside of human intervention.

The plant in the picture is a Canadian variety of tuberous begonia called "Illumination". It put up a spectacular performance last summer but was a little shy this year, like all the other shade lovers.

A few things about container care.

If you refill your pots with fresh potting mix every spring you won't need to feed them during the summer, but the peat moss tends to dry up so fast it almost doesn't matter how often you water them. I prefer real garden soil, even though it is very heavy, and the plants always perform better in it. If you do have garden soil in your planters it will require fertilizer, just like the rest of the garden, after the first three months.

Bunch pots together to keep the medium inside them, and thus the plants' roots, from getting too hot, especially if you use plastic containers; this helps reduce the water loss too.

Store clay pots in a place where the temperature doesn't drop below freezing, they always crack when left outside over winter.

Second Wind

Somebody who is fated to live a linear life can't easily grasp the cycles of nature; I'm envious, almost, of the way the garden gets to reshuffle the deck at the end of each year and start fresh in spring, one level up from where it was before.

Sometimes this cycle skips like a record with a scratched groove and the plants go back a month or two, to the gardener's delight.

I don't know what enticed yarrow into its second flush of bloom, but I'm going to enjoy it, even though it looks a little strange in the company of stonecrops and ripe pampas grasses.

I guess it liked its spot in full sun and the fact that it is not crowded, maybe the soil in that flower bed suits it, I don't know.

I can't wait for the other plant to adjust to its new location: it produces an abundance of peach colored flowers that last for more than a month.

Yarrow is one of the perennials that successfully transitioned from the herb patch to the flower border after horticulturists developed hybrids with larger and more colorful flowers. The vibrant reds and yellows of Red Velvet, Moonshine and Coronation Gold are the most popular, but I prefer the mellower earth tones of the Terracotta and Colorado Mix varieties.

Simply Glowing

If that is not a garden "thank you", I don't know what is. There is no greater joy for a gardener than to see a plant thrive to this degree: this is a division from one of the Stained Glass hostas in the back yard.

Between the middle of June and now the little transplant grew strong roots and filled out to look like this. This morning, in the bright sunshine that followed the rain, its healthy new foliage simply glowed.

August Flowers

Speaking of hostas, the second round of bloom, that of the August lilies, has started. A lot of the late blooming hostas are fragrant, and this is one of them, a classic plantain lily.

If you want a fragrant perennial, wait until its blooming season and buy one that already has flowers. It is true that it won't perform as well that season, since it has to deal with the stress of adjusting to the garden while expending energy on its offspring, but in the long run you'll have no unwelcome surprises.

WEEK THIRTY-SIX

September 3rd - Fall Green

September Rain

September brought with it capricious weather, a whole week of hot humid days followed by another bout of rain. While the conditions kept me indoors the garden spun out of control again, it's crazy, just crazy with the explosion of flowers and weeds. It churns them up so indiscriminately it almost makes me feel guilty about having a preference for the former, they're all plants, after all, who am I to decide?

I wanted to weed the flower beds, I really did, but then it started raining again. Not a delicate sprinkling of raindrops, a roaring downpour. No amount of gardening dedication will entice one to go out in this weather, so there goes another weekend.

I love the rain, it soothes the soul and refreshes everything. Even the light looks green, filtered through the luxuriant foliage, and makes everything take up a mossy hue, like the inside of an aquarium.

Around this time of year the vegetation usually starts slowing down in anticipation of the winter rest and turns mellower, dustier hues, but not this year, when the glut of water prompted every plant into another spree of foliage production.

I think the little dry shade garden in the back yard, a place that usually struggles during the dry end of summer, had finally come into its own.

Autumn Favorites

The stonecrops are ghostly pale this fall and I'm not used to seeing them like that, normally they turn up rosy hues as soon as the middle of August; it must be the rain, they didn't have enough sunshine to start ripening.

Despite the wet weather the fall bloomers are right on time - the prolific plumbago, the delicate morning glory, the tall grasses, the plush panaches of goldenrod.

A giant clump of cleomes decided to assert itself, sprouting intense lilac and magenta spikes in all directions, to keep company to the French mallow, whose continued dedication to sprout volunteers throughout an entire decade I find humbling. It just won't quit.

In the midst of late summer chaos, while rain pounded the garden mercilessly, I spider architected a giant web, a masterpiece of engineering, really. I can't figure out how the little weaver spanned the distances required to hold it up into the open, where it appears to be floating, not subject to gravity, not to mention how the delicate gossamer managed to weather the heavy downpours.

The End of Summer

Much as I try, I can't keep from getting sad as fall approaches, I hate seeing everything die down to the ground and the trees stripped bare to their skeletons. No amount of winter wonderland can make up for the exuberance and excess of summer, for the warmth of the sunshine and the energy of rolling thunder.

I know the leaves are going to turn for about a week and a half during which the landscape glows gold, russet and orange before everything goes dead and there is a huge mess to clean up. I'd rather they stayed on the trees and kept their chlorophyll.

Tomatoless

A little bit of sunshine shone through the clouds long enough to bring forth these symbolic tomatoes, which represent their entire kin this year. They look lost, somehow, in the anemic foliage, which is usually lush and impressive. The plants are scraggly and malnourished, it must be because I amended the soil in spring, worried that the nutrients in the ground might have gotten depleted after so many years of planting tomatoes in the same location. My efforts seemed to have yielded the opposite results.

WEEK THIRTY-SEVEN

September 10th - Purple Harmonies

I Know, Right?

One can never plan for this kind of picture, nature must gift you it, undeserved. There has to be just the right light, just the right time, but most importantly, unbridled cooperation from the plant world.

I didn't even plant the cleomes, they are volunteers from three years ago, a fascinating study in the vagaries of genetic inheritance. Last year the flowers turned a pale and shy lavender, a far cry from the original hybrids, which glowed intense purple. Imagine my surprise when I took a stroll through the garden on an overcast day last week and ran into this explosion of crazy.

They're everywhere, enthusiastically reaching out to the sunlight, five foot tall, all spikes and butterfly kisses, I'm melting like butter, I am.

The first year I collected the seeds, which turned out to be a completely unnecessary exercise: you don't need to plant these flowers, you need to thin their eager volunteers. I can't wait to see what they come up with next year.

Wistful Landscape

I'm a little saddened by the end of the season, but I can't complain: so far the summer spoiled us. There isn't a sign of fall in sight, except for a few overenthusiastic leaves which decided to start early despite copious hints from the rest of the landscape that it isn't time yet.

There is a certain melancholy in the late summer blooms, an almost contagious longing that runs opposite to the state of fact. The temperatures are still in the nineties and every now and then a drenching storms visits, with all the power and drama it commands during the height of summer.

The plants get an instant boost when it happens, gratefully oblivious to the approach of fall and carrying on like warm weather will never end. Lush foliage sprouts in response to the tropical rains at a time when it would normally slow down to prepare for dormancy.

The summer perennials were enticed into a second flush of bloom and the toad lilies, which would have been covered in flowers by now aren't even thinking to start.

Just like the garden I'm confused, so I went to the nursery to check out things to plant. It turns out that even if we're enjoying an extended summer, the tables are still overrun by mums.

High Contrast

White flowers know how to make a statement in the shade; on the day I took this picture, one with overcast sky, they glowed even brighter against the dark foliage.

If you consider growing a moon garden, white flowers are your best choices, especially the fragrant ones that bloom at night - nicotiana, tuberose, moon flower, jasmine and datura.

Mint in Bloom

I thought mint was more likely to bloom during hot dry summers, and we had plenty of rain. This is a nice variety of grapefruit mint growing in a pot in part shade.

Mint likes light shade and moist soils. It spreads by runners and will become invasive under favorable conditions. It's one of those plants good gardening practice recommends planting in containers.

WEEK THIRTY-EIGHT

September 17th - Earth Tones

Autumn Peach

If fall has one saving grace it's got to be its color, every hue in the earth tone palette is usually represented, including, as you can see in this picture, rosy peach.

Considering the general conditions that encourage brilliant fall foliage we should be in for a treat this year: we had plenty of moisture during the growing season and it shapes up to be a cool autumn without temperature extremes. That is if the rain doesn't ruin it. There is no fall color when it rains.

The second we crossed the threshold of the equinox, as if on a schedule, fall showed up, wrapped in a dreary drizzle, boasting dim light and dropping temperatures by twenty degrees overnight. Really? That precise?

The pampas grasses and the sedums do their best to cheer up the landscape while the late summer flowers are starting to wrap up their bloom.

So far the weather doesn't bode well for colorful foliage: it's raining. On the other hand the grass is so lush and green it makes me forget we're heading towards winter, which is no easy thing. I'm going to miss summer. A lot.

On a more optimistic note, even though it's a little early, mid-October is the time to plant spring bulbs so I started perusing the plant catalogs for beautiful new additions. One can never have too many daffodils.

Almost the End of the Season

The warm season is not over just yet, so here's a list of things that still need done in the garden before fall fully settles in.

Continue mowing the lawn, especially if it rains. Slowly taper off feeding and watering to allow it to prepare for winter, but do apply step four to discourage weeds and give fresh growth a good start come spring.

Clean and deadhead the late summer perennials, remove all the foliage that shows signs of disease. Burn or otherwise dispose of it, don't compost it or leave it on top of the flower beds. Some diseases, like powdery mildew, are particularly pernicious and may take a few seasons to get rid of; they will overwinter in the ground from fallen leaves.

Plant fall blooming annuals if you're so inclined.

Weed. Yes, again. I know, irksome.

Plan for the spring bulbs and divide spring blooming perennials before the weather gets too cold. Sow cool season annuals like calendulas, poppies, snapdragons and love-in-a-mist.

Pick and process the produce; harvest herbs to dry or otherwise preserve for winter.

Yellow

Goldenrod was a little late this year, and a lot less exuberant than usual. I think it rained too much for its taste.

This plant has been on the invasive weeds list for a while, but also made its way into the gardener's repertoire, grace to its bright pops of yellow color that are a welcome addition to the fall garden. It is definitely not for the front of the border, considering that it grows six feet tall, and as far as its rapacious spreading runners are concerned, I've been trying to contain them for six years and they're still sneaking up on me.

And Old Gold

The grasses look pretty enough, at this time their chenille panaches have just the right balance of softness and grace. Too bad their velvety seed heads ripen to scratchy frizz.

Since I started gardening I got into the habit to hold on to their dead stalks until spring, for what is no doubt sarcastically called winter interest. I think this year I'll break with the tradition: by the time February rolls around their decaying wet hay looks simply depressing.

WEEK THIRTY-NINE

September 23rd - The End of September

The Change of Seasons

Fall took me by surprise this year. I know it's almost October but the weather has been so warm until now I didn't even notice. The garden is a mess, as always at the end of summer, but it's showing no signs of slowing down.

This vegetal abandon is almost impossible to imagine in the doldrums of February, so I'm taking every opportunity to enjoy it now, before the garden goes into dormancy.

The toad lilies got spurred into bloom by the temperature drop, a little late in the season but with great enthusiasm, trying to assert themselves amidst a jungle of healthy foliage.

Roses often surprise me with repeat bloom around this time if the days are sunny and the nights are not too cold. The miniature one in the back yard was the first to oblige with a beautiful yellow blossom. I don't want the cold bleakness to come upon us and forget to leave, I really don't. Winter wonderland indeed!

Perpetuals

Some annuals are such reliable self-seeders they can pretty much hold their own with their perennial counterparts. They are usually wild meadow flowers, a little rugged but relentless in the propagation of their species.

I still find tall bell flowers from two years ago, blooming where I never planted them, and weedy little sprouts like the French mallows in the picture, whose seed heads, 'cheeses' as they are called, produce more than enough seed to populate the entire northern hemisphere. A third generation of Spider flowers reigns supreme over an entire flowerbed after it elbowed out the competition over the course of two summers.

I still find calendulas from seven years ago as well as the occasional snapdragon, stripped of the hybrid characteristics of the original cultivar and donning the more classic features of its parentage.

The vegetable garden surprises me every year with marigolds, and the flower borders with love-in-a-mist and moss roses.

Heirloom varieties are more likely to self-sow and they usually come true from seed.

Good Gardening Practice

With cold weather fast approaching the gardening schedule is getting tighter. It's almost time to start shopping for spring bulbs, produce needs picking, I have to figure out what herbs to harvest for the winter and the lawn hasn't been treated yet.

A visit to the plant nursery is in order, I always welcome new and unusual fall blooming perennials if I can find them. Besides, planting in the fall is good for morale.

In the Pink

Basil is the good herb that has everything: medicinal and aromatic properties, color and beautiful flowers. I always plant both the green and purple varieties, purple for its unusual foliage and green because it is more fragrant.

The purple basil has been in bloom for over eight weeks now, and it's still going strong, just in case you're looking for less common plants that bloom in the fall.

WEEK FORTY

September 30th - Sunny and Warm

Seriously?

Every year at the end of the season the tomatoes put up a good effort to bloom and set fruit again. Of course the fruit never ripens, with it being the end of the season and all.

Many summer annuals spring back into shape during the warm and sunny days of September, a month whose blue skies and balmy temperatures are only matched by those of April: the marigolds, with their bright orange and russet flowers, the cheerful calendulas which outlast the first and even the second frost, even the roses, whose late November flowers sparkle like little jewels when freezing rain encases them in ice.

It's so warm outside it still feels like August but the light has shifted, casting long shadows. A thin layer of barren leaves covers the garden path to remind me fall cleaning is not far behind. I'm checking my gardening schedule for anything but. Let's see: bulb planting sounds nice, dividing spring perennials, lawn treatment, none of these seem to claim urgency when everything is still so green and excessive.

If I plant them now the daffodils will sprout before the end of the year and spoil the bloom of next spring. I'd rather wait until December to plant them, the dirt doesn't usually freeze until then and there is no risk of a surprise warm streak forcing them out of dormancy before their time.

Starting Roses from Cuttings

The roses got the benefit of a long streak of sunshine without extreme temperatures and have gone out of their way to bloom. Even the June roses sometimes get a second wind during this month if the weather favors them.

For those who start roses from cuttings, this would be a good time to do it. I like the 'set it and forget it' glass jar method: bruise the ending of a six inch cutting with at least five leaves and preferably a spent flower, dip it in rooting hormone, stick it in its permanent location and place a clear jar on top. After this is mostly up to the rose whether it roots or not.

Don't be tempted to lift the jar until spring and don't judge success by the looks of the cutting. Some cuttings' leaves stay green for weeks without nary a hint of root development, while others' wither immediately to focus all their effort on the parts below ground.

The only way to judge success is to see new growth, and that may not happen until vegetation comes back to life next spring.

Mid-fall

A little rose in the back yard is keeping company to the ripening sedums and the late blooming toad lilies surrounded by green shoots that spill over the edges of the walkway and overflow stuffed pots.

It would be nice if the tuberoses bloom, but if not, they're sure to do so indoors at the end of January.

Prairie Flowers

More tall bell flowers from two years ago. These prairie plants are biennial and quite eager self-seeders. I noticed their foliage last year, in places I'm sure I didn't plant them. I'll keep an eye out for them next year, there aren't many flowers that bloom in my garden in fall, so their wild blue blossoms are a welcome surprise.

WEEK FORTY-ONE

October 8th - The Garden Path

Northern Orchids

I couldn't imagine my garden without the toad lilies, whose blossoms are as close to approximating a tropical orchids as any cold weather plant is ever going to get.

Don't get deceived by their fragile look, they are hardy to zones four through nine and just like their cousins, the spring bulbs, require minimal care. Their flowers show up very late, often after the garden is already covered in a thick layer of fallen leaves.

The original variety only comes in the classic purple spotted look, but some pink and blue cultivars have been created by growers in recent years. I planted a clump of pink plants in the back yard and they just started blooming.

Toad lilies like shade, especially in hot climates; they thrive in rich humus soil that doesn't dry out. Their sturdy stalks reach two to three feet tall depending on the variety and grow to form large clumps after they get settled into their garden spot.

Their flowers are quite tiny, about an inch across, you need to get really close in order to appreciate their beauty, but the plants bloom abundantly and will make spectacular specimen plantings for the shade garden.

Toad lilies are very photogenic. Their flowers, rather self-effacing in mass plantings, come alive through the lens of the camera, which reveals their intricate and fascinating features in exquisite detail.

Hybrids

In the world of plants the word hybrid immediately brings forth a specific image: greenhouses filled with long tables covered in little potted plants, perfectly tended to by a diligent team of professional growers and fed a perfect blend of nutrients to optimize their development.

The truth is plants mastered hybridization long before gardeners decided to use it to their own advantage, and they practice it enthusiastically and to quite interesting effects. For instance, I assume this phlox's corolla gradient is the result of the purple variety combining with the more recently planted white one.

If, like many gardeners, you prefer to stick to a single perennial for a more cohesive landscape design, you'll be in for a treat in a few years. The descendants of your original plantings will end up boasting every color imaginable, some of which seem impossible to obtain from the available selection. Happy to be left to their own devices the plants eagerly scrub their genome to retrieve forgotten traits from two, three generations back, and combine them to produce outcomes that boggle the mind.

The first generation of offspring kind of makes sense if you spend some time trying to figure out how it came to be, but after that it's nature's choice. That's how I ended up with lavender phlox and deep rose hellebores.

Repeat Bloom

I didn't know, but it seems that some spring blooming magnolias repeat in the summer, or, as is the case here, in the fall. I have seen this tree in bloom in April, when it braved a late killing frost that scattered some of its flower buds.

It is not unusual for repeat blooming magnolias to produce flowers that look very different the second time around, but this is not the case here, its charming pink blossoms look exactly like the ones it had in spring.

Produce

I haven't gotten to picking the eggplants yet, but I have to do it soon, because they're overripe. Eggplants benefit from a long growing season and this year really provided it, but there is a point of diminishing returns where more time on the vine doesn't do them any favors.

Eggplants are shiny and purple from the very beginning and their fruit varies in size, so it's kind of hard to tell when they are ready for harvest. Pick them when their skin becomes glossy and doesn't spring back immediately when pressed.

WEEK FORTY-TWO

October 15th - Wrapping Up the Season

Cold Early Fall

Here is the pink variety of toad liles, for comparison. The cold weather suits them, they are displaying an abundance of flowers I haven't seen in years.

A giant hunter moon brightened the sky for a couple of days and brought with it very cold weather, making the garden rush into hibernation way before its time. I haven't gotten to buying the spring bulbs yet, that makes them this week's priority.

The back yard is half buried in leaves and all the tender perennials are already inside. If I didn't know any better I'd think I saw frost on the lawn. Ugh .

It's way too soon for the usual fall gardening activities and way too cold for late summer gardening activities, so I'm cooped up indoors looking out the window at the golden sugar maple whose leaves have just started turning. They filter the light and dress everything up in a warm glow.

I think it's time for a trip to the plant nursery in search of interesting fall and spring blooming perennials. This is year three for the peony I moved to the back yard, I'm looking forward to its flowers.

Every year I plan to add wind anemones to the garden and for some reason I never follow up on it. Here's hoping it will finally happen this fall.

My Back Yard Beauty

My beautiful is preparing for winter and there's not much I can do about it so I'm starting next year's planning early.

There are never enough annuals or spring bulbs, so those are definitely on the list, especially for the new garden I started early this summer and which, with loving care, I hope will mature into a carpet of bloom.

There are plenty of flowers in spring, despite the fact that winter seems to linger longer and longer into April and even May, and there is a decent show of bloom in the summer, but the end of the season always falls short for some reason, so more fall blooming anything will be desirable.

Lately the never ending winters and the rainy summers have made it hard for the vegetables to mature and set fruit, so I'm going to break with tradition this spring and buy seedlings and a couple of potted tomato plants for the patio instead.

While I'm shopping for spring bulbs I'll keep an eye out for unusual perennial seeds, since I'll have extra space in the seed starting trays.

Still Going and Going...

The late summer flowers are still going strong despite the sudden drop in temperature. The weather shifted abruptly, right at the time of the equinox, to match the official change of seasons.

It's strange, usually the equinox brings bright blue skies, mellow weather and the unmistakable golden light. I already had to move the plants indoors due to the first freeze warning. They are not going to like being cooped up inside for so long.

Speaking of Repeats

Speaking of repeats, this is a first: dead nettle blooming in the fall, I've never seen that happen before. I forgot to check on the new rose cutting, maybe I should start a second one before the ground freezes.

The long range forecast predicts a long, hard and snowy winter, isn't that just great? I've got to stock up on creature comforts, the only thing worse than winter is an unusually long and bitter winter.

WEEK FORTY-THREE

October 22nd - Creature Comforts

How to Make Creams and Lotions

Face creams and lotions are basically soap without lye. Isn't chemistry great?

The basic proportions between oil and water based ingredients are three to one and the best creams always include another quarter quantity, proportion wise, of wax.

If you heard the saying oil and water don't mix, it's wrong. Sure they do, you just have to blend them until they turn into an emulsion, that's how creams and lotions are made.

The process is very similar to that of soap making, without the risk of burning your skin off. Heat up the fats, oils and wax into a double boiler until all the ingredients are liquid and fully blended, warm up the water soluble component (which can be a strong flower hydrosol, aloe vera juice or just plain water), to the same temperature, pour the water into the fat and blend until homogenized. I strongly recommend using a hand blender which has enough speed and power to emulsify the lotion successfully, so its contents will not separate.

When the cream is properly blended (it should immediately start looking smooth and fluffy) add your favorite fragrances.

Pour into jars while still warm, tighten the lids and allow the blend to rest in a cool place for twenty four hours.

A few comments. Yes, you can make cream without water soluble components, but you'll have to replace the water with oil and solid fats, like coconut oil or shea butter, are mandatory.

If you want the cream to have a lighter, thinner consistency, add oil, not water, drop by drop, adding water will only make it harder and heavier. If the cream separates you can try warming it up again to a liquid, letting it cool until it starts solidifying around the edges and starting the whole blending process again. It might work, but if you ask me you're better off starting over with fresh ingredients.

Skin Pampering

There is nothing like a gentle facial to cleanse the skin and make it glow and there are plenty of ingredients in the kitchen cupboards for a nourishing face mask. Let's go over a few classics.

Honey - it works by itself as a gentle exfoliator or it can be mixed with other ingredients like quick oats, cream or lemon juice for a moisturizing or astringent treatment, depending on your skin type.

Strong chamomile or lavender decocts are classics for facial steam treatments and getting rid of blackheads.

Egg is a rich source of vitamins for tired winter skin and offers the additional benefit of shrinking the pores.

Yellow cornmeal mixed with a little milk rubbed gently on the face removes dead skin and activates blood circulation to impart a healthy glow.

Mix equal quantities of coconut oil and sugar and your favorite fragrance for a very effective sugar scrub. The skin surface tends to run slightly acidic and anything sweet will make it thrive.

Fresh fruits, especially peaches, strawberries, mangoes and papaya for a natural and gentle acid peel.

Yogurt calms down irritation, especially from sunburn, while banana and avocado provide healthy food for dry skin.

I couldn't leave out the oats, which feature in a surprisingly large number of face masks, because they are good for everything: they nourish, calm, shrink the pores, exfoliate, provide antioxidants, heal, moisturize...

Home Made Soap

In theory making soap is easy, you only need a pound of fat or oil, a cup of very cold water and a little over 2 ounces of crystallized lye (check that it is 100% sodium hydroxide), a couple of plastic, glass or stainless steel bowls and a silicone spatula. Pour the water over the lye, mix it until the liquid becomes clear again, warm up the fat to match the lye temperature (the lye/water reaction is exogenous), pour the lye into the fat and blend the mix until it reaches the consistency of pudding. Place in molds and wait a day or two.

In practice making soap is a very precise chemical reaction and every detail matters: the quantity of lye depending on the type of fat, the temperatures of the lye and fat mixtures, even the type of fragrance. By the way, lye burns skin, so wear gloves, don't breathe in the fumes and keep a bottle of vinegar on hand for emergencies.

Bath Salts

Mix half a cup of fine sea salt with half a cup of baking soda and you got the base for bath salts. After that it is up to personal preference, but the usual additives are aromatic herbs, dried flower petals, essential oils (no more than fifteen drops or so) and natural resins like frankincense or myrrh, which help heal minor scraps and skin irritations.

Lavender and chamomile are great if you want to enjoy a good night sleep, rosemary if you want to improve your memory and increase focus when studying and marjoram is a mood booster.

Use citrus, cinnamon and peppermint oils sparingly, they tend to irritate the skin.

WEEK FORTY-FOUR

October 29th - In November

Freezing Rain

How does one use freezing rain in a sentence without spoiling everyone's mood? I heard it, early in the morning, while it was still dark outside, the sound you can't mistake for anything else other than maybe sandblasting. Ice pellets. Nice!

With that the last of the annuals abandoned the fight. The perennials are still trying to put a good face on the end of the season, even as they are, buried in dead foliage, but alas, the fall garden is a mess no matter how you're trying to look at it.

There is an inordinate amount of leaves in the back yard, still green, forcibly scattered and carried in from somewhere else. I can't recognize them, they don't belong to any of the trees above.

The strong winds have stripped the branches bare, making my life a little easier in the process: I won't have to worry about leaves on the lawn in January.

The weather relented for Halloween to give the kids just enough time to enjoy trick or treating. The cessation of hostilities was lifted immediately after, with the return of cold wind and dreadful drizzle and a permanent drop in temperature.

Fall Garden Activities

I had to do a good chunk of the fall cleaning way ahead of schedule because tonight is going to snow. While we're discussing the sped up fall schedule, let's run through the gardening tasks for the month.

If you haven't had a chance to divide spring perennials or start plants from stem cuttings, forget about it. It's way too cold for them now. Now is the best time to plant bare root trees, shrubs and roses (you can do that at any time during their dormancy as long as the ground is not frozen).

Last chance to plant spring bulbs, I seriously doubt we're going to experience a surprise warm streak at this point. Lift the tender bulbs you want to store over the winter.

Harvest the root vegetables before the ground freezes for good.

Clear the leaves off the lawn to keep it healthy and apply lawn fertilizer and weed preventer if you haven't already.

Trim the perennials and clean the flower beds if you usually do that in the fall. I like to wait until spring, it seems to give the plants an extra layer of protection against cold and water loss.

Protect roses by mounding up dirt around the graft bud.

Drain and store hoses. Store empty ceramic pots indoors so they won't crack during winter.

Muted Colors

The last flowers of the fall garden are still holding on, even thought we already underwent a couple of freezes. Their petals became translucent after the frosts, taking on more muted hues.

The weather turned really cold really fast, I'm going to miss summer so much! It's a good thing the tender bulbs are indoors and hopefully will indulge me with bloom. I cheated: I gave them liquid fertilizer.

Planting for Spring

Believe it or not, I still haven't purchased the spring bulbs. I think my plan to plant them in December is going to need some adjustment, so they're on the list of things to do this week, before the ground freezes.

The temperatures are going to be consistently in the thirties and forties and below freezing at night, woe is us! I really don't like winter. So, daffodils!

WEEK FORTY-FIVE

November 5th - Leaf Season

All the Pretty Colors

The leaves are colored by three types of pigments: chlorophyll, which keeps them green during the warm season, carotenoids, which make them look yellow or orange, and anthocyanins, which turn them red and purple. These three pigments are present all the time, but the last two are masked by the chlorophyll, which is dominant. The leaves produce additional quantities of anthocyanins before they fall, for reasons which are not absolutely clear.

Chlorophyll is photo-toxic in free form, so the plant decomposes it into safe components which serve physiological roles.

If you ever wondered if there is a scientific term for leaves changing color, there is, and it's called senescence.

How do leaves decide when it's time to start turning? Some get triggered by the amount of daylight available, others respond to cooling temperatures and rain, most often they react to a combination of factors, which include the two above, but also the health of the plant, the amount of cloud cover, whether it's in the sun or in the shade.

Brown color is the result of waste products trapped in the leaves.

Sunny days and cool nights favor anthocyanin production, thus turning foliage bright red, whereas overcast skies make it less active, resulting in yellow and orange colors.

How do deciduous trees get through winter?

First chlorophyll breaks down and gets reabsorbed, allowing the other pigments to lend their colors to the foliage and turn it copper, red, yellow and orange. The tree sends a chemical called abscisic acid to the terminal buds, which shut down the flow of sap to the leaves, signaling them to break off the branches. After the leaves have fallen, the tree enters dormancy, a period during which it ceases growth, slows down its metabolism and lives off the energy stored in its roots as starch.

The starch sweetens the sap and the reduced amount of water increases its density, making it behave like antifreeze to protect cell walls from bursting. The walls also become more pliable to allow water to pass through them and fill the interstitial space, making up for changes in its volume.

The tree's dead cells, which during the warm months are used as vessels for sap circulation, can freeze during winter, when they are nearly empty, without harming the tree, and act like insulation to prevent damage to living cells. The sap changes its chemical composition and turns into a supercooled liquid which will stay viscous instead of creating ice crystals even at temperatures that go far below freezing.

Finally, trees get a lot of help from snow, wrapped like a blanket around their roots, to protect them from bitter chills.

Tree Care

I read you're supposed to water trees right until the ground freezes. I didn't know you were supposed to water trees at all, not unless they have been planted recently or they're really small.

Trees usually take care of themselves but you can help them in small ways: mulch to keep their roots at a comfortable temperature, trim to remove crossing branches or broken limbs and protect the base of the tree from damage by people or wildlife. Structural trimming is best done during the dormant period.

Seasonal Interest

The burning bush fades into the background for the better part of the year but this is the month when it truly shines.

During leaf season the trees and shrubs steal the show and you almost fail to notice the smaller plants whose foliage turns brilliant colors too. If the weather cooperates the hosta leaves shine in bright sunny yellow, the cranesbills' foliage takes on every color from deep purple to bright orange and the ferns turn a bright copper.

WEEK FORTY-SIX

November 12th - Roses for All Seasons

November Rose

I was walking through the garden trying to assess what is left to do before winter descends upon us for good and I ran into this. My lovely rose had decided to brave two killing frosts and a freezing rain and bloom in the middle of November.

Contrary to popular belief roses are very resilient plants. The only thing they really can't live without is sunshine, everything else they'll take in stride.

When September rolls in they are enticed into a second flush of bloom which often lasts well after the first frost. I have spectacular pictures, taken in December, of delicate rosebuds encased in ice.

Which brings me back to this picture: my tiny rose is the last flower left in the garden and it floats over a glut of fallen leaves and dried up stems like it got the wrong season. Even the toad lilies have abandoned the fight.

I have often wondered what is the secret for making roses thrive, sometimes it feels like I can't do anything right by them no matter how much I try.

I can dutifully rehash the theory regarding rose care, for what it's worth: prune them in spring when the forsythia blooms if their variety requires pruning, water them deeply and infrequently, don't overcrowd them, feed them a lot, they consume a lot of energy blooming, mulch them to keep their roots cool and clear the diseased leaves and stems off the plant and the ground around it, fungi and molds tend to overwinter in the ground. The most important thing to keep in mind is that they must have eight hours of direct sunlight every day. No amount of care will make up for the lack of that.

The Fullness of Summer

A rose garden at the height of summer is a breathtaking sight. At this time the June roses haven't faded yet and all the repeat bloomers start their flowering season.

Many once blooming roses repeat sporadically in the fall if the weather suits them, but if you want a consistent display of flowers throughout the summer try grandifloras, floribundas, hybrid teas or hybrid perpetuals. The latter are a special treat for the rose afficionado; they blend the charm and grace of old garden roses like bourbons, chinas and noisettes with the resilience of species roses into low maintenance varieties that bloom freely all summer long.

I can't help myself; just a few ideas for splendid fragrant roses:

Reine des Violettes \- rich violet purple, fully double flowers, flat and quartered, fragrant.

Boule de Neige \- pristine white, snowball shaped flowers with an old bourbon parentage, extremely fragrant.

Gertrude Jekyll \- bright pink old English rose, considered to be the most fragrant.

Eden \- a blush pink and white climber with a light citrusy fragrance; its overflowing clusters of flowers fully justify its name.

America \- a very fragrant salmon pink rose with fully double flowers, a modern climber variety bred for disease resistance.

Mr. Lincoln \- a classic tea rose, deep red, exceptionally fragrant.

Pope John Paul II \- huge pure white blooms, one of the most fragrant hybrid tea roses ever created.

Radiant Perfume \- a long stemmed grandiflora with bunches of bright yellow flowers and a strong citrus and fruit scent.

Early Spring

Rugosa roses take the lead early in May to be the first roses in bloom while many of the spring perennials are still assessing the weather. Rugosa roses are as close to perfection as roses get: they have fragrant, large and full flowers, their foliage is impervious to the common rose pests and diseases, they are extremely winter hardy and require minimal care. Rugosas are also the roses which produce the bright red and orange hips for fall and winter interest. If you grow roses for culinary uses, rugosas are at the top of the list.

They do have one shortcoming: they only bloom once.

June

For those with a passion for heirloom roses June is flower paradise. All the once blooming varieties are at the peak of their glory with an exuberant display of color and fragrance.

Old garden roses tend to be fully double and fragrant and bloom in thick clusters, so abundant you can barely see the leaves through them. Try these varieties and you will never question the wisdom of planting once blooming roses again: Rose de Rescht, Ispahan, Tuscany Superb, Rosa Damascena, Felicite Parmantier, Konigin von Danemark, Belle de Crecy, Madame Isaac Pereire.

WEEK FORTY-SEVEN

November 19th - Icy!

Weather Musings

I read last year's entry entry for this week and got reminded of how remarkably consistent the weather and garden patterns are: the first snow, the January cold streak, the first bloom. They follow nature's implicit schedule almost to the day. It just dawned on me that I could read up a few weeks in advance and have a fair idea what the weather is going to be like.

The climate on the other hand is a different issue. It slowly shifted towards extremes, a change that has been years in the making and turned out less than user friendly results: hot and rainy summers, exceedingly long winters and inexistent springs. The fall season is the only one that somewhat benefited from the change, even though it lost a reliable and well loved phenomenon: Indian summer. It didn't happen this year, the second year in a row; instead we had bone chilling rain.

I used to wait for this week, which always showed up right on schedule between November 11 and November 17, to do all the fall cleaning in warmth and comfort. For those who don't remember it Indian summer had temperatures in the seventies, blue cloudless skies and perfectly still air, which is a blessing when you're trying to get a mountain of leaves to cooperate. After I had to haul wet and heavy garden debris in less than accommodating temperatures I must say I didn't know how to appreciate this late streak of warm weather while it was still here. I hope the change is not permanent.

It rained too much lately, the plants don't like wet weather at all, there is such a concept as too much of a good thing and it certainly applies to precipitation.

There would be an advantage in shifting to a warmer climate zone if that were the case but it's not: equatorial summers do not a zone six make. The winters got longer and more unpleasant than before.

After Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving weekend brought with it a welcome break in cold weather which provided an opportunity to finish up the fall cleaning. All the leaves have been raked, all the bulbs have been planted, all the pots and trellises have been cleared of debris and stored up, it's officially winter.

I finished the fall cleaning not a moment too soon: the weather quickly turned wretched and now I'm staring at snow clouds. A winter storm announced itself from afar and I've been waiting for two days for it to make its way here. It seems it will arrive this afternoon.

I usually manage to garner excitement for the first snow of the year, but this one is coming with a blizzard. Farmer's Almanac predicts a mild winter this year, but it seems it has decided to grace us early and get a head start.

Anyway, it's winter, what can we expect?

On a more cheerful note the spring bulbs are in the ground; there are going to be a lot of beautiful flowers in spring, some of which I haven't tried before. The two roses I started under glass jars look alive and well, at least so far. I hope they grow strong roots over the winter.

Time to start armchair gardening, I guess. Oh, and the Christmas cactus bloomed.

Winter Wear

I have to admit this winter wonderland imagery looks so pretty I can't be mad at it, but the truth is the freezing rain wreaked havoc on the trees. When it was over the garden was littered with broken branches, many of them quite large.

The trees that didn't break got weighed down so much they touched the ground in places and fused with the frost on the grass. Fortunately the ice only lasted a few hours and they snapped back, no worse for wear.

Still Life

I always try to look on the bright side of things, which in this case is the opportunity to take interesting photos. Well, that's about it. Ice bad.

I'm always in awe of the fact that perennial plants manage not only to survive months and months of freezing temperatures every year, but they thrive and grow through the ordeal. What you see in this picture happens inside trees every winter: dead cells on the outer layer of the cambium are allowed to freeze and turn into something akin to glass which protects the living sapwood from winter damage.

WEEK FORTY-EIGHT

November 26th - Under the Weather

Thougths at the Beginning of Winter

The last of the bulbs arrived and I finished planting them literally hours before winter started full blast. It snowed on and off pretty much every day after that.

I usually meet the conclusion of gardening work for the year with some sadness and this year was no exception, but nature deserves its annual rest.

I guess it's never too early to plan for spring, especially this year, after I reclaimed a prime spot in full sunshine from the expansionist habits of wild honeysuckle shrubbery. I guess that means I have room for more roses now.

While planting the bulbs I couldn't help notice a few things that will make a difference next year. The perennials I started this spring had time to mature, especially the daisies, the yarrow and the speedwell, I think they are going to be splendid come summer.

The main full sun flower bed is a wreck. I haven't kept the weeds and the suckers in check and they ran rampant over the land. It's too late now to clean them up, so next spring I'm going to have a blast. At least they'll serve as a protective cover for the perennial roots, I hope. The new peonies have really grown big, so next year I expect flowers.

The pachysandra really flourished as a dry shade foundation planting, and it seems to have created a micro-climate that benefits the other shade perennials too. They seem to be thriving. Comes to prove there is no such thing as an impossible spot. To deter from that a little bit, what I thought would be a pretty bulb garden remained a day lily thicket. They won't let anything else share their place in the sun. Oh, well...

Cold Front

The winter arrived, somewhat tentative but for good. Yesterday it snowed with the large and fluffy kind of flakes which form when the air is still warm.

At least the garden is ready: the flower beds are mostly cleared of leaves, the bulbs are in the ground, the trellisses and the pots are cleaned and stored. Believe it or not, if the spirit moves you to spend time in the garden despite the cold, you might still find some stuff to do.

Winterize

Empty and store water hoses, mulch the perennials to give them some extra warmth during winter.

Protect the cold tender roses by burying them (yes, that is an actual technique, especially for tree roses - they need to be dug up, laid flat in a trench and buried until spring. That's why I never got a tree rose), or by mounding earth to cover their graft buds so you don't end up with a garden full of rootstock after a harsh winter.

Bunch winter hardy potted plants together to offer them some extra protection from the cold. Store the empty clay pots, they'll crack at the first frost. Dig up and store the tender bulbs.

Prune

The dormant period is the best time to prune trees and shrubs. I prefer to prune my roses in spring, but it can be done now. Take root and hardwood cuttings to start in cold frames.

Care for the lawn

Clear the leaves, mow if appropriate, continue the lawn maintenance program for feeding and weed prevention. Spike to aerate if you have heavy clay soil.

Care for the wildlife

Clean and refill bird feeders and hang up suet cakes for extra energy.

Plant

If the dirt is not frozen there is still time to plant bulbs, shrubs and trees.

Pure White

Snowy winters may be burdensome to us but they are great for the plants, for which the white blanket provides protection during bitterly cold streaks.

Also, in order to get the so called 'winter interest' (I say that tongue in cheek because I never actually saw it happen) - the evergreens with berries, the colorful stems, the hardscape and the fountain grasses need a white background in order to get noticed, otherwise they just blend into a bland gray noise.

Winter Hardy Roses

Speaking of winterizing roses, it is a good idea to protect the graft buds anyway, but it doesn't hurt if you pick varieties that are bred specifically for very cold climates. Many of them are raised on their own roots, so there is no graft to protect.

Sub-zero roses are the best choice for zones four and above, although they will thrive in any climate zone. A few examples - Lily Pons, Dr. Brownell, Arctic Flame and the Morden varieties from Canada.

WEEK FORTY-NINE

December 3rd - Garden Storeys

Ground Floors

They are tiny, understated and barely a few inches above the ground, but don't mistake their simple demeanor for meekness, they will take charge of a full area if left to their own devices: crawlers, ramblers and ground covers have the most aggressive spreading habits of the whole plant world. Everybody who has grown bugle weed, lily turf, creeping Jenny or periwinkles knows what I'm talking about.

Many of these plants spread by runners, which makes them relatively difficult to contain, but also, fortunately, many of them are adapted to grow in special conditions where they don't encounter a lot of competition, and that makes them great choices for dry shade, rock gardens, woodland gardens and xeriscapes.

I have a list of favorites I wouldn't want to do without, invasive or no, because the garden wouldn't be the same without them:

\- sweet violets, the joy of April's borders; they form carpets of cheerful flowers that brighten up the landscape when it's barely awake and still shivering from the cold

\- plumbago with their abundance of electric blue flowers at the beginning of fall

\- grape hyacinths, just dreamy in a rainbow array of cool hues that run the gamut from pure white to indigo.

\- moss roses, don't even need to explain those

\- last, but not least, mosses, chamomile lawns and creeping thyme, which turn flagstone paths and hard stone patios into romantic fragrant retreats.

Open Fields

The familiar jumble of the cottage garden has evolved from a strange mix of prairie and woodland natives. I say strange because dame's rocket and cone flowers require very different conditions and yet they happily coexist in the sunny border like they were meant to grow together.

Their care free blooms fit into the second tier of the sunny border since they are usually three to four foot in height, tall enough to raise their heads above the wild grasses or catch the precious sunshine dappled through rare tree foliage.

Between the sun lovers - daisies, cone flowers, asters, liatris, butterfly weed, tickseed, verbena, chamomile, lavender, sage, larkspur, penstemon, milkweed and yarrow - and the woodland natives - bee balms, lobelia, bluebells, cardinal flowers and anemones - the garden is never at a loss for color or fragrance and an attractive haven for a host of humming birds, butterflies and bees.

Creating and maintaining a thriving combination of these plants requires patience, abundant sunshine and a lot of space. The plants need two to three years to come into their own, that is just enough time for the perennials to mature and for the annuals and biennials to settle into a reliable pattern of self-propagation.

The good part about native plants is that they are resilient and very well adapted to the soil and weather in your area but don't expect them to behave or limit themselves to where they were planted: at heart they are still wild, barely different from weeds.

Shrubs and Hedges

Shrubs and hedges are the easiest way to add color, fragrance, structure and privacy to a garden, but like all good things, they have a flaw: they need a lot of maintenance in order to keep them from growing out of control.

The loveliest choices are the fragrant shrubs - ever blooming lilacs, mock oranges, viburnum, abelia, honeysuckle, but for bright pops of color nothing beats hydrangeas and azaleas.

High Canopy

How long does a tree live? The short lived ones, like palm trees and small fruit trees live fifty to sixty years.The long lived ones, like red cedars, sequoias and Bristlecone pines can live between three thousand and five thousand years.

To put that in perspective, it means that the oldest living tree was born when human civilization began. I don't even know how to feel about that. Ephemeral, I guess.

WEEK FIFTY

December 10th - Sugarplum Dreams

Candied Fruit

The process of sugaring requires a lot of patience and a bit of precision, but the results are worth it. It can be applied to firm fruits, edible flowers, citrus peel or ginger root. Here is how it's done.

Mix three cups of sugar with a cup of water and boil until it turns into a syrup. The syrup thickness is the critical element for success, it has to be right below the soft ball consistency. You can test this two ways: if you have a sugar thermometer make sure the syrup temperature maintains a constant 220F, if you don't, drip a drop of syrup in cold water, it should keep its shape but still be soft and plastic.

At this stage drop in three cups of thin sliced fruit, peels or roots (not flowers, they have to be individually hand dipped) and allow them to boil together on low heat until they become translucent.

Take the pot off the heat, strain the fruit and place it on a wire rack, cover the syrup with a damp cheesecloth as it cools and let everything rest for twenty four hours.

The next day bring the syrup to a boil remembering to maintain the optimal temperature and boil the fruit in it again for ten to fifteen minutes. Strain, replace on the rack and repeat as many times as your patience allows, usually five or six days. At this point perfection should ensue.

If you worry the syrup might crystallize add a fifth of the quantity of corn syrup or honey.

Double Cream Custard

The recipe for custard is straightforward but it requires a good level of skill to get right. In principle it is a mix of egg yolks, milk, vanilla and heavy cream, starch optional, simmered together until they reach a thick consistency. When you run a spoon through the custard it should leave a line behind. That moment shouldn't be too difficult to notice since you have to stir the cream the entire time, lest it scorches and sticks.

There are many types of custard. Some, like Creme Anglaise, are pourable, some, like Creme Legere, are whipped, and some, like Creme Bavarois, are moldable. The latter, which has gelatin and whipped cream mixed in so that it holds its shape but still remains light, is the main ingredient for the best dessert of all times - the charlotte russe.

Like all great things this culinary masterpiece is simple: line the edges and the bottom of a springform pan with lady fingers and fill with alternate layers of Bavarian cream and candied fruit. Top with whipped cream. The flavor of the custard should complement the comfit used, usually candied orange peel.

Oh, did I forget to mention? The lady fingers should be soaked in triple sec. Sweet glorious decadence!

Fruit Cake

No, not that fruit cake, please come back! I'm talking about a very simple summer dessert which consists of a light sponge cake topped with fresh fruit slices. The best choices are sour cherries, peaches, apricots and plums.

There are two quirks to this basic recipe. The six egg sponge cake is made with an additional six tablespoons of water whipped with the egg whites, and yes, it will still maintain a sponge cake texture but it must have baking powder to rise. The underside of the fruit needs to be coated with flour so it won't sink to the bottom.

Rice Pudding

There are many variations on the rice pudding recipe, but I'll share the one I grew up with.

Boil one cup of rice with one cup of water and a pinch of salt until the the rice has absorbed all the water. Add three cups of milk and one vanilla bean, sliced open with all its seeds, and boil on medium heat until the rice is soft, but not mushy, stirring constantly to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pot. When the rice is almost cooked add three quarter cups of sugar and boil for an additional three or four minutes. The mixture is supposed to be very liquid; it is poured into bowls and turns solid as it cools. Serve with a dusting of cinnamon or a dollop of fruit jam.

WEEK FIFTY-ONE

December 17th - Simple Elegance

Formal Wear

People don't usually associate petunias with formal garden design because they are too loud and colorful, but this particular cultivar simply screams elegance. I couldn't help myself and brought a flat home when I ran into it at the plant nursery, a little late in the year and with very little room left to plant it.

Formal garden design is about clarity and restraint: clean geometry, unified color scheme, order, everything nature is not. Despite my abiding love for the plant world's excess and charming stubbornness I sometimes can't escape the allure of classical design and I feel a little guilty about that.

A mass planting of same flowers, especially in a primary color, demands all your attention. It doesn't have any of the soothing qualities of a cottage garden mish-mash where you can rest your gaze on random splotches of color and smile absentminded at unexpected discoveries.

A formal garden is not made of fancy flowers, although the roses are definitely an exception to that. It is born of a scrupulous adherence to design, which is achieved with whatever plants fit the requirements for height, color, and blooming season. A formal garden is all about control.

That's probably why I will never have one: I can't bring myself to rip out anything that grows outside the lines, I can't resent nature's inherent randomness, which is its genius and the reason why I love it so much to begin with.

Fairy Thimbles

Speaking of randomness, these just sprung up on me out of thin air in an almost empty flower bed and I only noticed them when they were already three foot tall. The interesting part of this is that I've been trying to grow foxgloves for years and couldn't do it to save my life, if one ever doubts that plants have will.

Foxgloves like acidic soil and grow in part shade, in new forest clearings and places where the soil has been recently disturbed. They are biennial plants but reseed themselves eagerly if they like their growing conditions, eventually settling into a staggered pattern of growth which imparts on them a perennial like behavior.

Most people know them for their medicinal use - their leaves contain the active ingredient of a common drug that strengthens the heart muscle and reduces the edema associated with heart failure. Don't ever try to self medicate with foxgloves, they are deadly poisonous, and be careful about planting them around young children and pets.

Garden foxgloves have been bred to display a compact habit and bloom twice as much, but it is the wild ones that fired the imagination and became the stuff of fairy tales. At almost eight foot tall they command the landscape bearing large clusters of purple bells which sway gently in the wind with the grace of sylphs. Folk tales say that happens because they bow their heads to the invisible fairies passing by.

Naked Seeds

They don't produce flowers, they don't bear fruit, many of them have needles for leaves. Their seeds are exposed, without a shell.

What's so special then about gymnosperms? They are weird and they are old: over three hundred and fifty million years old. Next time you see a ginkgo tree remember that the division it belongs to only has one species, genetically closer to the conifers than to the deciduous trees it resembles, and that this species was around when dinosaurs were still roaming the earth. Also keep in mind that the specimen you're looking at will most likely live to be a thousand.

Flowers in Winter

During mild winters these tough perennials start blooming at the end of January, often underneath the snow. Hellebores' evergreen leaves are designed to endure harsh winters: glossy and stiff, with sharp jagged edges, they remind me of sheet metal. As spring approaches the plants start sprouting new foliage and allow their old leaves, which get used up during the cold season, to die down to the ground in order to make room for the fresh growth.

Maybe that is the secret of their resilience, relatively few plants enjoy the advantage of an active metabolism during winter, or have the grit to sustain it.

WEEK FIFTY-TWO

December 24th - Denver in Winter

City Square

The first thing that strikes the visitor when they arrive in Denver is how friendly and laid back this city feels. Everybody looks content, nobody is in a rush and life as we know it feels alright just the way it is.

This feeling suffuses the pedestrian streets, the cozy squares and plazas, and especially this little gem we happened to discover when we ventured off Larimer street in search of a place to eat.

The Kettle Arcade, a historical landmark dating back to 1873, opens to a charming two level courtyard tucked away from the street and guarded at the entrance by a little angel statue. There is something about this place that makes it whimsical, like you have suddenly wondered into a fairy tale, and the holiday decorations amplify this impression.

If you walk through the arcade back into Larimer Street at night you'll be welcomed by a festival of lights. The square and the adjacent pedestrian streets revel in the spirit of Christmas, there is light and music and good food and happy people strolling leisurely, do I need to say more?

Denver Botanic Garden

I always thought that winter garden interest was a mythical construct, like the dodo bird or the unicorn. It took a trip to the botanical garden in Denver, which hosts the largest collection of plants from cold temperate climates, as well as the world's first xeriscape, to see it in action. Even at the peak of dormancy its cold landscape is still a garden, filled with color and life.

Tall tufts of bright yellow grasses swayed gracefully in the breeze amongst clumps of fresh berries, glistening on barren branches like little polished gems - black shiny onyx, milky translucent moonstone, red orange carnelian, blue chalcedony. Kelly green bamboo thickets surrounded the dark green mounds of dwarf pines, a high contrasting background for the silver mesa grasses. Clumps of bright orange reeds stopped at the edges of the frozen ponds like small fires.

There was such peace and stillness in the sleeping garden, under a generous Colorado sunshine, the peace before time, where worry and care have no room. Not a passing cloud, not a rustle of leaves, a silent sanctuary for the soul.

I sat on a little stone bench inside the bird sanctuary and rested for a bit, thinking of nothing, wishing for nothing, bothered by nothing, perfectly at peace. That probably explains why the park hosts regular yoga sessions when weather permits.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Don't let the bright sunshine fool you. Denver is a mile above sea level and this picture was taken at the end of December. The still chill had drawn complicated geometric patterns on the ice of the frozen lake, strange linear patterns reminiscent of stained glass, and I wouldn't have known why they looked like they did if I hadn't seen them before, rendered on the rear window of my car by frigid single digit temperatures.

I guess it must get very cold at night, especially in a place that doesn't boast much of a cloud cover.

Things to do in Denver

What's so special about Denver? Outdoor concerts in a natural red stone auditorium, painting and pottery studios, art shows, night life, hiking, sunshine and enjoying nature. If you're into yoga, it's everywhere.

Little railcars, pedestrian streets, museums, street art, try green chile, hot springs, go brewery hopping, watch money being made at the US Mint, but most of all, did I mention everybody looks happy and relaxed? I feel like I missed something...
