

WEEK ONE

January 2nd - Again, January...

Garden Journaling

I sat out in the garden yesterday, steeling precious moments between rain falls, a rare treat at this time of year. I'm so relieved that I got the extra week at the beginning of December, which allowed me to finish up the yard cleaning. It would be really depressing to watch the habitual pile of slimy, rotting debris that I can't touch for another three months.

As it is right now, the garden isn't in disarray, it's just sleeping. The veggie patch is clean, the planters are clean, the trellises are clean, the flower beds are...well, not so much, but that is a concern for spring.

It is important to watch the garden during the dormant season to make a clear assessment of how much room is still available for planting. For instance, even now, when the perennials are dormant and many of them have died down to the ground, if I throw a needle in the sunny border it will not reach the ground. I'm guessing that means I've reached full capacity.

Of course the wilderness tries to take over it every year, and I can tell you from previous experience, the wilderness is relentless and rapacious. It's an endless struggle.

I guess after so many years and so many tries I'll have to admit that hybrid roses don't much appreciate my garden. The once blooming shrubs are thriving, but all the noble roses are dead. I could blame the weather, the soil, or the hand of destiny, but the end result is that I'm slowly growing my stock of Dr. Huey.

Maybe if weather gives us a break, the French lilacs and the Great Southern magnolia will bloom this year, it's been a while.

Planning for Spring

Usually by this time I'm already overtaken by cabin fever and dreaming of beautiful summer days, but this year, with the exception of a few days of brutal cold at the beginning of the month, it seems weather forgot winter exists.

I hesitate to mention this because I don't want to jinx it; for sure the second I write the words another freeze from a place that will remain unmentioned is going to be upon us, but so far the temperatures have been in the fifties and sixties, mostly accompanied by rain.

I am a bit weather confused right now, because I don't know if I'm waiting for spring or still ending fall, but no matter.

Some of the spring planning took place a few months ago: the bulbs are planted and I propagated some of the existing perennials.

What really needs work this spring is an area in full shade where the roots of a mature tree make lawn survival impossible. I've been planning to replace that hopeless patch of patchy grass with a shade garden for a while now, but I never got to planting it, and in the meantime a good portion of that area got taken over by wild shrubs and weedy volunteers.

I can already picture the lush leaves of hostas and hellebores, mixed with many other, hopefully less common shade perennials, like Solomon's Seal, tricyrtis, bergenia and monkshood. Of course, cleaning the area takes precedence, I need to dig out clumps that have grown so big they are peeking out through the branches of the crab apple tree.

Another shade garden. I'm going to become an expert in shade soon.

Little Stars

Through interesting circumstances, now I have something that approximates full sun exposure in a small portion of the back yard. Lavish sunshine always conjures the image of that dreamy rose, you know the ones I'm talking about, the ones you only see in gardening books. Hundreds of petals, fragrance, perpetual bloom, the works.

Now, I know better, because I managed to kill eight or nine of them by planting them in this spot. They were fragrant, too. Besides, if I add one more plant to that flower bed it's going to burst.

Fragrance

If you are planting for fragrance, don't forget the annuals: stock, nicotiana, petunias, and sweet peas. I neglected planting annuals in the last few years, for two reasons. The weather was uncooperative and the flower beds are jam packed with well established perennials.

I'll try to find some room for them this year, even if I have to plant them in pots. The purple petunias I had on the balcony last year scented the whole back yard for months. But so did the garden phlox. But so did the petunias. I'll add some annuals, I'll find room somehow.

WEEK TWO

January 9th - Warm, Warmer, Warmest

Rain

It's rainy and warm, a lot more like March than January. I worry a little bit that the bulbs are going to emerge ahead of their time, I can already see leaves and I'm pretty sure winter is coming back. In fact, the end of the month already promises to bring back lower temperatures, although still above average.

I could fall back on the regular gardening activities for January, if you can call them that, but the catalogs haven't started arriving in the mail yet, so I have to make do with potted plants on the window sill.

There is also a fragrant hyacinth on the table right in front of me. Every year I get one and after it finishes blooming, I plant it in the garden. I noticed they tend to fare better than the fall bulbs, in part because the squirrels have more difficulty digging them up.

I visited the plant nursery, with the excuse of looking for African violets, and, as expected, it is way too early for garden related purchases: no plants or seeds yet, just dormant shrubs and trees. I did find the violets, of course.

I guess I'll have to wait patiently for the Amaryllis and the paperwhites to bloom in a week or two, maybe.

Winter is such a bore! What is the point of a season during which you can't spend time outside? I bought my favorite gardening book again, one which I had and lost, I can't remember when. I guess I'll brush up on the theory for now.

Medicinal Herbs

The first time I saw an herb garden in a public park I asked myself what was the point of it? The fact that it occupied a small nook in the middle of the rose garden, at a time when all the roses were in bloom, didn't help its cause very much. I know better now.

Of course, I selected the herbs for my own garden according to their flowering habits, unfair as it may seem; nobody grows herbs for their blooming prowess.

The one good thing about herbs is that they pretty much take care of themselves. They weather drought, heat, freezes, they're the ultimate "set it and forget it plant".

They enjoy clay soils, dry, hot weather and plenty of air movement, if you want to pamper them, but they'll grow anywhere, as long as they have sunshine. The Mediterranean darlings, like French lavender and rosemary, will not survive harsh winters outdoors, but most perennial herbs won't be affected even by subzero temperatures.

They tend to grow enthusiastically once established, and they need to be hard pruned on a regular basis to keep their foliage healthy and flavorful.

Be mindful of the spacing requirements, herbs grow up to five time their original size and they will end up smothering each other. They need good air movement, otherwise they develop black spot and powdery mildew, especially during long stretches of rainy weather.

When you harvest herbs, always pick the fresh, young top growth. Don't feel tempted to pick the broader leaves at the base, the plant uses them as energy storage and their flavor is not that great anyway. By picking the top growth you encourage the plant to leaf out more, instead of growing leggy.

I don't know if herbs protect their turf (some plants release natural herbicides into the soil to eliminate the competition), but I noticed that the herb patch stays relatively weed free.

As far as flowers are concerned, they bloomed more than their counterparts in the flower border last year. Keep in mind that some herbs bloom, ripen and die, so if you want to keep calendula and basil alive until the end of fall, don't let their flowers go to seed. Even herbs that don't die down after blooming, like lovage and dill, will put all their energy into their offspring instead of the foliage.

For Sun

For years I've been trying to find a balance in the perennial flower bed that would provide continuous bloom through all the warm season, and it's not an easy thing to do. The bulk of bloom happens mid-spring, early summer, and then I'm left with sedums for two whole months.

Daisies belong to this problem. It's not that I don't love them, which I do, it's just that their bloom is often overshadowed by roses, lilies, and every tall annual with large flowers, like zinnias, for instance, and they fade just when their bloom is needed most, in August.

And Shade

I'm sorry I misjudged hostas. Speaking of the late summer slump, they're always there to save the day; their bloom is sometimes just adequate, it is often enthusiastic, but they never disappoint.

One thing about hostas, they are shade plants, and their foliage absolutely needs it, the sun can scorch them to nothingness on hot summer days, but if they never see the sun at all, they will not bloom, I learned that the hard way. If you are looking for interesting foliage for a spot in deep shade, by all means give them a try, but for flowers they'll need part sun or light dappled shade.

WEEK THREE

January 16th - Evergreens

Purple Sage

Please admire the mighty sage, which took over the herb garden during the summer, before I trim its expansionist habits. It bore clusters of lavender blue flowers last year, so pretty to behold that I ignored good gardening practices and didn't prune it, and now I'm looking at the consequences. The marjoram didn't last a month, and I really, really wanted to have it in the garden, so lady sage will be encouraged to behave itself this spring, so that it maintains an appropriate size, stops crowding the thyme and does not sprawl all over the lawn.

Sage is easily propagated by wood cuttings, so I've heard, but I never actually tried this method myself. I did try starting it from seed, and can attest to the fact that it isn't an easy plant to propagate this way. This method does work, however, if you've got your heart set on using it. As a matter of fact, I think we might be looking at the seed started plant, but I can't be sure.

It really likes clay, as you can tell, and I was surprised to learn that it too is evergreen, although during really frigid winters it will die down to the ground completely.

There are two basic types of herbs, and they like different growing conditions, so don't mix them up in the border: the sun lovers - rosemary, lavender, sage, thyme, oregano, which thrive in dry soils and full sun, and the moisture lovers - mint, lemon balm, chives, parsley, dill, and basil, which need to be watered regularly and protected from excessive heat in order to be happy.

There is also a third category, which likes full sun, but needs to keep its roots cool and moist; lovage, marjoram and lemon verbena belong to this category. These herbs tend to take their time to adapt to a place, and will grow very large if they like their conditions, but that doesn't happen very often.

Winter Lavender

I know what you are thinking, lavender in winter, right? We didn't actually have winter yet, so that probably explains it.

I tried lavender for many years before this one finally took. I'm not sure what happened this time, maybe it is its location on a sunny slope, or the fact that it is somewhat sheltered, or the fact that the local climate is slowly warming up and shifting closer to its comfort range.

Last year I got my first harvest of lavender buds, of which I'm very proud, and the plant continued to bloom sporadically throughout the summer.

Although the lavender buds are the choice crop, the foliage is fragrant too, and will do fine in potpourris and herb sachets.

If you want beautiful flowers that attract bees to your garden, try Spanish, or butterfly lavender. It has a little clump of petals at the end of the inflorescence, which makes it look like a butterfly just landed on it. Spanish lavender likes hot and humid summers and will not survive winter outdoors north of zone nine. It is not the first choice for cooking and medicinal uses, that honor belongs to the French lavender, which, in turn, will not survive climates colder than zone seven.

English lavender is the choice for those who live in areas with cold winters, up to zone five. It is winter hardy, fragrant, flowers abundantly and will grace your garden for many years.

Yep!

I forgot to mention, although I noticed it in years past. The money plant is an evergreen. It keeps its broad leaves even during the coldest of winters, peculiar for a biennial plant, although it makes sense, if you think about it, if it needs to build up its strength to bear flowers and seed pods the following year.

These plants sprout out of thin air, I swear. I have no idea where this one came from, there weren't any in the back yard last year. It white flower clusters have a delicate fragrance, something between stock and sweet peas.

Right on Time

I was starting to wonder what happened to the hellebores. Their blooming time is late January, and they hardly push past the end of the month, barring extreme weather. During mild winters they bloom even earlier.

I thought they missed the start this year, but no, here they are, hiding under dead foliage. I have pictures of these plants from previous years, in bloom under a full snow cover. Just keep this detail in mind when you see them still in bloom come June.

WEEK FOUR

January 23rd - Memories of Summer

Green Flowers

Have you ever had this sinking feeling, when you want to try a plant you've never grown before, and you look at the beautiful photos on the seed packet, that there is absolutely no way this botanical wonder will ever grow in your garden?

I'm not one to dismiss instinct, it is usually based on a lot of fast logical reasoning and processing of already stored information that goes on in the back of your brain while you're minding your daily routine, but that doesn't mean it's always right. Fortunately for me, it wasn't this time, because they did sprout, and root, and grow big and strong.

I found out after the fact that Bells of Ireland are among the plants that need to be planted directly outdoors, information which would have served me well last year, before I started them in pods.

The thing about starting perennials from seed is that it doesn't matter how many of them you get to germinate, it only matters whether you manage to keep any of them at all. The germination rate of perennial plants is significantly lower than that of annuals, and their seedlings start out weak and fragile and grow very slowly, and you shouldn't place the same expectations on them as you do on tomatoes or marigolds. I had years when not even one little seedling emerged from a full packet of seeds, and yet I tried them again the following spring. In other years, a full tray of seedlings withered to nothing in the weeks that followed, for no reason I could fathom. Usually they give up the ghost once outside, because they can't adjust to being exposed to the weather. Success is sometimes circumstance, sometimes luck, it really doesn't make a lot of difference; if only one out of an entire packet of seeds makes it, you will have that plant in your garden, one you would have had a hard time to find fully grown. I have been fortunate to get quite a few less common perennials, like Canterbury bells, Maltese cross, fringed bleeding hearts, giant delphiniums, and now bells of Ireland.

The only things Irish about these beauties are their color and their name, they are in fact natives of Turkey.

I learned that the plants develop a long tap root, the main reason why they don't tolerate transplanting, and my reason to hope that their eerie green blossoms will return to the garden even stronger this year. They are supposed to bring good luck.

Summer Landscape

This is why I am so looking forward to next summer! I guess there's the answer for why there is no more space left for planting in the full sun flower bed and why I should leave it alone.

I'm still peeved about the roses, which should be in there somewhere, buried three levels deep under this vegetal exuberance, but if I really want to try any of them at all, I will have to expand the flower bed, to give them room to breathe, they really hate being crowded.

It is the shade garden that really needs attention this year, anyway. Unusual circumstances brought to it the gift of poison ivy a couple of years ago, which I managed to eliminate before it got a chance to make itself at home, but now I'm reluctant to sink my hands into the clumps of weeds and pull them, like I used to do, because I don't know what lurks underneath. I guess ignorance really is bliss, because I had no clue what was lurking underneath before, and didn't care, but I digress.

This brings up the gardening activity of the week: consulting plant catalogs to figure out what shade loving plants to choose. Most shade plants like at least a small amount of sunshine, even if dappled through tree canopies. There are very few true full shade plants that will bloom, and that's what I need to find.

For instance, hostas won't do for a north side foundation planting. Not even as foliage plants. They diminished so dramatically and in such a short period of time that I barely got to move them before they died off.

It is time to finally try spiderwort and ligularia, which beckon from the shade section of the plant nursery every time I pass them by, and maybe bergenia. Maybe I'll give aconite another try too, and definitely plant some wind anemones, in the brighter spots.

Medicinals

If you use plants for beauty products or home health remedies, there are a few things to keep in mind. The green pharmacy is still a pharmacy, even if the methods of extraction are crude and ballpark, by chemistry standards, and it needs to follow the same rules: impeccable hygiene standards, careful dosage and meticulous labeling.

Also don't forget there is an expiration date on your home made health and beauty potions, which don't have preservatives to keep them from spoiling, so check them regularly and dispose of all whose look or smell is off.

And Aromatics

Like most perennials, herbs take a few years to mature before they are ready for harvest. I haven't picked any flowers off the Saint John's Wort yet, maybe this summer. The lavender is just starting to produce large enough quantities and the yarrows are, frankly, to beautiful to touch.

The mint, which experienced a few years of unchallenged domination in the shade, suddenly died off, and its replacement really doesn't appreciate full sun exposure. A plant that really wants to be moved in the shade and leave precious sunny real estate available for planting. A win-win situation if I've ever seen one.

WEEK FIVE

January 30th - Sort of Gardening

February Matters

February is not the loveliest of months, but it has one redeeming quality: it's seed starting time. Depending on your hardiness zone, February brings the seed starting trays, which I will dig out of the garden shed early this year, because I promised myself to give the perennials a couple of extra weeks indoors.

Starting plants indoors presents a few challenges, which is why timing is essential to the success of this endeavor, albeit for the basics, like tomatoes and marigolds, it really doesn't make much of an impact, since they will pick up and grow fast immediately after being planted outdoors.

Anything beyond that will benefit from selecting the best planting time: too much time indoors and the roots get stunted, the plants start getting weak and leggy and prone to every plant pest and disease known to science. I have often wondered how can a plant get aphids or mildew indoors, from a sterile planting medium that is completely isolated from potential sources of infection, but this is the state of fact, so I'll take it at face value.

If they spend too little time indoors, they simply die as soon as they are moved outside.

There is a precise equilibrium point where the plants should be ready to be planted; keeping them inside past that point will make them waste energy trying to adjust to conditions that don't favor them, instead of using it to develop and get well established.

Unfortunately, acting at precisely that time is not exclusively in the gardener's control. We all watched leggy plants creep out of their case and sprawl around the room, while we waited for the unexpected May freeze to go away, or mourned the precious sprouts that got wiped into oblivion by one more cold night than they were able to tolerate. Given that the sprawling plants, however stunted and chlorotic, have much better chances of survival, I usually err on the side of caution and keep them inside.

The perennials don't even feature into this equation, because they take so long to germinate, and even longer to develop to the point where they can be safely planted outside, so I'm guessing planting time is right about now.

Groundhog Day

As expected, February brought back the dreary weather, because it's winter, and it's supposed to be unpleasant. You would be surprised how precisely tuned the plants' biological clocks are to the larger harmonies of nature.

You walk outside in seventy degrees weather, in the middle of January, and wonder how come there aren't buds on the trees, or plants shooting out of the ground. I wish I knew what triggered the plants to start their growing cycle, but they always seem to know exactly when it is safe for them to come out, and are so seldom.wrong that you're better off guessing the weather patterns according to their growth than the other way around.

For instance, the hellebores are late this year. They have started to bud out, but they are at least a couple of weeks behind, which tells me that we are going to have more cold weather coming, and it will stretch out for a bit. Hey, it's almost Groundhog Day, anyway, so I'll make my prediction. What's Phil got that I don't? I cast a shadow.

There are no daffodils or hyacinths in sight either, and the spring bulbs tend to leaf out really early when they sense spring is close.

That being said, the weather has been unseasonably warm and humid so far, which makes the fact that the plants are biding their time even more peculiar.

Winter Garden

I took a short garden tour and re-buried all the hyacinth and lily bulbs that the squirrels had dug up. I can only hope that the rest of them are still in the ground, for the most part. There is nothing to see yet, as expected at this time of year, even if the weather has been mild.

The plants are still dormant but, weather permitting, I'll start the spring cleaning early this year. This will give me the opportunity to assess how the perennials are doing, figure out which of them need moving or dividing and pull the weeds before the spring growth spurt.

Scented Shade

I tried bugbane three times in three different locations, and it died out on me every single time, to my distress. I'm keeping my fingers crossed to see if the last one reemerges this spring, the one I planted it in dappled shade.

I really like bugbane, especially after I saw its blooms, which smell like vanilla and grape soda. The mature plant is a prize for any garden, with its striking dark foliage and its large fragrant flowers that grow really tall in the shade and peak right at the beginning of fall, when the other plants tend to slow down. Maybe third time's a charm.

WEEK SIX

February 6th - February

Fickle Weather

February weather is so predictable. The second you get comfortable with the balmy temperatures, a winter storm is sure to come. And come it did, with lots of snow and thunder, strange as that is.

Back indoors, I'm doing what I do every winter, wait for it to be over. It's sunny, it's snowing, it's sunny again, all within five minutes. Just trying to keep track of it makes me tired.

I don't want to jinx it, like I did last year, and the year before that, but the Southern magnolia came through the cold season like a champion, without any frost damage, at least so far, so maybe it will bloom this year, I haven't seen it in bloom in a long time.

Every now and then the cloud cover breaks and a little patch of blue sky shows through. Filled with hope, I checked out the forecast for the rest of the month and it predicted as dreary a weather as it is to be expected for this time of year. It is, after all, February. It's supposed to be cold.

The plant catalogs have started pouring in the mail, all beautiful and in vibrant color. Just a few more weeks, just a few more weeks!

Perennial Challenge

Growing a perennial garden places one in the weird circumstance of having to work around the clock without actually planting anything. In a perennial garden, everything revolves around maintenance.

Here are a few challenges.

The perennial flower bed can't be tilled, because most of its residents do not like their roots disturbed, so the soil tends to get very hard, and the water runs off it, instead of going to the roots. The hard soil creates favorable conditions for perennial weeds, whose roots also benefit from not being disturbed. A good layering of mulch helps with both of these problems to some degree.

Perennials bloom in flushes, there are very few of them that produce flowers through the entire growing season, and all those spent blooms need to be pruned and dead headed regularly, to keep the garden healthy and pretty. Also, some perennials die down to the ground after bloom, leaving large bare spots in the flower bed that can't be planted over.

A perennial flower bed will never look neat and tidy, like annual plantings do. Perennials weave and mingle, shift, topple over, and develop beyond their charted growth range. This is part of their charm and should not be perceived as a defect, but don't expect them to behave.

Perennial plants settle all their territorial claims among themselves, the gardener's efforts to help them along are usually fruitless. The wise person lets them duke it out until they find a stable configuration, and then works with, and not against it.

Most plants like to bloom in April, May and June. Come July the garden starts to pace itself and by the end of August you are left with hostas and stonecrops, together with a lot of tired, not very attractive foliage.

That said, how wonderful is it to look out into the dormant garden in the middle of winter and know that everything is already there, right under the surface, ready to come out as soon as the weather turns, with vigor and abundance.

Fall Color

Here it is, the goldenrod. The first comment about this lovely fall bloomer is that it is not for the flower garden, it is for the wild open meadow. It will become invasive, due to its aggressive root system that spreads and takes over the underground before you can see anything grow. It is relentless and will choke all the other plants around it in the process.

Every year I barely refrain myself from pulling every one of its rapacious shoots the second it emerges, but then I remember this image and reconsider. That's all the fall color, right there. I reached a compromise, where I pull it from the front of the border and keep it contained in the background, much as I'm able. Once the flowers fade, it basically turns into ragweed, a plant it is often mistaken for. Proceed at your own risk.

Woodland Favorites

If you are blessed with woodland humus, which is not likely to occur naturally in the average suburban setting, your shade garden will be filled with color and fragrance way before the leaves grow back on the trees. The spring bulbs are kind of a given, but here is a list of less common flowers that are guaranteed to delight: hepatica, arums, Jack in the Pulpit, trillium, Solomon's Seal, bluebells, fringed bleeding heart, buttercups, and wild violets.

I'm hoping Jack in the Pulpit turns female this year (the plant choses its gender according to the growing conditions for the year). I would love to see the fruit, whose configuration is believed to predict the quantity distribution for the most common fall crops.

WEEK SEVEN

February 13th - Sweet Valentine

About that Time when I Found a Tree

So, I took a stroll through the garden, encouraged by the unusually warm weather and happy to be able to prune the rose bushes early and finally move that peony buried underneath them, when I found a tree. Happy Valentine's Day to me!

I don't believe the previous sentence managed to convey my stupor and embarrassment, as I am staring at it in disbelief. I found a tree! In my own garden. How off one's game does one have to be to have a real, full grown tree sneak up on them!

Not that I don't appreciate it, mind you, how do you not appreciate the gift of a tree, it's just that I know every square inch of my little patch of heaven, and for the life of me, I can't figure out how this happened.

I don't know what tree it is, and I hesitate to make assumptions at this point, given that I missed it in my daily gardening routine until it reached a 3" caliper. If that doesn't phase you, it means it's about nine feet tall. If I had to guess, it's probably another elm, which didn't seem to have any problem growing big and mighty from underneath the thicket of wild honeysuckle that got the better of me in the last few years; at least I have this pathetic excuse for why I never noticed it.

A whole tree. My garden is really spoiling me at this point. I usually get perennials that multiply, and volunteers grown from seeds carried by the wind, I even got a zone eight evergreen vine growing with a vengeance, but I must confess I never expected a tree.

I believe thank you is in order.

If it is another elm, it will have to settle its territory with the surrounding vegetation later on, given that its older family member is very large, with a trunk that one person can't wrap their arms around and towering over the house at a respectable fifty feet, but that's tomorrow's problem.

Before Planting

Speaking of gardening, it looks like I can get an early start on spring cleaning, at least. The bulbs and buds are still stubbornly holding on to their dormant status, but the first flowers of spring, the cheerful buttercups, are already in bloom.

It is very warm outside, with temperatures in the sixties and seventies at times, and as much as I hate winter, I can't help feeling uncomfortable about that. I guess this area is officially a zone six now.

The garden is as messy as it gets at this time of year, but I'm looking forward to scraping off all the plant debris to find out what's underneath. I finally moved the Pink Sorbet peony, if what I did can be called 'moving'. It came out in many pieces which are now gracing several areas of the garden. Between the brutal transplantation job and the fact that I disturbed it in spring, which is the worst possible time, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it makes it. At least it's in full sun now, and if nothing bothers it going further, it will have better growing conditions.

Other than that, my precious is buried under a pile of dead leaves and sticks, taking its sweet time to come back to life.

I can't wait to clear up the area around the crab apple tree for my new shade garden. That flower bed is a going to be a dream in blush pink and bright blue come spring.

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is dormant now. Keeping it on the window sill indoors altered its natural cycles. It blooms at random times, during summer too, so I'm guessing it decided to take a break for now, and leave the flower production to the Christmas cactus, which is also out of sync.

The spring planting takes precedence now, and all the tiny seeds are planted in their starting trays, waiting for nature to take its course. Nothing to see yet. I'm watching them like a hawk and counting the days.

Color for the End of Summer

For the seventh time in a row I started lupines, mostly because they make me feel better about my horticultural knowledge. Their palmate leaves can't be mistaken for anything else, and I get to go through the garden and say "and this is a lupine" instead of "aagh...", but they only made it to bloom once, and I believe those were full grown plants that I'm talking about.

I'll keep at it however, you know how perseverance is the mother of success. I hope I won't have to pull an Edison on this one, 'cause ninety nine years is a long time.

WEEK EIGHT

February 20th - Signs of Life

Aspirational February

A few days of mild weather provided the perfect opportunity for a little garden sprucing. After I pulled countless wild honeysuckle clumps from the northern flower beds, all the while counting my blessings for the rain which softened the dirt and made this endeavor possible, I couldn't help but notice that the garden beds look a lot tidier than I thought they would. Much of the mess was the wild brush, apparently, the border plants are relatively well-behaved.

Spring cleaning is nowhere near complete, but a fresh stretch of cold weather hit pause on my gardening enthusiasm and banished me indoors. Now I'm sitting here, looking out the window with growing impatience, and waiting to go back to my beloved and finish the task as soon as the chill subsides.

The perennials started coming out, just in time for the new freeze. The wild roses are leafing out, and the new shade garden under the crab apple tree is cleaned up and ready for planting. Its dwellers won't arrive for another month, which allows me the time to actually plan a layout to which I haven't given much thought.

The new shade perennials are mostly woodland natives I've never grown before. It would be nice to see flowers in that area, besides the blue eyed Marys that yield a good flush of color in May.

Meanwhile I'm feeding my yearning for all things green and flowery with these potted plants I keep grabbing at the grocery store on my way to the cash register. They are all yellow. Maybe it's a sign.

Buttercups

Most years, the buttercups are the first spring bulbs to bloom, and this one was no exception. It's hard to tell what's underneath the thick layer of dead plant mater which accumulates over the winter. Plants are jolted into rapid growth as soon as they are relieved of the blanket of debris, but with the arctic blast coming back they could use some cold weather protection for now, so I'll wait.

I'm curious what's underneath, as I am every spring. I can make up a few hyacinths, the occasional daffodil and of course, the ever increasing clumps of day lilies.

The little plants in the starting trays are very slow to start this year, I'm trying to figure out why. Even the tomatoes took their sweet time to germinate and did so only in part, which is a first. I got many lupines, at least for now.

By the way weather is behaving, I have time. I'd love to be wrong, for once, and miss starting the vegetable garden early, but I know it's not going to happen. We'll have our April fool's late freeze, it's the law of the land.

Well, at least we're getting closer to the official start of spring, if only on the calendar. It's very nice outside, if you look out the window. Thirty degrees and sunny, with white puffy clouds and blue skies.

Like Winter Didn't Even Happen

I might have jinxed this one. Between the time I wrote the title of this article and now, we've been blessed with the threat of a new winter storm, said to bring temperatures down into the teens again. I vigorously protest!

I've so had it with winter, can't we just, for once, not have it show up again and again until the middle of April? Of course the sage won't care either way, because it can survive in the tundra if it has to, but still.

Bashful Blooms

The spring flowers have started to come out, reluctantly. Crocuses are not my pride and joy, usually. I plant a good number of them every year, but whether they get eaten over the winter or they don't like the growing conditions, their rarefied blooms barely show up, and always in yellow.

I don't know if the purple ones have tastier bulbs, but I've never seen one, in so many years. At least this yellow one decided to represent.

WEEK NINE

February 28th - What to Do with Roses

Health and Beauty

There is no better flower for mature and thinning skin than the rose. It restores the complexion to its elastic, youthful glow, and it does so in the most gentle way. Its active compounds lock moisture in while they nourish, tighten, and restore the skin, especially if it has started showing signs of age or sun damage. The contribution of the rose to beauty regimens, however, goes far beyond its physical properties. Roses speak to the heart, soothe the mind, and lift the spirit, almost like magic, and when the spirit feels younger, the body follows suit.

You don't have to devise elaborate beauty treatments to take advantage of its therapeutic qualities, the rose is sophisticated enough in itself. Even the simplest things will be pampering and effective: rose water used as toner, to refine the pores and calm the skin, a few drops of rose otto blended in jojoba oil to cleanse and moisturize your complexion at the end of the day, a handful of dried rose petals ground into a find dust to add to a clay mask or to a fragrant bath salt, a rose infusion to use for a quick steam facial, even something as simple as adding rose petals to your bath.

In fact, the less you do with the rose, the more powerful its impact. Its classic scent blends well with almost any fragrance, a feature which makes it a must have for perfumery, but keep its essence unaltered. Use it alone, whether it be in a toner, a lotion, a bath oil or a cream, to better appreciate its exquisite fragrance and its health enhancing properties.

Ruby Sweets

Where I grew up, roses belonged in the pantry. Between the rose preserves, the rose syrups, and the rose water in pastry dough, the aristocratic flowers doubled up as bona fide cooking ingredients.

What do roses taste like? They are a bit of an acquired taste. Rose preserves are extremely fragrant, they make you feel almost like you are eating perfume, and their principal ingredient, the delicate petals, vigorously scrubbed with sugar and lemon until their velvety surfaces become thin and translucent like rice paper, screech between your teeth refusing to be chewed. Their consistence reminds me of cellophane.

The confection is very concentrated, you can't eat more than one delightful teaspoon at a time, and it feels almost sinful to taste the ruby colored spoonful of fragrant petals, which seem reserved for beings above the human condition.

The finished preserves, jams and jellies become cooking ingredients in and of themselves, and end up rolled inside crepes and pastries, tinting fine custards and filling beignets.

If you want to try your hand at making rose petal preserves, keep in mind that the rose variety is very important. Only the most fragrant damasks are fitting for this purpose, Kazanlik and Rose de Rescht are traditionally used. I have seen white preserve roses, but I've never seen the preserves themselves. The old fashioned confections are almost always a deep ruby, the trademark color of this delightful treat. Rubbing the petals with lemon juice helps maintain the color intensity.

I'm sitting here, sipping a delightful cup of rose petal tea, and it tastes very much like the rose preserves I remember from my childhood. I wonder why I never thought of trying it before.

Pamper Your Spirits

Strangely enough, the saying 'stop and smell the roses' is based on actual fact: the rose scent does provide actual stress relief. If the aromatherapy alone doesn't work, kick it up a notch and brew yourself a nice cup of rose petal tea. It eases tension and anxiety and promotes restful sleep, but be careful not to overindulge, roses are astringent, in fact their effects on your stomach are similar to those of mint tea.

Natural First Aid

It appears that chamomile and lavender are not the only go to plants for minor cuts and scrapes. Roses make a decent first aid for cuts and scrapes, due to their astringent and anti inflammatory properties. Their essence is cooling and they are very effective in soothing the pain, swelling and redness from minor burns, scrapes and insect bites. In general, rose extract calms irritated skin.

WEEK TEN

March 6th - Sprouts

A Pot of Mixed Basil

I always have a few pots of herbs on the balcony, which get to bask in the sunshine all summer long. Contrary to my expectations, herbs are not the kind of care free plants that will forgive you if you forget to water them, not even the drought friendly rosemary.

They may require a little more work, but I like having them there, lost among the pots of petunias and moss roses. On a whim, I decided to start the basil indoors this year, something I usually don't bother to do for herbs, and it returned the favor by germinating very quickly and immediately engaging in a growth spurt. By the time I move this pot outside, it may be fully grown.

Since the purple basil is more attractive and the green one is more flavorful, the pot features a blend of both varieties.

Basil is a sensitive herb: it likes sunshine but wilts quickly if it doesn't get plenty of water. Some treat it as holy, old wives' tales say that it drives men to madness, or that it is the plant of the basilisk and it has the ability to protect people from venomous bites. Some legends even say that it can guide the dead safely into the afterlife.

At the very least, it is said to bring happiness and prosperity into the household. I will let you in on a little secret: all herbs do. Just plant as many of them as you can and enjoy them all summer long in delicious healthy dishes, they're well worth your trouble.

Starting the Vegetable Garden

Here's to this year's crop! I decided to try Independence Day tomatoes, and learned that it has a much lower germination rate than other varieties. Let's hope they make up for it with taste.

The seedlings look sturdy and enthusiastic, and have grown large enough that I don't have to worry about them anymore.

I haven't fully planned this summer's vegetable garden yet, but it will be pretty much the same as it is every year: tomatoes, peppers, sweet and hot, eggplants, squashes, beans, and cucumbers, together with an assortment of kitchen herbs.

The veggie patch is still buried under last year's growth, an unfortunate setback due to the weather. As I said, March is a fickle and deceitful month, you can't trust it enough to clean up, not to mention plant!

It is so cold that I haven't dared go outside for an entire week, but I know that some of the plants that decided to brave the world early are not faring very well right now. They'll recover, I hope.

Fifteen degrees, even negative temperatures, if you add the wind chill. Not all one is hoping for in spring, I must say.

The little crabapple tree had already started opening its leaf buds, just in time for the freeze. This too shall pass; in the meantime I get to enjoy the little make shift hothouse in my living room.

Visitor

It is true that I cheat a little bit, the wildlife in the back yard had been fed a steady diet of calorie rich foods during the last couple of weeks. It's not by design, I just don't seem to get baked goods right lately. The squirrels are not choosy, given that however bad my cooking, it's still better than tree bark.

This little cardinal found the stash of crackers, checked it out to make sure it was on the level, and then called his wife to dine and grab some provisions for later. I know what you're thinking, I've got way too much time on my hands.

No Hurry

The seedlings are a little slow to start, but under the circumstances, I don't see that as a problem. The thing is, no matter what the thermometer says, I know won't get to plant them in the garden before April 20th, I'm not making that mistake again, so we've got time.

Another month indoors will give the perennial flowers more time to germinate and grow large enough to make it in the garden. I already have a few lupines, delphiniums, and, keeping my fingers crossed, one formosa lily. It seems it blooms the first year, I can hardly wait.

WEEK ELEVEN

March 13th - Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

All Things Lucky and Green

It seems fitting, on this of all days, to make a list of plants that bring luck, you know, just in case. Let's start with the classics: lavender and roses. No garden should be without them - lavender for luck, roses for love.

Honesty and sage attract prosperity to the household. It is said that if sage grows well in your garden, you'll never lack for anything. Honesty specifically pertains to the increase of money, because of its round seed pods that look like coins.

Lucky bamboo brings happiness, prosperity and long life. Ivy growing on a house will protect the inhabitants from curses and evil spirits.

Basil is a potent love charm, used frequently for this purpose by those so inclined. It also keeps fights and gossip at bay and ensures happiness and harmony in the household. Basil is an auspicious plant in general, it promotes good health and long life and keeps travelers safe on their journeys.

Since it's Saint Patrick's Day we have to mention the four leaf clover, the universal symbol of good luck.

If none of these good luck plants is heavy duty enough for your needs, here's the showpiece: white swallow-wort. Old wives' tales have it that if you manage to get a piece of it built into the skin of your palms, you will be able to open any lock, you won't be harmed by anything made of metal, you will get the ability to find treasure and you will understand and speak the language of animals. Don't go out chasing for it, it never grows in the same place for more then one year, after which it moves, skipping three rivers at a time, and you only have a chance to find it in the same place again every nine years. Still, useful.

The Gardening Year

I was browsing through past years' gardening articles and I got overtaken by this feeling of certainty and permanence. It is extraordinary how consistent nature's cycles are, almost down to day for the first bloom, the last frost, the unavoidable late freeze. Keeping a gardening journal makes this pattern obvious and somewhat discomforting, this truth that all things green abide by a gigantic cosmic timepiece of uncanny precision.

I suppose after almost twenty years of gardening I should be embarrassed to rediscover the elementary fact every experienced farmer takes for granted, but then the wonderment, the expectation, the joy of beholding the first shivering daffodil would be gone.

The garden only experiences one year, but it does so for decades, sometimes centuries. It gets established but it never gets old, it doesn't carry its hurts and misfortunes from one year to the next: come winter the cycle is complete and the following spring brings with it another chance to start fresh, unencumbered by the past.

I guess I could, by now, anticipate that in about a month all the perennials will be fully grown and the flower beds will be covered in violets. I could guarantee that the beginning of June will see the first tomato, or that mid-May the roses will be flush with bloom. I could anticipate the veil of Heavenly Blue morning glories that always heralds the beginning of September, but just because I expect all of these things to happen, that doesn't mean I don't rejoice in them just the same.

When I was much younger I wrote that the secret of eternity is repetition and congruence. I had no earthly idea what I was talking about at the time, which is proof that even a stopped clock is going to be right twice a day.

Every Single Year!

It wouldn't be March if we didn't have balmy temperatures followed by a hard frost and snow. This year was no exception, although this time the spring freeze spared the magnolia, which gets to keep its leaves for once.

I don't know how my southern magnolia managed to thrive in this much colder climate, obviously the landscaper who planted it forty odd years ago knew what she was doing. Maybe it's a micro-climate, with just the right amount of sunshine, frost and wind protection. It is strong and healthy, and looking resplendent right now, even though the last few winters haven't been kind.

Still Cold

It was very cold again, one last scream of winter, or so I hope. I think we can safely count on the April Fool's freeze, which never fails to oblige, but by now winter has no power anymore.

That doesn't mean last week didn't feel unpleasantly February-like, goodness knows nobody ever missed sleet! We were supposed to get a full blown blizzard, however, and it didn't happen; I'm almost guilted into thinking the freezing rain was a favor. Begone!

WEEK TWELVE

March 20th - Vernal Equinox

It's Officially Spring

This year welcomed the equinox with a chill more suitable for winter, followed suddenly by balmy breezes and temperatures in the seventies. I give up. The garden seems to be indifferent to the whims of the weather, and it follows its own rules, whatever they are.

The cherry trees are in bloom, in lovely shades of pink and purple, and the spring bulbs finally decided to come out of the ground: it's officially spring. I guess next week I'll have no excuse to postpone the spring cleaning, and I'm kind of eager to see what's underneath; every year I get a few wonderful surprises as a reward for my efforts.

The weather is forecast to stay warm for the whole week, a wonderful respite from the endless freeze, but it will rain a lot, it seems, so maybe I do get my excuse after all.

I'm so over the dreary and the cold and the sleet and the muck, and even though I realize this is one of those March head fakes, and we still have a month to go until the whole mess is behind us, I can't help my excitement for spring.

Speaking of patterns, every year, about a week after the equinox, summer visits. It doesn't stay, mind you, but it always visits for about a few days. I thought this year, since spring arrived wrapped in arctic air, might be an exception, but no, the balmy temperatures were right on schedule, like they always are.

In my early gardening years this would be the time when I rushed eagerly to the nursery to pick lovely specimens and plant them in my garden, only to do it all again a month later after the first batch succumbed to the inevitable April frosts.

This is how gardeners learn patience.

The First Daffodil

It was so cold when I took this picture I felt sorry for the daffodil, poor thing who dared the freezing temperatures to be the only flower in the garden that didn't belong to the hellebore family.

My daffodils are usually a week or two behind, because many of them are planted in part shade, but what a treat when they finally bloom.

Every year I plant more, one can never have too many daffodils, and even now I have a few bulbs in a pot that need to find a home in the garden.

Despite totally inept ministering, the pink peony I moved and divided earlier this spring seems no worse for the wear, and its early shoots brighten a few sunny spots in the back yard that are very happy to have it. I don't know if they will be strong enough to bloom this year, but I'll be happy if they acclimate to their new locations at least.

After the freeze subsided, more daffodils followed the valiant pioneer, I even saw a few hyacinths.

Meanwhile the little vegetable seedlings are growing big and strong indoors, undaunted by the diminished light that accompanied the cold streak.

I miss my garden so much during winter.

Glacially Bright

I walked out the back door, encouraged by the glorious sunshine, and ran back in despair to grab a coat. It is freezing! Unfortunately the rugosas had already started to leaf out, and all their new growth succumbed to the frigid temperatures.

They are very resilient plants, so I don't doubt they'll pick up again as soon as the weather cooperates, but I worry that the freeze might have damaged their flower buds.

Too Cold for Anything Else

I wanted to take pictures of spring flowers, but all I found was hellebores. I don't consider hellebores spring flowers, given that they bloom at the end of January, so that gives me an idea about how cold the garden thinks it is right now.

Sure some of the spring bulbs have sprouted and the recently moved peonies hurried up to push through new growth, but when the chill came they stopped dead in their tracks and are now waiting out the cold. Everything but the hellebores.

WEEK THIRTEEN

March 27th - The Pretty Flowers of Spring

How to Care for Hyacinths

The thing about hyacinths is that they don't need special care, they need the conditions they have become accustomed to: a climate with cold winters, full sun exposure and a good soil that gets neither boggy, nor dry.

Usually the gardener picks up a bag of hyacinths in October, digs a hole four inches deep, throws in a good handful of bone meal, places the bulbs in groups of five or six and covers them up. That should do it under normal circumstances, no extra activities required, except for regular watering if fall gets exceedingly dry. Bulbs don't tolerate drought, and by the time September rolls around gardeners often forget they are still in the ground and need water.

Can you plant hyacinths in spring? I always do, because I buy them in pots sometime in February, when their beautiful fragrant flowers help chase away the winter blues. When they finish blooming, I just move them out to the garden. The cheerful specimen in the picture is an example of how well spring planted bulbs can fare.

Don't assume that because they are woodland plants they must be shade tolerant, they bloom before there are any leaves on the trees, when they benefit from full sun exposure, which is what they like. If you plant them in the shade they will slowly diminish to nothing, but first they won't bloom.

This is probably why people believe hyacinths consume themselves in flower production and need to be replaced every two or three years. Not so. This hyacinth grew to about three times its original size and blooms more abundantly with each passing year. Just plant them in full sun and give them food and water, just like you would any other full sun perennial, and they will thrive.

Very Early Violets

The blooming violets are such a wonderful surprise, especially after last week's arctic blast. They are very resilient plants, violets, a feature that delights at the beginning of spring and exasperates in the middle of summer, when they greedily take over the flower beds. They have a lot of competition this year from the much larger plants I added last fall, but they still should have plenty of space to shine, since they fill every nook and crevice when left to their own devices. To this end, they started early.

March continues its seesaw temperature pattern and the summer like conditions reverted to more seasonally appropriate weather, which means rainy and cold. Here comes April's Fool.

The spring flowers have started coming out, the clematis and the roses are sprouting leaves, the trees are in bloom, what a delightful sight! One more month, one more month...

The new perennials are on their way from the nursery, more woodland natives for the shade, most of which I've never grown before. I feel bad that the flower beds are still covered in debris, I guess I know what is on the gardening schedule next week, unless, of course, it gets cold again.

The rugosas shook off last week's freeze like it was nothing and picked up where they left off, in fact all the roses seem to have gotten a good start this year, so I'm hoping for flowers.

The Blues

Nature is coming back to life in lovely periwinkle blue. One of the tasks on this year's gardening list is amending the soil of that tiny shade garden, so it becomes amenable to more than ground covers and volunteer wild species.

Judging by what thrives there, the soil must be very alkaline, which is not a bad thing in itself, as long as it provides sufficient nutrients for the plants. I do, of course, have a digital soil analyzer, but to my eternal shame, I never figured out how to use it. I'll put that on my list too.

And the Purples

Here's another spring planted hyacinth, although not as old as the white one. The full sun exposure of this sheltered southern corner speeds up the development of its inhabitants by at least a couple of weeks.

Since most of the garden is in part to full shade, the precious sunny spots get packed to capacity, and this one is no exception. In summer it sees vicious competition for space and resources and the plants spill over the path in wild abandon, but what fool complains about their garden blooming too much?

WEEK FOURTEEN

April 3rd - April. Still Cold.

Tulips? Yes, Please!

I always plant tulips. I've had beautiful ruffled pink ones, and fringed parrot ones, standard, double, lily flowering, you name it, I've tried them. I rarely see any in my garden.

They don't like the soil or the light levels, or something, or maybe they get eaten over the winter, who knows? Fact is I don't normally see tulips in spring. There are two exceptions to this rule: a beautiful West Point variety, bright yellow, with splendid lily flowering tulips on long, slender stems, and now this.

Don't judge, I can tell it is a standard tulip with no remarkable qualities, but it managed to make it to year two, which is rare, and it's not even in full sun, so I'm counting my blessings.

From what I gathered I don't plant tulip bulbs deep enough, but I doubt that is the only reason. Over many years of gardening plants taught me they have veto rights about where they are willing to grow, and I suffered many pangs of guilt over watching them wither pitifully, despite all my caring and effort. In such situations I just accept the fact that I am not going to grow that particular plant and move on.

Meanwhile April Fool brought the rain instead of the cold, and with it more excuses to postpone the spring cleaning. By the time I get to it, I'll be harvesting seeds for next year.

Rose Babies

This rose's parent succumbed two years ago during a brutal winter its little offspring managed to survive. That portion of the garden, which, incidentally, is the same one that sprouted the tulip, must have miraculous properties.

Said flower bed is mostly in the shade, on top of a mound that doesn't get a lot of water during the summer, or a lot of care in general. I almost feel like my garden is trying to tell me it's faring better without my input. I'm hurt.

Anyway, the tiny rose bush in the picture doesn't get significantly bigger when summer rolls in, but it always manages to sprout at least one flower, just to assert itself.

If you want to know how to propagate roses by cuttings, here is an article that describes the process. Every year I ask myself why don't I try to start more of roses from cuttings, and then remember I barely have enough room for the existing ones.

I could try to start this variety again, somewhere in part shade, since it doesn't seem to mind, but as I said, the originals have died, and their progeny is too young.

A walk around the garden confirmed all the roses benefited from a milder winter; even one of the "Peace" shrubs I thought long dead decided to come back to life. I fear the graft bud has been irreversibly damaged by the freeze and I'm now looking at another Dr. Huey.

Young Peonies

The Raspberry Sorbet peonies look so well adjusted to their brand new locations I had to wipe a tear from my eye. So much for never moving peonies in spring! I wonder if they'll have enough stamina to bloom this year.

Their flowers are gorgeous, but I've rarely seen them, because the original plant was buried under a large rose shrub. Now I have three of them, two in full sun and one in part shade, growing rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. I can barely wait!

The Money Plant

This plant is the reason I always wait too long to pull out weeds, it looks exactly like one of the classics, leaves, flower buds and all: it's honesty, or the money plant, a florist favorite for dried flower arrangements.

Honesty is annual or biennial; mine is the latter. I usually don't have the patience to grow biennial flowers, but I made an exception for this plant, which tends to make itself at home whether I approve of it or not. It's going to be spectacular come July, with its round and translucent seed pods.

WEEK FIFTEEN

April 10th - One Day in Spring

Spring Cleaning

The garden is finally in shape, after titanic efforts which spanned over most of the week, a little late, but still. April has blessed us with unusually warm weather, which is supposed to last past the day of last frost anyway, so I decided to risk it and plant all the vegetables.

The tomatoes picked up speed immediately, as they usually do when they are transplanted into the garden. They were started mid February and are a very early variety, as indicated by their name, Independence Day, so I figured giving them a head start was in order.

Spring cleaning is definitely not on my list of favorite gardening activities, but I can say it was worth it when I look at the fresh green growth that I uncovered in the process.

It's still early and the warm weather caught the plants by surprise, they are all rushing to catch up now, but it will still take some time until the full bloom of spring happens, so, for now, the fresh garden is dotted by the cheery colors of the spring bulbs.

April is a good time to divide and move any fall blooming perennials that one might want to propagate. I'm thinking, I'm thinking...

The lilacs' buds are ready to burst open and lily of the valley finally started spreading. I spent some time at the plant nursery, unable to tear myself away from the endless flats of pansies and petunias, but couldn't help myself in the herb section: I brought home a few.

Annual flowers will be the subject of a future visit, it's still mid April, and I enjoy the weather, but not trust it yet.

Anxiously Awaiting

After so many months of winter I tend to forget how beautiful the garden is, and how much I enjoy being in it, so now, between the balmy weather and the luxurious spring growth I find myself seeking any reason to be outside.

None of the new native plants for the shade emerged yet, and the trouble is I don't know when they are supposed to come out, but the perennials planted in the previous year are up to an enthusiastic start this spring.

I keep waiting for rain, lazy gardener that I am, but nature decided to teach me good gardening practice, so it's putting off the showers for until after I've applied myself and watered. No shortcuts, of course, what am I thinking!

Still too early to plant the annuals, although I am seriously tempted. Until it's time I go out every day to check for flower buds on the peonies, clematis and roses. It's finally spring!

Now that all the good things have been covered it is worth mentioning that the weeds are having a jolly good time, bless them. They added another full day to the cleaning schedule all by themselves. They made me abandon my organic dream and apply chemical treatment to the lawn. It's mayhem.

April Garden

Every year one plant surprises me with unexpectedly abundant bloom. Last year it was the sage, this year it looks like honesty is going to steal the show.

People who cultivate this plant for its unusual seed pods will get an unexpected extra: it has very pretty, early and slightly fragrant flowers; they are white and purple but don't last very long, the plant is eager to produce its characteristic coin shaped translucent fruit.

Spring Bulbs

The daffodils have started blooming, and they will keep doing so for the rest of the month. They are planted in areas with different sun exposures, and the ones in the shade trail their sunny counterparts by almost a month.

Every spring I make a note to self to plant more bulbs the following fall, but no matter how many I plant, their numbers seems to remain constant. I saw a couple of cotton tails enjoying life on top of the flower border. I'm not assigning blame or anything, just stating the facts.

WEEK SIXTEEN

April 17th - Sunlight in the Morning

The Vegetable Patch

Every year I'm looking forward to planting the miniature vegetable garden. I know this defies logic, given the amount of space I have available for it, but if I listened to logic I wouldn't have done it in previous years either.

It features the same plants every year: tomatoes, bell peppers, squash, cucumbers, beans and eggplant. If you are wondering where do I find room for all of the above in twenty square feet, the answer is I don't. By the time fall comes around the whole shoehorned planting turns into an unmanageable jungle, with foliage spilling over the concrete walkway and monster tomato plants toppling their supports. That being said, right now the little vegetable garden looks prim and proper, its well behaved plants growing neatly in their allotted spots.

Last year I gave up on the yield table after a few weeks of unfavorable weather in August unexpectedly snuffed my gardening enthusiasm, so, in order not to repeat this story, I started this year's record keeping early and I will stick to it come what may.

Of course now that all the seedlings are planted, tied to their supports and watered, there is nothing to do but wait for a couple of months. If the weather cooperates, they will have an almost two weeks head start, which is a lot as far as plant development goes.

According to forecasts, the rest of spring will be warm, but the summer will be cooler than usual. I read that tomatoes don't set fruit when temperatures exceed ninety five degrees F, but I haven't noticed that in my experience. Hot weather suits them just fine, it's excessive rain they don't like.

Perennial Gardens

A perennial garden is an aggregate entity, not a discrete collection of plants. There is a surprising amount of interdependency that needs to develop between the neighboring plants, an adjustment that takes years and happens mostly underground.

By the time a perennial garden gets fully established, its roots are so interconnected it gets difficult to remove a plant without affecting the entire flower bed. Its residents jointly rely on the nutrients some of the plants release into the soil, on the shade some other plants cast to protect the moisture of the whole border, and on an entire host of worms, insects and anaerobic bacteria which find safe haven inside their intertwined root systems.

Unlike an annual planting, which can be designed to the gardener's whim, a perennial garden places restrictions on what can or can't belong in it. There are plant incompatibilities, crowding issues, divergent watering needs, staggered blooming times, territorial dominance, all of which the plants have to resolve among themselves, and over which the gardener has very little say after the fact. The perennial garden is never the same, it changes its colors and patterns from one week to the next, from one year to the next. It has moods, theme colors, favorites. One year the irises run the show, the next year is all about hostas.

Perennial gardens are planted to last decades, even centuries in some cases, so don't expect them to behave the same as the cheerful annual borders. Most perennials don't bloom for at least a couple of years as they get established, others take six to ten years to reach maturity. Through that trying time they look like a lost cause, as if they are intent on bring you to despair while you toil and drip sweat over them in vain, and then all of a sudden everything comes together, when you least expect it, in ways you find difficult to believe.

SIlver Dollars

If you are looking for a plant that can thrive in the shade, give Lunaria a try. The plants will tolerate lower light conditions if they have to, they grow well in part-shade, dappled shade, up to medium shade, under trees or in northern borders.

I have some that sprouted in deep north foundation shade, but they don't seem to like it very much. Like all plants, the more sunlight they receive, the more they will bloom, and unlike many shade lovers they will be very happy in full sun.

Prolific Bloomers

I just learned that violets blooming in the fall are a bad omen, and I'm glad I didn't have this information the year they bloomed twice, thus being able to enjoy their beautiful flowers. By the way, the omen did not materialize, if it needed mentioning.

Old wives' tales not withstanding, violets bloom for only one reason: to propagate. Usually they do so by spreading runners, but if spring weather is not favorable, they switch to the contingency plan and produce seed, a task for which the fall flowers are particularly well suited. I prefer this alternate explanation to doom and gloom.

WEEK SEVENTEEN

April 24th - It's Cold and It's Wet...

Under the Rain

I don't think spring bulbs like my garden very much, because every fall I plant a fair share of them, but not many show up in the garden the next year. Some springs they perform better, this year was certainly not one of them. I blame myself, I should have given the plants some organic fertilizer earlier in the season.

I have some alliums sprinkled among the other perennials, and they did their duty, reluctantly, while the rest of the foliage went berserk, as it always does when it rains a lot in spring. I went out into the garden after a few stormy days to find a Land Before Times landscape, complete with broken branches and an overgrown mix of garden plants and weeds competing for territory.

The smooth blue asters I started last year are now three foot tall, I guess I should have paid attention to the mature plant height as described on the seed packet.

The garden really needs some fertilizer to encourage the plants to bloom, but I worry a bit, as I look at the mighty foliage, that if the plants receive any more food they are going to swallow me alive. I already can't tell heads from tails in the jumbled mess.

The beautiful purple clematis bloomed right on time, taking the rain in stride, unlike its neighbors in the flower bed. I can't say that I blame them. It's cold, it's wet, we had another freeze warning. Ech! I wouldn't bloom either.

Because of this aberrant weather phenomenon the tomatoes, which usually pick up speed at this time of year, seem to have taken a breather. They don't show signs of frost damage, but they aren't growing either. Everything else in the vegetable garden displays healthy growth, but it's still to early for flowers.

Lilacs

Every year when I enjoy the abundant bloom and fragrance of this Miss Kim lilac I count myself lucky for my tendency to procrastinate. I put off pulling what looked like a dead shrub for an entire summer and fall, only to be surprised with verdant branches the following spring.

Lilacs are great plants for cold climates and alkaline soils, but they don't like shade or having their feet wet.

A lilac bush flowers on old wood, so if you must prune it, keep in mind that you may lose bloom for up to three years. It seems that they also bloom less if they are fertilized excessively. I have to admit the thought of feeding trees and shrubs never occurred to me. Maybe I should reevaluate that, at least for the little apple tree, which skipped blooming this year.

I don't have much to say about lilacs, they seem to be the ultimate 'plant it and forget it' shrub, and, as long as they have enough sunshine, they'll take care of themselves.

I do have to add one thing: they are prone to powdery mildew. It doesn't affect the plant, but it looks bad, especially in August. I've been trying to get rid of this pest for years, but every summer it comes back, stubbornly, despite my efforts. It seems that the spores overwinter in the ground and pick up where they left off the following year.

As with all things, persistence is key, and I'm treating again this year, if need be. Eventually one side will have to give in, and I sure hope it's the mildew.

Still Male

I kept looking out for my wonderful Jack in the pulpit, worried that it might not come back this year, and I'm so excited to see it!

It snuck up on me and it even has a flower already, as you can see in the picture, but I don't think I'll see its fruit this year, unless it decides to sprout a second leaf. For now it's still male.

Just About

The shrub roses are almost in bloom, with Hansa in the lead, as usual. The good thing about once blooming roses is that spring is a paradise of blossoms. The not so good thing is that the flowers only last a few weeks.

Still, impressive. Between the roses and the peonies, soon there will be plenty of flowers in the garden. So far, since it rained a lot, the fresh foliage is on steroids again, but not a lot in terms of bloom.

WEEK EIGHTEEN

May 1st - May

Blushing Beauty

The long stretch of rain and cold slowed down the flowers and put the foliage in overdrive, and that includes the weeds. Good thing next week is going to be warm and sunny, the flower beds could do with a good once over before they get fed.

The peonies have started blooming, but not as exuberantly as last year, and I blame that on the weather. The new plants, the ones I divided and moved early this spring did not produce flowers, as it was reasonable to expect, despite my gardening enthusiasm. I don't mind, as long as they save their energies to adjust to their new location.

Peonies are very long lived, their clumps can last for a hundred years or more, and once established they need very little care. A good organic fertilizer in spring, well draining soil and sunshine and they are good to go.

They are subject to powdery mildew, a problem that does not become apparent until the end of summer; the plants are no worse for the wear the following spring, but the foliage can be unsightly. I cut it down as soon as the signs of the problem appear, although the plant fares better with the leaves left intact, so, each year I have to weigh the pros and cons of trimming up the afflicted greenery.

The clumps will grow big, so don't ignore the spacing requirements, the plants will be healthier if they get enough air movement around their stems.

Peonies don't need dividing, but don't mind it either. If you chose to divide a clump to expand your stock, do so in the fall, and make sure every root division has at least three eyes. Don't expect them to perform the first two years, during which they'll put all of their energy into developing a strong root system.

Simply Purple

The clematis is covered in purple blooms, soon to be followed by the purple cranesbills, the purple betony, the purple lavender and the purple sage. I think I'm starting to discern a pattern here.

The sage's bloom was absolutely stunning last year, so much so that I even tried to pick the flowers for bouquets, but they don't last very long, so they are better left on the plant.

The lavender is covered in buds, I think the garden is slowly getting back into its rhythms, which tells me that it's probably time to go in search of annuals to cheer it up a little bit.

I keep looking for signs that the woodland perennials I planted this spring are coming to life, but so far there is nothing I can see above ground. They may surprise me next year, sometimes plants do. I kind of wish they do, I am curious what trillium looks like in the garden.

The herb garden is thriving beyond my wildest dreams and will provide plentiful material for drying later in the summer.

Once I get to cleaning it, the garden is shaping up to be quite beautiful, but for now it's an unholy mess again. You'd be amazed at how much debris gets left behind after even a run of the mill storm.

Spring Perennials

One of the must haves in a shade garden, coral bells start blooming at the beginning of this month and stay in bloom for a good part of summer.

Heucheras bloom best when they are two, three years old. As they grow older they tend to hollow out in the middle, which is a sign that they need dividing. Don't be concerned about this, the divisions get a new spurt of growth once moved to their new location and they will bloom like crazy. They love clay soils and part shade.

Tadaa!

Some blooms despise subtlety, and the flowering onions are definitely among them. I don't think the garden appreciated the almost freeze in May. The tomatoes look shabby and most of the flowering perennials that usually bloom at this time are holding back.

I so had it with the cold! Fortunately next week is forecast to be warm and sunny, which means that now I have no excuse not to pick up the debris that the storms left behind last week.

WEEK NINETEEN

May 8th - Anyway,,,

Gardening Activities for May

May should be a busy month for the gardener, depending on the hardiness zone. After all the young plants have been safely transplanted in the garden, the annuals have been planted, the seeds have been sown, the weeds have been pulled (well, I haven't gotten to that part yet, but this task is never finished anyway), all the gardener has to do is sit and wait for the results to emerge.

That's not entirely true, because there is so much more to do: the lawn needs treatment and fertilizer, the border plants need feeding, the flower beds need weeding, spent spring blooms need pruning, the vegetables need stalking, you get the idea.

Every year around this time I get the reminder that spacing requirements for plants are not orientative. Everything is packed so tight in the flower bed that it feels like it's going to burst out onto the concrete pathway any moment now, and the competition is vicious.

This is hard to picture early in spring, before the foliage emerges, when there seems to be so much space around the plants that it feels like it's going to waste.

If there are fall blooming perennials that you'd like to propagate, now it's the time to do that. Also, there is still time to plant bulbs and corms for summer bloom. I'm still thinking whether there might be any that I'd like to add this year. See? I never learn. There is always room for one more plant.

And More Roses

Roses are actually very reliable bloomers. Even in years when other flowers didn't fare so well, the roses always show up abundantly and on schedule. Of course I'm talking about the shrub and species varieties, the other ones are still considering their options at this time.

The eternal optimist, I keep insisting on planting all sorts of old and noble varieties, but so far the only ones that made themselves at home are rugosas and Dr. Huey.

Roses

The pretty damask decided to spoil me this year, but the rain made me miss the window for petal harvesting. By the time everything is dry, all the flowers will be gone.

These roses have a peculiar characteristic: when they are done blooming, they don't fade, like normal flowers do, they just fall apart suddenly, scattering all of their petals on the ground and leaving the hip perfectly clean. All they need is one touch.

WEEK TWENTY

May 15th - Flowers in Bloom

Finicky Weather

The weather is still moody, and after a couple of days of sunshine the clouds are back. The garden took the stormy weather in stride, and kept the bloom on schedule.

Temperatures dropped into the sixties again, the rain started again, it must be monsoon season. The foliage is so thick and fleshy it almost gets in its own way. I hope that between the abundant rain and the fertilizer the plants got a good start for summer.

The red hot poker has three flowers already, what a handsome plant and quite care free, if you are looking for maintenance free summer bulbs for your sunny border.

I found hyssop and couldn't help myself, I've been curious about this plant for a long time. I was surprised to notice that it isn't scented, the foliage, anyway. Maybe the flowers? I'll wait and see.

After the rain stops I'll have to go through the flower beds and pull out the plethora of weeds that are now thriving on rain and organic fertilizer high in phosphorous. I can't tell what is what anymore, it's all a compact green mass of wilderness.

In the middle of the chaos, in the shade, the offspring of the Morden Blush I lost to the dreadful winter three years ago decided to sprout a flower. I'm still baffled by its enthusiasm. The plant is hardly taller than the neighboring violets.

A Gift from the Garden

Every year the garden surprises me in some way. I didn't plant foxgloves but they showed up all by themselves, the pretty little darlings.

Foxgloves are biennial plants, and after they propagate, they die down. If you want to keep them in the garden for a third year, pick the flowers before they go to seed, but don't bring them inside if you're superstitious, it's supposed to be bad luck.

A valuable medicinal plant, foxglove slows down the heart, and it can do so to very dangerous levels, so please use discernment with respect to planting it if you have small children. All parts of the plants are toxic if consumed.

They like ideal conditions, the ones that are seldom available in one's garden: rich woodland soil, that drains well but keeps its moisture, part shade but enough morning sunshine to encourage their bloom. They reseed easily, and if you have a designated spot for them, they will propagate to give you two year plants, and therefore flowers, every year.

If you have large areas that don't get disturbed, and the right conditions, they will naturalize, creating graceful drifts that move like waves from year to year. The plants can get very tall, six feet or so, and their stems are not very sturdy, so you will need to stake them or otherwise protect them from strong winds.

More Rain

More rain this week, a lot of it, actually, so, again, weeding got postponed. One of the hybrid teas turned into Dr. Huey, and how do I know that? Because it bloomed. The hybrid tea that was grafted on it didn't, so I'm wondering how is this bad news. It is true that the root stock only blooms one month a year, but it does bloom.

Anyway, now I have two of them. The other once blooming roses are also in full production mode, as they are expected to be at this time of the year, while the rest of the perennials are gathering up steam for June.

There is a flower already on one of the early tomato plants, despite the late frost that affected the plants a couple of weeks ago. The peppers look great, this year really agrees with them, they are sturdy and deep green, but no flowers yet.

The herb garden is thriving, the sage, lavender and valerian are already in bloom, the lovage is already knee high, maybe it's not too early to start harvesting leaves for drying, after the weather dries up, of course.

I really should have paid attention to the information on the seed packet: the smooth blue asters have passed the four foot mark and are still growing.

The garden is resting before the June bloom, there is not much to see yet, and the cold rainy weather doesn't inspire blossoming enthusiasm.

Almost Summer

It's almost summer, a calendar reality that got lost to the streak of rainy weather, which brought with it much cooler temperatures than the season warrants.

The rain finally cleared but everything is still soggy. I haven't seen such downpours in a long time. The light was dimmed to dusk levels and when the clouds finally released their water it felt like the whole sky fell on earth all of a sudden.

Waiting for Fragrance

I already took a trip to the plant nursery for a few annuals to brighten up planters and balconies, but nothing for the flower beds yet. I'm waiting for fragrant flowers.

I congratulated myself for the level of restraint: I only showed up home with only a few unplanned purchases -chocolate mint, hyssop and heliotrope. I thought they were scented, but so far I can't tell. Maybe it's the rain.

WEEK TWENTY-ONE

May 22nd - Fresh Herbs

Thyme in Bloom

Throughout my childhood, my grandmother did not let a day pass her by without extolling the marvelous health benefits of fresh herbs: their vitamin content, their antioxidant properties, their immune system boosting attributes. Her lessons stuck with me, and now, many years later, I wouldn't imagine my garden without a patch of fresh herbs.

I dry them in small bunches all through the summer, to build up an adequate supply of spices for the cold season, but they are, of course, best consumed fresh, just picked from the garden at their peak of flavor.

This is, of course, a luxury only available during the summer, so here are a few tips about herb drying, for all year round benefits (dried herbs still maintain a lot of the properties of their fresh counterparts, even though the latter are better).

Never pick herbs during the rain, but do pick them early in the day, after the morning sun dried up the dew. Always pick the young leaves, they are tender and more flavorful, and the large foliage around the base of the plant contains its emergency reserves of food and energy and it will not appreciate you taking them away from it.

If you grow herbs for their flowers, pick the blossoms just after they open.

Dry herbs in bunches, hung in a place where the air is warm and still. When they are completely dry, store the leaves whole if you have room, in paper bags labeled with the contents and the date. Herbs lose their potency when stored for too long.

Tips for a Successful Herb Garden

Herbs are not demanding plants, but some rules must be followed when growing them in order to ensure their success.

There are two kinds of herbs: those that adapted to the wind swept, sunny and dry cliffs of the Mediterranean shores, like rosemary, basil, thyme, sage, lavender, calendula and savory, which thrive in full sun and dry, limey soils, and those that enjoy shade, like parsley, mint, lemon balm, chives, dill and tarragon, which like a consistently moist soil and not too much sun exposure.

If you have a large area available for herb planting, it may be feasible to accommodate both growing conditions, but if not, the solution is to grow the moisture loving plants in pots, where you can control the shading and the moisture levels.

Some suggest that herbs grown in containers will benefit from a slow release organic fertilizer. In my experience herbs go crazy if you over feed them, and don't forget that potting mix already has a fair amount of fertilizer mixed in, usually enough for three months, which pretty much takes care of the whole growing season, at least for annual herbs.

Don't forget to clip off the flowers of basil and calendula before they go to seed, otherwise they'll be done for the year. When October rolls around you can let the latter go to seed, to provide you with seedlings for the following year (calendulas are cold weather annuals and their seeds need chilling during winter in order to thrive). October is often their best season anyway, they bloom a lot more once the weather cools down.

If parsley makes it through the winter, like mine did, it will start forming inflorescences. Other biennial and perennial herbs, like lovage and dill, will also be happy to direct their energy into producing offspring. They will either grow umbels or foliage, not both, and it's the gardener's choice what to do about it.

Personally I enjoy seeing herbs go to seed, and the butterflies love their flowers too, they provide food and shelter for their caterpillars.

Tomato Flowers

Usually I get a tomato around the beginning of June, so these are by no means early. I'm sure they would have been if the weather cooperated, but with all the rain and the cool temperatures, the tomato plants have been set back about a week.

They are just now coming out of the late freeze, which happened almost mid+May. I wonder why I bother to observe the day of last frost at all.

Soothing Lavender

A healthy crop of lavender this year, despite the rain. Of course I can't pick any of it until the weather dries up, but behold the beauty!

You can grow lavender from seed, in fact one of the plants in this thicket was grown from seed, but the easier way is to start it from cuttings or a seedling. Remember that lavender likes a dry and sunny climate, don't over water it .

WEEK TWENTY-TWO

May 29th - Memorial Day

Almost Summer

Memorial Day brought with it warmth and sunshine, as it is fitting for a holiday that marks the beginning of the summer.

The vegetation is in overdrive, and it makes me feel very small when I walk among the waist high asters and the giant broad leaved hostas.

In the kitchen garden the peppers are in the lead, with dark green, sturdy stems; I don't usually get plants this large from seed at this time of year. The potted basil grew tall, to provide a nice accent against the colorful neighboring lantana and heliotrope.

The cucurbits developed the second set of leaves, but are surprisingly small, considering the amount of water they received this month.

In the sun garden, the red hot poker dominates the landscape, picking up where the roses and the peonies left off. I'm waiting for the bee balms and lilies to start blooming. So grateful for summer!

I came back from vacation to a few pleasant surprises: the tomatoes grew another foot, the formosa lilies that I started from seed have sprouted in their pot and look like they're going to hang around, all the morning glories germinated and the rhizomatous begonia, which is supposed to bloom only in winter, apparently decided to spring flowers all year round.

How to Attract Butterflies to Your Garden

A visit to the butterfly house reminded me that the garden is a miniature ecosystem to which insects, birds, animals and invertebrates bring important contributions. You always know a healthy landscape by the buzzing of bees, the birdsong, and the hidden life of earthworms and spiders, and last, but not least, colorful butterflies.

How to attract butterflies to your back yard? First of all avoid pesticides, if in any way possible, and include plants that provide food and shelter for them, especially the umbellifers on which they like to lay their eggs.

The colorful meadow flowers, especially the orange ones, are butterfly favorites, and you will find you already have at least one or two in your garden: lantana, asters, honeysuckle, mallow, cone flowers, zinnias, garden phlox, milkweed, pentas, bee balms, butterfly bush, yarrow, sunflowers.

Don't forget the herbs - anise, dill and parsley inflorescences make great homes for caterpillars.

Include a water source, if you can, and provide shelter from the wind. Monarch butterflies only lay eggs on milkweed, but there are many other beautiful butterflies that favor a wider variety of plants. For instance, the black swallowtail will make itself at home in your herb garden if you plant dill, anise or parsley.

Butterflies prefer sunshine; partial shade is acceptable during the summer, when it's really warm.

Resilience

The picture doesn't do them justice, so I will describe what it represents: full grown trees growing in bare rock. Their roots meander between the giant slabs of limestone that border the edge of the lake, in search of any soil that built up over time, reaching deep for the water that's too far down, no worse for their effort.

I never cease to wonder at nature's resilience. One might object that a living thing that does nothing but stand still can't be that interesting. First, they don't stand still, they just move too slow for us to notice, and second, many of them stand still for centuries.

Compass Rose

For the whimsical gardener hardscape decor is almost as important as the plants themselves. Their details range from the sophisticated to the bizarre, but these artsy pieces are pleasant surprises in the landscape, especially in the fullness of summer, when one discovers them suddenly, almost engulfed in greenery.

Just like a sundial, a compass rose is always a welcome addition to the garden. If having a reminder that 'north is this way' doesn't seem like a good enough reason to get one, how about they are really, really pretty?

WEEK TWENTY-THREE

June 5th - The Bright Side of Summer

Sunshine and Heliotrope

I'm sitting on the balcony staring at my purple cherry pie plant, which looks happy as a clam basking in the sunshine in the company of butter yellow petunias. I don't know why I haven't tried heliotrope before, it's an old fashioned cottage garden favorite and mine is a cottage garden.

Some people describe its fragrance as a combination of cherry pie, hence the name, and vanilla, others say it smells more like grape soda; in my opinion it's closer to licorice.

Heliotrope is a sun lover which doesn't mind drought or poor soils, a perfect choice if you want no fuss, all summer bloom. You can plant it in a pot and bring it indoors when the warm season is over, it will be happy to bloom all year long in a sunny window, but be careful if you have pets. It appears it is poisonous to dogs and safe for cats, from what I read, but don't take my word for it.

I'm slowly expanding my winter greenhouse; every November I'm bringing indoors a rhizomatous begonia, a lemon verbena, the rosemary, a pot of very enthusiastic tuberoses, a naturalized amaryllis which blooms in summer, and now heliotrope. It's good to know it tolerates being grown indoors, some sun loving perennials are not pleased when forced to spend a whole winter inside, the rosemary is still trying to recover from the powdery mildew that afflicted it at the end of February.

I'll just have to find a bright sunny spot for the heliotrope, and I'm afraid the kitchen window sill is already taken.

Lavender Fields

You probably noticed that the little flowers are already open, so no lavender bud harvesting for me. That's ok, I don't have enough lavender in the garden to make growing it for harvesting worthwhile, but it fills my heart with joy to see its light purple flowers glow in the sunlight on a bright shiny morning like this.

I pick the flowers, eventually, right before they start to scatter, and fashion them into little lavender bottles, perfect for a linen drawer or for hanging out in the closet.

If you don't know what a lavender bottle is and how to make one, you can find information about them here. Lavender bottles are as pretty as they are fragrant.

The uses for lavender are endless, from tinctures to beauty products, home health remedies, food seasoning (Herbes de Provence are half lavender), teas, infused honey, natural cleaning products, air fresheners and potpourri. If you have trouble falling asleep, a small pillow filled with hops and lavender will help.

True lavender only blooms once in June/July and lasts for four weeks. Gardening advice encourages pruning the lavender bush after blooming, to keep it from sprawling and encourage it to repeat bloom, but in my experience, if you want lavender that blooms throughout the summer, you are better off planting Spanish lavender. The flowers are spectacular, they look like they are perpetually visited by butterflies.

A Pot of Mixed Basil

I think I should switch back the pots of basil and rosemary, the basil looks like it could do with a little bit more shade and a tad more water, and the rosemary isn't getting enough sunshine.

Also, the basil could use pinching, it looks a little leggy and delicate and it would be nice if it leafed out more, but I can't bring myself to do it. It's not like it's going to start blooming any time soon, anyway.

Hot Verbena

I don't think I've grown a plant which is happier in a dry sunny spot than verbena. This particular cultivar seems to draw its fire directly from the heat of the sun that bakes the pot it's planted in, and it shows its appreciation for it by sprouting hot magenta flower bunches in every direction.

Verbenas thrive on neglect, but don't forget to deadhead them, otherwise they will stop blooming. They don't like hot and humid weather.

WEEK TWENTY-FOUR

June 12th - Blessed Summer!

Scent

I took a stroll through the garden, just to take in its glorious fragrance. The great southern magnolia is in bloom, after so many years I can't even remember, and the sublime perfume of its flowers mingles with the heady sweet scent of the garden phlox and the spicy accents of bee balm and mint.

Next week marks the official beginning of summer, but summer is already here, judging by the unmistakable smell of heated herbs. There is a mish-mash of bloom in the garden, some belonging to the beginning of summer, some belonging to the beginning of fall. Plumbago and hostas blooming together, among bright orange daylilies, lavender and phlox. Here and there the lilies I planted last summer are trying to assert themselves, not very sturdy yet.

All the early hostas are fragrant, a fragrance that will blend into the scented evening air next week when they bloom. Oh, blessed summer! Warmth, sustenance, fragrance and beauty, what more can a gardener ask? Some people get bored as the season advances, and start dreaming about pumpkins and gourds and the sparkle of a white Christmas. Not me. I never miss winter, chestnuts roasting on an open fire or not.

The season barely started and I have the whole length of it to enjoy, and the mere thought of it makes me giddy.

Container Gardening

Container gardening sneaks up on you. You start with one potted plant and pretty soon the entire patio or balcony is covered in them, looking almost indistinguishable from the adjacent flower bed.

If you have lots of plants in pots, keep them grouped. That way the containers get some protection from drying out and they are easier to water if they are all in one spot.

Over a few summers I tried a couple of different vegetables in containers, and I must say none of them did well at all, maybe because I don't stick to watering them enough, which during the hottest part of summer means twice a day. If you have your heart set on growing potted vegetables, make sure the container is large enough to support their growth and provide enough nutrients, since vegetables are very heavy feeders. I noticed that even with the best of effort, they fare much better when planted in the garden.

Plants that like dry, exposed sites, like sun loving herbs, verbenas, heleniums, petunias and moss roses, do best in containers without an unreasonable amount of care.

The potting soil should be replaced every spring, but when this is not feasible, as is the case for container grown perennials and trees, make sure to top dress the pots to replace the soil that gets lost with each watering. A regular regimen of fertilizer is essential to keep the plants healthy.

Cucumbers

The first cucumber flowers of the season, all male by the look of them. Cucumbers, like all the cucurbits, bear male and female flowers, and rely on pollinators to bear fruit. Male flowers usually appear a week or more before the female ones.

Cucumbers thrive during rainy summers, their sappy stems are always thirsty. They need to be watered religiously, otherwise their fruit grows stunted and bitter.

Fiery Lantana

This is a very good year for lantana. I had it in the garden before, used as an annual, and it grew very large, completely overwhelming the surrounding plants. I found information about it which states that it grows up to six foot tall and six foot wide, and I can attest from experience that is true.

Lantanas belong to the verbena family, just like heliotrope, and they are in fact perennials if you live in a climate south of zone nine. Verbenas must be the theme for this summer, the whole balcony is covered in them.

WEEK TWENTY-FIVE

June 19th - I Love Summer

Southern Magnolia

It

Tall Bellflowers

The temperatures heated up, the tomatoes started performing. Tomato plants don't mind hot weather and will keep their composure even when more heat sensitive vegetables wilt pitifully, but they will not set fruit if the temperatures are above 85 to 90 degrees during the day or 75 at night. Considering the climate we live in, that's most of the summer. It also explains why the extra leafy vines suddenly decide to become fruitful mid-September, when their fruit doesn't really have enough time left to ripen.

The reason for this is that at higher temperatures the pollen becomes non-viable, or too dry to stick to the pistil.

How to remedy the situation? Unless you are growing tomatoes in a temperature controlled greenhouse there is not much you can do about it, other than root for accommodating weather.

Here are a few varieties that perform better than average in hot weather, but if temperatures are consistently above ninety degrees they will not set fruit either: SuperSweet100, grape tomatoes, Florida 91, Sunmaster, Heat Wave, Sunbeam, well, you get the idea, if heat or sun is part of the name, they're it.

Temperatures behaved themselves so far, and therefore there are tiny green tomatoes to show. Naturally I mislabeled the varieties, and planted Brandywine, which needs more room, in the tighter spot. It hasn't bloomed yet, but developed spectacular foliage.

If the soil is too rich or has too much nitrogen the plants will grow leafy to the detriment of setting fruit. Tomatoes like soils with a pH between 5.5 and 7 and need about three gallons of water per plant per week to be at their best, but avoid overdoing it during the harvest season to prevent the fruit from becoming watery.

If you have the room, tomatoes will be quite happy to sprawl on the ground, but they yield more trained on vertical supports. Pruning will encourage larger fruit, though not necessarily more of it. Remove all the suckers (the small shoots that develop at the nodes between the stem and a main branch. Keep the number of main branches around four. When the tomato reaches the desired height, pinch the top to stop it from growing, otherwise the indeterminate varieties will grow indefinitely. The determinate varieties hardly require pruning.

Grow marigolds around tomato plants to keep pest insects at bay and basil to improve the flavor of their fruit.

The Flowers of June

In the old days betony was considered the universal cure for all afflictions of the head, whether they be migraine, stroke, nightmares or the torment of evil spirits.

I never bunched it up with the medicinals, maybe because it is such a handsome and well-behaved plant: a compact rosette of oblong serrated leaves topped with dainty clumps of purple flowers. They bloom very reliably right about this time of the year, and last until the middle of July.

Peppers in Bloom

The peppers are in bloom. There is even one small fruit on the hot variety right now. During good years the chili peppers are very decorative plants, and from a distance they look like they are bearing strangely shaped red flowers.

This year seems to be a good one for the peppers, but the summer is long, it remains to be seen. This reminds me that I haven't started my produce table yet.

WEEK TWENTY-SIX

June 26th - Yassas!

For the Love of Athena

I don't think the goal of traveling is to see places and learn things, often you get better images and information from photography catalogs and travel guides. The goal of traveling is to get immersed in the spirit of a place.

The longer you stay in Greece, the more it becomes clear to you why this mountainous peninsula swept by winds witnessed the birth of modern civilization. There is a sense which permeates everything that the people of this culture are afraid of nothing, curious about everything and always eager to try something new.

If you are familiar with the legend, Athena won the contest with Poseidon to become patron goddess of the city because she offered the citizens wisdom, prosperity and peace, and her temple still stands at the top of the hill after all this time, intimidating by its massive scale alone.

You can see everything from atop the Acropolis, the whole world is at your fingertips, the land and the sea, the sky, the sun and the moon. Nothing is hidden, forbidden or wrong.

Giant stone temple complex at the top of the hill? That sounds like a wonderful idea, we can frame great views with the architectural elements, but make sure to get the ideal proportions and account for optical illusions, we don't want to look through columns that seem to taper off in the middle.

Exploring Monastiraki

Monastiraki is an old neighborhood of Athens nestled at the bottom of the Acropolis. No matter what your interests gravitate towards, you're going to find something there, whether it's historical sights, food or shopping, all of them are delivered to you in an easy to behold, light hearted manner.

I covered most of the popular attractions, despite the fact that we only stayed in Athens for two days, and it was very hot: Hadrian's Library, the Roman Agora, the flea market, the change of guards at the Parliament, the Metropolitan Cathedral, all except for one: the Tower of the Winds.

I wanted to kick myself for missing it after I saw the pictures, I can't even make up in my mind how this contraption was supposed to work.

It is a thirty six foot tall, twenty four foot in diameter octagonal timepiece in which a clepsydra, eight sundials and a weather vane were meant to function in concert.

The tower is aligned with the directions of the compass rose and is surrounded by a frieze depicting the gods of the eight winds. Inside the tower used to be the water clock, sort of an hourglass timepiece, but more weirdly shaped in order to control water flow. For the life of me I can't figure out where the sundials were.

It is an ancestor of the clock tower.

The Odeon of Herodus Atticus

This ancient theater is still in use today, I can see the obvious advantages of building things out of stone. During the summer festival the place is packed to the brim and can seat up to six thousand people. It has great acoustics, even if it is open to the sky.

Of course this is to be expected, the building is quite new, as far as the neighborhood goes, it only graced us with its presence since 174 AD, recent renovations excepted, of course.

Old Athens Streets

We found our way back to the city through narrow, bright and colorful streets filled with music and fragrance. The houses almost glowed in the sunlight at noon, in shades of periwinkle blue, sunny yellow, bright white and coral pink. On the way to Monastiraki we got a little owl souvenir. There are owl symbols everywhere in Athens, from city busses to shopping bags.

Legend has it that an owl accompanied Athena at all times and helped her see the things that were out of her line of sight. It is considered the guardian of the Acropolis.

WEEK TWENTY-SEVEN

July 2nd - The Island of the Minotaur

Minoan Red

How do you tell old from older? If you can find references about it in ancient Greek mythology, there is no contest there. Welcome to the palace of the Minotaur, the strange labyrinth made of thirteen hundred rooms whose functions remain a mystery, a place that must have been very animated and colorful in its day, back in 1700BC, baked as it was by the tropical sun and surrounded by a blue sea.

The sun shines as brightly today as it did then, bouncing off the smooth white surfaces, making the details sharper and revealing strange mason marks carved in the giant blocks of stone. I found one myself, a trident.

The ancient ruins should look old and dusty, like a land that time forgot, but they don't. Between the Minoan red (this place got to name its own color) and the sunshine, the complex feels alive and well, even in its current state, that of an archaeological dig. There is something about the spirit of the place that keeps you alert, makes you pay attention, draws you to things.

Maybe the memory of Daedalus and Icarus still lingers around the white stones to remind everybody of the earliest human aspiration to fly.

Maybe it's the eerie feeling you get when you walk through a place that is already familiar to you from the stories of your childhood, but you never thought was real. Maybe it's just me.

The Port of Heraklion

After you are done wondering at the precise cut and placement of cyclopean masonry blocks, one obvious question presents itself. Since Crete is an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, how did all the people who built these things get here? You are looking at the answer.

Because the Minoan complex includes human settlements dated sometimes in the early Neolithic, it must have happened before that. People from a proto-civilization preceding the Bronze Age traveled across the sea on rafts, and brought domestic animals and seeds for planting with them too. Later on more people joined the island from different areas of the Mediterranean basin to enrich the growing community with their cultural experiences.

The port of Heraklion predates the palace of Knossos, which makes it around four thousand years old, not in this current configuration, of course. Its old streets are teaming with people, both tourists and locals, and joy, lightness of being, comfort and belonging.

Very Very Old

I don't know what it is about very old edifices that gives me pause. They look almost too normal, as if time's passing didn't leave any traces at all, as if you could see yourself sitting in that chair, inhabiting that room, and thirty five hundred years meant nothing.

I'm trying to figure out whether this makes me imagine what immortality must be like or makes my life seem all the more fleeting by comparison, I haven't decided yet. Those people who lived three thousand years ago and I are alarmingly alike.

Cretan Landscape

One thing I didn't know before I went to Crete, it is all mountains. Protected by the large land masses, the valleys at the center of the island are pampered havens covered in olive groves and vineyards, all of which don't seem to mind the perpetually dry weather. It hardly ever rains on the island.

The narrow roads wind up and down between rocky cliffs and bright tapestries of bougainvilleas, and no matter where you are on the island, you will see open waters.

WEEK TWENTY-EIGHT

July 9th - Back Home and We Brought the Rain

Isn't She Beautiful?

Isn't she, though? I mean, look at this, and it rained buckets! I wished for a wildflower meadow a couple of years back, but when I looked into the details of creating one and learned that it is a difficult design to create and maintain in the average garden; one has to be very precise with the planting times and the growing conditions to make the flowers bloom in concert. Since it seemed like too much work, I gave up on the idea altogether. As it is often the case with things green and leafy, you only get them to cooperate when they feel like it, and not according to your planning. I guess the wild flower meadow concept was on a two year delay. The irony of this is that if you want to plan one from scratch, it takes it three years for it to reach this stage, and there is no guarantee that it is going to work.

I can't keep up with this, I give up, nature wins. Whatever you want to sprout, dear, I'll love it. I couldn't make this image happen if I spent every living second on that flower bed, toiling to exhaustion. I will take many pictures of it, because I'm not sure I can replicate the lucky meeting of circumstances that made it happen in the first place.

So, wild flower meadow, check! I wonder if I should wish for a heirloom rose arbor next, I never managed to make that one happen, you should see those misty paintings of old cottage roses in the landscaping books, they break your heart, they do.

In the meantime, please allow me to present the protagonists of this lovely assembly, just in case anybody had doubts that this is a true wildflower meadow: cone flowers, tall American bell flowers, bee balms, catmints, daisies and black eyed Susans. We'll have goldenrod and asters later.

Purple Belles

You would think that hostas, like the shade plants with broad foliage that they are, would love nothing more than a rainy summer, right? Partially. They developed luxurious foliage, and yes, the large fragrant ones did bloom, but not as abundantly as they usually do. You are looking at a picture of very early variety here, I guess that's the one that likes the rain.

The rest of them bloom much later summer, during what is usually the driest period of the year, so I should have realized that they don't suffer for lack of moisture, but they do resent lack of sunshine, and given to the permanent cloud cover this season blessed us with, they were going to drag their feet this year. I'm patiently waiting to see if the small landscaping variety, which tends to bloom in compact masses of lavender bells towards the end of August will surprise me and prove me wrong.

Hostas kind of grew on me. I didn't know how to care for them in the beginning, and as a result they looked sort of generic for a while. When properly attended to, it is hard to find fault with these plants, they bloom reliably, their flowers are spectacular, often delightfully fragrant, their foliage is lush and healthy, they're exceptionally resilient and fill the void of the summer doldrums, after most of the summer perennials have already finished blooming.

I didn't realize they're just not that into rain, to my great surprise, and this is not their year. If I had to pick between the daisies and the hostas which ones were going to have a better season, I wouldn't have hesitated to pick the hostas, but what do I know? Nature has its own wisdom.

The Garden in July

Even with all the rain the garden is still putting up its customary mid-summer flower show. This is the second year for the biennial bell flowers which adapted to their new surroundings with a vengeance and took over the flower bed. They are beautiful, and I took many pictures, and I appreciate the enthusiasm, but man! There is no room to breathe, they're all over the place.

I think I'll try for tamer plants next year, they grow seven foot tall, they even overwhelmed the goldenrod, and that's saying something!

Herbs in the Rain

It bloomed, but nowhere near last year's splendor, which makes sense considering that yarrow likes dry sunny meadows and so far we've had mostly rain.

The herbs don't really appreciate rainy weather, with the exception of sage, which seems to thrive under any circumstances, so I had to do a lot of prophylactic pruning to keep them healthy. The wormwood is nuts, I had no idea how big its clump can get, it was a tiny fledgling sprout when I planted it. I had to dig my way out of it with with shears! It's smallish and tidy now.

WEEK TWENTY-NINE

July 16th - Summer Chaos

Magic Beans

I plant scarlet runner beans for their flowers - all the beauty of sweet peas with none of the high maintenance. Of course they are not fragrant, but nothing in this life is perfect.

If you plant them as a crop, and during favorable years they do produce, don't pick them green, you are not doing yourself or the beans any favors.

There are three types of beans, based on their use: snap, shell and dry.

Any bean can function as a snap bean, as long as you pick it very young, while the pod still snaps easily when you bend it. Considering how large scarlet runner beans get, it doesn't seem like the best use for them.

Shell beans can be used green or shelled for the soft beans inside, and most of the stringy genes have been bred out of them during many hybridizations. These varieties include broad beans, Lima beans and French haricots.

Dry beans are stringy, and runner beans are the stringiest of them all. You can make rope out of those suckers, they are long, tough and impossible to chew. Even the shells are relatively unpleasant if you want to consume them green, their rough fuzzy texture does not agree with one's palate and kind of ruins their taste, which is not bad, as green beans go.

You have to wait until the shells are dry to really appreciate runner beans, whose offspring grows to gargantuan size and sports a calico pattern in white and deep purple, almost too beautiful to eat. This is an heirloom variety and will come true from seed, so do keep some of those pretty beans for next year's planting.

As I was admiring my valiant flower bearing vines I couldn't help but notice that they escaped the trellis and clambered their way up a phone wire and are now headed for the second floor. It's going to be an interesting experience trying to pull their dried up stems from there when I get to the fall cleaning.

Garden Textures

The difference between planting and landscape design comes from paying attention to seemingly unimportant details and one of them is texture. Its impact is even greater in the shade, where very few plants bloom.

A well balanced shade border will have all of the following:

Broad leaved plants, both deciduous and evergreen. If the leaves are variegated and have different indentations, that is even better. A few good examples are hostas, elephant ears, hellebores, rhubarb and chards.

Succulents.

Plants with long narrow leaves - decorative grasses, irises, day lilies, crocosmia, grape hyacinths and lily turf.

Plants with lacy foliage, like ferns, bugbane, wild bleeding hearts, dill and asparagus.

Plants with needle shaped leaves, especially evergreens.

Last, but not least, plants whose inflorescences come in diffuse, cloud-like drifts, like the one in the picture, but also catmint, navelwort, foam flowers, decorative grasses again, and coral bells.

Just Happy

Rain or shine, daisies are always happy. Their neighbor, the calendula, didn't bother this year. The fall is long and they bloom all the way to November, so there is still plenty of time.

A few years back they kind of took over the flower bed and I thinned them out, and they really didn't like it. I had to replant them and they took off again, and I'm not making that mistake again. Now when I find a perennial that blooms reliably for a good part of summer, I try not to mess with it too much. Aren't they lovely?

Getting an Early Start

Many of the fall perennials got an early start, which is kind of weird considering the rainy weather. It seems like the fall is going to be long, warm and rainy too, so I'm planning for a few additions, if I can find anything at the plant nursery that catches my eye.

This time is usually slow, most of the summer annuals are gone and it's too early for the fall selection, which pretty much means mums, but who knows, maybe I luck out. Always on the lookout for the perfect fall blooming perennial.

WEEK THIRTY

July 23rd - Late July

Herbs for Clay Soils

I know gardening wisdom says that most herbs thrive in poor soils, category that always includes clay for some reason, but in my experience that is not true. Many 'poor soil' herbs can't be bothered to last a whole season in clay, not to mention come back the following year. For instance, throughout a whole decade of gardening I haven't managed to keep thyme alive long enough to witness the end of summer. Chamomile lasts even less.

I'll make a list of plants that thrive in clay with very little effort, sometimes to the point of becoming invasive.

Wormwood. It's technically not an herb, at least not as far as its use is concerned nowadays, but it will grow gigantic in tough clay with no maintenance at all.

Yarrow. As long as the weather errs on the dry side, it will shine and bloom profusely.

Sage. It requires regular pruning to keep it from growing out of control.

Lemon balm. A strange plant for the dry and sunny border, given its delicate foliage. Its clump grows big and the plant spreads easily, it can become invasive. It stays green during mild winters.

Lavender. Hard to start, but once established, the shrub will be very long lived and maintenance free.

Calendula. The mature plants tolerate drought very well and bloom abundantly through the fall, way into November and after the first frost.

Chives. They live for years and have pretty blooms to boot.

Hyssop. Both the old fashioned and the licorice varieties love clay and it shows. Licorice hyssop is a welcome addition to the late summer garden, with its fuzzy, strongly scented flowers.

Saint John's Wort. It grows slowly but adapts well to its site and is very long lived.

Valerian. Reluctantly.

In shade and part shade, cilantro, dill and lovage perform well, marjoram and basil, not so much.

I can't speak of rosemary, which I'm always growing in a container, and the mint cares more about the weather than it does about the soil, because it needs moisture.

Almost August

We're definitely approaching the late summer lull, when most of the early summer perennials slow down and the August favorites haven't started blooming yet.

Every year at this time I take notice of the fact that there are way too few of the latter in my garden, and every year I try to do something about it, but for some reason, they don't stick around.

I was looking forward to the asters, but they are nowhere to be found either.

The long time residents and classic fall bloomers are doing very well, thank you, so I'm going to count my blessings for having the sedums, the hostas, the goldenrod and the plumbago thrive, but I would like to figure out a way to persuade other late summer plants, like russian sage, cimicifugas and windflowers to stay.

A trip to the nursery yielded a plant I've never seen before and therefore I had to bring it home. It's called yellow wax bells, it belongs to the hydrangea family, it is a native of Japan and loves shade.

Since my soil is very alkaline and hydrangeas can't stand it, I'll keep this one in its original container, with the soil it came in. Maybe I should try this more often, so I can grow plants that love acidic soil too.

The Wild Things

I really can't remember planting these, but I do recall trying a couple of hybrids which were a lot more colorful. I can only assume the originals died and this is the offspring.

If you are in the habit of collecting seeds from your plants, you are familiar with the fact that hybrid varieties revert to their wild state, if their seeds germinate at all. I sometimes plant them intentionally, just out of curiosity, to see what the original variety looked like.

Very Late

Dead nettle usually blooms in May. I don't know what happened this year, but here we are, more than two months late. The yellow variety, "Archangel", didn't bloom at all this year.

It is strange to see it and plumbago bloom together, the latter got an early start. I thought dead nettle didn't care about its growing conditions, but I was wrong. It really hates rain, the one's I had in the back yard are almost all gone.

WEEK THIRTY-ONE

July 30th - Bright Yellows

The Warm Garden Palette

Towards the end of summer, the garden palette shifts to yellows and oranges, to match the fiery energy of the sun. This is the time for the black eyed Susans, blanket flowers, marigolds, goldenrod and tickseed to shine.

The vegetable patch usually joins into the warm color harmony with squashes and pumpkins, but sadly mine decided to skip this year. During a good year I can't keep the squashes out of my way, if nothing else they produce an abundance of foliage and cheerful golden flowers. Not this summer, I can't even find them.

Despite their sprawling habit and their broad foliage, which takes up way too much space in a tiny garden, squashes and pumpkins thrive in hot, dry weather. Well, there is always next year.

The garden is overdue a good weeding, but otherwise in reasonably good shape for this time of year, the August mess. A few handfuls of fertilizer wouldn't hurt either, at least for the veggies.

It was supposed to rain again tomorrow, but the sunset begs to differ, red sky at night and all.

Beautiful Flowers to Grow in the Shade

The shade border rests at the end of summer, when it gets too warm and too dry for its taste. Since this summer was cool and rainy, the plants maintained the exuberant growth of early spring. The hostas are lush and full, the begonias are in full bloom and the toad lilies have doubled in size.

What to grow in the shade? Flowers. White, if you would, they stand out in low light.

In spring, hellebores, lily of the valley, trillium, Solomon's seal and bleeding hearts run the show, followed by the delicate fuzz of foam flowers. Later the clematis and the early hostas provide clusters of interest with bloom that lasts for weeks.

The tuberous begonia is the summer champion of the shade border, with its large exotic blooms that look like roses. Tuberous begonias bloom very reliably in full shade and withstand drought a lot better than one would think just by looking at them.

Plantain lilies come next, with the perfect combination of flowers, fragrance and showy foliage.

If you have acidic soil, hydrangeas and astilbe are great choices, and if the climate is not too hot, try snakeroot, a spectacular specimen plant with very dark, lacy foliage which, at the end of summer, sprouts airy wands that smell like vanilla and grape soda.

The fall is the season of the windflowers and the toad lilies.

Last but not least, the ground covers - alyssum, sweet woodruff and pachysandra, all of which have white flowers and perform very well in the shade.

Annuals in Pots

The potted plants need extra watering in August, when precipitation is usually low. The annuals need more care than the perennials, their roots are shallow and many of them bloom from spring to fall. Feed them regularly and water them frequently. Unlike the perennial, whose floppy foliage is more of a guideline than an alarm, annuals can't take wilting more than twice without suffering permanent damage.

Don't forget to deadhead, the plants will stop blooming if the faded flowers aren't removed.

More About Medicinal Herbs

Medicinal herbs, just like cooking herbs, are more effective when used fresh. If you want to use fresh herbs for infused oils, you need to allow them to wilt for a few hours, to eliminate as much of their water as possible.

Make sure to replace the green material with a fresh batch every other day, in order to increase the infused oil potency and avoid mold problems. Keep the jar in a sunny window and repeat this process for a month, stirring regularly. After a month, strain the oil and keep it in a cool place for up to six months.

WEEK THIRTY-TWO

August 7th - The Rain Again

Nature in Balance

Nature always finds its way back to balance. Not the rigorous balance people conceive of, based on logic and rules, but a messy one, without apparent patterns, which only reveals itself in retrospect. It has ebbs and flows, excesses and sparseness almost impossible to constrain by human means.

Every three years or so the rain comes back and lingers for an entire season, like it's afraid to leave. It is during those soggy summers, when the overgrown vegetation filters the light and makes existence look like the inside of an aquarium, that you really get the quiet workings of nature. They are not good, they are not evil, they just are.

Sure we try to control the perceived shortcomings of nature, but in the end all things green behave as they would according to the true weather conditions anyway. Rain eventually turns gardening into a spectator sport, what are you going to do, stand out there and get wet?

So you sit by a window and watch your garden do just fine without your input. There is great peace that comes with this understanding, that the world is alive and well and does what it wills, it makes its own rules and allows us, benevolently, to thrive and make our own rules too.

About Gardening

I've been growing vegetables in my little garden for over ten years, and one may wonder what is the benefit of waiting four whole months to get an eggplant when there is a whole stand of them at the grocery store all the time, even in the middle of winter.

What happens is that every year, sometimes in the middle of February I get these packets of seeds. There is nothing going on outside, nothing but bleak cold dreary, and me, indoors, with a little packet of seeds in my hand.

I set up the seed trays, making an unholy mess in the process, as anybody who's ever tried handling potting medium in their kitchen knows, plant one seed per tray and wait. Between that time and right about now many things happen - the first leaf, the first flower, the first fruit, the time for planting outdoors, the time for harvest - but the thing that really keeps me hooked is that, after experiencing all of them, come spring, I get to do it all again. Every spring I get another chance to see an eggplant go from seed to fruit in slow motion.

Most things in life have an expiration date, even life itself. In a way gardening brings me as close to the concept of forever as it is possible for a person to get. That is the worth of my eggplant.

When it Rains in Spring

Plants love rain, but it has to be on their schedule. When it rains in spring it's usually a harbinger of bountiful harvest, unless, of course, it rains a lot come harvest time too. Rain in August is usually not a prize.

The flower garden doesn't much care when it rains, but it doesn't bloom a lot during cool rainy summers, and that is not because it gets too much water, it's because it doesn't get enough sunshine. Still, everything is so green I feel like I'm looking at the wrong season.

Bulbs like Water Too

Don't forget to water the bulbs at the end of summer when the weather turns dry. By this time the spring bulbs have most likely died down to the ground, so it's easy to forget they are there. They need just as much water as the other perennials, especially if they are planted in pots.

Spring bulbs need to wait until mid to late October for planting, but summer bulbs can be planted at any time of year, granted to dirt is not frozen. I don't know what happened to the lily bulbs. Again.

WEEK THIRTY-THREE

August 14th - The Peaceful Garden

The Round Year

The year is round. This becomes evident even to the distracted onlooker sometimes in August when the garden comes full circle with the production of seed and then starts to mellow out in anticipation of winter.

It is weird to think of winter when the temperatures are approaching the top of the range, but I always do, because nature calls it in its own ineffable way, there is something about the way the light changes, the shift in the color saturation of maturing foliage, the scent of the wind. This end of season announcement is made even more disconcerting by the fact that, at least in this climate, it is followed by two more months of warm weather.

The slow cycles of plant life tie into the larger cycles of nature, and then of the world, and then of the stars, and then of the cosmos, and it's all cycles within cycles all the way out. It takes wisdom and patience to settle into this growing in place while the universe moves around you in circles, but it builds constancy and a sense of belonging to life, instead of passing through it.

Anyway, now that nature's message reached my doorstep, I'm already planning next year's plantings inside my head, without even wanting to, like some sort of nesting instinct, only garden related. Catalogs started showing up in the mail, and I saw lilies. I must have lilies. And daffodils. And tulips. And hyacinths.

Today is perfect, with bright sunshine and fragrant hostas, and balmy temperatures stirred gently by the breeze; the plants are heavy with the weight of harvest and just looking at them makes me happy. The approach of winter used to make me sad, but not anymore. With it comes the gift of another year, also round.

Noisy Summer Afternoon

I went outside to enjoy the peace and quiet of a summer afternoon, but I'm out of luck. Between the cicadas, the birds, the planes flying overhead and the squirrels dropping walnuts from the branches above on top of my head, it's noise central out here.

Nature is rarely quiet. It sometimes happens in winter, when it snows at dusk, or during the stillness before a thunderstorm, or during rare events that alter the normal course of things, like an eclipse, for instance, but during regular hours, forget about it.

Every now and then a gust of wind shuffles the leaves of the trees and stirs up all sorts of small creatures hiding in the branches. For a moment the noise intensifies.

I guess I'll enjoy my nature with noise, thank you. Just hold the walnuts. You wouldn't believe the noise those make when they fall on the roof, they sound like popping champaign corks.

Fruit

I have waited a long time for this, and compliments of the mild winter I got to see it again. If you've never seen the fruit of the southern magnolia, by all means look it up. The avocado green shell turns all shades of blush and pink, and when the fruit finally ripens, its scales open to reveal the seeds, which look exactly like corn, only bright red.

I tried to dry them one year, to use in potpourri, but unlike real corn they don't keep, unfortunately.

The Approach of Fall

Normally at the end of summer I would remind people they need to water the garden, but this year it would be kind of like bringing water to the river. The good news is the lawn looks resplendent, and for some miraculous reason relatively weed free.

Rain or shine, the August mess is guaranteed, it looks like. The squirrels provide me with fresh batches of chewed up walnut shells every day.

WEEK THIRTY-FOUR

August 21st - Total Eclipse of the Sun

Rare Events

You'd think the week of the eclipse would feature at least a grainy picture of it, but sadly my photo expertise leaves much to be desired. Anyway, just imagine there is an eclipse picture here, if you will, while I talk about it.

Like so many people, I too stared at the sun for a couple of hours, to watch it turn from a ball of fire into a thin crescent of light. We were not in the total eclipse zone and because of that, sunlight shone through the entire time. I could only see the moon's shadow through special glasses, but the day did turn darker and colder in the process.

Total solar eclipses are not rare occurrences, if you are willing to chase them around the globe, but if you're staying put, you aren't likely to experience too many of them in a lifetime. That made it worth wasting a couple of hours, and so I did.

The next eclipse is scheduled to occur in seven years, and it will be a total solar eclipse in our area, so I'm already marking my calendar. Seven years: that's seven generations for an annual plant, a reasonable length of time in a person's life, and nothing at all in the grand scheme of things. Just a reminder that time is not much of a common denominator for the whole of existence.

When Nature Was Quiet

Maybe this celestial event seemed over-hyped to people, but every other living think paid it its undivided attention. At the peak of the eclipse everything turned unnaturally still. There was no rustling in the leaves, no scurrying on the ground, no sound in the air. Not even the wind.

I experienced my little world grow very quiet as the light dimmed and the air cooled, and because I didn't know to expect this phenomenon, I paid attention to all its little details.

It is hard to describe the natural cues all around us that are so obvious to wildlife, the subtle changes that tighten your muscles, quicken your breath and give you goosebumps, but they all conveyed an undeniable, though silent behest: be very very still.

People would argue that the advances of civilization made these gut reactions obsolete, that one doesn't need to rely on instinct when there are so many ways to measure and predict natural events, but I can't help be humbled by the fact that birds and squirrels know better than me when it comes to keeping themselves out of danger.

Misty Landscapes

Fall came early and suddenly. This morning I woke up to a misty landscape, an airy fog that covered the wet plumes of grass like a blanket.There is so much peace in the garden on foggy mornings, so much quiet, as if the sky is trying to soothe the gardener's tired eyes and sunburned skin.

Fog is very rare in this area, in the decades I've lived here I can only remember a few instances of it. When it happens, people complain about it and deem it inconvenient, but I always love it.

Autumn Yellows

These are a few leftovers from the summer, the true fall yellows, the goldenrods, haven't bloomed yet, I blame it on the excessive rain.

The garden is holding up surprisingly well, considering, although, alas, not much luck with herbs and produce this year, for the obvious reasons. Strangely enough the plants can cope with draught a little better than they do with excessive rain, but nature will do what it wills. Next year is another year.

WEEK THIRTY-FIVE

August 28th - Cold Front

The Breath of Fall

It has gotten unusually cold all of a sudden, much too early for the beginning of fall. A dreary drizzle bore down all day yesterday, as a reminder of why I revile the cold season.

I've been looking through gardening books for ideas on how to make the winter garden more interesting, and to my great distress I realized all of those ideas are already incorporated in my garden, except for two: red dogwood branches and holly. And no, I wouldn't say there is winter interest. Nature didn't create winter interest, it created dreary monochrome landscape and frozen muck.

Way too early for depressing winter conversation. I'm hoping the weather will recover and keep us in summer for a bit longer, but unfortunately I know that's not how it works. There are two kinds of yearly patterns: the ones with harsh winters and extreme summers, which tend to be dry and have a very long and warm fall, and the wet ones, with mild rainy winters and cool rainy summers, which like to retire early and regale us all with uninspiring wet foliage (fall leaves need sunshine and warmth to develop the sugar that gives them their beautiful coloring).

After a day of November preview the sun came back, and today had sunshine and blue skies, but it's still cold. The plant nursery was filled with fall decorations, pumpkins and Halloween props. Maybe fall is not so dreary after all. Oh, mercy me, I just realized the fall raking season is fast approaching. Groan. Not thinking about it! Not thinking about it!

Gardening with Annuals

It has been a while since I used annuals, mostly because there is not much room left in my garden for a mass planting. I miss them dearly, though, and next year I promise to bring back the favorites:

Impatiens and wax begonias \- the go to plants for shade, both of which have fared well even during dry summers, and even in poor soils.

Tuberous begonias - the royalty of the shade, with their beautiful rose like blossoms.

Marigolds and petunias for the sunny border, to enjoy color and fragrance, especially during the lull at the end of summer.

Stock - a somewhat delicate flower, but well worth the effort for its exquisite fragrance.

Zinnias - the plants that never disappoint. There is no way one could go wrong with zinnias, and they come in almost any color, to accommodate every garden design.

Snapdragons - my all time favorite flowers, whose very presence brings a smile. Some of them are fragrant too, they have a sweet earthy scent.

Geraniums, which I haven't had in a very long time, overflowing baskets of fuchsias for the balcony, the list goes on and on.

I'll do my best to incorporate annuals in next year's garden, it's not easy to get continuous bloom out of a garden filled only with perennials, even one that has been properly designed.

Nothing if Not Persistent

I planted flowering tobacco five years ago, and if you ever had them, you understand why I still have them in my garden. There are two types of plants which aspire to garden permanence: the perennials and the self seeding annuals. For the latter, the rule is 'once in the garden, always in the garden'.

Here is a short list of perpetual annuals and biennials, if you don't want them in your garden forever, don't try them out: nicotiana, cleome, French mallow, hollyhocks, forget-me-nots, four-o-clocks, and honesty.

Field Pattern

Planting flowers in drifts helps create a natural effect that enhances the charm of cottage and English gardens. It also benefits the residents, who have adapted to growing in colonies.

Plants thrive in company, never use only one specimen of a kind. This is as true for trees as it is for the small annual flowers. The explanation for this lays beneath the ground: the root systems literally protect each other either by sharing nutrients or releasing chemicals into the soil that are not favorable to other plants.

WEEK THIRTY-SIX

September 4th - Fall Again

The Spring Bulb Catalogs are Here

The bulb catalogs started arriving in the mail, which gives me about a month to plan for next spring. Probably more. If you plant spring bulbs before the weather cools down for good they tend to sprout in the fall and spend their energy reserves on producing doomed foliage instead of storing it to feed bloom in spring.

Almost all bulbs, with the exception of daffodils, are food delicacies for wildlife during the long winter months. Either cover them with a mesh before you bury them, or plant twice as many. Of course I'm not sold on the daffodil bulbs being bitter either, because something must happen to them between the time I plant them in large numbers and the time they never come out of the ground.

Don't forget to sprinkle a good helping of bone meal in the planting holes and plant bulbs in groups of five or six - they look better in the landscape and are happier among their kin.

General gardening practice recommends replacing bulbs every three years, because they exhaust their food reserves and stop blooming after that. I'm not sure that is necessarily true, but I never got to worry about the bulbs exhausting themselves, the squirrels always get to them before that, so I guess the three year replacement cycle is more like a yearly replacement cycle.

Bee-sy!

I love watching bees swarm the stonecrops on nice sunny afternoons. If a garden is thriving, the bees will come to visit, but if you want to entice them further, here are a few pointers.

Avoid using insecticides, pesticides or harsh fertilizers.

Bees like tiny flowers that make it easier for them to collect pollen and nectar, so plant as many of the following as possible to attract them: sedums, catmints, beebalm, lemon balm, goldenrod, lavender, butterfly bush, mint, basil, thyme, rosemary and verbena.

If you can, provide a source of fresh water.

Choose native and heirloom species, they constitute better sources of pollen, which is bred out of the hybrid varieties in the process of hybridization.

Have flowers in bloom for all the seasons. Plant herbs, they love herbs. Make rooms for flowering trees.

Allow the garden to grow a little wild to make the bees feel more at home and provide them with shelter.

Graceful Mess

The garden is a graceful mess after all the rain, a mesh of textures, seed heads and excessive foliage. Normally around this time the vegetative cycle slows down enough for me to take a tally of what's there and figure out what to plant next year.

Right now I can't even venture past the edge of the border, the overgrown plants will throw me right back. I guess I'll wait another week.

Just Blue

Plumbago is a very reliable September bloomer. I tried it in both sunny and shaded spots and it performs well in both, although it blooms more abundantly in the sunshine.

This ground cover thrives on neglect, don't overfeed it, it will grow excessively tall to the detriment of blooming. Plumbago performs very well during droughts and tends to bloom early if summers are hot. After the bloom is over its maroon seed heads provide fall garden interest all the way through December.

WEEK THIRTY-SEVEN

September 11th - And Yet More Rain

Cool Beans

My tiny kitchen garden includes beans every year, even though they are not my favorite crop. I plant them for two reasons: they put a lot of nitrogen back into the soil and they have very pretty flowers.

During the last few years I stayed with the purple varieties, whose colorful pods are almost as attractive as their flowers and whose taste is very pleasant, as beans go, but this year I decided to give the old 'Painted Lady' another try.

I don't think you can find a bean with prettier seeds and flowers than these, except maybe Fava, which is already on the list of new plants to try next year.

Beans love cool weather; they bloom well until the beginning of summer, when they take a break and pick up again in September. During good years they can put up significant production in the short time left until the end of the season, and this seems to be a good year.

I decided not to pick them green, since they are so much better dry, and this tends to dampen their enthusiasm a little bit: the plants prioritize ripening of their seed over blooming.

Textures

The best way to describe the September garden is a charming mess. The summer plants don't know whether it makes sense for them to keep going, and when they do bloom they do so in bursts and spurts that have a jarring effect on the fall landscape, which is of a completely different breed.

Meanwhile the fruits of the spring flowers are starting to ripen, adding touches of brown, red and orange to the messy texture, and suddenly everything in the plant world seems to decide they have no reason to maintain hierarchy and order anymore. By the end of the first month of fall, the garden is pure chaos.

There is no telling what is what in the jumbled mess: dried up seedpods compete with exuberant stonecrop mopheads and unripened grass plumes, the pendulous hostas slowly turn to sticks and above the clutter the catmints rule supreme, with their diminutive but very persistent flowers.

This is usually the time when I too abandon the fight, why fight the garden's messy streak so late in the season? Besides, this year the rain provided additional excuses for not keeping the flower beds neat and tidy.

Here comes the rain again. So much rain.

Produce

Speaking of produce, this year the bell peppers performed very well and finally made it to the colorful stage. You can see red ones in the picture, but my favorites are so purple they look like eggplants. I started bell peppers from seed in February, a rainbow mix true to the image displayed on its packet. Yellow is the only color I haven't seen yet.

Hot peppers are a different story: they started out enthusiastically, but gave up the ghost when the summer turned too rainy for their taste.

Wild Berries

The charming disarray of September is starting to show, a sweet and nostalgic approach to the end of the season. The garden looks like it just got out of bed on sunny mornings,when its flowering stems are all in tangles and the first falling leaves dot the ground.

If I were to judge fruitfulness by these honeysuckle branches, I'd say we're all set for winter, but sadly they are not edible. The birds will be pleased.

WEEK THIRTY-EIGHT

September 18th - Awaiting the Equinox

After the Rain

Everyone is familiar with this weird characteristic of mushrooms: they spring out of the ground overnight, fully grown, whenever they get a good rain and enough warmth to trigger their development. You go to sleep with a lawn and wake up to a mushroom hatchery.

The good news is that mushrooms need decaying organic matter, which is rich in nutrients, in order to grow, and if they sprout on your lawn that means your soil is very healthy. They don't need sunlight or dirt, they'll grow anywhere: dark basements, rotting wooden logs, they'll even sprout sideways on the trunks of old trees. Some mushroom types, truffles, for instance, don't bother to break out of the ground at all and live their happy stealth lives completely buried.

That's where the largest part of the mushroom lives anyway, underground, where it forms an intricate network of filaments which span for miles and survive for thousands of years as long as there is sufficient decaying matter to feast on.

How do they grow so fast? My understanding is that the cells of their fruiting bodies divide and get fully formed beneath the surface of the soil, where the mycellium can accumulate large quantities of nutrients over time, and when moisture becomes available, the cells simply swell up with water and make the caps pop out of the ground. A mushroom is over 90% water.

Fall Princess

Every year I wait for this princess, the orchid of the northern garden, a plant whose flowers are as exquisite as its name is revolting. I'm talking about the toad lily.

For those who have long searched for late fall perennials, look no further: toad lilies start blooming mid-September and keep going until the beginning of November. They keep blooming until everything else has retired for the season, to keep good company to the fall equinox, the harvest and the Halloween pumpkins.

Toad lilies are fall bulbs, yes, there is such a thing, which means they bring to the garden all the advantages of their spring blooming siblings: they require virtually no maintenance, they are very resilient and in time they spread to form larger clumps, which makes them great for naturalizing. They grow about three foot tall and are not scented.

Sometimes mid-October they start to look unreal, because the garden is already knee deep in fallen leaves and all the other perennials have died down, and their slender stems topped by purple dotted flowers seem to be the only things left standing on nature's battle field at the end of the ultimate fight.

Their unusual blooms only used to come in purple. The newer hybrids have created blue and pink variations on the purple cultivar, but in my gardening experience those are not as resilient as the original plant.

Deep Purple

Did I mention the purple bell peppers? These are very pretty, I wish I thought of planting them before. Speaking of purple, the eggplants have decided to produce the miniature versions of their fruit, that and an overabundance of flowers. I'm not complaining, I'm just trying to get the point of the latter endeavor. It kind of looks like the end of the season, to tell you the truth. It's still warm enough, but the leaves have started falling and the blooming plants have closed shop for the season.

Some years the garden goes to bed early, and this seems like one of them.

WEEK THIRTY-NINE

September 25th - Officially Fall

At the End of September

With temperatures stubbornly stuck in the eighties and nineties I would have missed the beginning of fall this year but for the garden following its own internal clock: warmth or no warmth, once we passed the fall equinox, everything in the flower and vegetable border went into liquidation mode.

The autumn faithfuls, the stonecrops, are putting up a good show with their gradual color change from chartreuse to dark brown but everything else got the message that it's time to retire for the season and shut down production.

I don't understand what actually triggers this sudden shift, it must be the light levels or the altitude of the sun or something, the garden always knows best.

It's time to start planning for next year, so I'm trying to focus on finding spring bulbs and moving early blooming perennials. We need more daffodils, we always need more daffodils.

The weather forecast promised a wave of chilly air next week, but there is no sign of that yet. So far September unfolded according to its regular pattern - warm, sunny and dry.

David

Roses are not the only flowers who got a second wind this fall, the white phlox sprung back to life too, encouraged by sunshine and summer like temperatures.

Phlox is a must have in a temperate climate garden, especially if you have clay soil. There aren't many perennials that bloom all season long, are fragrant, like alkaline soils and require so little maintenance. The clumps are very long lived, once it gets established it thrives for decades and its bloom improves with each passing year. The clumps tend to get quite large if they have enough room, five feet tall by four feet in diameter.

The mature plants produce black seeds vaguely reminiscent of peppercorns, which eagerly sprout volunteers every spring. The seedlings respond very well to relocation, I have populated all the flower beds with progeny from one large plant.

The scent of this delightful perennial is at its best during sweltering evenings or on stormy days, right before a summer downpour, and the white variety in the picture, named "David", is exceptionally fragrant. You may not believe this, but I actually followed the scent all the way from the front door of the plant nursery to the last shelf against the back wall in order to find it.

Unlike the purple breed which produces generous bunches of flowers from June to November, the white one only blooms once in July, but it looks like this one decided to break with tradition and surprise me.

Preparing for the Winter

The yard is already a mess and the leaves haven't even started turning yet. Fall cleaning is the most important gardening activity before the cold season.

It is heartwarming to see a neat and tidy garden at rest under a soft blanket of snow. It is exciting to go out early in spring and peek at the first green shoots poking out of the ground. It is depressing to pick moldy slimy leaves out of the planter by hand on a chilly February morning; never doing that again, that's for sure!

Blush

A strange combination of circumstances coaxed the shrub roses into bloom again. I'm wondering if I should water them, September has been very dry, but it's so late in the season I worry it would disturb their natural cycles.

After a very rainy summer the plants seem stressed by seasonable moisture levels, especially the hostas, which luxuriated in lavish foliage the entire season. You wouldn't believe how much it rained this year just by looking at the flower beds, everything looks so dry already.

A Little Late

With all the rain, the fall bloomers are starting a little late, but here they are, finally. Goldenrod tends to be invasive, it spreads by runners and has an endlessly redundant root system that is almost impossible to get rid of, but I put up with it because it provides such a beautiful splash of color in the garden at exactly the right time.

Like all the plants that sport inflorescences of tiny blooms, goldenrod is beloved by butterflies and bees. Between it, the stonecrops and the catmints, the buzz never ends.

WEEK FORTY

October 2rd - My Lovely Garden

The Flowers of Spring

Usually around this time of year I start to panic, look around and wonder where everything went? Where are the flowers, where is the order, how am I ever going to dig myself out of the mountain of debris that becomes the fall garden. This is when I find it useful to revisit pictures from seasons past and wax nostalgic over the dewy roses and the cheerful daffodils and the overabundance of violets.

I hold on to the flowers of spring.

Gardens have the magnificent privilege of reinventing themselves every year, which is why you always see them with fresh eyes and you don't realize how old they really are. The oldest garden still in existence dates from the fifth century.

I looked through the pictures from previous years where no two seasons are the same, and yet the spirit of this collective living entity shines through, a very familiar presence and one that had become so dear to me over the years.

After fawning over the beautiful pictures I accidentally glance through the windows at the chaos outside and the lizard brain returns to panic mode, useless, as always, to test whether the garden is blooming less and less with each passing spring, to question whether the flowers are less beautiful, and to waste my time.

The garden is and it always will be beautiful and I love it with all my heart just the way it is.

Balance and Permanence

In the hustle and bustle of modern life nature feels slow somehow, we don't have the patience to acknowledge its subtle cues anymore and in the process we don't realize the fact that the fault lies with us and not with it. There is a reason for nature's slowness, the same reason that makes long lived creatures' hearts beat slower, the rhythm of the tides monotonously even and the timing of the first bloom in spring eerily precise: systems that are inherently stable have no reason to change over long periods of time, and those systems include many species of the plant kingdom.

One can't understand a garden's idiosyncrasies, because it functions on complex parameters that are mostly hidden from view, especially when one regards the vegetal realm as a simple, static set that can be modified at will. In reality an established perennial border is an autonomous system that manages its own nutrients and water, maintains its own hierarchy, finds its own balance. In all my years of gardening I learned one thing: the garden picks and chooses what it will accept or reject and it always has the last word. You can expend enormous amounts of energy to make the wrong plant fit and exhaust yourself in the process, but at the beginning of the next season that plant will not be back, no matter how bold the font on its perennial label.

This is why every spring I wait with the trepidation of a final exam to see which of the new plants got booted off the island. Those that don't usually thrive and grow beyond my wildest dreams.

After years of experience one reaches some level of wisdom; one stops worrying whether things will work out and starts knowing that they will. For instance, I don't doubt the fact that next April the garden will be covered in violets.

Not Always So

It used to be that every time I heard the word heliotrope I instantly got pulled into one of Aldous Huxley's books, so I never questioned my mental image of this plant, somewhat gangly and old-fashioned, with a pungent smell like that of palmarosa or patchouli, nature's mirror to an anachronistic character.

Imagine my surprise when I finally saw it for the first time. In all these years in never questioned that mental image, writers really do make their own little worlds.

Lavender Fuzzy

To support my new found enthusiasm for summer and fall bulbs, here is liatris, a favorite of the late summer garden. It comes in every shade of white, pink and purple and makes a wonderful companion to the warm glow of goldenrod.

I'll definitely put it on the list of bulbs to get for next year. Even though summer bulbs can be planted at any time during the growing season, I still like to plant mine with the daffodils and hyacinths at the end of October.

WEEK FORTY-ONE

October 9th - The Garden at Dawn

Magic Hour

Today I was out in the garden before dawn and I watched the crescent moon fade slowly into daylight as carpets of clouds moved very fast across the sky.

Slowly the birds and the moths started to emerge from their nightly hideouts, eager to catch an early meal before the morning rush.

The light was strange in a way I can't describe, a suffused golden lavender glow that faded to gray when the clouds overcast the sun. I'm starting to understand why this time of day is called the magic hour, but it's not just the light, there is also a great stillness in the air that envelops you that sharpens your senses and allows you to catch the lightest sound or scent. Life doesn't struggle before dawn, it doesn't fight, it doesn't hurt, it is at peace. You can almost taste time.

It looks like the year is ready to begin again, I know that doesn't make any sense, we're waiting for winter, but I can't find any signs of it in the humid breeze that feels too warm against my skin, almost tropical, so weird for the middle of October, so late.

The Moon Garden

Ok, I know everybody is busy and strolling through your garden at night is not the first thing that comes to mind at the end of a busy day, but if the spirit moves you to create one, a moon garden can be just as lovely as a bright patch of colorful flowers in the sunlight.

As is the case with shade gardens, white flowers perform best in the subdued light of the moon, which casts a silver glow over light colored blossoms and foliage. Even better, find white flowers that bloom at night, fragrant one, if possible, like nicotiana, tuberose, evening stock, primrose and moon flower.

Plants with silver foliage, like dusty miller, lamb's ears, curry or silver sage, add texture and interest to the border, as will a small reflective pond, if you have the room.

The moon garden performs in diminished light, so keep it open and airy, with wide smooth pathways and without large shrubs that cast deep shadows. Provide accents that sparkle when they catch the light - glazed ceramic, metallic wind chimes, marble statuary, garden lanterns. For an extra dose of eerie, try solar LED garden lights. They glow blue.

Goldenrod

Catching the tail end of the season, I don't know how to feel about that yet. It's still very warm but some leaves have started falling and got mixed with the stems of almost dormant perennials which are scattered all over the place.

Most of the leaves are still green, maybe it's too soon to tell whether or not we're going to have a beautiful leaf season. It doesn't look that way so far, last year at this time the trees were glowing copper, yellow, orange and red, but we'll have to wait and see.

Love

Tuberoses are proof that nature loves us. I had these in a pot for a few years now, I bring them indoors for the winter, feed them an all purpose fertilizer every now and then and in September, or sometimes even in February, they regale me with spectacular bloom.

Their fleshy white flowers last for weeks and are heavy with a heady perfume which is too strong for delicate noses and too sinful for puritan tastes. People either love them or hate them. I wouldn't have a garden without them.

WEEK FORTY-TWO

October 16th - Memories of Summer

Healing Gardens

The first time I saw an herb garden I thought it weird. Why would one want to waste so much space in the sunshine to grow plants that for the most part don't bloom. I guess my budding gardening instincts weren't very sophisticated.

I grew up with a garden, and a very well kept one at that, grace to my grandfather's horticultural talent, knowledge and decades of experience, but even so, one grew herbs wherever there was space left over, where it wasn't convenient to grow something else, surely they weren't a feature planting.

So I was walking through that perennial herb garden, first trying to find any flowers and then trying to see if I could recognize any of the residents. I couldn't then, not more than a few kitchen herbs. Some I recognized by name, but have never seen, some I recognized by scent, and some I'm still unfamiliar with.

What I didn't know then was that an herb garden is not meant to appeal to the eye, though, as you can see, herbs really do bloom. An herb garden is a garden of scents, and sounds, the buzzing of the bees, the fluttering of wings, it is to be enjoyed by touching fuzzy stems and feeling the coolness of the bruised mint and bee balm leaves on a hot afternoon.

Now, many years later, I have my own patch of herbs and I'm so enchanted with the waves of lavender, the umbels of yarrow and the sunny smiles of calendulas that I can't bring myself to harvest more than a few stems at a time. I guess enjoying it by sight does happen after all.

Sadly you can't get the country gal out of the garden design, I still tucked my lovage on the edge of the hosta bed. It is what it is.

Summer Glow

Sometimes mid to late winter one starts to look outside and not remember what the garden was like at the peak of its glory. That's usually when one starts going through photos from seasons past and can't even believe those images were real.

You can't appreciate the embarrassment of riches nature puts forth during the summer, there is just so much to meet the eye all the time and you hardly have time to keep up with it, but the photos are there, as proof that yes, those were the roses, weighing down the canes, and those were the sunny daisies keeping company to the fragrant phlox, and those peonies really were that big.

My point is that we and nature run ourselves differently. Our lives are linear, nature runs in cycles. What that means, except for the fact that nature's way is better, is that on that February afternoon when you can see nothing but dark and dreary muck, you're three short months away from the most extraordinary garden splendor. How many things in life can you think of that are like that and come with a hundred percent guarantee?

Of course, come spring and summer, the gardener gets caught up again in pruning, cleaning and dead heading and forgets to enjoy the beauty of the garden again, and that's when photography comes in handy. You record the glorious sights for later. What else are you going to do in February? Or October, as the case may be.

Cold and Late

We're still so early in the cold half of the year and I'm already waiting for it to be over. Bare trees, dreary sticks, low light and a mighty mess, what's not to like?

In the whirlwind of activities that usually accompanies preparing for winter I forgot to order the bulbs. There may still be time to do that later if the winter doesn't come early, though it looks like all the nurseries have closed shop for the warm season already. It's wreath and candle time.

Winterizing

If you want to pamper yourself on a dreary day, say in late November or early February, try your hand at home made beauty products, it's like catching sunshine and happiness in a jar.

Of course it doesn't hurt if you have your home grown herbs and flowers to start with, the ones you carefully tended to, harvested and properly preserved over the summer months. I always grow calendula, it makes wonderful balms for rough, dry and irritated skin. Don't let winter get you! Moisturize:)

WEEK FORTY-THREE

October 23rd - Gardening Naturally

What Plants Need to Thrive

If you've ever driven by a flower meadow in the middle of summer, you must have realized that plants handle themselves very well without human assistance, as they've always done. The gardener is only there to cheer them along.

A plant needs three things to thrive: sunlight, water and a proper balance of nutrients. From here on the details of what that means exactly for each species vary wildly.

Sunlight is the most important component, since it can't be supplemented, like the other two. No plant will do well with the wrong sun exposure, no matter how much care the green thumb doles upon it. If the label says full sun, that means at least eight hours a day.

Water only if the plants need it, which means when the soil is dry to the depth of one inch, or if they show signs of wilting, and then take your time to make sure that water seeps deeply into the ground. Rare and deep waterings encourage plants to develop strong root systems.

Sure it would be nice to go all natural and use no commercial fertilizers, but unless you have some well rotted manure laying around to mix into the plant beds in spring, or you compost large amounts of organic material, the nutrients in your garden soil will get depleted over time because plants that produce flowers and fruit are heavy feeders. A handful of organic fertilizer every month will keep your garden happy and blooming.

Too Much Rain, Too Little Rain

It's raining really hard again, a heavy summer rain, complete with lightning bolts and earth shaking thunder. The air is too warm and holds onto a fragrance I can't identify, something that doesn't smell exactly like summer, but like an in-between season I haven't experienced before.

This year's was a rainy summer, not a garden's favorite, that's for sure, but it did ensure good water reserves for the foreseeable future.

If I had to choose, I'd say that plants can handle drought a little better than excessive rain, for the simple reason that a gardener can water when it is too dry, but a gardener can't provide sunshine.

When the summer gets too wet two tasks take priority: draining excess water and providing fertilizer to replace the nutrients that have been washed away in the runoff.

A rainy season encourages the growth of luxuriant foliage, but makes plants hold off on blooming and setting fruit. Wet weather also creates a favorable environment for fungi, rusts and molds, and if the soil stays constantly soggy, it can encourage root rot. Prune and clean the garden beds religiously to allow good air movement around the stems and stake the lanky plants, which tend to grow sappy and fragile in the rain.

Growing with the Seasons

The secret to a well designed garden is allowing it to change through the seasons without losing its personality. This can be achieved by adding a few specimen plants which bloom for most of the growing season and maintaining the planting style and color scheme through spring, summer and fall.

Purple, white and yellow color schemes are the easiest to maintain; white flowers are best for the shade and roses go well with everything.

Field Patterns

There are few things as charming as a field of tiny flowers bowing gently in the breeze. Here is a list of candidates for beautiful field patterns: lavender, catmint, coral bells, salvia, Russian sage, baby's breath, wind anemones.

For a natural look, plant in drifts across the landscape, not only is the effect more pleasing to the eye, but most plants thrive in the company of their own species.

WEEK FORTY-FOUR

October 30th - Perfume

Scent Therapy

Nature reached its ugly late fall phase and I'm cooped up indoors with my tender perennials which decided to bloom indoors, just to show they care.

I hate November, it's one of those thankless months that bring exhausting work in the garden with nothing to show for it. It feels like the trees never run out of leaves, no matter how many bags you haul away. Don't even get me started on the joys of freezing rain.

Since there is nothing to see outside and it's getting cold and wet to boot, it felt like a great time to enjoy a decadent and self-indulgent activity, so I'm trying my hand at mixing perfume again, but this time with a purpose. If aromatherapy can improve both the physical and the emotional wellbeing, why not incorporate it into perfume making and reap the benefits?

Let's see, for the base notes, the faint scents that linger on the skin long after the strong perfume accents have faded. rosemary improves memory and focus, chamomile and lavender relieve stress, vetiver helps restore balance and makes one feel grounded, balsam fir comforts and soothes anxiety.

Now the floral scents, which are customarily used to create the middle notes. These scents carry the memory of the season they belong to and can transport one out of this godforsaken month and into a more appealing one, like June for rose essence, July for linden flowers and lilies, April for lilacs and lily of the valley, September for tuberoses, March for hyacinths, May for honeysuckle. Given their association with a specific time of year and according to the basics of perfume making, these fragrances should never be mixed, they are too strong in and of themselves and will fight each other in ways whose outcome is not altogether pleasant.

For the top notes, the first scent that reveals itself when the perfume is applied, all citrus scents improve the mood, peppermint energizes, and cinnamon and cloves relieve inflammation and keep colds at bay. Did I mention that cinnamon and cloves are also said to bring luck and abundance? Just a thought.

Stovetop Aromatherapy

The easiest way to fill the house with fragrance is the old fashioned stove top method. Fill a pot with water, bring it to a boil, add your favorite herb or spice and let it simmer on low heat for a couple of hours.

The best stovetop aromatherapy is a side effect of cooking delightfully decadent treats, here are few enticing examples: simmering fruit preserves, fruit compote with cinnamon and vanilla, starting a fresh pot of coffee, making hot cocoa or warm cookies. When in doubt, bake bread, it never disappoints.

Sultry White Fragrance

You would think that the white fleshy flowers that have a heavy, almost overbearing fragrance would be the easiest to extract perfume from, but it is the very opposite: lilies, gardenias, lily of the valley, tuberoses, honeysuckle, and jasmine are notoriously difficult to pin down scent wise, as their fragrances are almost universally altered by the extraction process. The old fashioned method of effleurage, which infuses deodorized animal fats with the scent of fresh picked flower petals, yields the best approximation of the actual fragrance. Any chemical processing that involves temperature and pressure changes or hydrocarbon extraction usually destroys the scent.

If the wonderful fragrance of lily of the valley, magnolia, gardenia or lily still lingering in the air brings a smile to your lips, keep in mind that they were most likely synthesized in a lab, the essential oils, if they happen to be true to fragrance, are prohibitively expensive.

This is why I do my best to enjoy the fragrance of these flowers while they are in season, outside, in the garden. Sometimes even cutting the blooms to bring them indoors will alter their scent.

If you really want to process your own fragrances, try steam distillation to make hydrosols from roses, chamomile, lavender or lemon verbena, which are pretty cooperative, or make alcohol tinctures from cinnamon, peppercorns. sandalwood and cloves. Citrus and pine oils are usually cold pressed, if you have the equipment for that.

Dried rose petals will hold their fragrance for some time if they are kept in an airtight container, but their fragrance fades away quickly once they are exposed to air.

For the Bath

Bath teas can be made on the spot for instant spa indulgence. Mix a blend of your favorite herbs and spices, place them in a muslin bag and let the hot water run over it while it fills the tub. The fragrance is lovely and adding soothing herbs like chamomile or lavender alleviates skin irritation and heals small scrapes and bumps.

Don't use spearmints, cinnamon and cloves, which are too irritating for prolonged exposure, but do add powdered milk, baking soda or oats to calm, soften and nourish the skin.

WEEK FORTY-FIVE

November 6th - Gardening by the Moon

When to Plant What

Gardening by the moon is a bit of a contentious subject among farmers and gardeners; some swear by it and find it very useful in their practice while others dismiss it as total hooey. I haven't tried it yet, so I'm only talking about it in the abstract.

The basic tenet behind the practice is that the moon's gravitational pull helps draw sap upwards during the waxing phase and allows it to pool below ground during the waning phase. For this reason, the time of the waxing moon is considered favorable for planting crops that are cultivated for their areal parts, with the phase before the first quarter being best for leafy vegetables and seed starting and the phase between the first quarter and the full moon the most auspicious for transplanting seedlings, especially for plants that are cultivated for their flowers and fruit.

During the full moon culinary and medicinal herbs are at the peak of their potency and flavor, so this is the recommended time to harvest them. Harvesting can be done literally under the moonlight or, more commonly, in the morning, after the dew has dried.

During the waning moon and before the last quarter all plants grown for their roots will be at their best and therefore it is a good time for both planting and harvesting radishes, onions and potatoes, and also, for planting flower bulbs.

The second half of the waning moon, between the last quarter and the new moon, is the plants' time to rest and replenish their energy reserves. Lunar gardening recommends to avoid disturbing them in any way. No planting or seed starting is to be done at this time. Use this time to improve the soil and get rid of the weeds instead.

Harvest Moon

The Harvest Moon is the full moon that occurs between the first week of September and the first week of October, closest to the fall equinox. This year's Harvest Moon happened in October, which is not very common.

It has earned this name because it shines very brightly and keeps both its rising position and time relatively the same for the whole four days when the moon is full. The moon's path through the sky is very low too, which creates the illusion of it being a lot larger, almost to the point where it looks unreal, and its silver light shines twice as bright.

For those who don't spend their time following the moon's antics, this is a rare feat. Unlike the sun, which always rises in the east, the moon can pop up almost anywhere, and rise in the evening, at midnight or, hidden from sight, half way through the day.

The Harvest Moon rises early in the evening, when it provides an abundance of light to extend the useful farming time by a few hours.The reliable and intense light of the moon right at sunset, especially at a time when farmers rush to finish up harvesting the summer crops, feels almost like a gift, as if to make up for the fact that the day just started getting shorter than the night.

When to Prune, Divide and Collect Seeds

The time of the full moon is considered to provide the best odds for starting cuttings and dividing perennials. Also, the full winter moon is the recommended time for pruning trees, because the sap that is drawn more abundantly upwards during this time helps them heal faster.

Harvest crops for long storage and seeds at the end of the waning moon, when the plants are resting. For more information on specific days, check a moon gardening calendar. They get very detailed.

When to Work the Soil

The second part of the dark moon, which is the portion in the waning moon cycle between the last quarter and the new moon is plants' time to rest. Lunar gardening recommends to avoid planting at this time, and work on improving the soil instead.

Use this time for tilling and weeding, the weed seeds that you accidentally propagate in the process have a hard time germinating in total darkness.

WEEK FORTY-SIX

November 13th - Ugly Weather

November Rain

With the weather finally turning I moved the gardening activities indoors. Surprisingly, the potted tuberose is in bloom, and so are the lilies. Even so a trip to the plant nursery is in order, to pick up some bulbs and check up the tropical plant section, the kitchen window sill looks a little sad.

From what I've seen so far, the garden venues are still focused on fall and holiday decor, there is a lot of greenery and sparkle in the flower department, but not many potted plants that bloom.

Indoor plants that bloom in winter often come from the southern hemisphere, but if you give any potted plant summer conditions twice a year, which is basically what happens when you bring them in from the cold and expose them to seventy degree temperatures again, they shift their blooming schedule so much it becomes totally unpredictable. The tuberoses have bloomed through every season since I started them, even in the diminished winter light.

If you enjoy spring flowers during the cold season, there is still time to start some potted bulbs. Begin with bulbs that have been chilled, plant them in shallow containers and keep them in temperatures between fifty and sixty degrees for a couple of weeks. When the shoots emerge move them to a bright, sunny window. Keep the soil moist but not soggy and after they finish blooming and when the weather warms up, plant them in the garden.

It is not true that forced bulbs get depleted, mine bloomed every year. I even noticed that the ones that spent a winter indoors fare better than their outdoor counterparts.

In the Clouds

If the concept of living in the clouds conjures images of wings and harps, I'm afraid it's a little more prosaic than that. We lived in the clouds this entire month with the barometric pressure being so low. Think about it, it's a lot less depressing than seeing the weather as plain god-awful.

Sure, I like the misty and poetic version of low cloud cover a lot better, but fog is not very common in this area.

The weather is crazy, jumping from full blown thunderstorm with strong winds to barren frozen stillness that puts a chill through your bones from one day to the next. We're sticking with the crazy stormy today.

Every now and then an angry wind whips the tree branches against the window, to make the dark and moonless night feel even more menacing. One week from Thanksgiving, thank goodness for turkey and pie! I always wondered how that sweet potato, marshmallow and honey recipe came to be and now I know.

Oh, my, and winter hasn't even started yet. Of course the second I decided to clean the leaves out of the back yard the rain returned. Unholy November weather, I'm sticking with the cloud concept, much better for morale.

Wasn't this supposed to be Indian Summer? We haven't had a real frost yet, so maybe it's late this year, at least I like to think so.

Still Haven't Picked the Bulbs

Even if by gardening guidelines it is very late, I'm still planning to pick up a few bulbs for next spring. A couple of years ago I planted daffodils in the middle of December and they turned out fine.

There is nothing more enjoyable at the beginning of spring than being surprised by pretty flowers you forgot you planted Last year the daffodils were exuberant; I finally got enough of them to put up a real show.

The End of the Season

Fall cleaning is upon me, and because the weather was so cold and wet and miserable I kept putting it off. Obviously the longer I delay the colder, wetter and more miserable it's going to get outside, so probably next week I'll have to motivate myself to do it.

It doesn't look too bad yet, that's probably because most of the leaves are still in the trees. Normally during this week of November the weather is unseasonably warm, but not this year.

WEEK FORTY-SEVEN

November 20th - In Other Words

The End of the Gardening Year

Today it snowed. It's not the first snow of the year, but it is the kind that looks like it means it. It was not a pleasant snow, angry and wind driven, with drifts that blast your face with a shower of icy pellets.

Thankfully I managed to finish all my gardening chores, not a moment too soon, and though the landscape may be a frozen field going into year's end, it will be a neat and tidy one.

The bulbs arrived while the weather was still warm, so I planted them. The leaves have been raked and picked up, the vegetable garden is all cleaned up, the trellises and pots are stored safely in the shed, I put away the hoses so they won't freeze, every task is finished and I'm miserable: there will be no gardening until March, nothing but loathsome, dreary, cold and mucky days for months!

Planning? What planning? What is there to plan, how the foliage is going to emerge from the ground when the weather turns? The garden is already designed, if one can call the random mish-mash of perennials that happened over time design, it's mostly maintenance now.

One always hears about the advantages presented by established perennial gardens, and I never thought I'd arrive to the conclusion that one of them, and the most often mentioned, was going to drive me to distress: they are self-sufficient. What am I for then?

Anyway, that's next year's problem, for now I'll try to find a cozy place where I can completely ignore mother nature until spring. God I hate winter!

Gardens in Jars

Terraria seem to have come back in fashion, during my last trip to the plant nursery I've seen containers of all shapes and sizes ready to be filled with live plants and sealed. I've had a terrarium for ages, I don't even remember how many years, so I feel like I can shed some wisdom on what makes them tick.

If you are going to start one, use a large container and give the plants plenty of room to breathe, they grow a lot faster and larger than you anticipate. Don't feed the beast! The idea is to keep growth contained and any amount of fertilizer will spur it out of control.

A classic terrarium is sealed, a self-sufficient ecosystem that must not be exposed to outside influences once closed. If yours is set up so that it can be opened, it will require periodic maintenance to remove the debris and trim the excessive growth. Water every six months or so. If you are not sure whether it needs water or not, err on the side of dry; waterlogged dirt in a sealed jar is just asking for trouble \- mold, mildew and root rot.

It needs indirect but bright light for the most part of the day. The plants must be adapted to a tropical environment, otherwise they won't survive. The air in the jar is going to be still, much warmer than the room it's in, and very humid. Those who have kept a terrarium for a while like to talk about how its glass fogs up in the morning as a result of plants' night respiration, an endearing image for sure, but a very telling one as far as moisture is concerned. The only exception to this rule is if you set up a desert environment for cacti, not an easy thing to do, because you can't control the air humidity in a closed jar.

Keep in mind that the terrarium itself is the living entity you are tending to, it is not just a container for individual plants, and it must be nurtured and kept healthy as a whole in the same way you would a fish tank or a bee hive.

November Chore List

Leaf raking, bulb planting, perennial plant dividing, tool storing, garden hose and ceramic pot winterizing, lawn treating, root vegetable harvesting, bird feeder filling, rose root mounding.

Spring planning, indoor bulb forcing, pumpkin baking, gardening book browsing, seed storing, aahh..., that's about it, I think.

Indoor Retreat

I can't say why every year I hope this dreary weather will not return, I'm not even going to try to rationalize the lapse in logic, but since it always does, shockingly, I am now looking for the most sheltered spot in the house where I plan to spend the winter with minimal interference from the great outdoors.

Herbal tea, check, soft blanket, check, warm sweater, check. Not even looking out the window.

WEEK FORTY-EIGHT

November 27th - How to Propagate Perennials

Cuttings

Stem, root or leaf cuttings are the nursery standard for the propagation of perennials, especially those whose clumps grow woody with time. The benefit of this method is that the young plants are true clones of their parents.

Leaf cutting is the simplest and most miraculous of the methods. It works for African violets, hydrangeas and begonias and it consists of picking a leaf with a long stem and sticking it in the ground. That's all. If you happen to have rooting hormone, it doesn't hurt to dip the stem in it before planting. If not, honey will also work. If not, just add water. I didn't believe it either until I experienced it myself.

Stem cuttings are the most common, used for most of the woody perennials, including but not limited to roses, rosemary, lavender, fuchsias, mums and geraniums. Pick a sturdy stem that is woody but still green, cut it into four to six inch long pieces that contain at least one growth bud, bruise the end to kick start the plant's rooting process and plant it. Both the medium and the cutting must be kept consistently moist. Some people like to mist their plants, others prefer to cover them with a clear jar to create a greenhouse effect. Some plants take a long time to root, but you'll know if the process worked when the cutting starts sprouting new growth.

Root cuttings are used for the propagation of woody shrubs - lilacs, raspberries, Oregon grape hollies, mock oranges and Japanese anemones. Dig up roots that are at least pencil thin while the plant is dormant and cut sections three to six inches long that have one or two growth nodes. After planting, water well to ensure the roots are well settled into the ground and there are no air pockets around them.

Bulb Propagation

If you love root division, you'll be happy to know that it works for bulbs too, via scaling, slicing, scooping and scoring.

Scaling is a propagation method that seems almost custom designed for lilies, whose bulbs "bloom" naturally, turning them into tiny clusters that look like artichokes. Scaling lily bulbs is the easiest propagation method available, you just dig them up, tease the scales gently apart and replant them in the desired location.

I hesitate to dig up my lilies, because if they manage to make it through the winter without being eaten I consider it enough of a blessing and would not dream of jinxing my luck. It so happens that lily bulbs are a squirrel and rabbit food delicacy.

For onion shaped roots, like those of daffodils and hyacinths, slice the bulb vertically into equal pieces that have a small portion of the root attached, soak them in a fungicidal solution, place them in a closed zipper bag with moist vermiculite and keep them in a warm dark place for three months. When they start forming little bulbils at the end, they are ready to plant.

The most unusual method of bulb propagation is called scooping, or scoring, and it is used for hyacinths. Take a large dormant bulb, scoop out the basal plate without disturbing the scales, or alternately score and remove radial portions of it, and plant it in moist sand to about half the height of the bulb, with the scooped out portion facing up. Keep them in a warm, dark place and make sure the sand stays consistently moist. After three months the scooped out portion will be covered with bulbils, which can be easily detached and planted.

Root Divisions

Many herbaceous perennials are easily propagated by root division. Dig up the root ball, tease it apart into several sections and replant them. Some plants, like peonies and hellebores, do not like their roots disturbed and will take a long time to adjust to the new location; they won't look too hot during the process, but they'll get over it eventually if you really have your heart set on propagating them.

When you divide tuberous roots like peonies, coral bells or bleeding hearts, make sure the pieces have at least one eye (the growth bud) and plant them in shallow beds, otherwise they won't come out at all.

Starting Seeds

The easiest way to propagate perennials from seed is to collect the seedlings that pop around the mother plant in spring and transplant them in the desired location. Some plants, like hellebores, garden phlox, violets and sedum are very eager to produce offspring, so you'll have a fresh crop of plants available every year.

Start rare and unusual breeds indoors six to eight weeks before the date of last frost, or, better yet, plant them in the flower border at the end of summer, this way they will go through a cold cycle and be perfectly adapted to their permanent location when they sprout the following spring.

WEEK FORTY-NINE

December 4th - Winter Days

First Snow

Trying to settle into the cold season rhythm and pretend not to notice how the days are growing shorter and shorter, good grief it's getting dark at five! The good news is that we're fast approaching the winter solstice when the process is going to reverse. Won't make much of a difference in the short term, but still, positive.

The first snow came early this year, courtesy of a cold front that dropped in on us from the Arctic in November, but the weather turned mild and humid since, in sync with this year's pattern.

According to the long range weather forecast it seems that we're looking at a year with less precipitation and more temperature extremes than this one, and with any luck, an early spring. March promises to be exceedingly warm and rainy, just in time to give the plants a good head start.

Of course that is four months from now.

I just realized that if the weather holds this pattern the hellebores are going to bloom in January, so there's something to look forward to.

Dormant Garden

If you were wondering what happens to your perennials during their winter hibernation, here goes.

At the approach of winter they transform the sugars developed through photosynthesis into starch, which they can store inside their roots long term and use during the winter in the same way hibernating animals use stored fat.

After the first frost, the plants shed their aerial parts, which consume a lot of energy and through which they lose most of their water. In the process of shedding their foliage the plants create a blanket of organic matter around their roots to keep the soil from freezing by both insulating it and warming it up through the process of decomposition.

Underneath the soil, the roots release the water in their cells, to keep the plants' cell tissue from being damaged; the water is released as a solution of salt and sugars which acts very much like antifreeze in the soil around the roots.

The plants slow down all their metabolic processes during the winter, to preserve the energy stored into the roots during the vegetative season.

The bold evergreens that choose to brave the winter with their foliage intact slow down their metabolism significantly during the cold season too, and cover their leaves and needles with a thick coat of wax or resin to prevent cell damage and water loss as much as possible.

After learning that the plants need their fallen leaves for winter protection I kind of feel guilty about diligently raking the flower beds, but in previous years leaving a blanket of leaves had encouraged a weed bonanza to the detriment of the perennials.

Already Thinking of Spring

I got a flower catalog in the mail and it's already making me think about spring. Come to think of it, it's not a bad time to order bare root roses, even if they won't shipped until March.

The plant nurseries tend to run out of the most popular breeds, as well as the rare and unusual ones, at the beginning of the winter and come spring the selection tends to be relatively limited.

Caring for Amaryllis Bulbs

Newly purchased amaryllis bulbs will bloom around Christmas, as advertised. If you plan to keep your bulbs for many years they start slowly shifting their blooming schedule, so much so that it becomes unpredictable. For instance mine bloomed in July this year, I know, weird.

Make sure the pot is large enough for the bulb and change the soil periodically so that it doesn't run out of nutrients. Keep the medium consistently moist but not soggy.

WEEK FIFTY

December 11th - Christmas Stories

For the Love of Starfish

It snowed for Christmas, large fluffy flakes that wove a thin blanket on the ground. It's getting really cold, so the snow didn't melt, even in the bright sunshine that followed.

Every year at this time I like to make a wish for good things to come, for health, abundance and peace and the happiness of all. After being in this life for more years that I care to acknowledge, there is a lingering sadness associated with these wishes. They always remind me of the story about the million starfish stranded on the beach and the wasted effort of trying to return them to the sea, and yet I realize that if any of these wishes were granted, even a single one, all life would be better for the trying, so I'm throwing my starfish back. Again.

Of course this is the dust of fairy tales and I should be grown up enough not to dwell on it for purpose, but there is a reason why those fairy tales exist, and lasted through centuries of history. How lost would we be without them and how little would get accomplished without the madness of people who insist on doing impossible things.

With that in mind I dedicate the coming year, and hopefully the many years after that, to wildly unreasonable expectations and the love of starfish.

Garden Angels

Whether you believe in angels or not, we're all acquainted with the wealth of stories that evolved from the faith in the existence of their phylum.

According to tradition, an angel's most important duty is to protect. What? Basically everything: people, places, endeavors, universes, time, events that haven't happened yet, you name it, there is an angel in charge. For those of us blessed with a green thumb, the icing on the cake are the garden angels, whose task is to oversee the growth of plants and ensure they thrive and multiply over many seasons.

This probably explains the popularity of angel statuary in gardens large and small and the feeling of serenity that comes upon us when we discover them suddenly, half hidden by luxurious plant growth.

Next time you're at wit's end about that dry patch in the shade where nothing seems to grow, there is comfort in the knowledge that specialized help is available.

So then, you ask, if this is so, why hasn't my garden turned into the paradise I always dreamed of? Sadly, like it is with most interactive systems, the answer is usually operator error. Besides, the garden is always doing splendidly with or without the gardener's input, just not in the manner they want it to.

The Week Before Christmas

The week before Christmas was warmer than usual, so between last minute tasks and travel preparations I found a few moments for a stroll through the garden, which still smelled like humus and exuberant plant growth with an intensity that felt almost tropical.

The resting garden is so still and quiet one wouldn't be able to guess the arduous work the plants are engaged in underground to prepare for next spring.

Caring for Poinsettias

Poinsettias need a warm spot that gets direct bright light, away from drafts, where the temperature doesn't drop below sixty five degrees. Snip off the top growth in spring and move them outside when the weather stays consistently warm, to a spot with morning sun and afternoon shade. If you want them to bloom they need about three months of 12 hour nights, beginning in October.

Some gardeners place paper bags over them, and keep them on and off on a precise schedule for the entire stretch between October and Christmas. Waay too much work, man!

WEEK FIFTY-ONE

December 18th - Boston in Winter

White on White

Christopher Columbus conspicuously ignored us while we walked by him under the large trellis to get back to the city and warmer indoor activities. I looked but couldn't find out why he's displayed sideways in the archway. The park was very quiet under the fresh snow, with only a few shivering people walking fast through it, bundled up to their eyes and eager to get out of the cold.

The park looks completely different in the summer, when it comes alive with outdoor concerts, art fairs, school field trips, volunteer gardening, and even fitness classes, but for now its frozen landscape has the stillness of a sculpture.

Everything is sparse and white on white - the snow, the weathered trellis, the statue, the steps, the clouds, to be honest winter is not the most exciting of seasons, after you admire the pristine gleaming landscape for a while you start praying for signs of life.

We hurried back to Quincy Market, the lit up Christmas tree and lovely holiday music, although it wasn't much warmer there, but it felt a little more comforting. I wish someone thought to make up winter holidays for the beginning of the year, January through March can be pretty gruesome, all horrendous weather, no celebrations.

The Prado

We've been to Boston many times, but somehow never managed to make our way to this little hidden gem. Prado comes as a surprise in the middle of the city, as a welcome respite from the bustling activity of Hanover Street.

While I was trying to find out more about the statue of Paul Revere, I got a history lesson, but not the one I was expecting: the monument required seven different versions between the first sketches and the final clay model and fifty five years, no, that is not a misprint, for the final clay model to be finally cast in bronze and erected on the plaza.

I think I lived all my life with the wrong expectations, because a fifty five year wait to see results never made it into my consciousness as a possibility, and I'm a very patient person as people go. I thought waiting seventeen years for a wisteria to bloom was unreasonable.

I don't know if I'm comforted or depressed by this finding. Comforted, I guess: there's always tomorrow, even if it happens a few decades from now.

Suddenly I envy tortoises.

Quincy Market

No matter what we keep ending up here, but that's fine: good food, street performers, live music, Christmas lights, fluffy snow, what's not to like?

Even on the coldest day the market was bustling with activity, despite the fact that night falls at four thirty in the afternoon and the temperatures never made it to the twenties, even in the brightest sunshine.

Winter by the Bay

There is a special charm to northern ports that seldom reveals itself, as if the spirit of the water wished to keep the most beautiful imagery for those willing to stick around and brave its harshest weather.

Frozen bearded masts, snowed in cockpits, anchors encased in ice, fluffed up seagulls perched on glassy flagstaffs, winter nautical sights are not for the casual tourist, you have to earn them.

WEEK FIFTY-TWO

December 25th - End of Year

Perspective

The year ended in a frigid streak, which the large groups of people rushing around town doing last minute errands tried their best to ignore. Still, five degrees is five degrees no matter how gleefully you look at it.

Meanwhile I looked through some old garden photos and got really excited about spring planning, which I'm eager to start early.

The vegetable garden reached the point where a farmer would rotate the crops, the problem is there is no space to rotate them to. I'll try container planting, maybe, although I have to say it's not the most productive method in the world, and the pots need unreasonable amounts of water for the entire growing season. The veggies love the hard yellow clay in which they have grown so far, especially the tomatoes, but even a nutrient rich soil like that gets depleted over the years. I'm afraid it's pea and bean time, and I'm not fond of either.

With the best garden real estate out of the running, I'm at a loss as of where to grow my kitchen garden. Maybe in even bigger containers on the balcony.

As far as the flower bed goes, I'm hoping for a large selection of annual flats that won't be available until late spring. I really missed the annuals this year, they make a big difference in a perennial garden, which tends to get sparse and tired by the end of summer.

The garden is full of perennials that won't bloom, maybe it's time to amend the soil. Carrying lots and lots of bags of dirt is good cardio, gardening tends to get labor intensive that way.

Does the thought of buying manure on line feel surreal to anyone else?

Crop Rotation

Crop rotation requires a lot more space than is usually available in a backyard, but I can discuss it in concept. It is a natural gardening method that allows the soil to maintain its balance, so it doesn't get depleted over time due to the repeated cultivation of a crop that makes heavy use of a specific nutrient. Growing crops this way also maintains the general hygiene of the growing medium by controlling weeds, keeping the soil light and airy and discouraging pests and diseases.

A basic crop rotation system consists of four equal size plots and four crop families: legumes, bulbous roots, carrot and tomato types and brassicas. The crops are moved one plot over each year, respecting the order of families listed above; in practice they are more likely to be "rotated", since vegetable gardens are usually laid out in a grid and not in a line.

Obviously, crop rotation does not apply to perennial vegetables and herbs, and your annual herbs will be fine when grown in the same place year after year.

Crop rotation can get a lot more complex than that, further sorting the vegetable families into six categories instead of four and keeping track of the varying size of the plots that get allotted to different crops. I understand that this tends to get confusing after a few seasons, even when keeping meticulous records of the planting layouts from previous years.

Wild and Persistent

There are a few short lived plants that never leave. You'll be lucky if you love them, 'cause they'll be there anyway and outlive your prized perennials by many years.

Technically French mallows are biennial plants, but you should explain that to the French mallows. I planted these eight years ago, and they're still here. Every spring another enthusiastic carpet of volunteer seedlings show up to pick up the baton. I heard this works with the more sophisticated hollyhock varieties, but I haven't had any luck with those.

Roses

Wild roses are the most resilient plants in the garden, they will withstand anything nature decides to bring, be it draught, freeze, wind storm or heavy rain. This particular variety, called "Hansa", a rugged rugosa that spreads by runners, has grown to cover half the flower bed since I planted it, and that was not part of the original plan.

In contrast with the delicate and high maintenance hybrid teas, the wild varieties are scrappy, reliable and care free. Too bad they only bloom for one month a year, but when they do, they are spectacular.
