Towel Day

Day 225: Douglas Adams cagily imparted a lot of good advice to those who read HHGTTG carefully, but I find these words from Slartibartfast particularly and personally apt in these current times: "Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied." Know where your towel is. Don't panic. And from another quarter entirely, wear the lilac. (Oddly and without any plan for it to happen that way, I just finished reading "Night Watch"). (background image courtesy of NASA via Hubble)

Spring Colour

Day 209: My yard is beginning to colour even though the flower beds immediately below my windows are only beginning to bud for the most part. Lilac scents the air, the pink dogwood wears a rosy crown although its lower branches are rather thin, the Sitka mountain-ash promises a bounty of fruit for the cedar waxwings and robins this fall. A few straggly Lily-of-the-valley survived my remake of the front bed, and will soon be overtopped by alliums, now still in the "knobby-wand" stage of development. The peonies have walnut-sized buds with rich blood-red peeking through the initial cracks, and a few columbines have spread their skirts. Still, it feels like we're off to a slow start here. Nights remain chilly even when daytime temps hit the 70s. I have to keep reminding myself that it isn't even mid-May yet.

Scratch-and-Sniff

Day 218: I wish I could include a scratch-and-sniff patch with this post to carry to my readers the marvelous blend of fragrances rising from my yard on these over-warm afternoons. While the lilac dominates, an occasional current of air brings lily-of-the-valley into play, both scents riding atop a deeper, softer layer of mountain-ash. When these fade, the Philadelphus steps up, its sweet aroma filling the entire neighbourhood. It does my heart good to see the lilac strong again. When I moved here some thirty years ago, it was leggy and feeble, having grown in the shadow of an immense branch of Douglas-fir. When the branch was removed, I cut the lilac back radically per the instructions in a horticultural manual. They assured me it would benefit from the pruning and be back at full strength in just a few years. That was far from the case! It took close to twenty years before it bore a single flower. Since then, it has been putting on a few new spikes each year until now, at long last, it looks like a lilac again.

Cool Hues

Day 220: It's taken close to 30 years, but I think I have finally achieved a sufficiently cool-hued garden to meet my esthetic requirements. The theme has been somewhat more challenging than I expected to maintain throughout the season, and I'll admit that toward the end of summer, it shades into reds and yellows. That said, at least I've phased out most of the pink (or relocated it). The most dramatic change has been in the columbines. Now blues and purples dominate where once only one pale yellow broke up a wash of pink. The colour change hasn't affected the hummingbirds' interest in the nectar-rich blossoms. In fact, hummers are drawn to blue with the same passion they exhibit for red, and they love the delphiniums which are just now setting buds. There's more blue to come!

Virtual Tour

Day 227: My readers have often heard me speak of my lackadaisical approach to gardening, but over the last several years, I've put more effort into it than previously, putting in new flowerbeds, planting trees and shrubs, working in soil amendments and so on. Well, I am reaping much greater rewards than anticipated for the little effort those labours have actually been, and this year, I am pleased to say that my yard actually looks like a gardener lives here. Please join me for a virtual tour of a few of the plants currently in bloom.

We'll start in the upper left corner with Bachelor's Buttons. They are regarded as something of a pest by many people, but they remind me of my mother's garden when I was very young. I nicked my plant from a roadside ditch where it had strayed from someone's garden. It grows like a weed, so I maintain it to keep it from spreading.

The second image is of the Bridal Wreath Spiraea I added to the front yard last year, again a plant which recalls the gardens of my youth. My grandmother had a huge one. Mine is only about two feet tall, having grown about a foot since I planted it.

Next in line is a commercial cultivar of the blue Columbine familiar to most Montanans. I purchased it as a tiny start a year ago as part of my colour replacement plan to substitute blues for pinks. It is my favourite Columbine.

The daisies in the fourth photo are Delospermum, an annual. They fill the top of a small strawberry jar. They are succulents, and therefore can survive near-drought conditions. I couldn't decide which of three colours I liked best: orange, yellow or red, so I got all three.

The bottom row starts with Siberian Iris, and yes, these can also become quite a pest. Mine came with the house, and I thin them out every few years to keep them from taking over the yard.

Next is the lilac, and thereby hangs a tale. It was not in good shape, so I took the recommendation of a gardening handbook and hacked it off a foot above ground level. The manual assured me that it would come back to full glory in four years. Only this year, approximately fifteen years from its major surgery, is it in full and lavish bloom. Lesson learned. I'll never do that again.

Oriental poppies are a flower I can't hate but can't exactly love, either. They also grow like weeds and spread wildly. It took me ten years to remove the last traces of this one's forebears from the east-side flowerbed, but I couldn't bear to kill it off entirely. It now lives in the "Barren Wasteland" between my house and garage, happy as Larry and providing a blast of colour where it's really needed.

Lily-of-the-valley brings back memories of sitting on my grandmother's back steps when I was three or four years old, surrounded by sweet fragrance. The scent was one Grandma also wore as perfume: Muguet de Bois.

Last is Lithodora, its vibrant stars so shockingly blue that visitors can hardly believe they're real. As far as I'm concerned, it can take over the entire bed beside the driveway, a spot in which it seems to be quite happy.

There are other things in bloom in my yard as well: Bleeding-heart, Kerria, fat blood-red peonies, heather, snapdragons, the Akebia vines...and there are even more things to come, to say nothing of shrubs and ferns and other foliage plants. When I look out over the garden now, somehow I forget all about those days of weeding until my back ached and my fingernails were broken and filthy. It's been worth it all.

Lilac Time

Day 190: With almost all sunlight blocked by an enormous branch of the big Doug fir at the end of my carport, my lilac had gone leggy and seldom produced more than a few weak blooms. I'd read in a gardening book that lilacs could be brought back to their former vigour by drastic pruning, but the article also counselled patience, saying that it would take at least four years for a plant to "bush out" again. I enlisted a neighbour's help to shorten the fir branch, and then with some trepidation, hacked the lilac back to a two-foot high stump. That was about ten years ago, and for at least the first two years, I considered digging it out and starting over in a new location. I resisted the temptation, and at last my patience has been rewarded. The lilac has thirteen lovely lavender flower clusters this year. That said, I will never prune it again!

Bloomin' Beautiful

Day 227: Because I am so proud of my garden this year, here are a few more photos from around the yard! There will be more to come at a later date. The irises are just budding and the delphiniums are only starting to put up flower spikes. I see nodding heads currently the size of hazelnuts on the poppies, and several other perennials are still in the vegetative (non-blooming) state. This promises to be a colorful summer!

I put the hardy fuchsias ("Genii" and "Dollar Princess") in the ground yesterday, but I am not quite brave enough to commit the tomatoes ("Sweet Million" and "Oregon Spring") to Mother Nature's whims. Although the forecast would seem to indicate a trend toward mild temperatures, we've had killing frosts here as late as mid-June. Consequently, the tomatoes will remain in their pots until the first of June. I'll have to risk them then or take a chance on going fruitless due to our short growing season. Tomatoes are a hit-and-miss proposition any year (and the only edible I try to grow, with the exception of some herbs).

The yard suffered one fatality, however. The Whatzit Tree was ailing, so I had my neighbor take it down. I still have to dig out the roots (a project which may wait until next year). The front yard wants a fast-growing shade tree, and I am entertaining three options to replace it: black walnut, horse chestnut or a big-leaf maple. Decisions, decisions! But that's what makes gardening fun.