Before The Smoke

Before the 110 degree heat, before the choking smoke, before the fires that are devouring people's lives, I had a cutting garden full of lovely things.  

Okay, some were not so lovely any more.  But they were loved.  And it's a cutting garden. so it doesn't have to look good.  At least not all the time.  And yes those are onions and yes I cut them.

I would go down in the mornings with a cup of tea and a big basket, and cut until the basket was overflowing.  I'm sure when I clean up the garden in late fall I'll find a forgotten teacup or six.  Gardening is filled with happy surprises.    

In this basket - a tall white butterfly bush, new this year.  A two foot campanula primulafolia. I have carried seedlings and little jars of seed from garden to garden.  It seeds all over.  I love it.

Some David Austin roses, hopeless as cut flowers but so graceful and fragrant.  A long sprig of duck foot ivy.  An intensely blue bush clematis.  The raw material.

I make arrangements on the outdoor table, the leftover bits swept onto the patio and then into a nearby bed.  This vase has a pink scabiosa that grew to six feet before it keeled over and went to seed.  Note to self: stronger stakes next year.  It is, however, seeding all over the potato patch.  Sometimes good things come from what looks like disaster.

Back to the flowers: I think the rose is The Dark Lady from David Austin, but the tag is long gone.  I know I also planted Prospero, and it's also a David Austin and a major shedder on day two in the house.  I don't care, I love the graceful way they droop, and I leave the fallen petals.

Some plain blue buddleia that volunteered and is reseeding all over the place.  The hummingbirds love it.  That intense blue bush clematis.  Some unopened rose buds - it's a cutting garden and I cut buds knowing they will never open.  I love the way they feel in an arrangement, that not all the flowers are the same age.  Some still in bud, some drooping and shedding. 

I had a few leftover bits I could not bring myself to sweep off the table.   A Brandy rose, a deep pink rose, alas also tag-less.  One leftover spray of that dark David Austin, a bit of peach yarrow that lasts forever, and a scabiosa seed pod.  And yes that blue clematis with the teensy intense flowers.  Just a few flowers by the kitchen window.  That seems to be where I'm spending a lot of time.

The first dahlia to bloom is always Thomas Edison.  He's also the last to quit.  I quite like him with the peachy Pat Austin rose.  And the shed petal.  The tomatoes?  The jury is still out.  

One of the joys of having a cutting garden  (besides the miracle that things are actually growing) is not cutting something if I'm not in the mood for that flower.  In my regular garden things get dead headed.  They rarely get cut, cutting leaves holes.  In the cutting garden I have been cutting with abandon, and I'm letting things go to seed.  Next year I'm hoping for happy surprises.  

Hot pink hollyhocks have reseeded everywhere.  For the first few years I harvested seed and coaxed it along.  Now? I throw the spent stalks where I want hollyhocks and dig out the extras.

This year I got a whole crop of weird looking pointy purple and green tomatoes I didn't plant.  And a huge crop of potatoes in the flower bed above the pool, growing happily under that hot pink holly hock.  Surprisingly pretty foliage, and not bad as a cut flower.  Weird fact: the flowers tell you what color the potatoes are.  White flowers for white, pink for red and lavender for blue.

  Next year: Daisies invading the dahlias? Masses of sweet peas?  I can dream.  Sweet peas are not especially happy with me, and the birds love to pull them up, but I did have one pale pink sweet pea volunteer in the gravel and flower away.  It set seed.  I am hoping for great things.

There will be sheets of low blue forget-me-nots in spring, and hellebores volunteering between the stone steps.  I'm tossing out handfuls of nigella and poppy seeds and hoping they will be happy.  

I know I'm lucky my garden is only smoky, so many have lost everything.  I'm hoping some day the fires will stop.  And I am grateful for all the things that grow.

April Postcard From The Hedge

There have been years when the impatiens lived thru the winter.  This has not been one of them.

In January my garden was rimed with frost, just like those English gardens in the magazines.  Brilliant! I thought...until the frost crystals quit holding hands and the plants collapsed into slime.  All on a bed of sticky mud.

In February my garden looked like it had been hit by a blow torch, and I seriously considered taking up golf.  Or moving.  

But in March my garden started growing, unencumbered by last year's stalks and stems, and it has never looked better.  And if you know anything about gardeners, you know we always say "You should have been here last week - it was so much better" or "Pity you couldn't come next week when the X is blooming."

Not this year.  This year it's perfect.  The dogwood:

The roses:  Golden Celebration,

 Pat Austin,

 and the understated Sally Holmes.

The usual spring things are blooming.  Apple. 

 Lilac,

fragrant Philadelphus.

Geranium and alyssum are dancing with a stone wall. 

And for you smug know-it-alls, this is what a true species geranium looks like.  Not that pelargonium thing the nurseries call geranium.  And that yellow?  That's Alyssum.  Saxatilis.  Not the white sweetly scented thing you call alyssum.  That's lobularia maritima.  Beautiful by any name.   (But do try to be less smug.  It makes the mea culpas so much easier.)

The vineyard is budding...

You can see a baby cluster of what will be grapes (and wine) just peeking out from under. 

The native iris, the one you can grow under oaks and not water all summer is covered in big flat platters of pale blue.  Some hybridizer got all crazy over these and the new colors are fabulous. Glad someone has the patience.  Not me. 

The  ivy geranium (if you've been paying attention, you're yelling "pelargonium!" and you are so right!) are climbing over the stone balls atop the pool wall.  Later they will spill down the wall, but the big freeze gave them an unanticipated haircut.  Needed but unanticipated. 

 And my favorite iris, Victoria Falls, lights up the garden.  It will re-bloom if you feed it well - I have cut this iris at Christmas.  Of course that was in a winter not as cold as the one just past.

Even the sculpture looks happy.  The Big Talk.  

It's a good day to be in our garden.  If we don't answer the doorbell,  come around.  We're in the back.  Talking.  And enjoying one perfect day in the garden.

Bringing the mountain

My friend has white mulberries in her garden, and huge peach trees she has raised from seed.  Lemons and kumquats, figs and pomegranates, a glasshouse full of seedlings ready to plant out.  And a motorized scooter to get around her garden.  She used to come walk around my garden, but no more. When I go for tea her house is full of lilacs or roses, lilies or iris, and she always asks me "How is your garden?"  How do you answer that? A garden is never just one way.  But this spring my garden is the best it has ever been.

So last week I took my garden to her.  I brought her a small bouquet of what's blooming now, and my laptop with photos of my garden.

The spanish bluebells came from my friend Sylvia - her garden is a sheet of blue in spring.  Mine are more numerous each year, and I finally have enough to share.

The columbines came from Carol.   I can feel her gentle presence when they bloom.  I miss her.

I don't remember who first told me they got their name from the ring of doves kissing.  Remember your Latin? 

Rhododendrons light up the shade, and caress me with a faint spiciness as I brush past.  They will be sticky and brown soon, and the stickiness will coat my fingers as I snap off the endless spent flowers, but they're worth it.

I showed her the old apple tree just budding,

and the forget-me-nots that stick to your socks.  My mom says when that happens the best thing to do is plant your socks.  She's right, the seeds never come off.

There are bright bergenias with leaves like glossy cabbage.  A granny plant, very out of fashion.  Too bad. I love it.

The first roses of the year are opening outside the bathroom window among the spent peach blossoms, where it is sunniest.  When she saw this she said "Climbing Peace!  That is my favorite rose!"  When a few more have opened I will take her armfuls.

If you can't bring your friend to your garden, get out your camera and your laptop, and bring your garden to visit your friend.  And don't forget the bouquet, for no matter how small, a bouquet gathered by your hand from your garden will always speak of love.

Hot Stuff

I didn't plan to have a hot orange and pink garden, it just sort of happened. A pastel garden would have died against my yellow and blue house, so I would come home with hot colors, then wander around with a trowel trying to find homes for them.

The screaming orange roses (no, I don't know their name, I got them from a backyard breeder; when fully open they're ugly and they fade horribly as they age and yes you may have some cuttings) look brilliant next to the hot pink pelargoniums...

...and a bit of lime and blue calm things down, courtesy of Tradescantia 'Sweet Kate'. 

No I don't know who Kate is or was. Do you know who John Tradescant was? You might look them up -  elder and younger.

The pink hollyhock has volunteered under the orange tree...

...and as it does not get enough sun it's lying down. Makes things more convenient for the snails.

Canna 'Tropicana' has the most amazing leaves - huge, tropical (hence the cultivar name) they come up tight and unroll into striped flags.

A little pale peach at the end of the bed just to calm things down. Don't want to leave visitors with jangled nerves.

Somehow they all play well together. 

What if they didn't play well together? What would a 'Runs with scissors' garden look like? 

My next project. Any ideas?

Slamming Into Summer

Last Sunday we rode our bikes up the mountain. In turtlenecks and windbreakers for the ride down. My hands were stiff with cold when we got home.

On Wednesday we went up the mountain again and came home drenched in sweat. 

It's official: It's summer. And it happened in about 48 hours. My poor garden is reeling: hydrangeas droop, lovely pale blue flowers tinged with green hang their heads. The dogwood is sad and floppy. Even the dog won't go out. Too hot to swim, 

...too hot to water. But some things are happy - the grapes...

...are tiny as pencil dots, but there are forests of them. Cross your fingers, we may finally have a decent crop.  The vines are flinging their arms all over the place, trying to catch you as you go up the stairs. Huge leaves are crying out to be made into dolmades. I confess I've pulled a few leaves to place under the Red Hawk cheese from Cowgirl Creamery - my current passion. It's fabulous with white wine on the patio before dinner. It's local and hand made, and it tastes a lot like Epoisses.  Smells a lot like it too. But wait until it cools off for cocktails and a stroll around the garden. Where you will find happy poppies...

and roses - 

finally not balling up and falling off in the damp. Just in time for the end of the first big bloom and the weeks-long wait for the re-blooming. Grrrr.

The Sally Holmes look moth-eaten...

...but the White Meidland, shoved in at the edge of the big oak's canopy and given little water and no care are gorgeous.

They looked awful in the front, dropped brown balls instead of opening into sparkling white roses. I put them here because I didn't have the guts to throw them out. I figured they would die on their own and save me the decision, and now they light up the dry shade. Silly me.

The campanula, the unfortunately named campanula poscharskyana, is climbing up the New Zealand flax. When it's over, when it has set seed, I will pull the spent stalks and throw handfuls of them where I want campanula next year. Very obliging plant. When the seed stalks begin to brown and look horrid I will give them a shake (to release as many seeds as possible) and throw them under the oak to compost. 

It's still blazing out there.

But in a few hours the lawn will be in shade, and I will make gin and tonics in mason jars, grab some Red Hawk and our Boules and head for the bottom lawn. 

It's summer. Finally.