Ferns: big deal, little deal, or no deal?

I'm not a big fan of ferns.  It's hard to understand how anyone can get too worked up over a plant whose major contribution seems to be . . .  what?  It's green.  It takes up space.  Big deal.

That said, I have found ferns helpful--in a "they also serve who only stand and wait" kind of way--in different areas of the garden.  Several marsh ferns (Thelypteris palustris) anchor  the damp and sunny end of the raingarden. Their foliage plays off the surrounding spiky iris leaves and decorative grasses.

 

A few Japanese painted ferns (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum) are nestled in the dry deep shade of an eastern red cedar. Note to self: since you actually paid good money for these ferns, move them out from the shadows and into a spot where they can actually be seen!

But most of the ferns found their own way into the garden.  There are plenty of these common ferns springing up along the edges of shady beds.  I'm not sure what variety they are.  Perhaps since we're in Massachusetts, they're Massachusetts ferns?

A ginormous clump of lady fern--currently bowled over flat on its back from the ravages of drought and heat--has settled itself in between two evergreens along the back property line.  Its red stems and spores are really quite beautiful.

Despite my low regard, I am always pleased to discover ferns growing in out of the way places--beneath hedges, down the backsides of slopes, in those neglected areas removed from sight and mind.  The other evening, I was weeding one of these damp and dreary marginal spaces--the kind of gnarly wasteland where ugly stuff happens and a lot of it--kind of like the vegetative version of the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars. Among the weeds that don't seem to be able to grow anywhere else and the self-sowers that have escaped from their original locations, I was delighted to discover another fern variety--the sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis). 

This cache of four or five plants was growing in an area that is reliably damp and shady. Now that I've pushed some of the habitues of this low-rent district out, perhaps these ferns will be able to become a big deal in their own small way.

Suburban gardening: So different from town and country gardening

Okay, to start with a couple of facts: (1) Everyone knows that the plant pornography of high style horticultural magazines bears no resemblance to the really dirty stuff that happens in the garden and (2) many bloggers have humorously ridiculed the crap that American marketing masters would have you believe that you need in order to attain gardening self-actualization.

Although this turf has been well-trod, I still had a problem when, at the end of a weekend working in the garden, I sat down to relax with an iced drink and the latest edition of Town and Country.  Yes, it was Town and Country, so what should I expect? But, hey already. Between the articles about emerald and sapphire floral brooches and society equestriennes was this page of gardening "inspiration."  So this is what folks enjoy when gardening in a parallel universe. 

In contrast, here are the suburban highlights of my weekend around the back quarter acre.  First, I shoveled rotting compost. It smelled, it was soggy, it was not yet ready to be used.  And yes, that $685 pink silk shirt would look fabulous, darling, polka-dotted with decomposing plant muck.

And I pruned a portion of the climbing rose.  Cue cursing, sweat, and bloody cuts.  Geez, I forgot to focus my mental energy towards attaining the pruned perfection of those lollypop-like boxwood topiaries.  Dang!

Then there was the dead mourning dove that needed to be removed from its impalement on the trellis. Perhaps that set of cute little hand tools could double as surgical implements for the post-mortem extraction?

 I guess that proves that the suburbs are so very different from the town and country.  But we all know that.

Waving the flag

It may be a day before the real flag-waving, local parading, and fireworks launching is celebrated, but there is no holding back these blue flag irises (Iris versicolor).  Last year--after four increasingly exasperating years of watching only foliage--these clumps kicked up a single bloom.  This year, I had about a dozen beautiful blue violet blooms.

These plants are located at one end of the rain garden in an area that captures the downhill flow of water.  Although the clumps of tubers ride high above the level of pooled water, the entire spread remains damp 24/7.  In order to encourage the even and generous distribution of water along the length of the rain garden and to remove the encroachment of other wet-footed plants, I clean out along the borders of this bed about once a month. It's down and dirty work.

But these blooms, they make me feel like all of it--the watching, the waiting, the muck slopping, and the weed pulling--is worth it.  A little quiet flag waving.

Fathers Day lesson: time is the greatest gift

My father was most definitely a self-made man: striving, thrifty, hard-working, and devotedly civic-minded.  His internal engine ran on the energy of personal improvement. One of the first financial lessons that my father taught me was the value of long-term planning.  "When it comes to saving, time is the greatest gift," he would said.  As a graduate student, I plowed my fellowship and teaching stipends into a long-term IRA, even at the short-term cost of a diet based on lentils, peanut butter, and rice and living in the sort of housing that rents for $86.63/month.  It might seem crazy for a 22-year old kid to be saving for retirement, but I'm glad now to have started my nest egg way back then. That compound interest thing is kind of amazing.

The same gift of time applies with dahlias.  An over-wintered row of plants is now in bloom.  The burgundy blooms of "Arabian Night" are leading the show.  "Pattycake" is following fast behind.  

In comparison, the "Rose Toscano" tuber that I planted in late May is just breaking the soil.  Flowering is a long time off.

The gift of  time given to those over-wintered dahlias, along with some peony foliage and Alchemilla lady's mantle, pays off with a Father's Day bouquet. And at a price that my frugal father  would definitely have approved!

Good thymes

Anyone who ever read Edward Eager's "thyme" travel stories as a child appreciates all the magical possibilities of this herb. I still wonder, like the characters in Eager's books, if I crush the scented leaves of creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum Coccineus), will I find myself transformed into a baby crawling on all fours?  And a sniff of orange thyme takes me where? To a fruit farm in California or Florida? What delicious adventures are hinted by pink lemonade thyme, coconut thyme, or lime thyme?

Carefully stewarding my youthful sense of wonder, I remain open to the possibility of a flight of fantasy from my workaday world.  So my garden always has space for thyme.  Right now, a blooming carpet of creeping thyme is cascading over the front stone wall. Around the back, common thyme (Thymus vulgaris)  has settled in next to a bed of mint. (I like pretty shiny sparkly things just enough to enjoy that time trip.)

And a little clump of lemon thyme (Thymus x citriodorus) is flourishing in an herb pot. 

I'm not big on garden ornaments, but how wonderful would be a sundial with some cryptic horological inscription--"Heed also the shadows which inform the light" or my personal motto, "Festina lente"--to convey oneself back to a leisurely childhood afternoon of reading fantasy books on the lawn. Or maybe a sundial reading "Knowledge is the sun of youth's bright day."