Daffodil (and allium and hyacinth and amaryllis) dreams

Now that Labor Day has rolled past, it's time to put away the white shoes, sharpen the school pencils, and order bulbs for the coming winter and spring.  Thankfully, I had the foresight to jot a few notes down about what to order on my garden goalroll at the end of the last season.  How else would I remember a pressing need for hundreds of allium "Ostrowkianum"--or even how to spell that plant's name?!

Since I pledged my deep commitment to daffodils a couple of years ago, I find myself each autumn trying to fill, enhance, and extend their springtime show.  This effort means searching on a half dozen variables--hardiness, bloom time, color, flower shape, height, light requirements--to find the perfect variety, or at least one that meets most of the criteria.  This year, I'm seeking a replacement for my sadly unrequited embrace of hoop petticoat daffodils: none of the 100 Narcissus bulbocodium conspicuus bulbs planted along the front walk came up.  Not a single one.  None.  In their place, I'm yearning for a very early white northern-tolerant miniature. The closest candidate to my daffodil dream date appears to be "Jenny," a short (that's good), zone 6 hardy (yes!), early bloomer (terrific) with reflexed petals and a slightly frilled trumpet (okay, why not?!) of ivory and pale yellow (meh, I'll settle).

So here's how the whole order is shaping up:

Tulip World

60 narcissus cyclamineus "Jenny" Planted 10/13/2012 along front walk in groups of 3 bulbs

Bluestone Perennials
150 allium "Ostrowkianum" Planted 10/13/2012 along front walk in groups of 7 bulbs

Brent and Becky's Bulbs
50 wood hyacinth "Queen of Pinks"

And for indoor forcing:

White Flower Farm

36 paperwhite narcissus "Ziva"
1 amaryllis "Royal Velvet"
1 amaryllis "Picotee"

Old House Gardens

5 hyacinth "Gipsy Queen" 

5 hyacinth "L'Innocence" 

5 hyacinth "Lady Derby"

Now, if one reliable supplier would just carry everything on my shopping list.  But that's too much to dream!

Alsatian routes

Rather than spending the past several weeks weeding, deadheading, and watering, I've been exerting my efforts on the pleasures of drinking Gewürztraminer, devouring Munster cheese, and admiring flower-filled window boxes.  Yes, that means a trip to Alsace, the sliver of eastern France that hugs the west bank of the Rhine.

Although we did enjoy plenty of the traditional Alsatian fare of red geraniums, there were also geranium mixes of rosés, whites, and pinot noirs--all the colors that you might expect to find in wine country. I have never been a fan of geraniums, ranking them somewhere around pedestrian carnations and impatiens, but after seeing how Alsatians embraced this plodder of the plant world and amped it up to over-achievement by care and variety selection, I'm willing to reconsider.

Alsace is also the area from which, as a teen-age orphan, my great-grandfather emigrated to the United States in 1868.  I've written in the past about his farming background, so I was interested in seeing his homeland. The fields around his village, Aschbach, were indeed glorious: wide rolling banks of corn and hay sweeping up to the horizon. The farm tracks across corn fields and by orchards guided my eight-mile morning run through his neighborhood.  

The road entering Aschbach was bordered by long, well-tended beds of white liatris and hydrangea, yellow potentilla and rudbeckia, and blue salvia.  Although only common plants were featured, with their perfect repetition of color and shape, these beds welcomed visitors with the very Alsatian message of orderliness, hard work, and solidity.

Yes, this is a place where people take their plants seriously. Even this old farm cart, laden with--of course--red geraniums, had been drafted into the effort. Vehicles like these were in use well into the 20th century.  The cornfields planted right up to the road verge and to the house yards left little unused space.  I think that I may have discovered my predisposition to all things horticultural.

And, in the village center, this tribute to lawn-mowing clinched the genetic link manifested by my great-grandfathers' descendants' love of their ride-on, gas-powered, and push mowers. So that's why my brothers and I wouldn't dream of hiring out this task to lawn care companies. I thought that we were all just penny-pinching and industrious, but it seems like those Alsatian roots might be the real cause.

View from above

Some second floor pruning of the "New Dawn" climbing rose affords a few views from above. I think that I've got the Japanese garden design principle of borrowed scenery (shakkei) down, thanks to my neighbors' mad skills, and there's even a hint of the hill and pond (chisen-kaiyu-skiki) style, courtesy of the rain garden.

Of course, even from these lofty heights, what I mostly see is overdue deadheading, pruning that's calling out, and an urgent need for staking. 

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.