Category Archives: my garden

Happy Things

housework, my garden,

Today I’ll just mention a few things that have made me glad this week.

1) I’ve been waiting and waiting for a certain echinacea plant to start blooming. It is later than the purple coneflowers nearby, and I was expecting it to be the orangey-brown variety that I bought last summer after I saw Kim’s on her blog. It opened up this week and it’s not – it’s white, which I don’t even remember planting. That one like Kim’s must not have made it through the winter. But I like white.

2) I found some dishes I liked at Target. I like the color and the design, and that they were on clearance, so I bought the salad plates. I don’t have a complete set of any dishes. For most of my life I’ve specialized in white dishes, and we often bought a dozen bowls or plates at a restaurant supply store. They have held up very well over the decades of children learning to wash dishes. White dinnerware makes the simplest meal, if it has a balance of colors, look very special. To have this many dishes that are more colorful in themselves is a new thing around here.

3) We had Mr. and Mrs. C. over last night to watch a movie. We also ate some apple pie that I made and served on my new plates, and I picked a few zinnias for the table. I really did enjoy Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront.” It came out in 1954. Marlon Brando is great as the young man in the story, and the screenplay, as one reviewer said, is “impeccable.” There was an important part of the story about how Jesus is right there with you when you are at work in a dehumanizing job, and how He will help you to do the right thing. Those were the days!

4) I have alwaP1100786tshirtsys taken great satisfaction from doing laundry, especially my husband’s clothes. I even like ironing his shirts, but since he retired he wears more shirts that don’t need ironing, like the T-shirts I washed today. Folding and stacking these soft cotton knits freshly fluffed in the dryer makes it easy for me to be the Jolly Washerwoman.

5) Over 20 years ago we planted a rosemary bush next to our front sidewalk. Once or twice a year I prune it. Today I gave it a severe trimming and noticed how gnarly and thick the branches have become. I realized that even though it has some holes in its canopy, I’m not ready to replace it yet. It’s become an old friend.

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6) I love succulents. I like sticking them into places that don’t get quite enough water to support most annuals. This afternoon I decided to do something about a bare spot that has showed up in the front yard, where the automatic misters for some reason don’t spray enough water. I dug up some of the red sedum from the back yard where it spreads like crazy, and put it in that spot with some granite rocks. Of course, I love granite rocks, too!

7) I love my robins. Yes, I was thrilled to discover that “he” is actually a pair of robins who have become frequent hoppers about the back garden. One day they sat on the fence facing each other having what seemed to be an intense discussion, or maybe they were just singing a jazzy duet. They were too shy to let me take their picture together, but I did get one of them on that fence. A couple of days later I found “him” again on the other side of the garden, still at a distance, but more clearly silhouetted against the sky. Someday I hope to snap his picture on the birdbath, but I’m really glad to have this much success.

8) As I was planning this post I thought about how the many material things in our life can be thought of as having little value compared to the intangible realities like love and truth and kindness. But as soon as we are thankful for them, when we see them as gifts from our Father and receive a little bit of Him in them, they become threads connecting us to God, bringing grace in. And that’s the power of thankfulness.

Zinnias

my garden, poetry,

Last year I had the amazing tall red zinnia in the back yard, but my favorites from the past have been bushy big orange ones in the vegetable garden. For some reason I don’t care for purplish-pink, but if you buy a variety six-pack, there always seem to be several of that color. And if you buy them before they are root-bound they won’t have started to bloom so you can’t even know what color you are setting out.

This year the two 4-inch potted zinnias I bought, in orange and yellow, are not remarkable. But the mix of six are very showy. They are huge; I think they are the “State Fair” variety. I guess I have broadened my mind, because I don’t even mind their hodgepodge of different colors by the driveway.

One I planted in the far corner of the back yard, sort of behind the lavender bush because there was an empty spot. I hadn’t gone to that corner of the garden for a week, and was surprised to see flowers poking out all the way to the sidewalk. It’s as though that dark pink zinnia went into contortions just so I would look at it.

In the front yard I planted some trailing orange zinnias, which I think look nicer flowing out of a pot, but they are cheery enough here. All through springtime when I was planting the front garden, I knew I was not getting the look I wanted. I didn’t have enough time or energy to comb the county for just the right colors and types of plants to create the perfect design.

But now that I have run across this poem — another one by Valerie Worth who wrote the “Library” poem — I have been encouraged to philosophize about the flowers and see a lesson in them. I know that I am very pleased every time I arrive home and they come into view all bright and in their proper places after all.

Zinnias

Zinnias, stout and stiff,
Stand no nonsense: their colors
Stare, their leaves
Grow straight out, their petals
Jut like clipped cardboard,
Round, in neat flat rings.

Even cut and bunched,
Arranged to please us
In the house, in water, they
Will hardly wilt—I know
Someone like zinnias; I wish
I were like zinnias.

–Valerie Worth

Philoflora

my garden, nature, other gardens, , , ,
pink climber at church 09
old picture of friend I helped this week

The job I was committed to doing in the church garden was deadheading roses. It took longer than I expected because in the years since I bowed out of regular gardening there, many more floribunda roses have been planted, and most of those needed a thorough trimming right about now.

The first day I put off driving over there until midday, and in spite of my sun hat I got hot and tired halfway through. So later in the week I started earlier in the morning and enjoyed my work very much. Some of the rose bushes are my old friends, and some other plants are, too.

Like this Phormium oP1100242r New Zealand Flax. I didn’t plant these, but on my watch, maybe five years ago, the plant in one pot died. I combed the nurseries in vain to find a replacement, and then I had a brilliant idea. Since these perennials grow constantly larger, I could “thin” and divide the two healthy plants and use what I cut off to start a new one in the third container.

It was a big project, but I completed it in a few hours one day. I spread a tarp on the concrete nearby, and after watering the pots thoroughly I managed to turn them on their sides without breaking them, and get the plants, dirt and roots dumped out. Then I cut and reassembled my plants and set them back in new planting mix. I must not have had my camera that day because the only pictures of the event are in my mind.P1100243

Now don’t they still look good? New Zealand Flax (not related to the Linum usitatissimum that we would call the real thing) doesn’t need much water, and in order to stay attractive it only wants old dry leaves pulled out or trimmed off from time to time. When I passed by these plants I noticed that this trimming hadn’t been done recently so I used my rose pruners and took care of them before I took their picture.P1100233

At home, where my tasks are more vast, I have run into problems. I put off adding horizontal support lines for the sweet peas until it would have been near impossible to get behind them to do it  — so they grew about twice as high as the trellising, and bravely reached for the sky, holding on with their delicate tendrils — to what? Only to each other. And then, still clinging together, they fell.P1100235

At this point the only rescue that could be accomplished was very crude and unpretty, but it should make it possible for me to get a few more bouquets of the flowers that are now on very short stems indeed, because of the heat.

seed bank crp

 

For my birthday a while back a friend took me to the Baker Creek Seed store near here, which is in an old bank building that they now call The Seed Bank. She wanted to buy me some seeds, but as it was a surprise I wasn’t at all prepared. What to get? I ended up with hollyhocks to plant next fall, and hyssop and fennel that I planted this spring, but I don’t remember what day. That’s flaky to begin with.P1090112

None of the seed packets from Baker Creek have much information onP1100253 them of the sort I’m used to. They don’t tell you how many days to maturity, or how deep to plant the seeds, or how many days they might take to sprout. Maybe they have that info online? If so, that’s too new-fangled for me; I don’t have a smart phone that I consult when I’m in the rows.

So I just watched my seed beds and kept them moist and saw that day after day nothing was coming up, except weeds and volunteer nasturtiums. One morning I decided it was time to face the failure and start in on the weeds – but wait! Those tiny two-pronged spikes I see when I put my face down by the dirt…. they just might be the beginnings of feathery fennel leaves! So I will wait a few more days. But the hyssop – I don’t think so.P1100252CA poppies yellow-pink 5-30-14

We put cages around our tomato plants, and I made labels to tape on the wire. Only about half as many plants as last year.

One successful  flower in the garden is this nice California Poppy in pink and yellow. I planted it last year from a mixed six-pack of seedlings, and it came back!

That’s my overview of the week’s Plant Love.

Disorderly and Beloved Garden

my garden, , ,

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This morning Mr. Glad and I sat eating our Power Pancakes together, looking out the window at a fat robin who was hopping and flying around the garden.

I could see that there are enough sweet peas to make bouquets for eight neighbors, if I would pick them. The seed beds where I planted hyssop and fennel early in the week need sprinkling.

And the south side of the yard is a jungle! For most of our sojourn here it has been a nuisance getting water to that area, because of having only one faucet and the difficulty of dragging a heavy hose to and fro without smashing plants.

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campanula and rhododendron

Last fall we installed automatic irrigation, and the plants that had learned to do with intermittent drought are loving the new normal and are having the time of their lives.

Today I will go out and pull up the lamb’s ears that have grown into the path, and trim back the valerian flowers from the same path. I don’t want to touch the campanula yet, as it’s in its glory.

yellow helianthemum w pincushion

The yellow helianthemum that grows now in the middle of the pincushion flowers, well, it has surprised me by blooming for a few weeks so far.

That makes four helianthema (doesn’t it make sense to call the plural that?) in our garden: yellow, red, pink, and orange. None of the others bloomed as long as this yellow one, but next time they show their flowers I’ll take pictures so that I can write one blog post about the lot of them.

I picked one giant bouquet of the sweet peas for my next-door neighbor. She said that she has been noticing them coming over the fence, and that she and her granddaughter have been drying flowers to make greeting cards. I could see the gleam in her eye as she contemplated all the pretty flowers in that bunch.

As for me, I’m not being at all crafty these days, unless you count the neverending creating of order and space indoors and out. Lots of out-of-the-ordinary things are coming up for the two of us in the next few months, and taking some amount of time and mental effort in preparation. It all makes me treasure today, when I can be home and pull some ordinary weeds.