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"Rabbit Warren at Pontoise, Snow"
by Camille Pissarro,
at Chicago's Art Institute |
Sorry for the long hiatus. Tim and I spent six days in
Chicago recently, reveling in the
Art Institute’s magnificent European
Impressionists collection, the beautiful
Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe,
the city’s eclectic architecture, superlative Greek omelets, Millennium Park’s sculpture
and plantings, vast Lake Michigan, all those friendly Midwesterners.
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| Sally and me |
I also got to
meet one of my best friends ever, Sally Benson, face-to-face. Sally’s editor of
American Nurseryman magazine and the
first person ever to pay me hard cash for writing something. For once, the
actual event exceeded the anticipation. It’s entirely possible that we’re actually
twins who were separated at birth, as coincidences multiplied over years of an
impeccably grammatically correct email relationship, a feeling that
talkingtalkingtalking for 17 hours over two days did nothing to dispel. Sally,
you’re the best.
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Caryopteris x clandonensis
'Dark Knight' |
I had meant
to publish a post from the Windy City about our jaunt to Glencoe, but the
United States of Greed does not make it easy—or cheap—for itinerants to access
the Internet. As always, things work out as they’re supposed to, because I was
so busy yakking with Sally that only the vaguest of impressions of the Botanic
Garden survive. It was huge (380 acres) and in full fall glory on a perfect
Midwestern September day. The glorious shrub
Caryopteris x clandonensis ‘Dark Knight’
(blue mist spirea, blue beard), with blue-blue flowers
displayed to perfection against dark green foliage, snagged my attention: Sally
and I marveled that breeders work so hard to produce cultivars with lackluster
variegation, gold-I-think-not foliage and washed-out-looking blooms.
I do remember
saying “That plant doesn’t go in North Carolina” about 600 times.
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| Millennium Park sculpture |
Paid more
attention at
Millennium Park (Sally had gone back to work). The giant chrome
bicycle-helmet sculpture on the main plaza really draws your eye. I
experienced a flash of inspiration and asked Tim to take a picture of our
reflection as he took a picture of the shiny glob. Unfortunately, hundreds of
other tourists were simultaneously struck by the same “original” thought. Anyway,
the curved surface made my rear look big. (Like that’s hard to do. Ha.)
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| Formal planting at Millennium Park |
On a
horticultural note, the planting designers and maintenance crews of both
Millennium and Grant Parks really know their stuff. Tim and I came away with
several stolen ideas for future projects. One of my favorites is the use of
rainbow-colored painted 1x10” boards as access walkways in and behind beds—what
a great way to give a space winter interest!
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Gentiana andrewsii
with bumblebee butt
(click on picture and look for black blob) |
Millennium
Park’s prairie garden introduced me to an absolutely stunning little miracle of
nature, the native bottle gentian (
Gentiana
andrewsii). The flowers expand but never open, whence the common name.
Enchanted (regular readers know what a sucker I am for blue blooms), we watched
a bumblebee wriggle herself head-first into the bottle, completely
disappearing. She shimmied back out a few seconds later, her saddlebags filled
with pollen, only to move on the next flower for a repeat performance. Tim caught
her descent in the photo here. (I am reminded again of how difficult it is for
a camera to capture blues truly.)
Completely
disregarding a cardinal rule of public-garden etiquette, I filched a faded
bloom in hopes of getting viable seed. (Don't try this on your own, kids.)
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| A cluster of bottle gentian flowers |
Alas,
research revealed
Gentiana andrewsii requires
the cool nights of
USDA hardiness zones 3 to 7
to flourish, something Zone 8/9 SENC can’t provide. This revelation came as no
surprise, really: gentians in general don’t go here (and that makes 601). Further
digging yielded a species—
G. saponaria,
or soapwort gentian—allegedly tolerant of Zone 8 conditions. I prepared to roll
out an Internet search for plants when I remembered that coastal Oregon is also
considered Zone 8. I can’t think of many places with a climate as dissimilar to
Oak Island’s as, say, Eugene. It’s illustrative of the inherent
limitations of
hardiness zone maps.
The prairie
garden featured many familiar plants, including various Salvia species, Echinacea (coneflower), Rudbeckia (black-eyed Susan), Eryngium bourgatii (Mediterranean sea holly),
Eryngium yuccifolium (Rattlesnake
master, so called because it is believed to treat snakebites and/or keep snakes
out of the garden; both claims are erroneous), Veronicastrum virginicum (Culver’s root), Cimicifuga racemosa (snakeroot or cohosh), and numerous grasses,
including the graceful Eragrostis
spectabilis (purple love grass). The whole space buzzed and whirred with
bees and birds, like the goldfinch feasting on coneflower seedheads pictured below.
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| Echinacea seedheads and goldfinch |
Alas, we
country mice remembered—too late—that
four
days is enough city-time for us. Trudging miles of concrete sidewalks hemmed in
by tall buildings and crowds of people, high ambient energy levels and incessant
hum and rumble lose a lot of their charm after the first 72 hours or so. In fact,
they lost
all their charm, leaving us
to wonder why we thought a little change of scene would be so much fun in the
first place. Despite frequent and liberal dousings with hand sanitizer, by Day
5 I could no longer deny that I’d caught a cold, my first in years. We spent
most of Day 6 huddled in O’Hare, snuffling and counting minutes until our 8:25
pm flight.
Yes, it’s
true. Tim and I are Official Old Farts (OOFs).
Anyway. We’re
home now. The fine layer of cat litter riming every flat surface has been
shoveled out, the kitchen table cleared of last week’s mail and
newspapers, the laundry mountain conquered, the soporific effects of NyQuil and
Benadryl (almost) worn off. Once this opus is posted, I’m headed down the hall
for a nap. Another day or two and I’ll feel like getting back to work. Whoever
said “East, West, / Home’s best” sure knew what he was talking about.
Thanks for
dropping by.
Your
OOFy correspondent,
Kathy
